21 posts tagged “midway”

Edinburgh was a lovely place to visit. Extremely lovely in all ways - lovely people, lovely places, lovely architechture, lovely dramatic mountainous vistas. It's something I've not really done before - gone out to a place by myself. You look at holidays these days and they seem so catered for the couple; the luckless loner doesn't even get much of a look-in. Still, it was another eye-opener in that I can do more independant stuff like that without too much bother. My first act to total independance was leaving home to live by myself down in Wales - don't get me wrong, I cried for a little while when I settled down in the semi-crumbling bedroom I slept in for four-and-a-half years. It seemed plain wrong just to disconnect myself like that, but it was truly something important and I recommend anyone to do it - although I was more motivated by finding one of Mum's many cats pissing and shitting all over my clothes after being trapped in the tumble dryer.

So it was my first time in Scotland and it was just nice to be there. The train journey wasn't that big a deal, really - one-and-a-half hours later and I was there - and the way Edinburgh is laid out, it's a very tourist-friendly place. I spent the first two days there doing the whole tourist thing - I went on ghost tours, underground town tours, visited the castle (which was pretty special for many reasons), bought souvenirs and took many photographs which you can oggle on my facebook (when the thing can actually load up so I can post a link...). There was a weird feel to the place - like a really low light which was doing some weird things to some of my photos. Good things, mind you.

So get this - in Edinburgh Castle, there's a tour which tells you the story of the Honours of Scotland - or the Scottish Crown Jewels. You can go through a twisted, linear corridor full of education, mannequins dressed in period gear and Cromwell trying to steal the Honours as they were hidden away. Now the crazy thing is that the penultimate thing you see are replicas of the Honours - touchable versions of the crown, sceptre and sword. Around the corner? The actual Honours guarded and surrounded by a glass case - how crazy is that? You get the tourist speil and then the real thing. I liked the Castle for it had a lot of things to see and do including the One O'Clock gun which fires across Edinburgh every day except Sundays. There are more things I needed to see as a tourist, but I'm definitely going again this year for my birthday, so I'm very much looking forward to it!

I also met up with a bunch of Midwayians on the weekend - the Saturday was a pub crawl, although some of the pubs seemed to be quite dead and lifeless. We had some Polish pubs, some old man pubs and finally ending with a visit to a rather terrible nightclub called The Citrus Club which also featured one of the worst toilets known to man. You don't want to know. To be fair, the thing started well in The Guildford Arms - one of the oldest pubs in Edinburgh, and one which has some beautiful exterior and interior ornate detailing. We were celebrating not only the closure of Wheelman, but also celebrating the depature of a veteran of Midway Newcastle. I was sad to see him go this week, but he sounds like he has his life nicely planned - something involving holing up in an exotic part of the world where living is cheap and mortgages are laughed at.

Oh, and Wannaburger. Such a lovely discovery on my trip - they do killer burgers and some very lush milk shakes. Recommended!

The next project is currently in a state of pre-production flux. I've come off the few tasks of Wheelman left; one of which I was particularly pissed off about, but kind of understandable considering we were working like trojans. I've taken up running again in a determined mission to lose some weight. It's been rough, though - taking any break in regular exercise, it's difficult to get back into it. I managed 3 kilometers on Sunday, but I'm sure with practice I'll be back to my svelt self. I have many shirts and jeans which no longer fit me, and that saddens me. I feel a lot healthier too - the trap of falling into the whole takeaway food thing when working late nights meant I had quite a few health issues which have thankfully taken a back seat. There's talk that we won't be crunching like crazy people for over a year.

The Ubisoft thing is an interesting prospect - it's being called a "strategic alliance" by the PR teams, and although the naysayers are spitting predictions that this is a death knell, it's not. Check out who makes movies these days - there's many studios getting together for creating movies and pooling their resources. The economic climate these days ain't good as we are constantly reminded by the news, so this is more a shrewd decision than an act of desperation. There's some definite positives to the deal - Ubisoft can put their marketing clout behind the game and give it an audience it deserves. It does sadden me that there's people out there who want to get the game now "It's an Ubisoft game" rather than "It's a Midway game". Yep, this is what we're up against. I don't read comments these days, though when I mistakenly read them, it's deflates the soul ever so slightly.

Don't read the comments, kids.

The "PS3 Is An Ass To Develop For" story which was picked up by Kotaku after a podcast interview with our executive producer didn't make for easy reading for me either. I'm not sure how I feel really about that. Maybe it was a planned move to get more publicity by invoking the rage of both 360 and PS3 fanboys in a single swoop (over 30,000 views of this story already), but I'm hoping there's no real lasting damage to this. As part of the development team, we're always told about keeping confidential over many things - the Ubisoft deal being one of them. I had prods and pokes from some ex-workmates from old companies, and I had to be all mysterious and sage-like. I also know that Midway PR do scope out this blog and I've been positive about Wheelman - not because it's the "done" thing in the eyes of the company, but because I believe it's a genuinely exciting title. It just saddens me when detrimental stuff happens which shouldn't ever happen in our position at this moment in time. We need to be winning back the hearts and minds of the gaming public, not turning them away.

Shaun also appears in the latest Major Nelson podcast! I listen to the show regularly, and although Larry Hyrb seemed rather enthused by it (and a bit surprised, grr), his co-host "e", wasn't that keen. I will have to bother him with Xbox Live messages until he sees sense.

I've been getting on with my own thing at work for "Project 2" - essentially a lot of research and development. We've got a lot of planning already done and I'm really stoked by some of the concept art and character art which has been created already. I've been grabbing recent showreels of motion graphics studios and the like to get a bead of what's fresh and new in the world of graphic design - they invoke inspirational bubbles which turn into concept sketches and ideas. I really want to do something special with the front end of Project 2 because I wasn't that enthused by how the front end for Wheelman turned out - you'll see in the demo. There was a recent presentation of Project 2 along with a pretty incredible mood video which was put together by a lot of different art disciplines. I've only just started to get back into the swing of mock-up design and have a good idea how the front end can progress... but that mood video. Ohmy. You could have put that on gametrailers.com and it wouldn't have looked shabby all.

Speaking of which..... new Wheelman gameplay footage!

There's also some 3D screenshots knocking about - my particular favourite being the bike chase for the way the sunlight glints off stuff. Please check out this stuff and download the demo on Xbox Live and PSN when it becomes available sometime this month.

The fact I now have extra time on my hands means I can now concentrate on some side-project stuff including The Cult of Karl video. I'm currently working over the animatic with some finished artwork and realising that the video should be in the sexy form of 16:9 whereas it's been produced in 4:3 - big mistake. I've had to re-position all kinds of transitions and the like, though I feel great working on it again - it's been in cold storage for too long. The strange thing is that when I work on animated stuff, I feel like I belong in that discipline. This brings me nicely onto one of the things I wanted to share since I visited rllmukforum.com for a brief visit (and they are these days, although I hear that the mods have since cleaned up the acts of the arseholes who frequent there) and one of my PMs was a question regarding...

"How did you get into the games industry?"

Well, it's been a bit of a strange journey - I've been passionate about videogaming for some time since the days of the Atari VCS. Yep, that makes me feel rather ancient, but I'm glad that I spent my time exploring virtual worlds. I also enjoyed the interfaces of later games on newer systems - I think I had a thing for pixel art and I practiced that on an ancient Spectrum game creation tool called the Skateboard Construction Kit. I know, a weird thing to indulge in, but it got me into tiling stuff together and learning more about pixel art. I think I appreciated loading screens too and how artists could be more creative with restrictions. At this point, I also hooked up with a school friend called Andrew Nibbs, and we would spend time in his basement after school working on videogames. I'd do the graphics, he'd do the code. It was quite a pleasant set-up as I fondly remember the huge toasted doorsteps graced with butter accompanied by generous mugs of tea that his mother would bring us. I guess that was the first development house I worked for..!

I then did the whole education thing - I still believe perhaps I should have cut down a bit on the education, but it did mean that I was trained up in that work ethic of 9-5. I did a graphic design course followed by an BA(Hons) Animation course. I think this is why I feel the way I do working on The Cult of Karl video - I had the mindset that I would be an animator when I left that course. I remember when we were took on an outing to Annecy in 1997 to check out the animation festival they had there. It was quite enlightening in that we had many companies like Dreamworks, Pixar and the like who were extremely eager for talent. Sadly we were in our first year of animation, so we were definitely not prepared for it. The sun shone with optimism and we were all happy to think to the future where we'd be in Annecy again with portfolios and hopes... it wasn't meant to be though.

When we arrived back in Annecy in 1999 with our portfolios and a lot more animation knowledge (although we could have had more considering the place I was taught wasn't that much cop), we discovered that no-one was hiring at that time. Omniously, the rain clouds hung about during our visit and our portfolios became handy make-shift umbrellas as we trudged through the puddles. Thunder cracked above our heads and our hearts were full of dread. Thankfully my big break for the industry came when I was given a phone number by one of the computer teachers who worked at College. It was a phone number with the name "Gavin Morgan" which I ended up phoning in semi-desperation and demanded to know if there were any vacances for me. The company I phoned up turned out to be Jester Interactive, and the guy who picked up the phone thankfully wasn't Gavin Morgan - so I got a job there as a Trainee Artist working on a game for the Dreamcast called Hellgate.

The crazy thing is that I soon ended up jumping from the position of Trainee Artist to Lead Artist. Now this is quite crazy because I kind of protested this as a bad thing - the leap from the bottom of the rung to the upper rungs of the hierarchy of art-related jobs in the games industry was stellar at best, but ill-advised at worst. I felt I was pretty inexperienced and realised that being a Lead Artist meant I had a lot more admin in my life, and a lot less actual artwork. I did have my hand in a lot of disciplines though - I animated cut scenes, helped out with world creation, singularly created the front end for the game and generally got on with any other minor jobs there. At that point I wasn't too good with communication with other artists which soon lead to me being demoted back to Artist - a move which I didn't feel that angry about because it felt like a good thing to do.

I worked at Jester for some time on several projects - some of which were canned to the depths of the unknown when the company had a bit of an identity crisis. I also worked on Music 3000 - which was a time where we had a lot of fun creating content for the title. I did all of the front end interface design including some of the "skins" which were used to decorate the interface with. I think that was a happy studio at that point - the studio stereo was cranked up with sweet tunes and we got on with it. The last major game I worked on there was TT Superbikes, where I had become a Lead Environment Artist responsible for a lot of the architectural detailing of the track. This was quite a rewarding job as it was a challenge to recreate reality with polygon limits (the game was on PlayStation 2), although when the game was done, I resigned. I think one of the reasons for the resignation was the management's distrust in us as a workforce - there was suspicions and the place didn't feel like a good atmosphere to work for. So I left.

Next up, I worked with Tim Wright (aka CoLD SToRAGE) - the ex-creative director of Jester - for a company he started up called Checkmate Solutions where I'd work on the interfaces (graphical and UI design) of some eJay products - music creation software. The office was a full and energetic place on my first day, but this was all a bit of a lie - half the office was there just to hoodwink some grant agency to give Tim some money. Did this surprise me? Nope. This was the wonderful world of games development, and little tricks like that didn't really shock me. "Ah, business as usual, then". It was pretty hard work in that payment wasn't that regular - we'd have milestones to achieve and if we achieve those milestones, the company got paid. I probably got paid half of what I should have been paid due to all this, so I ended up having to become freelance for a year to supplement my meagre wages.

When all the eJay stuff was done and work had kind of dried up, Tim let me go and I concentrated on the freelancing - although I was actively seeking full-time work. From there, I got some lucky breaks doing tutorials for magazines as well as learning about how important it was to network and communicate with people - a guy I sent an e-mail to regarding how much I loved his work called Derek Yu, actually hooked me up with an LA company called Say Design, where I would be working with them on Flash animation, graphics and mock-ups for web-based games. While this was going on, I would be going to interviews to various development houses for work as an Interface Artist and after some interview failures, eventually Midway Newcastle took me under their wing in 2006 for which I was extremely grateful for. So far I've worked on Rush on the PSP as a GUI Artist and Wheelman on 360/PS3/PC, where I evolved into a Senior UI Artist. I've learnt a great deal about different disciplines - working in a larger studio means that there's more departments and more communication to take part in.

So anyone who wants to work in the games industry - I'll give you some handy pointers. Play videogames. Play them as often as you can and get passionate about the games you are playing. Make mental notes about what impresses you about those games you play. Also get onto videogame news websites and sites like gametrailers.com, where you'll get the latest info on games. Soak it in. The passion is an important thing which will help you greatly. This has been a very videogame-orientated post; I think I've managed to get a lot off my chest - hopefully more when I start losing all this weight...

Oh, and I am quite tempted to get a PS3 now I have experienced the lovelyness of Killzone 2. Maybe it's time to forgive and forget Sony for their moments of insanity. Maybe.

"You must be the only person who hates taking days off work for being sick". I see these words manifest themselves onto my television during another rummage through the Capitol Wasteland of Washington DC, It's noon and I'm already frustrated with myself for having such a lousy immune system. I remember when I was young and carefree - mortality wasn't even questioned as I joyfully threw myself off tables in a bid to fly like Superman. Sure, broken arms were the result of such bizarre (and scientifically proven as manic) behaviour, but I cared not a jot. Now I'm hacking up my throat with coughing while getting a sweat on combined with a nice headache as the icing on a rather joyless cake. Mmm.

My frustration lies with not being at work. Sounds crazy, right? Well, I think there's something in my DNA on my mother's side which has given me a strong work ethic. I was brought up in an environment where work = money = food on the table. It's a simple but very definite equation of sorts. I also like feeling like I'm occupied with things - the devil makes work for idle hands, perhaps. I like the security of having stuff to do and doing that stuff in the company of other like-minded individuals for the common goal. Now when I'm sick and out of the office, I get idle hands. It never used to be that way - when I was a teenager (who also had a paid job delivering papers to practically every letterbox in my hometown), I had my spare time taken up with projects of an artistic nature. I think I'm having trouble kick-starting my creative juices in a non-work capacity...

Still, the immune system deficiency could be down to the Wheelman grind - and I don't mean that in a negative way - it's that it's a constant stream of work and late-nighters in the office which has become a very regular occurance. I actually felt guilt having a weekend to myself - guilt! Is that weird? We've not got long to go now on the game in terms of development - you may have read the month's delay but we're also releasing a Wheelman demo before the game is released on March 20th on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. I'm keeping quiet about the demo though - there's something rather cool we've done with it, but I shall not spoil the surprise. You will like it though. Oh, yes.

So the game is almost finished. It's kind of an exciting time in the office as we start planning the next project. Again, NDAs and the sort prevent me from revealing anything regarding it, but it's going to be an interesting prospect. We've got an internal showing of what work's been done with it soon - I've seen some of the concept art already, and it's looking quite lovely. Actually, that reminds me - I was pretty blown away when in one of the meeting rooms of how close our concept art for Wheelman matches the things which go on in the game itself. I always love checking out the concept guys to see what they're up to. I think they've got the coolest jobs in the studio, to be honest. Yep, I'm envious. I often am. The only thing which is annoying is that the concept art needs to have a larger audience - hopefully we can embelish the credits with some of their fine work.

Some of you may have caught the Fallout 3 reference in the opening paragraph - to tell you the truth, I've been hooked on it for a while now. I had my thing with Oblivion and really got into the whole storyline, environment, characters... and now it's happening again! Bethesda have done a pretty impressive job with Fallout 3 - there's some truly inspiring vistas to check out, I think no other game has captured a feeling of survival and grim menace better than Fallout 3 - especially when you're out on the open wastelands and feel a huge sense of vulnerability. Whenever I discover new towns, I always feel like there's a lot of possibilities from that discovery and it's also another opportunity to get more involved with the storyline and the lore of post-apocalyptic Washington DC.

There are flaws though - much in the same way Oblivion had flaws. For a start, the VATS system (where the action freezes on a target and you can take out specific body parts) is pretty cool to use - I did have doubts, but I only realised that shooting in a normal FPS-way is also rated by VATS in terms of percentages. It's okay if you use a weapon with bullets, but painfully obvious when shooting a missile and watching it pass through the Super Mutant's chest. Later I discover to always shoot on the ground with that thing, and all was well. VATS also sometimes lets me down when I'm using it indoors and I somehow end up shooting at the edge of a wall's corner where the target I was trying to shoot at was in perfect view.

Other gripes? Repairing weapons wasn't that clearly telegraphed in the game - I ended up discovering I could repair weapons with other weapons through word of mouth. Yep, I know it was in the manual - but who reads those things anyway? (Unless you're in the glory of the Katamari Damacy manuals in their lush artwork and characterful mastery, but I digress), It's very easy to repair a weapon of lousyness over an awesome weapon - case in point, the Lincoln Repeater is an insanely lush weapon, but if you use a hunting rifle and have the Repeater in your inventory, it's easy to accidentally repair the hunting rifle with the Repeater. Doh.

The game also suffers from some broken quests - like Oblivion did - in Big Town, I was told to fix some robots in a scrapyard for an impending attack of Super Mutants - except there were no robots to fix. The guy I give scrap metal to in Megaton has disappeared and the woman who willingly buys the fingers of bad men from me has gone AWOL too. It's things like this which can shake me from my dreamy escapism at times, but there is forgiveness. I think it happens in a lot of games - you spot a huge bug and then you just get on with it. Oh, unless it's the bug in Fallout 3 where your character can sometimes get stuck in scenery. I hate that soooo much. I do forgive that for the fact the game is such a huge achievement and undertaking, although I do save my game a lot more than I should because of it.

You won't find such gripes in the stellar reviews of the game though - I don't think that many game reviewers have 80 hours to dedicate to one game for a review - unless they're hardcore. This is why I don't normally trust reviews - word of mouth is gospel. I also used to think demos were a good indicator, although sometimes it's very easy to get it wrong - case in point is the Blue Dragon demo which I absolutely hated though only because it threw me right in at the deep end with no tutorials about mastering the advance combat systems or inventory choice you'd get in a sprawling RPG.

Sticking with my games-centric blog-tone, I've just watched what is the last ever episode of Consolevania. You can grab it here and I thoroughly recommend you give it a watch, even if you've not had a chance to see the other episodes. The show's been going on for a few years now, with regular(ish) episode releases. I think I got into the show late around the end of Series 1, but since then I've enjoyed the reviewing stylings of Rab and Ryan. Here's some classic examples of what I'm rambling on about -

Rab reviews Batman Begins...

Ryan's take on gaming Hype...

Now the thing with this final episode is that it very much reminded me of the last episode of Gamesmaster - Dominik Diamond basically spills his guts and gives us a heartfelt journey of his feelings about working on the show with a very memorable closing line - "I should come up with the funniest gag in the history of Gamesmaster, but... I can't". Thankfully the magic of YouTube means you can watch the whole episode in its entirety before some copyright-hugging arse forces it offline...

Back to the last episode of Consolevania (and it actually saddens me to type that) - Rab also wears his heart on his sleeve during footage of Consolevania's Top Ten Games of 2008. A lot of things are covered - the fact that they don't want to be remembered for being people who review games negatively. As Rab points out, games are wonderful things and we should be happy to be part of that. He mentioned that the Videogaiden show they did with the BBC Scotland (also up on YouTube) basically stripped them of their love of games and they ended up becoming reviewing machines. There was also mention of how Rab regrets being pissed off over comments on forums to the point that he stopped the ability to comment on consolevania.com as well as the Consolevania YouTube page.

Personally, I believe that rllmuk was a lynch pin in all this. I used to frequent the place often, but I soon realise that it is full of people who appear to have nothing but negativity and hate in their hearts. Anyone who speaks praise of a game is instantly spotlighted and analysed. There was an uneasy analysing process, sniping, arguing... just horrible. If the arsehole community of rllmuk are responsible in part for Consolevania's departure, then fuck them. I think this is the defining moment for me. I'd sometimes slink back on to rllmuk after a hiatus and get back into the groove of talking about games until being reminded how bad the place can be. In fact, fuck it. No more internet gaming forums for me.

If anything, I think Consolevania has left an interesting legacy of archived programmes and shows - like a history of gaming from 2005-2009. We can look back on those episodes and remember all the good things - the positive things. The blue-eyed soul.

Well, I've cranked out this blog and I'm still bored. I think the next entry will be a journey through the games I used to play on my trusty ZX Spectrum +2. Ah, happy days of being young and carefree. Pumped full of testosterone and acne, though the glow of a broken cathrode ray illuminated the darkness and put me on the road to where I am now.

Nostalgia can be a wonderful thing.

"Are we there yet?" yelled the kids in unison. I shook my vision clear and look out towards the vast desert road which stretched before me and my sweat-covered steering wheel. I study the road surface once more - it seemed a little more detailed and potholed than before. "Are we there yet?" once more echoed through my ears as I looked up and stared at the skyline. I was sure that was a different sky. Out of curiosity, I turned the wheel to move into the other lane. Yep, it felt a lot more smoother than it did - I was surprised at this fact considering I had been on this road now for over two years. "Are we there yet?". I stared into the horizon and saw nothing but the curvature of the earth, although the cacti appeared to pop into existance a lot less now. "Are we there yet?"

Welcome to the world of videogame development.

Wheelman's development has been the longest I've worked on any videogame (just over 2 years) - and considering this is my first AAA title, should I really be surprised? Over the past nine years of development, I've had a maximum of eighteen months as a limit and psychologically used this as a yardstick to pace myself like one would normally do when running a marathon. So imagine when you finish those arduous 26.2 miles only to be told there's an extra 8 miles to go. You'd have energy left, but you definitely wouldn't feel like you have prepared for this surprise. Again, I shouldn't be surprised. Myself and a determined core of the studio have crunched on Wheelman for over a year - a year of hard work, late-night takeaway meals and not much time to paint that exotic mural up in my front room. I'm kind of lucky that I don't have a physical relationship as I know it would be in tatters now. Me staggering back home in a zombie-like trance only to find the missus waiting for me with a "Where have you been?" look. I'd mumble something before crashing out to bed.

It's been longer for a lot of the studio though - three years of development. It's been a long journey, though it feels like we're almost done. The car will get to its destination and the kids will eventually stop yelling that cliched question. I booted up an old build of the game from last year, and it's insane the amount of progress we have achieved in getting the game where it is now - we have much, much better handling; our version of Barcelona is looking more alive; we have complete missions with an almost sultry level of polish and attention to detail. I still enjoy taking a perfectly decent car and heaping huge amounts of virtual damage onto it. At this stage, we're now finishing up on things - killing bugs, fixing graphical glitches and finding every opportunity to play new builds. I think a fair majority of us want the game to succeed and to do well for Midway - I know I want it to. We are mostly gamers who know what irritates us and what makes us happy when we engage in our pastime when we get a spare moment. There's been a very active e-mail Feedback mailing list where there are daily opinions, points raised and a healthy result of hopefully making our game even better.

My tasks now on my "Burndown" list are mostly optimisation and making parts of the UI even smaller and more programmer-friendly. As this is my first title where I'm using Scaleform and Flash CS3 for the front end work, it's been... interesting. What I do know is that using Flash for anything precise and developer friendly is an impossibility. Take this nugget of unjoy for instance - our in-game map is split up into many, many square pieces which helps with memory and frame rate. Now Flash CS3 has some alarming habits, but one of these is forgetting about integer numbers. So imagine all of these squares are laid out on a grid. It's all very precise - 280x280 pixel pieces on integer (non-decimal) co-ordinates. Flash magically does something with these pieces so when you load up the scene, sometimes you'll get pieces which are 279.9x280.1. Not only that, but their positions have also been slightly altered. The result? Noticable gaps in my map. I've been trying to combat this, and a lot of work the other day was spent adding a pixel buffer around the piece so when these pieces overlapped, it would mean no seams. Optimisation has also become something of a chore as Flash sometimes does some very strange things with vertices - and not just that - deleting whole portions of the map when I delete one vertex. It's maddening to say the least. I'm ever hopeful we get the new CS4 with all the stuff which should have been put into Flash CS3 for the next project.

It does annoy me sometimes when things don't work the way they should - or have been designed to work. A myriad of crashes have lost so many man hours on this planet. Imagine if we had no crashes on the computers we work on - we'd be living on the fucking moon by now. Speaking of crashes, I think my Xbox 360 has finally bitten the bullet. It's now freezing up a few minutes into playing a game (from boot-up) and now I'm resigned to the fact that I've become another casualty of Microsoft's Biggest Fuck-up Ever. A lot of the guys in the studio have suffered the same fate of 360 death and know only too well of the horrible procedure of getting a coffin from UPS to cart away that white box which offered so much including the always-constant fear that its innards would implode with badly-vented heat and break the hearts of many, many gamers. It is heart-breaking because the machine is such a damn attractive beast with a vast wealth of great games, but let down by some shonky manufacturing. I suppose I've got a fair amount of play out of it, but I've had a fair amount of play out of my PlayStation2 for a much more impressive number of years. In fact, I bought the thing on the first year of my career in the games industry and it's still working fine. I'm going to phone Xbox Support tomorrow and it's going to break my heart.

So the PS2 and Wii (and possibly the Dreamcast I'll never sell) will get dusted off and given some loving. I've also ventured into PC Gaming again and bought some fine bargains from PC World including the fancy-schmancy Unreal Tournament III Special Edition for a tenner. I've got the thing already on the 360, but alas - 360 won't work no more. I enjoyed it very much with joypad, but we know the keyboard and mouse are the natural home for any self-respecting FPS, right? Plus those 18 hours of UnrealEd video tutorials have sold it to me. Midway as a company have invested heavily in the Unreal Engine and I do use UnrealEd for stuff, but only for exporting, checking and the like. It'll be good to get a lot more pro-active with it for the next project.

I think the problem with working so hard and long on something is not having time to learn new skills and expanding my circle of artistic knowledge and experience. As you may have figured out, I want to take a wall in my flat and turn it into a super-sexy mural. I've got the design in my head and I really want to start work on it, but coming home now means rationing time so I get enough out of the hour or so I have around to do things before the inevitable drifting off to bed. Of course, when Wheelman is all done and wrapped up, time will become a lot more available for me as we revert back to the regular working day. That's going to be a very exciting day because I'll be able to explode with ideas and creativity: I'll become a man on an artistic mission. One of my first missions is to work on getting a more fancy-pants finished version of my video for Chris Merritt's Cult of Karl tune. Chris (who has recently revamped his site with lots of goodness) has been in contact with me and loved my animatic (click on that to grab it!) though I feel a bit crappy for not working on the finished thing due to a lack of time. I made time for that animatic - lunch breaks included, but not had the chance to fully go through with, well, any animated music promo. It's been my dream to finish at least one animated music promo before I shift this mortal coil.

Now this may sound all very dramatic and all, but recently Shynola's Gideon Baws sadly passed away. He was 33 - my age. From what I can gather, he suffered an accidental blow to the head earlier in the day and later on in the day he died from an aneurysm. It just shows you how sometimes life can be so short, so every day has to be lived and enjoyed. Shynola have produced some of the greatest music promos ever - and in tribute of Gideon's passing, I present to you some of Shynola's best. R.I.P.

Plus the classic Go With The Flow promo featuring the Queens of the Stone Age which can't be embedded because Universal are a bunch of arses.

Rather frustratingly the demise of my 360 couldn't have come at a worse time. There's many, many new games out on the horizon ready to be grabbed and played. Dead Space looks positively astounding in its execution and the fact it's an EA game which isn't really what you'd normally expect from EA - kudos to them for that. I've not seen any advertisements for Coca Cola in those previews yet, so there is hope. Fable 2 is coming out soon, as is Gears of War 2. Oh, and Fallout 3 - although since I can't enjoy it on my 360, I'm seriously tempted to play the thing on my PC. Saints Row 2 is getting a lot of praise from gaming forums, and yet I can't sample its goodness. What I will say from the looks of it is that it's what GTA4 could have been - the developers of Saints Row 2 appear to remember games should be fun and not all dramatic and po-faced. God bless them. Here's a slice of fun, fun, fun!

Christmas is coming and I have many credit-crunch-busting ways to grab presents for people. I think all the hoo-ha about the collapse of the World Economy is something which we engineered as human beings. Imagine how unphased we'd be if we lived in, I dunno, the Isle of Man? They've got their own monetary system going on there so I'm sure it's all business as usual. I am a great believer in karma, so the imminent demise of Iceland isn't all that of a surprise. Regular readers of this blog will have gotten that little joke, but feel free to find Icelandic references in past posts and put two and two together! There's the hoo-ha of "negative equity". Bullshit. I'm glad I bought this place and feel happier because of it. Those who fear the values of their homes decrease are possibly those fly-by-night types who jump from house to house in the same way I used to when I rented. Whatever happened to a sense of stability? A rock to build from? A lot of things which wind people up are constructs by - people! It's all very much a human race doing itself an injustice. Me? I'm happy to live every day as it comes although I know now that my Christmas present for this year will be the heating of this flat during the Winter months. Nothing really tangible, but could be the thing which saves me from a very uncomfortable time.

In other news, Charlie Brooker's Dead Set is soon to make a showing on E4. This is a genuinely exciting concept for me and one Charlie probably has been thinking about for some time - a zombie outbreak with the main characters of the series being trapped inside the Big Brother house! Even more astounding is that Davina McCall becomes a zombie - and a pretty impressive one from early reports. The show will begin on the 27th for 5 days with the finale being on - yep, you guessed it - Halloween! Check out the trailer here. ("Embedding disabled by request" are words which fill me with woe.)

Harry Hill is back! Harry could be considered the less vitrolic version of Charlie Brooker as he is also a commenter of what comes out of Satan's Googlebox, but there's definitely a touch of the surreal. All three parts of the first episode can be now viewed via the constant magic of YouTube. I'm also enjoying Stephen Fry's America - although there was a shaky start in the first episode, the second episode delivered in a lot more ways. He has also recently revamped his website to 2.0 and that includes a stalker-ish Twitter feed. He's currently poncing about Africa eyeing up lions! I also took advantage of Virgin's current 1p rentals and I have to say that Rambo was pretty impressive popcorn-munching brainless action, though Be Kind Rewind? What the hell happened, Michel Gondry? You suddenly run out of creative juice or something? Ghostbusters remake? Funny, yep. Not much else really did it for me compared to the heart, soul and sheer creativity found in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I even felt cheated out of spending a penny on it. It goes to show you that not all film directors are guaranteed to be awesome all of the time (I'm looking at you, George Lucas). Here's the only good bit of Be Kind Rewind...

Oh, and the camouflage bit.

Well, there's not much else to talk about. 40 minutes until bedtime and it's getting a bit colder in Chez Pick. I bought some more bits and pieces from a workmate and good friend of mine who is going on a dizzying journey around the world - and I probably mentioned in an earlier post, but I promised him a place to stay here when he comes back. He helped me a great deal when I was kicked out by my evil ex-landlord from Iceland (aha!) so I am more than happy to return the favour. It'll be good to have someone knocking about this place, but this is happening next year - actually when Wheelman should be out on shelves for all to grab - so it's also a deadline for me to make this place a bit more habitable. At the moment there's still a bit of a bare bones quality here which I need to shake off somewhat. I do enjoy coming back here though after walking back from work in the dead of night. Nothing but the startled sight of bunnies pelting back into their holes, sleeping truckers in their curtained cabs and the reminder that my lousy eyeballs aren't doing me any favours when confronted with the exaggerated glare of many light sources.

Here's hoping that soon the walk back will be a less nocturnal journey!

Oh, almost forgot. Consolevania's back!

Photo Credit.

This blog has been drifting about my consciousness since last Monday after touching down at Newcastle International with memories of the mass gathering of the gaming populace of Europe - Leipzig 08. The last trade show I attended was ECTS 2002 in London when I was working for Jester Interactive - it was a bitter-sweet affair as ECTS 2000 was so much more memorable and for a Dreamcast obsessive like myself, the stuff of dreams. It was during the time Sega were in denial regarding the imminent death of the console and this was supplemented by an infamous e-mail by Peter Moore (yep, him with those guns) who reassured us all that everything was fine and we should all just keep developing for the Dreamcast. In the case of ECTS, I was the obsessive gamer whose nose involuntarily bled with joy at the sights of magazine features made flesh - I was the carrier of the swag and the drinker of the PlayStation2-flavoured Kool Aid. Leipzig 08 would be a different matter for me entirely...

Now the thing about travelling to Leipzig is that for anyone reading this, they would probably consider it no big deal to hop on a plane and travel to Germany. For me, it was due to the fact that this would be my first time on a plane. Yep, you read that right. A man of 33 years of age not ascending to the heavens and looking down on the planet with godlike vision. It was no fault of my own - I was brought up in an environment where holidays for us involved travelling down to the nearby beach. On foot. There was one special occasion where we ended up in a caravan at the foot of Snowdonia, though air travel? Forget it. As I type, my dear old Mum is still hasn't flown. She doesn't even know how to drive a car, bless her. Maybe I've taken after my Mum in that respect of not trying things straight away and sitting on my laurels. This was an opportunity I couldn't miss though.

I did almost consider dropping out. There's a part of my brain which is to blame for my virginity in many things - the "don't want to rock the boat" part of my brain. When I was offered the job at Midway Newcastle, those devious synapses snapped into attention and I almost refused the offer. Thankfully I've learnt to reign in that indecision and doubt and just went ahead with what my heart told me. Get out of this flat. It's killing you slowly. It was a big deal moving, but in hindsight I'm glad I did it. Same with buying this place. I almost balked out of getting a mortgage at the interview in my local bank. I'm here now and feel a lot more secure and a lot less stressed. I rammed down those uncertain thoughts and responded in the positive - I was going to Leipzig!

This meant I had to bone up on air travel though - I asked the advice of many people and got some very handy hints. "Chewing is important to keep your ears from popping" commented one workmate. "Taking off is fantastic!" mentioned another. On forums I was advised to limit myself to 100ml liquid containers, not to take the piss at the security terminals and simply enjoy it. I bought my first ever suitcase! I grabbed some euros! I received homework from work! Yep, homework. Leipzig wasn't going to be a holiday - it would be four days of working at the Wheelman stand as part of the Midway stand. We had reams of documentation to read up on about the game. We also had practical tests where we would have to talk through the first mission of the game - Frantic - to our producers, who posed as inquisative members of the press in case any of them wandered into our stand. The thing is that we weren't really the types of people who would normally demonstrate games to strangers, but by the end of the boot camp I think we were more than prepared for it. One downer was we were playing an old build of the game from E3 - so there was some bugs which had to be skillfully avoided while playing the game. They're fixed now, but it was hard to concentrate on playing the game and talking to people about the game when you had to avoid wayward traffic which appeared to make a beeline straight towards your car.

The whole process of airports was something of a new thing for me. It was exciting and interesting but I wasn't actually scared about flying - I just wanted to know what to expect so I felt a bit more at ease. Thankfully there was a bar at Newcastle International, so a quick double Gin and Tonic (the lass behind the counter was unsurprised at my joy that they only did doubles) and I felt a bit more ready for it. It was weird to see grizzled travellers go through the motions while I was floundering - at security I took everything out of my coat pockets and then put my coat on top of it all only to be told by the security guard that "I could have just took my coat off and put it in the tray". Remembering the advice not to be a smart arse, I let it pass and soon found myself in the departure lounge looking out onto our plane to Charles de Gaule Airport in Paris.

Christ, it looked small.

I wasn't too phased by the size of the thing - jumbo jet or small passenger plane, I just wanted to get up there and see what all the fuss was about. One thing which was a neat surprise for us all was that the plane wasted no time in bombing down the runway and taking off and when we shot up into the air, it was a moment I'll never forget. I was transfixed with what was outside my window as we drifted through the low-laying wisps of cloud. I turned once to look at the interior and felt a bit strange seeing it at a very definite angle of 45 degrees. I quickly turned back to see the ground disappear in a transition of ghostly whiteness while I rapidly chewed to keep those wayward ears of mine in check. Emerging through those clouds to a fresh new sun-bathed world was quite the thing. I have vertigo but only when I'm clinging onto ladders - but this felt like I was totally safe. I often compared it to travelling on train - you don't really consider you're travelling on a train, you sit there and accept it. In the same way, I was accepting we were thousands of feet in the air and heading towards Paris at quite some speed.

That was something else I couldn't quite get my head around - when the plane banked, everyone stayed in their seats. The sensation was quite an interesting one - looking out of my nearby window and seeing nothing but cloud, then looking out of the other windows and seeing nothing but sky. What also wasn't lost on me was that 2 hours later we were in Paris... I mean, that completely freaked me out. I'm so used to land travel and seeing scenery zip by horizontally to give me indication of movement and yet here I was looking at exotic French candies and the confused signage of Charles De Gaule. It was quite something. We had some dinner in a faux-pub in a dingy part of the airport, where I was forced to order salad with my Croque Monseiur. Salad, as we should all know, is the devil incarnate. It's the garnish which shouldn't be. It's like a creepy uncle sitting on an armchair watching Match of the Day while slowly scratching his crotch. If I had my way, salad would be banned and replaced with chips.

The second flight was just as long in a plane which was even smaller, though already I considered myself something of the flying expert now. I almost didn't even pay attention to the classic display of safety and emergency measures by one of the air crew. It was strange looking down on the patchwork countryside littered with towns and lakes of Germany and feeling like you were hovering over a different country. We touched down at the modest airport just outside Leipzig and I had one thought in my mind - this was the most countries I had ever been in the space of a day. Mum would be proud! We were met at the airport by Sascha - one of the two drivers who were responsible for carting our tired asses from airport to hotel and from hotel to venue. The SUV was decorated in Midway logos of titles at the show including our own blessed Wheelman logo I have learned to grow to love with repeated exposures.

We had practically spent almost all day travelling, so we made ourselves comfortable in our hotel rooms - which were very nice indeed. Again, it was the first time I had stayed in Germany and also in a swanky hotel. The Westin Leipzig definitely ticked all the right boxes except for one - tea and coffee-making facilities. In all the hotels I have visited on my travels, there was always a kettle, some tea bags and some biscuits. Not here. A well-stocked mini-bar and some tasty European treats but no sign of that stalwart of all things British. It was mentioned that this is the way in Germany, so I better get used to it. I am something of a tea addict - growing up I drank nothing but tea and after scoffing at people who drank "the posh stuff" like Earl Grey and Lapsang Souchong, I succumbed and delighted in the myriad of assorted tea tastes.

At dinner in one of the hotel's restaurants, we caught up with some of the guys who already worked that day - the first day when the Conference was open - and we got a taste of what to expect. It was extremely busy and many, many people were interested in what Midway was offering - not just Wheelman, but also TNA Impact and the insanely popular MK vs DC Universe title. We learnt that Midway had two stands at the event - we had the sparkling edifice of the consumer stand along with synonymous booth babes and free swag - and we had the more serious Midway stand in the Business Centre part of the event. This dealt with all dealings with retail as well as interviews with press. I was impressed to find out it even had its own kitchen.

The next morning I was in a sense of confusion at breakfast - there was so much to choose from and I must have looked quite hopeless trying to work out what the hell to do. Did I need a tray? Of course not! That didn't stop me taking one in a sense of pure Britishness until I realised our tables were laid out with the civilized trappings of cutlery and plates. I eventually settled on the German equivalent of a cooked breakfast, though soon realised very quickly that sausages in Germany aren't all that great. The tough outer skin I wasn't that big a fan of, and the sausages had cooled to the point it felt like I was chewing down on severed fingers. Nomnomnom.

Our team formed up outside the hotel in our eye-catching red Wheelman shirts and soon piled into another form of transport which I would be experiencing for the first time - a limousine! This was a special limo for promotion of another Midway title - This Is Vegas. It was at the show but only in the form of a looping trailer. In the morning sun, I noticed a lot more of Leipzig - it's a strange place in that it kept on reminding me of Raccoon City in one of the Resident Evil films. All that skyscraper and tall buildings and hardly anyone on the streets. Graffiti of various (thankfully mostly appealing) forms took over a lot of the area along with the huge advertising spend of Sony's LittleBigPlanet - they had taken over an entire side of a building near our hotel with a massively impressive mural. I learnt later on that we were going to have our own Wheelman city-based attraction, but the plans to put half a Pontiac G8 poking through a building were put on hold by those pesky Health and Safety people who appear to be ruining the fabric of our lives entirely.

Another weird thing about Leipzig is this - the town feels empty and deserted and yet the venue is a very, very professional and adequate affair. In fact, it was more than adequate - it felt like it was made just for the purpose of fronting this annual affair with relative ease. We passed through the Business Centre and grabbed some water for the stand while oggling at the various meeting rooms, demo pods and varied munchies which decorated the tables. One of the guys who worked yesterday showed some of the freebies we were giving out - Wheelman high-visibility jackets and Wheelman licence plate holders to name but two. I suddenly drifted back to my time in ECTS and secretly yearned to have those freebies in a swag bag to take back home and needlessly fill up the empty spaces in my batchelor flat with anything but walled static. I shook this profound feeling off as we strode towards one of the four massive consumer halls.

It was very hard not to involuntarily let out a feeling of elation and excitement seeing the stands of other companies showcasing the games which we as gamers could be playing in months to come. Sony had a massive presence there and the LittleBigPlanet stand was unmissable - it was overpowering in its cutesy attraction. We strode on passing the massive EA stand, the huge Ubisoft congregation of titles, Rockstar's surprisingly modest no-bullshit stand and then - back out into the daylight. The morning sun was quite warm to me considering the same time yesterday I was enjoying cooling Northern breezes, though I quickly acclimatised myself as we continued like the cast of Reservior Dogs with intent and determination - into the next consumer hall. In the distance I could see our stand - it wasn't as overpowering as EA's or Ubisoft's stand, but still just as noticable and unique.

As we approached, we could see the Wheelman stand - our home for the next four days. The stand was like a circular monolith to the celebration of rotation - several spinning monitor screens managed to hypnotise people by keeping the Wheelman trailer from spinning with them; above the stand was an orgy of tyres and montage while a large life-size cut-out of Vin Diesel stood guard outside. Essentially, the stand was also designed as an oven for cooking human beings - as we found out as soon as the doors of Leipzig opened and the unmistakable foot-falls of gamers echoed around the hall as they made a beeline for the demo-pod of choice. Before this startling vision, I took in the whole ambience of our stand -  we had a portion of a TNA Wrestling ring with which a wig-adorning German announcer would whip up the crowds into a frenzy supplemented by an scantily-clad booth babe and the head of our Creative Director spread out across 16 television screens.Our pod of six demo stations soon became occupied and a team of three-four people including myself talked through the game to many, many people.

It was surprising how easy I got into the whole "selling the game" thing to people - it can be so easy to be unsincere about going through the storyline of Wheelman to someone for the hundreth time, but I really relished it. In my mind, we were salesmen and we were there to sell the game. On the first two days, we perhaps over-sold it - we were over-trained. This isn't a bad thing though as we came across as extremely knowledgeable regarding all aspects of the game. It was also relentlessly hard work. When I'm in the studio, I sit on my arse and move fingers on a keyboard and mouse. It's not really the most tiring thing in the world, though it was something of a rude awakening to be on one's feet for 9-10 hours keeping an eye on multiple monitors to point players in the right direction in the training mission.

This was something of an issue - our build of the game had no subtitles so we were constantly showing people where to go. A lot of the people who sampled the game were German and the ones who couldn't speak/understand English actually were able tor read English - which helped the next day with a freshly-subtitled build. In the mission, you're a getaway driver for an old flame called Lumi Vega (I'm getting flashbacks here...!) and you basically follow her directions; there's no map for the first mission to keep with the whole cinematic feel of the game though it's hard to hear Lumi when A) You don't understand spoken English and B) our wiggy announcer chanted "Midway!" repeatedly to the sounds of questionable Euro-dirge. Don't get me wrong, I'm not being super-critical here - just that it seemed to be going against our pitches.

It was a constant stream of people - I greeted them with a cheery "heeelllo!" and then asked whether they spoke English, then talked them through the plot and the intracicies of Vehicle Melee. Actually, that was one of the perks of the job - knowing that their faces would light up when we showcased stuff like Vehicle Melee, Air Jack and Cyclone. We were told that those were the things we needed to show to "sell" the game and it was very, very addicting to demonstrate Air Jack and see eyes light up. There was genuine surprise and it was a very powerful argument for those visitors to our booth who thought our game was another GTA-wannabe. "You can't do that in GTA" one of us mentioned to an inevitably surprised convert. It was relentless though - time seemed to stand still in that booth and as soon as one person or group of people left, we'd get more people. There's that couple of seconds of resetting the dev kit, grabbing some water to parch my dry throat and get back to greeting and selling the game.

We had quite a few people interested in the prospect of the game being released on PC, while an incredibly large majority of people - and I'm not exaggerating there - absolutely loved the game. I think the proof is definitely in the pudding. People have read about the title online and possibly read about some of the criticisms and putdowns from some so-called gaming news sites and forums, and it's only when you show and let them sample the game that the penny drops. We're not trying to be like GTA - it's a happy medium of different inspirations to form a cohesive experience. We're a tasty cocktail of GTA, Burnout and Pursuit Force, cherry-picking the coolest bits from other titles and inspired by some of the best car chases in movie history, and crafting a game out of it. The over-training actually paid off when a member of the press came into the booth and I instantly switched to Salesman Mode and even persauded him to stick around to check out the Air Jack and Cyclone - he was very, very happy to have stopped by. I think that's the thing - the nice surprise people get from expecting one thing and getting something totally different.

There were some much-needed breathers during some of the very successful signing sessions - TNA wrestlers Christian Cage and Christy Hemme were about to throw freebies into the crowds and sign stuff while we gave out autograph cards (I've become a keen TNA fan since catching it on Bravo - takes me back to my late night WCW watching sessions...!). Mortal Kombat's Ed Boon also popped down to sign things as the Midway announcer chanted "Ed Boon!" in a hypnotic rhythm. In that moment, I think I felt like I was very much part of Midway as a whole - it's easy to work in Midway Newcastle and feel like we're just one studio, but far from it - we're part of many studios and this trip was also a great opportunity to meet some of the guys from those other studios. We met with the German Marketing guys who were extremely welcoming and very friendly people. I met Mr. Hector Sanchez who's producing Mortal Kombat Versus DC Universe - which was strange because when we met it was like we already knew each other if only from checking out each others' Facebook page updates (Also his MKasts make for incisive listening!). I met Jason Jones from the London office -  I think he's an IT bloke, though I managed to rustle him up some freebies even if it meant me shamefully wrestling a free Rock Band t-shirt from a women for the benefit of Jason's niece.

How did I end up in that situation? Well, the final two days were actually a lot more smartly used - instead of burning ourselves out over-selling the game, we'd show Cyclone and then if there was no-one in the queue, showcase those special moves. This also meant we'd have half a day to explore the booths so I spent some time grabbing swag for Jason. One horribly sickening thing I noted during my varied excursions through the halls of Leipzig was the phenomemon of "T-shirt". Massed crowds of swag-hungry gamers gathered in frenzied swarms at the stages of major booths as announcers shouted "T-shirt?" and threw out varied garments to be grabbed and wrestled to the ground. It was startling to see as I came from a more measured and civilized time where t-shirts were given freely and without a fight. Kudos has to go to Rockstar Games for their take on "T-shirt" - eight-player Midnight Club LA network race, winner gets a T-shirt. Simple. A sense of achievement and dignity was rewarded to those lucky winners. I still feel a tinge of guilt wrestling that t-shirt away from a crestfallen woman. She could have been grabbing it for her son, for fuck's sake.

I grabbed a modest amount of swag, though it was pretty inspiring to see many people walk around the event with Midway bags and the Wheelman painting I had seen crafted a mere month or so back in the studio. The Midway stand was kind of guilty of "T-shirt"-type antics, though it was perhaps a bit more generous than the sparse offerings of other stands. I would say that though, right?

I queued up for a few games - Pure was a nice surprise although they really needed to tell people how to pull off those amazing stunt when getting gnarly air. The longest queue wait was Mirror's Edge - it was strange because I had a secondary motive to try and score one of the rather fashionable t-shirts which sported the main character beautifully realised in Anime form. The wait in the queue was explained soon after an hour when we discovered "VIP"s were jumping the queue holding onto sweaty VIP cards. I struck up a conversation with some guys from the UK - a bunch of Irish lads who run a website called Citizen Game (there's actually another one based in the US, doh) and talked about my feelings of some of the games of the show and, of course, bigging up Midway and Wheelman. They mentioned they wanted to be the next Kotaku and I advised them that this shouldn't be said aloud - besides, Kotaku seem to have it in for Midway. Plus Brian Crecrete is kind of creepy with that beard.

I eventually got into the now-mythical booth and was pleasantly surprised by the game - it looked lush and played quite nicely although there was some little glitches and bugs which I'm sure will be ironed out soon enough. It didn't last that long for a demo though - about 10 minutes? I made sure I used this experience for the next day when we were trying to show as many people as possible the joys of Wheelman. As for the Citizen Game boys, they did mention me in one of their gargantuan podcasts, though I came across as a complete arsehole dissing LittleBigPlanet.

Okay, LittleBigPlanet. I love your look and style. I like your character design. I love the opportunity of creativity, but jeez - you're a bit spongy to play and your levels have a depth to them which meant when I played in a team of four people, we kept on mis-judging those horrible swinging girders due to the fact we weren't on the same horizontal plane as they were. Doh. This is a valuable lesson - never, ever trust Gametrailers scoring from their userbase. I was thinking about this yesterday night on my walk home through the sleeping truckers and the hiding bunnies of the industrial estate... it's okay to mark a film trailer because, well, you're watching it and that's all a film does - it entertains through visuals. Now a game trailer on the other hand... that's totally different. You can have the world's best game trailer but the game could ultimately fail to deliver when you get a controller in your hands to play it. That's how I felt about LittleBigPlanet - it has promise, but ultimately it wasn't all that filling. I speak the truth!

Killzone 2 was a nice surprise - it actually looked a lot nicer than I expected and played decent too. I think my rekindled Sony interest came when I was at the rather exceptional Sony Party playing Wipeout HD in Frenzy mode (soooo lovely) while listening to the best DJ set around and drinking Champage Red Bulls. Yep, the game which hooked me into the original PlayStation was working its magic again. The actual event took place on the Sony stand and was a hive of other games-related press and exhibitors with which I entertained with my expert dance skills and the fact these skills were projected up on a huge video wall for all to see. Sadly the free drink policy didn't cover free food, which was confounding and somewhat crazy to say the least, but at that point I felt like we - as a company - were all one big family. The post-party buzz in the Hotel bar afterwards only strengthened this resolve.

I didn't really get a chance to play many other games - Guitar Hero On Tour on the huggable DS was a nice diversion but was obvious that the unit was designed for kids as my fat, useless fingers testified. Lego Batman was very familiar to me as I played Lego Star Wars religiously, but it was great fun. The aforementioned Midnight Club LA was a solid racer with some lovely GTA4-fuelled visuals.. I only wish I had more time to play more games. I really wanted to check out the new Bionic Commando, Street Fighter 4, Diablo 3... *sigh* I did get to check out our so-called competition and was happy to report back to the troops that there was nothing to worry about at all. The four days were relentless hard work, but I ended up making new friends with some very, very lovely people. My one regret was that I didn't go out with Hector and the others on the second night, though my body and mind was in no right state of mind. One of the guys told me off and mentioned that this was "par for the course" although it sounded like some crazy adventure through dodgy bars, nightclubs and a torrential rainstorm. I think I eventually got the whole "work hard, play hard" thing even if I called it quits early due to the fact we were drinking on "school nights".

We even were priviledged enough to see the lifecycle of the festival from early birth to inevitable death as we helped pack away the dev kits and watched as teams of workers streamed into the now vacated stands with step-ladders, drills and the occassional fork lift truck. This time was spent reflecting on the event as a whole - it welcomed more than 200,000 visitors - a lot more than this year's toned-down E3 event in Los Angeles. I was fascinated by the way the event was like a living organism as people migrated from stand to stand for those bloody t-shirt giveaways and Guitar Hero-fronted live performances. It was an exciting mess of colour, noise and activity and I loved every bit of it. Interestingly enough, next year a rival event is going to be happening in Cologne - the argument for this event is that Cologne is a lot more connected than Leipzig. Even though Leipzig has a truly stunning facility, the city itself is sadly lacking in accommodation and, well, glitz. The happy-shiny LittleBigPlanet advertising was in direct contrast to buildings covered in graffiti set to be demolished whenever the time was right - which felt like never. Leipzig is a city stuck in a time bubble which seriously needs to burst for the event to compete. Midway will be attending the Cologne do instead of the Leipzig shindig next year and if they ask me to help out, I would do so in a heartbeat.

The journey home was a bit... weird. I got into the mindset of a seasoned traveller once again and now I was taking for granted all the cool shit which was going on outside my window. Saying that, the final journey home was pretty amazing - we flew over NewcastleGateshead (I could see work!) and the plane banked across and over the sea before drifting into land. I think I'm something of a addict now and it won't be long - like all addicts - until I'm on bigger and longer air journeys. I don't think I've suffered from jetlag yet, so there's always time. What is important is that I feel a lot more confident booking a flight and jumping on a plane. The novelty of being somewhere far away in a short space of time is quite seductive.

Work is still very much a large part of my life now regarding Wheelman's development - I've been crunching since the start of the year, so this final push to get the game to a submission stage means I still keep on doing what I always do. I think there is a core group of people who have crunched as much as me - evenmoreso. We have something to prove and we want to make sure our first AAA title will be as entertaining and accessible as we can make it. The game recently had another touch of graphical polish added to it, and Barcelona looks even more inviting as our skies look bluer and richer in colour. I think it's a good thing to distance ourselves from the cliche of next-gen brown. What is quite a nice feeling is knowing that we're now finishing up on the title - my schedule is considerably shorter than it was and it's great to see missions converge into a playable build from start to finish. There's still work to do, but I think there's an tangible current of excitement in the studio. We also have seen a sneaky preview of the marketing bits and pieces and it looks pretty super-sexy thanks to the artistry of the talented Pete Thompson in the concept department. I miss that department. All I have at the moment is programmer chat...

Not really had much time to do anything else really - as the huge month-long gap in blog entries can testify..! I'm finding spare time to continue my Cult of Karl work and hopefully I'll have an animatic ready to be put up on YouTube in time for the re-birth of the Gervais/Merchant/Pilkington podcast although the preview on iTunes left me a bit cold - they dusted off the old anecdote of slugs eating the glue from stamps again. I also hope Gervais and Merchant don't bully Karl like they did with their recent podcasts - it's horrible listening and feels like the pair are genuinely envious of Karl's popularity. Oh, and a masterstroke from Ben Folds - leaking his own album with a collection of fake songs he produced with his band in a day in the studio, yet the fake album is very, very listenable indeed!

One more thing - the 360 is back to normal. For the moment. I've been tainted by those terrifying red rings of doom though so I've been playing the 2D delights of Braid (the hype is very much jusitified) and Castle Crashers. I always feel a sense of regret for Microsoft droppng the ball with the 360 - not with the service and the games, but more for the console itself. I've never known a console like it to be so unreliable and uncertain. I still won't be getting a PlayStation 3 any time soon though - lest I forget I am still all mortgaged up. Strongbad's new Wii game was enjoyable although quite short, but I did giggle with glee at my own interactive Teen Girl Squad episode. I'll be cautiously considering getting other Wii games even though the Wii console will gladly take credit card details and nothing else.

That owl hoot outside signifies the end of this blog entry. I'll update more when I get a chance!

It is the thing that all Xbox 360 owners fear - the dreaded "red rings of death". Yesterday afternoon, that evil technological spectre finally visited me five minutes into a pigeon-hunting spree in GTA4, and I involuntarily yelped like a woman. Two rings, yep, but two rings are the precursor to three rings. It's like discovering a cancerous mole and realising that you may not have as much time on this planet as you expected. Okay, so maybe a bit of a drastic metaphor but to someone like me who plays his 360 with an almost religious fixation, it's just as damning. I checked the xbox.com site and realised I had somehow forgotten to register the thing when I bought it in February 2006. See? It's had a good innings. There were some suspicious hiccups and burps, sure, but I shook them off. Now the thing is that there are things on the interweb which tell you how to avoid getting these rings again - it's an overheating thing, so they recommend hoovering the vents. There's more complicated and tech-savvy options including cracking the thing open and replacing some silicone gel to part of the circuitry, but fuck that. Even though I enjoyed dismantling technology to see how it worked when I was younger, I'm 33 now and I just want to shoot virtual pigeons again. I can play my 360 but the dread of knowing it could quite easily switch back to two - or even three - rings is a bit too much to bear.

So I migrated to my dusty Wii and started to enjoy Metroid Prime 3 - Corruption again. I forgot just how gorgeous and fun playing that game is - for a sci-fi geek like myself, there's a lot of fiction and scanning the lavish environments for the purposes of back-story. The thing is this - when I play my Wii, I really feel confident that it's not going to spontaenously combust. I also like the fact it's as quiet as a mouse compared to the mini-cyclone generated by the 360. I also discovered yesterday that you could download DS demos via the Nintendo Channel (this isn't actually that well signposted in the channel itself) so I marvelled with being able to play Ninja Gaiden on that spunky little handheld (does that sound dirty to you?). If it's one thing Nintendo are extremely good at it's providing a solid gameplay experience. Their online aspect still leaves a lot to be desired, but they're slowly catching up.

I now look at my 360's shame-laden facia with a derision often associated with finding onions in the ingredients list of a favourite pasta dish. It's going to cost me money to send the thing off to be repaired, and money is something which I have more respect for. Maybe the DIY option is the way to go. My warranty has evaporated (even though ex-Xbox bloke Peter Moore kind of admitted they had a shonky product and extended the warranties for those who bothered to register their consoles) and it may bring back those childhood memories of appliance dismantlement. Saying that, I could end up with a pile of electronic components and the uneasy feeling that I should have got it repaired properly.

I've gotten considerably less busy on Wheelman - I think the overwork I did this year has more than paid off and now I'm here on a Sunday in my pants updating my blog while I enjoy the outside world being sporadically doused in rainfall. There are still tasks to perform and I've gotten very adept at reporting bugs on our internal bug-tracking system. You may have read that Wheelman's release date has been delayed until Q1 2009. When this was announced internally, I was in two minds over it. In one mind, I felt a bit deflated that I put in a lot of extra work to try and prevent this delay. The other mind was one of relief and that the game would get the attention and polish it needed. Some gaming blogs cited that as a criticism when they saw the game at E3, but they've not been on the shop floor and seen just how amazingly quickly the game has evolved and form before our eyes.

On Friday I enjoyed a quick Wheelman session where I was being chased by cops - and it was pretty reassuring that the game has become something more confident. I had early reservations about how our traffic would be unpredictable in the way it avoided you as you screamed down the Barcelona streets, but now it's not only predictable but it also has a feeling of intelligence about it. The melee system is a great thing when used against police, though what is even better is that airjacking during a pursuit can actually aid you in evading the cops. Picture the scene - I have four police cars on my tail and my car is pretty banged up. Ahead of me lies a pristine vehicle just ripe for the jacking. I position myself behind the vehicle and leap out of the remains of my old vehicle. As you do this, the police speed past (probably in shock that someone can leap from one car to another with such precision and awesomeness) and getting into the old vehicle tossing the driver out means that I can quickly turn 180 degrees and use the freshly-filled focus gauge to boost the hell out of there.

It's discovering tactics like this which will only help our cause. The vehicle melee is very much like that of a fighting game - the amount of movement of the analog stick determines how hard you hit the car, you can use your pistol to shoot out tyres and make the opposing vehicle more unstable and - this is the doozy - the Mortal Kombat-esque "Finish Him" move will give you an impressive exploding car and police diving out of the airbourne wreckage. It's not just the driving which has gotten more confident though - the on-foot combat is improving nicely too. We've got a new lead desginer in who worked on Crackdown (and placed all 800 of those non-pigeon-shaped-orbs) and he's currently refactoring the on-foot missions so they're a lot more interesting and involving now. The on-foot combat isn't the main meat-and-bones of the game, though it's good that there's just as much care and attention associated with it. We've also got... achievements! Even though we're still developing the thing, I still get that giddy feeling when that achievement pop-up appears on screen. I had to notify one of the lead coders that the achievement notification needs to move from the default position - possibly the top right of the screen where not much actually happens. I wouldn't have noticed this if I haven't been playing the game inbetween waiting for stuff to happen on my PC and after-hours R&R.

Another advantage of the move of the release date is that we avoid the November rush of titles (many of them sequels). We have such videogame behemoths as Gears of War 2 (which has a rumoured special edition version bundled with - yep - a life-size Lancer - perhaps) and Fable 2 as well as the supposed announcement from EA of their next incarnation of their ongoing Need for Speed franchise - Need for Speed Undercover. Check out the trailer...

I've been keeping tabs on this title as when it was announced there was a tingle down my spine. Not because I was excited for a new Need for Speed title - more likely that it was because it had a certain Wheelman-esque tone to it. The racing focus from previous games has been now centered around missions involving driving, although there's no mention of on-foot. I'm guessing there won't be on-foot as the game's going to be mostly fuelled by what you see above - cut-scenes with real-life actors and probably some heavy Burger King product placement. Maybe we'll get missions revolving around Burger King? I'd like missions where I can drive my car through their restaurants throwing Wii Fit money-off vouchers at the patrons within. Check out that November date on the trailer too...

Still, Wheelman is a new IP and bringing it out at the beginning of next year is going to benefit everyone. This Is Vegas - another Midway title - has gone the same way, though again - it'll benefit us all. This has been the longest I've worked on any videogame and I think that our effort will be present on screen for all to see. My motivation is proving those naysayers wrong. Those people who insist on spreading their negativity and opinions in an effort to discredit the game without giving it a fair chance.

Friday night was a bit of a wash-out - we had a bit of a night in at a workmate's place (he used to be my ex-housemate too!) so it was a night of drinking, group-commenting on America's Most Dangerous Car Chases 3 and watching people play videogames with a soupçon of testosterone (especially Fight Night and bloody football) followed by aforementioned ex-housemate in fighting mood after a quantity of booze was quaffed. I cut my loses and slipped out the back door without them knowing while walking home thinking how I could have spent the night being a lot more productive. I wasn't even that drunk. I think that's a reason why I decide to stay in most nights - besides the obvious monetary benefits, I'm now occupying myself with creating artwork and other little pet projects. There's been a bit of a sea change in my heart recently as life has gotten mundane and boring. I wake up and go through the motions - the same shower, the same oggling of BBC Breakfast while slurping tea and munching on breakfast. The same walk down the hill... These pet projects help me justify my existence and make me think less about the things which get me into some horrible mindsets which I once had to endure. The sacrifice for this is social life, but meh. You can keep that.

One of these pet projects is some fan art for Shadow of the Colossus - it's almost done, though I need one more step to achieve and it'll be lovely. Here's step 1, step 2 and step 3. I'm doing this for a friend of mine who kept me in digs when I was thrown out by my maeloveant ex-landlord, so I'm going to use this painting as a guide for an actual 100% bonafide real painting on canvas. I was going to show you the progression of time through the use of an image with the three versions of work-in-progress, but the GIMP is so fucking lousy at being an art package - you can tell it's been crafted by non-artists - I gave up. All I needed to do was copy one element to another layer, but noooooo. Too fucking easy. No wonder people use Photoshop (mostly illegally too). Fuck GIMP.

*deep breaths*

Why is it that people have to fuck around with stuff to make it more complicated than it actually needs to be? DeviantArt v6.0, step forward! Complicating things for the sake of complication so it now takes my journal .css templates and breaks them undeservingly. Facebook, step this way! There's a "new" Facebook waiting in the wings and, yep, it's more complicated than normal. They've added these needless features which it doesn't deserve. MySpace! More guff than you require! Winamp! It fancies itself as the new iTunes so it ends up gorging on so much digital lint, it's embarassing. Even my stalwart favourite, thesixtyone.com, has been messed about with by its creators. We now have some stupid "as it happens" news ticker which means nothing to anyone. The same can be argued for food. I remember when food was simple and straight-forward. Now? They're all manner of faff added to food to give it some kind of mythical appeal. LEAVE IT ALONE. I don't want sodding onions in my food. Fancy some tomato relish and egg mayonnaise in your breakfast roll, sir? No. Give me a fried egg. Give me a sausage. Some baked beans. A hash brown. Right, now go away. Leave me to add my own garnish. Garnish! I don't want your leaves ganging up on my food like a bunch of vegetarian hoodies! Just give me a burger! Two buns! Maybe some bacon! Cheese! Nothing else!

*deeper breaths*

I guess this can be drawn back to the first thing I mentioned in this blog post - consoles. I remember when games consoles were just that - games consoles. You'd stick your game in, switch it on and you'll be playing... a game! These days convergence means that consoles are supposedly required by law to be everything and more. The Playstation3 is mostly more regarded as a Blu-Ray player than a games machine these days. The Wii and 360 are also guilty of this - fancy viewing your digital photos? Listening to music? Gah. These are little things to help bring in more casuals so it's probably a good thing, but this blog comes from the mindset of a crusty old vagrant who has been playing games since the Atari VCS.

Another project I've been working on is The Cult of Karl video. I've grabbed a trial version of Flash CS3 for my home PC and currently taking the animatic storyboards I've been sketching up on my trusty Moleskin while half-watching Top Gear repeats, and editing them together to the music of Mr. Chris Merritt. It's very addicting and exciting to see it slowly take shape because I have a love for animated music promos and I sometimes think I missed my calling due to the lousy anticipation which my old Animation degree course instilled in me and other students. I suppose I kind of fell into games development, but still had it in my mind as a thing I would most likely enjoy doing. The thing with working in the games industry as an artist is that you do get some free reign on things, but there's always a commanding art director to steer the look of your artwork. This music promo is 100% me - undiluted and I have total control of it. This is very exciting for me. The process is super-fluid and a lot of the imagery which currently resides on The Cult of Karl Facebook album comes from my mind as I've been listening to the tune during shopping trips and while in work.

I need to start crafting some vector-based elements for testing in Illustrator, get them imported into Flash and slowly flesh out the animatic until it's fully-fledged. After this, I'll need to get myself a YouTube non-porn account and upload it there. I think it's a great thing to do because it's my way of saying "Cheers!" to Chris Merritt for coming up with such a great tune. Also I'll be exorcising some demons as I attempted a music video during my final year of my Animation degree but failed to finish the thing. I'm determined to finish this thing and get it out there. I think a lot of animators these days are extremely lucky to have something like YouTube to showcase their portfolios and talent. When I was working on my degree, the internet was still in its infancy and YouTube was but a crazy dream along with Wikipedia. Now? It allows me to show you Mr. Merritt's new promo for Mimic (from the excellent Pixie and the Bear double album) -

Hopefully these pet projects will drive me onto bigger things - the last thing I need is artistic stagnation. I envy those on DeviantArt with a lot of time on their hands and a lot of talent. There's people who craft incredible digital paintings, create wonderful characters and intricate pixel art. I feel like I can do these things too, but I need to be a teenager again with a carefree abandon and no notion of morality or mortgages. Maybe my 360 red-ringing was a blessing in disguise, I dunno.

So that's all for today - I need to grab a cuppa, sit down and do some more Karl stuff. Stay tuned for the next update coming soon - I'll be revealing future travel plans to foreign lands! (I can't reveal where and when yet, needless to say I'm extremely stoked and also quite unnerved by it all).

Normally E3 is considered by many gamers as an early Christmas - all their favourite developers and hardware manufacturers congregate in a large room in Los Angeles and reveal wonderous surprises. When console launches coincide with E3, there's mass hysteria and the brains of gamers worldwide fizz and bubble with possibilities. This year though, things were a lot more different. No console launches to be found due to the current lifecycles of "The Big Three" - the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, the PlayStation 3 (or PLAYSTATION 3 as Sony's PR would want me to type) and the Nintendo Wii. Instead we have software launches to look forward to and the normal procedure in this case is that each of the three companies would have media briefings to showcase these imminent releases. By the way, this round-up sounds like I attended E3 but in actual fact I caught it in wonderous stream-o-vision while working hard on Wheelman. Oh... so... tired....

Shake off that tiredness, Steve! On with the opinions!

Microsoft were first with Don Mattrick (ex-EA boss and kinda slimy) introducing Fallout 3 (which looked good but still didn't get my pulse racing), Fable 2 (looking excellent - a definite purchase) and Gears of War 2 (ditto). From that point on, the hardcore - and arguably the core userbase of the Xbox 360 - were thrown a curveball with the redesign of the Xbox 360 dashboard. It's been touted as "the first time ever a piece of consumer electronics has been re-invented through software". The result? The introduction of 3D avatars (or Microsoft's answer to Miis) and a much more plainer interface. There was a stunned silence when the audience saw the result and when I saw the thing I took an instant dislike to it. I've kind of grown to love it a little though since I was shown that a theme background could bring it out somewhat. The 3D avatars were instantly hated by the hardcore, even though they're mature versions of the Mii characters seen on the Wii. We were then shown how these avatars could be dressed up and customised and my first thought was that the clothing industry would no doubt get involved and micro-transaction the arse out of consumers once more. We saw Xbox Live Primetime which had virtual TV shows featuring the avatars which could be played at certain times of the day/night - like proper shows. This makes some kind of sense as TV shows are losing out to videogames with dwlindling audiences. Microsoft also got a deal with Netflix, which means nothing to anyone outside the US.

Thankfully Xbox Live Arcade's future offerings gave me some hope - Galaga Legends is a "true" sequel to Galaga in the same way that Pac-Man Championship is a "true" sequel to Pac-Man - and it's recommended by me too. Sometimes games forget to be fun, but Pac-Man Championship is a joy to play and looks lush to boot. Geometry Wars 2 looks insanely promising too - with four player co-op and lots more stuff being thrown on screen at you. Microsoft did show some of the offerings of the XNA Community and it seems like they're desperate for someone to come along and give the titles a lot more polish to make them more appealing. They still look like they've been put together in someone's bedroom - which they probably have. Still, XNA is a promising prospect and already one title has hit Live - Schzoid. Not had a chance to check this out yet...

There were many casual announcements too - Lips was revealed with slightly more than a Singstar rip-off, there was some Eye Toy rip-off from Codemasters which allows users to play interactive games using the Xbox Live Vision camera, although there was a killer feature to this product which took all the "filmed" footage and turned it into a cheesy movie trailer. Plenty of possibilities in a party atmosphere! Sadly I don't really "do" parties these days. I'm not sure if it's me being a bit older and wiser or not being bothered. Maybe I'm too tired these days, who knows. There was one more surprise in that after the head honcho of Square Enix announced a trio of JRPGs, he surprised everyone by announcing that Final Fantasy XIII was coming to the console. Another Sony exclusive shot to hell? Interestingly, this announcement possibly prevented Bungie from announcing their new game - which has been confirmed as another Halo title - though this was a telling sign. Mattrick said they didn't need to announce it due to their "embarassment of riches" though I'm sure the Halo announcement could have replaced Duffy's live performance?

The FFXIII announcement annoyed one person in particular - the Fragmaster himself!

The genius thing about is that it's not real yet so many people think it is. Mwhahaa!

Sony were next the following afternoon, and they definitely know how to put on a show with huge Sony monitor screens dominating the auditorium. Jack Tretton held proceedings and the usual Sony stuff came out - the "victory" of Blu-Ray over HD-DVD, the Cell processor, their phrase of "new generation" which is an attempt to overshadow "next gen" somewhat, the completely pointless video reel of developers harping on about the Playstation 3's superior power (one of the devs even mentioned that Blu-Ray has "infinite storage". It's all there to appease the fanboys and to attempt to brainwash those who have yet to buy a PS3. To give Sony their dues, they do mention they have three consoles out there which are successful - the PS3, PS2 and PSP. Then there's the possibility that PS2 owners will all eventually migrate to the PS3. I think I sometimes doubt the nature/intention of the PS3 as a games console when Jack himself reckons that the PS3 is "the cheapest and most future-proof Blu-Ray player out there". Hey, it also plays games!

Resistance 2 was rolled out and I was a bit unsure about those "impressive visuals". It didn't look all that incredible for a console which is supposedly better than the 360 with low resolution textures and (in the level) some uninspiring level design. The official trailer was a lot more impressive though only if the footage in that trailer was actually from the game. Sony have a history of blatantly lying to people over stuff like that. The Getaway on the PS3 had some dubious screenshots taken using the engine (they did the same with the PS2 version) and the E3 2006 Killzone 2 trailer which was supposedly all in-game footage only shows up what they've achieved with Killzone 2 recently. Sure, it looks lovely but it doesn't look as lovely as that FMV trailer of two years back.

Sony want the Playstation Network to be the "leader in online console gaming" which means it's targeting Xbox Live. Live's been something of a success story for Microsoft, though it does cost £40 a year whereas Sony's service is free to the customer. Tretton also put the boot in by saying that their service won't be full of games only to boast about how many more games they have in their catalogue. Straight after this, some of the new PSN games were shown and the only ones which really intrigued and impressed were Flower (from the guys who brought us the lush Flow), Pixeljunk Eden (think LocoRoco but wearing a trendwhore t-shirt) and the Ratchet and Clank title. The imaginatively-titled "Massive Action Game" boasted 256 players online fighting each other. It's an interesting prospect, but it'll be even more interesting to see how it's handled and whether there's going to be huge portions of lag to contend with. This was backed up with a CGI trailer. As was God of War III. GT5 Prologue - the proper version, and not the demo you can buy, will also give petrolheads their own streaming TV content with Top Gear episodes, exclusive content and more besides.

Home - or Sony's answer to Second Life - was mentioned again and Tretton continued thanking everyone for their patience - because it seems like content takes an age to appear from Sony's studios these days. Little Big Planet is still a promising prospect, even though the game was used as some kind of horrific statistic tool to show just how wonderfully Sony's doing these days. I mean take GT5 - I'm sure it's been 4 years in development or something and it still ain't fully finished. What gives? No real surprises either, which I think annoyed a lot of the gaming public. Where's our surprises? Where's our early Christmas presents? Maybe Nintendo can save E3!

Nope.

Nintendo's E3 media briefing was pretty lacklustre. Again, no real surprises. Nintendo President Satoru Iwata brought out a load of stats and statistics about how Nintendo is making crazy money and thus don't really need to try. I think that's the whole problem with them - they're resting on their laurels. Animal Crossing on the Wii was showcased and this encapsulates them "not reallly trying". Animal Crossing on the Wii is just like it was on the DS and bits of it from the Gamecube. There's a new city area and the new microphone peripheral known from this day forth as WiiSpeak can be used to link up with pals online so you can go fishing and do all the same stuff you've done in other Animal Crossings of the past. I think UK:R summed up my feelings nicely. They revealed Shaun White Snowboarding with Mr Shaun White doing snowboarding on... the Wii Balance Board! The one thing which is even more rare than the Wii itself!

They also showed a new peripheral called Motion Plus which is attached to the end of the Wii Remote and will give the player a more responsive Wii Remote, though surely Nintendo should have provided this in the Wii Remote as standard? Maybe it's going to be in new Wii Remotes and it should make previous Wii games a lot more enjoyable by being more responsive than they were previously... it seems crazy though. They're even bringing out a new rubber coat for this extended controller... *sigh* Well, it's being bundled with Wii Sports Resort which includes the hardcore pastime of frisbee tossing! There's also sword fighting with the Wii Remotes used as you'd expect, and it's quite promising. I just want Lucasfilm to do something special with that technology - they did showcase The Clone Wars for Wii which appears to be a fighting game, though not first person. You know what I'm thinking? Star Wars Arcade on the Wii including those first person lightsabre bits. C'mon, it'll be incredible! It won't happen though, it's too obvious.

What else? Not much. GTA Chinatown Wars on the DS(!) was the only real hardcore announcement. Call of Duty 5 using the Zapper... not much else to report really. Reggie Fils Amis flexed his pecs as he virtually glided on the waves in a Wii Sports Resort minigame which had flashbacks of Wave Race 64 (why isn't there a Wave Race for the Wii yet?!) and... *sigh* not much else. Nintendo did post an interview to try and appease the angry masses though a quick glance at the comments (I hate reading comments from rabid gamers half the time anyway) will show you that the hardcore are still annoyed. There were some games shown at E3 a bit more in detail like Mirror's Edge which were great to see, though the conferences seemed to stamp a feeling of emptiness and paled into insignificance than the more surprising and bombastic E3 offerings of the past. Leipzig should reveal more hopefully - let's cross our fingers.

Midway had a good showing at E3 - MK vs. DC looked fantastic and some writers have cited the game to be "a return to form" and even comparing it to the holy grail of the series - Mortal Kombat 2. This Is Vegas was coming on nicely and TNA Impact could well be the contender which the Smackdown series needs. Our game was also showcased and I'd like to share with you some footage from the event with help from Mr. Shaun Himmerick -

Notice that this is the first time we've shown the public the Airjack move - it allows Milo to seamlessly move from one vehicle to another. It's inspired by Pursuit Force though I think we've used this inspiration well in that it keeps the flow of the game moving. In GTA4, there's a period where you have to stop your trashed car, get out of trashed car and flag down another car. I think it suits our game more, although we've definitely got more of a Burnout flavour than a GTA4 flavour. I think people loved using the vehicle melee attack too and overall it was mostly good reception. I say mostly because one of the write-ups wasn't the best thing ever written about our game. I'm not going to call it out, but it mostly dissed the E3 build before ending the article with "with more polish this could make a rental". For fuck's sake. It's work-in-progress and it's always being fine-tuned. This is "journalism" though it also reeks of anti-Midway bias. Another article from the same site ended the MK vs DC article with something like "let's see if this can aid Midway's floundering franchise". Floundering? Jeez.

This is what we've got to put up with. It's alarming to see this - like a secret campaign to continually brown-nose what Midway is doing whatever is done. Gamers are a fickle lot though that write-up is doing us no favours - now it seems Midway isn't just trying to win over gamers but the press too. It's a slap in the face for all the hard work we're putting into the game and I only hope the writer of that article falls down a huge concrete staircase into a tank of hungry sharks.

Back onto the development of Wheelman and we're nearing a crucial deadline to get everything we want into the game. The studio's gotten more busy as the night approaches, though I've been crunching since the start of the year and been in a constant state of crunch. I recently played a more refined on-foot section of the game and it's amazing how it's evolved from what it used to be to something which is a lot more engaging. I think advancements like this can only make me feel a lot better about what I'm working on. I still try my hardest to ignore the rabid comments of the gaming populace... it's crazy how one minute they can be trash-talking with "LOL! Vin Diesel!" and the next with "Wow, this has surprised me! Er, unLOL?". It's always extremes. The studio has seen departures and it's always hard when people you know or see in the office spirit themselves away to other job opportunities. Facebook status updates are all well and informative, but they don't really cut it.

I can't stop listening to Chris Merritt's new double album - Pixie and the Bear. I was extremely humbled when I got an e-mail from his manager/drummer thanking me for the support and offering to send me mp3 files of the album as I wait for the "physical" album to be sent. Amazing! The album is such a joy to discover and listen to - there's so much melodic goodness and many of the tracks are uplifting and joyous celebrations. I'm working on The Cult of Karl music video as a fan project and so far it's coming on nicely. I thought I'd upload some character sketches of progress...

It's going to be a Flash-based video and I'm busy storyboarding the thing. My deadline is the end of this year... let's see how well I do! Wheelman's insane crunch should be a thing of the past soon as we gear down for the next project, so I'll use this time very wisely indeed.

Tell me you've seen the Watchman trailer. Ohmy!

Tell me you've seen the Terminator Salvation trailer? Ohmy!

Both are promising. Zack Snyder's 300 was a joy for me especially since I saw the thing in HD for the first viewing in the comfort of my home. I also like the fact Terminator Salvation is part of another trilogy and isn't pretending to be Terminator 4 even though people will treat it as such. Both these movies will be something to look forward to - life should always be full of things to look forward to, otherwise it's totally pointless.

I also just went to see Wall-E and it's quite an departure from usual Pixar movies - for a start, the first 10 minutes of the movie were both beautifully realised and quite depressing as the last working robot on planet Earth is stacking up skyscrapers of squashed metal cubes from humanity's consumerist blow-out. The huge mega-corporation known as BnL - or Buy n Large - is responsible for this and decides to take humanity off the planet and onto a huge spaceship called the Axiom while BnL robots clean up the mess. Wall-E is the last working robot on the planet and it's quite strange to see him navigate around the desolate surface while other Wall-E robots lie in pieces or deactivated. Wall-E's world is soon changed by the appearance of a scanning robot called Eve - whom he falls in love with, naturally.

It's definitely heart-warming and there's some very close home truths seeing that all of the Axiom passengers are hugely obese and ride about on hovering lazyboys while nattering to other people online. Sound familiar? The Axiom interior is a huge vast shopping mall and entertainment palace although you have to think about how these people got on board in the first place - surely all of humanity couldn't afford to travel on the Axiom? It didn't really look like all of humanity was on there too. Maybe BnL stranded the humans who couldn't afford to travel to a fate on a doomed planet? (This is meant to be a kids film too...!). I enjoyed it although it still doesn't top my all-time Pixar favourite - The Incredibles!

I also didn't care for the use of live action humans in the movie too - seems like Pixar are continuing the trend with John Carter of Mars. It's weird how jarring they are, though it's even weirder that there's live action humans and CGI fat people. Is this an admittance that Pixar can't actually replicate humans convincingly? Either give me 100% CGI or forget it. To quote Karl Pilkington - "we're going backwards". I was also surprised the price of the ticket was so low (£3.50) but maybe that had something to do with the half-an-hour of adverts, trailers and the like (mostly aimed at the young in the audience, grrr). Whoa, already it's caused controversy..!

Next week is going to be interesting - I think I'll have all the work I need to have done for Wheelman... well, done. There's an obvious shortfall of work over time though and I'm sure I'll be given more tasks to do. This generates more questions than answers although this is more food for thought. Nomnomnom. Yes, I'm being delibrately obscure for a very good reason.

One day I'll tell you about it.

These days I don't seem to have any fun. There's a simple reason for this - money. Ever since the advent of me becoming a fully independant human being, I've ironically become like a lot of other people - struck down with a self-imposed mortgage and a plethora of bills to wade through. Almost half my wages go on the aforementioned mortgage, which then leaves all the other bills to be bulldozed away from my already-crumbling bank account. Recently I got an insanely huge bill for electricity when I realised that it was a very bad idea to leave my heating on at a low temperature setting all the time - and - try out the sexy underfloor heating. Yep, I have underfloor heating. How modern! Modern and bloody expensive. For three months, the bill totalled £340. This is quite a gap from the £135 I expected the bill to come to. The itemisation revealed that, yep, the heat was insanely expensive. After a panicked phone call to nPower (incidentally, their call centre is down the road from me), they told me to take the readings of the meter for seven consecutive days - with no heating turned on - then get back to them, where I would then have an invigorating phone call of reading out numbers. My curiosity has put me out of pocket of £205. I still find it funny they welcome me to nPower (being my first bill and all) with a huge debt. That's no way to greet someone for the first time!

This is it though - when I first moved in, I assumed there would be only one reading - like most ye olde fashioned meters out there. This is new-fangled though, and new often means needlessly complicated. It's almost as if the creators of these things are trying to impress the ladies of the world somehow. So this meter has three readings - one for day usage, one for night usage and one for heat. I'm not sure if this includes water heating or not - it probably does. It's my responsibility though to sort it - like a lot of things in this flat. I mentioned the bubbling sink unjoy last time and this is sometimes coupled with the alarming sound of dripping water from a pipe behind my washing machine. Well, a quick e-mail to the supervisor and it turns out the seller of this place was hiding another thing - she had the opportunity a while ago to get someone out to clean the pipes and remove the blockage. It seems to be a common thing for these flats, though she bottled it. From the e-mail, it turns out that I'd have to call out the team responsible, somehow get the person who lives below me (her name is Anna) to be at home when these guys come round, and then - oh yes, this is the best bit - shell out £150 to get the job sorted. My supervisor tells me that this is fine because I can give the reciept to her and she can reimburse me via the maintenace fee I pay every month anyway.

Sometimes I realise why some people live together - the convienience of it all. Sharing the load. Sharing the burden of constant bills eating away. "You can pay the mortgage, I'll pay the bills!". Surely it's not as blatant as that? Surely there has to be some element of love in there? Love confuses the crap out of me. I have often been in love with many women though it's always been from afar and always been the unrequited type of love. I've never been the one to go up to someone and ask them out - I always feel that the arseholes of the world have got that covered and I'd just pimp away into the shadows. I got an e-mail recently from someone who noticed my okcupid account - a man, although he was actually one of the guys who worked on the website. "Hey, why haven't you got a photo up on your profile? You'll get more people contacting you and have more fun!". My account kind of imploded when I had a hissy fit over the whole notion of these dating sites. Looking through some of the profiles, you see many women who are frankly scary individuals. I guess this is why they have profiles up on okcupid though, right? Did I just generalise and say that all crazy women frequent online dating sites? I have wondered whether I should make a project out of trying to find out more about love as an emotion, as motivation, as a tangible thing. So instead of the selflessness of hunting for that so-called "true love", I can make it into a project which will inform me and other people. An anonymous love blog? Could be!

The bastard upstairs neighbours are leaving next Thursday. I couldn't contain the manic laughter which emitted from me while I was rustling up some Earl Grey and Jaffa Cakes. It will be nice to no longer hear the banging, the noise, the inconsiderate things which may have annoyed other tenants. I try my best to not make any noise when I come in from work though the scum above me don't seem to have that in their nature. I only hope the next inhabitants will be a lot less like those arses upstairs.

Although I'm now in lockdown mode (all heating off and penny-pinching schemes in motion), I actually went out with some guys from work and enjoyed myself for once. We met up in The Gate in Newcastle and waiting around there, I realised why I hated the place so much. It's such an unusual thing - the cinema is on the top floor so you get families and the like heading up there, though it's also what can be best described as a shopping mall of hedonism - so there's nightclubs (we noted that Mood has subliminal vagina patterns on their windows), pubs, a casino (we had the last Midway Christmas do there) and restaurants. The plan was to eat in Nando's, but past experience of their food from the constant late nights in the office turned me off this and it was agreed that as we were waiting so long for two more of our party, we'd head off into Frankie and Benny's and enjoy some delicious Italian food. I have to add at this point that I haven't been in there before, though I was glad I did because the BBQ Chicken pizza I had there was the best pizza I've ever, ever eaten. It was like a pizza to be savoured - every chew was slowed down to catch all the subtle flavours. This also compared favourably to the piffling amounts of food you would get from Nando's. I will definitely go to F&B's again as I was torn between four different menu items.

Kung Fu Panda was the film we also treated ourselves to. I didn't pick up any snacks because - hell - I've got a mortgage and prices in the cinema these days have become dangerously close to DVD pricing. I'm glad I saw it at the cinema though - not only is it a beautiful film, but there were some genuine moments throughout which made the collective masses laugh, gasp and look in awe. The soundtrack was achingly well-crafted, the animation was super-fluid (probably the best character-driven CGI animation I've seen, actually) and it wasn't until the end where I discovered some of the voice talent included Ian McShane as the baddy, Lucy Lui, Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman aaaaand Jackie Chan! As a monkey! A monkey who kicked ass! The film is so much more than a movie for kids - I cannot recommend this movie strongly enough. Rotten Tomatoes also has the film rated highly - I think it's great that Dreamworks are bringing the fight to Pixar in such a way. It can only motivate them to come up with a better movie, right? Actually, Wall-E could be a blast. I wasn't that keen on seeing Cars. Still not seen it.

So, yep. A treat though one I wish I could sustain on a weekly basis - alas, it feels like I've been sitting on my hands to the point that they feel numb. Next month I have to renew the hornydog.co.uk site - though I will be killing off daisyjones.co.uk as it was a crazy pipe dream which these days I couldn't sustain due to all this work. *sigh* All this work. We're nearing the end of Wheelman's development and we're getting close to the polish stage. I've been working on the thing all this year (and some of last year) with extended hours, as have other people. There's this core unit of developers within the studio who really want the game to succeed. We've been getting excellent feedback amongst the dirge of "LOL Midway" which I'm getting sick and tired of hearing these days. For fuck's sake, we're doing our best to make the best game we can out of the time we're given. Give us a break. As mentioned previously, gamers are a fickle lot. They can run with opinions which range from pure excitement to pure derision. I really believe this game is going to do well for us and the company - there's a hefty marketing budget, but I think we've got a few advantages to also consider.

For a start, we're a Teen-rated game. People have mentioned that this could be the GTA-esque purchase for people who couldn't get a copy due to not being sneaky enough or just, I dunno, obeying the law and not playing a Mature-rated game? We're a lot more accessible than GTA4 in some respects too - we've got handling models which are a lot more forgiving than GTA4. That could either be an advantage or a disadvantage depending on how you look at it. The common mistake of comparing us to GTA4 is also a moot point when you consider we're more spiritually linked with Driver ("when it was good" to quote one preview) than anything else. Interestingly, Ubisoft Newcastle are working on a Driver sequel and EA have announced Need For Speed - Undercover which is achingly close to what we're trying to achieve with Wheelman. It's reassuring that bigger companies like Ubisoft and EA are considering this as an option for future game releases. It shows that we're doing something right.

At the same time that we're nearing the end of development, some workmates are leaving the company. I'm assuming it's down to the natural cycle of game development where people feel like they've closed the pages of one book and want to get stuck into a different book. I can't help but feel dislocated from this process when I see other people going through with it. Personally, I would like to stick around and see what comes up next after Wheelman. I feel like I've settled in nicely and (mostly) enjoying the work which I'm doing. Of course, there are greivances which I am determined to outline after the game is released and we're going through the post mortem. I've worked almost 9 years in the games industry and there's always been a harrowing sense of deja vu related to how games are developed. We'll see if anything will be learnt from this game's development and see if it'll make the next title we work on a more fluid experience. I'm looking forward to getting back to normal hours so I can start producing my own artwork again - persue other disciplines like character design and modelling - and feel like I'm progressing with my time on this planet. As mentioned... we'll see.

We were recently bigged up on the 1Up show -

Top Gear's back! Last week I was in fits of giggles when the threesome decided to buy cars and turn them into Police cars. Hopefully YouTube hasn't cut the above clips from the annuls of digital space and time so you too can see why I was giggling. There's something about that ice cream van jingle which cracks me up everytime. This week's episode was indulgence for - cars! No hijinx - just car reviews and the like, though it was still perfectly watchable. Next week there's promises of their crazy antics again. Can't wait!

I also can't wait for the next episode of Doctor Who. Season Four has been mostly enjoyable with some truly stand-out episodes (the claustrophobic Midnight and the wonderful parallel universe shennanigans of Turn Left come to mind), though The Stolen Earth was a bombastic orgy of Doctor Who fan fiction and I absolutely adored it. No spoilers though the ending was quite a shock, which has left forums questioning if the BBC really are that hardcore. If you've seen the episode, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

How's that for a taster!

Music-wise, I recently enjoyed Ben Folds live at the Newcastle Academy. It was quite the show - I danced, I geeked out and I sung loud and proud to a lot of the tunes he belted out with his very, very talented band. I knew this would be a special night when the guys tore into classic old Ben Folds Five tunes and sounded like every part the band which started it all. I think I was in the wrong part of the crowd though - I tried to get as close as possible to Mr. Folds to see his crazy jazz hands fritter across the keyboard, though it turned out that the more vocal fanbase were right of the stage to obsessively stare at Ben's mug. There was strong audience participation and the support from Corn Mo was quite special too. Corn Mo appears to be a bearded gentleman who may have been on some kind of narcotic, though this did not dampen his enthusiasm or the fact he had a rather impressive set of lungs too.

There were many, many geeky ladies in amongst the crowd too. *sigh*

In other news, Chris Merritt has released his new album - The Pixie And The Bear. Sadly I can only currently order it from PayPal (I don't like 'em) and there's no link to download just the mp3s though I keep asking so maybe one day... I think it's probably a bad thing I'd rather have an instant fix than patiently wait for the physical album.

I mentioned GTA4 and I'm still playing it, although there's a few things which - after playing for so long - piss me off. This definitely isn't the 10/10 game which so many have proclaimed. These include -

• There's one mission which is quite tough later on. Like all missions in GTA4, repeated play will reward you with the foresight to know what to do. Unfortunately failure means restarting the mission and then partaking in five minutes of unskippable driving. Bad game design, surely?

• Police. They're bastards. When driving, they're a lot more tamer than in previous GTA incarnations, but on foot? Oh, god. I was doing an Assassin mission when I managed to acquire three stars. Police soon streamed into the building I was shooting criminals - and continuned to stream in. It got to the point where it was pointless to go on because shooting these unrelenting cops (who quite like running at you from out of cover) meant the wanted levels would increase and more cops would come at you.

• That fucking mobile phone. It's a nuisance. Sure, it's great to do stuff with it but sadly the metagame of keeping everyone happy wears thin way too quickly. I go on a date with someone and Brucie decides to phone me as I'm travelling to the date. What to do? Either way, if I deny one person then they get pissed with me. Also characters like Roman and Little Jacob end up in different areas of the map - they give you an in-game hour to travel there, though sometimes it's frankly impossible to get there in time meaning - yep - they get pissed off with you again. Characters I phone have their phones switched off at times, so why can't I do the same with mine?

• Car flipping. Sometimes it's extremely easy to turn a corner and somehow flip your car into a barrel roll. I know there's an achievement for this, but it's quite alarming that it can be done so easily. While we're on the subject of driving - trees. Why can I drive into a lamppost made from metal and knock it to the floor where I end up stopping dead when I hit a spindly tree? Just so you know - Wheelman will let you drive through both smaller trees and lampposts with little or no fuss. Hooray!

• Pigeons. I'm a sucker for running about a town finding hidden stuff, but the pigeons are the most evil of all hidden things. For a start, they're tiny and can be absolutely anywhere. They can't be killed by a baseball bat or any melee weapon, so you have to use a pistol. Shooting a pistol in a pedestrianised area means police though... *sigh* In one instance, I found two pigeons in a Medical Centre with a huge staircase. By the time I found and shot the second pigeon, a mass of police were waiting for me downstairs and I barely escaped with very little health. Out of 200, I've found about 32 - and that's after 70 hours of gameplay. It's crazy.

GTA4 does a lot of things so, so right. The environment still amazes me - so many little details, so much character. Totally believable in the same way the environments in Assassin's Creed were (shame about the gameplay...). The water in the game looks and reacts in amazing ways. The helicopters are a joy to control (as are the bikes) and although I cited dodgy handling as a minus point, prolonged driving rewards you with a handling system full of nuances and little touches. The characters are also all nicely realised - I love taking out some of the characters in my car and getting a little backstory on their lives. I have to question a game getting a perfect score when it's far from perfect - these only seem to crop up in the later stages of a hyped-up game - Halo 3 is another example of this.

I've now decided that any future game purchases will have to be made by trading in other games. It's the only way I can save money and also could be a sneaky motivational factor into making me complete the games I currently own. Am I mad for doing this? I'm not sure. I lament sometimes the things I purchased when I was young and carefree, though I can't go thinking back to those times. The past is just that - the past. I only wish I had the funds to enjoy my life more. I spent very little at the shops today while I was in my mental lockdown mode - only buying the things I actually needed. I picked up my usual bag of popcorn and thought... "Do I really need this?". Nope, I don't. Back on the shelf it went.

Heart-breaking.

The BBC are a crafty lot. They impose a licence fee on the entire nation and have TV adverts with friendly warnings that we should all pay unless we want a huge fine. The plus side of this is that we get television with no advertising and that's a good thing, right? I did have to shake my fist at Auntie Beeb when the fee increased in value due to the advent of digital TV - all well and good to those who could get it, but at the time I didn't have the chance to. Now in the space year of 2008, it all makes sense. iPlayer has been a huge success online with the fact it's an opportunity to catch up on shows you've missed, but now it's been integrated into my cable service and - my god - it's the future.

I lament at the lack of jetpacs and meals in pill form, but the fact I can sit down on my second-hand sofa, select the iPlayer option and watch again a wide selection of television shows is something which has suddenly made the licence fee payments all the more bearable to endure. There are teething troubles - sometimes iPlayer will lock up my cable box and I have to reset it, but like my magic kettle which can boil water in 3 seconds flat but make a huge noise doing it, miracles can be temperamental little things of wonder.

Speaking of my magic kettle, I was looking for filters for it in Comet and I chanced upon the display - it had changed a bit. Next to the price was a little note which made me laugh out loud in the middle of the store. What did it say?

• "Important: The Quick Cup is not a Kettle. The water is heated to 90C. This is 10C cooler than required to make a perfect cup of black tea according to the Tea Council. So it maybe not for tea connoisseurs but good enough for the rest of us."

Really. That's what it said. I have evidence but the photo looks a little bit like someone's smeared Vasoline on the lens. Couldn't they have pushed for that extra 10C? I feel rather gimped and cheated now. As this revelation hit me, the tannoy harped on about how you can buy a "futureproof" television which is HD compatible, though I know you can never have anything futureproof these days. There will be SuperHD, SuperMegaHD and all other kinds of HD improvements which will make the impulse purchaser feel cheated. My Sony Bravia (pictured) has given me so far a year of joyous non-complaint. I don't care if it isn't "proper" 1080p. It makes my videogames look lovelier, and for a graphics whore like myself, this is a plus point.

Before I go on, I've spent all weekend at home resting before the final push on Wheelman. I've not had a weekend off in a while and it feels rather strange. I was out and about shopping for stuff today if only to get away from the bastard neighbours above me. Even as I type, their out-of-control brat who visits at weekends (how convienient!) is running up and down their flat. I think they're the main reason why this is the "problem" block and maybe why the seller of this flat wanted out. There was a notice on the front door regarding the fact someone had vomited on the porch steps "again". I know who was responsible. Yep. The cunts upstairs. There's good news though - I phoned the supervisor and she told me they're out in the next two months - "maybe even sooner". The owner of the flat will be selling the place instead of renting, which means you'll get someone more responsible than those fly-by-night renters that I used to be part of. There's a light at the end of the tunnel and I'm glad of that. I'm counting the days and will celebrate when they fuck off to somewhere far away from here.

We had a pretty eventful work shindig on the Friday. Free bar and a lot of workmates to natter to and have fun with, although my art director was persuasive enough to make me forget about the cardinal rule of "Never Mix Your Drinks". Sambuca is an evil liquid to behold and I was introduced to it on that night. I do remember all of the night though - I have a habit these days of remembering what happened including some impromptu dancing, persuading my HR manager to send a text message to her boyfriend with the content "I am sex. Would you like sex? I am sex." and queueing at a cashpoint outside Digital nightclub, only to have a lesbian tell me she should be at the front of the queue because "she's a lesbian". At that point I knew the night was tainted so I staggered home and unwisely recorded some rambling on my camera phone. It was unwise because moment-of-clarity ranting actually is extremely truthful and logical - mostly about how as humans we must have purpose. We've got hearts and souls and if we don't fill those things with love and compassion, we're merely shells with no purpose.

I think at this point in time I'm very much a shell of a man.

The intense work schedule hasn't helped - I've had very little time to myself and at times I feel a bit like someone's took me out of a drawer, used me and then I go back into the drawer to be used again the very next day. This weekend break has been a bit of a good thing - one of the guys at the shindig persauded me that I should do it and I'm glad I have done. I also need to start being creative for myself too - so I will begin work on the first painting for a friend of mine in earnest. Maybe even tonight - I'll get a thumbnail Painter sketch produced for him to aid with colours, etc. then next weekend I can run down to the local crafts store and pick up a canvas and what I need to begin work. Saying that, my walls in this flat are mostly bare and need some prettification.

Ah, the flat. Summer has almost arrived and it's only now that I appreciate just how wonderful it is. Inconsiderate neighbours aside, the view from my window which I'm typing this very e-mail is full of trees, blossom and singing birds in the sunshine. It's quite a transformation and one which isn't lost on me. Actually, let's take a quick photo...

No bad, eh? So this feels a lot more like a sanctuary for me to kick back and relax. Sure, there's no one else to relax with and maybe one day I'll rectify that. Solitude can be the best and worst thing. I'm sure some people who know me are envious, but I'm not sure I should be considered a lucky person due to this. I'll continue to meander through this life and see where it leads.

TheSixtyOne is still filling my heart and ears with beautiful tunes. As a source of independant music, it's a very intoxicating one. You can check out my profile here and see what I've bumped, favourited and played to death. I recommend it to anyone who likes discovering new music. Speaking of which, I'm also planning on producing an animated music promo for Chris Merritt's excellent tribute to Karl Pilkington called "Cult of Karl". I'm currently making a list of all the best things Karl has uttered during his fantastic XFM shows and the podcasts he produced with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. I've also got a shopping list of what I would like to see in the video. It's going to be hard work but I really want to give something back to Chris and also Karl for providing me with countless hours of enjoyment while working.

I've also been researching animated music videos and below are a selection of three music promos which I only just discovered while researching. There's something a lot more enjoyable watching a music video than some horrible pop-pap with idiotic product placement for Nokia phones and the like. So first of all...

This is a video for the Atomic Swindlers called Float by an extremely talented animator/designer called Joel Trussel. His style reminds me a lot of Genndy Tartakovsky though this is in no way a bad thing. He's got more music promos out in the wild and they're all brilliantly executed. I love the story-telling behind this promo very much. Next...

This is a favourite Zero 7 track of mine though the video captures the spirit of the song brilliantly. There's rotoscoping involved, but it's creatively done and I can empathise a lot with the subject matter.

This was number one in Fasthack's Top 10 Animated Music Promos (Fasthack has become an insta-bookmark due to this) - it's new to me and it's an insane journey through the evolution of humanity - tied up nicely to the subject matter of the song in question, Pearl Jam's "Do The Evolution". It's a frantic joy-ride of a video and that what makes it all the more incredible when seeing it for the first time.

I'll post progress of the video and the painting up on this blog - stay tuned!

So Grand Theft Auto 4 arrived on Tuesday into my anticipating hands. The day had been taken off work and I mentally prepared myself for the gamegasm which was to come. Thankfully I wasn't disappointed - GTA4 is an insanely dense experience which floored me from the beginning. Imagine the scene - I'm an Russian immigrant called Niko Bellic and I've just driven my drunken cousin back to his "palace". He shoots off in his taxi back to his workplace and I stand in his pokey flat looking around at my new surroundings. There's a bed, a scattering of furniture resembling a kitchen and a television.

"Press LB to watch TV"

Hmm. Watch TV? Okay. Maybe it'll be a 5 minute looping cut scene. Nope. There's whole channels on there. Programmes with ad breaks! So for the next 30 minutes of the game, I'm watching a television on my television - a perfect satire of American broadcasting. Things get even more mind-bogglingly insane when Ricky Gervais appears. A GTA version of him. In a comedy club you can actually visit. Virtua-Rick then performs a section from one of his stand-up routines complete with rather explicit languange before I get more programming. I have to wrench myself from the virtual television and into the outside world of Liberty City.

Another moment of jaw-droppery - it's now daylight and Liberty City is moving at its own pace. Pedestrians go about their business, traffic meanders on the roads and I decide to go for a casual stroll. A run-down funfair grabs my attention and I try to take in all the detail of this new world - there's too much. It's totally believable and astoundingly detailed. I stroll past a bowling alley called Memory Lanes. Hmmm, can I go in? Fuck! I can! Not just that - I can play bowling. This bowling alley had it's own microcosm of life too - people were bowling and jumping up in the air when they got a strike. Already this game has sold me and I've not even scratch the surface.

GTA4 is an astounding achievement - for a start it's probably the most expensive videogame ever created - $100million! Of course, it made all that back times four on day one sales and will continue to earn Take Two nice pots of cash. This is good news for the industry in general, though bad news for our good friend, Jack Thompson. For those who don't know who he is, the man is an attorney and a crusader to stop the sale of so-called "murder simulators" like GTA. GTA4 has just been released, so he has gotten back into the limelight. I recently heard a woeful "interview" with him on the we're-so-cool-it-hurts Destructoid podcast and it wasn't good. The interviewer was a British fella who was too soft-spoken and tried a bit too hard to be humourous, as Jack made good on this opportunity and started to bring out all the stuff involving how GTA encourages you to shoot cops, kill hookers, etc.

Except it doesn't. I've been playing GTA4 now and I've done many things. I've taken my girlfriend out to that bowling alley. I've got drunk with my cousin. I've enjoyed the company of a hooker though didn't beat up on her. I escaped police without shooting a single cop. GTA is what you want it to be. When you kill people on missions to progress through the game, they're bad people. Drug dealers. Gangsters. Small time crooks. Jack did bring up some valid points through all the "please don't talk over me" vocal dick-dangling - like the fact the game shouldn't be sold to minors. Jack came across as someone who would gladly talk over his mother to get his points across, even if they're as wrong as "there's sexual content in GTA4 which is worse than Hot Coffee". Again, a falsehood. Lies. "Have you even played the game, Jack?" asked the nervous interviewer. Question was dodged. Jack ended up ending the interview immaturely like a small child who's been told by his Mum that it's time for bed. I think Jack doesn't realise a lot of gamers out there are educated people who know when a bullshit merchant comes along.

GTA4 has a very solid storyline and the characters are brilliant in their conception. Niko has had a history of war and he recounts horrific tales of the past. There's no happiness associated with these tales - no sick boasts that Mr. Thompson would expect. Niko has been fooled by his cousin into thinking Liberty City is the land of opportunity, but is really a place of crooks and gangsters. The cut scenes all look gorgeously realised and I'm surprised at the quantum leap of quality from San Andreas on the Xbox to now. Also worth noting is the multiplayer mode - it's a fantastic addition to an already-brimming package and I'm still amazed how smooth it feels and how right it all is. It's going to keep me occupied for many, many weeks to come.

Of course, there's the comparison some guys in the office are having with Wheelman... I think we're okay in that we're offering something different to GTA4 and we know it. I know we can't compete directly but we can offer alternatives. I hope the guys working on Saints Row 2 have enough to be different and fresh - I did note some clever in-jokes in GTA4 including a road called Stillwater Avenue (direct reference to Saints Row) and a high-rise building called The Majestic which is also featured in Crackdown. Oh, and the Hot Coffee Shop..!

So I'm not even halfway through this long weekend and I feel like I've already achieved a great deal. I had a fantastic time out with some workmates courtesy of the company (and learnt a lot too). I've scored a sofa and chair. I've done some artwork! I'm almost tempted to go out for a jog tomorrow for the first time in ages. I'll be knackered but accomplished - like I always am these days.

Oh, one more thing. This -

This is why videogames make me smile. Enjoy your long weekends!

Is it that time again? I don my marketing cape and self-indulge on the kind words the gaming press have spoken about Wheelman? We've been collating all the previews internally in the office and each one has filled us with happy feelings deep inside our guts - the press really, really like what they saw when they all attended the Midway Gamers' Day in Las Vegas almost a week ago. We've got a write-up in MCV (the industry paper) and amongst all the hedonistic beverage shunting and lady-oggles, there's more positivity.

I think there's a definite sea change in the air for the company - only recent did the long-time boss of Midway, David Zucker, stepped down to allow Matt Booty to step up and lead the company. I'm not sure if it's a permanent or a interim position but MCV liked the fact that someone who's worked in the company for 17 years and worked his way up to the top was extremely passionate about the line up. I've said this many times in my blog already - I love working for Midway. I love the people who I work with and I enjoy delving into the company twiki pages and seeing games slowly take form - as a gamer and a bit of a fanboy, this is a fantastic thing to experience. I really hope this is our year and we start to be taken seriously - I think we have this somewhat negative reputation with a selection of gamers which needs to be shook off.

Here's a round up of some of the lovely things the press have been saying... (click on the links for full stories)

• Eurogamer - "As you might expect, The Wheelman is a game with an awful lot of destruction going on. Practically every piece of scenery can be smashed to bits in spectacular fashion, while the vehicle damage modelling has been lavished with a similarly pleasing degree of care."
• Gamespy - "Overall, our first impressions [The] Wheelman are rather positive. Car combat is easy to jump into and handles better than many other sandbox titles on the market. The stunts and rams give it tiny hints of Burnout. We'd like to see Midway Newcastle address a few problem areas, but overall, the driving is rather satisfying and the streets of Barcelona look great."
• Gamezone - "Wheelman is shaping up to be a fine entry into the action-driving genre, and should be something to get excited for when it launches later this year."
• 1UP - "Where the game sets itself apart -- both from L.A. Rush and games like Driver -- is in a series of attacks you can perform while driving. You can shoot at other vehicles. You have special moves you can pull off such as spinning your car 180 degrees and firing at enemies behind you in slow motion. And you can melee attack with your car."
• GamesRadar - "The highlight of our time with Wheelman was the car melee attack and the supercharged Cyclone attack, while the on-foot shooting mission left us lukewarm. We’re certainly hoping Midway can build an entertaining world around the awesome driving features, and we eagerly await a deeper look at street-level Barcelona."
• TeamXbox - "The title has been in development for just over two years, with gameplay and visuals certainly showing an attention to detail. Most of all, our short tryout delivered a bunch of thrills, something we expect will carry throughout the entire game. If that happens, maybe Diesel will complete his transition from Hollywood actor to game-universe icon."
• IGN - "It's be easy to want to label this as sort of a vanity project for Diesel, but the fact remains that Escape from Butcher Bay was an excellent game. There's definitely a lot of potential in [The] Wheelman, and Diesel's lengthy absence from the big screen (he was last seen in a brief cameo in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift might mean that there are plenty of fans out there who can't wait for his next project."
• Kotaku - "If you've ever wanted to be involved in a classic Hollywood car chase movie, Midway has a game for you. Wheelman is based on the upcoming Vin Diesel movie of the same name and puts the player in control of Mr. Diesel himself. It is an sandbox action driving game taking place in a nicely recreated Barcelona."
• Gamespot - "Then there's the city itself, a beautiful re-creation of the coastal Spanish city of Barcelona. As producers put it, this isn't a street-by-street reproduction of the city, but all of the famous landmarks (such as the famous La Sagrada Familia church) will be in the game. During our time with the game, we saw huge, open areas such as the Gran Via de les Cortes Catalanes, and narrow alleys reminiscent of the city's Barri Gotic district."
• Destructoid - "It might sound silly on paper, but in practice, the “Vehicle Melee” adds an interesting element to the frenetic chases that will presumably be littered throughout the game. Nailing a perfectly time “Vehicle Melee” attack feels good, and doesn’t slow down the action for the second."
• WorthPlaying - "Instead of the usual sludge of generic licensed songs that plague open world games, Wheelman had an original soundtrack clearly inspired by the music of the actual classic car chase films, and it perfectly captured the way a good film uses music. Tracks were purely instrumental, monumental during major car chases and then light and airy during relaxed scenes. Moving toward enemies provoked tense music, while bursts of action called for suitable bursts of brass and heavy synth bass. The music did a lot to help imagine the finished product while playing the early version, and in the final game could prove to be a marvelous finishing touch."
• videogamer.com - "We reckon that Wheelman's got something even better than the vehicle melee, and that's the Cyclone special move, a 180 degree slow motion vehicle spin which flips the camera into the car, providing you with an over the shoulder view to take shots at other cars through your windscreen. The Cyclone, triggered by a d-pad press, is just one of a series of super moves that will be time limited and only available when your Focus Meter is filled by driving dangerously."

*gasp*

Okay, so this may look like self-promotion, but sod it. We've been working on this game for almost two years now and it's hard not to feel a sense of pride when everyone's work gets praise. Okay - there is room for improvement and the team are taking on board all the feedback from the press. I think it's great we're being compared favourably with  established franchises like Burnout, GTA, Driver and Pursuit Force - in fact, it's great that some writers are citing that Wheelman could be what Driver 3 should have been. I remember playing the original Driver on the PSOne and I fell in love with the handling, the environments... the last level was a particular challenge and probably one of the hardest missions in any game ever, though completing it was a wonderful moment. It's strange that the game used to have the sub-title of "You Are The Wheelman" and developed by Reflections - now Ubisoft-owned and a relatively short bus journey across the Tyne.

It's great to get feedback which is constructive, though not so when you see comments from gamers who fall under the Internet Dickwad Theory. Are we making the game for such people? As I've mentioned in earlier posts, gamers are a fickle lot. They get enticed by the hype machine and then spat out again when they realise the product which was hyped wasn't to their expectations. We've all had such moments. Halo 2 did it for me. I was amazed by it all but the sheen soon wore off and it was back to the same old formula of Flood being uninvited guests and ruining the whole game. Even GTA4 - which will be in my hands very, very soon - is a game I'm not going to hype myself into a lather over because I've been there before. We have no say on the hype of Wheelman - we continue to work long hours to make sure that the game can be produced to the best of our abilities.

The long hours and takeaways are seeing a slow gradual change to my gut - it's increasing in size, that much is certain. It's kind of like a slow increase which you don't really notice until it's too late - so I'm thinking about taking up running again. Gateshead has plenty of people running about as they train for events, and being a runner for two years and running the Great North Run twice for charities, I do feel a sadness that I'm not still running. If I do decide to start up again, I need to begin at square one and take it nice and slowly - I can't jump in straight away because I know that won't really do me much good. My trusty iPod will also help me with the lovely Nike Plus shizzle which I used last year - it's a great motivator and helped me a great deal to stop getting insanely bored when running the same routes. I could buy a bike, but bikes cost money. I still have my running gear in my wardrobe and it needs to feel geek-sweat again.

I've also been thinking a bit about me as a singularity. I was on the phone to Mum yesterday night and I almost asked her if she was disappointed that I hadn't shacked up to a lucky lady. I'm sure she's more happy that her son has become totally independant and that's a great thing for her... I'd like to know if it would be better if I was independant but with someone. Do I actually need to be in a relationship to be happy? Can't I just wing it on my own like I've done all my life? Do I need to hunt down love or will it find me? So many questions regarding this... sure, there's been times when I've got into bed and seen the empty space next to me. I'm sure when I eventually get hold of a lovely sofa or two that I'll be envisioning someone sitting there smiling back at me.

I miss coming home to a full house. I come from a large family and we all used to live in quite a suitably large house near the seaside. We'd all have our own lives outside of the house, but we'd always come back home and become a family unit - albeit a fractured one at times. Eventually when I had to leave home, it was done quickly - it was almost like a bank heist. Ed was waiting in his car with my possessions and I jumped in and scooted off to Wales - I remember I had a row with my Mum regarding her cats. I think things got worse by the year when I was living at home though a lot of shit had happened along the way which almost felt like it was an inevitability that I was destined to leave. There's always a sense in this life that things naturally degrade and deteriorate - even us as human beings slowly malfunction.

It's not the same to come home here and have no one to hug and be welcomed home... do I need that? I don't know. I need some sense of belonging at times, and I know that living in NewcastleGateshead has made me feel like I belonged here more than I have elsewhere. I think I'm scared that if I do get into a relationship, it would feel like it would be destined to deteriorate in the same way as everything else seems to do...

Tennyson was right.

Ohnos! Steve's gone all profound! Quick, slap on something videogamey!!! (NOTE - language is NSFW!)

*phew*

Quick update - I've pulled out of the Innocent AGM because the price to get down to London these days is extortionate and it could be put to better use - like a sofa. Easy come, easy go. Just a shame I'm not as rich as I used to be.