While my preordered, Collector’s Edition of the game, Alan Wake, languishes somewhere in a Channel Islands warehouse and volcanic ash clouds gather on the horizon, a chap in Spain,  HeikkiX360, was lucky enough to receive his game 8 days early – courtesy of the good folk at GAME Spain, who it would appear, have diligently shipped off their pre-orders, a week and a bit early.  If it’s not cruel enough that HeikkiX360 has taunted us with an ‘un-boxing’ video, he’s also had the gall to put up a video walkthrough of  the first three episodes, lest there be any doubt that he did in fact have the game.  If you love a good unboxing (it just tends to make me jealous and annoyed), then make the jump and press play to see Alan Wake stripped of his shrink wrap.  Lastly, a community service message for any budding Spielberg planning on shooting an unboxing video of their own.  Don’t film the unboxing on your bed.  It tends to just come off as creepy.

Was The Wire the best show on television? In the words of the Wire’s corrupt Senator Clay Davis, “Sheeeeeeeeet, yes”.

Having just devoured all five series on DVD, I’m inclined to agree with Clay and the critics. Simply put, this HBO drama is compelling. It’s as addictive as the G packs* being pushed on the Baltimore corners. Corners that I’ve spent more hours on (albeit from the comfort of my lounge) these past few weeks than I care to admit.

A show that will leave you thinking about it’s characters, their decaying city and crumbling institutions, long after the final credits roll at the end of Season Five. A testament to the strength of the writing and the acting; you’ll be left wondering and concerned for the fate of the characters (criminals and police alike). For a city that you may have no real desire to ever actually visit in person, it’s surprising how much you will miss those Baltimore corners.

The Wire isn’t just universally loved by the critics, but by ‘every man’ as well. Over at Amazon, customer reviewers are dealing almost exclusively in ‘five star’ ratings, and it’s perhaps telling that the few negative reviews seem hard pushed to find anything other than the packaging to complain about.

Did you miss the show when it originally aired? You may well have done yourself a favour. Each of the five series of The Wire share both a brilliant ensemble cast and pacing that slowly builds to a crescendo. Each episode provides the viewer greater reward than the one before; a TV drama that rewards the viewers investment. Now on DVD, you are no longer at the mercy of TV network programming. You can get your ‘fix’ in the time it takes to select the next episode on the disc.

Have you seen The Wire? Does it deserve it’s lofty reputation as the best show on Television? Leave me your thoughts in the comments.

Haven’t seen the show. What are you waiting for?

* A wholesaler’s package of 100 vials of cocaine

Here at The Incomplete Gamer we like to think that when it comes to video games we’re making intelligent, informed purchasing choices, but truth be known, we’re a sucker for a great advertising campaign.

Back in November, Sony kicked off its ‘You’ve got the whole world in your hands’ print and TV advertising campaign for the PSP; a clever campaign that showcased the versatility of Sony’s portable handheld.

But if it’s software that ultimately sells consoles then we can’t help but think that the campaign would be more effective if it used that same ‘whole world’ theme to sell specific titles.

That being said, Sony have absolutely nailed it with it’s new ad campaign for Resistance Retribution. Building on the ‘whole world in your hands theme, this stunning explosive artwork ‘Your Enemy, Your Battle, Your Retribution’, excellently captures the games and the experience of playing Resistance on the PSP.

The scan above comes from an ad that appears in the April 09 issue of JB HiFi Games and DVD magazine Stack.

Resistance Retribution was already on our play and review shortlist, but this advertisement pushed it to the top of the pile.  As I type this post, I’m currently trying to retake Europe from the Chimera.  As soon as I’m done we’ll  post our review.

The following images below, are from Sony’s ‘whole world’ campaign.

Throughout 2008, game developer Criterion Games earned plenty of well-deserved praise for its racing title Burnout Paradise (PS3/Xbox360).   Not content with creating a great, open-world racing game, Criterion spent the last twelve months delivering additional content, and further tweaking the game play, garnering respect from gamers and the gaming media alike along the way.  Best of all, that content cost nothing!  Feel free to correct The Incomplete Gamer, but if there’s a better supported title on the market today, then we don’t know about it.  That support continues this year, commencing with this major free update which landed on February 6th.

Criterion Games have done a sterling job in keeping the Burnout Paradise faithful happy, but what does a developer do to jump start sales of a 12 month old game in a crowded marketplace.  Criterion Games relaunched the game!  A new SKU, and a new title (Burnout Paradise: Ultimate Box), complete with all the free downloadable content to date as well as the new premium (read: not free) content; the Party Pack – a play at home, social, pass the controller type mode.

Just an aside; call us anti-social but we’re not seeing the appeal of Party Mode.  It works like this.  Your mates drop around.  Drink your last beer and show you up; all the while sloshing beer and dropping chips on your favourite Dual Shock controller.  Basically, Party Mode is a pretty good argument for the benefits of online gaming.

But back to the Burnout Paradise reboot.  The new SKU makes sense, getting the game valuable shelf space and in-store visibility.  So far so good.  What doesn’t seem to make sense;  the $99 being charged by EB’s and GAME, for the physical PS3 and Xbox360 versions of the title.

Coincidence Only.  It’s another Jez.  No Party Mode for the Incomplete Gamer…not yet anyway.

Of course you could argue that there’s something wrong with all of GAME and EB’s pricing, but that’s another post for another day.  Back to the $99 price point.  Burnout Paradise was previously available in the PS3 Platinum range and copies of those can still be found in store if you look hard enough.  Considering the only new premium content to come bundled with the Ultimate Box is the ‘Party mode’, you are paying almost $50 extra for one new mode, arguably, worse cover art, and the convenience of not having to download the free DLC.

Speaking of Party Mode; head over to the PS3 store.  The Party mode is priced at $15.95, which may seem high, but add that to the price of your Platinum version of the game and your still $36 better off.  If you’re a Generation Y or what ever the hell the generation is called that that no longer cares for bulky game boxes cluttering up their lounges, then you can go one better, and pick up the Game and Party Pack from the PSN store for only $55!

On the one hand we’re stoked to see the downloadable games being retailed more cheaply than their Blue-ray equivalents.  Frankly, it’s about time!  On the other hand, (and keep in mind, The Incomplete Gamer prefers our games in a form that we can hold and caress and gaze lovingly at), it seems obvious that the powers that be have priced the boxed game way too high.

Now of course no one’s holding a gun to your head and if you can find a Platinum version of the game, or even better, a minty-fresh used copy, with the original and best cover art, you can enjoy your Burnout Paradise, download all that free content and still have $50 burning a hole in your pocket.

Even in the best of economic times we like to see game prices falling, not rising.  As much as the game deserves to continue to build an audience, I can’t quite see this game flying off the shelf at $99.  Not when it can currently be had so much cheaper, both as the Platinum Edition and in the PSN Store.  Of course the Big W’s and JB’s of the world will surely shave a few dollars of the RRP, but how much remains to be seen.

In the humble opinion of the Incomplete Gamer; had it been priced at $59, a ten dollar premium over the platinum version, it would have moved off the shelves a lot faster.  Still, what do we know about video game retailing.  Perhaps it’s all a deliberate (and very smart ploy) to drive all the ‘late to the party’ Burnout fans to the online store.

Call us old fashioned but sometimes you just want to hold the box and turn the pages

As for video game buying, yesterday we put our wallets where our mouths are and picked up the aforementioned ‘minty fresh’ used copy of Burnout Paradise for $39 from our good friends at GAME and the Burnout Paradise Official Game Guide (Prima) from EB’s for the bargain price of $14.95

If you’ll excuse me now, I’ve got some new trophies to unlock.

Can you top Lumines? Can you compete with Lumines? Would you even try? Japanese developer Cyber Front clearly believed there was room for a new puzzle game on the PSP and deserves credit for at least for developing a new puzzle IP on Sony’s handheld, at a time when so many new PSP titles were simply ports or sequels. Cyber Front’s PR machine say the game takes its inspiration from Tetris, but literally turns the concept on its head. Such a description doesn’t really do Koloomn justice, nor does it adequately explain what this puzzler is all about. A mere Tetris clone it is not.

Like Tetris, you have a well, but unlike Tetris, the blocks come, not from the top but instead, they appear, row by row, from the bottom of the well. The game mechanics are simple enough. Destroy blocks by rotating them and placing them next to blocks of the same colour. The D pad moves a square curser, 2 blocks wide by 2 blocks high in size, over the blocks in the well. The X or triangle button rotates the block to the left and the square button rotates the block to the right. Simply combine four blocks of the same colour in any direction to make them disappear. Before they dissapear you can add more blocks of the same colour to the chain. Don’t let the blocks in the well reach the top of the screen. When they do, it’s game over.

Think you’ve seen this game before?

Sounds simple enough. And it is. It’s less frenetic than Lumines, at least initially, although it’s also a little more mentally challenging. Koloomn comes complete with an excellent tutorial level and a simple, well written, full colour (a rarity these days) manual.

There’s more to the game than simply combining blocks of the same colour. Like Lumines, you can also eliminate blocks by bringing colours together as a consequence of the destruction of other blocks. In Koloomn, that’s called ‘forming a chain’, and depending on how successful you are at forming chains, you’ll be rewarded with ‘magic blocks’. An ‘Arrow block’ will turn all blocks in line with the arrow the same colour. ‘Bomb blocks’ will turn all adjacent blocks the same colour. ‘Wave blocks’ will make all blocks on the screen the same colour as the ‘Wave block’ disappear. Still with me?

In some ways Koloomn is an odd mix. The artwork, bright colours and in-game characters scream children’s game, yet the gameplay mechanics won’t be easily mastered by the littlies. No matter your ability, you’ll soon tire of the single player mode however. While you’ll easily get one entry on the leader board, you’ll be hard pressed to knock off the remaining CPU scores. While Lumines provided a visual and aural reward for the investment you make in its gameplay, Koloomn’s only reward is an ever increasing level of difficulty.

There’s no auto save – a glaring omission in a pick up and play title, but especially so in a title where high scores are this games greatest reward. There’s nothing more disappointing than discovering your morning’s top score is not on the scoreboard when you break out the game again later that day.

It’s not all bad news. When you tire of the single player mode there’s a rich multiplayer game mode, although not in the sense that you may have hoped for. In Campaign and Arcade mode you’ll be pitted against computer controlled opponents and take on the likes of Dynamyte Ace and Agent Blanc. The different characters don’t impact on gameplay as much as give a visual face to your CPU opponent. However multiplayer does differ significantly from the single player mode.

Characters don’t impact gameplay but do give you someone to blame.

While the basic gameplay remains unchanged, the different coloured blocks now have greater significance. The colour of the blocks you remove will determine how you attack your opponent. Clear green blocks and your opponent’s rotation controls will be reversed. Clear blue blocks and you’ll throw large blocks onto your opponents screen. This is certainly an interesting gameplay dynamic which adds a great deal of depth to the game. Of course the only multiplayer we are really interested in is true multiplayer. Sadly, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record, there is no game sharing and no infrastructure mode available. The only way you’ll get multiplayer gaming is if you find another player with a PSP and their own copy of Koloomn. Good luck with that quest.

Visually the game is polished. The front-end menu screens are unique, but functional, presented in a comic panel manner. The in-game screens, both single player and multiplayer are detailed and bright, with the character animations and scoring information adding a bit of light and colour to an otherwise simple block-filled well that we’ve all seen before. Like Lumines, the music in this game will get into your head. Unlike Lumines, that’s not necessarily a good thing. Quirky, cartoon-like, repetitive and annoying, you’ll soon grow tired of the music and be reaching for the volume controls.

Koloomn has some good ideas here, including some innovative gameplay. Sadly, it’s a game with a bit of an identity crisis. It’s visual and aural presentation is aimed squarely at the younger kids. Its gameplay however, while simple to play initially, actually has a bit of depth to it and won’t be mastered without quite a bit of dedication. Its biggest strength, the multiplayer attack modes are let down by the exclusion of game sharing or infrastructure mode, meaning that you’re not likely to be playing multiplayer with anyone other than the CPU.

The multiplayer ‘attack modes’ are innovative… If only you could find a human opponent.

In the case of Lumines you have an example puzzle game where gameplay, audio and visuals come together to create a true masterpiece. In Koloomn’s case the individual parts come together in an unconvincing fashion. It’s a game not sure of what it’s meant to be and, in the case of its multiplayer capabilities, not fully kitted out to take advantage of its biggest strength – it’s multiplayer attack modes.

If you were only going to buy one puzzle game for your PSP, then you wouldn’t buy Koloomn. Only if you’re a sucker for a puzzle game and already own Lumines is Koloomn worthy of your time.

Fans of sitcoms and procedural crime drama were treated this week to a cross over double act with a difference featuring CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (8:30pm, Sunday 29th June, Channel Nine) and Two and a Half Men (Tuesday, 8:30pm, 1 July, Channel Nine).

So was this stunt TV or was it an an original cross over concept that breathed fresh life into two tired television genres? Today The Incomplete Gamer stopped writing about Tivo long enough to pick up the peanut remote and find out for ourselves.

What makes this crossing over concept original was that (mercifully) none of the characters of either show actually crossed over. As easy as it might have been to send Charlie Harper (Charlie Sheen) to Vegas on a date with a stripper, it was the writers instead who crossed over.

First out of the blocks on Sunday was CSI. The episode titled “Two and a Half Deaths” was written by the creators of Two and a Half Men, Chuck Lorre and Lee Aronsohn.

This time around the CSI Team are investigating the death of Annabelle, a diva sitcom star played by Katey Sagal. With the possible exception of the rubber chicken Grisham delicately extracts from Annabelle’s mouth, there are only a few subtle clues that this isn’t your average CSI episode. A network suit strolling the corridors of the CSI labs remarks “Beautiful people doing high tech police work. There might be a series in this” Later, when discussing the sitcom ‘Two and a Half Men’ a member of Annabelle’s writing staff remarks, “I’d rather sleep with Annabelle than write that crap.”

Behind the scenes of the cross over episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,

If you were none the wiser, there is really nothing distinguishing in the writing or the direction to single this episode out as being unique or special. It does pass muster as a decent CSI episode and as such is a credit to the creative adaptability of the Two and a Half Men creators, Chuck Lorre and Lee Aronsohn.

The second part of the crossover, the Two and a Half Men episode called “Fish in a Drawer,” screened Tuesday night. Written by CSI writers Sarah Goldfinger and Evan Dunsky and based on a story by CSI executive producers Carol Mendelsohn an
d Naren Shankar, this episode revolves around the mysterious death at the home of Charlie Harper, played by Charlie Sheen.

From the minute the opening CSI theme music plays “Who…Are You..Men Men.., Men Men,” it’s clear that the CSI crew have pulled out all stops to milk the CSI crossover concept for all its worth. Unlike the CSI episode, there is no mistaking this episode. All the CSI trademarks are on display front and centre; the flash backs (the dead butterflies and the clown on the bed were our favourites), the forensics, the interrogations, the CSI visual conventions (the cgi microscopic camera work. But throughout, the humour remains classic Two and a Half Men. When checking Charlie’s bedroom for semen using the ultra violet light, one of the Crime Scene Investigators remarks, “It’s like a Jackson Pollack painting.”

Hit or miss. For once a TV network managed to deliver a cross over concept that wasn’t corny. The Networks deal the crossover card at ratings time and as a rule these special episodes result in a positive ratings spike. Yet ratings aside, at best they leave us disappointed and at worst cringing in their wake. Even when TV shows are set in the same city, it is rare that they ever share a similar tone, those shadings of light and dark that make each shows universe both unique and believable. Which is why, for the most part when your favourite TV character stumbles onto the set of that ‘other show’ the jarring and sense of displacement is so great that you, the viewer are unable to suspend your disbelief.

For our money, The Two and a Half Men episode is our pick of the two. The CSI episode just doesn’t shine as brightly. Perhaps because CSI is already adept at weaving the occasionally humorous element into it’s stories, perhaps we’re getting tired of procedural crime dramas, or perhaps, Quentin Tarantino simply raised the bar too high when he directed the CSI episode Grave Digger in 2005.

If there’s one thing we’re lacking at the Incomplete Gamer, it’s time. Time to read, time to play, time to consume…and perhaps most importantly, time to complete ‘Incomplete Gamer’ reviews.

Of course, time’s the one thing we can’t find on Ebay, although a quick Ebay search does  turn up a BACK TO THE FUTURE Flux Capacitor Official Prop Replica for only $350.  Had you been quicker off the mark you could have hit up US seller studbold1969 who was selling a ‘how to build a flux capacitor’ guide for the bargain price of $US20 (parts not included). The item description read ‘serious buyers only’ which you’d think would rule out the vast majority of interested bidders!.

While we’ve passed up on the weird science for now, The Incomplete Gamer did stumble across an equally tempting buy on Ebay the other day and in the interests of serving our readers, and, in the interest of hopefully saving some of that all important ‘time’, we successfully bid for the said item.

The Neuros MPEG4 Video Recorder 2 won’t transport you back in time, but it does promise to save you time and into the bargain, produce a pretty decent encoding of Back to the Future for you to enjoy on your PSP, Video Ipod, Handheld or Mobile Phone.

Here at the Incomplete Gamer, the PSP is our portable video player of choice.

Now, up until recently, if we’ve wanted to get video content onto the PSP our options have been limited. If we wanted the best video quality available we could, and we did buy UMD movies and while that solution provided the best video quality currently available it did come a t a cost. UMD movies were more expensive than their DVD equivalent, yet offered less by way of features. Of course, there’s a wealth of movie trailers, clips and video blogs online, already encoded in a PSP friendly format awaiting to be downloaded and transferred to the PSP, but if we wanted to watch a movie or TV show that we legally own, we have to first rip the video to the computer, and then re-encode the video into a PSP friendly format. All of that takes time. Remember time – that all important thing we’re in short supply of here at the Incomplete Gamer. It also takes a computer that’s up to the challenge. The more powerful the beast the quicker you’ll rip and encode, but regardless it’s still a time-consuming task. Time you’re spending in front of the computer or waiting for the computer to finish encoding is time you could have spent actually watching the damn video.

What if there was a simpler way? Well Neuros says there is.

The promise: Neuros says: The Neuros MPEG4 Recorder works like a mini digital VCR and eliminates all fees, hassle and conversion of files. You can record live TV, your favourite movies and TV shows and watch them anytime…anywhere…on almost any portable device.
Put video on your PSP™, iPod™, smart phone, notebook and other portables!

Sounds good. And prospective buyers needn’t take their word for it, nor the Incomplete Gamer’s for that matter. Neuros provide a range of video samples for you do download prior to purchase.

So, does it deliver? The Neuros MPEG-4 Video Recorder 2 is, despite its decidedly unsexy moniker (there was, as the name suggests, a Neuros MPEG Video Recorder, that came before it), one sexy beast.

Un-boxing the Neuros MPEG-4 Recorder 2 reveals a device roughly no bigger than two decks of cards placed side by side, two thirds the length of the PSP and only slightly wider.

Setting up is a breeze. All you’ll need is provided in the box. Two sets of composite AV leads, one which takes the signal from your AV source – TV, Video Recorder or DVD player and plugs into the Recorder and the other which take the signal back out to the TV. All that’s left to do is plug in the power lead (the power supply is dual voltage (110 -240 watt) so you’ll simply need an adapter plug that will accept the US plug and you’re in business. (Neuros products are not available direct in Australia yet, although a few of the Neuros resellers will ship overseas. The word from Neuros is that the company hopes to find a partner to distribute their product in Australia later this year.)

  Now it has to be said that the AV leads appear a little flimsy. While you might consider rappelling down a Monster Cable, you’d be reluctant to hang a Christmas tree ornament from these suckers. Having said that, they did the trick, and didn’t suffer from any interference

Once plugged in and powered up, it’s time to navigate the OSD. Much has been written about the aesthetics of the user interface. It’s true that the OSD won’t win any beauty contests, but it’s also true that once set up, you won’t be spending much time there either. Critics have also complained that the user interface isn’t intuitive enough, but I think that says more about the world we live in and how we expect to be able to master all things without investing any time or effort, than it does about how easy this device is to use. Personally, I’ve got no complaints. I’d suggest you read the manual. It’s well written and comprehensive and you’ll be up to speed in minutes. There more support on the Neuros Audio web site including step by step guides that will walk your through the process.

The first thing you’ll want to do is upgrade the firmware. Simply download the file, transfer the file to the root directory of the memory stick duo, place it back in the Recorder 2 and hit the update firmware. Again, it’s all well documented in both the manual and online.

Once updated, I switched the Neuros MPEG-4 Recorder 2 to PAL output, and was ready to record. The first test was to record some digital TV being output in native (full screen) 16:9 widescreen. In the recording menu, having selected PSP you have two recording options, both WQVGA (368 x 208) The best option here is Normal (30 fps – 768kbps) which will allow you to record roughly 143 minutes on a one gig stick. Economy (30 fps – 384kbps) with its lower bit rate will give you 251 minutes of recording time on a 1 gig card.

Here’s where I ran into problems. Remember I’m recording from a digital TV tuner outputting a 16:9 widescreen signal to a widescreen TV which is displaying the picture perfectly. Played back on the PSP, the picture has been cropped top and bottom. Not terribly noticeable on wide shots but when the camera zooms in, all the actors are missing the tops of their heads. (download Sample video here)

Rather than mess about, I fire off a quick email to the good folks at Neuros Audio. They reply promptly and confirm my suspicion that the WQVGA mode is most suited to taping a widescreen movie. The cropping top and bottom, simply removing the black borders, rather than any of the image.

So it’s back to the Recorder 2 to test it’s DVD recording capability, again using the WQVGA Normal mode . Excellent. As expected, it handles the Back to the Future encoding perfectly on this occasion with no unnecessary cropping (download sample video here).

With DVD encoding mastered it’s back to the problem of recording my favourite TV shows to enjoy on the road.

While only two PSP encoding options are available, the Recorder 2 has a lot more tricks up its shiny black case. Remember this sucker encodes video for just about any portable video device on the market, including the ubiquitous Video Ipod.

There are four QVGA (30 fps) modes on offer – Economy, Normal, Fine and Superfine. To really see what the Neuros was capable of I chose Superfine. With a bitrate of 1536 kbps you’ll get just 77 minutes from a one gig stick,

Changing the digital set top box to a 4:3 output, and selecting the Superfine option, I achieved, not surprisingly, near perfect video encoding with none of the cropping issues encountered with the WQVGA mode. (See Sample)

There is only one problem with this method of encoding. The QVGA files are saved in a folder on your memory stick called PDA-IPOD folder. If you place the memory stick straight into the PSP your video files won’t appear in the menu. You must first put the memory stick into a pc, transfer the files from the PDA-IPOD folder and place in the correct PSP video folder – :\MP_ROOT\101MNV01.

The bad news; that work around, while resulting in beautifully encoded video, introduces an extra time consuming step into the process. A step that would be necessary if you were transferring video to an Ipod, but one that makes the whole PSP video transfer process that little bit harder.

The good news is that Neuros is aware of the problem and plan to fix it. Accordi
ng to Neuros representative Johan Abadie, “The reason why the fine and superfine quality settings are not available is due to the limitations the PSP has (I should say had now) on the maximum bit rate the PSP can playback from the memory stick slot. With our old firmware, any files encoded at a higher bit rate than 768kbp/s (normal setting), would not playback. We figured out shortly after releasing our last firmware upgrade that this limitation has been alleviated, but have not had time to change the file structure yet. I anticipate it will be done in the next few weeks.”

It’s not perfect. The absence of a WQVGA mode that can encode 16:9 TV output without cropping is its biggest failing. Having said that, the Neuros Audio’s track record of on-going improvement and firmware development give me confidence that the Recorder 2 is a product that will only get better.

The Incomplete Gamer gives this device it’s big ‘it saved me time’ rubber stamp of approval. The device records at the press of a button, and encodes in real time. Neuros customer service is prompt and efficient. No time lost there either. Video purists might not like to here such unqualified praise for a device that’s encoding a digital file from an analogue source, but personally the real time encoding results I’ve achieved with the Neuros Recorder 2 are the equivalent of any software based encoding I’ve done using a PC, including the superior H264 AVC encoding using PSP Media Manager.

There are a lot of good reasons to be revisiting Capcom’s Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max, the Street Fighter port released for the PSP back in 2006. Capcom celebrated its 25th birthday just a couple of weeks ago on June 11th. In May this year Capcom announced what we’ all suspected. Street Fighter 4; already heading to the arcades later this year, would also be making its way to PS3, Xbox360 and PC as well. Then there’s Kristin Kreuk. She’s still the best reason to watch Smallville, and currently she’s filming the latest Street Fighter movie – Street Fighter – the Legend of Chun Li, in Bangkok. Lastly, Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max was the first game ever reviewed by The Incomplete Gamer, albeit for another gaming website. As our first piece of review code, the UMD takes pride of place in the TIG lab.

But a word of warning. while the following review holds a special place in our heart, there’s nothing new here that we haven’t all seen before. If Street Fighter was a singer and not a game franchise it would have retired to Vegas a long time ago, where it could perform the same routine seven nights a week to its loyal fans.

Back in 2006, Capcom brought the Street Fighter love to the PSP with Street Fighter Alpha 3, and threw in enough extras to warrant the addition of the word ‘Max’ to the title. If you have even a passing interest in gaming then Street Fighter needs no introduction. Here’s a gaming franchise with a rich arcade gaming heritage, old school appeal and a hardcore fan base. The Street Fighter series is one of Capcom’s most popular franchises, with 25 million sales worldwide spread across almost every major home gaming platform over the years.

Fire up Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max and your PSP has instant street cred, without dabbling in any of that messy and legally suspect homebrew scene. There it is, in all its original arcade glory. Much has been made of the fact that what once took up the space of a medium sized washing machine and took two people to lift can now be played on a handheld, and not in some cut-down compromised form either, but a perfect port with a heap of extras thrown in for good measure. If the wonders of miniaturisation still float your boat, or if you’ve been left disappointed by less complete attempts to port your favourite Street Fighter game to a handheld in the past, then chances are you’ll be initially impressed by Capcom’s efforts.

Spoiled for choice.

The main menu welcomes you with a staggering 15 modes to choose from. Those new to the Street Fighter series or those just a little rusty might want to step into the Training Mode and work on their moves before jumping into Arcade Mode, where you’ll ‘experience all the action and story of the arcade hit’. In truth the story’s a bit on the thin side; this is simply a game where you beat the crap out of the opposition, or at least attempt to do just that. You are given a whopping 37 characters to choose from, including all of the characters from Street Fighter Alpha, and 4 new characters, Eagle, Yun and Maki from Capcom vs. SNK 2 and Ingrid from Capcom Fighting Evolution. There are also 2 unlockable characters as well, M. Bison and Shin Akuma. Each character has ten fights to battle through. Do the maths; you’ll be spending hours completing this mode alone.

At this point you might want to head back to the main menu. Go to Game Options and dial back the difficulty level – from 1 to 8 fiendishly difficult stars (the default is 4). Here you can also customise the number of rounds (1, 3 or 5), the game speed, and background and sound effect volumes. Still in Options Mode you’ll want to go to Button Configuration and change things more to your liking. If you are really struggling to win a single round, let alone a fight, you might want to assign a special move or combo to one of the shoulder buttons or any of the right hand face buttons. The hardcore players will cry foul, and certainly, assigning such moves to a single button, dumbs the game down dramatically, but the option is there if you need it. If you don’t know your ‘Hadouken’ from your ‘Spinning Back Knuckle’ then you might like to try assign a special move or combo to one button, at least until you literally find your feet.

Back to the Mode Menu. In World Tour, you can travel the globe and build your fighter’s power and ability. Dramatic Battle let’s you team up in a 2 on 1 battle, probably not a bad idea if you still find yourself battling with the controls and your opponents. Reverse Dramatic Battle turns the tables, putting you on the wrong end of a 2 on 1 showdown. Variable Battle is great for those with short attention spans – you can swap characters during the fight. Free Battle lets you pick your opponent, while Vs 100 Kumite lets you see how many fights out of a 100 you can survive. Final Battle as its name suggests puts you up against the bosses, while Survival Mode lets you see how many victories you can string together. Your high scores for all modes are available in Score Ranking. Edit Mode allows you to tinker with your character’s style, while Entry Mode allows you to enter an edited character into other modes. Rounding out the offerings is Network Mode. Sadly it’s ad-hoc only, and there is no game sharing so you may be hard pressed to find another Street Fighter toting PSP gamer ready to throw down.

If you can’t win in 2 on 1 Dramatic Battle mode you’re doing something wrong.

While the various modes on offer are impressive and you’d clock up many an hour before playing through all that’s to be had here, it’s the Street Fighter fighting mechanics that give this game it’s real depth. You can choose the game speed and your fighting style – the unusually named ‘ism’s X, V or A. The real enjoyment of any Street Fighter game is mastering the combos and supers, and in learning the individual strengths and weaknesses of the characters. This is no button masher. In fact even on the lower level of difficulty, button mashing will only get you through a couple of fights in Arcade Mode before you end up on the wrong end of the big K.O.

And here’s where things get difficult, both in game play and in recommending the game. If you’re one of the hard-core Street Fighter faithful, you would have been thrilled to discover one of the best received Street Fighter games ever had been faithfully ported to the PSP. But chances are you’ll be less than thrilled with the hardware the game is on. Give it an hour and your thumb will ache regardless of whether you persevere with the D pad or the analogue nub. I’ve been told that if you play through the pain, you’ll eventually come battle hardened and oblivious, but one week in, my thumb still feels like it’s been recently dislocated.

You might think the control problems may go some way to providing a bit of a leveller between the hardcore gamer and those new to the scene, but while the pain may be felt equally, and the experienced player may find some of the moves a little harder to pull off than in years gone by, the rest of us are going to be dealing with not just the pain and an awkward control system, but also a ruthless AI that takes no prisoners.

Visually, for the most part the game looks great. The front end looks a little rougher than you might expect had you never played the 8-year old original Arcade version, but those who loved the original will be glad to see an exact replica on their PSP screens. Purists may choose to play the game in its original 4 x 3 mode, with customisable borders on the left and right of the screen, or you can play it in full, widescreen mode. In-game screens are detailed and vivid. Some will swear that Street Fighter has never looked so good. The audio is ok. The music isn’t something you’d necessarily want to rip to your mp3 player and listen to, but again, everything has made it across from the arcade version.

In theory, loading times, the bane of many a PSP release shouldn’t be problem here. Surely, a 2D beat-em-up should be the perfect pick-up and play portable game. Sadly, the loading times, both between rounds and between fights, are too long. From the selection of your character in Arcade Mode, through to the commencement of the fight, you are facing a 30 second wait.

Too much time spent watching loading screens and not enough time spent playing.

Then there’s the question of whether a fighting game even belongs on a handheld like the PSP. Six months on from launch, I no longer handle the PSP with kid gloves or look at it in awe. Even so, in the last seven days playing Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max, the handheld has taken a greater pounding than in the previous 25 weeks put together. Is the PSP even built for this kind of punishment?

One last thing; there’s nothing new here that we haven’t all seen before. If Street Fighter was a singer and not a game franchise it would have retired to Vegas a long time ago, where it could perform the same routine seven nights a week to its loyal fans. Even if you think your hands can take the punishment, I’d still recommend you rent this one before buying. If you’re a hard-core Street Fighter fan, and can put up with the PSP’s shortcomings, then you’ll surely enjoy Street Fighter 3 Alpha Max.

Lian Xing is stumbling clumsily backwards through the control room, the petite brunette moving with about as much grace as a gorilla on ice, which is disturbing, not only because the covert operative only tips the scales at only 54 kilograms, but because this is Syphon Filter, Dark Mirror, a game of stealth and the first game to bring user-friendly precision control to the Playstation Portable platform. Even more alarming, I’m not actually touching the analogue nub. Lian bumps drunkenly into a doorway, alerting the three guards to her presence and slumps to the floor in a hail of gunfire. Lian’s dead, but far far worse, and without getting too technical, The Incomplete Gamer PSP is rooted.

Everyone out there bemoaning the fact that the PSP only has one analogue nub, and not the two analogue joysticks like the PS2 and PS3; there is a fate far worse, which is of course no analogue nub at all. Kutaragi’s Law of course states that your PSP will break on a public holiday, at a location where you have no on-line access and at a time when you have a great deal of free time to get your game on, if only your PSP would function.

So 500 kilometres from the dust free Incomplete Gamer Lab, without so much as a ‘google’ and with only a jewelers screwdriver to our name, we set about opening the PSP ands exposing its innards. Or at least we would have had we remembered the location of the hidden screws beneath the battery bay sticker. Undeterred we managed to pull open the front of the PSP wide enough to give us access to the joystick nub and the phillips head screws that hold it in place.

There’s a broken disk inside the analogue nub (we suspect Pursuit Force was the culprit, but it may well have been Street Fighter Alpha) and no amount of temporary jiggling was going to put humpty together again, although that didn’t stop us trying. Rather than being rewarded for our perseverance, we managed to inadvertently scratch the inside of the front face plate, so when we eventually returned to the Incomplete Gamer labs we now have a PSP with broken analogue nub and a scratched screen.

Back at the lab and a quick search of Ebay found a number of Hong Kong based suppliers selling the analogue nub unit, and various options for replacement faceplates. The first analogue unit to arrive was slightly damaged (missing one of two loops used to attach it to the faceplate). We promptly order another unit from supplier B and then set about cannibalising the original unit and the replacement unit, hoping to making one complete sucker from the sum of the parts. Once you know how, you’ll be reassembling this sucker in your sleep, but until you reach that level of Zen like mastery you’ll find yourself cursing words you’d never even heard of. For the uninitiated, we highly recommend Califrag’s how to video, below.

The faceplate was next to arrive and fitting is a snap after the finger gymnastics you’ve just performed with the analogue nub. Props to the manufacturer. If it’s not OEM, it’s a near perfect clone complete with requisite PSP and Sony logos. We’re not altogether convinced about the colour. Sure it’s a perfect match for our Sony Ericsson K610i mobile phone lying around the Lab, but like the couch we moved to the other side of the lab, we still haven’t quite got used to the portables’ new clothes.

The Incomplete Gamer loves Tivo; unashamedly, unreservedly, absolutely. Even when the hard drive gremlin turns her pretty features a nasty shade of ‘Green Screen of Death’, and she goes into an endless reboot loop, taking three months worth of Scrubs, Law & Order and Wilfred to the Tivo grave.

Tivo’s built a reputation on three features. It boasts, what is quite possibly the world’s most user-friendly interface. Not only is the UI intuitive, it’s incredibly powerful as well. Combine those features with a reputation for reliability and you have one solid Hard Disc Recorder.

For those of us outside the US, the Tivo even comes complete with a certain geeky cachet. Tivo’s not officially sold or supported in Australia, but thanks to the incredible efforts of the local OzTivo community, it’s possible to import a used, Series 1 Tivo, and with a bit of tweaking, and the purchase of an ethernet card and external tuner source, be up and running relatively painlessly. The upside of being an Aussie – the Tivo community provide free weekly TV listings – the raw data that transform the Tivo into an intelligent servant, faithfully recording your favourite telly 24/7. The downside; only the Series 1 Tivo’s will work in Oz. Tivo locked subsequent generation of the units down. The Series 1 was quite the HDD Recorder back in 2001, but today faces off against High Definition competition, both in the form of the Series 3 Tivo as well as other dual-tuner wielding offerings from almost all major AV manufacturers.

In Australia, if you are after a High Def HDD recorder, with a full 7 day a week subscription service then your commercial alternatives are limited. There’s the Dual Tuner High-definition Topfield HDD Recorder or a Media Centre PC, coupled with the ICE TV subscription service. Three drawbacks; it’s a much more expensive proposition. You’ll pay twice as much for the Topfield, or even more for a decent Media Centre PC and then you’ll also have to pay for the monthly TV listing.

Lack of HD not withstanding, the Tivo’s trump card is its geekiness. Remember, there’s no warranty, and no real after sales support. While the Tivo does get a good rap for reliability, these are seven year old units, and basically just pc’s that are always on and always recording. The strong OzTivo community will go out of their way to help you but if you’re considering buying a Tivo, you really need to be prepared to take to it with a torx screwdriver at least once and possibly more often, and therein lies the true joy of Tivo ownership; ripping out the hard drives and re-imaging, replacing a fan that’s finally bit the bullet, not to mention operating on your own PC so as to re-image and test the drives.

Here at Incomplete Gamer HQ, we’ve re-imaged our Tivo’s two 300 gig Samsung hard drives more times than we care to remember. Shortly after its arrival, our Tivo developed a nasty habit of calling time on proceedings after reaching 20 per cent capacity. We originally hoped an upgrade to the latest os would solve the problem, but last week we reluctantly came to the conclusion that one of the two Samsung drives had a bad sector. Testing the drives and completing a low-level format on both drives was the only way forward.

So it was off to Samsung, in search of a HDD utility. If you have Samsung drives then you’ll need a program with the sexy moniker of Hutil. Next up, you’ll need to make a bootable disc. For those that have forgotten or perhaps never made one, you’ll find the instructions here. You can make a CD or floppy disc depending on your PC’s hardware, but we’d recommend a floppy disc, if only because the size of the Dos based Hutil program is very small.

Both drives passed all tests with flying colours (not a bad sector to be found) so there was nothing left to do but run a low level format on both drives. There’s a reason why the program warns you that it may take a while to complete. Try plus twelve hours.

Now the Tivo is back in its rightful place in the Incomplete Gamer Screening Lounge, and for good measure, we’ve swapped the slave and the master drives so even if the hard drive problem’s not fixed, the Tivo should fill to at least 50 per cent capacity (350 hours) without crashing.

Our Tivo’s the Incomplete Gamer’s best friend, just quietly going about it’s business, Muppets from Space one day, Two and a Half Men the next, a Two and a Half Men episode today, and Life on Mars on Sunday. We can safely indulge in the latest video gaming gem, safe in the knowledge that the Tivo has our back.