Please note this competition is only open to UK residents. Entrants must be over 16.

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I’ve only had 5 mins to play with this update, and of the two i’d say the Facebook one is probably the most useful, even though it’s the social network i use the least. The ability to be able to look at photos is somewhat useful. Whereas with twitter you’re unable to follow any links that are tweeted, so sometimes it’s useless.

Anyway, take a look at some bad quality photos I took of the screen below,

So King of Fighters IIX is my first experience of the series, and overall I’d say it was a pleasant experience. It may be that i’m older and i’ve got more patience for learning special moves, but the game was really easy to get into, the 3 on 3 style format was refreshing.

Unlike most other beat em-ups KOF lets you pick three characters, you then get to choose the order you want to play them in. One of the great things about this is you can pick a combination of fast/slow/powerful fighters, which keeps the gameplay relatively fresh even after 3 or 4 bouts. The controls are really easy to pick up, the normal high/low punch/kick combos are all there as are

the roll the d-pad style special moves. I found most of the special moves fairly easy to pick up and the repeating control combincations make it easy to master two or three chracters really quickly, making it easy to quickly pick your three best fighters.

The real fun comes with being able to link attacks creating huge combo moves. For example linking command moves, such as a heavy punch plus direction and then moving into a special move or two can take a good 25% of an opponents health away. This type of thing gos down great on xbox Live or whilst playing with a bunch of mates, although the massive combo success rate drops heavily as beer consumption increases.

Graphically the game is very different to anything i’ve played in recent years, KOF still uses all hand drawn sprites, and doesn’t apply any filters to smooth them. It seems weird but I found this  retro style really appealing, again it might be an age thing, but it really bought back those late 80s early 90s arcade memories.

I played the game on the regular difficultly and found it relatively easy, which is saying something. Seasoned beat-em-up players will probably want to crank the difficulty up.

Overall I’ve found it an enjoyable experience, and i genuinely have found the game really addictive. The very accessible control system really makes the game easy and quick to get to grips with. It’s a brilliant addition to the xbox get-together night rotation of games.

I’m a fairly patient person, actually that’s a lie. I hate queuing, waiting and anything else that prevents me from getting to where i want or doing what I want to do. What made this lack of Xbox worse was that my pre-order of Guitar Hero 5 turned up just as the broken Xbox 360 was going back. In fact I had shiny Guitar 5 on one side of me and busted broken Xbox 360 on the other awating collection by UPS.

That day i walked back from work, straight into my local Tesco and bought an Xbox Elite. In my head the justification was that I’d have a larger hard drive etc. The fact that it had HDMI didn’t really register as much of an advantage, except for maybe some tidier cabling.

The Xbox Elite has some obivous advantages straight away, for a start it’s definitely a lot quieter, although i’ve heard some of the newer permium and arcade consoles are also equipped with quieter DVD drives these days. The power brick is actually a little bit smaller, not loads, but it all helps when you live in a 1 bedroom flat.

The biggest advantage however is the picture quality through HDMI. Now, I’ve read quite a few technical comparisons of component and HDMI xbox connections and people have said there’s little difference. This didn’t seem to be the case for me, and from comments I’ve read on various forums people’s opinions seem to differ. I’ve come to the conclusion that the level of improvement might depend on the TV you’re using. I’m using a relatively new mid-range 40in Sony Bravia, the picture quality on component wasn’t bad, but i always detected a slight ghosting, which initialy annoyed me but i got used to it. Through the HDMI connection the picture is incredibly sharp and the colours seem a lot deeper, black is a lot, well..  blacker. Which isn’t bad for an LCD TV.

If you’re not tempted yet, check out the video below and you’ll be £10.20 poorer by tomorrow evening.

I’d seen advert for RFG, but nothing about them really made me think, wow that’s something new I really want to play it. As soon as someone mentioned you can destroy the environment and best of all you can do it with a giant mech if you so wish, I was in there. The game is basically a standard open world free roaming job, which is great, but the real icing on the cake is that you can destroy pretty much any structure and object, buildings, bridges, vehicles etc. You play the part of a explosives expert of sorts so you start of equipped with remote explosives and a big old mining hammer type thing, both of which are capable of levelling structures in their own way. Vehicles can also be driven through and into building causing damage. Once a building becomes structurally unstable they usually collapse in a fairly realistic way. My favourite structure to topple at the moment are the giant  smoke stacks.

I haven’t actually finished the game yet, but i’d say it definitely gets better as it progresses, I recently even found a smaller walker called a “Walker Light” which even included a jet pack. My only critisisms at the moment are that the walkers rarely come into the game at least up until the point I’m at, but I’m guessing that’s to stop it from becoming too easy, the cover system is also very limited and tends to be more difficult to use than just standing behind something and manually ducking, also the character and the vehicles find it very hard to climb most hills, which is strange for a game where the landscape is made up of steep ridges and hills which can provide excellent cover for an attack.

Check out the video below for examples of the geomod destuctive environment and how it adds to the gameplay.

I’ve been playing the game for a few hours here and there the last few days, and I’m finding it hard, I’m not the only one either. The copy I bought from Game was preowned, even though the game had only just been released. The guy in the shop said the owner returned it the same day because he “hated” it. That’s where we differ though, I don’t hate it at all. I’m really enjoying the challenge, the change in fight mechanics is definitely for the best, it all feels a lot more realistic even the pace of the fight feels a lot better.

It's a good likeness, even down to the muscles

It feels a lot less like an arcade. You can’t easily parry an opponents punches anymore and therefore hit them with constant haymakers. You have to be a lot cleverer. There’s a whole counter punch system that’s been added, and this is where the heart of the new fighting system lies.

Counter Punches cause a lot more damage. In order to pull off a counter punch you need to successfully dodge your opponents punch and then throw a punch immediately. This takes away a lot more health and causes more damage, whilst making a satisfying sound. You you also weave now which makes dodging the punches more realistic. In place of the parry from Fight Night Round 3 you can block and throw a counter punch, however the catch is you can’t just hold your block up to do this. You need to block at the exact moment the punch connects, my problem with this is that it’s almost an advantage to have your block down and keep trying to bring it up when you think your oppoenets punch is going to connect. When in reality you’re better to keep your guard up all the time.

The other feature that impressed me was the ability to upload front and side photos of yourself to the EA Sports site, you can then download these in the game and use them to make a boxer with your likeness and to be fair it worked very well for me.

Overall though it’s hugely enjoyable and it’s great that the controls and mechanics have changed for the better, this’ll keep fans of the previous games busy whilst progressing the game towards a mnore realisitic interpretation

Controlly Moley

So the controls have changed, who cares? Well I guess a lot of people who’s mastered Round 3 might be bothered. I thought I was pretty good to be honest but I welcome a change. I don’t welcome it because i think the new control system is more intuitive, more because i wanted a new challenge, I didn’t want to pick up Round 4 and it feel old straight away. Let’s be honest the graphics are great in Round 3 and Fight Night Round 4 is slightly improved, so you want some differences (apart from the new line up of boxing greats).

Reach

Round 4 is supposedly a far more tactical game, and I think that’s an improvement. The demo doesn’t really give you long enough or a wide  enough range of fighters to really get a feel for tactics, however reach, speed etc should matter a lot more this time around. I could certainly see how the new counter punch system make mindless slogging a lot less productive. I couldn’t find parry though, that was one of my favourites from Round 3 as it allowed you to wind up a massive haymaker (WTF is that?).

I’ll certainly be buying Round 4, I don’t hink I can afford not too. Especially if I want to be competitive on and offline.