Piracy of DVDs, music, and films seems to be the norm in today's society. Remember my review of The Nines? I had at least three people tell me they'd downloaded it on my recommendation?

Yet those same people will be the first to say that everything's crap these days and that companies don't take risks with new things. I'm hardly surprised, when tens of thousands of people are downloading their content, there's no room for error with TV shows, movies, and games. Companies want to stick to what they know will sell...

Piracy has become so commonplace that it's frowned upon to comment negatively on a person's illegal behaviour. It's almost like you're in the wrong simply for diagreeing with the concept of stealing through the internet. I remember one family who used to think it was desperately cute that I was against piracy and that I was on some kind of misguided campaign. Needless to say, they didn't stop buying their pirate DVDs from a local shop in the area. Who knows what the guy was doing with the cash? Maybe it went to drugs, or maybe it went to buying him and his family a new car.

Irregardless of the truth, piracy is theft. People do it because, quite simply, there's no recourse. They know they won't get caught, and so they continue with their downloads unabated. People t give little or any thought to the fact that it's theft.

But it IS theft. I've had thousands of my books downloaded, and I'm only a crappy Z list writer (OK so maybe I'm around the Ns). I can't imagine what it would be like to have a best seller and know hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of my books had been pirated. And not one of those people would give any thought to the fact that I'd lost revenue from that book.

Most of them would say I had earned enough from it already. A few would comment that they'd never have bought it anyway (so, by their reckoning, they're allowed to download it). There are a rare few who would download something to check the quality before buying. I think this is sensible and should be an option for most products these days (Amazon has started doing this and it's great). I can't think of the number of times I've been burned by a truly abysmal music CD in the past few years.

My only gripe is that we have to wait to see USA shows for sometimes months, if not years, before we get them in the UK. The technology is in place now for us to be able to download shows direct from the production company, yet does the FOX Network have a delivery system in place? Of course not.

They gripe about so many illegal downloads, yet here I am, clamouring to give them my cash for an easily configurable distribution service where I can legally download the shows I like. yet there's no movement. I would glady cancel my pricey (and rubbish) Virgin service for a pay per show subscription. At least that way I get to pay only for the shows I watch. Sadly, I doubt this will happen any time soon...

So, if the companies themselves don't do something, internet piracy is here to stay and no book, DVD, or music CD is safe. 

The latest issue of Shivers is now on sale at Borders across the UK.

Featured this month is:

• Top 10 Movies to Watch at Beltaine (the magazine was supposed to be out on the 1st of May).
• A glowing review of God of War.
• Preview of the fabulous Dead Island, by those uber Polish Developers, Techland.

Go out and buy it at once!

I've just finished Dead Rising on the XBOX 360 and what a great game it is!

It is, quite frankly, far superior to the traditional zombiefests like Resident Evil. If you haven't played it, it takes all the basic elements of zombie mythology, and all the great movies (Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later), and merges them into a really terrifying blend of zombie action horror.

The story is this: photojournalist Frank West goes to an American shopping mall to cover the story of a riot. You, as Frank, have 72 hours to complete missions, unlock the main storyline, to rescue the few survivors, take photographs, and, of course, to stay alive. It's a horror action adventure, with role playing elements (in that you can level up and gain new abilities).

Wilamette Shopping Mall comes to life in the most minute detail in Dead Rising, and you'll really feel like you're trapped alone with tens of thousands of zombies for company. While I won't spoil the story, it really is sensational. Movie writers should take note: THIS is how to write a zombie story. 

But it's the bad guys (known as psychopaths) that are the highlight of the game. Never have I hated the boss battles so much - each boss evoked genuine feelings of loathing, pity, disgust, and anger in me. 

Sure, the game has its problems. There's a lot of backtracking in the shopping mall, NPCs have abysmally bad intelligence, and with a game so reliant on combat, Frank isn't as manouverable or skillfull as you would have liked. The steep learning curve makes the game particularly difficult and frustrating at first, and I almost didn't persevere after the first few hours of endless deaths. But once you realise how the game should be played (and it does have a unique style), things become a lot easier and you can settle into the wonderful horror of the game.

The graphics are truly fantastic with some of the best skin tones seen in a console game.

So, if you haven't checked out Dead Rising, you can get it quite cheaply these days. It might be tough to get into, but you cannot beat it for story, style, and most importantly, substance. It's only the second game ever to give me cabin fever (System Shock 2 was the other, if you're curious). Sure, I found plenty of niggles with the game (like Otis, the mission giver who calls you pretty much constantly on the radio - very annoying), but its positive qualities far outweigh any negatives.

Overall: 9/10 - Spine-tinglingly scary and genuinely chilling. Unmissable.

I'll be bringing news of the sequel - soon... 

Every so often a game comes along that’s so unique and wonderful that it almost defies description. In every generation there can be only one.

Oh, hang on, that’s Highlander. Or Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Anyway, I digress. EA recently offered me the chance to visit their spanking-new offices in Guildford for an exclusive hands-on look at their opus, Spore. Up for grabs was an hour with the first Stage of the game and a session with the Creature Creator.

Describing Spore isn't easy. It’s one part creature simulator, one part god game, with a splash of real-time strategy added for good measure. It blends all these elements perfectly into a brightly coloured universe of your own making.

The game is made up of five Stages, the first being the Microbial Stage where you as a single-celled organism must fight for survival in the primordial oceans, but I’ll speak more of that in a moment. The second is the Creature Stage, which sees you evolved into a land-dwelling beastie. The third - the Tribal Stage – is where you build a race for your creature. The fourth – the City Stage - transforms your now thriving race into an empire where you do battle with other similarly evolved tribes across your world. The fifth and final game – the Civilization Stage – takes you into space where you can seek out (and conquer) strange new worlds and life forms, and to boldly go where no strange alien critter has gone before.

The First Stage - The Primordial Soup
It’s impossible to talk about Spore’s gameplay without referring back to the Creature Creator, which allows you amend your creature’s genetic code at any time. Through it you can alter any aspect of your critter from its abilities to its physical appearance. You’ll be using the Creature Creator a great deal throughout the game and its beauty lies in its simplicity, ease of use, and the sheer depth of things you can do with it. You'll use the Creator to change your creature on the fly, sometimes to give it new abilities and genetic traits, at other times to allow it to more efficiently perform a task you've set it. The Creator is at the heart of Spore's gameplay, but more on that later.

Each of Spore’s five distinct Stages plays very differently, and the first sees you as a single celled organism swimming in the two dimensional waters of your world. The primordial soup is teeming with life, and resources are hard to come by. To evolve, you have to consume as much food as you can, avoiding the larger critters and competing for the limited foodstuffs. Combat is fast and fun and you’ll find yourself fleeing from the larger, more evolved, organisms while battling it out with critters around your own size.

Spore is all about development and evolution and you’ll need every advantage to survive in this primal and primitive world. How you interact with your environment is up to you, for you can mould your tiny creature any way you see fit. Want him to eat meat? Give him a jaw (but you’ll have to battle other critters for food). Fancy a peace-loving herbivore? Then give him a filter for eating plankton. Want to be greedy? Then have both. The choice is yours.

You initially only have a few ways to customise your creature, but you’ll occasionally encounter an opponent that contains valuable DNA, or, in simpler terms, a genetic trait you don’t have. You can integrate this into your creature making you more evolved, and often, more powerful. Enhancements I found were jet propulsion, electricity field, poison sting, and a larger mouth.

Spore's attention to detail is exceptional, and of particular note is that you can see much larger creatures in the blurred distance behind you as you play, giving you a sense of the great scale of it all. As you consume food, you advance your Evolution Meter and when it reaches a certain point you expand to the next size, forever leaving behind the smaller, less evolved creatures. There are five or six of these evolutionary jumps in the first Stage and while they all play similarly, each represents your growth from single-celled organism to something much larger and more powerful.

By the end of Stage One my critter had a whopping great spike on its snout, two large carnivorous mouths, a poison gland, and an electric field generator. The more enhancements you give yourself, the larger and more cumbersome you become and the slower you move. I initially steered like a cow with all my endowments, but gave myself a nifty speed boost with the addition of four water jets. It’s a trade off between size and speed and manoeuvrability. You only have so many genetic points with which to empower your creature (so you can’t load them with every trait and advantage you possess), but you can sell back evolutionary traits to buy new ones.  

First Stage Summary
This first Stage feels incredibly atmospheric and evocative and could easily be a stand-alone game in its own right. The difficulty is spot on and the control mechanism is almost perfect. The ability to transform your creature at any time is a unique tool and you can (and probably will) spend hours refining your creation's abilities.

The Creature Creator
Rather than force you to play through each of the five Stages of Spore in sequence, EA has allowed you to jump straight into the action at any point. This is where the Creature Creator comes into its own. You can build a creature from scratch utilising the tool to build pretty much any type of beastie you require. Choose from a template of body parts to make up your critter, and once made, you can access the Creator again to amend each and every aspect of your creation. It really is THAT versatile. The sheer number of creature permutations is mind-boggling. If you can see it, you can alter its texture, size, shape, angle, or colour. You can change obvious things about your critter like its number of arms, to the small and subtle placement of its eyes. There are hundreds of different hands, feet, bodies, and faces available and an equal number of skins to make them look unique.

You can access the Creature Creation tool at any time (at the press of a key) to create pretty much anything you can think of. And once made, no matter how many legs, arms, or bizarre appendages you have, Spore's software will extrapolate its movement in an oddly appealing manner. Lastly, you can give your creature all kinds of sounds and emotes to fit their personality from the soft crooning of a pacifist to the warlike bellows of a warmonger.

Love at First Sight
I fell in love with Spore the moment the loading screen first flashed into life. The game is gorgeous and the beautiful and brightly coloured graphics will appeal to everyone, kids and pensioners alike. But if you’re into the dark and brooding then fear not, for due to the power of the Creature Creator, if you can’t stand all that cutesy nonsense, the tool will allow you to create drab and monstrous-looking creatures. It seems that those developers at EA have thought of everything!

Dumbed Down
A lot of people have worried about Spore being dumbed down. But that’s just not the case. Well, not entirely. The original intention was to have you play through all five Stages of the game in sequence, but now you can flit back and forth between the various levels at will. There are advantages and disadvantages to both ways of playing, but the open-ended accessibility grants more options for those gamers that prefer one particular Stage over another, or for people to hop straight into the Galactic Conquest part of the game.

Missions
There’s a lot more to do in Spore than just fighting for survival. For example there’s a story and objectives to complete. In the Galactic Conquest stage I found myself having to visit certain cities in my spaceship (that looked like a cute teddy bear) in order to prove to the locals that I was friendly. EA is keeping quiet on the overarching storyline but it looks interesting from what I've seen of it. Of course, you can forego the story and just blow any race you encounter to kingdom come, but there are always alternatives to fighting…

Friend or Foe
There are plenty of ways to achieve victory in the game. It’s not all about slaughter. You can make friends with other tribes (through friendship, trade, or threat of superior firepower), and you can fall in love. The amount of detail in the game is astonishing and your creatures have a wide range of different calls, emotes and ways of communicating.

Sporepedia
Everything created in Spore will be collected in the Sporepedia (http://www.sporepedia.com/) the repository of everything create by every gamer. Ever! You can visit it to look at the wealth of creations made by others, and download those critters, world themes, and styles to your own game. And then compete against them.

Summary
Spore is a one-of-a-kind game. It’s unique and fabulous and utterly intoxicating. I hope the gaming addiction wards are ready for this one because it’s going to draw an awful lot of people into its warm and appealing universe. I played the game for two hours and I barely scratched the surface. The amount of things you can create is limited only by your imagination, and when you can have a world themed around Christmas, or erotic-looking garden fruit, the world is quite literally your oyster.

I would have genuinely liked to have seen Spore contain some form of online PVP with other gamers, or at least a simulator that doesn’t necessarily destroy your world but allows you to pit your skills and creatures against other players. A missed opportunity, perhaps?

That said, Spore is a truly impressive game, perfectly polished with a rich and stylish theme throughout. It might not be hardcore enough for the serious gamers, but for everyone else, there’s enough in Spore to keep you creating forever…

It's not quite dead - yet - for Dungeons & Dragons has rolled a natural 20 to avoid fading into obscurit (oh, the nerdy gaming jokes are endless).

Publisher Wizards of the Coast is releasing the fourth iteration of the popular role playing game on 6th of June 2008, and they are celebrating the release with Worldwide Dungeons & Dragons Day on June 7th - just one short month away.

So if you're salivating for news of your favourite player class or race, you've only got a few weeks to wait.

Find out more about Worldwide D&D Day here.

If you ever needed proof that movie producers are seeking riches over artistic integrity, then Terminator 4 is the final nail of proof in the bejewelled coffin of greed. The fourth movie in the series (due out next year) has been given a PG 13 rating, which brings in the big bucks and appeals to a wider audience, but doesn't that just strike you as wrong, somehow?

Surely, having three movies in a series that are R rated establishes a continuity (there's blood and lots of gore) which can't be shown in a kiddie-friendly version. They've castrated the series for cash.

They did exactly the same thing with Die Hard 4. Which was the highest grossing of all the quartet.

So, with movie producers willing to slash the adult rating from their movies to make a few extra bucks, does this mean the end of the blockbuster R rated movie? I doubt it, but they will be few and far between from here on out.

I'm finding this cash over art philosophy a bit depressing. Just think what could be on the horizon:

• A Nightmare on Elm Street - for pre-schoolers (start 'em early).
• Star Whores (the Reformed Years).
• Beverley Hills Cop - the Sesame Street Singalonga Version.
• The Omen: Songs of Praise - where they sing their hearts out to the Carmina Burana (as opposed to having them torn out).

They could remake every R rated movie for a teen audience.

• Instead of Rosemary getting raped by the Devil (Rosemary's Baby), Satan could pop around for tea and, shortly after, Rosie has a bun in the oven. And they could all laugh about it later (and maybe have a sing song).
• The zombies in Dawn of the Dead are replaced with geriatric clowns (hmm, that might be scarier, actually).
• The chest-burster in Alien has been replaced with Michael Hurt choking on a Rich Tea Biscut. Then they could have a sing song, too (tap dancing aliens shouldn't be sniffed at). 
• ... In fact, that movie would now be called: Allergy: the crew gets hassled by a rare flower which makes them all a bit poorly for a few days.
• ... or they could have a pet. Cats are always good. People like cats (and dogs).
• Plus, cats give people allergies (can you see where I'm going with this?) Clearly, I should write movie scripts for a living... Or not!

Anyway, as you can see, they've dumbed down our movies. Now they're taking away all the adult content. That means no sex, no violence, and definitely. Absolutely. Categorically. No boobies.

Or exploding heads.

Which is a shame, 'cos I like all those things in movies! 

This was supposed to be a beta review, but as I can't even get the game to start, all you're going to get are the negatives.

I had tremendous poblems installing the game, with all kinds of error messages, but - as per the PVP Weekend - the game installed and ran, patched and played.

Only it all hangs on the loading screens.

I can make a character with an exceptionally choppy handful of frames per second, and I can load up the game one in every ten attempts, but there are just too many problems with the code (appalling frame rates, glitches and problems) to make this game worthwhile.

If you're one of the lucky ones who is playing generally problem free, then fine, but I urge everyone else to avoid Age of Conan until the game has received at least some positive reviews that the title has been optimised to actually work.

Right now I think we're all playing the Macintosh version of the game on our PCs. That can be the only excuse for releasing such a shoddy piece of code. 

In their defense, Funcom has stated that the "open" beta is using an older version of the game code installed with lots of analysis software running to obtain configuration statistics. I find this bizarre in the extreme, and probably not even true. The open beta has been the chance to show off the game, to engender people to your title, and to really spread the positive word of mouth. The last thing you do is release a buggy version of old code to the public. Funcom has swiftly shattered all expectations of the game in one clumsy sweep. If this old version of the game story is true, they've made a critical mistake and may have doomed their game to mediocrity. If it's false, they're in a whole mountain of trouble as the game is nowhere near ready for release.  They can't win either way (well they could have by making a polished game on release - but that doesn't seem like an option for them).

We've learned so much in the last ten years. The public knows better. We're more discerning than we were back in the days of Anarchy Online. We have lots more options in the games we play. Polish is king and if a game doesn't make the grade, we can abandon it for another. We've seen the previous casualties, yet the only people not learning the lessons of the past are the developers. Learn the lesson now: 

Don't Release Half-Finished Game Code. Polish is King! 

So, Age of Conan released WAY too early? You betcha.

Come back in six months - or wait for Warhammer Online.

Both are an alternative (and far less frustrating) option to paying to beta test Age of Conan on its release at the end of May.

It's no secret that the UK pays a high price for its television. I pay about £120 ($250) a year just for the BBC Television Licence, which you have to have if you are capable of receiving any TV signals.

Now, I don't watch a great deal of actual TV, and despite enjoying a few shows on BBC's network (maybe three or four shows a year) I just can't see why the TV production companies can't arrange a direct download service for their shows.

I'd be more than happy setting up a subscription service to the various stations I like (HBO, FOX, etc). Surely in this electronic age they'd be striving to keep up with technology, allowing us to download the shows we want, in the format we want, when we want.

I'm sure this will come in time, but right now, it seems the TV companies are way behind current delivery systems, which is a shame as you always see tens of thousands of shows being downloaded illegally, when a majority could be eliminated overnight with an official channel. So that proves this kind of service is in high demand. No one wants to wait six months for a show to start in the UK when it's already finished in America. The TV studios need to get their act together. I know you can buy shows on iTunes, but many of them are region-locked. It's just not good enough.

I would be willing to forever get rid of my TV receiving equipment (and the crummy BBC TV Licence) in favour of customising exactly what TV I want to watch. And when.

It seems that Age of Conan has gone just the same way as Hellgate London as the 'open beta' code is plagued with bugs, installation problems, and crashes. Players are experiencing regular BSoD (blue screens of death), falling through the world, game freezes, and all manner of other niggling issues that should have been ironed out months ago.

In it's defence, Funcom insists that beta testers are using an OLD version of the game code and that the game will be substantially polished for release.

Regardless of whether that's true, people play betas for an early look at the game before they buy. It's like a demo, and they're going to be far less inclined to purchase a bugged and clearly unfinished game than they are something that plays beautifully and is optimised for every PC configuration known to man. Age of Conan is definitely not the latter.

With clear comparisons to Hellgate London's dismal launch, Age of Conan isn't far behind that in terms of needing six more months of development.

Like so many other games before it, it could have been so good, but instead it's a 70% complete game with major balance issues and requiring an awful lot of polish. The general consensus is that Age of Conan needed another three to six months' development time before release just to sort out the issues like falling through the world in key places.

We ALL know by now how important polish is to a game's release. If you polish it, people will play. Fail to perform that task and the game is doomed to obscurity.

It's just a terrible shame that Funcom's second major release may join the ranks of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Hellgate London, and Shadowbane, as games that could have been magnificient, but endless bugs and a total lack of polish destroyed any chance of them being a successful contender in today's highly competitive MMO market.

I'll have a full review soon, but right now, I'm concerned that what we're seeing is a clear indication of what we will (or won't) be playing in just 20 days' time.

As we all know, the UK price of petrol is about to sky rocket, but how many of you know exactly what the breakdown of those costs are?

Well, get ready for a surprise (or not) as this is the scary truth. If the price of a litre of petrol was £1.09, the breakdown would be:

Duty: 50.35

Petrol Actual Cost: 32.6

VAT: 16.07p

Retailer Delivery: £8.88p

That's right, you heard me! Fifty pence! That's just about half the price of petrol that goes to the Government. In what universe, is the tax on an item amost 50%? This is SHAMEFUL exploitation and I cannot believe the country hasn't stood up and demanded a reason why we're being taxed to the hilt on petrol.

I don't like posting political comments but the world is ruled by whoever controls its resources. Right now we're being manipulated by the oil barons and our own Government, both of whom are prepared to fleece us for all they can possibly get until resources run dry. It's a pretty bleak situation and I'm certain that we won't see another viable source of energy until the oil industry is sure it can't get any more blood from the proverbial stone that is the world's car owners, hauliers, and everyone who makes a living in a motor vehicle.

And, what's worse, is that as petrol prices rise, so does the price of everything else to compensate. So it all impacts the economy and makes everyone poorer.

The Government is worried about the oncoming recession. Well, how about slashing the Duty on petrol for starters. That has a massive knock-on effect which would massively cut costs for everyone in the UK.

But, of course, that would never happen. There's way too much greed involved. This can only end in tears...

It's all very worrying.