Forza 2 has a great paint mode which combined with some talent allows for some fantastic designs. I have no talent but I got a nice surprise last night when I signed into the game and got a car gift from Robert.
Absolutely stunning. Cheers for that – I might now have a prize for the first Forza Leagues tournament!
No, not the Beyonce album.
Not even a low-mounted plumbing fixture or type of sink intended for washing the external genitalia and the anus.
It’s Bomberman day on Xbox Live. David & Ricky D – I expect to see you online at least once this week for a session! To other 360 owners – get this! 8 player online. It can’t possibly fail*
*Obviously it can go wrong and online could suck salty balls and be one of the worst lag fests known to man. The recent Bomberman games have been awful as well, but I’ve kept the faith and hopefully this will be the reward. However, for old time’s sake ….you can’t go wrong, can you?
Over the last three weeks I’ve been beavering away on a new website which is finally ready to roll – www.forzaleagues.com. For the last few years I’ve gamed with a great but dwindling bunch of guys known as The Lickers. We’ve ended up with a core group enjoying mostly racing and first person shooters but we have a problem – no site to run leagues and a habit of starting a league but never finishing it.
So myself and Cheesy (fellow Lick) decided to try and do something about it, hence Forza Leagues. The website allows us to easily run multiple leagues and seasons for Forza 2. It should make the admin part as easy as possible and give us some nice stats along the way. It also allows us to attract 360 users from other forums and websites to join our leagues or form their own using the software we’ve developed.
Now when I say we’ve developed the software it’s really all down to one guy – Graeme (he asked me not to link to his homepage). So it’s a big thank you for the coding you’ve been doing over the last couple of weeks. Everyone’s feedback so far has been really positive. I also need to thank Robert (Foe Real) who’s logo work in Forza is superb and can be seen above. Soon we’ll all be riding using his designs.
Longer term we hope to add more games, leagues, ladders and team tournaments but for the moment, to get us started, we’re focussing on Forza 2 only. We’re looking for clean racers to join up and take part. Don’t worry about fast times as there will be leagues to cater for all abilities. The important thing is that you race fairly and don’t abuse your fellow gamers. If that sounds like you and you enjoy Forza 2 then feel free to register with Forza Leagues and at least give it a go. Hope to see you there.
Shite. I missed posting on 07/07/07 which no doubt means I’m cursed for the rest of my life. Probably explains the sore head for most of today (sorry Shak) but at least we’ve had two dry days in a row AND at the weekend. I’m currently sitting in the back garden enjoying the lovely summers evening and surfing like a demon. Bliss. I know it’s too much to ask but more dry days please. Is anyone listening? Thought not.
One last comment – tennis was rather splendid over the weekend with an amazing men’s singles final today. Well done to Jamie Murray too – who’d have thought he’d be the first Murray to win a Wimbledon title.
Did I say that was the last comment? Forza 2 is an immense game. It’s not only racers that are getting their kicks as anyone into customising cars can use the auction house to sell their wares. So well done Robert (or Foe Real as he’s known to some) for selling his second design for 5 million credits. That’s just one car. I think he’s totalling around 9 million now which is over ten times the money I’ve earned from racing only. Swine.
Microsoft have come clean and admitted they have reliability issues with the Xbox 360. They are setting aside over $1 billion to extend warranties to three years (flashing red lights) for 360 owners and also compensate those that have had their consoles repaired since launch. This is good news and well overdue. With failure rates of only 1% rumoured on the PS3 and more and more bad press surrounding 360 reliability there wasn’t really any other course of action.
Shame it wasn’t done sooner though.
Not much time to blog, but enough to post some links…
Terrorist attacks always seemed pretty remote, even when they were in the UK. I guess there was always a sense of ‘it’s London’ and ‘it won’t happen up here’. Today’s terrorist attack on Glasgow airport disproves that totally. Like the London cars that were found on Friday, the car that drove into Glasgow airport had propane gas and also petrol on board. Thankfully no one seems to be badly injured apart from one of the two people in the car. They were described as Asian with an eye witness stating that one guy was shouting Allah as he was pulled from the car.
Most disturbing was that one of the terrorists who has suffered 90% burns was wearing a suicide belt. The belt was only found on the suspect when he was in hospital. It’s shocking to think what damage he could have done.
Even more shocking is that this looks like a botched attack. What would have happened if the propane had gone up or the suicide belt detonated? How many innocents would have died? Or was the plan to ever kill lots of people? Was it just to disrupt, cause panic and fear, unsettle the public? I guess no one really knows at the moment. All we can do is keep vigilant for anything suspicious. Who knows where these guys were staying, worked or who they were friends with.
I’ve been loving the live text commentary on BBC sports recently and yesterday/today’s Henman match was a highpoint. Here are some of the better funnies:
Top work and thanks to Tom Fordyce as it makes for a far more entertaining game if you can’t watch it live, like when your at work…although I read this all tonight. Honest.
The 360 is a fine console with excellent games, great online community and a fine multi-media machine. However it’s failure rate is atrocious yet Microsoft have always denied there is a big issue with returns. Now comes news that the UK repairs team is receiving 1500 – 2500 per day according to this article published on 360 Gamer.
1500-2500 per day in the UK alone
That sounds really high but tie’s up with my own findings. I game regularly with a group of guys and almost all of them have had at least one 360 fail. Two of the group are onto their 5th 360. That’s five machines in less than 20 months. If it happened to one guy only you would put it down to bad luck but not two. I’ve also had mine fail, Shakeel’s has just gone, Graham’s on his third and as already said most of the guys have had theirs fail two. If it’s not the red ring of light it’s scratched disks, which is definitely caused by the 360 as the guys that I know it’s happened too haven’t even removed the disk from the machine for two weeks. It started to fail and on inspecting the disk concentric scratches were clearly visible.
These problems have now transferred to the 360 Elite which was Microsoft’s chance to address the issues which look to have been sadly missed. A couple of folk I know are now thinking it’s time to ditch the 360 and move to PS3 despite that platforms lack of current games – at least it seems more reliable. Time to come clean Microsoft. Early adopters deserve better than this. Consumers deserve better than this. You no longer have a monopoly when it comes to HD games and a busy online console community and gamers are becoming tired of the failure’s.
On my last trip to Madrid (two weeks ago now) I managed to squeeze in a stadium tour at the Bernabeu. It’s a magnificent stadium, very compact and the tour is only 10 Euro’s and is a bit of a bargain.
While there are no guides to tell you about the place you are allowed to walk round at your own pace and get to see views from many parts of the stadium, a small museum full of trophies and detail on Real Madrid’s history and then a walk down on to the pitchside and the dug out. You finish off in the away dressing room and press room before finally reaching the shop. The shop is actually the most disappointing part of the whole tour.
The weather in Madrid was fantastic although a bit too hot for me. Again the food was great and I tried Octopus for the first time – very nice. However trawling through the photo’s has been annoying. The camera has 4 or 5 dead pixels now on the sensor, a couple looking like a small cluster meaning each photo needs touched up. On individual photo’s it’s not bad but when you’ve a large batch to process it’s nothing but a pain in the arse. Looks like it’s time for a new camera. Yep, it’s a great excuse. Anyway, the full Flickr set is available here.
