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Nintendo E3 2008 Press Conference Coverage at IGN

Because Vesperia CLEARLY has more potential...

One of them is the sequel to the most cherished console RPG of last generation. One of them is a first Wii effort from a tiny developer who have made about 2 DS games. It's sad, isn't it?

Jools Watsham: Game Designer, fighter, loverman

So, basically, Blogger must hate Youtube, so I can't directly post these videos. But before I link you, its best if I explain who this chap is.

Jools Watsham is the current head of maverick game company Renegade Kid. RK were the creators of the edgy, horror-FPS DS game Dementium, which released in America last year to critical acclaim. The game was notable for it's highly advanced 3D technology mostly unseen on DS. Now, the company is sticking to what they know best with another gorgeous looking DS title: Moon. The game, currently scheduled for a 2009 release, is being touted as a sort of "handheld System Shock 2". And if that doesn't put gamers into a coma of anticipation, then they need looking at.

Moon boasts some stunning-looking scenes

Now, Jools has been uploading short video-blogs (vlogs) to both Youtube, and now, his own site. These videos are highly recommended viewing, both for offering an honest and professional insight into the industry, and the fact that Watsham has perhaps the greatest voice since Gregory Peck.

See for yourself.

The Conduit - New Trailer

So for anyone not up-to-date of the situation, The Conduit is an exclusive Wii first person shooter designed on a ground-up engine built specifically for the console by a humble developer High Voltage Software. Since being unveiled last month to much fanfare by IGN, the company have received several offers from publishers to pick it up. The first screens of the game showed the title to be reminiscent of Half-Life.

The first gameplay trailer was released a couple of days ago.




Will certainly be keeping an eye on this one.

Last day of school

So five years of Key Stage 3 and 4 learning finally comes to an abrupt end. Today was our last official day of year 11, and while it wasn't really that sad for me, I did manage to capture lots of witchcraft paintings for memoirs.

This is Lauren making me look unattractive

These are the cool people who murder each other regularly

Here are two random people

And here are the boys. I can't be bothered naming them.

Key Retro Studios staff leave company

There are a number of things that leave a gamer inconsolable. One is Sony announcing any PS2 owner wanting to buy it's highly anticipated predecessor will have to fork out $600. Another is Microsoft fanboys realizing that Halo 3 isn't exactly what it's cracked up to be (say what you want chumps, the whole campaign mode screams average). But henceforth is the day when Wii owners across the planet are scorned to a pulp, as Retro Studios loses three members of staff pivotal to the critical acclaim of their critically acclaimed Metroid Prime series. Rumours were rife about the debacle a couple of days ago, but now it has been confirmed that Mark Pacini (lead designer), Jack Matthews (engineer) and Todd Keller (art director) are no longer serving under the orders of Retro.

Just one of the masterpieces created by the art team for Metroid Prime


No other information is available at this time about the reasons for the sudden departure, but it is unlikely that management at the company terminated their contracts early (ie, they probably weren't fired), but it's strange for several influential figures from a developer to leave purely on an coincidental basis, so there is a chance that Pacini, Matthews and Keller are planning to start up their own company.

In the mean time, Retro is NOT SHUTTING DOWN and will continue to develop great, AAA games for Nintendo. Some of the maestros behind the Prime behemoth may have left, but one thing remains the same, and that's that Retro Studios' next title will be one of Wii's most anticipated.

OMGZ, le mature game for teh Wii?!!

High Voltage Software is a humble video games developer. Chugging along quietly for 15 years, their library consists of no bolshy blockbusters or cult classics. But now, they just may be the saving grace for hardcore Wii owners everywhere.

IGN recently scored a world exclusive with the Illinois-based team on their next game, and it looks set to hit the big time. FPS "The Conduit" has been secretly in development for around a year now and it seems to focus on graphics - something with may seem unimaginable to 99% if Wii devs. Working on a completely ground-up engine going by the name as Quantum3, The Conduit is a futuristic shooter set in Washington DC. It looks to sport many Halo-esque mega-beam-weapons-of-death but the whole thing seems to have more of a Half-Life air to it; with action scenes ranging from big, open spaces to quiet, heart-pumping, deserted trains.




Herro!

As many a Wii owners know, their beloved white box has been incredibly deficient of FPSs; bizarre considering that Medal of Honour: Heroes 2 proved that the genre could easily blast any console counterpart out of the water in terms of control. High Voltage knows this, and also understands that many 3rd party titles are severely lacking in the technological departments:

"We think it's a real shame that publishers and developers aren't taking advantage of the technical possibilities of the Wii platform. Most Wii games don't even look as good as the later day PS2 titles and that's a real slap in the face to consumers" says Kerry Ganofski CEO. It's a true joy to see a serious publisher voice what so many hardcore Wii gamers have been fighting to say over the past few months. The Conduit looks to not only appeal to those craving some AAA shooter action, but also wants to quash the perception that Wii can't house games that look no better than last gen titles.

If you're wondering how HVS' much flaunted Quantum3 engine expects to achieve this, below is the official tech demo video:

So there you have it. Could The Conduit be a real pioneer for future mature Wii games that actually have effort put into them? Who knows? It can certainly be a big pay-off if you're the first one to get your idea out there: look at the runaway success Guitar Hero 3 on Wii has become.

For all the available screens and full info/press release on The Conduit, visit the IGN page here.

France vs Children

Imagine for a moment, if you will, a full A4 side of French gobbledygook. Add 5 questions on top of that concerning that piece. Then add another 50 random questions and answers all in french. Then consider the prospect of having to memorize all of that in five days. That is basically the task that haunts every second of my life until Friday. Apparently, "they" are getting rid of this curse in the coming years. Yay.

Do not watch this space for the next 48 hours

So, tomorrow happens to be one of the most frustrating days for many people. And while some will think that hiding dog excrement in their "friend's" shoes is a larf, many games will know to loathe and despise April Fools Day like the bastard child of the Gregorian calender it is.

Unfortunately, numerous sources have already been getting over excited and begun to dust off their cobwebby imaginations early. So forget any "MEGATONS!!1" you may have heard over the interweb - it's complete BS. I happened to come across a story on Wii60 earlier elaborating on plans for Nintendo to introduce DLC for 35 of its games, including Twilight Princess, Metroid and Brawl. Super. Predictably, the article was bashfully removed within hours.

So, if I do update the blog tomorrow with some major announcement that is too good to be true, take no notice. In fact, lets just not go on the internet tomorrow: that makes everything easier eh?

The Byron Report and what it means for the industry

If you have been anywhere near a television over the past few days, you will have likely happened to gaze upon a story concerning the video games industry and government calls for overhauling the age classification system in the UK.

It's unclear exactly who decided that a change was necessary, but I'll bet my murderous disposition that it was some ill-informed MP who perceives that all games are Columbine simulators. Keith Vaz then, probably. But a study was carried out nonetheless by Psychologist Tanya Byron, and the resulting changes are, shock horror, actually... not damaging at all to the industry. If one reads the report, they'd be pleasantly surprised to know that this shrink isn't actually a female Jack Thompson, and has put in place a plan that doesn't banish adult games to the point where anyone seen buying one would be ousted from British society as a middle-aged paedophile who lives with his mother.

Basically, before you know the changes, one has to understand how games are currently classified in the UK. Well the company who decides the age rating is an independent organisation called PEGI. Their age labels consist of:

3+
7+
12+
16+
18+

Now, some gamers may notice in their library that some of their more "mature" games have "that film logo on", IE, a BBFC rating of either 15 or 18. The BBFC are an "official" classification company who rate films in the UK, and regularly rate some of the more fruity games (like all Resident Evil games as 15 or Manhunt 2 as 18).

After this report, all video games will pass through PEGI as per usual, but if they feel the game is deserving of a !2 or above rating, they must be approved by the BBFC, who will then classify the games themselves. It isn't totally clear why this will avoid the illegal transaction of video games to minors, but the strength of an official (and familiar) logo may be enough to get the message across to parents that not all games are for children. A responsible parent wouldn't let little Timmy see a 15 rated film, so why would mummy buy him Grand Theft Auto. So technically, this shuffle shouldn't actually affect anything, but the subtleties of the the change might. To that degree, it's a well though-out plan. So kudos to Ms Byron for that .

But most importantly, this move may spell an end to the whinging of scores of MPs the industry has faced these past years.

Feature: The risks of modern games development

Long gone are the days where any geeky bedroom techy could programme a game within days and ship some tapes to their local store. With budgets exceeding Hollywood and the development phase enduring upwards of two years, publishers need to be certain that they make sufficient profit to keep themselves afloat in the choppy waters of 21st century video game production. Companies like Eidos are the ones who have paid the price of misjudging the sway of the consumers. We're at a stage now where some companies have no choice but to throw all their resources at a game to try and keep the hype train chugging along while they desperately get it translated for that last Eastern European country. But even if you know you're game is good or bad, you have to take risks.

Lets look at Factor 5 for example. These guys jumped on board with Sony when they realised they'd be joining the team in the lead in the hardware arms race. Here we had a developer that could make a truly great game with sheer power alone. The Rogue Squadron games remain both fan favourites and also the best looking games of last gen. Simply by adding so much atmosphere into the action, Factor 5 could make a masterpiece by fully utilizing the best hardware that was available. The plan was to do the same with Lair.


Pretty, no?

Upon it's announcement, people could see that Factor 5 were in their zone with PS3. They had the best hardware up their sleeves, and looked set to imitate their Rogue Squadron glory. Upon release, Lair failed miserable, both commercially and critically. Why? Because they let people play it.

It sounds harsh, but the initial critical reaction of your game is pivotal to the long-term outcome. Factor 5 misjudged that state of the industry. They couldn't foresee the phenomenon that was the Wii Remote. They didn't expect the glut of near-photo realistic games to appear on Xbox 360. They thought the road would be easy; that they could get away with ragged edges due to the prettiness of the game. When journos first got their hands on it, they needed to be impressed. Some of them had just got back from playing Gears of War, others had been wowed by Wii Sports. Would Lair give the PS3 a similar killer app? It wasn't to be. The consoles of the last gen were arguably clones: you could get away with more because people couldn't imagine things being much different. Factor 5 couldn't imagine anything being able to hold a candle to Lair, but with hindsight, they'd be lucky if the flame was still warm.

To reflect their mistakes, Julian Eggebrecht recently admitted that the reason they signed on for Lair was that the company needed money, and Sony seemed to be the one to provide. They were obviously wrong, and are now putting a new Wii game into production because frankly: that's where the money lies. If you have the God-given power to predict the industry, then it can become a harmonious loop, but if you continue to misjudge the flow of the fickle consumer, then it can be the most vicious of circles, and eventually ending up like the first company mentioned in this feature.


They'll survive, but how many more won't?

My lovely new blog.

If you are reading this post, feel special. Feel special for two reasons: Either this will go down in history as Aaron "D_prOdigy" Clegg's first foray into videogame journalism stardom, or at least feel fuzzly in the knowledge that you could be among the only 3 people who reads "just another nerd's blog"

Well nerd I am not. I mean, I'd love to be, but I just don't know how to be. HTML? FTP? WTF?

Over time, this blog will expand. Whether it draws in 2 readers or 2 million is irrelevent. All journos start somewhere and the younger the better. Today is the day I read a feature on the matter. Every single writer involved unanimously agreed that a blog was the best way to start a career. Write, write and write is what they said. And slap me over the head with a flannel and call me Mabel, I am going to write.

What can you expect from this blog? Well, if your really not into gaming then I'd suggest that little red cross in the corner, becuase you'd be more out of place than the Six Million Dollar Man in a magnet factory. I will be focusing most of my efforts on Nintendo-related stuff, but I could post all kind news if I deem it significant. Plus you can count on lots of random stuff too.

Keep tuned, because I'm at a time in life where there's not much more to do than sit at a PC, and I might as well try and reach out to as many people as I can in the process.

Viva la Revolution!