I was Director of Cultural Events at the Haile Selassie Pavilion.

Everyone here at PEOWW would like to wish all our readers a happy new decade and ting. So what will 2010 bring?

Well we’ve got some great stuff lined up with a new series of PEOWWcasts focusing on retro gaming with special guests (some of whom may be a bit famous), the return of Perfekt Past, the début of a new writer or two, the annual PEOWW awards along with all the usual news, reviews and features you know and love (dont forget pain delivered exquisitely via the knife – Ed).

In related news we’d like to congratulate Simon Mapplebeck, the winner of our PEOWW 2009 compo and Lewie Procter & Adam Walton who came as runners up, you’ll all be getting your swag very soon. A big thanks to everyone who sent us nominations this year and everybody in general for taking the time to visit our site.

Can't be... that's inside the room.

As the UK’s most-loved gaming website, and as a busy mother, PEOWW knows how hard it is to keep up with the release schedules.  Well we’ve taken all the fuss out of it with our new ‘Incoming’ section which you get to by accessing the menu at the top of this screen.

We’ll also be adding screenies, vids and previews for many of the games in there.  So keep checking it out if you want to know what’s going to be good and when you can get it.

Massively shit

So Microsoft have launched their ‘Games on Demand’ service as part of today’s utterly underwhelming Dashboard update.

What’s on offer?

Firstly, all the games are £19.99.  Not 2352M$P but actually £19.99.  Maybe because that looks cheaper than 2352M$P.  Don’t know.

So, what does twenty quid buy you in the digital world?  Kameo… Perfect Dark Zero… Fight Night 3… CoD2… and basically a bunch of shit that you’d only pay a fiver for now and at least you’d have something physical to add to your collection.

Is this the shittest thing since anything ever?  I think so.

Shitesaber

So, those Avatar things that we played with for literally ten minutes back when the fuck-awful NXE thing launched last year.  Microsoft hadn’t really done much with them apart from occasionally giving us hats or whatever.  Well, the latest Xbox Live update has added the following sure fire signs that certain people shouldn’t be on your friendlist.

Clone Trooper Armour/Elite Outfit/COG Armor/Elites Outfit/Locust Drone Armour/Obi-Wan Tunic and Armour/Sam Fisher Outfit/Splinter Cell Outfit/UNSC Marine Armor – all priced between 320 or 400M$P each.

There’s also the following pointless shit:

• Basketball – 160M$P
• Big Daddy Doll – 240M$P
• Camera – 160M$P
• Dumbbells – 160M$P
• Guitar -160M$P
• Lightsaber – 400M$P
• Mobile Phone – 160M$P
• Pom Poms – 160M$P
• Popcorn – 160M$P
• Football – 160M$P

Literally shit then.

Sting like a butterfly.

I thought developers had learned the lesson by now.  Remember GRAW’s ridiculous three achievements for being literally the best in the world at the game?  Well they realised, by the time the made GRAW2, that those achievements were stupid and sorted it out.

Even Epic released us from ranked match hell for Gears 2 and a bunch of other games have shifted their focus from ranked match achievements because, as we all know, playing against the random filth you find on Xbox Live is UTTERLY JOYLESS.

EA however seem to be living in this insane fantasy world where Xbox Live is actually some sort of community.  If it is, it’s that place that Karen Matthews is from.  Look at Fifa ’09, it’s a great game but the DLC forces you to try and win online tournaments against randoms.  You know, the sort of pricks who actually pay M$P for the best players, use the unbalanced formation and always play the cheap square pass/tap-in tactic for scoring.  Give me a level playing field and I’m fine, but don’t expect me to drop to their level.  If you were playing against a mate offline you wouldn’t pick Real Madrid if he picked  MK Dons would you?

Anyway, EA have repeated this trick with their new, not-as-good-as-the-last-one, boxing game Fight Night Round 4.  Firstly, there are THREE achievements for winning online belts (ie – be the best in the world against cheap tactic bastards)  in three weight divisions which is fucking ridiculous and shouldn’t happen in these post-GRAW days.  Secondly, this broken fucking system means that the champions can refuse to play you which has, all to predictably, led to the belts all being held to ransom by low self-esteem tossers who are demanding as much as 4000M$P, a year’s worth of Live or a £20 PSN card to give up the title.

I don’t know who are the bigger twats, these pondlife for doing it or EA for thinking it wouldn’t happen.

(Instant IP ban for anyone who comments about games not being about achievements/trophies, that’s not the fucking point).

I first had to question GAME’s pricing policy when they had Tony Hawk’s Project 8 on sale for £35 but had the pre-owned version there for £40.  The oddness continues to this day, as spotted by our forum-member, Dogmeat.

Go (away)

Despite claims to the contrary (from, you know… wankers), there’s no anti-Sony agenda here. We hate them a little less than we hate Microsoft but we’ve got love for the PSP. It’s a PS1 (well… 1.5) in your hand. That’s amazing. Fuck the DS with its gimmicky stylus use that generally only serves to get you through menus or overcomplicate the gameplay and give you cramp) and painfully bad 3D.

So, the new PSP has been revealed to the world (good work GamingConsoleNetwork) and, well, it looks shit doesn’t it?

No UMD support, no second stick… in fact no sticks, it just has one analogue nub and frankly I’d rather attempt to control a game using my tongue than a PSP nub. The sliding screen looks gash as well. It does come with 16gb of storage though, which’ll be great for storing emulators on when they inevitable hack this thing.

Arkanoid Live is out today.  It costs 800pts which is a fair price for a remake of a stone cold arcade classic.

But what’s this?  The demo shows that the main menu has options for four episodes.  It’s only once you complete the demo (which is six stages long) that you realise that your 800pts only buys you episodes 1 and 2.  What’s the odds that 3 and 4 will cost 400pts then?

The achievements only relate to episodes 1 and 2 also which makes us think that another 50 gamerscore will be attached to the DLC.

Note to Microsoft:  it’s one thing charging 1200pts for games, but charging it for a full game and then tricking people into buying part of the game for 800 makes you literally cunts.  XBLA is dead.  Go fuck yourselves.

Pirates!

A couple of news items showed up this week that may be more related than you’d think.  First up we’ve got developers Stardock complaining that their PC strategy RPG has had only 18,000 legitimate online connections and over 100,000 filthy piratey ones.  One of their number bleated ‘we spent a lot of time today trying to isolate out the warez users from the legitimate users (it would require a lot of surgery to actually break them and even if we did, there’d be no friendly ‘ha ha pirate’ message which would result in people just saying the game is buggy).’

Not arsed obviously.  PC strategy RPGs belong in the Austrian cellars that home most of their players but the rather natty GTA: Chinatown Wars has also threw up some evidence of pirate shenanigans.  You see, it only sold about 90,000 in the States despite being good, being on the DS and being a GTA game.  Of course once you get past the DS’ main userbase a GTA game would only appeal to the kind of user that might happen to know about the wide range of no fuss, but highly illegal, flashcards widely available for the machine.