My brother bought me 2D Boy’s World of Goo, a lovely little physics based game somewhere between Lemmings and Loco Roco. It’s huge fun, very addictive and I look forward to the full version coming out. I suspect it’ll play well on the UMPC so will need to download it and see if the license is valid on a second machine…
A good early birthday present.
For the curious, here’s a trailer:
Jon at EA sent me a copy of the Spore Creature Creator, a component of the new landmark title from Maxis (y’know, the SimCity guys) that’s due later this year. I haven’t installed it yet, but was amused by the consequences of Jon demo-ing it to Jonathan Ross and his family (and most especially his son Harvey).
Harvey posted on a forum that he’d seen the game and received tens of pages of comments because people didn’t believe he was Jonathan Ross’ son, because people believed he was, because they didn’t believe he’d seen Spore, and because they did. It was all a bit bizarre and Jon, who works the PR at EA, had to comment on it for a blogger or two.
I’m not at the level of fame yet that I get personal demos of new video games (Jon, when does that happen?***), but it’s nice to get sent stuff to play with too. I’ll be writing a bit on the C&C 3 expansion pack soon, which EA were good enough to send me last week.
We’re working on some gaming stuff at the office too. When I get those previews I’ll let you know.
*** Just spotted this. I can win the celebrity Spore experience by entering a competition with EA. Maybe I should try the Creature Creator first…
I went to the Grosvenor Victoria, a casino on the Edgeware Road, with James on Saturday. It was an interesting thing but I think I’m done with live poker for a little while.
Reasons being:
1) I don’t have the bankroll to play the averages. It may be a winnable game in the long term, especially as so many of the players don’t seem to really know what they’re doing, but you need to pay the rakes (an extortionate £3 per half hour for the 50p-£1 table of £25 NL holdem) and cope with what happens when the cards don’t come in. Which they didn’t at all on Saturday.
2) Poker’s fundamentally not that social a game. You’re trying to edge out your fellow players and part of that involves giving very little away about who you are and what you’re doing. I like the social aspect of the game played with friends and this neutered some of the fun for me.
3) I still haven’t worked out how to play cash game poker. It’s a very different beast to tournament poker which I vaguely understand after reading the Harrington books and 200 odd tournaments on Pokerstars, not to mention the odd live appearance at the (soon to be defunct?) Gutshot.
4) I don’t like the absence of women from the game. It’s somehow understandable from online poker (I guess you notice less), but the fact that the only women in the Vic were waitresses, cashiers, dealers and masseuses lent a slightly unnatural air to the evening for me.
Still, it was an interesting experience and definitely distracted me from the awfulness of Indy.
I finally finished ‘Radiant Dawn’ on Wii yesterday. It should have been on DS. It makes no sense on the Wii, even less so due to its completely random and arbitrary plotline, which I think may have been the result of an experiment involving monkeys and typewriters.
The things that happen when Amanda goes away.
I’m not even going to apologise, this time, for my latest bout of ignoring this blog. It’s been busy. Let’s leave it at that. Slap me in person, if you like.
I’ve spent my down time doing fun things – reading through the back catalogue of Robert Charles Wilson (following the excellent recommendations of Tom and Simon via Twitter), as well as the new Alistair Reynolds, the Sebastian Darke childrens’ books, the new Iain M Banks, and will soon be starting the Mike Carey (of Lucifer and Constantine fame) novels. I’ve got to this place where self-indulgence involves reading mountains of sci-fi and fantasy and its significantly healthier than pigging out on McDonalds so I’m running with it.
Have also been playing more of the new ‘Fire Emblem’ game on Wii than I’d like. This is a mediocre version of the brilliant GBA game that takes absolutely no advantage of the Wii control scheme and seems to have been scripted by a monkey prone to bouts of hysteria. The plot just keeps extending itself in explicable turns in order to cope with the fact that the game needs more missions to have justified its sticker price.
More excitingly, Wii Fit arrived last Monday and I’ve used it about 6 times, gaining some impressive and some not-so-impressive scores. It’s all part of my motivation to get fit, which has also seen me play squash for the first time in four years (admittedly only for 10 minutes, but, y’know…). Wii Fit also entertained about a dozen friends at the first BBQ of the season this weekend (mmm, chickan).
So, I’m busy, and I’m doing interesting things, and if you’d like to know what I’m up to find me on Twitter and Facebook as that’s where my social media output is going for the moment (book reviews on Visual Bookshelf, movie reviews on Flixster, random observations on life on Twitter).
Share and enjoy, people. Share and enjoy.
I’ve seen a couple of mentions of online poker sites being blocked by mobile broadband providers… But I wonder why this is happening, if, indeed it is at all.
Cheating poker jockeys would find the appeal of cheap (as low as £10 per month) mobile broadband very strong – they could have multiple IP addresses at a single location and, well, cheat to their hearts’ content. Well, cheat until the algorithms/monitors looking for anomalous behaviour caught them out. But y’know, they could cheat.
So it’d have to be the poker sites blocking access to people from mobile broadband connections rather than the other way around, given that, if anything, online poker would provide an incentive for people to sign up to mobile broadband.
For the record, I love poker, don’t have a USB mobile broadband dongle, and wouldn’t cheat at online poker even if I knew how. Cheaters are wrong. But was just wondering about it, inundated as I seem to have been with mobile broadband adverts lately.
A bewildering combination of utterly compelling car-smashing gameplay and infuriating design decisions, which means that playing it is simultaneously fun and irritating, like eating a delicious cake with the occasional drawing pin in it.
Yes (thanks, Gil, for the pointer).
I too, have been spending more time than I have on this game on Xbox 360, courtesy of EA (they send me review copies). On this occasion, they sent me a PS3 version as well, which Patrick will guest-review soon and I’ll add to the blog.
It is an absolutely beautiful and very entertaining game; the Xbox Live action is smooth, seamless and instantaneous (but won’t work if you don’t have a hard drive in your 360), the graphics amazing and the race modes as fun as they’ve ever been in Burnout. But…
…there’s no splitscreen option, that I can find. Which is half the way I enjoyed the game in the past, so its an annoying design decision, as Charlie points out.
…there’s no way to immediately ‘restart’ a race.
…free-roaming is all well and good, but it makes ‘instant action’ of the kind you might be inclined to have hard to come by (I used to spend more time than was healthy on ‘crash’ modes, or whatever it was called, when you had to cause lots of damage to passing vehicles).
Other than those – significant issues – this game is flawlessly executed. If you were ever a fan of Burnout, you’ll enjoy the visit. If you thought Burnout was a bit to linear and formulaic, you’ll love it. If you need split screen action… you’ll be disappointed.
Update: My Xbox copy crashes frequently and has caused red-rings (but the Xbox then works fine with Halo3). All a bit weird. Don’t know if this is a bug in the game, or anyone else has seen this? “Burnout Paradise Red Rings of Death” to help people looking up the problem find me… SEOtastic.
Update 2: This wasn’t a problem with Burnout Paradise. I was just experiencing the same hardware faults that plague so many Xbox owners. Second replacement Xbox (or repaired Xbox, rather), here I come. C’mon Microsoft! Sort it out!
Patrick says:
There are times when it rocks to be Armo’s mate – getting a free copy of Burnout on PS3 is definitely one of them. I’ve chatted with Armo about the game and can understand his annoyance at lack of split-screen, but IMO this is simply the best racing game out there. It’s so good I actually question whether I need to buy another ever again (probably a good thing) – and I’d be suprised if a slew of Paradise City-alike copycat games didn’t appear over the next 12 months.
Some don’t like it but I think the free-roaming aspect of the game, which once you’ve started doesn’t have any loading times or menus screens at all, is awesome. Do any event whenever you want, nomatter whether you’ve managed to complete earlier events. Yes, there’s no crash mode, but instead you have the similarly crazy Showtime mode available at any time, with records to be broken on every road in the city. Got to mention the online mode as well. I’m not a big online gamer at all, and generally can’t really be bothered to leave games to go through lobbies and find a decent (and non-abusive) opponent – it just takes too long and I don’t know that many people with a PS3 to make it worthwhile. But the online in Burnout is a revelation – totally integrated into the main game and available at the touch of a button. The first time you play eight-player Burnout is an insane experience. So basically it’s great. A shame about the lack of restarts and no split-screen, but in its place you can lure an unsuspecting newbie to the roof of a car park and then push him off, which for me, more than makes up for it.
Here’s the thing. It’s very, very good.
There’s not much more to add to my review of the demo. The game is fast, varied, graphically impressive and addictive. The video is compelling enough and the most of actors are the right combination of good at what they do and beautiful, which is always nice. The multiplayer is pretty slick, limited lag and a few good, entertaining modes of gameplay and well designed maps. Damo and Matt have bought it too, which was nice of them, and we had a good session yesterday.
I’ve not finished the single player campaign yet, but the appearance of the Scrin will make it interesting. An alien race turning up randomly? Nice! Clearly different strategies required for them than for Nod… and then the whole thing will be played through again when I take on the Nod campaign. So There’s a fair few hours of fun in this.
Other than the fact that the game plays better with a Core2Duo (which I still haven’t brought myself to buy), my only real criticism is the fact that the ‘Normal’ level AI is a bit of a pushover. Haven’t tried the harder AI yet – suspect it will be frustratingly difficult. IIRC, earlier C&C games had more balance on this front, but ultimately it’s not a massive problem.
Let me know if you want to play multiplayer at some point. Not this weekend, though: Some Tingulstads are visiting us, I’m going to see Hot Fuzz and also hopefully eat some Malaysian food at that new restaurant that’s opened. You know, that one.
Thanks again to the guys at EA for this. Keep it coming!!
I’m nearly recovered from a two week cold (damn unpleasant business) but my review copy of C&C: Tiberian Wars has arrived. I’ve fixed the performance issues on my machine (caused by mediocre drivers for my graphics and sound card) and it plays well… and is hugely enjoyable. Nothing like a bit of silly acting to camera coupled with some strategic bombardment of those evil Nod scum.
I’m also off to Norway this weekend to visit some family friends, have a party on Thursday and may have preview tickets to a screening of that new Will Ferrell movie, so it’s likely to stay a little quiet till after the bank holiday. Have a few things I’d like to write about, though, so expect a little more after Easter.
I used to love Sony, but recently it seems everyone there has gone nuts. I’m particularly fond of this blog, which charts the progress of the PS3. It’s not positive, needless to say. Even less so than Maddox.
Particularly amusing quotes include:
Sony has clearly manufactured a PS3 for every man, woman and child in Europe. Either that or NO ONE WANTS THE THING and its cumbersome 3D avatar system from 1998.
F.A.O. STUDENTS:
If you buy a PS3 this means you’re not allowed to whine about loans or attend anti-capitalist rallies with your sack-cloth-wearing, dreadlocked, stinking, gap-year-in-Thailand-going-off-on, quorn-eating friends. You’re also not allowed to spend the next 25 years of your life only talking about your “uni” friends and the things you did in “uni” and how much fun you had in “uni”. That last one’s a general rule even if you don’t buy a PS3.
On the pricing, and comparison to Blu-Ray drive costs:
“It’s official – the PS3 is cheaper than the combined price of two more expensive things. It’s certainly food for thought.”
On a pre-ordered 60GB PS3 selling for £390, excl delivery:
Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful! Moron pre-orders PlayStation3, then sells it on Ebay for less than he paid for it. Other UK auctions are currently floudering, too. Genius. Global justice. WELL DONE, BRAVE PEOPLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. THE END IS NIGH. THE END IS NIGH!
N’uff respect to Commander Zorg. Let’s see what happens in the next couple of weeks. I suspect I’ll remain content with my Xbox 360, and maybe buy a Wii for Wii-mote bowling.