Important Decision

Recently, personal issue’s have meant that we haven’t been able to dedicate the time and resources needed to run the site. Our dot.com is due for renewal later this week and as a result of current time constraints, we won’t be renewing it. However, we will continue to run the site, mainly in a more relaxed and less corporate way. Come back early next week to see what I mean.

Sony, Sony, Sony

Some major UK announcements have been made at this year’s Leipzig Games Convention. Here they are:

• 160gb PS3 will launch in the UK on October 31st 2008 and cost approx £355
• New model of the PSP – PSP 3000 – will launch on October 15th 2008 and will have an improved screen and build in microphone. The redesigned PSP will be released in eight different bundles with games on offer including Fifa and Buzz. The PSP Slim and Lite will receive a price drop when the newer handheld is launched.
• The PSN will get a movie and music service in Q1 2009.
• There will be a new wireless keypad released for the PS3 – it slots into the controller, 360-chatpad style.
• LittleBigPlanet is hitting stores on October 29th 2008.

Quick News: Nukem on Arcade

Duke Nukem 3D will be heading to Xbox Live Arcade very soon. We have little to no information to share with you other than the fact that it has passed certification and so should be on Marketplace sometime between now and Christmas.

Preorder Banjo Bonus!

Banjo Kazooie will be released on Xbox 360 on November 14th. Microsoft has announced that by preordering that game at select retailer’s you will recieve a very special bonus – Banjo Kazooie, the original N64 game, has been updated and will be released on Xbox Live Arcade later this year – and you will not only recieve the game for free by perordering, but you’ll have it at least two weeks before it goes up on Marketplace! Bargain!

Fable II Pub Games (Xbox 360 Review)

Fable II Pub Games gives you the unique chance to give yourself a head start in life, which we believe is an actual forst in the videogame world. Any gold you earn (or lose…) by playing this arcade game can be directly transfered into your Fable II world, later this year.

On paper, the title is a collection of three basic gambling games – one card based, one dice and the other a variant of a middle ages fruit machine. There is a very good tutorial mode which helps you learn the basics and then you’re good to start playing. As well as just playing the games to earn gold, you can also enter tournaments to win items for your Fable II experience including some chocolates and a bed… both items I am now a proud owner of in both real life and in-game.

The game features no multiplayer, which in my opinion should have been a good way to stop possible cheating altogether – though looking at the leaderboards it doesn’t seemed to have helped.

Overall, we don’t really want to go into too much detail in this review – you’ll either love or hate the game, so we advise that you download the trial first and see what you think. For us though, it’s an essential start to our Fable II experience, which begins properly on October 24th.

9/10

What’s Happening:

Firstly, we apologise. When the site started our main aim was to try and be consistent and keep our reader’s happy and we realise that we haven’t been doing that recently. The reason that there has been little activity on the site is that usually, I have a couple of other people helping me out, getting news stories written and generally helping in other more boring tasks, but due to unforeseen personal commitments from all of us, none of us have been able to contribute any of our time to the site. That should all cease during this week and things will hopefully return even better than before.

We’ve been having a few issues regarding getting reviews written – at one point I did find an extremely enthusiastic individual who said that he would write a couple a week, but nothing has materialised yet… Also we’re going to be (hopefully) implementing some game nights, halo challenges and a forum before the end of the sunny (well at the moment more windy) month of August.

Thanks for bearing with us and we once again apologise for leaving you for so long.

No news updates for a while

More information soon.

You may have noticed that recently there haven’t been any updates to the site. This has been due to personal family issues and has nothing to do with our continued commitment to making BritGamer a pleasant experience for all our visitors.

Starting very shortly we will be introducing Gaming Nights and depending on the success of these, either more will follow and/or a casual clan will be formed. Stay tuned.

5 Dice (iPhone 3g review)

Five Dice is basically Yahtzee with a less oriental name and of course without the trademarks and licensing. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the principles, the idea is to fill your scorecard with the most points possible and you get three turns to try and achieve this. If at any stage you manage to get all five dice showing the same number then you have achieved a Yahtzee.

The game plays well and is good for when you have 5 minutes to waste. The 20 slot leaderboard adds a slice of replayability and manages to induce “one more go syndrome”.

Overall: Well worth £2.39:  8.5/10

Wii Christmas Rush!

BritGamer understands that there won’t be enough Wii Consoles or copies of Wii Fit to meet demand this Christmas. Our advice? Buy a 360 or PS3. Buy one now and put it away, rather than despairing in the winter and paying eBay prices.