Ah the A3-21 Plasma Rifle; it is one of the strongest weapons in fallout 3 not only that but you can get it relatively quickly as well it’s also stylish to boot.

So do you want one?

Do the quest ‘The replicated man’ which involves searching for an escaped android from the commonwealth. The android is chief harkness, of rivet city but you will need to find clues that link the android to pinkerton, who can be found in the lower half of rivet city, before you can confront him about it.

When you have confronted him about it, offer to kill the scientist who wanted you to find him, and he will give you his plasma rifle, which does more damage than a regular plasma rifle and is more valuable. you can also get a perk from the scientist and the plasma rifle, by repeating the step above, but instead of killing him, turn in the android and you will be able to keep both rewards, although harkness will disappear from the game.

Too much work?

You could make your own A3-21 Plasma Rifle. If you’ve been paying attention to the pictures in the article or indeed if you’ve actually read the title you might of noticed pictures of the A3-21 Plasma Rifle all over the place. This replica rifle was done by the very talented Ryan Palse (CitizenStrips) and painted by his wife Dena Palse.

Check out some pictures of the finished project.

Here’s some work in progress .

… and here is the in-game model and the replica together so you can compare.

If you’re interested many more can be found here or alternatively you can visit Ryans’ Flickr account here and check out his other projects

Ah Co-op Portal. Nothing breaks up freindships faster than having to work together but then again this is Portal we’re talking about so it’s probably worth losing a few freinds over.

It’s only a small teaser really but it gives us a little peak of what to expect out of Co-op mode. I suggest you take a look then figure out who is the most patient/competent freind you know.

Previously known as “Project Icarus” BioShock Infinite is an upcoming FPS  being developed by Irrational Games and is only indirectly connected to the first 2 Bioshock games. It is due to be released in 2012 for PS3, 360 and PC and will feature  a new protagonist former Pinkerton agent, DeWitt and the entirely new setting of “Columbia” a collapsing air-city.

Although Infinite will feature similar game-play concepts from the ones we have seen from the previous games the story takes place in a radically different time and place. Namely “Columbia” a city suspended in the air by giant blimps and balloons that was proudly boasted by the American government when launched in 1900, centralized on the idea of American Exceptionalism. Like Rapture however, Columbia is considered a failed utopia with signs present suggesting a theocratic government took control at some point.

Set in 1912 you play the role of Booker DeWitt a disgraced former agent, hired by individuals to invade the air-city and rescue Elizabeth, a woman that was abducted by Columbia as a girl.

Take a look at the trailer.

• A Perfect Circle – “The Outsider”
• Aerosmith – “Cryin’”
• AFI – “Dancing Through Sunday”
• Alice Cooper – “No More Mr. Nice Guy”
• Alter Bridge – “Ties That Bind”
• Anberlin – “The Feel Good Drag”
• Anthrax – “Indians”
• Arch Enemy – “Nemesis”
• Atreyu – “Ravenous”
• Avenged Sevenfold – “Bat Country”
• Bad Brains – “Re-Ignition (Live)”
• Band Of Skulls – “I Know What I Am”
• Black Sabbath – “Children Of The Grave”
• Blind Melon – “Tones Of Home”
• Blue Öyster Cult – “Burnin’ For You”
• Bush – “Machinehead”
• Buzzcocks – “What Do I Get?”
• Children Of Bodom – “If You Want Peace… Prepare For War”
• Creedence Clearwater Revival – “Fortunate Son”
• The Cure – “Fascination Street”
• Deep Purple – “Burn”
• Def Leppard – “Pour Some Sugar On Me (Live)”
• Dethklok – “Bloodlines”
• The Dillinger Escape Plan – “Setting Fire To Sleeping Giants”
• Dire Straits – “Money For Nothing”
• DragonForce – “Fury of the Storm”
• Drowning Pool – “Bodies”
• Edgar Winter- “Free Ride”
• Fall Out Boy – “Dance, Dance”
• Five Finger Death Punch – “Hard To See”
• Flyleaf – “Again”
• Foo Fighters – “No Way Back”
• Foreigner – “Feels Like The First Time”
• George Thorogood and The Destroyers – “Move It On Over (Live)”
• The Hives – “Tick Tick Boom”
• Interpol – “Slow Hands”
• Jane’s Addiction – “Been Caught Stealing”
• Jethro Tull – “Aqualung”
• John 5 – “Black Widow Of La Porte”
• KISS – “Love Gun”
• Linkin Park – “Bleed It Out”
• Lynyrd Skynyrd – “Call Me The Breeze (Live)”
• Megadeth – “Sudden Death”
• Megadeth – “Holy Wars… The Punishment Due”
• Megadeth – “This Day We Fight!”
• Metallica & Ozzy Osbourne – “Paranoid (Live)”
• Muse – “Uprising”
• My Chemical Romance – “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)”
• Neil Young – “Rockin’ In The Free World”
• Nickelback – “How You Remind Me”
• Night Ranger – “(You Can Still) Rock In America”
• Nine Inch Nails – “Wish”
• The Offspring – “Self Esteem”
• Orianthi – “Suffocated”
• Pantera – “I’m Broken”
• Phoenix – “Lasso”
• Poison – “Unskinny Bop”
• Queen – “Bohemian Rhapsody”
• Queensrÿche – “Jet City Woman”
• Rammstein – “Waidmanns Heil”
• The Ramones – “Theme From Spiderman”
• Red Rider – “Lunatic Fringe”
• R.E.M. – “Losing My Religion”
• Rise Against – “Savior”
• The Rolling Stones – “Stray Cat Blues”
• The Runaways – “Cherry Bomb”
• Rush – “2112 Pt. 1 – Overture”
• Rush – “2112 Pt. 2 – The Temples Of Syrinx”
• Rush – “2112 Pt. 3 – Discovery”
• Rush – “2112 Pt. 4 – Presentation”
• Rush – “2112 Pt. 5 – Oracle: The Dream”
• Rush – “2112 Pt. 6 – Soliloquy”
• Rush – “2112 Pt. 7 – Grand Finale”
• RX Bandits – “It’s Only Another Parsec…”
• Silversun Pickups – “There’s No Secrets This Year”
• Slash featuring Ian Astbury – “Ghost”
• Slayer – “Chemical Warfare”
• Slipknot – “Psychosocial”
• Snot – “Deadfall”
• Soundgarden – “Black Rain”
• Steve Vai – “Speeding” (Vault Version)
• Stone Temple Pilots – “Interstate Love Song”
• Strung Out – “Calling”
• Styx – “Renegade”
• Sum 41 – “Motivation”
• Tesla – “Modern Day Cowboy”
• Them Crooked Vultures – “Scumbag Blues”
• Third Eye Blind – “Graduate”
• Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – “Listen To Her Heart”
• Twisted Sister – “We’re Not Gonna Take It”
• The Vines – “Get Free”
• The White Stripes – “Seven Nation Army”
• ZZ Top – “Sharp Dressed Man (Live)”

Hydro Thunder Hurricane, which from hence forth will be abbreviated to HTH. Is, at around £10 great value for Money but not a truly great game. While the graphics are very nice and a lot of effort has obviously gone into the inexplicable dinosaurs and battlefields that you will have to navigate at blinding speeds the game is something that will keep you entertained for a rainy day or a drunken night home with your mates. The control system works rather nicely but at its core the game play gets a little stagnant after a couple of hours, its like an amalgamation of Wave race for the N64 and Wipeout for the original Playstation but I’m afraid it lives up to neither. But for a tenner why the hell not, i had great fun smashing my friend into a wall and if all else fails its quite nice to pretend its Pokemon snap and just go off on an adventure around the dazzlingly bizarre courses.

So next time your drunk with a couple of friends but cant be arsed to go out, and your copy of left for dead has melted have a go at HTH.

It has now been confirmed that Microsoft will be selling the Kinect controller for $149.99 on the Xbox 360.

A lot of people are saying that the price seems about $50 too high, but Microsoft have stuck with the pricing of $149.99 and have thrown in a free game, Kinect Adventures.

There’s also a new budget level Xbox 360 console SKU being planned. This will contain built in Wi-Fi N, a black matte finish like that of the Xbox 360 S, and 4GB of internal memory. It’s coming August 3rd for $199.99. You can get both the new console and Kinect for a combined $299.99 later this year, as part of the Kinect Holiday Bundle.

Bungie, in an effort to avoid leaks and elected to leak information themselves revealing a portion of the achievements available in Halo: Reach check’m out below.

- A Monument to All Your Sins – Complete each Campaign Mission on Legendary – alone.
- Banshees, Fast and Low – Hijack a Banshee during the Reach Campaign.
- Yes, Sensei – Earn a First Strike Medal in a Matchmaking game.
- A New Challenger – Complete all of the Daily Challenges in a given day.
- Make It Rain – Purchase an item from the Armory that requires the rank of Lt. Colonel.
- If They Came to Hear Me Beg – Perform an Assassination against an Elite to survive a fall that would’ve been fatal.

All in all there will be 49 Achievements and 23 of them will be campaign-specific.

“Achievements were bucketed into five different groups, Campaign (23), Firefight (7), Multiplayer (4), Training (6) and Player Experience (9). Some of the Training Achievements can be earned in both Campaign and Firefight.”

Roll on September 14.

Rather unsurprisingly the recent Portal 2 trailer has caused much excitement among the gaming community, of course the new gaming elements have much to do with it but it would be remiss of me to say that it didnt have anything to do with the featured personality core, the bumbling, british personality core Wheatley.

Recently there  has been division about the voice actor for Wheatly. You see, for the Trailer they had Richard Lord, an animator for Valve, to play the wonderful Wheatley. Richard Lord, in case it wasn’t obvious, is not an experienced voice actor but this hasn’t stopped Wheatley from becoming incredibly popular very quick.  It’s only recently been announced that since Richard Lord was a stand in, Wheatley will be voiced by an actual voice actor but already someone has made a petition to keep him. (Which you can find here)

Conversely, a lot of people actually complained that the voice wasn’t suited at all for the personally core.  All that being said, Valve clearly hadn’t finished putting all the voice effects on Wheatley which would make his voice a lot more suited. Still, an actual actor would probably improve Wheatley no end, even if you were a fan of Richard Lord imagine Wheatley voiced by someone like… say Simon Pegg. Food for thought.

Well, Here is the Wheatley Trailer (in HD) just in case you missed it.

At the moment details are limited, what we do know is the player can take control of a squad of 4 space marines. an Assault Marine, a Tactical Marine, a Sergeant and a Devastator Marine and as the game progresses upgrades are earned for each. This  allows the player to customise the squad as the game goes on.

At the moment the story concerns an Ork invasion of an Imperial Forge World. (Weapons Factory). I doubt they’ll win any awards for the story.

Here are the technical differences.

…and here are some more pictures.

Microsoft launched a new slim Xbox 360 at E3 and now it has been confirmed that there the next generation of Xbox wont be available until 2015.

The company’s European boss, Chris Lewis, has stated that with the just released slim Xbox 360 and the upcoming Kinect peripheral, the life cycle of the 360 has been extended into 2015:

As of the announcement he current build features at least 30 characters include Captain America, Chris Redfield, Deadpool, Dante, Dormammu, Felicia, Hulk, Morrigan, Iron Man, Ryu and Wolverine. It has been confirmed that Nemisis and Tyrant will not be making it due to age restrictions… on the game.

Okay, on to the video. Deadpool, Captain America and Iron Man versus Dante, Chris Redfield and Felicia… Fantastic.

You’ve got to love the Valve way of doing things. Find some developers with a unique idea, hire them then implement their ideas into your games. Genius and terribly honest as well. Portal 2 is looking fantastic, which doesn’t come as a surprise… take a look for yourself.

Not heard much about this FPS set in the afterwake of an Earthquake in Chicago. Nice to know it’s still going.

So far at E3 the 360 side has been at little disappointing especially with the Kinect feeling so… casual. There were so many possibilities but hey at least Star Wars looks good. I do have to wonder though… how do you walk around. Okay here is the trailer.

It has been reported that Hulu will be coming to Xbox 360 as an Xbox Live service in a few weeks. Microsoft will be making the announcement at E3.

Hulu will reportedly be integrated into the Xbox’s dashboard, much the way Netflix was before it. It is pretty much guaranteed that the service will be subscription based, but no prices have been released yet.

This Microsoft announcement is expected in the next hour or so, we will soon see if this information is reliable.

On June 11, 2010 LedgeWizard Games, released their first game, Towers, for the Xbox (Live) Indie Games Platform. A unique and imaginative take on the Tower defence game that sets out to build a deep and rewarding experience without losing any of its vibrant personality.

Based in South Cornwall, England, LedgeWizard Games are a small family based team headed up by Adam Steppens who built Towers in his spare time. I was lucky enough to get an interview with Mr. LedgeWizard himself, Adam Steppens.

What differentiates Towers from other Tower Defence games?

I’ve played a number of good TDs in the past so there are obviously strong influences from some games. I’m hoping that a few of the tower designs are fairly original and that they complement each other well. Each of the towers has a few different versions that can be upgraded to individually, so, for instance, a cannon tower could be given a speed upgrade, or damage upgrade or even eventually both. Different towers have other upgrades available, though the total number for each tower has been kept fairly low so that each tower has strengths and weaknesses which have to be worked into the strategy.

There are also multiple endings based on how well you do. All are achievable and seeing one ending doesn’t lock you out from seeing any of the others. I think it’s very important for people to be able to see all of the content without being locked out for making a decision that they might regret later. That’s something for RPGs I think.

The golden rule that I eventually settled on was to keep it simple. It’s a pretty casual game that anyone can pick up and play. The variety is in the different strategies the player can come up with. Originally, different coloured wizards were going to be able to build different towers, or make it so that different objects in the world would be used for different sets of towers. It all got a little bit complicated and potentially quite restrictive. It also played havoc with the difficulty. I might something like that in a sequel. So the game basically only ever has three options. Build, upgrade and sell.

The game has a fairly sedate pace, especially in the earlier levels. The idea being that the player has a moment to think about which towers to choose and where to place them, rather than the whole game being a reaction test. However, there are times when you’ve got everything under control and just want things to move a little faster, so I added a fast forward control.

How did you get into making a game for the 360?

A friend of mine showed me a site he had been learning from, [xnadevelopment]. He’d followed a tutorial and had gotten a blue wizard to jump around whilst shooting fireballs. I was instantly intrigued and even more so when he pointed out that the software needed to get going was completely free. Needless to say, I was interested and after trying out the tutorials myself, I set about making a game myself. This would become Towers. Originally I designed it as a side on game, like old style platformers. The first step was to create a series of platforms, on which I stood a blue wizard (which I had coincidentally drawn years before, for a game I’d never made). Being fairly new to this, I was quite impressed by my little wizard standing on his ledge. Other’s not so much, but he was the starting point and when I came to sign up for the XNA Creators Club, I couldn’t use my original choices, so I went with LedgeWizard.

From that point I continued learning as I went along, not quite sure what I’d be able to do. Thankfully the XNA forums and numerous code samples are available, so with a bit of time and effort you can achieve a lot. I can’t say I never got stuck, but I persevered and I’m pleased with the way it’s turned out.

What was your favourite part of the process?

Seeing people’s reactions to the game. At one point, I had one tester playing and five other people criticising his tower placements, each asking to have the controller passed to them next, so that they could show them how it’s done. When people get out of their seats and start pointing to where they think towers should be placed it’s very cool, especially when it’s meant to be a single player experience.

Overall, the feedback I’ve received has been incredibly gratifying. As a result of the feedback, we’re even planning an update, to add multiple difficulty levels and are planning on smoothing out the difficulty curve a little. One particular level, Everwinter Trail, has been commented on a few times and is definately possible, but generally harder than the other levels around it. We’ve got some tips on our website at www.ledgewizardgames.com if people are struggling and will possibly offer walkthroughs in the future if people are interested.

What was your least favourite part?

I’m generally happy with everything that went into the game. I cut a number of items early on when it was apparent that they either bogged the game down, or made it overcomplicated. Despite this, the things that did go in took a lot longer than I’d originally expected. I think I told my wife that the game would be done in a few evenings and odd weekends over a month and it dragged out a lot more than that. To be fair, I was learning as I went along, so was essentially encountering new problems at every step. But I worked through each and every one and firmly believe the next one will be quicker. At least, that’s what I’ve told my wife.

There’s almost as much work in getting the game playing right and running smoothly as there is just getting it to work in the first place. I owe a seriously huge thank you to my testers who volunteered their free time playing and replaying the levels as I made minute changes to the levels or the controls or some other incredibly small point.

So, what are you working on next?

Loads of things! Whilst working on Towers, I kept getting ideas that either were too complex to go in and might work for a sequel or for an entirely different TD. I want to work a lot more with game generated music for instance, as it’s an area I really haven’t explored much. Also, I’ve had at least a dozen unrelated ideas. Some being clones and some being quite original. I’ll have to let you know when I’ve picked one!

I tend to create a very rough prototype (like a ghost, wearing a hat whilst wandering through a forest and being shot at by cannons) and throw it out to a few close friends, who will quite honestly tell me that it’s either a rubbish idea, or maybe that it’s got some potential . Getting people to look past placeholder graphics is tricky, plus I’m really not very good with drawing graphics yet, so they have to fill in the blanks with their imaginations.

Lastly, Some of the levels can get a bit tough, Do you have any recommended strategies?

This unintended one arose in early play testing. An interesting use of the lightning tower. Designed to have huge range and really high damage to a single target or anything standing really close. Ideal for boss monsters, since it will always output its maximum damage rather than over-killing. It also targets the monster with the most hit points remaining so that it’s not generally wasted on smaller monsters.

Most people put these towers near the centre of the screen, exposing them to as much of the monster’s paths as possible, but one tester put one right at the end of the path, covering very little ground. It turned out that the tower acted really well as a filter. The tester has put gun towers down to finish off weakened monsters that had gotten past everything else. However, gun towers get locked onto targets, shooting them for as long as they possibly can. Therefore if they start tracking something with a lot of health, weaker monsters that could easily be killed quickly will creep past. The lightning tower solved this by severely weakening or frequently killing off just the tougher monsters as opposed to the ones that the guns could quickly destroy.

Could I please just add a huge thank you to everyone who helped suggest ideas and improvements whilst testing the game. Without you guys the whole experience would’ve been a lot less satisfying and a lot less fun.

You can find and download the game from the XBox LIVE Marketplace. I highly recommend that you give it a go. Or you could visit LedgeWizard games yourself. Here.

E3 starts tomorrow and already news is being leaked! It has been reported that Microsoft will be renaming their Project Natal to simply Kinect.

USA Today revealed this list of Kinect games:

• Kinectimals: A virtual ‘big cat’ trainer that lets you train and play with 20 different feline members of the animal kingdom, including tigers, lions and cheetah.
• Kinect Sports: Microsoft’s answer to Wii Sports, Kinect Sports features table tennis, boxing, bowling, soccer, beach volleyball, and track and field; all controlled using your body.
• Joyride: This one looks to be a kart-style racer—grip your hands on an imaginary steering wheel and use your foot for the gas and brakes.
• Kinect Adventures: This game combines a river raft simulator (recently seen on Youtube) and obstacle course for up to four players. Rafting works in pairs, with players working together and moving in the same direction to steer. Jumping will also grant access to secret areas.
• Dance Central: Developed by MTV games, this is a motion-controlled dance-off.
• Disney and Lucasarts have also announced that classic Disney and Star Wars characters will be appearing in upcoming Kinect games.

Additionally, the Xbox 360 is set to have a more slimmed down design and here is what it is going to look like.

Update: USA Today has pulled the Kinect story from their website.

The ‘Natal’ could be great, if done properly. It wouldn’t be hard, for now just ignore innovation. Look at the best games around at the moment and how you could improve them. Don’t build games around the ‘Natal’ look at existing games and see how any of the features of the natal could be used to improve them without removing anything that made the game good in the first place.

Here is my vision: I am playing an FPS let’s call it… um ‘Shooter’ and I want to go to the menu so instead of pressing the menu button instead all I have to do to pause the game is take one of my hands off the Xbox controller and the game will pause by itself to allowing me to explore the menu using a mid-air hand on an invisible menu screen like star trek or minority report. Lifting different hands might give me different menus or maybe a left handed/right handed version of the same menu. The important thing would be to not disrupt what makes FPSs good in the first place but rather add to that experience.

Another example. While playing Rock Band Hero (or any rhythm game) as you play the guitar like you normally would you actions off-screen should reflect your actions on-screen letting your character have his own personal rocking out, this would be fantastic to look back on with a whole band especially if they could factor in the entire rooms positions to allow high fives and such.

Racing games could have you in the car see catching your subtle head/hand movements. Don’t have an untouchable invisible steering wheel use the same technology and have you holding the Xbox controller and have the option to drive steering wheel style or standard joypad controller, actually let me repeat this, HAVE THE CHOICE TO USE STANDARD CONTROLS.

You see, all the feedback is in the Xbox controller and  all the real control is in the Xbox controller so there’s no reason to get rid of the Xbox controller what I want is both.

Here is an example of  what the Xbox  does not need…

Glowing Xbox got your attention? Well forget about it it’s nothing to do with anything. Why did I include a picture of a glowing Xbox that has nothing to do with anything? Well you’d like to know that wouldn’t you. Well i’m not going to tell you. Just look at the picture below.

Look at it. Now take a proper look, that horrible, old, useless Boxart picture. God Damn it makes me want to punch small furry animals it is so bad. This needs to be changed and sharpish.

Wow. It is like the gods have breathed fresh air in my face . When I look it of I see the millions of years of evolution I see that majesty of the universe, I see…

Okay, enough of that. Sarcasm aside it’s nice to have an update now and again to freshen things up but I can’t help thinking there are better things microsoft could be doing with their time and money.

No time to read just look….

What can I say. Earthworm Jim, back in HD and 4 player co-op. Fantastic…. His voice seems a bit off though. Take a look for yourselves.

The world is introduced to Brock Lee and his desire to experience Blur. Well so says the blurb, personally it seems a tad juvenile that the advert tries to set it’s self as a mature alternative to Mario Kart which is ironic. Well take a look at the advert or indeed wait for may. I don’t mind either way.

For everyone who hasn’t gotten around to watching the David lynch inspired, Alan Wake prequel, Bright Falls, I have be nice enough to collect together the first 4 Episodes. It’s a must watch for everyone looking orward to the Alan Wake game.

Not a lot I can say about this one, it’s a trailer for Pro Evolution Soccer, 2011, Watch it.

I’ll be honest I’m not sure how excited I should be about this game and that possibly due to the fact that my entire knowledge of Football(Soccer) comes from this particular clip from Mitchell & Webb. Enjoy.