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Byte Size – Dead Or Alive 6 Review (Xbox One X)

Barrie Clarke 911 Views

The latest in the titillating fighting franchise is here and packs everything you would expect into a nicely rounded package.  Team Ninja have continued with the plethora of scantily clad girls who can kick butt. And thanks to the latest generation of gaming equipment you get to witness all the bouncing and jiggling that goes with the high intensity combat. And just for full disclosure, I am terrible at fighting games and resort to full on button mashing 99% of the time.

The Good – Underneath all the eye candy is a solid and smooth fighting game. There are tons of moves and combos to learn for those who are inclined to do so, but for mashers like me there is still plenty of fun to be had.

The Bad – This is easy, unfortunately. Well for Xbox anyway. The online side of things is almost completely devoid of players. And considering the type of competitive game we have here this is a real problem.

The Unlocks! – So at release there are 27 fighters each with different costumes, hair styles, glasses, and god knows what else to unlock. Now for me this is a nightmare. I like to have everything in a game, call me a completionist if you will. But the time needed to unlock everything here would be huge.

Anyway, if you want a fighting game DOA6 is still one of the breast, umm, best.

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Anthem – Post release considerations, PS4

Richard Armitt 1140 Views ,  ,  ,  ,  , 

Anthem, you will have heard of it no doubt. Anybody with the slightest toe dipped in to Gaming, Social Media or having seen the odd Bus drive past will be familiar. Being the latest title from Bioware the stakes were high and it has to be said, Bioware fans can be a fervent pack when they are poked with a stick. Let’s be straight up from the front.

The company has delivered a game that does not stick to their modus operandi, fair enough, but the fans didn’t know and they’re upset.

The company has tried to deliver a game du jour, moderately massively persistently online, bullet sponge enemies and heaps of customisation.

The company has actually delivered a flawed, but fun game that can be enjoyed on different levels if you forgive a few structural issues.

This is probably a good time to say, this isn’t a review in the traditional sense, there are various reasons for that, but the key ones will be the method of Anthem’s launch and popularisation, alongside the pack mentality and vocal rejection of the game by anybody with a phone and some data for Twitter.

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Conviction: An Anthem short movie by Neil Blomkamp

Richard Armitt 1171 Views ,  , 

Anthem will be with us by the end of the month and what better way to celebrate it than give us a surprise Short Movie by sci-fi stalwart Neil Blomkamp (District 9 for example).

Given the design and nature of his movies, bringing the Anthem world and its Javelins to life must have been a no-brainer on both sides.

There is currently a teaser up on youtube.

The full short will be available on the 14th.

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The Barrie's Highlights Edition
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2019 on Xbox. What’s to come?

Barrie Clarke 1074 Views ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  , 

So here we are, a new year and a new slew of games to look forward to. Most have been in the mix for a while now so there are no real surprises here but still an impressive list none the less.

Personally I am looking forward to The Outer Worlds and Wasteland 3 the most, but am also keen have a crack at Anthem and Metro Exodus. And lets not forget that all Microsoft Studios titles will release straight to Game Pass so if you aren’t a subscriber what more reason do you need?

Cheers, Barrie.

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The Barrie's Highlights Edition
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New Family Settings and Tools for Cross-Play Now Available on Xbox

Barrie Clarke 1142 Views ,  , 

Microsoft recently announced the availability of cross-play updates to Family Settings on Xbox, which include two new settings parents can turn on and off in supported games, for both cross-network play and cross-network communication on any child or teen account.

With this update, Xbox is giving parents more choice in managing child and teen accounts for cross-network gaming scenarios.

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Byte Size ReviewPS4PSNetworkXBLAXbox One

Byte Size – Farming Simulator 19 (Xbox One X)

Barrie Clarke 1289 Views ,  , 

Bit of a niche title this one. So I thought I would try out our new ‘byte size’ review format.

The Farming Simulator franchise has been around for a while now and in doing so proves that there is a market for simulated farming. Who knows, with all the millions of dollars of equipment replicated in the game maybe it is real farmers just wanting to play with the fancy tools of their trade.

The Good – Toys!

The Bad – Clunky controls

The Ugly – It’s a bit like watching grass grow…

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10 annoying things in video games
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Byte Size – when 300 words are enough

Richard Armitt 1391 Views ,  , 

We’ve been writing about games for quite some time in one publication or another and given the obvious changes in culture over those years it makes sense for us to re-evaluate how best to deliver our thoughts.

We have traditionally targeted 800 – 900 words for an average length review, sometimes its easy to be tighter and sometimes its easy to run will up to 1,500 words if the mood takes you. But here’s the rub.

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The 2018 Player2 Charity Marathon – back for thirdsies

Richard Armitt 925 Views ,  , 

Yes, we’re plugging another blog, but for a great reason and besides it’s a community thing and together we can make a village or something, in Minecraft at least.

After a successful charity event last year, the Player 2 team are coming back once again to raise money for the Terry Campese Foundation. Last year the team raised over $3700 for the charity, every cent of which went to helping sick and underprivilege families from the Canberra and Southern NSW regions.

This year the crew aim to beat that mark and are looking at the possibility of reaching $4000.

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Strange Brigade, PS4 Review

Richard Armitt 1138 Views ,  , 

Rebellion have come up trumps with this one, a third person shooter full of mildly challenging puzzles, loot and wave upon wave of monstrous entities.

Taking a sprinkling of Boy’s Own Adventures mixed with a healthy dose of Michael Palin’s Ripping Yarns, enjoy a rollicking trip of Devil-May-Cry-Derring-Do, adventuring into the unknown and fighting evil wherever it raises a mummified head.

Time to get out there and kick Evil where it hurts old chaps!

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Sea of Thieves Review, Xbox One S

Barrie Clarke 1115 Views ,  , 

Now unless you have been stranded on a deserted island somewhere then you are bound to have heard of Sea of Thieves from Rare and Microsoft. It has been a long time since I have seen as much promotion and marketing go into a game title.

Everything from large well advertised Alpha and Beta testing groups to Sea of Thieves hardware, including external hard drives, controllers, and stands.

They really have thrown everything at this Xbox/Windows 10 Play Anywhere title, you would hope with a bottle of bubbly cracked across the bow, it would be a beautiful launch and plain sailing for our rum soaked mates at Rare…

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Burnout Paradise HD Remastered, PS4 Review

Richard Armitt 1148 Views ,  ,  , 

For many Burnout Paradise was the best of the series, an open world racing game chock full of stunts, jumps, races and sexy cars, not forgetting the spectacular crashes crumpling som of the shiniest crashes to grace the PS3 or Xbox360.

It was something of a pleasant surprise that the HD rework was announced a mere few weeks before release, building hype and expectation amongst the people that wanted to be taken back to Paradise City.

They will not be disappointed. No silly narrative, no loot boxes, no customisation. Just balls to wall, pedal to the metal, smash me up in hail of sparks fun.

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