Happy Birthday Xbox One xxx.

Saturday, November the 22nd, 2014 officially marks the one year anniversary of Xbox One. And Xbox want to thank you for being a part of an amazing 12 months by celebrating with you all weekend long.

First, all New Zealanders that opted in to receive Xbox Marketing emails, will receive a personalised email detailing what you’ve accomplished since Xbox One launched last November. Here’s a look at some of the community achievements made on Xbox One this past year.

Overall, the total community Gamerscore earned on Xbox One is more than 11 billion, fans spent more than 2 billion hours playing games on Xbox One and the top four most popular achievements unlocked include:

Forza Motorsport 5: Welcome to Forza Motorsport

Titanfall: Build Yourself

Destiny: Ship Rite

Call of Duty: Ghosts: Spatial Awareness

But that’s not all! To show their appreciation for your loyal and continued support for Xbox One, Xbox have several gifts available for their fan-boys and girls, celebrating one year on Xbox One. Beginning Friday the 21st of November, 2014,  all registered Xbox One owners will get:

A Year One Gamer Picture

A special Year One background as well as an exclusive Day One background for those who unlocked the Day One achievement

A Year One background image for use on Twitter, your desktop, etc.

A free rental of “Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn” (for a limited time)

And in addition, fans will be selected at random to receive a special gift from us. The full list of possible gifts include:

One month membership for Xbox One-exclusive EA Access service

Tiger Shark cash card for Grand Theft Auto V, worth $200,000 in-game GTA Online dollars

Xbox Live Gold 12-month membership digital code

Killer Instinct Season 1 Combo Breaker Pack, the retail version of Killer Instinct Xbox One’s first season and includes all eight season one characters: Jago, Sabrewulf, Glacius, Thunder, Sadira, Orchid, and Spinal. Also includes Fulgore DLC character.

Special limited edition Nissan 370Z, featuring a custom Casio livery for Forza Horizon 2

Air Vehicle shortcut for Battlefield 4 for immediate access to all available unlocks for helicopters and jets available in the main Battlefield 4 game

Arno’s French Rapier for Assassin’s Creed Unity to improve your combat skills

75 Platinum in Warframe

Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare Costume Pack for Peggle 2

Epic Quest Table in Pinball FX2

Dance Central Spotlight (full game token)

Project Spark Premium – 15 days: Grants 2x gain of Spark XP, credits, and champion XP, as well as the ability to purchase new token-only content for earned in-game credits

A message from Xbox:

“Xbox remain committed to all of our incredible fans and gamers worldwide and are so grateful for your support over the last year. Thank you for helping us celebrate this incredible milestone”.

The post The One has turned One – News appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Xbox is offering one lucky New Zealander and a mate the opportunity to jet set across the globe for 10 days on the High Flyers trip of a lifetime.

The competition prize includes tickets to Super Bowl XLIX and the Merseyside Derby.  To top it off, there’s exclusive access to major game development studios in Singapore, Canada, the United Sates and the United Kingdom.

And all of this after touching down from a ZERO-G Experience aboard a parabolic flight with Zero Gravity Corporation. Not a bad prize, right?

High Flyers is about celebrating Xbox fans and the spectacular games on Xbox One. The close of 2014 has seen the Xbox One games portfolio step up to the next level. Acclaimed new titles have demonstrated what fans can expect from the new generation of gaming and it’s time to reward their ongoing enthusiasm.

Xbox New Zealand Lead, Steven Blackburn, says: “Twelve years with Xbox and this is the most exciting prize I’ve seen. I’m ecstatic that two lucky Kiwis will be on that plane. I’m looking forward to meeting them and hope they fly the New Zealand flag proudly on tour.”

For a chance at the grand prize, gamers 18 years and over need only own and play the featured Game of the Week once to enter the draw. It’s worth noting that High Flyers is a seven-week competition and playing all seven featured games earns seven entries.

The Xbox One High Flyers tour kicks off in Singapore on 30th of January 2015 and follows the schedule below:

Day 1 – Visit Ubisoft Singapore’s Assassin’s Creed sound studio to record your voice

Day 2 – Zero Gravity flight

Day 3 – Attend Super Bowl XLIX in Glendale, Arizona

Day 4 – Depart for Vancouver, Canada

Day 5 – Visit the EA Sports Studio for a Motion Capture session, followed by a visit to Capcom Studios

Day 6 – Visit Turn 10 Studios and Xbox HQ in Seattle

Day 7 – Visit Insomniac Studios and get a joy ride on the Warthog

Day 8 – Travel to UK for lunch at Playground Games

Day 9 – Attend the MerseySide Derby

Day 10 – Take a supercar for a hot lap before travelling home

Hundreds of token prizes are up for grabs each week throughout the entire High Flyers competition.  All you need do is send a photo to the High Flyers website (www.xbox.com/en-NZ/HighFlyers) that displays your love for Xbox and the relevant game for that week. You’ll be in with a chance to score some sweet in-game items.

“With thousands of New Zealanders using Xbox One every day we wanted to celebrate as many Kiwi gamers as possible. We’ll be rewarding the gamers who demonstrate their Xbox pride,” says Blackburn.

The schedule below details each Game of the Week beginning 10 November:

Week 1 (10-16 Nov) – FIFA 15

Week 2 (17-23 Nov) – Forza Horizon 2

Week 3 (24-30 Nov) – Sunset Overdrive

Week 4 (1-7 Dec) – Assassin’s Creed Unity

Week 5 (8-14 Dec) – Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

Week 6 (15-21 Dec) – Halo: The Master Chief Collection

Week 7 (22-28 Dec) – Dead Rising 3

For full details about the Xbox One High Flyers competition including entry details and terms and conditions, please go HERE.

The post Ten Days. Ten Epic Experiences. A Lifetime of Bragging Rights. – News appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Improving every aspect of the game in addition to the all-new First Person Mode revealed yesterday, this means big technical changes like increasing the overall resolution and more than doubling the draw distance, as well as replacing every texture in the game and much more.

To see just how far the game has come in its transition to these new versions, check out the PS3 to PS4 Comparison video below.

Grand Theft Auto V for will be available on Xbox One and PS4 November 18th, 2014 and on PC January 27th, 2015.

The post The Gap Between Last & Next Gen Blurs for GTA V – News appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

The colourful DLC artwork led me to believe it was some kind of platformer for kids – oh, how wrong I was.

Project: Spark is a game that resists a short, easy description – but I’m going to do my best.

Sitting somewhere between LittleBigPlanet, The Sims, Fable and Diablo sits this vast digital sandbox where, to be honest, pretty much anything goes. Microsoft have created not only the most robust world building tool kit I’ve ever seen, but also a surprisingly complex coding system to let you inhabit that world with all manner of life, objectives and other entertainment.

We’re introduced to this world with a really simple and surprisingly fun single player campaign.

Four heroes defend the world under siege from a dark force – with the help of the benevolent and godlike ‘Spark’ – floating about and helping them by constructing the world around them, in a way that helps them proceed. You move around a 3D world with a top-down camera, bashing out enemies as they come at you – the visual effects of Fable meet a simplified version of the combat of your point and click RTS.

This campaign is fun enough, but by no means deep enough to impress your average gamer.

However, what this section is good at is introducing you to the fundamental concepts of Project: Spark when it comes to world building.

Project: Spark perhaps can be best seen as a tool for teaching the very basics of coding – so much so that I become somewhat amazed at the depths of creation available.

Each creation starts out with building a landscape.

Everything you put in that world, however – hero, villain, objective – has a coded ‘Brain’. This determines everything that the game is capable of, but on a much more specific level than you might imagine.

If you’re making your Level a hero, you first have to program it to move – you do this by coding it’s brain so that ‘WHEN’ the left analogue stick is used, movement happens.

This is required for all actions, with a staggering degree of complexity.

The first tutorial has you set a marker to the conclusion of a Level, and you must set this marker’s Brain to not only end the Level, but to present custom ‘Game Over’ text and fade out at a certain speed.

This, arguably is the game’s greatest strength and weakness – the sheer amount of menus and options can make the game feel like a real chore when you’re sitting down to make something from scratch.

With that said, it allows you (if you’re really committed to making something magic) do it with a degree of detail and interactivity you’ve never seen in a world builder before.

And a lot of the joy I got from this game was getting to know these tools – getting an objective or an enemy to work in exactly the way I wanted it to, in a very nerdy way, is extremely thrilling.

A huge part of Project: Spark’s charm is it’s visual appeal.

Everything is rendered in the ultra adorable, somehow warm and kind style of Fable, with rounded edges making it seem like the world is made out of folded paper and cork.

It’s a sweet look, and it makes investing the time to make your world look exactly right.

Much like LittleBigPlanet, the nearest possible comparison to this unique title, the game shines when showing off what other players have already made.

The Campaign they offer is nothing more than a passably fun heroes quest – but the community creations really display what’s possible here.

In my brief dip into the world of other people’s genius, I experienced a pretty excellent Flappy Bird clone, a very, very impressive Avatar combat sim (much better than the Legend of Aang game), and a maze themed Combat Gauntlet. And all of them were excellent fun.

Project: Spark is one that if you don’t have a lot of time to spare, probably isn’t worth the effort.

Getting to know this game will exponentially increase your enjoyment. If you’re looking for something to pay off in the short run, find a FPS or Hack ‘n’ Slash.

But if you’re interested in world building and want to commit some playing time, I implore you to play this . Give yourself a chance to come up with something really incredible.

The post Project Spark Xbox One – Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Sunset Overdrive is an open world third-person shooter. It is set in a fictional metropolis called Sunset City (who would have guessed) which is under a zombie-mutant apocalyptic type siege.

I’m not the biggest fan of the genre or the overdone idea of a zombie like apocalypse. With Sunset Overdrive, it’s like they took both ideas and injected them with hallucinogenic steroids and then created this game.

That is one reason I have loved Insomniacs previous works. They manage not to take themselves so seriously and pull it off. Many games attempt to poke fun at themselves but they usually manage to miss the point. Sunset Overdrive seems to have the balance.

Insomniac have inserted their weird sense of humour everywhere in this game, from comic book style mini animations to respawning. You might get dropped off in an alien spaceship or dance your way out of an Egyptian sarcophagus. This game is purely for the fun of it.

The game allows you to create your own character and give them whatever whacky attire you deem suitable. After the all-important character customisation you head out to work.

You are a simple cleaner who hates your job and while collecting litter at a rave promoting FizzCo’s (the soon to be villainous company) new energy drink; Overcharge, things go terribly wrong.

The party guests, after drinking this new concoction, start turning into deranged bright orange mutant zombies triggering a citywide apocalypse.

FizzCo puts the city into lockdown to stop the rest of the world finding out their terrible mistake. You decide it’s your goal, after surviving, to escape this freak show of a city. On your way to try and reach this goal you meet and greet a whole entourage of strange and amusing characters.

In this apocalyptic city the survivors have created their own little factions and it turns out to be in your best interest to befriend and assist these cliques.

Some of these factions include a group of delusional LARPers who seem stuck in the dark ages and a troupe of kick ass scouts that have claimed a Japanese museum as their base.

Liaising with these factions will give you reason to explore new areas of the city and participate in an array of bizarre quests along with getting to know some of the more peculiar characters in the story.

You are free to get from place to place however you like. You are something of a parkour expert with the abilities to wall run (for like forever), grind on almost anything and bounce great heights from the tops of cars and numerous other landscape features.

The city is filled with debris, smash-able objects, collectables, chests and an almost unlimited amount of things to jump, wall run and grind on.

This freedom makes it distractingly fun to traverse this world. I found myself on many occasions just aimlessly using all these abilities in random directions for sheer joy of the process. The game definitely encourages you to take full advantage of these skills as getting on the ground can be bad for one’s health, literally.

The infestations of bright orange mutant zombie things or ODs are very much everywhere.

There are a few other bigger and more killer abominations around too, each with a unique look and killing style giving more reason to be quick on your feet. Even other humans, now turned Scabs, can be cause for concern when gallivanting about Sunset City. Marauding around on the ground is likely to get you killed by any combination of these adversities.

This said, dying doesn’t really seem to have any adverse effects. You’ll just pop up nearby in some whacky respawn animation. The only times dying was of some detriment to you was mid-missions where you might have to take down a certain amount of enemies or in a boss battle, where dying means the count of health bar resetting.

All the acrobatic antics are also a close part of the combat as you need to shoot and hit the enemy in the midst of it all.

While many third person shooter type games have you ducking to cover or strafing back and forth, this simply isn’t an option in Sunset Overdrive. Initially it took a small amount time to adjust to a much faster paced and busy combat scene but soon as you get the hang of it, it is fun to no end.

The weapons are funky and have a definite Ratchet and Clank flavour to them.

They are amusing to use and make taking down the weird and wonderful zombies of Sunset city all the more enjoyable and chaotic. Shooting out an explosive teddy bear, lighting up the enemy with a quick array of fireworks or laying down multiple toy shaped acid sprinklers is not only entertaining but the carnage left in its wake is a satisfying experience.

Apart from not dying, cavorting fashionably from wall to pole to rooftop offers other incentives.

Your character and the guns you collect can be improved by applying amps. Amps are varying in effect, from adding a fire burst to a gun to making your melee attacks shoot out mini tornadoes. Weapon amps are effective from the moment of application but character amps require your Style bar to increase before they become activated.

The game has numerous currencies, one for clothes, weapons and few different ones for purchasing amps. I was very happy with this system as it meant you didn’t have to sacrifice one to gain the other. While money and cans of overcharge are easily gained through quests and what not there are random bits and bobs that need to be collected for amp purchases.

These vary from stinky shoes to trashed toilet paper are strewn throughout the Levels meaning coming across them in random exploration is a guarantee.

I was very impressed with the side quests as they easily fit into the world and always seemed relevant and in some cases I thought they were the main story.

I loved that they fit so well within the main story it was easy to confuse the two. On the downside there were a few that seemed to repeat ideas but this didn’t subtract from the overall experience.

One more unique aspect of gameplay are mini horde mode type Levels. They come around every once in a while and can be replayed at any time.

Here you have to defend your base from hordes of the zombie-mutants while a friend of yours, Floyd, creates new amps for you. It has a bit of a tower defence aspect to it as you have traps available that you have to place strategically to assist in your defence. Playing the game unlocks and new bases where you have to implement new defensive strategy.

These sections gave a nice differentiation in gameplay as well as bonus amps.

Sunset Overdrive takes on a rather cartoony art style and reinforces this with some over the top comic book style animations in battle and cut scenes.

I found these to be comical and enjoyed the style for what it was. This game was never going for realism and rather than spending copious amounts of time and money on such a thing they went for making a great game instead. Sound also is well applied and makes the universe feel more interactive and delightful.

What is a sandbox game set in a zombie apocalypse city without some type of multiplayer?

The multiplayer takes you through numerous mission types. These may involve collecting dynamite, jumping to a blimp and placing it to bring it down before it finishes its course. Others may have you doing a certain amount of mini challenges or taking on a horde of enemies.

They are enjoyable and provide competition with other players to be the best at what ever task is handed to you.

Insomniac has yet again impressed me with its unique style and flare.

It has a slightly more adult version of that classic Ratchet and Clank humour running through it and many other ideas that seem to tap into their previous works but this game is still very much original.

It demands a different play style to most third person shooters and has a personality of its own. From addictive gameplay to crazy weapons Sunset Overdrive really offers a game that is wholly enjoyable and entertaining.

The post Sunset Overdrive Xbox One – Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

The star of this game is Wei Shen, an undercover Chinese-American cop who has recently come back home to Hong Kong.

It’s his mission to infiltrate and bring down the Sun On Ye Triads. As he slowly builds trust and friendship on both sides, lines begin to blur and things get very intense.

The story is rather interesting and keeps you intrigued and invested, that said I did sometimes miss things and later on it somehow came back round leaving me sitting a bit clueless as to what was going on.

You roam around in a reinvented version of Hong Kong, with a few different scenes to offer, from temples to bustling markets. Missions will take you all over the city.

Traveling between places will usually have you driving to get there. Unfortunately I went from a car simulator to this game so driving around was something I had to readjust to. The driving aspect of Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition  isn’t the best thing out there but it works for this style of game, being arcade like in nature. Vehicles can be both purchased and unlocked with certain missions.

Completing tasks can earn you both Cop Points and Triad Points, specifically. Leveling up in either will allow you to unlock a new attack or special ability from the specific skill trees associated with each. There is a third skill tree; melee training, which is unlocked by finding old jade statues and bringing them back to your old martial arts teacher.

There are a few other abilities that can be unlocked through building reputation or earning “Face”. Leveling up in Face also allows you to purchase better cars and clothes. Health is increased by finding hidden and not so hidden Shrines across the city and praying at them.

Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition offers plenty of side gigs and other little things to find on your exploration of this altered and remodeled Hong Kong.

Blue cases are littered throughout the game and finding these can earn you extra money or unlock bonus outfits for our hero/anti-hero to wear. Clothing while also being aesthetic can grant small bonuses like extra XP gained or increased hand to hand combat damage.

Hand to hand combat can be rather frustrating. Taking down an enemy feels like it just takes forever, never mind a large group of them.

If you fail a particular combat section, having to do it all again is cause for trepidation. It is all mainly comprised of slight variations of smashing one button with a few dodge and counter opportunities. Thankfully these sections are paced to some degree but can still become frustrating.

The shooter side of things is also a bit clunky but does have some aspects that make it more meaty. For example you can vault over cover in slow motion giving you time to aim at your foes and mow down your enemies mid jump. Similar to moments in Max Payne 3 or even older; Stronghold‘s ‘Bullet Time’.

Obviously missions will have you doing all kinds of things. Both legal and illegal (well, mostly illegal).

There are some more repeated ideas, like trailing someone in a car or losing the police but it’s engaging enough. Other more bizarre sections have you participating in Karaoke or racing the riffraff down town. Missions vary enough to not get on the tedious side of things.

Graphically this ‘Definitive’ Edition doesn’t seem to stand out as ground-breaking, but it’s beautiful in its own right. I couldn’t really complain.

The city is busy and filled with all manner of people and things. If it at some point it was possibly lacking in detail I was too busy playing the game to notice.

While the game may sound serious it has a distinct sense of humour to it.

From plainly stupid reasons for certain side missions to the odd karaoke section of a bigger mission, it maintains an entertaining sense of humour throughout.

Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition is an open world third person action adventure game that is almost a combination of GTA and Driver set in Hong Kong.It is a next gen remake with added content from the original Sleeping Dogs title of 2012.

It manages its own unique personality to differentiate it from similar titles and offers up a bit of odd humour, general violence, an intriguing story and a character you can somewhat relate to.

It may not be every one’s cup of tea and combat is a bit on the sloppy side, but it’s a game you could find many hours of gameplay in.

The post Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition – Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Beacon Mental Hospital has become the site of a brutal slaughter of staff and patience with only a couple of surivors.

Local police tend to the call and Detective Sebastian Castellanos arrives there shortly after, only to find empty patrol cars and an eerily quiet foyer of the Institution.

It’s not long before blood trails which lead to bodies are found and viewing the security footage unveils something darker, evil and supernatural.

Then, quite literally the world as you know it begins to change.

After a short adrenalin fuelled but futile escape, Castellanos finds himself tied upside down in a dark room of hanging bodies.

A hulking mutant proceeds with his butchery of the carcases as you plan your escape.

As always, escape is futile as you are chased and cut by this chainsaw weilding brute into a giant mincer room… It’s full on and your very life hangs with every step or slide. You can hide, you can run, but you can’t escape The Evil Within.

And this is only the Intro into the game.

After the somewhat flawed escape attempt from the hospital in an ambulance, you release yourself from the wrecked vehicle finding yourself in a wooded area which leads to an old run down township..

As you saunter around collecting items an killing off the undead whilst looking for the survivors, a patient, a doctor and your rookie Police partner Julie’Kid’ Kidman you discover that the land is riddled with various traps.

From Dynamite linked trip wires to bear traps and more, both can be disarmed if you are careful enough not to set them off. That said the bear traps are the worst, as your environment is dark and at times (especially when sprinting away from a horde of undead that are pursuing you) you will easily step onto one and it takes time to free yourself.

I found myself questioning why there were survivors. Were they apart of the plot? Are they somehow tied in to what was going on? When you reach the doctor he is in dire need of his patient; Leslie… But getting to Leslie sees you need keys, which are sewn into a corpse.

Levels and environments are not what they seem. Is one place another? Are you delusional and have you not moved at all. Is this al the beginning or the end?

This is one title that will not only give you a good scare, but will also have you totally at the edge of your seat.

There is a small RPG element in the sense that you can carry a small inventory.

This is your primary weapon (police pistol) and syringes that you might pick up (these are the much needed and rarely found health), med kits, journals, grenades and scrap parts so you can cobble together your own weapons.

You will also acquire other weapons such as a cross bow with vairious darts and a shotgun. It’s within this inventory menu where you swap out weapons. None of which are dual wielding though.

You may also use objects found within the environment. Bottles can be thrown to distract the enemy so that you can sneak up behind them and enact a stealth kill or just sneak away and axes or other melee weapons.

Collecting matches enables you to burn the bodies of those that you slaughter, this permanently finishes them off. These are limited however.

You also have a torch or lantern and if you are out of bullets, which is a common occurrence, try and find a flaming torch, as this is very effective in melee.

Green Gel or bottles of pills are used as a form of currency in the Upgrade Menu where you can upgrade your abilities, such as stamina or health bar, through to leveling up your weapons. Even your Inventory can be upgraded to enable to carry more loot. There is no jump, but there is a sprint which is reliant on your stamina and a large focus on stealth and trying to remain undetected throughout the entire game.

Game saves are enacted through mirrors.

The first time you encounter this is very early on in the game and whilst it’s more of a cinematic, the first time you are required to do this you are thinking WTF???

You are transported through a mirror back into the Beacon Mental Hospital.

A nurse is there waiting for you and leads you to an Electric chair.

Strapped in and unable to move with the electro head piece firmly in place, each upgrade you do gives you a good healthy zap.

It makes you wonder whether the game you are playing is all a delusion and you are actually still within the confines of the hospital itself.

So, how did this mayhem start?

It’s all the work of one dark and evil entity called Ruvik. You first see him on the security cameras before all hell breaks loose, literally.

From the city to the dilapidated village through to blood stained factory like buildings, your path eventually leads back to the Hospital to face off with Ruvik.

The undead that you face, for the most part are well constructed but do clone with the special Boss here and there, including the Boxhead – which you may have seen on the gameplay trailer already.

Graphically there is so much detail. Bethesda didn’t skimp on anything here. However on the Xbox One, I did notice that while the environments had an insane amount of detail to them, some character animation looked a little choppy here and there.

There is a hazy film grain overlapping the game screen and this retains an eerie and foreboding feeling.

After many, many hours of playing through The Evil Within I am pretty sure that I died more times than ever due to the frustrating ingame camera.

When you can, try and avoid melee combat, unless you are holding a meaty weapon (like an axe or similar). Having a bout of fisticuffs against one of the tortured undead will most likely leave you worse for wear. There’s no shame in running for your life.

It seemed that the camera was unable to keep up with melee combat and alot of the time objects within the environment kept getting in the way of the view so I was unable to see what, if anything I was hitting.

Then there’s the enemies you can’t see…

Frustrating yes, but a small, oh so small issue in a game that is as amazing as this one.

A good lengthy play and one that certainly has replayable value to it. The Hardest game setting is not available until you have conquered the game first time around.

If Silent Hill and Resident Evil were to ever have an illegitimate offspring, that grew up to be a rebellious teenager – that perfectly describes The Evil Within. A masterful game by the legendary horror video game master; Shinji Mikami

You need this game. Just have a spare pair of undies handy.

The post The Evil Within – Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.