Smackdown Vs Raw 2011

In the world of wrestling,  sports entertainment giant WWE’s game franchise has evolved from robotic figures stumbling around the ring to amazingly realistic superstars re-creating the action we see on television and putting the player firmly in the driving seat. However a major problem I have with the Smackdown Vs. Raw game series is THQ’s attitude of give and take with in-game features. It seems every year there is a new and exciting addition to the game to make the whole experience that little more realistic but at the cost of many basic features we should see in any wrestling game or even at the cost of previous new features which are simply jettisoned to make room for the next big hype to pull in those much needed sales. It’s hard to believe that THQ is responsible for arguably one of the greatest wrestling games of all time, WWF No Mercy on the Nintendo 64. Published over a decade ago, WWF No Mercy far out-performs the latest game, WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw 2011, in many ways (obviously not taking into account graphics and other features that are limited by the N64 which was retired in 2002). Such features as the Create a Superstar, Story Mode and even the overall in-ring game play is much smoother in No Mercy than the latest WWE releases and it is a shame that games made over ten years ago are not as primitive as you would expect in the light-speed world of technology. I have been an avid fan of wrestling games ever since the release of WWF War Zone back in 1998 so I have seen the industry take leaps and bounds and I have outlined the major issues that, in my opinion, are holding modern wrestling games back.

Create A Superstar

One of the longest running features (and my personal favorite) is the create a superstar mode. This mode allows you to make any type of superstar you like and put him up against anyone on the WWE roster. This feature is especially important to me as these days I have no idea who 90% of the roster are so I rely on being able to create myself. However I feel it is a great shame that created superstars never look as good as the superstars in the game. They stick out like a sore thumb and the game reacts so differently that it removes most of the illusion that your created player belongs in the ring at all.  For example in Smackdown Vs. Raw 2011 the game will not allow you to choose a created wrestler for a match until all of the created wrestlers have loaded in the selection screen. If you have quite a few created superstars this can take quite a long time. I am aware that we are long past the days when created superstars were so unrealistic that if you made a wrestler who wore a cape it would be stuck to him like a wet shower curtain but I strongly feel that created superstars should be on a par with the regular superstars making them look like they belong in the game.

Story Mode

I was utterly gutted to find out that story mode had been removed from Smackdown Vs. Raw 2011 in favor of Universe Mode, a new game feature that essentially keeps tabs on everything you do in the game and creates rivalries and alliances between superstars while using random cut scenes to spice up matches.  However the fact of the matter is that the developers have just gotten damn lazy and instead of creating a new adventure to explore with a wrestler of your choice, they have simply added in a hollow structure that randomly spits out cut scenes which have little meaning and do not follow any overall story. The story modes of previous games brought excitement with friendships, rivalries, screw jobs, and championship struggles. Universe mode just brings random cut scenes which, if you play with the same superstar often, repeat often and do not enhance your ‘career’ in the game. Other downfalls of Universe Mode are that created superstars are often ignored and therefore further feel like they do not belong in the game. Also unless a superstar is on the Raw or Smackdown brand they will also be ignored by universe mode, which makes me wonder why they bothered to include the WCW, ECW, Legend, Free Lance and custom brands for superstars in the game at all.

Road to Wrestlemania

I figured after reading the previous paragraph, many of you will be thinking “Road to Wrestlemania is the story mode for the new games.” But seriously… They give us 4 random wrestlers, who we may not give a damn about, to play as and one mediocre created superstar story that always involves your wrestler starting as a new guy and working his way up the ranks against the odds. I would rather they scrap this whole feature and instead bring back one epic story that you can play through with any superstar you like, with the little tweaks to the story based on which superstar you chose. As I said previously, for me these games are all about my created superstar because I no longer keep up to date with the television shows. So to be able to play the game with my wrestler and take part in the story mode is very important to me and is the one reason why this is the first year since 1998 that I have not bothered to buy the latest game.

All of the features they removed from the game

As I had stated previously, there are loads of features that have been removed from the wrestling games over the years which I think is a shame. Rather than the games getting better with each year they are merely changing slightly to the point where they are nothing like their predecessors. A few features that are sorely missed include:

Create A Taunt – This feature allowed you to enhance the personality of created superstars by giving them unique poses and taunts.

Create A Belt – This was a great opportunity to create belts from that past that had been retired or create new belts to suit your superstars.

Create a PPV – Although the new Create a Story mode renders this feature obsolete, it still had many elements that are missing from the games today.

Damage Meters – Arguably an over-done feature at first, however it would be nice if games still kept track of the moves you do and specific injuries you may cause to your opponent.

Realistic/Ridiculous Game Play – In 2002, Smackdown! Shut Your Mouth had a very comical and over the top feel to the game. It included features such as jumping off the fist of the Smackdown arena, driving the undertakers motorcycle around the ring and giving Booker T an alternative entrance where his pyro would launch him into the air. However this completely changed in the next game, Smackdown! Here Comes the Pain, which took a more serious, realistic approach. In this game small wrestlers such as lightweights and divas could not lift heavyweights, when they attempted to lift a heavier opponent the move was ether reversed or caused injury to the superstar. Out of all the recent WWE games I feel that Smackdown! Shut Your Mouth was so much more fun because it was clear that the developers never took the game too seriously and this creates an overall fun experience.

GM Mode – I honestly feel that GM Mode never got a chance to become something great. At first it was limited, however this game mode certainly could have become something unique and I was gutted they removed it.

Match Types – There are so many match types missing from the new games, Special Referee, Buried Alive, 3 Stages of Hell, Lumberjack Match, I Quit Match,… I understand that many of these matches are not featured on WWE programming anymore however there is no reason they should be removed from the game series.

Moves – Again, over the years we have lost hundreds of moves that were previously in the game. I understand that wrestlers leave and go work elsewhere but that is no reason to take a move out of the game completely. I also find it ridiculous that moves performed by wrestlers who have left the WWE sometimes remain in the game but do not have their popular names and instead have names that subtly hint at who used them. A recent example is in Smackdown Vs. Raw 2011 in which there is a taunt named the “King-a-Roonie” which obviously is the Spin-a-Roonie performed by Booker T who was known as “King Booker” for some time in his career but was not contracted with WWE at the time of development.

In-Game Features – Fighting in the crowd, climbing the Titantron and standing on the announce tables are all features that have simply disappeared from the new games. Seriously… why?

The Locker Room – This was one of the things I loved previously, having a locker room you could customise and would manage your story mode options from.

Create a Superstar Names – For some reason they removed all of the actual names that can be given to a created superstar for the commentary/announcers and instead gave us a load of gimmick wrestler names. Again… why?

Finally I shall round off this rant with a quick word on things I think should be left out of the games completely. The main one being the mini-games that appear during royal rumble matches, tapping buttons in the correct order, trying to land a marker inside a small zone or bashing the button that appears on screen are not features I enjoy and certainly do not encourage wrestling to win the match. Also as I have made clear already I think the Universe mode should be scrapped. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next game as the official WWE Universe social network was closed in January 2011, so we may have already seen the last of it. Last but certainly not least, ether remove or fix the match creator. This year I thought the match creator would allow me to mix and match the best parts of WWE matches to create interesting new match-ups. Instead it turned out to be extremely restricted and in my opinion pointless, I can see the appeal in creating a singles match then putting a cage on the ring, but that is no different from just choosing a cage match to begin with. For the match creator to truly be worth while it must work universally across all match types, I personally feel a royal rumble inside of a steel cage or even a hell in a cell would be awesome!

In conclusion, the developers of the WWE game franchise really need to take a step back and look at the history of the series and stop dropping features in favor of adding new ones. Each game should be an improvement on the last which means building on and improving the game modes that already exist so that overall game play is richer and gamers have a mixture of brand new features and classic wresting modes so that the game can really appeal to wrestling fans old and new.

Yoo0oo Radio Logo

Yo Yo Mofos!! This Thursday marks the beginning of the fourth series of Yoo0oo Radio, broadcasting utter crap for 5 weeks during the summer. Episodes will be broadcast on Thursdays between 8pm and 10pm UK time live on KaY.

As always we have tweaked our format to try to make the show bigger and better! This year each show will feature a number of interesting discussions and interactions with an emphasis on better and more music. Epic choons will be played every 15 minutes separating each segment of the show.

This year we have also invited a number of guest DJs to join us to bring some epic stories and banter as well as some of their own choons of choice. So far we have Amanda Howie “Durr”, and Ann & Lanny “Da Lesbians” confirmed to join us live in the studio.

Broadcast Dates:

Thursday, 29th July 2010

Thursday, 5th August 2010

Thursday, 12th August 2010

Thursday, 19th August 2010

Thursday, 26th August 2010

Weekly reminders will be posted before each show begins to keep you well and truly informed! In the mean time you can listen to some clips from previous series in the “Audio” section of yo-radio.co.uk.

Also you should definitely add and interact with us on our Facebook group!

Hope to see you there bitches!

Sky Scottish Logo 1996

During a report about Scottish television news on Reporting Scotland; Fiona Hyslop MSP, Minister for Culture and External Affairs, stated that she felt Scotland needed it’s own digital channel focusing on Scottish programming and news. Now of course I could begin right away bashing the SNP for supporting anything that can be branded as remotely Scottish, however I feel that there is a lot to be discussed on her suggestion.

Firstly, this is not the first time someone has had this idea. ‘Sky Scottish’ was a joint venture between British Sky Broadcasting and SMG (Better known as STV or Scottish Television) back in 1996 and was broadcast as part of Sky’s Multichannel package. However the channel was short lived, lasting only 18 months before it was taken off the air. Which is no surprise since it only broadcast for 2 hours each day and had very little quality programming, the best of which were extra editions of Scotland Today and old episodes of Take the High Road.

Now, over a decade later, digital television has changed dramatically and the whole of Britain is on the verge of the digital switchover making multiple digital channels available to everyone. So could this be the right time to have another try at a Scottish TV channel? I think in this day and age it is certainly a good call and has a lot of potential. A new Scottish television channel could adopt the format of channels such as Dave; showing repeats of Scottish programmes such as Still Game, Chewin’ the Fat, Only an Excuse and Rab C. Nesbitt. As well as Scottish politics, news and sport.

STV has had a “strained” relationship with ITV for a long time and since STV stopped broadcasting programmes such as The Bill and Doc Martin more and more people are switching to ITV1 London. I think it is about time STV gave up their format to allow ITV to operate with an ‘ITV1 Scotland’ channel broadcasting on channel 3 and instead relaunch as an independent digital channel following the format described above.

Uniblue DriverScanner

If ever you have browsed a computing website or tried to download a missing file from a website; you will have come across an advert telling you that without updated drivers your computer may not be running at full capacity. There are a few programs on the Internet that scan your system then update any drivers that are outdated.

The program I tried out is Uniblue DriverScanner 2009 which at face value seems like a pretty sweet deal, with a price tag of $29.95 (roughly £20) and a Microsoft Gold Certificate. However my experience of using the software was not a good one and resulted in me having to perform multiple system restores and eventually a reboot of the whole OS. The lesson here folks: Don’t fix it if it ain’t broken!

I came across the program while trying to install drivers on my custom built PC. Since some of the hardware I have used is quite an age old so Windows XP had a difficult time trying to install some of the components. However upon scanning my system, DriverScanner detected the un-installed hardware and sourced the drivers. Also the software detected that some of the Windows drivers for other hardware was outdated and offered to give me the latest versions. Obviously I opted for yes, then the issues started.

One of my major issues was the NIC card seemed to be making my router crash, when I connected to the Internet on that PC the whole network would go down every time. Other issues included the video card no longer sending out a signal to the television, Firewire ports becoming completely inactive and lots of unwanted software for web cams and external hard drives that I don’t need. I found that these issues would be resolved by system restores to before the drivers were installed. Eventually my system became extremely slow and some programs were performing unusually so I finally opted for a OS reinstall. Although I am not entirely sure that the drivers were responsible for the the system failure, it did happen very soon after.

I do believe this software is useful if you are unsure of what drivers you need for a piece of hardware, however the claim that outdated drivers are jeopardising your PCs performance are a little far fetched, and im my experience updating all the drivers that DriverScanner recommended proved fatal to the performance of my PC.

KrizzyB in 'Into the Madness'

As many of you know and have been asking or harassing me about, all of my videos from my YouTube Channel and my website have disappeared without warning or explanation. Many of you have given me great support and loyalty in following my videos and I do owe you all an explanation however I have waited until everything has cleared before I have went public.

For many years now I have been involved in voluntary youth work with Renfrewshire Youth Services, a long time member of the Renfrewshire Youth Voice as the Chair and Vice-Chair, sat on many groups that influence the decisions made about things that effect the young people of Renfrewshire and projects that are aimed at young people and also a Member of the Scottish Youth Parliament for over 3 and a half years. Recently I have also taken up employment with Renfrewshire Council as a sessional youth worker.

We all know what moment this was...

A complete contrast to the videos I had made for YouTube as ‘KrizzyB’, the crazy character based upon myself but with an extreme boost in madness, hilarity and plenty of randomness. However the ‘inapropriate’ nature of many of the videos caused a member of the public to complain directly to the Chief Executives of Renfrewshire Council about myself being an inappropriate person to work as a youth worker and represent the Council as a highly respected youth activist. Luckily for me, I have worked with a lot of important people who were willing to defend my work for the Council and save my job, and my influence and years of work with Renfrewshire Youth Voice and the Scottish Youth Parliament has led them to decline my resignation from office bearer positions in the organisations. However my videos are sadly no more as I have had no choice but to remove them as they have got me into this mess and would only cost me my job and my positions in these organisations.

I feel that I have been judged incorrectly by the person who complained because my videos do not reflect me as a person at all, my videos never referred to my work as a volunteer, or as an employee in any of my jobs, they were simply an act and were largely fabricated to create the illusion of real documented events. Although the content was agreeably inappropriate, much of it was ether staged or edited to appear as though it had happened in reality. Swearing and drinking were common themes in these ‘inappropriate’ videos and although I understand the publicity I gave these activities; the videos were never meant for a young audience and were, in many cases, quite an age old.

'Yoo0oo Radio Cribs' screenshot...and my reaction to all this.

In conclusion I feel it is safe to say that nether myself nor the complainer has really came out of this well. The complainer went right to the top of the Council rather than my bosses at Education & Leisure; their clear intention was to have me sacked. However, although I have certainly used up all my brownie points that I have earned over the years, I am still (just) working with the council in all my projects. However I have lost a large part of my life, my love of creating entertainment, which unfortunately will be gone indefinitely.

If you feel like getting in touch with me you can comment this post or you can email me at: me@krizzyb.com

KrizzyBxx

Symantec faces major doubt from customers.

The Internet has exploded today with confusion and suspicion about a mysterious file attempting to access a server in Africa from computers with Norton Internet Security installed.

The unknown file ‘PIFTS.exe’ has popped up on many firewalls asking to connect to a server in Africa through the Internet. Confusion about the nature of this program has sparked mass debate online about the purpose of the program and whether or not it is safe. Strangely Symantec, who own Norton, have been deleting any threads mentioning the file on their forums, and now have officially pulled down their forum.

News of this has reached many Internet users and online news sources but we are still unaware of the true nature of the program and it’s purpose. Many believe it is a spying program that sends information on browsing habits of citizens and forwarding them to Africa, bypassing any laws preventing countries spying on their own citizens. It is believed this information is reviewed externally and then fed back to the country it came from.

Other theories claim that Norton has been infiltrated by rogue software that is now being distributed as part of their Internet Safety Suite.

This whole affair seems very abnormal and speculation of a cover-up is shared among many. Even google is having the finger pointed at them as any Google Trend information on searches for the file PIFTS.exe have been removed.

All Norton users and Internet browsers are recommended to block access to any files they are unsure of trying to communicated via the Internet.

For more information and latest developments visit: http://blog.bull3t.me.uk/archives/internet/the-mysterious-norton-cover-up-and-piftsexe/

KrizzyBxx

Image on Microsoft.com homepage after CES 09 (January 2009)

However, you will notice that they have completely ignored Windows Vista, their current Operating System, and jumped straight to the ‘Windows 7 Beta’ logo. Does this mean even Microsoft are admitting that Vista is a flop and the sooner we get Windows 7 the better?