Following their debut hit single, they went on to produce an immediate hit – “Everybody in love” which also went to number one. Louis Walsh mentored the band and is very pleased to have them storming the charts. Louis says, “I am very proud of the lads, they are nice on stage and off stage”. The X Factor launched their career as an impressive 14.52 million viewer’s watch on the Saturday show alone.

JLS are one of the most popular bands of the year; even before entering on the X Factor, they won best Unsigned act at Urban Awards. Their adoring fans continue to buy JLS merchandise (i.e. JLS hoodies) which increases their profits. JLS are going to start touring with their album called “JLS” starting in November.

JLS album track list –

 Beat Again (first single)
02. Everybody In Love (second single)
03. Keep You
04. Crazy For You
05. Heal This Heartbreak
06. Close To You
07. Only Tonight
08. One Shot
09. Private
10. Don’t Go
11. Only Making Love
12. Kickstart
13. Tightrope
By Sophie Wilford

For those of you who don’t know, Spore is essentially a mash up of many game types, with the basis being evolution of a species, your species. Yes that’s right, you start the game as a singular cell in a 2D world. This stage is similar to Pac Man but with no boundaries, just fluid dynamics to guide you. As you eat more and collect body parts you are able to “evolve” your creature to the next level by adding new parts or rearranging old ones. Everything is procedurally generated on the fly, and at some point you will have control over everything, the plants, trees, rocks, water, music, creatures, colour of the planet and even its shape. Also added to this is the massively single player experience where other peoples creatures and buildings are added to your game depending on how you play and how you design your creature. This means that there is always stuff that can kill you along with stuff you can kill.

Eventually you progress onto land and into a 3D environment, where your main objective is to ally or defeat other nests of creatures, this is done through a rather simplistic button bash style game and is one of the main areas where spore fails to deliver on its vision. This leads onto a 3^rd tribal stage which is the same but in a grander scale with instruments and weapons coming in to play. After this you progress onto the penultimate stage, the civ stage.

The civ and space stages are mostly the same, just on a different level of control, the civ stage allows you to do most things but the space stage allows you to do almost anything you like. This is the most accurately depicted stage of spore, you take control of a single space ship and fly round the 50,000 star systems in the galaxy, that’s endless hours of fun, with tools such as the genesis device and tractor beam.

It promised to be the most open ended game ever created and to a large extent it is, but in many ways its so simple (easy to get from cell to space in less than 4 hours) which lets it down. Although Will has now said that this was intentional as to persuade casual gamers it seems die hard fans of his work will be disappointed. It is more open ended than The Sims or Sim City but some how seems more of a tech demo or proof of concept rather than a game.

In conclusion it is a great concept and fun to play with, but far too simple to impress the hard core gamer.

Read more here

The simple reason for this is that the developers (Ubisoft Montreal) have tried to fit a lot of fancy Wii controls to the game, which has sent the Wii version crashing down around their ears.

The Wii version is exactly the same as the Gamecube version, so there is still no online multiplayer unlike the Xbox 360 (not good) but they have kept the alternative current gen storyline instead of the next-gen games (good thing).

The main storyline is that as special agent Sam Fisher (who never seems to reach retirement even though in ‘Chaos Theory’ you find out just how old he is) you are sent to prison to infiltrate a terrorist cell were you decide where your loyalties lie. This is a perfectly good story line that could work as it does on all the other formats.

From the very start it is obvious that there has been next to no effort put into updating the graphics, even though the Wii is not exactly a graphical powerhouse (although it does have a bit more oomph under then the hood then the original Xbox). But the Wii version seems to have a much murkier grey colour scheme making the whole game seem very bland; few surfaces stand out from each other.

But like I said at the very beginning of the article, it’s the control system that lets the game down: the nunchuck and the remote are meant to enhance your gaming experience by ten-fold but this time it more effective to just use a conventional controller.

To turn the camera you have to point the Wii remote at the edge of the screen a lot like “Call of Duty 3” or “Red Steel” so you would think that (as in the mentioned games) all you have to do is point the remote further off the screen to turn faster but no this game chooses not to do this. In this game when you point the remote off the screen the camera … wait for it … stops dead, which is not very useful in a fire fight.

The nunchuck controls are just as rubbish with jumping performed by flicking the nunchuck: Flick up would take cover behind a wall but now involves tilting the nunchuck form side to side. Although the controls aren’t all bad the lock picking is very enjoyable, but aiming is near impossible – if you are moving an inch then you will have to have the luck of the leprechauns to hit someone, and standing still isn’t very preferable in a large fire fight. But thankfully they haven’t messed around with the co-op mode too much and it seems that when you have a mate to curse at the controls with you it is that much more bearable.

So all in all Wii version is a waste of time. You’re better off buying the Gamecube version and sticking it in your Wii.

Warning: The author of this review has been pronounced by the Gamers’ Psychiatric Association as a Fully Recovered Halo Addict. While he may no longer have cravings for playing first-person shooters all night, he may still have violent tendencies and n00b-pwning qualities to his playing.

… But in all seriousness: Up until playing Red Steel, I had not touched a first-person shooter in many months and had grown weary of them. Hopefully that will make this review a little less gamer-biased.

The story starts off with you on a date with your fiancé Miyu. Your main job here is her bodyguard, but she has proposed to you. Happy with the news, she goes to tell her father, who is promptly wounded by an attempted assassination. From here, your job is to protect her father Isao until you can safely exit the hotel you are staying in. One you are home free, the game continues as you try to rescue your kidnapped fiancé.

From when you first turn on the game, it’s obvious that the Wii controller plays a big part in the gameplay. From dragging and dropping game saves to load games, to being able to tilt your handgun for full gangster status; there are a lot of little details that really make you aware of how flexible the controller is. A few other things that are done with motion as opposed to button-bashing include opening doors with a push, reloading your gun, pulling levers, parrying sword attacks…

While all of this seems to be a mere novelty at first, after playing the game for a few hours, I started to realise the real benefit of this. I found myself doing much more ‘real’ actions such as pushing open a door while keeping cover, or instinctively pushing over a table to stay shielded.

Weapon controls are even more intuitive, using simple gestures like moving the controller closer to the screen to ‘zoom in’ down the sights of a gun. Firing the gun causes the controller to vibrate in kickback, and the speaker on the controller is used for the sound of gunfire and reloading.
But Red Steel is not just about guns – it’s also about swords. I’ll tell you now: you need fast reactions and good timing for sword fights. The game does a tremendous job of giving adrenaline rushes in both gun and sword fights. The Wii remote itself is used to slash with the sword, whereas the nunchuck in the left hand is used to parry (deflect) attacks.

Moving away from the little features, the game as a whole is tied together well with a running story line. Mid-level cut scenes don’t break from the first-person perspective, while more elaborate comic-style cut scenes make appearances between levels. While the mid-game scenes work well and play into the action, the others tend to be just a little too long. This is especially annoying when, say, you have to watch them more than once for whatever reason.
However, the voice acting balances it out. Just hearing the characters speak English lines in Hollywood-style Californian and Japanese accents is enough by itself to make it an entertaining game. My one concern is that in some situations, there is a distinct lack of sound bites for each character. I can only hear someone go “It’s just you and me now, pal!” and “There he is!” so many times before I go nuts.

The game’s AI (Artificial Intelligence) is of a good standard. Enemies will take cover and hide, retreat when their peers are being attacked, and even sneak up on you if they can. Not once has the AI been ‘buggy’ or messed up, as opposed to other games such as Call Of Duty 3 where enemies will regularly walk into walls and the like.
Unfortunately, the AI has one pitfall – triggers. Red Steel is one of those games where things will only happen if you do something specific, such as walk into an area or flip a switch. The fact that I can stand outside a doorway and be completely safe is a little stupid, considering that taking one more pace into the room will cause the enemies to go into ‘combat mode’ for no apparent reason. I would much prefer if the AI was more proactive to make you think on your feet.

On the subject of AI, the overall difficulty of the game ramps up nicely. If you’ve never played a first-person shooter before, Red Steel is a great first, starting off at a very slow pace. Now that I’m well into my 4th hour of actual gameplay (yes, it keeps track of time), only now can I honestly say it’s getting tough.

For those of you who care, the graphics are pretty good. Metal things are shiny, explosions look very movie-esque… but the one interesting effect is depth of field. If your health is low, a few things will happen: the sound of gunfire will start to die away, replaced with a heartbeat, and your vision will blur. While distant objects will be blurred, you can still see close objects (weapons etc.) sharply. I thought this was a welcome addition to the visuals of the game, and again helps build a sense of panic to make you go down guns blazing.

Getting into more technical aspects, the game stops about twice a ‘chapter’ to load the level. While there is a lot of ground covered between loadings, Call Of Duty 3 still holds the prize for the most expansive levels.

In general, I have found this game a blast to play. Through all it’s imperfections, I’m slowly playing Red Steel more and more because of its immersive gameplay and unique player experience.

All in all, I give this game an 8 out of 10. Darn good, but let down in a few simple areas. While it’s had its share of bad reviews and criticisms for being a ‘rushed game’, I heartily recommend this title — but you may want to rent before you buy.

If you have any further questions about the game that you think I missed, tell me in the comments and I’ll add them to the review! I haven’t completed the game yet, so there’s still more to be discovered.

Red Steel is published by Ubisoft for a retail price of £39.99. Rated 16+ for violence.

Find the best prices for Red Steel at Froogle to make sure you don’t get stiffed.

I may record some video as well soonish. If I do, I’ll edit and put it in here.

Our story starts in 1954, with Barry Nelson playing the American detective ‘Jimmy Bond’ in a US adaptation of Casino Royal.

What can I say, it was awful!

So let’s move on to 1967, in which David Niven plays the retired British agent James Bond, who is forced out of retirement after his son gets into a spot of bother in the spoof ‘Casino Royale’.
It was okay I suppose, pretty funny in places, and it carries a genuine sense of 60’s swinging which set the scene for the later Bond spoof ‘Austin Powers’.

But anyway, now we’ve reached 2006, and a new ‘official’ offering of Casino Royal, which see’s Daniel Craig playing the part of 007. Already he’s had his fair share of criticisms, mainly about his hair (Blonde? Ginger?, nahh, looks brown to me).

But I think Daniel Craig is the first James Bond since the man himself to replicate the great Sean Connery with such precision that it breathes some fresh air into the character once more: Roger Moore over-did the innuendos, Peirce Brosnan was far too old, Timothy Dalton was too Welsh and the less said about George Lazenby the better (an Australian Bond? A crime!)

But Daniel Craig really outshines them all, the sincerity he brings to such an ‘out there’ character makes this Bond seem like the most unstoppable Bond to date, which is backed up by the brilliant pyrotechnics and car-flipping fun which has been missing for 11 years since ‘Goldeneye’ emerged, which was a great film compared to the really half-arsed ‘Die Another Day’. By the way, it may be worth mentioning that this film is directed by Martin Campbell, who directed Goldeneye!

But anyway. Casino Royale is the best Bond film in a long time, so why not go and see it!

Casino Royal is in cinemas from Thursday 16th Nov
Rated: 12A

So this guy has chains connected to his body with rings lodged into the skin of his hands, feet, back, chest and jaw. He has to rip them all out before the clock reaches zero, or the bomb will explode.

It may be gruesome, but the scenarios and torture devices explored by writers James Wan and Leigh Whannell are simply mind bending. I mean how can you think up a machine that’ll rip out your ribcage unless you manage to reach a key placed strategically in boiling acid. I won’t spoil some of the latter means of blood splatteringly horrific chunks of metal, but they do get even nastier.

What’s worse is that the film makes you feel sympathetic towards the main ‘baddy’ in the film. The man behind the mystery is critically ill, and only the help of a troubled nurse can help him.
And if she fails? Naturally she’ll have her face blown off by an expertly crafted necklace.

So there’s the setting for this year’s best horror film, the only question is, have you got the stomach to endure it?

Saw III is in cinemas now.
Rated 18

It will be have a 30 gigabyte hard drive, and WMA, MP3, AAC, JPEG, WMV, and MPEG-4 playback. You will be able to connect to wireless internet connections with it because it has an onboard 802.11b/g wireless interface. With it you will be able to update it’s firmware and also transfer pictures between them both.

It will have a 12.5 hour battery life when playing music non-stop and a 3.5 hour battery life playing videos.

While researching the product, I found a web page comparing the iPod to a Zune, so I have put a copy of it here.

To me this seems to be very biased in the direction of the Zune, as it does include the Apple iPod’s special functions, for example, the games.

File Compatibility

With the sun slowly setting and the huge fountains of water shooting themselves gracefully into the sky I was standing on top of an elevator waiting for a balding man in a suit holding a briefcase to walk under me. When he eventually did I took out my fibre wire from my suit and strangled him with little effort. I then pulled his body up on top of the elevator and took off his clothes.

This is the first 5 minutes of me playing Hitman: Blood Money.

Blood Money is the 4^th of the fantastic Hitman games, and my personal favourite, the main elements of the game is murder, stealth and deception. Even though most levels you are given only one target, it is always either in a heavily guarded private location, or a very public place. Unlike it’s predecessors it’s next to impossible to just go in with a heavy machine gun and keep shooting until you hit. There are certain factors that make this impossible.

1. It’s very hard to smuggle weapons across the world, especially as your main mode of transport is airplane.
2. It’s a bit obvious you walking into a place with either a large bulk in your coat or a large machine gun. Especially as there will be CCTV, so even if you do get away with it, you’ll be on every news station in the world.
3. You’ll run out of ammunition very quickly: Ammo and guns don’t come cheap you know!
4. You’ll be lucky if the boys in blue don’t shoot you down at first sight of a large machine gun.
5. There’s a chance people may escape, causing the same effects as number 2.
6. You can’t get heavy machine guns in this game.

You may begin to notice how realistic this game is now, with the threat of witnesses, CCTV or the law becoming very apparent, as if you are in the real world.

Columbine springs to mind.

I have owned this game now for about 6 months and pretty much completed it on every difficulty setting. (I lie but run with it) I have gotten to the point now to see whether I can in fact do what I said you couldn’t do, just run in and massacre everyone and come out breathing.

I tried this on a level of a hillbilly wedding, where I have to kill the groom and the father of the bride. Picture the scene. The location is a set of large shacks built on a swamp as a sort of dock for airboats. Here there are people shooting crocodiles with shotguns. There is a small alley in between 2 shacks that lead to a large grassy area where people are dancing. There’s a large house at the end of this large area and to the right is a tent. In the back garden there’s a small bandstand where the ill-fated groom and bride will stand to wed -if I don’t kill him first. I decided to do this a bit at a time, and before I knew it I had killed 10 guests and 12 guards all outside the large house without anyone in the house any the wiser.

I then found a present wrapped up, and inside I placed a remote bomb, I went out to the small bandstand thing and placed the present on the floor near it, where the guests stood. I also poisoned the cake that the groom then tasted a few minutes later killing him silently. The priest, not knowing the groom was dead, then asked for the bell to be rung so people could head to see this event. No one knew the groom was lying dead in the kitchen yet. I then waited until a large crowd was there and BANG! The whole crowd was no more. I then just like Gary Oldman in Leon, ran about the house with the shotgun, shooting anyone that moved. (And they say videogames are violent.)

Then I ran up to shoot a woman and she fell to her knees and shouted, ‘Please, Don’t Shoot, I have children.’

I froze; I couldn’t believe what I just heard. She has kids, if I shoot her now, those kids will never see their mum again. What if I’m becoming a murderer? Just like those dickhead kids who thought Manhunt was fun so they tried it themselves. They say kids who start off killing small things like tiny animals then lead on to become killers. I didn’t feel like killing anyone in the real world, just the people on here.

Then it occurred to me. The reason the wannabe Charles Mansons out there kill things…is to kill things.

Kill: To take the life of something.

In Hitman I’m not killing things, I’m merely making the animated person, develop rag doll physics (basically so it acts like a real dead body by being all floppy)… And they come back when I restart the level. Also…the main thing:

ITS JUST A GAME!!

If I see these as real people, or even see the world that I’m playing in as real, then I’m a warped individual that DOES have murderous tendencies. But I merely am seeing it as how skilful I am at this GAME. I’m not pulling a gun trigger; I’m pressing the R1 button. The lady doesn’t have kids, nor does she have a soul or a voice, someone else records the voice and everything she says is a script. Like films, games can be taken way too seriously when at the end of the day its just entertainment, morbid entertainment, but still that’s what it is.

So if you excuse me I’m going to go play Grand Theft Auto San Andreas and beat an old lady to death with a double ended bright purple dildo.

Since the start of the 21st century, it seems that Hollywood’s best attempts at making blockbuster action films have been remakes of classic cartoon series (X-Men, Spiderman, Fantastic 4 etc.) or video game to film conversions (Tomb Raider, Doom, Silent Hill etc.)
But with Superman returns comes a new breed of Hollywood action films. It’s hard to categorise these films, but the name ’sequels to classic film series that essentially mean cashing-in’ jumps to mind.
Let’s look at the facts, by the end of this decade we will witness Rocky Balboa (Aka Rocky VI), Rambo IV, Die Hard 4: Live Free or Die Hard (some sites have already dubbed this as the worst ever film title) and at least 2 James Bond Films (which have suffered greatly from Hollywood’s special effects unit in recent years).
Also rumoured to be in pre-production are Terminator 4, 2 new Star Wars films (prologue and an epilogue), Indiana Jones 4 and a remake of Westworld (ask Mr. Ward).
Now there’s no doubt in my mind that these will be highly successful films as far as box-office sales go, but I can’t help thinking that Hollywood have resigned themselves to coughing up established film franchises to keep the money rolling, as opposed to actually thinking up some new ideas!
But I would like to mention (I say ‘I’ when really I mean ‘Mr. Ward wants you to know’) that whilst Hollywood may be suffering a slight blip, the alternatives in independent and world cinema are steadily on the increase.
In fact, some of the best films this year have come from Spanish film makers, and actresses such as Penelopy Cruz have eclipsed the likes of Keira Knightley in the glossy mags.
Not that I read them of course!

What started for many as a cult animated comedy has now reached breaking point. The BBC have now refused to show it on terrestrial television, and have banished it to a late night BBC3 schedule. The reason, I suppose Family Guy is a little too controversial for the likes of them.
But really they’re sitting upon the funniest animated show around today, as Family Guy is a goldmine for truly historic satire that will make you wet yourself laughing.
The first episode of this colossal series has the main character ‘Peter Griffin’ going to the doctors for a check up. But when he screams rape over an innocent prostate exam, the madness soon unfolds for a 30 minute extravaganza that never lets up on the extreme humour for a second.
And for Family Guy veterans who have high expectations for this series, prepare to be blown away. The action is faster, funnier and even more surreal than any previous offerings from a cartoon that is leaps and bounds ahead of lesser shows, such as the Simpsons and South Park.

Seriously, this is the pinnacle of animated comedy. The question is, can they get any higher?

Family Guy season 5 is out 30/10/06
RRP £24.99