Flat Life Vista has launched!

Welcome to Flat Life 2.0. As you can see there has been a lot of changes in the update. First of all the blog is now separate from the comic, so I will no longer just post a message when I upload the latest comic. The blog will now be where I post anything that I think is cool or interesting for our readers along with my thoughts.

I have also added an ATOM and RSS feed, you can subscribe to this to be kept in the know on whenever the latest comic is online and whenever we post anything on the blog. Also for the time being the forum is no longer being used and in it's place you have the ability to comment on any and all blog posts.

We will try and update with a new comic each week but it will sometimes be one every two weeks. Also I have to head back to my native land (England) on business some time this month so there will probably be no new comics during those two weeks, but I'll try and keep posting on the blog at the very least.

Feel free to give us feedback via the comments!

NOTE: This post has been set to a future date to keep it at the top of blog until the 28th.

New strip - Goat Sucker!

Damn this one is a long one! They get longer every week! Hope you all enjoy. Leave feedback in the comments. Thanks!

Spider-man 3: The game: The website

EDIT: They moved the banner, so they loose the link :)

I'm posting this because the new spidey game looks fantastic, and because by posting it I'm entered into a Spider-man 3 contest.

I think if you click it you may even enhance my chances of winning. Go on, you know you want to :)

Webcast of the week : 1UP YOURS!

I have said it before on this site and I'll say it again, the 1UP Yours webcast is by far the greatest gaming centric webcast in existence.

With a combined cast of EGM, 1UP.com and other 1UP network writers, 1Up Yours offers some of the most entertaining and educational discussions to be found regarding the video game industry.

They have an outstanding cast of personalities that clash in all the right ways. They have the best line up of guests of any video game based webcast. I find that they actually talk about video game topics that I care about. They take the industry seriously and light hearted at the same time.

If this sounds like a love letter to 1UP Yours, that's because it is. I love you guys :-D

Visit the 1UP Yours Homepage

The homemade Perfect Dark Zero robot!

Another story stolen from Kotaku (although they stole it from MAKE:blog).

In true Joanna Dark fashion a gentleman named David Harr has built the automated Xbox 360 button masher, specifically to get Perfect Dark Zero's "two most tedious achievements: 1000 Death Match Games and 1000 Dark Ops Games worth 30 gamer points each (60 total)".

David had this to say -

"Both of these Achievements were successfully obtained by the xBot without having to sit there and push buttons for 40-50 some-odd hours. While it's running its course, nothing needs to be touched. Except for the occasional checking if I got my points.

Why, you may ask, did I build such a thing? Because I can!"

Pretty cool as these achievements are hard as hell to get, but I intend to get them without a robot cheat, even if it takes me years! Any excuse to keep playing Perfect Dark Zero!

Free Grand Theft Auto for everyone!

The GTA games have pretty much been played by everyone these days. But I'm sure there is a decent amount of you that missed out on the first 2 classics (or only played the inferior Playstation versions). Or maybe you just fancy going back and playing these classics again?

Well your all in luck, because those awesome Scottish dudes at Rockstar North are giving away these classics for FREE! Now as Crecente at Kotaku notes this may be old news to some, but I think that for those that didn't know, this is pretty fricking awesome!

Also a note from informs us that these version have been modified so that they run on most newer PC's! Which is awesome because you don't need a fast PC for these classics!

Source: Kotaku

Rockstar Classics

Spider-man 3 The game of the movie of the comic

Who's excited about the Spider-man 3 movie? Everyone? Thought so. Well many of you may have forgot that there is also a game set to be released along side what may be the greatest super-hero movie ever!

Spider-man 2 was a great game, Ultimate Spider-man was even better, and I expect the Spider-man 3 game to surpass the previous games. I just hope the swinging mechanism is more like the Ultimate version than the Spider-man 2 game. I'm sure some will disagree with me on this as it was a slightly controversial issue when Ultimate was released, but I found that once I got used to the Ultimate Spider-man controls I was unable to return to Spider-man 2 and enjoy swinging.

I think many people just didn't figure out the trick, which was to press the climb web button just before letting go of the web at the apex of the swing. Until figuring that out I tended to find it hard to get any height while swinging.

I would much prefer a Spider-man game set in the "616" universe (that's the regular comic to you non-insiders). Although a game based on the movie is better than the horrible Ultimate universe (sorry I never forgave the terrible Gwen Stacy death story).

Anyway head over to Gamespot UK for the scoop!

Perfect Dark, Old and New

Have I ever mentioned that I love the Perfect Dark games? Check out this classic Nintendo 64 commercial for one of the greatest first person shooters ever created (suck it Halo!).



Also here is a developer walkthrough for the Half-Life 2 mod "Perfect Dark Source" -

SOS SEGA : SAVE OUR SONIC!

Being a big fan of the last two Sonic Adventure games it felt tragic to play Sonic's latest 360 outing. The game was by any stretch of the imagination, bad. It was horrible in fact. Many (including myself) have high hopes for the upcoming Wii exclusive Sonic and the Secret Rings, which so far is looking promising. And for those out of the loop, the DS Sonic Rush was a slice of greatness.

But there is little doubt that the franchise is in dire need of fixing. And the always awesome 1UP network has posted a great article titled "Hit Reset : Sonic the Hedeghog - How Sega can save Sonic the Hedeghog". They have laid out "a simple four-step plan to help Sonic speed his way back into our hearts." And I have to agree 100% with everything they say.

Head over there now for the scoop!

New strip - The great escape

Happy valentines day all!

This strip ended up much longer than we expected, but we did get them locked up and escaped in one strip, so it had to take a few panels. Hope you all enjoy.

Perfect Dark - Source

I should have the latest comic online tonight. But meanwhile -

I'm sure I have mentioned before that I am a huge fan of Perfect Dark. Both the original and Zero hold a place in my best of list. So after I recently snagged myself a Nintendo 64 with the original Perfect Dark (for $30 on eBay) I came across this fantastic looking Half-Life (another favourite of mine) mod for Perfect Dark.

Check out a preview video here.

The playable beta is out now and from the looks of it, it's well worth checking out. I know I will as soon as I have my laptop (my current PC would run this like shit).

Again I'll use my usual lazy trick of copy/pasting more detail directly from the site in question -

[Perfect Dark : Source] is the result of a common passion... Player yesterday, creator tomorrow... The concept of this game is the dream of all fanatic players... We are making this MOD for our pleasure... And undoubtedly for yours! !

I know some fans of Perfect Dark were disappointed with the sequel (blind fools all of them). For them Perfect Dark : Source may be just what the doctor ordered. I look forward to checking thos out but I personally feel that Perfect Dark Zero is pretty close to being perfect (a few minor bugs aside).

Head over to the site for more info!

Broken Pixels Episode 6

Woot! A new episode of the hilarious 1up produced show that combines jaded journalists with alcohol and bad games has been released. Haven't even watched it myself yet but I had to post it right away! This one features Total Recall and Spice World!

Monkey Island : The Lost Years

If you have never played a Monkey Island game, then you haven't lived. I suggest you search out all four classics right away. For those of you that know the joy that is The Secret of Monkey Island you will probably be interested to know that some fans are working on a very exciting looking project know as Monkey Island : The Lost Years. I'll let the creators blurb explain more -

"MI -TLY is a non-commercial Monkey Island - inspired game, using all original art and music. This game is not intended to be "the next Monkey Island". Instead, we break off from the official series and go our own way. Untill Lucasarts sees the light and starts working on the official sequel(s), we hope this game will keep some of the MANY MI-fans out there interested in the series."

Looks pretty promising to me, head over to the site and check out it's progress.

There is also a second Monkey Island fan game know as The darkness of Monkey Island, but as all the information seems to be in (EDIT) Italian I don't know much about it. Looks great though.

On a side note there is a great looking Indiana Jones fan made game in the works. Head over to the site out check out the playable demo.

I think all of them are being made with Chris Jones' amazing Adventure game Studio.

It's great to see the classic adventure games being kept alive by these very talented fans. There was also a fan made complete graphical overhaul of the classic Maniac Mansion released a while ago. Great work folks!

Podcast Webcast of the week!

Welcome to a new feature at Flat Life, "Podcast Webcast of the Week" will feature my pick for best podcast webcast each week. I was torn between this and the 1UP Yours podcast as my first pick. I decided on this because I have plugged 1UP yours many times in the past and it is already a popular show. But I am sure many of you haven't heard of this great show. Sure it's not a geek centric show but sometimes thats a nice change from the majority of shows I listen to.

TTN is exactly what it says on the box, all talk (with some jamming in part 2) and mostly nonsense. There are no specific themes here (except the regular Dubya bashing in part 3) just good humour from two very likable guys. If your looking for a something entertaining to listen to at work or on the journey I strongly recommend you check out TTN. It comes in 3 parts (usually 30/45 minutes each) every week, and is in my opinion a great addition to anyone's playlist!

Here's the description of the show from Yahoo podcasts -

"Jon and Scott discuss any topic that comes to mind and attempt to point out stupidity in America and around the globe. Being almost not stupid themselves, they are highly qualified to provide commentary on topics that range from evolution to boobs to goat's ass to the commander and chief of stupidity, George Dubya Bush."

A big thanks to Flat Life reader Orochi for introducing me to TTN.

VISIT THE TOTAL TALK NONSENSE SITE

Unreleased Perfect Dark Zero and more

Despite the lukewarm reception from critics, I was and remain a big fan of Perfect Dark Zero. In fact I think it is probably my favourite first-person-shooter (with Dues Ex: Invisible War right behind it). So getting a chance to see the game in some of it's beta stages is exciting to me. I think the above image is gorgeous, in fact I think Joanna looks even cooler in that shot than she did in the final version. More unseen Perfect Dark here. And here.

And for all of you that thought PDZ was bad, well let me just say that I hate you and every fiber of your being. But no hard feelings, OK?

Unseen64 is a foreign website (don't worry it's easy to navigate) that collects a variety of screenshots for unreleased games and released games looking very different from the final versions. Want to see Metal Gear Solid on the Saturn? Or The abandoned Resident Evil 1.5? Or even the Gamecube version of Too Human! They have these and many more over at Unseen64.

I'm going to credit Kotaku for directing me there this morning although I have come across this site in the past. But since Kotaku rocks I'm happy to plug them.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go start a letter writing campaign for Perfect Dark Zero 2.

Crazy GTA : San Andreas stunts

This is some impressive stunt work. Whenever I attempt to ride the bikes at high speed the only stunts I usually pull off are the ones that see me flying over my handlebars.

Is Vista right for you?

Thinking of upgrading to Vista but your still unsure? Want to know what Vista is going to do for you other than look like OSX and downsize your bank account by a few hundred dollars? 1UP.com has some answers for you -

"Microsoft's new baby, Windows Vista, has a huge competitor--one that's stable, relatively secure, installed in hundreds of millions of homes, and (ahem) works flawlessly with every piece of hardware and software currently available. Its name? Windows XP.

So why even consider buying into Vista, let alone one of the five flavors of Microsoft's next operating system?"

READ ON

Broken Pixels

Ok just so you know intend to post more than video links in the future. But so far these were the only things I have found that I wanted to post.

If you don't already watch the 1UP show, then let me tell you that it is probably the best video game show ever created. Head over to 1UP.com to see what your missing. This isn't the 1up show but it's created by the same people. Broken Pixels is an hilarious look at some of the worst games out there. This episodes candidates are Wii's Red Steel and Necro-Nesia. A must see in my books -

Wii - Hold On Tight

This fan made Wii commercials is excellent.



I doubt Nintendo would embrace a marketing campaign that suggests that the Wii may break your TV though.

Conan O'Brien Vs Serena Williams

I love Conan, that funny looking red head is king of late night talk shows for me (everyone else sucks!). Check him out handing Serena Williams her ass at Wii Tennis. How can someone so good at real tennis suck so hard at Wii tennis?



Also I noticed they weren't wearing their wrist straps, they could have killed someone! It's lucky Serena wasn't serving!