Interview with Peter Molyneux

Check out this interview with Peter Molyneux. I was really lucky to interview him on his life making games, to find out what inspires him and to have a cheeky look at Fable 2!

Click here to read it.

I can kill you with my BRAIN!

Well its taken all my childhood and some of my adult life but finally, finally, they've come up with a way to control computers, more specifically games with just our thoughts! This research in Australia, explained on the BBC news site by President of US/Australian firm Emotiv, Tan Lee, is the latest in the technology known as non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG).

"It picks up electrical activity from the brain and sends wireless signals to a computer. The headset could be used to improve the realism of emotional responses of AI characters in games. If you laughed or felt happy after killing a character in a game then your virtual buddy could admonish you for being callous"

This head-set is surprisingly cheap. As the technology has grown so its cost has gone down to only $299. A small price to pay for moving things with your mind.

So here's what I'm thinking. We get a Wii controller for the Xbox 360 or the PS3, full motion sensativity. Then we get this mind reading thing (electro reading, whatever) and then we get Lucas Arts to make us a Jedi game. Use the Wii mote as a lightsaber and then we can actually have force powers and us THEM PROPERLY! Is that not awesome.


Check out the link here to the BBC news site if your interested in reading about how the science works. Click here.

Impending DOOM!

It's gonna hit the fan big time when the new GTA is finally released. Not only do we have have Tanya Byron's review on the harms of video games to children going public at a similar time, but we've also got the Presidential election in the States heating up, with hungry politicians just grabbing hold of anything to push them ahead. I'm looking at you, erm, all of you actually!

Things are probably going to get pretty messy and underneath it all will be one game. It's a good thing that game is GTA and not another rubbish publicity hounding, violence-for-the-sake -of violence-run -of-the-mill-shooter. We have a tough time ahead of us. We should start planning are arguments now ahead of time. We should be prepared to defend our favourite past time and not appear like a bunch of apethetic illiterate idiots.

It's a sad thought but were not ever going to fully get rid of this kind of stigmatism. Just ask the film industry. They've been legitimised for years as an art and they STILL get crazy right-wing nuts claiming that movies are a serious threat to the children.

Won't somebody, PLEASE, think of the children.

What ever happened to the rugby game?

I hail from the other side of the River Seven. I'm Welsh and I've spent the most part of my life living Wales. I've just watched another win by our fantastic boys in red and it got me thinking. What ever happened to the rugby game.

Now I understand that compared to football, rugby is a somewhat niece market. There’s no way a rugby game is gonna sell as well as say Fifa. But over the years there have been some really fantastic titles. If you like rugby of course, if you don’t then your out of luck because the amount of different controls that a video game version of rugby requires boarders on the ridiculous.


The one rugby game I remember playing the most was Jonah Lomu Rugby on the Playstaion one. A game where teams were so miss balanced that any game could descend into a free-for-all and where Lomu himself was pretty much indestructible!

That’s not to mention the commentary where every five minuets heard the commentator shouting “and he’s gone in there like a freight train!” Boy did that get old quick.

And yet there was something about Lomu Rugby that kept my friends and I enthralled for hours. If we were ever watching the Six Nations and half-time approached we’d fire up the PSone and have a quick game, it did after all support the multi-tap feature.

I know other rugby games have been and gone, some with really good 3D graphics but none have captured that same magic as Lomu. I wonder if there’s a next-gen title in the works, mind you we’ve a while to next world cup, does Lomu have a son?

Making games into art

Finally Rez HD has hit Xbox Live Arcade. A game not seen since the dreamy days of the Sega Dreamcast, apart from a small stint on the PS2 of course. If you have yet to experience this game, why are you reading this! Go and buy it this instance, you really won't regret it.

Mixing general, pseudo 3D, side-scrolling shooter mechanics into some sort of LSD induced freak-out the game has you shooting down computer programs sent to stop you hacking the ‘system’. You really do have to play this game to understand how awesome it is.

Extremely easy to pick up and play it offers a gaming experience like no other. You will be left scratching your head, but you’ll feel one step closer to becoming one with your machine and mother earth.

Don’t let the similarities between Jeff Minter’s Space Giraffe put you off. This game is much easy to pick up and play and is arguably a deeper gaming experience. I cannot recommend this highly enough, so waste no time picking up the definitive version in glorious high definition.

You can find it on Xbox Live Arcade or alternatively if you feel like going old school you can find copies of it on PS2 and Dreamcast on Amazon.com.

Another one bites the dust!

Well, if you've been following this whole nasty business from last year, you'll have heard that another journalist from Gamespot has decided to leave. Recently Rich Gallup left, on friendly terms and now so too has Ryan Davies. This can all be traced back to the firing of Jeff Gertsmann last year. Allegedly over a bad review he gave of Kane and Lynch. A review it quite honestly deserved. This latest departure marks the third of late and is a great blow to the Cnet website whose content has been in steady decline ever since Jeff left.

It has been rumoured that publisher Eidos, who had invested heavily in advertising on the site, were unhappy with the review and put pressure on parent company Cnet and threatned to pull the advertising fund.

While this represents a sad day for game journalists it is in fact not an uncommon practice.

Ethically I cannot agree with Cnets firing of Jeff Gertsmann, but at least journalists such as the recently departed Ryan Davis and Rich Gallup can act with thier feet sending a very clear messages to game companies and advertisers alike.

Manipulation of opinion like this will not be tolerated in any arm of the meida. That means you FOX NEWS!