5 posts tagged “playstation 3”

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.

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.

Interesting title there, yes? I grant you... "exploding soup". How the heck did I end up with that? Well, let's get that out of the way first. After working on a Saturday - although I spent a lot of the day deleting old e-mails and playing our latest build - I thought I'd treat myself to a bit of shopping. Somerfield is where I do the "small shop" whereas the bigger Sainsbury's is the larger shop. Somerfield it was then - I was on food and needed to get back home. I bought the regulars and decided to pick up the hallowed Soup of Gods - freshly-made butternut squash soup. Mmm! The checkout girl suspiciously double-bagged the first bag of my shopping though neglected to double-bag the next - although all that was in that bag was some apples, a loaf of fairly light bread and the aforementioned soup.

SOUP ASPLODE

So I was almost home. A matter of yards. I was quite chuffed that I had myself another sample of lovely soup when I heard the sound which is that of fear regarding soup-love. "Clunk!". I looked behind to see the soup on the pavement but intact. Phew. I looked at the bag which contained the soup and comically it had a round hole in it. I thought I could pop the soup back in and make it, so I picked it up and as I was about to put the soup back in - and by the way, the fresh soup is packaged in a plastic cup with a lid - the whole bag disintegrated and the soup fell a lot harder onto the pavement. Waste of food. Soup halfway up my leg. Me cursing Somerfield for their shoddy bags. I won't stand for it though - I'm sending them the soup-covered wreck of a bag complete with my reciept, a semi piss-taking letter and a request for some free soup. I think I'm within my rights, right? Needless to say from now on I'll be taking no chances and triple bagging my shopping from Somerfield. It is strange that the bags also ask to be recycled, yet there's no recycling bin in the shop.

Media Vs. Videogaming

I hate it when the media seems to be throwing everything it can at videogaming. Actually, an interesting comment made by someone online confirmed my fears - people these days are spending less time watching television and videogames are a contributing factor. What better way to get back at videogames than to directly attack them and put them down? Fox News this week had a spectacular display of foot-in-mouth over the alleged "explicit sex scene" in Mass Effect - below is the footage from this non-story complete with the hilariously named "Se-xbox" moniker...

Note that it also claims that the game features "Full Digital Nudity And Sex". As you can see, Cooper Lawrence appears on the show to pass comment - and hang on - isn't that a new book you want to plug with you posing like you're God's Gift to womankind? Geoff Keighley thankfully defends the game and gets his facts straight - even to the point where he asks Cooper if she's actually played the game. "No!" she giggles. Well, that's interesting. She's criticising a game she hasn't even played. As soon as this feature ended and basically Geoff was frozen out of more defending and sensible discussion, things got into motion pretty quickly...

When Facts Go Wrong 3!

Firstly, EA's Jeff Brown (VP of Communications) sent a letter to Fox citing that their comments were wholly inaccurate and were mostly conducted by people who hadn't even played the game. Here's some snippets -

• Your headline above the televised story read: "New videogame shows full digital nudity and sex." Fact: Mass Effect does not include explicit or frontal nudity. Love scenes in non-interactive sequences include side and profile shots - a vantage frequently used in many prime-time television shows. It's also worth noting that the game requires players to develop complex relationships before characters can become intimate and players can chose to avoid the love scenes altogether.

• FNC voice-over reporter says: "You'll see full digital nudity and the ability for players to engage in graphic sex."
  Fact: Sex scenes in Mass Effect are not graphic. These scenes are very similar to sex sequences frequently seen on network television in prime time.
  

• FNC reporter says: "Critics say Mass Effect is being marketed to kids and teenagers."Fact: That is flat out false. Mass Effect and all related marketing has been reviewed by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) and rated Mature - appropriate for players 17-years and older. ESRB routinely counsels retailers on requesting proof of age in selling M-rated titles and the system has been lauded by members of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission. In practical terms, the ratings work as well or better than those used for warning viewers about television content.

Fox replied with no apology but invited EA's VP of Communications on the show to defend the game further. Thankfully this was seen right away as a transparent attempt by Fox to keep the discussion going, even though it was a discussion based on conjecture and not experience - something that many videogame news write-ups happen to be built from. It gets better...

Don't Fuck With The Internet.

Many gamers soon realised that they could blackball Cooper Lawrence's book via the power of amazon.com reviews and soon enough they had given the book negative reviews and added some insightful comment like "I've not read the book, but it's a terrible read" to mirror Lawrence's comments about Mass Effect. Amazon.com keep deleting the negative reviews, but they keep on being added. This ended up with Lawrence realising what a stupid moo she is and has since apologised for this...

“I recognize that I misspoke,” she said. “I really regret saying that, and now that I’ve seen the game and seen the sex scenes it’s kind of a joke. Before the show I had asked somebody about what they had heard, and they had said it’s like pornography,” she added. “But it’s not like pornography. I’ve seen episodes of ‘Lost’ that are more sexually explicit.”

Adam Sessler commented about this whole debacle rather eloquently on G4's X-Play -

This whole thing just outlines how uninformed the media are regarding videogames. They see each one with suspicion and regard all gamers as slackers and should be treated as such. I'm sure many people including myself are insulted by this. Whenever a murder occurs, there's a rush to see what videogames were in the murderer's living space and then blame it on them. Forget those films! Forget those television shows! Another excuse is that because the game is truly an interactive experience, it is an obvious connection to bad things. I blame several factors in this - not the games. Parents who aren't responsible (who have also caused the mess of feral kids running about this country I live in) allowing their kids to play M-Rated/18 Certificate games. Also the person who is playing the game - if he or she is mentally unstable then he should have carers who realise that he shouldn't be playing impressionable games... or watching impressionable movies. It's sad that Videogames versus The Media will roll on and on and on. As gaming gets more popular, this will be the case. It just gets me angry.

Assassin's Creed - Done!

Still in the world of videogaming - I completed Assassin's Creed the other night. It actually surprised me with its ending and wasn't actually what I expected. I'm not going to reveal spoilers, but let's just say that a sequel is definitely possible. I can still play it and dive back into the Animus to check out where those hidden flags are for more lovely achievements, though the overall gameplay of the game does let down the truly beautiful looks of it. Dodgy fight system, repetitive mission tasks... the fact is though that Assassin's Creed has been a very successful thing for Ubisoft - to the point that they could tell EA to piss off as the mighty EA did want to buy Ubisoft and no doubt borgify them into the EA Collective. For this reason alone, Assassin's Creed must be celebrated.

The Console Sea Change.

This article does it for me. It's basically Sony's plans for their dubiously-marketed PLAYSTATION 3(ahem) - you may care to note that there's no mention of videogaming in Sony's plans for console dominance - just lots of other stuff. This is a case of history repeating itself with the PS2 and the Dreamcast where Sega released a flurry of incredible games, though the unwashed masses indulged in the PS2 for the small factor that it could play DVDs and get the support from Sony's team of paid-off developers. The Dreamcast died a death it didn't deserve. The Sony bigwigs think that they'll overtake the installed user base of the Xbox 360, and I think they could do it - though only because of all that guff in that article and not the videogaming part of the console. As a games developer, this worries me somewhat. I think Sony show their consumer goods-shaped heart on their sleeve.

Hooray for Blu-Ray?

Blu-Ray is now the deciding factor for a lot of PS3 purchases and not the gaming side - which has been stupendously lacklustre compared to the 360's consistant output. It depresses me that this is the case - when Sony bring out a "new" console, it's more often than not the same model but in a different colour - and people will buy it. People cite that all this console purchasing is "good news for the industry" but I think otherwise - it's good news for the movie industry due to all those Blu-Ray purchases. Early adopters of Blu-Ray players are officially knackered by the fact that you can update the PS3 firmwear to a more newer version of the Blu-Ray player due to the PS3's online capability. The whole thing stinks, and is the reason why developer support from Sony sucks so much and it's also why a lot of Sony's PR is as smug as they are. The consumer are guinea pigs munching up another Sony-created media format before they inevitably bring out the next one. I'm happy to have not bought into the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray "war" because I knew it would end in tears.

Lastly...

House-purchasing update - survey has been approved and now I need to phone up for Contents Insurance quotes (gah). I put it off last week though need to sort it out this week. Also! I've decided to throw away HP's crappy wireless keyboard and mouse and getting my hands on a wired keyboard and mouse. Fuck wireless. I mean - even if the keyboard and mouse from HP was great, they still go through batteries like they were Jaffa Cakes and I think I'd actually save money with a wired keyboard and mouse. In fact, I'm typing this on my cheap-ass £5 USB keyboard and yet it's still 100 times more reliable than the wireless keyboard. I'm an old-fashioned kind of fella. I miss wires. Oh, and the in-built webcam is still knackered. Word to the wise - HP sucks.