5 posts tagged “vin diesel”

It's official - Wii Fit is now a part of my life. Every day at around 7PM, I jump onto the Wii Balance Board and get my BMI reading. The picture above was the first BMI reading I got from it, and I was kind of shocked. Obese? Me? Overweight, yep. I am that. Not obese though. Obese? Thing must be broken. Yet I look down and see the developer belly which was hewn from countless late-nighters and an infinite conveyor belt of takeaway meals. Actually, the way Wii Fit shows you your BMI is kind of horrendous if you're weight conscious - your Mii is on screen and thin to start with, but slowly expands as the BMI increases. The end flourish is a comedy sound effect which does nothing to help the fact that there's a cartoon version of yourself on screen looking pretty fat and miserable.

Wii Fit has helped me in the past two weeks or so to a much more nicer BMI of 30.15 - I yearn for the day when I'm not in the painfully red obese oblong and am sitting in the pink glow of being overweight. It's still not a good place to be, but a hell of a lot better than obese. I've been on the thing often as well as complimenting the workouts with some running again. Ah, I've missed the running. I am determined to lose this gut though. Half my wardrobe now is unwearable - I've got slim-fit hipster jeans slowly getting covered in dust, and shirts which don't button up the way they were designed.

I was extremely lucky to pick up Wii Fit though - I somehow managed to get to PC World the exact moment they got stock in (and ironically it was after a 3km run..!) and now I'm getting serious with some rhythm boxing courtesy of a trainer Mii who sounds a lot like Jason Stratham. It's crazy I come out of those workouts with a sweat on, but it all helps. I've also cut out completely the chocolate and sweets. Biscuits? None of that sweet cakey nonsense for me. I've forsaken my treats for a gutless body. Is it natural to be doing this? I guess I just don't want to bounce as much these days.

I went for my annual visit with my optician at the weekend - although my optician has now become a Scottish fella with worse eyesight than me. Could this even be possible? He managed to put myself at ease with all the wacky things which are currently happening with my eyes. I have floaters - one main one for each eye - which drift into vision sometimes to say hello. I hate floaters. I also have the joylessness of seeing light sources shimmer in a next-gen-bloom-kind-of-way - it was a nice novelty to begin with, walking home with a dreamlike sheen over all. Now? It's kind of bloody irritating, evenmoreso when I was out running one night and not only were the lights all shimmery, but there was mist about - which only seemed to make the effect much worse. Oh, and the glasses constantly steaming up through my exertions too. So, yep. I hate my vision.

Mr. Optician also told me of the things to expect if (when?) one of my retinas decides to detach itself from the back of the eyeball. My old optician told me that I should expect a "curtain effect", though the new optician was a lot more descriptive - expect plenty more floaters than usual (like shitloads more) followed by flashes of white light and then the dreaded curtain effect. When that happens, I should phone them up without hesitation. I've been told that this is what you would expect if you are short of sight. On the good news side of things, he did mention that my eyesight hasn't changed that much - although his final test (a new one I didn't experience last year) proved I may soon need *two* sets of glasses - one for reading and one for normal everyday activity.

Getting old sucks. So does the prospect of spending money on spectacles - although my healthcare covers £200 of it all, so I decided to get a new pair anyway and also a pair of sunglasses in lieu of the pair I lost when I was training for the GNR a few years back. I did feel like not taking my vision for granted when I left there, so I decided to watch Watchmen at the wonderous Tyneside Cinema. Verdict? Really enjoyed it, although I've not read the book in a while so maybe when I re-read the book, I can get angry with the film like half of the critics out there. There were some very brilliant bits in the movie though, and there was some pretty impressive gore too, especially the scrap in the alleyway. People who have seen the movie will know exactly what I mean.

What else? Wheelman is going to be out next week! I'm quite excited about this - feedback on the demo has been majorly positive. There are still the naysayers out there, but we've got the majority and that'll do us. The game should be out the 25th (I've seen 24th somewhere though...) in the US and the 27th in the UK. To celebrate this, Ubisoft have produced a brand new trailer which - quite frankly - kicks serious booty -

Now Ubisoft produce some lovely trailers - they have a knack of marrying mainstream music with the action (check out these trailers for Prince of Persia and Assassin's Creed and try and tell me otherwise, oh doubter of things!) and the above is no exception. I think it puts Wheelman firmly in the "fun" department. "Look, it's not a seriously gritty thing like GTA4. It lets you shunt cars, spin 180 and shoot shit and leap from car to car with gay abandon!". This trailer has got a lot of positive feedback, though I think it's interesting that the Midway logo has been toned down somewhat - you can see it at the end, but you need to squint a bit.

I think that says a lot about the company in this day and age. I can imagine the marketing men of Ubisoft getting together and realising that the Midway logo is a negative than a positive. This is sad news, though perhaps unsurprising given the slow descent which has been happening. Vin's also interviewed very, very briefly for GameTrailers TV (Note the caption for the interview doesn't mention Midway Newcastle) and it's pretty much telling that Vin doesn't really seem to know too much about the game. I've crunched on that motherfucker for over a year, the least he can do is know a bit more about it.

Vin recently appeared on a French chat show for Fast and Furious, and looked kind of unsettled when Wheelman was shown on big screens and one of the hosts handed him a controller. The result? Vin bouncing off walls and spectacularly ending the demonstration slamming into a roadblock. Thankfully a cop car exploded and the audience went crazy. Thank god for that exploding cop car, or else it would have looked kind of stupid. The host then showed Vin "how it should be done". Vin tried to rescue the situation describing the "Reverse Cyclone" (It's actually called The Cyclone, Vin) by getting up out of his chair and turning on the spot while shooting an imaginary pistol.

So, yep. I get the feeling that Vin would rather talk more about the new Riddick game than Wheelman - that's the impression I get. Has Wheelman changed from the original vision of a straight-laced GTA clone - in Vin's eyes? Is he pissed off that you can do all that fun arcadey stuff? I'm extremely glad we didn't go down the GTA4 route of chore-like gameplay and the seriousness of it all. GTA San Andreas had parachutes and jetpacks. What happened?

I think Wheelman will do well at retail - I think there's been that turnaround we've all hoped for when the gamers of the world realise what we're not trying to be. "GTA4 Meets Burnout" seems like a good description. It's going to be an interesting couple of weeks - review scores (the ones I've heard of have been very favourable), the game's release, sales figures and that possibility of a sequel. If we get to do a sequel, I wouldn't mind at all - it'll be great to see where else we can take the franchise and add the things that we wanted to, but couldn't.

It'll be interesting to see if Vin's on board too - or at least care enough for a sequel. Maybe if we have an unlockable Riddick skin, he'd be interested.

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.

At last! I can show you and talk all about the game I've been working on for almost 2 years - Wheelman! How can this be? Well, Midway have an annual Gamers' Day where they show their games in development to various members of the press - it's quite insane how many reporters will there - possibly at this very minute - in Las Vegas. They're starting to feed information to various online gaming sites and to start with, we have the Gametrailers outing of a brand-new trailer -

Those of you who have seen the 2006 trailer may be a little disappointed that it makes an appearance again alongside all the in-game stuff (I would have wanted more in-game footage personally), but it's been well received by the community at Gametrailers.com - currently standing at a rating of 7.9 and 45,000 views. There's stuff in the trailer which makes me wince because I know it's old footage from an old build - the build we currently have is a lot better in a lot of ways. We've been having regular focus tests and getting feedback to help refine the experience, and I think we've done pretty well so far.

I'm looking forward to gameplay footage - like seeing the whole of the first mission - Frantic - from start to finish. There's a lot of crazy stuff going on and the game throws you right in the thick of it - it's a tutorial mode at heart, but one which is a lot more enjoyable and action-packed than a lot of tutorial modes out there. As you progress through the game, you'll unlock more gamplay modes - much like you could do in Midway's Stranglehold - which are added to your arsenal of combat both on-foot and in-car.

The notion of celebration on New Years Eve (Is it New Year's? Apostrophe confusion has gripped the many...) is an old and tired one for me. Maybe it's because I'm old and tired. I've been party to many frustrating New Year Celebrations - one of which I will never forget. It happened in The Krazy House in Liverpool and one hilarious female reveller thought it would be funny to steal the glasses from my face and disappear into the throng. I was seething and (even worse) pissed so I spent a lot of time shouting at blurry strangers. I got my glasses back but they were scratched to buggery. I rarely get lucky with people on New Year too. You'd think that would be the best time to play tonsil hockey, but alas. Nope. I've had little luck in that respect. Fireworks also lose their appeal after you've seen them for the first... I dunno... ten times? So sod it. I'm staying in.

Party Pooper!

Yep. Even my headings pour scorn on my decision to stay in, but I'll be slowly drinking while watching the terrible television schedules and/or drunkenly increasing my Gamerscore through online Xbox Live antics. The service has recently been up and down and Xbox Live frontman Major Nelson (aka Larry Hyrb) has tried to calm down a lot of angry people who have received Xbox 360 consoles for Christmas and discovered that they can't play online, although the problem is a lot more than that - the fact that the console needs to be online to do certain things. When the service goes down, people piss and moan - although they have a right to if they've paid for the service. I've not noticed that much because I don't normally play online with randoms because it can be a scary process. I remember a long session of Uno where a lot of the players were half-naked men in darkened rooms. I know of this because they all owned Xbox Live Vision cameras. It's quite something to actually know who you're playing with. Still, I'll see if I can pluck up the courage to go online tonight.

365 Update!

Well, one of my resolutions is to get 365 finished - it's all well and good to have all 365 pieces of artwork to hand but I spent last night arranging them into folders. I need to scan in a load more and track down what pieces of artwork were done on what date. I'm going to be using CreateSpace to get the book published - I used blurb and although they did a great job with the printing of my 365Lite! book for my Mum as a Christmas pressie, CreateSpace offers a lot more than blurb - including the acceptance of .pdf files (meaning InDesign!), your own ISBN number and - because the company is owned by Amazon - the book will be sold through their website! I'm also wondering about connecting the book to charity so profits raised will go to good causes. I ran many miles for Cancer Research UK and Macmillan Cancer Support and I'm thinking I can raise money for them without all that painful training stuff. As way of an apology, here's a sneaky peek at a piece of 365 artwork never seen anywhere else -

365 Preview

I'm looking forward to getting everything arranged. One of the lovely things about Vista is that with the large icons, it'll display a sexy large icon with a preview image of what's in that folder - this'll prove invaluable for seeing what gaps are left in what months and tracking down that artwork. While on the subject of "Good Things About Vista" - the tabbed folder navigation is pretty awesome too and helped me cut through the monotony of arranging images in various folders. Actually, it feels a lot like when I was younger and I filled out sticker albums. There are gaps which will slowly get closed off. I'm actually very excited by it all - it'll show a snapshot of my year as an artist. There were times when it felt like a chore, but they were few.

Get Me Back To Work!

Honestly... I'm fed up of being holed up here with no work to go to. "You must be mad!" I hear you shout. Nope. Work kept me busy and industrious. Anyone who's been in a state of depression will understand the importance of this. When I was unemployed, it did no good to me and was a factor in my second Trip To The Abyss Albeit In A Different Coloured Submarine. I was thinking about getting my job at Midway and the interview I had with them was such an incredible thing - they were friendly, warm and generous in their comments. The previous interviews I had with other companies were a different matter. Shall I name names? One interview was wonderously confused by the interviewers changing the job role halfway through the interview thus making my carefully-collated portfolio pretty redundant. Another interview almost felt like a bear trap - like they wanted me to fail, slip up or make a wrong move. I think in this industry there's sometimes a feeling that some people are piss-takers. I've worked with a few in my career who have basically blagged their way into the job and they've been instrumental in ruining games. It's a shame, but there you go. I'm glad I'm in a studio where (mostly) everyone has an enthusiasm and a feeling they don't want to produce a turd of a game.

Avoiding The Brown Stuff

Wheelman is always in my thoughts. I guess it can't be helped when I've been working on it this long... there's still obstacles to vault over and negotiate although I'm determined to do a good job. One thing about working for a company which practically saved your life is that you don't take the piss - I'm not exaggerating either. I was quite close to something horrible and I was pulled away from that. I looked at the Midway site last night and was freaked out by the forums and the general concensus on the company's image. It is frustrating in a way - I was very lucky to see Stranglehold's progress on our company twiki and when it eventually became a physical entity on shelves, I was proud and happy to see the game's lifecycle. The guys in Chicago worked crazy hours to get the game produced, and it shows. I was even lucky to thank one of the designers for producing the Museum Level - which I really, really enjoyed. So you have Stranglehold which I consider to be a very un-Midway title. There's been un-Midway titles in the past like Psi-Ops and The Suffering which have been bold in their direction although the sales figures painted a different picture. Talk to people who played both games though and they will state how much they enjoyed them.

On The Other Hand...

...there's Cruis'n.

Yep, that's not a PSOne title. It's on the Wii and sometimes it frustrates me that stuff like this comes out when Midway are trying to "not do an Atari" and end up in the shit. Sadly it's more commercially viable for them to release the game as is instead of spending more time working on it. All the rep built up by Stranglehold gets put back... the same happened with Hour of Victory too - it could have had more time to be tinkered with, but it came out and received a panning. Recently Blacksite also suffered the same fate - not enough time to make it the game it could have been. I was gutted when co-op was dropped and when I got my hands on a copy, there are moments when it truly shines (the first appearance of the spire hitting that shopping plaza in slow motion comes to mind) but there are also moments when there's literally nothing happening. The driving bits are frustrating at first, but you soon get kinda used to them. Harvey Smith did comment about development on Blacksite being "fucked" in an obvious attempt to get kicked out by Midway so he can work on Deus Ex 3 - but when you have worked in the industry for as long as I have, you realise that all development is fucked to a certain degree. I think it was a shame that Blacksite appeared so close to the release of Call of Duty 4 - which is a simply astounding assault on the senses. It does a lot of things very well indeed and really immerses you.

Wheelman T-shirt!

What I'm Trying To Say...

I'm a gamer. I've played games for a long time on a variety of systems and I love the immersion. Getting into the industry was great for me as a gamer because I got a kick (and still do) out of the creative processes behind the games which have given me so much enjoyment over the years. The mistake people make with companies like Midway, Rockstar, Ubisoft and EA (to name a few) is that their output is from one studio when it's actually a collective from many different studios. Midway Newcastle is the only UK-based Midway studio and I think that's going to be hugely important in the games we produce. You'll find Wheelman will have a different feel and look to the US-based Midway output and that's something I'm glad to be part of. There's not been much press of the game though January will change this as Midway's Gamers Day will give gamers the chance to play the game for the first time. I chatted to one of my superiors about how worried I was that Wheelman wasn't in many of the "What to look out for in 2008" articles in the gaming press, but he assured me that Midway didn't want to shoot their load too soon with Wheelman coverage. There's a method to this madness...

Secret Sauce.

There's things we're doing with Wheelman which are quite, quite insane. For a start, we're using the Unreal Engine to power the game and the engine in question wasn't really designed for high-speed action/driving games. Thankfully we have a team of programmers who have come up with scary miracles. The game is looking gorgeous and I really want to show people the game in action too. We have gameplay elements which are quite fresh and different to the norm.  We have a soundtrack which fooled me into thinking someone was watching The Bourne Supremacy on DVD for research purposes - they were actually playing a build of the game..! We don't have a huge tacky graphic with the word "Nitrous!" pop on screen and block your view (although if it does come up as a suggestion, I will shout it down from the highest mountain). Most importantly - we have a team of people who are mostly gamers and know what's great and what's shite. Things have been designed, re-designed and tested. I like the fact there are outspoken and vocal people on the team who aren't treating the job as a way to pay off their mortgages. In short - Wheelman isn't even close to Cruis'n. Be assured of that. To get you in the spirit of Wheelman, check out the FMV trailer which has been doing the rounds for some time. I'm hopeful that gameplay footage will soon be forthcoming and people can start judging for themselves... (This is a YEAR OLD..!)

Finally...

Well, it's been something of an update (and a long time coming) but I hope you all had a great Christmas (or whatever festiveness you happen to celebrate around this time of year). Christmas at home was bliss - almost no arguments (although there was a minor squabble over sausages) and it was good to see everyone again. I also hope you have a great New Year although it's already technically 2008 on the other side of the planet. My resolutions? I have quite a few, but I will take a leaf out of Tracey Emin's book regarding them. I'm treating them more as rules than resolutions which I will stick to. I think as you get older that re- rules become more and more important to the way you live your life. When you're a carefree hipster (you know - the type that ruined the third season of The Mighty Boosh), you don't care much for them. You're more interested in kissing random strangers when the bells chime and have no fear of you losing your spectacles as you have perfect eyesight anyway. Grrrr. I'll leave you with a clip of when the Boosh set its adventures in fantastical places and not some grim area of Camden...

I'm currently at home on my new spanky PC after the old one conked out on me after almost 5 years of noisy service. It was built for me by a good friend of mine and he saw fit to not only include a fan with a metal biohazard symbol, but many more fans too! Some neon finished the look of black exterior with a blue sheen emitting from within. I soon named this once-amazing beast Flawed Jesus - as I spent a lot of time trying to get the thing working well without all the coughs and hiccups. It got so bad I had my mate's phone number on the desktop so I could remember it from memory if anything happened.

"What fate befell Flawed Jesus?" I hear you ask. Well, all it took was one 2Mb file to make Windows stop working and halt my machine. *sob* I looked on my live-in landlord's PC for any way of fixing it. One idea was to take out and plug the keyboard back in. Surely not..! Nope. Not. So what else? Techy stuff, obviously. Techy stuff involving administrator passwords. Problem was that my friend couldn't remember if a password had been put in there, let alone if there actually was one. Soooooo, I turned to the dark side and used a dodgy copy to repair my copy of Windows XP. When I say "repair", I actually mean "install everything again without touching the stuff which isn't Windows-based". The code gave me 0 days of usage and now I can only access my hard drives via the Safe Mode - and sadly I can't extract any of those files unless I grab a USB cradle thing to slot the drives in and transfer to Stalag Vista.

My Computer Is Personal Again. (TM)

People have mocked me for my purchase. The HP IQ 771 is helluva sexy with zero fan noise (it's strange to hear a hard drive click and whirr again), integrated DVD, Live TV tuner, Windows Media Center, slots-a-plenty, wireless shizzle and - get this - a touch-screen monitor. For an arty-type like me, this is a nice thing. Sadly I'm unsure if all my old XP programs will work on Vista. I need to check out whether I can use Painter with the touch-screen on this. I want my AdMuncher back! I hear Firefox is possible to put on Vista, but it's painful. Vista itself looks lovely - lots of gradients and glass effect windows which doubtlessly put my Dual Core processor in a spin. For fuck's sake, this is meant to be the future. Why the hell does stuff still not instantly appear on here? Where's my jetpack? Etc?

So until I get myself all shizzled up here, there will not be much art created and uploaded. It'll take a bit of getting used to. Meanwhile, I'm tempted to set up the other PC and get XP on there - a proper copy of it. Maybe. It's very hard to track down copies these days - in PC World, you would think they would give the user a choice. Nope. No choice. As it says on the back of their products - "One Microsoft Way". I did muse about getting an Apple Mac, though that would instantly make me a smug fucker and that's no good. Those PC Mac ads... the PC seems a nicer chap than the Mac arsehole.

Getting To Know Me...

So a little bit about me - this bit is known as "my job". I'm currently working as a GUI Artist at Midway Newcastle. This means I get to design the gift wrapping of a videogame - in this case, Wheelman. It's a next gen racer-type-shooter thing featuring everyone's favourite bald-headed actor. No, no! Not Ben Kingsley! Although... no, it's Vin Diesel. He who has a name which is an anagram of "I End Lives". You don't fuck with Vin, especially when he's making films like The Pacifier. Didn't harm Arnold's career, right?

Hmm.

I use a lot of packages including Max, Flash, Illustrator, Photoshop and After Effects. I'm also doing some Actionscript-type logic with Flash to produce the front end and HUD elements. It's a bit laborious, but worth it in the end - although I will be getting into work at 7ish in the morning and leaving at 6.30 in the evening. If I had a wife and kids, I would surely be divorced by now. Luckily (?) I don't. Nope. Plenty of spare time and no one to hug in the middle of the night. I need to be productive or else this solitary fact grows and grows until that's all there is and there is nowhere to turn. If I'm creating or working on something, I'm not thinking deep dark shit like that.

The Cake Is A Lie.

A quicky on the joyousness which is Portal - one of the five games to come from the Orange Box including the seminal Half Life 2 and the beautifully-realised Team Fortress 2. Portal is short but very sweet - you start off as a test subject for Aperture Science Enrichment Center who is lucky enough to test a handheld device which can create two portals on walls - one as an entrance and the other as an exit. Like all the best videogames - a simple idea fantastically implemented with one of the best videogame endings known to man, woman and child because it features the sweet melodies of Jonathan Coulter who I am lucky to have discovered and currently listening to his excellent tunes now. Click on that link to check out some free music and also a chance to purchase - I intend to grab everything I can off iTunes as soon as I decide what to remove on my stuffed-to-fuck iPod.

Lovely Camcorder. Shit Phone.

Going back to technology letting me down - the latest kind, anyway - my Samsung U600 just played a tuneful melody of death as its batteries have drained. "How so?" you ask. Aha! Well, there's this wonderful quirk with it - besides the fact it has magical buttons which aren't really buttons. When it loses network coverage with O2, the huge LCD screen will switch back on and not turn off. Forever. So this is extremely unhandy when I have it in my pocket and I need it in a hurry. Al Gore won't be happy. I'm guessing it's something O2 have done to it. Maybe the shamefully-trendy animated screen which may need to be changed as part of an experiment to see if anything happens. If not, I'm tempted to swap it for something more capable. Get this - one of my workmates has gotten a Sony Ericsson which not only has actual buttons to answer the phone, but also live TV. For fuck's sake. I use my phone to browse online until I discovered I spent a tenner doing that after going over my piss-weak weedy limit of 512k. No, not Mb. K. As in 1024 bytes. Needless to say, I don't use it much any more and I've switched off all the images.

I miss my old Nokia. Not my 6600, but my 3310. A brick but a dependable brick, it was a phone at best and a calculator at worst. These days my U600 is a better camera than my current digital camera and a better camcorder than... well, it's better than the phone part. The iPhone? Yeah, right. It's bound to be a crushing disappointment. I don't think it's a case of me getting older, but technology getting more shit and needless. We're headed for Hades!

I'm going to end every post with a YouTube clip, and this one is a new favourite of mine -

I was going to embed the Official BBC YouTube Clip, but sadly they've removed embedding from there. Why? They don't want people worldwide to enjoy their programming, even though they hawk it across the seas for other international networks anyway. Here in the UK we still pay our TV Licence and yet the BBC have debts to pay off which could include selling off the iconic BBC Television Centre. Stupid sods.