I know Gears 1 isn’t exactly new but I’m not one to jump into a franchise half way through. OK I did with Halo but I would have preferred to have played the previous games before sticking in Halo 3. With Gears I’ve doing it my way, 1 comes first and here are my first impressions of it.

I’m a down to earth sorta guy and thats how I prefer my gaming, so figting aliens isn’t exactly my ideal game but I’ll give anything a go. A few checkpoints into Gears probably isn’t enough to give it a justified review so I’ll just stick to what I know or have seen so far.

The aiming was the first thing I noticed. Its fast and frantic. Other games I’ve played recently including GTA and CoD both have a slow scrolling type aiming control where it takes you a while to go from one side of the screen to the next, Gears is quite the opposite and while I am totally no good with the faster paced aiming at the minute it does add to the franticness of trying to fight off aliens or whatever they are.

The graphics are by no means awesome but from an older game I wouldn’t expect total HD in my face sorta stuff.

I like a story and so far I have been given very little, I’ve been taken out of a cell so many days after something day. Whether I skipped the intro by getting button happy I’m not sure but as long as the story is filled in as we go a long that will be good enough for me.

So, I guess Gears 1 could lead to the purchase of Gears 2. We’ll have to see how it goes??.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been on a mission on GTA IV, I got right back into the game again and completed a huge chuck of the story missions. These were pretty much straight forward and I managed to complete each one in turn without getting killed, arrested or blown up. I was feeling a little let down by how easy the missions still were with me being so close to the end of the game, this was until I started the final mission.

Here you get to choose to seek revenge or make a deal for mega bucks, the first part of the missions I found easy completing them both on the first attempt, next comes the wedding cut scene followed by the final mission. The 2 variations of this mission are pretty similar and I am still to compete either one, so hopefully this weekend I will complete my first ever GTA game.

Have you completed GTA IV? or any previous GTA game? How did you find the difficulty curve?

Well I got he game for Christmas and had mixed feelings about what to expect. I was hyped as the previous installment was the best game I played all of last year. I was a little wary as it was going back to the World War 2 settings. I had also heard mixed reviews from friends and colleagues stating it was good but not as good as Modern Warfare.

So, my first thoughts. It pretty much follows the exact same game play and graphics as Modern Warfare, so looks like its just the story that has changed and although I didn’t want it to go back to WWII I am really enjoying it. Here’s the list of current missions that make up the game:

Semper Fi
Little Resistance
Hard Landing
Vendetta
Their Land, Their Blood
Burn ‘em Out
Relentless
Blood & Iron
Ring of Steel
Eviction
Black Cats
Blowtorch & Corkscrew
Breaking Point
Heart of the Reich
Downfall

I am currently up to Blood & Iron, so reckon I am roughly half way through the game. At this point I have already completed missions as both the US and Russian soldiers and have completed missions including the Sniper Rifle in “Vendetta”, and the newly added Flamethrower in “Burn Em Out”.

Here’s hoping there are still a few surprises left in the game for me.

Call of Duty 5 is due to hit the shelves on 11 November, and Activision have gone back to CoD’s roots and have set the follow up to Modern Warfare back in World War II this time turning to the Pacific front with some key new features including:

• Harsh New Enemies, Environments and Tactics: Face off against ruthless and tactically advanced enemies that will stop at nothing to defend their homelands, from swamp ambushes and tree-top snipers to fearless Kamikaze attacks. Play as a U.S. Marine and Russian conscript across a variety of Pacific and European locations against the fearless Imperial Japanese and elite German soldiers in epic adrenaline-filled infantry, vehicle and airborne missions.
• Co-Op Campaign Mode, Call of Duty Style: For the first time in the franchise, Call of Duty: World at War introduces co-op play, bringing fresh meaning to No One Fights Alone. Campaign co-op features up to four-players online, or two-player local split-screen, allowing gamers to experience harrowing campaign missions together for greater camaraderie and tactical execution. Co-op mode incorporates innovative multiplayer components such as challenges, rankings and online stats for deeper re-playability and multiplayer experience bonuses. Co-op mode also features Competitive Co-Op that will show who is really the best player on your team.
• Enhanced Innovative Multiplayer: Call of Duty: World at War continues the addictive class-based multiplayer action the series is famous for. The addition of vehicle combat with tanks rounds out the highly-successful Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare multiplayer experience, and features such as persistent stats, player rankings, upgradeable weapons, squad-based gameplay, customizable classes and Perks, have been further enhanced to set a new standard in Call of Duty online war.
• The Authentic Call of Duty Experience: Built using the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare engine, Call of Duty: World at War utilizes cutting-edge technology including highly-detailed character models, self-shadowing, environmental lighting and amazing special effects to deliver jaw-dropping visuals. Depth of field, rim-lighting and texture-streaming technology bring the adrenaline-pumping combat to life, while physics-enabled battlefields and fire that spreads through environments realistically immerses players into the harrowing and dynamic combat.

Click the below screen shots to see larger images:

Gaming Laptops

Not any more, with the price drop in memory and technology advancements mainly in scaling down in size of most pc and laptop parts there is now no need to have the clunky desktop gaming machine, of course some of them look fantastic but finding room is often an issue, I know it is for me.

So how do you decide on which gaming laptop to go for, do you really need something like the Rock Xtreme SL Pro at around the $4,500 mark, obviously not in all cases, but it does depend on the games you play. I often find this helps you to find the best laptops that suit your needs. A great rule of thumb is to check out the requirements of the latest game released in the category that you usually play. There are 2 sets of requirements, minimum and recommended, look at the recommended spec and use this as the minimum spec for your laptop, this will usually future proof as much as possible without costing you too much extra by heading straight to the top of the range.

There are some great gaming laptops out there ranging from the awesome Alienware range, but if the $5000ish price tag puts you off, then why not look at a gaming laptop like the MSI GT735, less than half the price of the Alienware m15x but still a great spec with a massive 4GB of RAM.

The PlayStation 3 is one of the hottest items on the market and the most desired gaming console around the world. With the great possibilities that the power of this consoles holds, owners and gamers alike are waiting to see what the next game will bring, waiting for the one game that blows the others out of the water. Here’s what we can expect in the coming months.

Upcoming releases include:

• Need for Speed Undercover
• Wipeout HD
• Motor Storm Pacific Rift
• Far Cry 2

These games without a doubt will be some of the most successful to sell over coming months. As the years pass the graphics and animation that developers are enhancing are just amazing. Players who crave new action packed games will be thrilled with both the sequels to existing series which get better and better game play wise and even more excited by the brand new releases.

Upcoming Releases

Some of the games to be released include Fable II, Far Cry 2, Call of Duty: World at War, Gears of War 2, and Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. As you can see most of these games belong to a series that has been played and enjoyed over the last year or so. With the new releases players can expect amazing graphics, harder levels, and designs that will please even the harshest of critics. With the newly developed games even the most skilled of players will be tested.

The Xbox 360 has become one of the most popular game consoles to ever be placed on the market and when new games are to be released many sell out before they even hit the shelves. Individuals around the world are already back ordering the games listed above as well as many others to be released over the next few months. Developers are changing the way gaming technology is viewed and played so there is much to be seen in the future from these wonderful creators.