Planes, Trains and Automobiles

I am now an international jetsetter.

I flew down to London for an interview today, which was very cool. It may not sound like such a big deal, but it's still a new thing to me, to be able to get from one capital city to another in a little over an hour. I love to fly, but it's been years since I last took to the skies. There's something about giving nature the finger and defying gravity in a giant metal tube that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. My dad decided to come to. He told me that he wanted to wish me luck. I think he just wanted to have another go on a plane. Once at Heathrow, we had to get a bus to Feltham, where we could catch a train to Chertsey. We then decided to walk to where my interview was held.
The main thing we noticed about down south was how much warmer it is: it's danmed hot. I mean El Scorchio hot. We're Scotsmen, born and bred in the pissin rain - we're not built for glorious sunshine. To decide to walk a mile in sunshine that would shame the Sahara must have seemed like a good idea on the train, while we were still protected from the deadly UV rays, but honestly, what the hell were we thinking? Summer in Scotland means maybe a day or two of some sun struggling to come out from behind the clouds - down there it means summer.
Anyway, the whole interview seemed to go well, and I should probably hear back pretty soon. I remain cautiously optimistic, but at the same time I'm hoping I don't get a repeat of what happened last time I went for this kind of job - three days later the company declared bankruptcy. W00t.

EIEF Impressions

The second Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival (EIEF) has been underway for a couple of days now, but today was the first day it was open to the public. On the whole, it was pretty good; I got my hands on a few titles I've been looking forward to, saw some other cool stuff, and took part in a Burnout tournament (and lost horribly). So here's my quick rundown of my highlights.

Nintendo

Nintendo were out in force, showing off quite a few of their upcoming titles. The new Zelda and Nintendogs took centre stage, naturally, but there were a number of DS's showing off various other titles. Most of which I didn't get to play because all the batteries had drained - some great organisational skills on display there, boys. So I didn't get a shot of Sonic Rush, the new Super Mario Bros game, Mario Kart DS or Viewtiful Joe DS, all of which I was looking forward to. I was also disappointed that neither Meteos or Advance Wars DS were on display, as well as the lack of any other new Cube titles.

I'm now completely sold on Nintendogs. I've had an interest in this one for some time, so getting my grubby mitts on it was quite excitng. I must've spent half an hour just sitting on the giant bone, playing with the demo. It's one of the most innovative games of recent memory, and one of the first to really take advantage of the DS's unique features. The puppies were so lifelike it almost made me want one of my own. It made me smile like no other game on display could.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is also shaping up nicely. There's no doubt the graphics are gorgeous, as I'm sure you're aware, but for me the important thing was the gameplay: I'm happy to say, it's pure Zelda. There were four different demos, each showing off a different aspect of the game, with a village, a dungeon, a horseriding section, and a boss fight. Each were rather impressive and showed off the different elements of the game nicely. Minigames seem to be more prominent than before, with activities ranging from herding goats on horseback to grabbing raging animals. One thing that did annoy me slightly was the slight pause after striking an enemy; while it was in previous 3D Zelda games, it seems to be slightly more noticeable this time. There also seemed to be a couple of very minor glitches, mostly with the controls and collision detection, but I expect these issues to be ironed out for the final game. This is another one I'm really looking forward to now.

EA

EA made their presence known with a fairly large display showing off two whole games. Tiger Woods 2006 failed in impress; it certainly looks very pretty, but I'm sure it's not much different from Tiger Woods 2005. Similarly, Burnout seems to be the latest vicitm of EA's "endless squels" policy. It hasn't been all that long since we had one, and yet here comes Burnout Vengeance, due out in a couple of weeks. From what I played of it, it was little more than a slightly shinier version of the last game. I have no doubt it'll sell well, but I hope they don't make a habit of this.

Microsoft

While 360 logos were everywhere, not one was on display. Hardly a shock, but slightly disappointing. Instead, they had a nice little setup where 12 people could try out a couple of different Live games, with Far Cry Instincts and Halo 2 amongst those on display. I wasn't all that impressed with Instincts; the deathmatch game I played seemed far too formulaic, and got the impression the weapon balancing still needed some tweaking.

Sony

Sony were nowhere to be found, which I found both disappointing and surprising, especially considering the PSP's launch is three weeks away. Given the amount of attention this event is getting, and the number of people turning up, it seems foolish that Sony would ignore this chance to get some more publicity. Personally, I see it as yet another slap to the face of UK gamers as Sony once again proves they really don't care about us. Clearly they're too busy taking importers to court than promote their own product. Sorry, Sony - you missed your chance; I'm getting a DS.

Talk, Talk, Talk

I also attended a couple of seminars. In the first, Eidos' Creative Director Ian Livingston talked about how games have integrated themselves into modern culture, and took us on a whirlwind tour of the industy's history, from Pong to Space Invaders to Lemmings to Tomb Raider. While it's perhaps unsurprising a lot of his focus was on Lara Croft -a character he helped create- her importance in the helping video game industry shed it's geeky image and becoming more mainstream can't be denied. All in all, it was a pretty good look back over the years, and while I may have known most of what was covered, I'm sure many others in the audience didn't. It was certainly interesting getting such an influential person's take on the industry's past and what we can look forward to in the future.

The second was a look at EyeToy Kinetic, which I found much more interesting. A new game from the same team that brought us EyeToy: Play, the focus of this game was to help players keep fit. It's not as daft as it sounds, as anyone who has played a dancing game will agree. Developer Tom Holmes talked us through the devlopment process, describing the relationship with Nike MotionWorks, some of the goals of the project and how they overcame certain barriers. This is certainly one I'm going to be keeping an eye on (pun fully intended) when it comes out later this year.

In Review

Overall, the show was pretty small, but that's to be expected for something in only its second year. It was pretty busy, too, with attendees ranging from kids dragging their parents around to veteran gamers nearing their thirties. There were a couple of technical problems with some of the displays; about four of the 16 demo PCs weren't working properly, and Nintendo's failure to provide most of their DS's with mains power was a big letdown. Having said that, I left pretty satisfied with what I had seen and played. I hope that next year's show will be even bigger and attract even more attention.