The PS4 has been revealed!

So the new PlayStation 4 has been revealed, to an extent anyway. While we now now what the new features added into this new console will be and an idea of what the games will look like we still are none the wiser as to what the console itself will look like.

So the emphasis on this new next gen console would be appear to be on the social aspect of gaming and instant gaming.  New features include the ability to instantly share screenshots or video of games you are currently playing by the use of the 'Share' button on the new controller.  You are also able to watch what your friends are playing, live, and to message you friends with helpful tips of how to get through tricky parts of the game they may be stuck on.  This isn't all though, you see with the PS4 you can now remotely control your friends game from your console and do those tricky parts that they just can't seem to do.  The console and network itself is being made to incorporate social network sites like Facebook to make sharing your progress or game stats that much quicker and easier.

Also revealed was the ability to use the PlayStation Vita as a second screen to play your PS4 games on (much like the Wii U and what Sony tried to do with the PS3/PSP).  It looks good and providing it works with the majority if not all games then I can see this feature having a knock on effect on the sales of the Vita.

There are cool features like the "suspend mode" which allows you to turn off and then turn on the console and pick up exactly where you left off, without having to reload the game.  Gaikai cloud system that allows you to play a chunk of any game that catches your eye on the store. And there is also the ability to play games while their are being downloaded without the need to wait for the download to be finished to play.

Alot more was revealed but overall I am very excited for the new PlayStation and for all the features that come with it.  The social aspects of the console particularly impressed me and I'm hopeful that they will all work as they have been shown to.  My eyes are currently fixed on Microsoft and the reveal of the next Xbox because as it stands at the moment, if they don't pull something amazing out of the bag I can see alot of people going back/converting to the PlayStation 4 when it's released.

Check out the official PlayStation UK blog post (linked below) about the PlayStation Meeting 2013 for more information and for the link to re-watch the meeting if you missed it.

PlayStation Meeting 2013

Real Actors Read...

YouTube is much like a giant Library; you can go in almost every day but even after a year or two there are still things that you haven't seen.

Just recently I was browsing around and stumbled across a channel and videos entitled 'Real actors read Yelp reviews'.  The premise is that they get professional actors to read out real reviews posted on Yelp, with the idea of trying to see the emotion of the person who wrote the review.  The idea behind this series is a simple one but the reviews are made even funnier when you add emotion to them.

If Yelp reviews wasn't enough for you they also have actors reading out Missed Connection pages & posts from Christian Forums.  This is a channel that I personally will be keeping a close eye on for more of these well made and beautifully funny videos.

Check out Gotta Kid To Feed Productions YouTube channel here:  http://www.youtube.com/user/gottakidtofeed 

and check out the very first video below featuring Chris Kipiniak 

My Name is Stuart and I am addicted to X Com.

This is a confession. I have been slowly losing my life to this addiction and it has to stop. I have been hurting sentient life from other planets and dimensions for my own filthy addiction and I haven’t cared how I got my fix.

Look at this shit

I had better start with the beginning. A long time ago, all the cool kids were into turn based combat, it was the in-thing. I wanted to fit in so I tried Final Fantasy X on my Playstation 2 but it was a bad trip. The story was awful and all the characters looked like they had been designed by someone experiencing both a split personality and massive head trauma. The turn based combat itself was tedious, watching the characters repeat the same inane actions over and over for ages until the battle was won. My only reward? Pushing the annoying bastards forward to the next mind numbingly boring battle to while away the hours of my life. This was not for me!

I told my friends that I didn’t want to be cool, if this was what it took. I stuck to real time combat and I stayed healthy. Fortunately this fad didn’t last long and soon turn based combat was relegated to dingy cellars and attics where sad, hollow beings spend hours with calculators working out which stats to increase on their spiky haired personalities which have more life than their users. That was the end of it, or so I thought.

Fast forward more than a decade and turn based combat has come back in a new guise. I knew it was bad news, but a friend talked to me about it. He said turn based combat had changed. It wasn’t about stupid looking gits whining about to esoteric situation, this time, it was about fighting off an alien invasion with big burly men and big burly women. The game was getting high score reviews everywhere you looked and once again, my curiosity was peaked. The demo appeared on the Xbox live market place and I gave in, deciding that I would be just as bored as I had been before.

I couldn’t have been more wrong

Before I knew it, I was selecting a squad to fight off an alien menace, I was picking their weapons and skill sets, their armour and sending them out into battle, choosing optimal routes of attack, sending my snipers to higher ground so they have an advantage, making sure I don’t get out flanked. I was in heaven.  

You see, I was always a huge fan of Real Time Strategy games. While they had advanced, my laptop, the one I am typing this on, was a hybrid engine of steam power and hamsters on treadmills. 

Unfortunately steam and hamster power doesn’t work together very well and 8 steamed alive hamsters later, my computer can barely run basic programs at the same time, let alone a high end Real time strategy game.

There had been attempts to make Real Time Strategy games on the console market, but sadly, the controller is not suited to this, and made every battle an exercise in frustration and defeat. Xcom solves this problem by using a mixture of strategy and turn based action which is satisfying almost to the point that it would be illegal to play it in public and especially not in front of children.

When the mission is over, you return to your base which isn’t just a mission hub, it’s also a vital part of the game, making sure you keep funds coming in from countries in the world so you don’t run out of money, keeping aircraft ready in those countries if a UFO is spotted above them, making sure the base has enough power, workshops, scientists and engineers. There is a whole litany of things you can build in the base, all there to provide support for your team and hell for the invading aliens.

You raise your team members from frail humans with normal machine guns to the point where they are armoured titans, striding across the battlefields as a tightly knit team. Snipers dealing with long range enemies, assault troops being the grunts, heavy weapons soldiers to take on the tougher opponents, support troops with med kits and tasers to capture aliens. I was even giving them stupid nicknames. Mr. Cuddlebums was the name of my heavy weapons expert from the first level of the game and I have still kept him alive since then and in that, is where my real shame comes from.

You see, in Xcom, troops get stronger with each mission, develop their own specialties and tactics and soon become your primary soldiers. Unfortunately, when your soldier dies, they are dead forever. All that work, all that experience can be ruined by one berserker running up to him and tearing out his anus through their oesophagus.

Farewell Soldiers. You're killing aliens in heaven now

I could not handle that. I needed my favourite troops to stay alive. I didn’t want their names on the memorial wall  So I saved. I saved every time I thought my troops were going to be in danger. I saved before I started a mission and I saved after it. I reloaded so often if one of my team were killed, and the first thing that came to my head was “NOPE!”.

Xcom had made me something I’m not, a Save Spammer. Cowardly, unwilling to take defeat because I knew that one step back meant eight steps forward for the alien menace. I don’t need to make a game that is already pretty bloody difficult any harder.

So this is my confession, I spend hours on Xcom but do I really accomplish anything?

You bet your arse I do! DIE ALIENS DIE!

Life After Questing: Day 453

It's day 453 of my life in Skyrim and questing is a side note, a thing I do when I get bored or nostalgic about 'the good old days'.  Today I am in Whiterun (I swear I never leave this town), and I am having an easy day. I'm going to help the locals where I can and see what there is in a town that, if I'm honest, I've only ever run through on quests.

It's a fairly grime day in Whiterun with rain clouds overhead so there is only one thing for it; a trip to the Bannered Mare for a spot of breakfast.  As I'm not going to be doing much today I start with something light and a nice piece of Bread and a Sweetroll.  After an unfruitful attempt at seeing if Hulda has any gossip, I decided to mingle with the drunks who are always in here day and night.  There are all pretty boring so I figure that I'll explore the markets outside and what they have to sell before I get in trouble for punching Mikael out cold.

After clearing the gold out of two of the vendors I come to Carlotta Valentia who has something for sale that I have never found in Skyrim before: Milk.  For over a year now my diet has consisted of just alcohol and it's a surprise that I can walk straight let alone fight a Dragon and win.  Now however I have something normal to drink and for some strange reason this makes me happy.

On my way to Dragonsreach I pass Heimskr and wonder to myself how the Thalmor haven't killed him yet, or at least a citizen of Whiterun for his generally annoying never-ending rants.  After getting moaned at by the old crow of a cleaner upon entering and raiding the kitchen of all the good food I realise that there is nothing else here that I've not already seen and head out to explore the rest of the town in the hope of something interesting.

The trip to the Dungeon leads to looking at empty cells (clearly no crime happening at the moment), so I head back to the market, past Belethor's General Goods store and I stop at a house.  This is a special house for it is the house of my ex-wife Ysolda.  I start to feel my love for her return which is quickly overtaken with an overwhelming sense of guilt.  I can't bring myself to enter the house even though I still carry the key around with me.  You see I didn't break off the marriage, but in a moment of rage and stupidity I took her life.  Now I see that it was a terrible thing to do and wish I could go back and change it but I can't (and there is only so much necromancy can do).

Filled with regret and sadness I decide that there is only one thing left to do with the rest of my day; return to the Bannered Mare, buy loads of alcohol and get smashed at home with my companion Gregor.

For a day that was meant to be a good easy one, it turned out to be a pretty crappy one.  The only way it could get worse is if Gregor takes advantage of me while drunk.  But I suppose if it's been this long since she died then I shouldn't complain about a little action wherever it comes from.

Why you should be watching Game of Thrones

Or

If you don’t like Game of Thrones, you are worse than Hitler.

Oh my. I’m really putting my cards on the table where I stand on this subject aren’t I? I suppose I’d better back this rather grand claim up without too much hyperbole.

If you haven’t heard of Game of Thrones, it is a fantasy series set primarily in the Kingdom of Westeros. There are noble families dotted around the kingdom which will get into a bit of a kerfuffle because this is a drama and without conflict there is no drama. There are a number of families dotted around but there three particularly important families.

You have the noble Stark family who guard the north from the creatures beyond the wall, except that they don’t because nothing nefarious has been seen for hundreds of years. The Baratheons who are the current royal family with Robert Baratheon on the Iron throne, except he’s not a very good king because he’s mostly pissed all the time and doesn’t like the reality of ruling. Then we have the Lannisters who are the richest family and whom lust for power and are generally the “bad guys”.

Oh I almost forgot, there are two remaining Targaryans, an exiled family who were almost wiped out in a bloody revolution to take the throne from them.

Except things aren’t clear cut in this universe, there is no Lord of the rings moment with Aragorn facing down Sauron’s minions in an epic battle of good versus evil. There are bad people and there are good people but no evil force is coming to wipe them out just because it is an evil force. People fight for power because they are greedy for it, or because they believe it is their right, or because they need the power to protect their loved ones from those who would do them harm.

This is a fantasy series for people who, like me, generally don’t like fantasy series. All the pomp and circumstance of the fantasy is replaced with gritty reality. There are no white wizards with eagles to save the day. Good people are killed, evil can win and nothing is certain.  That isn’t to say that fantasy doesn’t play a part in this series, in fact it is an background note of a song that is slowly growing to a tremendous roar. One phrase echoes through the series “Winter is coming”, meaning that years, maybe decades will go on through the winter and with the winter, things from the icy north come with them threatening everyone.

I’m being deliberately vague at this point because I absolutely love this series and I wish to engender you to watch it without any spoilers, because, and I believe I am quoting Nietzsche when I say “Shit goes down hard”.

When I first recommended this series to my friends, family, strangers online, in person and on the bus, my first one line description was “As if Lord of the Rings was directed by Quentin Tarantino, but better” and I think that still sticks. The drama is intense; the battle scenes are truly epic and brutal. There is fucking, swearing and brutal violence. Almost every line of dialogue is beautifully written and snappy, you’ll want to memorise them in vain hope that you can use them in every day talk with the people around you.

If you ever lived through that moment when everyone was telling you “You have to see The Wire! It’s the best cop show ever” well HBO has done it again and Game of Thrones is the new series you have to see. As time of writing, both the first two series are available on DVD and Bluray, it is not a purchase you will regret because you will end up watching them more than once, lending them to a friend to get them into it, just so they can understand the fervour that has possessed you about this television program.  

As a final note. I’m going to leave you with the first minutes of this fantastic series. Hopefully that will whet your appetite

Hey I’m Stuart Robinson.

This is my first guest contribution to The Social Gamer and with any luck it should be one of many. I have my own blog but it’s not as stylish as this, nor is it as refined. I tend to write whatever comes to my mind, whether that be fiction, non-fiction or a general ranty style of essay with liberal amounts of swearing and analogies involving sexually transmitted diseases from swine corpses. It can be found at 

Toe Nail Dirt.

I’m also on Twitter @Stueymon where I can be found either posting pictures of cats with captions on them, making observations about pop culture, movies or videogames, swearing or swinging vaguely at some lefty liberal political point and failing completely. Go read the blog and follow me or I’ll come into your house and stare lecherously at your house pets. 

The New Playstation

So if you haven't already heard the rumours  it would seem that by the end of this month we should all know either some concrete information on Sony's new PlayStation, or even know what it's going to look like.

It does however seem that there has been some leaked photos going around of what the new controller is going to be.  If you haven't seen it then the picture is below.

Personally I'm not a massive fan of this controller at the moment as it looks a big chunky in some aspects.  But what can we tell from the pictures so far?  Well you can see a socket for a jack at the bottom of the controller; is Sony going to do an Xbox and go for wired headsets as well as wireless?
There is also the screen on the front which some people are thinking is a touch screen built into the controller.  I don't see how beneficial that will be considering the size of it means you probably won't get a lot of display on the screen to touch.
You can also see in this picture a white box just above the screen.  Could this be a sensor for PlayStation move and this time round it's integrated into the controller to save having added peripherals??
Finally, the first picture I saw of this had the controller looking like a proper old-school wired controller.  Now I'm sure Sony wouldn't go back to them and this will no doubt be wireless but it does make me worry a little bit.

I'm not sold on this controller if it does in fact turn out to be the new PlayStation controller and leads me to have reservations about the console itself.  Either way Sony is still hurting from the hacking scandal and have lost a lot of consumer trust due to this, and this new console is their big chance to try and entice some of those consumers back to them and away from Xbox.

One thing is for sure; hopefully we should all know what is going on by the end of this month.