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William Hanson keeps us company

TV Editor James Campbell met up with William Hanson, etiquette expert and Manchester English Language student, to talk about his new radio show on Fuse FM amongst other things [Full Article]

Dragon Age: Origins

Like all industries in recent times, many Video Game companies have been struggling to keep their heads above water. It all makes sense: an average game will take a couple of years to create, with a necessarily large development staff, each trying to earn a living, a massive amount of funding is needed before a single pixel can be produced. What we’ve seen as a result is a situation where committing to the development of a game is entirely reliant on whether it will indisputably sell by the bucket load; in other words, making a First Person Shooter. [Full Article]

Battlefield: Bad company 2

The Battlefield franchise has been pottering about for quite a while. The early games set a new precedent in online multiplayer, allowing a range of different classes to diversify your typical warzone. It could be argued that Battlefield set the standard for other games to follow- most notably, the Call of Duty series- and if it wasn’t for Battlefield paving the way, we might not have such a great selection of multiplayer, and single player, shooters. [Full Article]

Eastenders E20: The program Skins wishes it could be

Hit youth-orientated drama Skins is back on our screens for a fourth series this February. Though just as one set of tales chronicling the lives of troubled urban teens begins another, vastly superior one, ends. Eastenders E20 (available to watch online at bbc.co.uk/eastenders/e20/) is a spin off of the more established primetime soap following the lives of four new arrivals to Albert Square. The series consists of 12 short episodes showing the trials and tribulations of Zsa Zsa, Leon, Mercy and Fatboy as they squat in one of Ian Beale’s vacant properties. [Full Article]

A new gaming era

It may seem like millennia since the likes of Pong; however, videogames are still a very young medium – only approaching their 40th year - which may be why they have found so few friends in parents or policy makers. Playing moustachioed Italian plumbers, spinning blue hedgehogs, anatomically-exaggerated gun-wielding vixens, and remorseless hit-and-run drivers, admittedly may sound rather ridiculous on paper. [Full Article]

Army of two

With Army of Two: The 40th Day, doing reasonably well in the gaming charts, many of you may feel the need to take a trip back to 2008, when the original Army of Two was released. Let me save you some time. [Full Article]

Assassin's Creed 2 Review

Back in 2007, a little game came out called Assassin’s Creed. Unfortunately, this humble offering was preceded by a lot of hype, which gave the impression that AC was going to be the greatest, most revolutionary media shake-up since a podgy red plumber decided to act upon his life-long disdain for walking mushrooms and harmless turtles. It flopped. Despite having an adequate free-running mechanism for traversing your agile assassin around the 12th century, middle-eastern locales, the game play was linear, uninspired and, frankly, duller than watching paint dry with Gordon Brown [Full Article]

Foul play afoot on Four Weddings

Was it inevitable that the merging of a game show and reality television would make for such hostile viewing pleasure? Now don’t get me wrong Come Dine with Me is up there with my television favourites, but I cannot help thinking that these types of show bring out the worst in already quite questionable characters. [Full Article]

Are you ready for Windows 7?

The latest version of Microsoft Windows in here and it's simply called Windows 7. It replaces Vista, which took a lot of criticism for it's bloated feel and security annoyances. If you're after a new laptop you're most likely to have Windows 7 preinstalled since pretty much every new laptop in the shops comes with it. [Full Article]

INTERVIEW- Idris Elba

Have you watched The Wire yet? No, why not? It’s only the best ruddy television program of all time. You don’t know who Stringer Bell is? I give up on you. For all the cool people here’s an interview with Idris Elba, who played Stringer Bell in The Wire. [Full Article]

Mendeley - The last.fm of research

The market for software able to sort through your academic papers and manage your references is crowded. The latest list puts the number of software packages at over 20, each offering just something slightly different. So now enter Mendeley, the brainchild of one of its founders, Jan Reichelt, a graduate of the University of Bath and a current PhD student at the University of Cologne. [Full Article]

The Xmas rundown

Fancy treating someone this Christmas? Perhaps you’re writing a list, or maybe you’re looking for a gift for someone, which you can inevitably use yourself. Well what says I Love You more than a disc tray full of glorious gaming goodness, especially at a bargain price. Here’s a rundown of the five best options for a taut purse string, which you might have missed. [Full Article]

American Idol vs X Factor

With the final of X Factor in sight and the new series of American Idol about to venture back onto our screens, I thought now would be a good time to make my vote on the biggest competition yet… American Idol vs X Factor. [Full Article]

Five websites to explore

A selection of new websites to explore in your free time. [Full Article]

Mini-over?

On the 26th of November 2009 millions of people around the world wept. Some say it was the end of an era. They said that day Mininova.org was dead. [Full Article]

Yo-Ho Kablammo & Hexothermic

This week has seen me mellow into the simpler things in life; taking advantage of Xbox Live’s range of Arcade titles has brought me back to a previous time: when innovation was rife, power-ups were all the rage, and the majority of enemies could be killed by jumping on their heads. [Full Article]

Holidays are coming...

Christmas these days is an all singing, all dancing, interactive experience, and this is even true of our ad breaks. Children pick their presents from the Toys R Us adverts, supermarkets compete for the cheapest tins of Quality Street, and people across the country begin their Christmas countdown from the first time they see the Coca Cola lorry. [Full Article]

Modern Warfare 2

It would be with no hint of hyperbole to say that 2007’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was my favourite game of all time. By combining the greatest ever online experience with an immensely immersive campaign, CoD4 drained away the precious hours of my life. [Full Article]

13/11/09: Day in the life of a couch potato

Before the internet was invented, and we were given 24 hour access to ‘lulz’, television was well on the way to creating the next stage in human evolution, the couch potato. [Full Article]

The iPhone debate

Earlier this month, Orange announced the release of its first iPhone in the UK, a landmark day that finally ended 02’s dominance of the iPhone market. 30,000 iPhones were sold on the first day of sales, breaking a new record for the number of phones sold on a launch day. [Full Article]

Borderlands

very so often, a game comes along that claims to defy convention- usually by merely merging two existing, and popular, genres together. Enter Borderlands, which has taken it upon itself to coalesce the all-conquering First-Person Shooter with the highly addictive Role-Play Game, to create something mostly unoriginal, yet compellingly enjoyable. [Full Article]

The Jeremy Kyle Show LIVE!

If you want to watch a bunch of chavs moaning about their ridiculously messed up lives with the only real thing they care about being their five minutes of TV fame, then go and watch the Jeremy Kyle Show LIVE [Full Article]

FIFA Vs Pro Evo

Many moons ago, there was a little game called Fifa, and Fifa had it good. In footballing terms, he was a Fernando Torres on a pitch void of all competition but my beloved Glossop North End FC. Then Pro Evolution Soccer, let’s call him Wayne Rooney, joined the game and began to run circles around the competition with his aesthetically unpleasing appearance, yet completely uncompromised gameplay. [Full Article]

Forget about Friends, America has so much more to offer

I’ve never been a big fan of Friends, the American sitcom which details the daily lives of a group of Manhattan residents, it was always very predictable and actually dumbed down the sitcom genre. [Full Article]