We went to see Alice in Wonderland (in 3D) at the cinema last night. Although not an amazing film by any means, it was still thoroughly enjoyable (as with most, if not all, of Tim Burton’s films). Wonderland looks rather nice in 3D, though nothing compared to the world of Pandora (Avatar). As with Avatar and other 3D cinema I’ve experienced (e.g. old 3D Imax shows), watching the film just excited the hell out of me for when I can play games in 3D. In particular, I can’t wait to play a 3D Elder Scrolls game. I just keep imagining that moment when you walk out of the sewers in Oblivion (The Elder Scrolls IV) and the glory of seeing Cyrodiil and The Imperial City in the distance in 3D.

Bring it on! Eurogamer recently published this interesting feature on the current state of 3D TV’s and 3D games.

“Rom Check Fail” is a very cool indie game that should warm the heart of any retro arcade game lover.  From the website:

“Carefully place a dozen arcade classics in a large mixing bowl. Add a dash of awesomesauce, cover the bowl, and allow the ingredients to ferment over three weeks. Uncover in a well ventilated area, then mash until loud and glitchy. Serve over the internet.”

I played through it recently – very crazy, but very cool.  Check it out!

This is an extremely impressive trailer for the upcoming game “DogFighter”, from game developers Dark Water Studios, based in Derry, Northern Ireland (my home town).  There’s no official word yet on what platform the game will be on, but it is looking like it’ll be a hell lot of fun.  I’d love an XBLA release. :)

Image by Damien Lopez

I’m currently making my way through Jesper Juul’s “A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and Their Players” and I came across this useful diagram.  It is missing a few entries, but overall its quite handy for reference (and nostalgia).

Jordan Mechnar, creator of the classic Prince of Persia (which kick started the franchise), has published his old journals from back in the days when he was working on the original PoP game. They make for fantastic, nostalgic and insightful reading. Not only that, but he has also included original video footage which he shot of his brother running and diving around a park – footage which eventually became part of the digitised animations used in the game. Its incredibly strange after all these years to watch someone run around in real-life with those moves.

Reading these journals just makes me want to have some quality time to make a game.

(Thanks to Leila Johnston on Twitter (whose adventure book “Enemy of Chaos” I have just bought today) for tweeting about these journals, otherwise I might never have found them.)

One of the downsides of a touch screen device such as the iPhone is that it often doesn’t lend itself well to typical game control schemes.  Prime example – Marble Blast, a game which I am a huge fan of on the Xbox 360, is awful on the iPhone primarily due to its controls.  On the flip side, one of the great things about the iPhone is some of the unique games that appear on the platform that make great use of touch screen controls.  One such game is Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor.

The idea is fairly simple – you take the role of a spider exploring a rather eerie mansion and you must spin webs with the goal of trapping insects for you to feast upon.  Once a certain percentage of the insects in the level are eaten, a portal opens to the next level.  However, it won’t take long before you realise that, as suggested by the title of the game, the manor holds a dark secret.

The game’s controls are simple yet elegant – touch the right side of the spider to move right, touch left of the spider to move left and flick in a particular direction to jump and weave your silk.  Once you connect up a closed shape with your silk lines, it will form a web which insects can get caught in.  Moving around in this game just feels right and really makes the game play very well – its great to finally see a platformer that actually controls this good on a touch screen.

The graphics have a nice hand-drawn style and provide a graceful and polished environment.  The twinkly ambient music furthers this grace and gives the game a very artistic shine throughout.

The game contains 28 levels with various types of bugs which must be trapped in different ways.  It may feel a bit short in length to some, but for me its pretty much the ideal length a mobile game should be and is definitely replayable.  The gameplay can become somewhat repetitive if played for a long period, however since I only tend to play mobile games in short bursts I rarely found the game tiring. Overall, the game is enjoyable and at its low price point of £1.79 (less than a bottle of beer) it is an essential purchase for any iPhone owner. Highly recommended.

A pretty excellent post from Cracked.com, with pictures showing what games would be like if they followed the rules of reality a  bit more closely…

Read the full post at Cracked.com to see more hilarious Photoshops.

Wow.

A very cool integration of FaceAPI and the Source engine to create head tracking movement in games using just a standard webcam.  Probably less convenient and more strenuous than using a traditional controller, but still cool tech nonetheless with a lot of potential for other applications.

Info link: http://torbensko.com/software/head_tracking/

Wolfenstein 3D was one of the first games I can remember playing on my PC, along with Lemmings, Ghostbusters II and some form of Pengo clone.  For a long time I even had to play it with the only sound coming from the internal PC speaker (which could produce blips and screeches) due to the lack of a Sound Blaster card.  I’ve always held a soft spot for the game, mostly due to fond memories and nostalgia more than anything else, so I was chuffed when I heard it was coming to Xbox Live Arcade, especially at the appropriate price of 400 Microsoft points for all 6 episodes (which still include the secret levels from the original).  Naturally, I snapped it up on release.

So far I’ve completed 4 out of the 6 episodes.  The port has its plus sides, mainly that its the easiest version of Wolfenstein 3D to control that I’ve ever played – in the original PC version you had to hold down Shift to strafe, making movement anything but intuitive by today’s FPS control standards.  Also, the addition of achievements adds extra incentive to complete goals such as finding all the secrets in a level, 100% kill count and 100% treasure looting.  Sadly, the port is not without its flaws, which is pretty disappointing given the age of the game (17 years old at time of writing).  One of the biggest flaws of the port is the dodgy collision detection between the player and pick-up items on the ground (e.g. treasure, health, ammo).  Its often the case that you need to be facing the item to pick it up and that walking over it backwards will only work half the time.  The fact that this issue was not present in the game 17 years ago makes this even more disappointing.  Also, the music plays at a much slower tempo than the original version, perhaps not an issue for players new to the game but apparent to those who played the original a lot – unnecessary (why the hell…?) and degrading to the music.  Other minor glitches include a small pause before toggling a secret wall, the boss kill cam playing too fast (with the sound not in sync) and a few graphical glitches such as edges of walls flickering and slight gaps appearing, as well as being unable to stretch the game to 16:9 aspect ratio.

Its still good old Wolfenstein 3D, a game that perhaps doesn’t hold up these days to those who don’t have the nostalgia of having played the original, but enjoyable to replay for those of us who did.  Its disappointing that a port of such an old game can still have issues, but thankfully the issues are minor enough to still allow for the nostalgia to shine through.  For 400 points its nice and cheap with a good few hours of gameplay throughout its 6 episodes.