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I am a big fan of mods… be it store-shelf or low-amateur quality, there’s something about mods which have a different appeal from retail games. There’s a lot more scope for originality… doing things the original developers couldn’t possibly do themselves due to financial or legal restrictions (they wouldn’t sell enough copies of a Half-Life 2 Meets Metal Gear Solid Crossover to cover the cost of covering legality issues). It also produces a game made by fans, with their own interests in mind… meaning something more humourous (albeit sometimes unintentionally) and definitely cheekier than anything made by the bigwigs.

Morroblivion is a fantastic Olbivion mod which allows the player to revisit the dark plains of Vvardenfell - where life is cheap, and loot is abundant… or the frosty forests of Solstheim - where the locals’ hearts are as cold as the land they inhabit (bar Uncle Sweetshare of course; what a gangster) or… the rubbish land of Mournhold, where there’s little to do and much to lament (such as the fact that you’d spent your hard earned on a pathetic excuse for an expansion pack).

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This is the 21st century, and most of us are constantly “plugged in” and possibly helpless without our gadgets and wireless trinkets… Anyway, I’ve compiled a guide which shows you how you can enjoy a holiday in the wilderness, while retaining the electrickery which gets you through your day to day life.

Part One: What You’ll Need

This initial part of the guide outlines selection of things to bring with you on your venture into the heart of your deepest enemy… Nature

1. MP3 Player

This is one thing most of you are probably going to already have so make sure you’ve got a lot of listenable music you won’t get sick of… or if you’re not really into music then pack it full of podcasts (preferably GameOnYou podcasts) so you can get your fix of news and generally the

world of technology which you have temporarily left behind. Depending on your mp3 player’s memory, it may be recommended to ration these podcasts. If you can, bring an extra memory card packed full of entertainment.

2. Swiss Army Knife

Unlike the majority of people who buy these, if you get one before going camping you may actually have a use for it, be it fighting bears, midgets or the Swiss (fight fire with fire) the swiss army knife will prevail. Fortunately you don’t have to spend a lot of money such as the one pictured (I got a knockoff multitool for £7). For extra nerd points, you can pick up one of these (equally as) impractical bastards.

3. Mobile Phone

This may sound pretty obvious and, like the mp3 player, you’re already likely to have one. Bringing a mobile phone isn’t just for the technophiles… it’ll be likely to come in very handy. It could even save your life, but more importantly you can call your mates and ask them about the latest gaming ne

ws you’ve been missing. There’s no need to bring a gadgety phone as it’s battery probably wouldn’t last long - and you can bring individual gadgets which will do the same thing… better.

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In celebration of the height of summer, Microsoft have announced their “Summer of Arcade” promotion where gamers can play some great Xbox Live Arcade titles and have the chance to win prizes at the same time.

The “Summer of Arcade” will commence Wednesday July 30, with the release of Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2, and run through until the end of August closing after the release of Castle Crashers.

All you have to do is log in, play the trial or full version of the featured game of the week and you will be entered in to the sweepstakes with the chance to win some huge prizes.

The featured games in the promotion are as follows:

• July 30:Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 -  The latest version of the popular retro shooter that includes six gameplay modes, new enemies and scoring strategies. Available for 800 MS points.
• August 6:Braid - An artistic puzzle-platformer where the player must manipulate the flow of time in different ways to reach their goal.
• August 13:Bionic Commando: Rearmed - A remake of the classic 8-bit side-scroller, complete with stunning HD graphics.
• August 20:Galaga Legions - This classic arcade shooter returns with updated graphics and table turning game dynamics.
• August 27: Castle Crashers - Defend your Kingdom and save the princess in this arcade adventure.

Playing the trial or full versions of these will get you entered into both the Weekly Prize drawing and the Grand Prize drawing with the following prizes:

• Grand Prize (x1)- 100,000 Microsoft Points, 12 month Xbox Live Gold subscription and an Xbox 360 Elite console.
• Runner-up Prizes (x2)- 10,000 Microsoft Points and a 12 month Xbox Live Gold Subscription.
• Weekly Prizes (x5) - 4000 Microsoft Points.

The “Summer of Arcade” ends September 2nd.

This has been taken from Slapstic, but since their servers are deaded, I’ve taken the liberty of ripping out the content of this post before it’s lost forever!

This is a pretty decent list of games that should run on a pretty basic ‘rig’, since we know many of our readers don’t spend their entire savings on upgrades whenever Crytek decide to wheel out a new game.

I’m running an Acer Aspire 4720Z
Processor: Intel Pentium Dual CPU T2310 @ 1.46 GHz, 1.47 GHz
Memory (RAM): 1GB
System Type: Windows Vista 32-bit Operating System

Obviously there are other factors involved in how well a game will run on your system but those are the major ones. So here’s the list of games! There are some multiplatform games on the list, but I’m recommending the PC versions. All of the games below are absolutely quality.

1. Deus Ex

It’s not uncommon to find this game referred to as the greatest PC game of all time. I don’t necessarily think it deserves THAT title, but it’s definitely a great shooter. The graphics aren’t very pretty (but still passable), but it’s sort of like an old lady. She was hot at some point in time. But now that she doesn’t have any teeth and smells like Metamucil it’s like “eeeeeeh…”. Actually it’s nothing like that. This is a great game.

2. Diablo 2

I hope you like the sound of your own mouse clicking, because you’ll be doing it a LOT during this classic RPG. The character management and growth aspect of the game is fantastic, and anyone that’s played it will tell you that you NEED to play it.

3. Final Fantasy VII

Yes, nerds around the world, there IS a PC version of this game, and it’s exactly like the original. There’s no way you haven’t heard about this game already, so just go get it.

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Unreal Tournament 3 is of course the latest installment of the Unreal series for Epic Games. Leading up to it’s release, the game generated a lot of hype, mostly down to so many other titles utilising the Unreal engine with mostly impressive results and, we are happy to announce that UT3 lives up to the hype in spectacular fashion.

Unlike most shooters, UT3 hasn’t changed much at all over the years, it is still the extremely fast paced, no holds barred, fragfest that we’ve all came to know and love. Of course the graphics look amazing and the old weapons have been re-designed, slightly but are still instantly recognisable to Unreal veterans.

The single player campaign is a series of matches as you would find during online play varying from deathmatch to capture the flag, The story takes a back seat, only being told through short cut-scenes at the beginning of each chapter and text briefings before each mission. During the campaign you will take control of Reaper, (a Dom and Baird hybrid from Gears of War), along with his team of “Ronin”, Jester the sarcastic sister of Reaper, Othello the Cole Train of UT3 and Bishop an self proclaimed crusader of god, all of which can be commanded to great effect during missions.

Along with single player, you can play the campaign in co-op, play Instant Action, basically a custom bot match or Multi-player, either way your guaranteed to have a good time, especially with the addition of vehicles, hoverboards, some crazy power-ups, mutators and a hell of a lot of maps.

The only real problems we had, at least with the console version, was the “push to speak” system. which was not really thought out. In order to speak to your team you must push right on the d-pad and hold it throughout your sentence. This posed problems as, for example in CTF, if you capture the flag, the enemy will converge on you, in order to shout at your team for help with covering fire you must either come to a complete stop as movement is controlled by the stick above the d-pad, or fumble about with the controller until you can speak and move forward and back but not turn. This is also complicated by the ability to “feign death” by pressing down on the d-pad, meaning any movement of your thumb while speaking can cause you to collapse to the ground, dropping the flag in the process.

Despite that minor flaw, UT3 is still fantastic game to play both online and off. Easily rated at 9 out of 10, it is a must buy for all shooter fans.

Microsoft recently announced DirectX 11, the sequel to DirectX 9 (A  known and loved video-game programming interface for Windows - much unlike the quiet middle-child we call DirectX 10) during a recent Video-Game developer conference. Unsurprisingly it’ll be a vista exclusive, with probable support for future operating systems.

Microsoft Noggin Chris Satchell explains that the discontinuity between DirectX 9 and 10 (caused by the unnecessary necessity of DirectX 10 being limited to specific hardware) and that "DX11 is totally compatible with DX10. There’s not that 9/10 discontinuity we created before," while sweat emerged from his forehead and his eyes darted about the room… maybe Good news for the majority of gamers who don’t want to upgrade before their time.

Among the features announced is the fascinating inclusion of technology which will allow your GPU’s power to be shared with/work in parallel with the processor - meaning that you would be able to use any spare juice from your graphics card(s) as general processing power. An interesting concept which would hopefully, among other things, mean that you would be able to use your graphics card(s) as extra power for desktop (and other graphically non-intensive tasks).

Microsoft’s supposed PC-equivalent of Xbox Live has finally been made free - news which made me put down my cold beans on toast an applaud.

I’m sure I’m not alone in hoping that over the next year or so, people will flock to GFW Live simply because it’s free, and we might see the advantages of MS’s relationships with indie developers come to fruition in the form of a wave of launch titles for the (inevitable?) stand-alone client and marketplace.

Check out the Gamerscore Blog for the announcement.

The first o f the big three, and arguably the best conference was delivered by Microsoft this year. They not only made a reasonably beefy number of announcements but also covered a lot of highly anticipated games and gave us a deeper look into them.

They also introduced the new dashboard design, along with their infamous new Avatars which are due to hit Xboxes worldwide come Autumn (delivered via the mandatory Autumn update). Don’t worry if you bought any themes before the upcoming new dashboard… Microsoft assures that they will be compatible with the new dashboard, and Gamerpics are rumoured to follow suit.

Follow us for our comprehensive coverage of the Microsoft E3 Press Conference…

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After gamers all over the world waited patiently for Bungie’s mystery announcement on wednesday, only to have it cancelled at the last second, Microsoft’s Head of Xbox Business, Don Mattrick, decided to shead a little light on it for us.

In an interview with MTV’s Stephen Totilo, Mattrick confirmed that Bungie are working on a new Halo project for Microsoft.

When asked why there was a lack of Halo news at E3, Mattrick said “Microsoft’s Monday press conference was already loaded with content and so any announcements for that series weren’t needed to get gamers excited.” Mattrick was also asked if this “project” was simply Halo Wars or the secretive Peter Jackson Halo project, Mattrick responded “Neither, the Bungie game is something else.” before changing the topic as fast as he could.

So once again we are left to wonder what it could be, but you’ll know as soon as we do.

Many questions arise from these gameplay shorts: Will there be any wacky super-powers this time around? Who’s this lady-type? Who keeps leaving that sand lying around in slopy areas?

One thing we’re sure of though is that Prince of Persia looks ruddy gorgeous - and it takes a lot for us to say ‘ruddy’.

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