Posted Wednesday, September 1, 2010 at 6:00 pm

I think most of my readers who are also on Twitter know about this, but in case you’re not one of them, I though I would do a quick update about my other site.

I set up GameDevBlogs.net with the intention of cataloguing all of the various blogs written by game developers. I’ve seen “recommend me a game developer blog” posts on a number of forums, and it seemed like there would be a use for such a site.

Also, many game developers keep very interesting sites (way better than this load of old rubbish), but are tucked away and never promote them. I figured that if I could help drive extra traffic their way then I would be doing a favour to both readers and authors.

So yeah, go and check it out, if you want to find some new game development-based reading material. Or, if you write a game developer blog, why not submit it?

Posted Monday, August 30, 2010 at 1:20 pm

Sorry, this is another post that isn’t about games. But stick around – you might enjoy it anyway!

So, the reason it’s been a little quiet around here is because I’ve been on holiday. Not one of those fancy holidays where you go somewhere sunny and sit by a pool drinking booze from breakfast ’till bedtime, but a (to use a horrible term that I will never type again) “staycation”.

The plan for the first week was to spend a week travelling up the West coast of Scotland, starting in Edinburgh where we live, and taking in Fort William, Plockton, Applecross, Torridon, Inverewe, and Ullapool (with sightseeing stops in between). We’d then cross back to the East coast, down to Inverness and spend a couple of days exploring that area.

It was a great holiday, very relaxing despite the relatively large amount of travelling. Seeing new places constantly meant that by the end we felt that we’d done much more than a week.

For friends, there are a load of photos on my Facebook page. For the rest of you unwashed random strangers, you’ll just have to make do with the handful I have put on Flickr.

The second week was back to Edinburgh, to take in the sights and sounds of the famous Fringe.

Now, despite being in a relationship with an Edinburgh girl for over ten years, I’ve never been during the festival before. I think I always assumed it would be packed full of tourists, and fairly horrible because of it. I was right and wrong. The Fringe is absolutely amazing, and I was a fucking idiot for not coming sooner.

I mean really, where else are you going to wander around and see this sort of thing, every day for a month?

As well as taking in the street performances and general goings on, I ended up seeing 25 shows over the month, which I’m told is possibly being a little over eager. Oh well! I won’t bore you with them all, but some high (and low) lights were…

• Rob Rouse was the first show we saw, and we weren’t let down. We had seen him touring his show from last year recently, and there was a little bit of overlap, but his performance was energetic enough that we didn’t care.
• I’ve never seen Tom Binns’ hospital radio DJ character Ivan Brackenbury before, and this was apparently a “best of” compilation of his previous sets. Although it is essentially one joke repeated for an hour, it is a good joke, and very well done. Tom also had a new act this year – a psychic called Ian D. Montfort. Unfortunately it was sold out every day we were free.
• Nick Helm was possibly the best thing I went to see. An extremely energetic (and slightly aggressive) musical comedy act that had the whole audience in stitches (even the poor girl that he focussed his attention on).
• The Boy with Tape on His Face was getting a lot of attention, and it was certainly interesting. Essentially a mime act where a range of props (including audience members) are combined in unexpected ways. Worth catching.
• One of the few more theatrical shows I went to see was Mike Wozniak and Henry Paker’s “The Golden Lizard”. A bizarre ‘boys own’ adventure play, interspersed with new takes on scientific ideas (such as a new numeracy system, or a way to discover the average name of a room full of people). Both actors played the various characters interchangeably, which sounds confusing but was very easy to follow. I also saw Mike in Alex Horne’s Taskmaster, and am now a big fan.
• Stewart Lee’s Vegetable Stew was pretty much exactly what I expected from him – good stuff.
• Goring & Stokes had been recommended to me by another game developer, and if you’re reading this blog you’ll almost certainly enjoy their two individual pieces of stand up on the theme of being huge nerds.
• And finally, the low-light of the Fringe for me – Rhod Gilbert is famous for doing a routine about the confusion caused when buying a duvet. He seems to have decided now that he wants to stick with that, so has done a version about buying a vacuum cleaner, and also one about using a washing machine. That’ll teach me for trying to “play it safe” and buy tickets for a big name act.

To sum it up – the Fringe is great, and if you’re at all able to you should really come up here and see it for yourself. Maybe I will bump into you next year?

Posted Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 8:00 am

Eurogamer have recently put up an article in which they ask a number of video game developers what one wish they would like granted for the industry, if they could have anything.

The replies are all rather disappointing, to be honest, and many are things that are within the developers’ grasp, if they really wanted to achieve them.

Greg Zeschuk, co-founder of BioWare, would like a “guarantee a hundred per cent agreement that games are art.” Aside from this being a boring addition to the ‘are games art?’ dirge, it seems rather bizarre to blanket demand that all games are art. Surely nobody actually thinks that, do they?

It’s particularly odd as he then goes on to say “hopefully ours are the ones that are closer to art”, which implies that even he agrees that currently, their games aren’t art. Eurgh.

Karl Stewart, who is the brand director of “Lara Croft” (which seems a fairly straightforward job, given some of the shit that has had that brand attached to it) would like a game that will make him cry. More cynical folk than me would maybe suggest Angel of Darkness.

Still on a Lara Croft vibe, Forest Large would “would love to see more women developers”. Men can’t animate women properly, apparently. A truly baffling (and kind of insulting to animators) comment to make.

This also made me laugh “I don’t want you to think that Lara Croft is the only multi-dimensional female character out there in games.” First reader to write down more than one dimension of Lara Croft’s character in the comments wins a prize.

Brian Jarrard (the community director at Bungie) thinks that it would be “great if games were just somehow a little more ubiquitous and accessible.” Free Flash and billions of iPhone games are just not accessible enough, games should be cheaper apparently. This coming from a guy working at a company that was platform exclusive for years. If you want to make these changes, how about fighting from within, eh?

Next up is respected designer Warren Spector who wants “to make games for a lot less money with much smaller teams, so we could take a lot more chances”. Well Warren, there are plenty of teams out there doing exactly that. How much of a small team do you want? Two guys? There are people out there making money like that. And let’s face it, you’re probably the one with the clout and cash to set up a studio doing whatever takes your fancy.

And finally Niles Sankey says “the nice thing about Bungie – it might sound clichéd, but we never really need to make wishes. We’re going to make it happen.” Which is brilliant news for Brian Jarrard, I guess.

So, now you’re read me picking apart the replies of half of the respondents, you’re probably wondering what my “one wish” would be.

Well, that would be telling. And might get me fired

Posted Monday, August 9, 2010 at 8:48 pm

At 7:55am on Saturday the 7th of August I sat down with the intention of playing video games for 24 hours solid. It turns out, that was going to be much harder than I’d expected. Or than it sounds.

I think this is one of the problems with asking people to sponsor you to play games. You can reel them in with all of the information about what a good cause the money is going to, but when it comes to the crunch and they ask “so what is it you’re doing?” your answer is still guaranteed to make them exclaim “well that’s not very hard.”

Yeah, have you ever tried sitting in the same spot concentrating on something for 24 hours?

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let’s start off with a couple of pictures, shall we? First off, the battleground where this epic struggle would be taking place – my living room.

As you can probably guess, I would be sitting on the right of the picture, mostly spending my time looking at the TV on the left. Next up, the game pile.

I have been cultivating my pile of shame for some time now, steadily growing it. It had a rampant spurt last year, while I was living in America and couldn’t play anything, but I can’t lie – I’ve not been making the best inroads in to it since coming back.

This isn’t even the whole pile, by the way. There are other games, like Alpha Protocol and a handful of PS3 titles, that aren’t shown here. But these were the candidates for some serious play time.

I also had something of a plan. I’d heard that the latest Prince of Persia game (Forgotten Sands) was only around eight hours long. I figured that I could get through that in 1/3rd of my playing time, then make good progress on something else, before tiredness would kick in and I would have to fall back to simpler games. It was not a plan I had a lot of success with, to be honest.

Oh, PoP needs a patch. Not quite the grand start I imagined. But still, at least patching is quick on Xbox #sksp
7:56 AM Aug 7th via TweetDeck

After a slightly bumpy start, I got underway with PoP. And it turns out that it’s a really decent game. Not amazing, and it won’t set the world on fire, but far more evocative of Sands of Time than any of the games since, and with some good ideas of its own.

The most pivotal of those ideas is the new ability to freeze water in time, so that it can be used as poles, beams, or walls. This power is on the left trigger, and will grow to become key – many of the end-game puzzles involve quickly switching water between flowing and solid so that you can progress.

Why are all the switches in this castle above head height? How is that practical on a day to day basis? Can everyone in Persia wall run?
Sat Aug 07 2010 08:31:21 (GMT Daylight Time) via TweetDeck

At first progress in PoP seemed to be going well – I was charging through locations, and the plot was moving at a good pace. All seemed well. But somewhere around the four hour mark it slowed down and I was getting bogged down in repeated puzzle and trap sections (seriously, there are far too many traps in that palace, it just isn’t safe).

This palace stables … so many spinning blade traps. I think it would be bad to keep horses here.
Sat Aug 07 2010 10:04:23 (GMT Daylight Time) via TweetDeck

Still, I was doing well at gathering achievements! I’d already decided I was going to make a note of how many I’d gained over the 24 hours period, and this game was doing the business.

@WeeGoblin I am on 17 achievements in 3.5 hours. PoP is giving them away like sweet gaming candy #sksp
Sat Aug 07 2010 11:24:15 (GMT Daylight Time) via TweetDeck in reply to WeeGoblin

Four and a quarter hours in, and it was time for a lunch of champions – fish finger sandwiches. Just look at the steam rising off these bad boys. And yes, that is an Xbox chat pad. I can’t remember why I bought it, but it must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Still, it’s much quicker for messaging people than using the software keyboard.

Whoever told me Prince of Persia was an 8 hour long game was a liar. I have been playing it for 8 hours now. #sksp
Sat Aug 07 2010 15:53:44 (GMT Daylight Time) via TweetDeck

10 hours in now. Still PoPping away. The game shows no signs of ending. #sksp
Sat Aug 07 2010 18:08:49 (GMT Daylight Time) via TweetDeck

It became very clear that I was never going to finish the game in eight hours. Although the final sections have a fair pace to them, there is far too much bloat around the middle, where the story doesn’t advance any further. Right towards the end the game also gets stuck in a rut of making you perform the same tricky series of manoeuvres a few times in a row, and loses some of the fun.

Still, everything has to come to an end some time, right? And slightly after the half-way mark, so did the Prince.

12.5 hours in – Prince of Persia: Done. What’s next? #sksp
Sat Aug 07 2010 20:25:28 (GMT Daylight Time) via TweetDeck

I think, looking back, it was a great idea to hammer away at one game and complete it. I got a rush from finishing it, when I otherwise could have been flagging. Following the story of one game also helped me focus, and stopped me from losing interest.

Oh, and it made me laugh when I found out that one of the designers is Michael McIntyre. Wait, sorry, Michael McIntyre.

Having had my fill of 3rd person action adventuring for a while, I moved on to Split/Second. This was also because my friend, who was one of the vehicle artists on it, was online and was going to play against me. Having someone to chat to would help – I was flagging.

Split/Second is pretty. Except for the car models, which are shit.
Sat Aug 07 2010 21:14:48 (GMT Daylight Time) via TweetDeck

My wife also came home and made me a lovely Thai green curry for dinner, which was awesome. Don’t underestimate the benefits of some nice food in raising your flagging spirits, 24 hour gamers!

Around this time darkness set in. Possibly in a metaphorical sense, as well as a literal one.

I can’t tell if I’m so bad at Split/Second because I’m bad at it, or because I’ve been playing games for 14 hours solid. #sksp
Sat Aug 07 2010 21:58:12 (GMT Daylight Time) via TweetDeck

I suspect that, if I were to put Split/Second back in the tray right now, I would still be crap at it. Driving games are not my forte, and especially not ludicrously fast-paced acradey ones. I’m just rubbish at avoiding smashing in to things.

After a couple of hours of that I decided to try my hand at Singularity. Although PoP’s length had sort of scuppered my plans, I still had an idea that I could play a good chunk of this.

No subtitle option, Singularity? I thought it was 2010? How am I meant to play this through the night?
Sat Aug 07 2010 23:35:15 (GMT Daylight Time) via TweetDeck

Unfortunately it wasn’t to be. First, because of the crazy decision to not have a subtitle option. I often have to play with the sound turned low, and I like to be able to read things in case the audio mixing is a bit ropey.

Secondly, because I was a lot more tired than I had realised. Within half an hour, some unusual time-bending things had happened (in the game), and I had been presented with audio and written diaries. There was no way I was going to be able to follow all of this.

My wife had gone to bed (she hates the noises that zombies make in games, especially when they die), but the cat was still here as moral support. Well, I say “support”, she was mostly in this position…

Not feeling Singularity – think I might miss a lot of plot by being tired. Need something dumber. And I have just the game…
Sat Aug 07 2010 23:50:19 (GMT Daylight Time) via TweetDeck

You may have spotted it in the picture earlier, but this was really my secret weapon of grade A mindless game playing: SpongeBob SquarePants, Truth or Square.

It turned out to be a very good choice. Before I knew it a couple of hours had flown by, and I had perked up a bit. There is something about the crazy world of SpongeBob that will just cheer me up, even if the music and sound effects were repeated to a point that it would have driven any adult watching insane (thankfully I was already well beyond that point).

MuscleBob BuffPants
Sun Aug 08 2010 00:26:10 (GMT Daylight Time) via TweetDeck

Although my relatively poor showing at Split/Second hadn’t helped out much, The ‘Bob also helped push me past the 1000 points of gamerscore mark, at 16 and a half hours in. I could have managed it on Prince of Persia alone, except that the game has two achievements for completing boss fights without taking any damage, which is basically just not going to happen on your first playthrough.

I love cartoony games where you smash stuff and get millions of pickup tokens.
Sun Aug 08 2010 01:18:26 (GMT Daylight Time) via TweetDeck

It’s true, you know. Give me brightly coloured polygons, and destructible boxes that drop dozens of gaudy tokens, and I am a happy gamer. This also explains my long-running love affair with the Ratchet & Clank series.

SpongeBob couldn’t last forever though – I was worried my IQ was dropping sharply, for one thing. But I didn’t feel ready to face another “proper” game. So in came my second backup – Lego Harry Potter. This was to be another mistake.

You know you are really tired beyond rational thought when a Lego game loses you about half an hour in. I couldn’t keep track of which characters knew which spells, which things I had interacted with, and where I was meant to be going. I remember thinking that it was one of the best, most fully realised, Lego games I have played (and I’ve played them all), but I just couldn’t keep up.

With four hours remaining, I needed a re-think.

After a brief stint on Lego Harry Potter, it’s time to mop up the remaining Saboteur achievements. #sksp
Sun Aug 08 2010 03:59:10 (GMT Daylight Time) via TweetDeck

I have been playing Saboteur for ages. Actually ages. Somewhere between 40 and 50 hours, according to my in-game stats. I started out enjoying it, but it had become a chore. But I had got so far, and the final 100 gamerscore I had remaining to claim, though theoretically easy to get, would require some grinding. Nice, easy, grinding of a game that I was already very familiar with.

Just the ticket.

After kissing 50 women (yes, repeated casual sexual assault is an achievement in this game), I was done.

2 hours left. Saboteur – done. Never have to play that wonky game again. #sksp
Sun Aug 08 2010 06:00:08 (GMT Daylight Time) via TweetDeck

And hey, what’s that outside?

For the last couple of hours, I wanted to give something else a go. I’d picked up a brand new copy of Bionic Commando for a measly three pounds, and though I’d heard it was a bit ropey, I had always thought it must still have some decent fun in there somewhere. I mean, you’re a guy with a bionic arm, swinging around a city and shooting people. How bad could it be? Things got off to a good start.

Bionic Commando has a really cool menu.
Sun Aug 08 2010 06:10:08 (GMT Daylight Time) via TweetDeck

I’ll have to upload a video of this at some point. It’s like Doctor Octopus is helping you through the menus. Very slick. It all goes downhill from there though, with swinging controls that I couldn’t get my head around, horrible depth of field, and some very shonky design that punishes you too much for dying.

I have since had it pointed out to me that I should give the game another chance when I haven’t been awake for 24 hours. This is a good point.

What would I play to round out the day?

One hour to go. Time to bust some shit in Crackdown 2. #sksp
Sun Aug 08 2010 07:00:02 (GMT Daylight Time) via TweetDeck

Almost the perfect game for this kind of thing. I jumped and shot my way around Pacific City, finding hidden and agility orbs, and killing the freaks that my wife hates the sound of so much.

AND DONE. 24 hours is up. Good luck to those still playing – I’m off to bed! #sksp
Sun Aug 08 2010 08:04:00 (GMT Daylight Time) via TweetDeck

So there you have it, my account of 24 hours of playing games. Some bits went well, some bits were a struggle, but in the end it was worth it. Not sure I would do it again next year, though. I guess it depends on how big the Pile of Shame has become.

Currently I have raised just over £700 for the Sick Kids Friend Foundation – the Save Point event in total has raised a phenomenal £6,474.63. Thank you very much to everyone who has sponsored us. There were times when I was flagging that I thought it would be easy to not bother. But knowing that so many people had paid for me to go through all of this pushed me on.

That doesn’t have to be the end of it though. If you’ve read this and enjoyed it, but haven’t donated yet, please pop over to this page and bung an extra fiver our way.

Sorry, did I make that clear enough? Sponsor me!

Posted Thursday, August 5, 2010 at 7:00 pm

Cast your mind back to late January 2007, can you remember what you were doing? The beauty of having a blog is that I don’t have to remember, I can look back. And I can tell you that I was mostly enjoying Splinter Cell: Double Agent.

It didn’t last, though. I can’t remember exactly where (if I could be bothered to look through my achievement list I probably could find out), but at some point around two thirds in to the game I gave up. I know I never saw the level that was in the demo.

For some reason, though I want to like them, there is always something that turns me off Splinter Cell games.

Or at least, there was. Between the single player mode, the co-op story, and the Hunter and Last Stand modes, I have put quite a considerable amount of time in to the game. Because it is very very good.

It has what I think is the best implementation of stealth in a third person action game that I’ve ever seen. There is no need for radars showing you exactly where the enemies are, and where they are looking – if an enemy can see you, they can see you. This would be frustrating except for the simplification of the core stealth elements to make them clearer.

There is no middle ground and wondering if you’re in shadow enough – if you are in the dark (and thus invisible to enemies) the view goes to greyscale. If the view’s in colour, then you stand a risk of being seen. If an enemy is about to see you (ie is looking at you but hasn’t realised yet) then a warning pops up in the centre of the screen.

It’s all so incredibly straight forward and intuitive that it makes the game a pleasure to play. And you’re playing using the information in front of you, not by looking at triangles on a minimap in the corner of the screen.

The game also features a takedown system that is pretty successful. Enemies that you can see can be “tagged” (the number of tags available depends on the weapon you are using). Making a hand to hand kill allows you to kill all tagged enemies in your line of sight with a single button press.

Although there’s no real reason for this requirement in the game’s story, in practice it results in you taking time to spot enemies, then making an opportunity to pick off a lone straggler at very close range, followed by manoeuvring yourself into a position where you have as many enemies within shooting range as possible. Basically a three stage process that encompasses everything fun about stealth action gameplay. Very clever.

So, gameplay wise it’s doing some good things. But it’s not let down in other areas either. The production values are generally good, featuring interesting cutscenes (the sort-of-interactive interrogation scenes are a particular nice touch), decent voice acting, and sparing but well thought out use of music.

It’s let down by limited audio samples for the enemies, which often results in a lot of repetition when a group are hinting for you – it’s not uncommon to hear the same line a handful of times within a couple of minutes. The loading times are another sour note – though in single player they are covered by cutscenes, they are still very long, and will grind down your enjoyment of replays and the multiplayer elements.

It also has some interesting storytelling elements, such as framing the tutorial about light, dark, and destructible scenery, as a flashback of Sam talking to his young daughter who is scared of the monsters under her bed. Another later mission shifts the core gameplay a little for good effect.

A core element of the game’s presentation is that it doesn’t use normal text to provide you with your objectives, and instead projects them onto the nearby scenery. The result is is mixed. When it works, it stops you from having to look around the screen for HUD, and focuses you in the direction you should be moving in. Since you do still have control, however, it’s entirely possible to be looking in the wrong direction and miss a useful objective.

The single player story element of the game is relatively short, but there is a nice variety of missions and very little reuse of assets, that keep it feeling fresh throughout. I suspect the long development delays became a help here – I’d bet that there were a lot of scrapped or vastly reduced missions, that resulted in art assets that were put to use elsewhere.

Special mention for the co-op section of the game. There are four large levels, that are completely new and fill in some of the story before the single player game. Again, given the game’s long and twisted development cycle, it’s a fair bet that these were originally single player levels on their own, that were later re-purposed. Though they are long and nice, aside from a few simple level elements that force both players to interact with them simultaneously (electronic devices that require two keys, for example), they could be completed by a good lone player.

Overall though, it’s definitely one to have a look at. I’ve put a lot of hours in to it, and kept enjoying it, it’s the only Splinter Cell game I’ve not been compelled to give up halfway through, and it’s the most fun I’ve had with an action stealth game ever.

Posted Tuesday, August 3, 2010 at 10:06 pm

As if I didn’t already know that Naughty Dog were a class act, they go ahead and confirm it.

All geometry is built inside of Maya, but all gameplay metadata objects (including foreground geometry instances) are all placed and manipulated in our custom built level design tool called Charter, which is strictly designed for this purpose.

Yes! That’s right! That’s exactly how you do it. Designers shouldn’t be using expensive 3d art packages so that they can plop trigger boxes and enemy spawn points down – it’s an entirely over-complicated tool for the job.

Oh, and if your designers are using Maya for this, you’re probably wasting thousands of pounds of company money every week, just in the time that they’re wasting waiting for it to load up.

I wonder if anything could make me think Naughty Dog is more of a designer-friendly place to work?

we don’t have anyone at our studio that is hired for the sole purpose of filling a producer’s role

*cries tears of joy*

Posted Tuesday, August 3, 2010 at 7:30 am

We’re now down to under a week until the Sick Kids Save Point event, so my attention has turned to planning what games I’ll most likely be playing.

As I’m thinking of sticking to the Xbox, my list of available games (that I am at all likely to play) is:

• Crackdown 2. Though I am a lot of the way through this already – down to my last ten agility orbs to find – so I don’t think it’ll get a lot of play time. Maybe just the odd half hour of messing around to clear my head between other games? Unless I find a few friends playing it.
• Saboteur. I will undoubtedly put in an hour or so on this, even though it’s my current playing game anyway. A little bit of extra time blowing up some Nazi targets is always welcome, and time seems to slip away when I play it.
• Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands. I bought this a few weeks back and still haven’t got around to starting it. I’ve heard it can be completed in around eight hours, which brings up the possibility of starting and finishing a whole game during the day. I worry the acrobatics towards the end of the game will require too much co-ordination for later in the day though.
• Spongebob Squarepants: Truth or Square. Look, I saw my nephews playing it and it looked like the sort of stupid fun that I don’t often get on the Xbox. Maybe one for the 20+ hour mark?
• Alpha Protocol. Just realised today that I have accidentally bought two copies of what is apparently quite a disappointing game. 24 hours would give a lot of time to hammer through an RPG. But would the buggy nature drive me mad?
• Singularity. Another fairly linear single player game I have heard is good, but short. Could I beat this and PoP?
• Lego Harry Potter. I love the Lego games, and I think this will be perfect 20+ hour fodder. Something that is engaging and funny, but not at all complicated.
• Borderlands. I started playing this at the start of the year, and it never really clicked with me. But for some reason it has been calling to me again.
• Dirt 2. For some reason I keep buying car games, even though I never get in to them. This one hasn’t even seen the inside of my Xbox yet. A bit of racing might be a good way of kicking off?
• Forza 3. Same again, though at least I have done a few races in this.
• Skate 3. Bought the same weekend that Red Dead Redemption came out, and then pretty much ignored. I’ve always wanted to be great at skateboarding games, but I don’t think my digits are dexterous enough.
• Tropico 3. I hear this is quite relaxing. Could be a good way of winding down between bouts of faster paced games?
• Brutal Legend. Not really sure what to expect of this at all. What I have realised from reading this list is that I find it very hard to stop myself from buying almost any game, once it can be got for £15 or less.
• Call of Duty: World at War. I have a love / hate relationship with CoD. Only “love” is too strong a word for it. But the single player campaigns are always short, and I think I’m already a mission in to this, so perhaps another one I could hammer through?
• Army of Two: 40th Day. Another “short single player shooty game”. Found the first one surprisingly entertaining.
• Split/Second. Broom! More racing fun. Am more likely to give this a go than Dirt or Forza, I would think. Even if just for a few laps.
• Bourne Conspiracy. A colleague played this, and said it was worth a go as an average third person shooty / fighty thing.
• Bionic Commando. Heard very mixed things about this, but it only cost £3 so I thought it would have to be very bad to be a waste of money.
• DJ Hero. Love the music, but just like skateboarding games, I’m not sure my hands are up to the task. I think it’s likely this will get a playing at some point later in the day, when I’m flagging and need picking up.
• Left 4 Dead 2. Almost forgot I’d bought this, as it’s another one I’ve not started. Enjoyed the first, but is this more of a mission pack? And will I enjoy it without any buddies playing?

So, what have we learned (other than that I have far too many games)? I think strong contenders are: Singularity, Lego Harry Potter, Prince of Persia, Split/Second, and DJ Hero. Beyond that, I think I’ll just have to see how I’m doing.

I’ve also decided that I’m going to keep track of how many achievements I earn in the 24 hours, and how much gamerscore. Not that I’ll be attempting to break any records, but I just think it’ll be interesting.

As before, I’m going to end this article with a bit of begging. I’m sure there are plenty of readers out there who could afford to spare £5, but haven’t sponsored me yet. That small amount of money will make a big difference to the happiness of a sick child in hospital.

My donations page is here.

Posted Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 11:00 am

My current mobile phone gaming squeeze is Helsing’s Fire. It’s an interesting and fresh puzzle game with a lot of style.

In it you play as Van Helsing, looking to rid a town of monsters by placing torches so that they are all caught in the light, and blasting them with coloured tonics. Although it times your progress through levels, this seems to just be for bragging rights, and doesn’t affect your progress at all.

Some monsters can attack your torches, causing them to go out, and you have a maximum of three per stage. In theory this makes the game more difficult, but in practise it doesn’t really make any difference, as the attacks are infrequent and easy to avoid.

Every thirty levels you are placed in an encounter against a single boss monster. And at this point the game changes completely. These monsters are more mobile, and fire regular attacks against you. The chance of losing torches increases hugely over the regular stages.

The problem is, the controls aren’t really suited to these faster paced stages, and I find it quite annoying that the game goes from a gentle puzzler to a poor actioner.

This isn’t the only game that does it. I’ve played any number of action adventure games that suddenly “mix it up” during the boss encounters, and throw away the idea of testing the skills the player has been slowly building up in favour of showing off something new. Which is obviously a very bad idea.

(You really should check out Helsing’s Fire though – 29 levels out of every 30 are great puzzling fun.)

Posted Tuesday, July 27, 2010 at 6:00 pm

Ok, I hope this update doesn’t mark me out as someone who will rag on something just because it’s popular, but I played the demo of Limbo after hearing nothing but good things, and I just don’t get it.

The controls and movement are exactly the same slightly too physics-y, floaty controls that people rightly complained about in Little Big Planet.

The almost invisible, instant death, traps with no warning are exactly the kind of unfair failure killers that the have hated since the days of Rick Dangerous.

I mean, it is very pretty, but I’m not understanding the charm beyond that.

If I was being more cynical I would think that people give pretty looking indie games an easier ride.

Posted Monday, July 26, 2010 at 10:00 am

With just two weeks to go until I take part in Sick Kids Save Point, I have been doing more planning. And also a few rigorous training sessions (yes, that does just mean playing games. I am exactly like Rocky Balboa. The out of shape version from the most recent movie).

Before I go any further in this update I’ll remind you that Sick Kids Save Point is a charity event to raise money for the Sick Kids Friend Foundation which supports the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh. We are doing this by playing videogames for 24 hours solid.

Obviously the most important element to decide is what games to play, and there are a lot of options available to me as my “waiting to be played” list is huge (check back this time next week for more on this).

I am currently thinking that, although I have a few PlayStation 3 games I’d like to get through, I will stick to Xbox games. Firstly because I have a lot more of those, and secondly because anyone can then track my current playing status through my gamercard. People on my friends list will even be able to see if I have become set to “away” – which will mean either having a food break or, much more worryingly, have fallen asleep.

For those who can’t follow me on Live, and I haven’t filled up my friends list yet, so send me a request if you want, I will of course be tweeting a lot during the day. I’ll keep people up to date on what I’m playing, and how I’m doing.

I’ve also been thinking about sustenance on the day. Drinks-wise, obviously alcohol is out of the picture as it’ll just make me drowsy and much more likely to fall sleep. Sugary soft drinks or energy drinks are an option, but my teeth certainly wouldn’t thank me for relying on them (plus most energy drinks are revoltingly sweet).

So I am most likely to end up drinking a lot of cups of tea (very British I know) to get my caffeine fix. I may even keep count, because I suspect it’s going to end up as a fairly record-breaking number.

As far as food goes obviously takeaway would be the stereotypical gamer choice (and I may well go for the pizza option for dinner, just because it will be quick and easy to cook). The problem with takeaway is that it gives a short energy boost that wears off quickly, and leaves you feeling bloated and lethargic – which are obviously not good for avoiding sleep.

I figure I will be able to get plenty of energy from snacking on fruit throughout the day, which will also not do too much damage to my “just managing to hang on to the right side of being a fatty” physique.

If you haven’t sponsored me yet, please go and do it now. As much as playing games for 24 hours seems like a joke, the money it will raise, and the great cause and sick children it will help, are not.

My donations page is here.