I quite liked the light-hearted trailer they put together for the glove too:

This could be very useful for some of the research I’ve been doing lately – plenty of games and applications could be made around this technology. Then again, I guess thats what Microsoft are getting at with Kinect. How good both are in the hands of the public remain to be seen.

For more details on the project, check out the project’s page.

Rather lovely, right? You can listen to the entire track here, and download it here. If you want to hear the original Bieber track, just for comparison’s sake of course, you can hear it here.

If you don’t believe this is actually the Bieber track slowed down, here’s the proof. I took the slowed down version and sped it up again here. When I first posted this sped up version I simply was doing it to prove to someone on Twitter it wasn’t a hoax. Turns out Gizmodo found the link and posted it on their article about the song (see Update 2), and as of the time I’m writing this, the clip has over 32,000 listens and it’s at the top of the Audioboo popular chart (see below). Thank God I changed my display picture to one that didn’t show my ugly mug to those 32k people, eh?

Note: “Echoes Across The Wasteland” was the title given to the track when it was uploaded to the Photon Wave Orchestra bandcamp page, a band name which apparently originated from 4Chan. There had been some confusion as to whether this was a genuine ambient release from this band, hence why I sped up the track to show it was indeed the Bieb-meister.

Damn this looks hot. The first game was fantastic. The second game, whilst it hit a bit of a lull in the middle, was still pretty awesome thanks to the last few chapters. The other good news is that Ken Levine is back on board for this one. Can’t wait to check this out.

I’m very proud of my hometown this evening. Derry/Londonderry has been awarded the status of UK City of Culture for 2013. Congratulations to all involved in the bid – the support for the bid from the people in the city was fantastic, particularly online. I set up a twibbon to show support for the bid (this adds a small symbol to the corner of your Twitter or Facebook display picture), tweeted about it, and it gradually gained over 1,200 supporters. Here’s to the future, and hopefully we can show both the historical and contemporary culture Derry has to offer.

The video above, “Voices”, is a short film produced to support the bid.

Eluvium – “Copia”
Listen now: Prelude for Time Feelers, Indoor Swimming at the Space Station

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Rhian Sheehan – “Standing in Silence”
Listen now: Part 3, Part 7/8
Available for a mere £1.95 digitally at Play.com.

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The Tumbled Sea – “Songs by The Tumbled Sea”
Listen now: 97202, A Growing Recognition of the Genius of Birds
This album is available as a free download (provided by the artist)! Check out his Myspace for more, and I recommend his side project Magic Man, who have also provided their great album available for free download.

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Helios – “Caesura”
Listen now: Hope Valley Hill, Mima

• There is no collision detection with anything other than the ground. Bridges are simply a mirage. You can also drive off the end of the map. Physics? Pah, take that Newton!
• The box and gameplay description of the game advertise that the player must escape from the police. Lucky for you, there are actually no police in the game. The law is a lie. In fact, there is pretty much zero plot to the game whatsoever.
• In the originally released version, enemy trucks had no AI and, as such, never left the starting position. Praise be that a patch was eventually released which gave life to these lumbering beasts. The patch also gave the great privilege of adding sound effects to the game.
• Text on the player’s HUD doesn’t fit properly.
• The game fails to distinguish between the player starting or finishing when crossing the line, so you may receive a “YOU’RE WINNER” message within a second of starting the game. Rewarding feedback leads to high levels of player engagement, right?

Despite all this, the game still sold 20,000 copies. In fairness, from watching the video, it looks pretty damn entertaining.

Crater Face from Skyler Page on Vimeo.

I was first introduced to Carcassonne thanks to it being given away free of charge for a limited time on Xbox 360 to celebrate the 5th anniversary of Xbox Live. After a few plays and having grown accustomed to the rules (well, most of them) the game really began to grow on me, and I’ve since played the original board game. Within the last few days an iPhone version of the game has been released… and its pretty damn good!

If you’re unfamiliar with Carcassonne, Wikipedia provides a nice summary of how the game is played:

The game board is a medieval landscape built by the players as the game progresses. The game starts with a single terrain tile face up and 71 others shuffled face down for the players to draw from. On each turn a player draws a new terrain tile and places it adjacent to tiles that are already face up. The new tile must be placed in a way that extends features on the tiles it abuts: roads must connect to roads, fields to fields, and cities to cities.

After placing the new tile, the placing player may opt to station a follower piece on that tile. The follower can only be placed on the just-placed tile, and must be placed in a specific feature. A follower claims ownership of one terrain feature—road, field, city, or cloister—and may not be placed on a feature already claimed by another player’s follower. However, it is possible for terrain features to become shared after the further placement of tiles. For example, two field tiles which each have a follower can become connected into a single field by another terrain tile.

The game ends when the last tile has been placed. At that time all features (including fields) score points for the players with the most followers in them. The player with the most points wins the game.

The iPhone version of the game offers several modes of play. Normal mode is the original board game, which can be played either locally with up to 5 people (friends over Wi-fi or bluetooth or fairly intelligent AI CPU players) or online with friends or random players. Solitaire mode pits you alone against the game, with the goal of meeting a list of requirements. The original board game included several expansion packs – these aren’t present at the moment but may become available in future, presumably as purchasable downloadable content.

So far I’ve been predominantly playing Normal mode, both with CPU players and friends, and its rather good. Play is turn-based, meaning you can take your go and then exit the app. Push notifications can be enabled to notify you when your friend has made their move. The app is extremely polished, provides an in-game chat room, shows your friend’s current online status and provides an overview of what tiles are remaining. The game board can be zoomed in and out of easily using the usual pinch gestures and controls are easy and unobtrusive. Online games are ranked, assigning the player with an overall skill rating which increases or decreases with each win or loss respectively.

A couple of minor gripes are that the app runs a bit sluggish on an iPhone 3G or earlier (runs fine on 3GS onwards), and it should be easier to switch between games while on the go – at the minute this requires opening the options screen and pausing the game, which isn’t a very appropriately labeled option since it doesn’t pause the game at all, but rather takes you back to the menus. The game also tends to suck your battery a bit if you have it running for a while.

These problems do little to tarnish what is a great version of an addictive and fun casual game, joining Words With Friends as one of the must-have turn-based iPhone games, suitable even for those with a busy lifestyle. The app is currently available for the introductory price of £2.99 ($4.99), but will soon be priced at £5.99 ($9.99) so I recommend picking this up as soon as possible if you want to save some cash. Its well worth it.

Link: Official app site with trailer video

For a highly comprehensive review with tons of screenshots, check out this great post from ackmonduel over at boardgamegeek.com.

I aim to move the rest of the site (my profile, games portfolio, etc.) to a seperate, more professionally fitting site. These changes will hopefully come into effect within the next month or so.

Update: I’ve done a bit of tidying up with the current WordPress theme. I’ve condensed the categories, tidied up the sidebar and narrowed the theme a little, and I like it – so I’m going to stick with it. The only thing left to do is move the additional portfolio stuff to a new site, which will happen sometime in the near future.

It wouldn’t be difficult to turn this into some sort of game (for passengers of course) – maybe some sort of Pokemon collector type game where you have to photograph a certain number of cars of a certain model or colour, or if you want to get controversial, virtually shooting at passing cars and scoring points for it.

I was going to mention some form of Death Race mechanics, but thats probably pushing it…

App: Augmented Driving by Imaginyze