Archive for ‘Gaming’

August 2nd, 2011

Stuck in a gaming funk

Hopefully this is linked to the fact that I’m out enjoying the sun a lot more than usual, but I’ve broken out of my old gaming habits. Other than playing far too many Xbox Live Arcade games, I haven’t played a full boxed game since Portal 2!

Not to discount digital releases of course. Plants vs. Zombies has been my staple these last few weeks. I even played enough to get that horrific Smarty Branches achievement for growing the Tree of Wisdom to 100 feet. It makes me want to make more Plants vs. Zombies fan art too! I love the ability to dip in and out of most XBLA games. PopCap are especially good at this, although Zuma makes me forget to blink!

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I recently downloaded From Dust which is part of the Summer of Arcade 2011 and a game I’ve been working on. It’s a beautiful game but I’m finding the difficulty curve a bit evil. When I’ve messed up a level (which happens a lot) I’ve just been finding creative ways to kill the little tribes people. I might pick up Bastion and Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet once I’ve tackled From Dust. That should keep me busy until the madness that is the Christmas releases.

For now I think I’ll keep up with the more casual gaming and enjoy watching Chris replay Bioshock while I attempt to finish some paintings!

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July 24th, 2011

Garrus Portrait WIP Part 2

Some may remember the portrait I posted work in progress images of back in January. It’s of Garrus, a character from the video game Mass Effect.

It’s only been 6 months (oops) but I thought I’d stick the canvas on my easel and do a bit more work on it today. I’m hoping to get it done next week, but I did chose to paint it on a huge canvas…

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July 13th, 2011

The Special 10K 2011

I ran my first 10k race last weekend! I took part in the British 10K London Run on behalf of a very awesome children’s charity, SpecialEffect.

I joined fellow members of the video games industry to raise over £11,000! It was a really fantastic atmosphere on the day and I really enjoyed being part of such a fun team. 10K was the furthest I have ever ran. Well, walked and ran. I managed to pull a muscle behind my knee at around the 7K mark. Luckily I managed to walk it off by the 9K mark and sprinted the last 300m. I didn’t make a brilliant time, but at least I’ve got a goal for the next race!

My fellow team mates included:
Dave Moran (Midlifegamer), Kirsty Payne (SpecialEffect/Mastertronic), Andy Robertson (Family Gamer), Matt Eyre (Sega), Mark Ward (Warner), Johnny Minkley (SpecialEffect/Eurogamer), Simon Cowley (NCSoft), Graeme Boyd (Microsoft), Dan Maher (Microsoft), Mark Robins (Lunch PR), Andrew Smith (SpiltMilk), Lucy Starvis (Lunch PR), Cat Channon (NCSoft), Craig Stephens (NCSoft), Nicky Hunt (Spiltmilk), Mick Morris (Audiomotion), Brian Mitchell (Audiomotion), Rachel Tudhope (Audiomotion), Luke Niejadlik (Audiomotion), Gareth Glover (Codemasters), Neil Grainger (Audiomotion), Steve Merrett (Voltage PR), Alison Beasley (Lincoln Beasley), Jacob Mattock (Lincoln Beasley) and Nick Streeter (SpecialEffect).

HUGE thanks to everyone who donated!

Photo time! Most of these were stolen from the SpecialEffect Facebook page.

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June 10th, 2011

It’s time to kick ass and chew bubblegum…

… and drink far too much tequilla!

I was lucky enough to attend the Duke Nukem Forever lunch party yesterday. It was brillaint fun. The women walking around with shots of tequilla and vodka were a very good bad idea.

It’s a shame the demo on show wasn’t particularly interesting as most of it was cut scenes and I couldn’t hear it. I really wanted to give it a go and shoot some pigcops. Will have to wait a little longer I guess.

Anyway, here are some embarrassing photos:

This is a terrible photo but Oli’s face in this is brilliant! The guy dressed as Duke was freaking HUGE!!
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Hail to the queens, baby! Me and the lovely Kelsey in The King’s chair
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Mr Joe and another weird pose from me
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And finally, an idea of how drunk I was. Oops!duke3

Big thanks to Laura Sindall for the photos!

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June 4th, 2011

Lego Pirates of the Caribbean

Oh man, I love the Lego video games. I am an absolute sucker for the collectibles and I generally think they’re really cute games. The latest release, Lego PotC, is no exception. It took me around 35 hours to get all of the collectibles which, compared to Lego Harry Potter isn’t too bad. Oh, and I beat @fantaman to 1000G. Yeah boi!

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April 12th, 2011

Child of Eden Hits BAFTA London and Kapow! Comic Con

I rarely post up work stuff on here but it feels strange not to for this particular set of events. As Ubisoft are publishing the spiritual sequel to Rez, Child of Eden, I was very lucky to get the chance to work with it’s creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi! Mizuguchi also brought along the team’s concept artist, Ishihara Takashi. They were both really great guys and although last week was very busy, it was lots of fun.

The two biggest highlights of the four days were a developer Q&A at BAFTA hosted by Gamespot on the Friday and a Q&A and Gameplay Demo at Kapow! Comic Con on Saturday and Sunday.

I would do a write up but I’m going to be lazy and just put up photos! Besides, you can read two great write-ups from the BAFTA event here and here. :)

The BAFTA hall before it filled with the attendees. The sound system was still in one piece at this point.
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The BAFTA audience applauding Mizuguchi after his gameplay demos and open Q&A session. Also, broken speakers (so rock’n'roll!)
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Bluehero gets a photo with the guys after having some artwork signed
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Catherine and her sister brought some of their epic games collection to get signed!
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Mizuguchi on stage for the open Q&A at Kapow! Comicon
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Testing the game and sound before the live demo at Kapow!
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During the Q&A at the end fo the live demo at Kapow!
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Kinect pose – represent!
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I look far too happy here XD
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Yeah, this post needed more silliness…
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The guys kindly signed some artwork for me. I couldn’t find my copy of Rez, but luckily I was able to feed my fangirliness with this. :)
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I’ll finish off this post with a video of the BAFTA demo of the level “Evolution”. Big thanks to Lauren for posting this up.

Some of the photos were taken from Mizuguchi’s twitter as his photos were MUCH better than my crappy Blackberry photos. You should all follow him!

CategoryGaming, Video | Comment4 Comments »

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February 15th, 2011

Bishi Bashi Valentines Special

Chris and I aren’t the biggest fans of Valentines day so we agreed we wouldn’t buy any souless cards or chocolates to ruin my diet this year. Also, sending flowers is a bit pointless since he bought me a pot of daffodils last year that will flower again soon. (Random fact: Daffodils are my favourite!)

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We also agreed not to buy presents… well I did. Chris bought me a copy of Bishi Bashi Special for the PSOne! I absolutely love that game. It’s utterly crazy and loads of fun to play with friends. Chris has never played it so next time he comes over, or when we finally move in, I’ll get my original Playstation out for some button-bashing madness!

Bishi Bashi was the inspiration for Nintendo’s Wario Ware games and is, in my opinion, far superior. Here’s a video with a selection of mini-games…

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