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Anyone looking for a fun hobby, writing up your opinion, then contact us! Email why you think you are suitable to write for gamelick to gamelick@ymail.co.uk.

Write for us - GameLick

Anyone who is interested in writing for gamelick, please email us! We are searching for dedicated people who love technology and would like to write about video gaming. For more information, email us at gamelick@ymail.co.uk

Website of the week - Swapz

This week's website of the week is Swapz.co.uk
It is a website all about trust and works similarly to eBay. You put on items that you are willing to swap and the community are able to view what items you are swapping and if they want anything, offer you something for a trade. Works just the same as you used to swap things in the playground at primary school!
This is an effective and efficient website if you can think you will get a better deal than you would at eBay. There are no charges (from what i can see so far) so means all of the profits go to you! Swapz.co.uk is highly recommended if you have a load of junk (which most of us do). Check it out!!

Mobile Game Review - Tibia ME

So what is Tibia ME?, Well for most of you who are starting to find more time to waste whilst on a crammed bus in London, Tibia ME is a mobile game for smart phones.It requires a fast Internet connection (3G) and this is the basis of where you play the game. It is a RPG game, where you are a small character in a world of magic and warriors.
There is a chat room style to the game too, at the bottom of the game screen, you can talk to other players inside the game who, are in the same 'world'. You are able to upgrade your player through levels and experience. This involves getting through the game, by using the characters that are not controlled by 'real people' but 'computer players'. Gold is also a characteristic in the game, where you are able to collect pieces of hidden gold in worlds and also gain gold from doing stuff for characters in the game.
As for the looks and whole style of the game, it is very Zelda. Sorry, but if the Zelda guys were to see this, they would be onto Tibia Me's backs in no time. There has been a blatant copy of the main character and the stories and how the game is played. The only difference has to be how you can talk to other online players and have interactions with them.
To be honest, Tibia ME is a good game, but it just lacks something. There is a slow pace to the game and is no real gem as to why you would come back. It is worth a download but as for me, not a game to keep coming back too. 6/10.

Games Coming Soon

The top 5 games coming out soon with the most hype in this month from all you lot are the following:
1) Call of Duty: Modern Warefare II, Coming out 10/11/09
2) The Godfather II, Coming out 10/04/09
3) Pokemon Platinum, Coming out 22/05/09
4) Wolfenstein, Coming out July '09
5) Red Faction: Guerrilla, Coming out 12/06/09

Will be posting soon.

Later tonight, posts are coming...
Wont be that regular, but if you want to help, email me.

Hopefully will be running soon

Sorry yet again, instead of having a dedicated schedule of when posts are going to be outputted from here,I may just once every now and then just do a post, its much easier for me this way, sorry if ive let you down lol.

Website of the Week

In all of the news hype, here's Website of the Week.
Barack Obama is going into the White House tomorrow, taking over George Bush, Woo!
So to keep track, log on to his website, give GameLick a shout to him, maybe he will become a follower! He constantly updates his blog and from what Ive heard, is running a podcast and has a YouTube account.
Get into politics you fools!

Mobile Game Review - Playman Summer Games 3

Firstly, sorry about no posts guys!
I'm about to repay you all :)
Well, lets start off with a mobile phone game review, which i have to admit, cannot get the sound to work on games with my Nokia N96 and so cannot judge the sound on any future games.
Playman Summer Games is an Olympics style game which allows your character to compete with others in 5 different events, and one tournament.
There are three modes, challenge(main game), multiplayer and survival (you have to unlock from challenge).
Challenge is where you have to beat certain characters at their special track. You get awarded if you beat them or not, and thus completes the game. Multiplayer is amazing, where you can play on the same handset against a mate, up to 6 mates at once and can choose to have extra CPU players! It also increments where your previous players have been on the track, so you know if you have beaten them or not there and then.
The graphics are good, not great and can have slow loading times dependant on the phone you have. But as extras, high score boards, help and a community has been set up for easy to use, fun gaming. You really have to play Playman Summer Games 3 to understand the phenomenon of beating everyone at such an easy to use, addictive athletics game.

Playman Summer Games 3 gets 9/10.

Mobile Game Review - Text Twist Turbo

Text Twist Turbo is a game of where you have 2 modes, using letters jumbled up for you to find the hidden word/s.
The two modes are basic puzzle and twist puzzle. Basic puzzle is where you get an amount of letters, that can amount to a full word (meaning you beat the level if found). You can keep searching through the 4-10 characters provided trying to find smaller words also, which gain you points. In the twist puzzle, you ar'nt able to move the letters about so freely, but after you make one word from a set of letters, the letters move out of the screen and new letters replace.
In both styles of the game, there is a bar at the top, which shows how far you have to get to complete the stage (indicated by a flag being a checkpoint). It also shows you how many words you can make and how many you have done.
This game is so simple that anyone can play,though the controls could be introducced with an introduction level of some kind if a sequel comes out. Text Twist Turbo is just such a simple concept, that i even get stuck, im stuck at level 14 on basic mode, which is much funner than twist mode in my opinion.
Text Twist Turbo is one of the least hyped about games, but if you find this game on any free mobile game websites, then be sure to download this game! Its fab and is brill playing on the bus, filling spare time, and even in your free time! Think of it as a two mode brain trainer, sort of.Theres just too much to talk about in Text Twist Turbo, so before boring you to pieces, Text Twist Turbo gets a nearly perfect,brilliant, 9/10.

Coming Soon

Another round up of the most popular games everyones looking forward too:
1)Street Fighter IV, PS3; 20/02/09
2)Warhammer 40,000:Dawn at War II, PC; 20/02/09
3)Ghostbusters:The Video Game, Wii; 19/06/09
4)Tom Clancy's HAWX, Xbox 360; 27/02/09
5)Diablo III, PC; TBA

PSP Review - The Simpsons Game

The Simpsons, who doesn't love them?
Now for their PSP game.
Well, the story starts off strangely, with homer being stuck in a dream of chocolate world..here you learn the controls of homer Simpson whilst trying to kill of chocolate rabbits and reach the end of the stage. However, when he awakes, Bart soon finds a game manual, dropped from god. It allows the Simpson's characters to have 'special powers'. After this, you have a series of 16 stages to complete, which are all of varying difficulty, which can mean its one of those games that you keep in the drawer as you have been stuck for so long! There is a large variety in the 16 levels in the game, as each character is used from the Simpson family, including Maggie!
After Bart finds the game manual, each character has their own special abilities, with homer having a variety of different styles of homer, such as slime homer and Bart having a different mode also, being bartman.
The Simpson's Game in my view, can be categorised into a puzzle game. Most of the game is using your grey matter, taking a while to get used to using hidden buttons to open doors etc. The cut scenes in the game are superb, and look the same on TV quality.
Now for the bad. Which is sadly, a very large list.
The in game graphics are very poor, some of the poorest seen on the portable gaming device. Combined with a bad camera angle, can be very annoying also, especially when you fail the mission due to bad quality graphics and camera angles. Although the controls are very easy to pick up and use, there is no challenge with fighting off enemies etc, all you have to do is some button mashing and you could easily kill off a couple of baddies. The loading times can be very long indeed, with up to 20 seconds of waiting to get onto the next stage in the game, and can even take 5 seconds to get from pausing to back into the game!
Also, although there is thousands of unlocks to fully complete the game, with 5 separate collect ables in the each stage, you don't seem to get rewarded for getting any/all of them? The only point here is seemingly, to extend the game value and replayability, which it lacks also.
However, the movie unlocks are fun to watch back over and when watched in sequence, are a full Simpson's episode, with TV quality, with both graphics and sound, which is surprising from the average sound and poor graphics in the game play. There is a lack of multiplayer also, which could be a nice bonus to such an average game.
Being a disappointment, lacking where games need to exceed, The Simpson's Game gets an average 6/10. The only thing that i found fun was the amount of time it takes to complete the game (for me was 10 hours, which was mostly being stuck at 'the god danceoff level'.

Next week's PSP review is of Worms:Open Warfare.

Coming Next Wednesday - Xbox 360 Reviews

Finally or what?!..Not just yet :|
Yeah, il be reviewing Xbox 360 games each wednesday, starting next week.
It may be every 2 weeks, due to me only having 8 games to play, but i may just go 'heck with it' and do them each and every week.
Stay Tuned dudes!

CES 2009

At the moment, i am really busy preparing for exams, making Game Lick better and all, but i must keep you up to date with this.
CES 2009 is when some of the technologies biggest companies group together for announcements and all, if you want to keep up to date on this, log onto Stuff, who post regular updates and video links from YouTube live from the CES centre. Go there now!

Random Review

Each Tuesday, as i was bored not to update my blog on Tuesday's, there will be a random review. You can comment on what you would like to see, or email me at gamelick[AT]ymail.com
Pot Noodle..Don't you just love them?
Well, I love the chicken and mushroom Pot Noodle(the green one) and so kept buying many pots to fill me up on Friday nights. In case you are not from the UK, you may not have heard of a promotion about a 'spinning fork', its basically a competition where you can win one instantly, not hard really.
Well, I won one before the Pot Noodle got to me. The device is pretty large in comparison with your typical fork, this is mainly due to the batteries inside. The build is 'chunky', whilst not really feeling of superb quality, it is a fun free prize to receive. There is a large red button on the base of the fork, which when pressed, rotates the detachable fork at a medium speed. The fork is made of a stainless steel? and the design of the fork spokes are very attractive with them made to look like noodles themselves.
When on, the fork makes such a racket, that it sounds as though you have a motorised hair shaver in your hands. Being limited edition and all, this could be worth a bit 'later on in life', but after the fun side wears off, this comes of little use, how is a spinning fork of any benefit anyway?!
Pot Noodle's Spinning Fork gets 5/10.

Macworld '09

Apple, the leading company by far in the portable media players and the most popular online shop for music has introduced some exciting news.
To start off with, they have gotten rid of the DRM tracks on their iTunes store, which means when you download a song from iTunes, you can move it between players and other computers. Good News.
Also, they have dropped the prices of their tracks. Philip Schiller,the announcer at Macworld 09, said iTunes songs would come in three pricing tiers: 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29, which all depend upon the recording company they come from.
Not so major news for you lot, but iWork is out, where you can find out and get a time limited download here.
So then, a review of Macworld '09? Well, major news, but not as big as previous Macworld's and announcements from Apple, it raises the bar on portable entertainment, yet again, but the excitement lasts no longer than 10 mins. This announcement gets 6/10.

Website of the Week

Another week, another Website of the Week.
This time, its free software ive been having a look at. Found randomly through StumbleUpon, is Ramsinks. It looks like a blog made up a guy like me, but has a whole list which are also linked to free downloads to make your life better =D. Click here ASAP if you have a computer.

Mobile Game Review - Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

You all know the TV show that gets your family screaming at the TV (especially the kids just guessing) so lets crack on with the game.
Who wants to be a millionaire mobile game is practically a copy from the television show, showing by text presented on buttons questions and four multiple choice answers to choose from. The 3 lifelines are also in use during the mobile edition of Who wants to be a millionaire,but with a timer to make sure that you dont google the questions asked. You get two types of scoring, money wise and points wise. High scores are set when the player decides to walk with the money or gets past checkpoints meaning they go home with at least a certain amount, even if you muck up.
Questions are rarely repeated, as there is an impressive amount of questions provided with Who Wants to be a Millionaire. This is a major advantage of this game over other rivals, such as Alyphaa.
The attractive colour scheme and easy to use layout is yet, another brilliant aspect of the popular mobile game.
You wouldnt think that a TV show that is a game would be that good-a-game but suprises me, with great use of graphics and especially the range of questions inside. This game wont be played non-stop until completed by anyone, but is a must have for those times when you are playing games in class, just because you have a substitute teacher.
Who Wants to be a Millonaire deserves two seperate ratings, 7/10 for teenagers and below, mainly due to the difficulty of the questions and 8/10 for 'adults'. This game could be easily improved with a willing server to host online games, or a chance to play a multiplayer with your mates.

Games Coming Soon

Here it is another roundup of some of the most popular and hyped games coming soon!
1. Resident Evil 5, PS3; 03/13/09
2. Sims 3, PC; 02/20/09
3. Tekken 6, PS3; TBA
4. Killzone 2,PS3; 27/02/2009
5. Empire: Total War,PC; 06/02/2009

PSP Review - World Tour Soccer 2

So, the last PSP review was World Tour Soccer, that got a measly 6/10. Lets see if those London Studio Guys have improved the second time around, here's World Tour Soccer 2.

World Tour Soccer 2 starts off with the same sort of style and dimension that sets it apart from other PSP footballing game rivals. The whole 'Challenge game' is still here, meaning that World Tour Soccer 2 is not your typical Fifa or PES.

From the three modes in the previous game, World Tour Soccer 2 has dramatically improved. There are now 11 unique game modes, each offering a different angle on the most popular sport in the world (except America). There is a wide variety of the modes too, not just small adjustments, but instead totally different ones. Some of the most funnest to play (and sometimes most challenging) include totally outnumbered, where you are totally outnumbered...Pass Clock, where one player can only hold the ball for a brief period of time and All Rounder, where you have to pass the ball to each member of your team before being allowed to shoot (otherwise you concede a free kick).

There are two main modes in the game, which are world cup mode and Medal Mode.
World cup mode is basically where you travel across continents, moving from each one when you have completed a certain amount of challenges on the Continent. There are 5 continents to complete, and you have to complete at least 5 challenges on a continents to move on. Now, that means 25 challenges to complete, you hardcore gamers may find that a bit of a quick game, but i bet you will even find it hard. Sure, there it is easy at first, but you get stuck very soon and the game just annoys you and would be one of those games you never play because you cant get any further..yet.
And for the medal mode, when you move across continents in the world cup mode, you unlock challenges for the medal mode. In the medal mode, you can choose the type of challenge you wish to complete and have 8 to complete in each game mode. There is yet again, the medals to represent how well you have done.
Achievements and awards can show you off online to other players, but we will get to that bit soon.
World Tour Soccer 2 has a wide variety of teams to choose from, each ranked with stars to show how good they are on the field. The controls are very easy to use, so the kids can easily play this game, but may find it difficult when playing against the harder levels of the footballing game.
The cut scenes in the game are superb, probably one of the best you will ever see coming out of the PSP, as you move from one continent to another. The in-game graphics though, are OK, but not the best I've ever seen. The commentary is good, in the same league as Fifa 03..not the best. Also there is still, yet no league type mode, which is a major let down for a otherwise good game. There is a exhibition mode though, where you can play a normal football match in a customized setting.
The online play...well..theres none basically. Sorry to say folks, but the stinge (or for whatever reason),the developers removed the online servers for this game. Meaning you cannot fully complete the game by getting all of the achievements. Before the online functionality was removed, this game would have been 'up there' its a real good game all around, and it would keep you glued for hours(until you got annoyed so much you gave up). But due to the lack of online play, which would be fun and addictive, and the lack of a league mode (like a normal football game), i can only lower its score.
World Tour Soccer has improved from its predecessor by including more modes, but has disappointed many with the online play removed and no league mode. Lets hope they get it third time lucky?

World Tour Soccer gets a disappointing 7/10.

Next week: The Simpson's Game

Be free to email us on what you want reviewed or if you have any problems with our reviews.