Gaming Tees for all!

After an eternity of preparation we have finally managed to get our t shirt empire off the ground and live for the masses. Videogametees is a collaboration between myself and the good chaps over at Teefly and hopefully this can grow into something nice and wonderful for all involved. Our original aim was to get at least eight shirts into each of the four sections but time constraints prevented me from completing them all. Suffice to say, I have a ton of ideas and they are being developed into shirts when time allows. Each shirt idea goes through a long research period where we come up with the concept and then set about seeing if it can be translated into a workable design. The process by which we make the shirts means that the artwork must be strictly prepared. For this reason a lot of ideas get tossed aside simply because they are too complex for the production methods. We did manage 16 shirts though and you can at least browse the site and see if any take your fancy. With plans to get all site sections live by March and more shirts added every month it's highly likely you'll eventually see something that takes your fancy. Except for Richard that is. I made it quite clear that we where NOT making a design based on the recent spate of Pony games. Sorry mate.

Kameo for little kids!

I was asked why Kameo keeps appearing in my GamerTag as a recently played game. It's perhaps the only game, along with Sonic & Pinata, that's suitable for my eldest offspring. The rest of my collection is packed with guns, gore and adult excess which I keep locked away from prying eyes! My lad was not old enough when Kameo was first released but he saw the box and wanted to play. To keep him happy I made a Top Trumps version of Kameo using what artwork I could scrounge from the web. We managed to scrabble together about twenty cards and I considered contacting Rare to get more art to make a bigger set but I gave up. Games industry PR is universally up it's own arse! So when you see Kameo, Sonic etc appear in the GamerTag you can be assured I haven't lost all sense of reason and taste…
Jericho
Working through this basic shooter I got cheaply from Ebay recently. It's worth the £15 I paid for it but I would have been a little miffed had I paid full retail. Gears of War this isn't. Still, a few nice things in there with some interesting Hellraiser-style critters and more gore than we usually see on the Box. Level design is pretty basic (turn left, walk forward, kill, turn right, walk forward, kill more), enemy AI is non-existant and even on Hard you've got to really suck at games not to breeze through the levels. I'll try some more out tonight.

F**k those Flags!

All of them. And the person responsible for making them such an irritating achievement on Assassin's Creed. I want the achievement. I want to feel the overwhelming joy when the very last flag prompts the unlocked bar to pop onto the screen. But I am not a masochist (which as the dictionary states is a willingness or tendency to subject oneself to unpleasant or trying experiences) so it's not going to happen. Still, it's just one of a few problems with the game that is only saved by a truly spectacular environment and game mechanics. It's so much fun to actually control the lead character you can mindlessly plough through the same set of tasks again and again and defy boredom! Only problem now is the Xbox keeps telling me the disc is scratched and I am so close to the end! Going to try to clean the disc and hope that it fixes the problem.

Overload? No thanks mate…

One of the original titles for the magazine before we settled on Maximum. We were extremely lucky to be told beforehand that Overload was the title of a certain… you know, men-who-like-men top shelf rag. Must have been one of the few that Richard did not subscribe too but there you go! Boom. Da Daa! I glanced through a few issues I kept hold of and began to ponder the the reasons for its demise.
1 First off, too many fighting games. What were we thinking? I should have been punched hard in the face for throwing endless beat 'em ups and Neo Geo nonsense across every issue. Sure, it had its place but we went overboard even by Maximum standards. VF, Tekken, Soul Edge, Darkstalkers, KoF, more Tekken, X-Men plus a little more Tekken to wash it all down.
2 Too much import and arcade coverage. Nowadays I just laugh for a LONG TIME when I see the pages we wasted on King's Field. PC Games should also have been canned. Hardly any of our audience even owned a PC back then let alone care for the games on them.
3 Thirty pages with a purple background? Should have stuck with the Overload title methinks…
Zeppelin should have sucked godammit!
But they didn't which makes not being there so much more painful. Then we had to endure smug pensioners leaving the O2 arena gushing praise whilst keeping the false teeth in. Damn their eyes! World Tour now Page!

House full of elves

Been asked by the family to write down some ideas for xmas. So far it's a long list of Xbox games... hehe. List is getting shorter by the day though as some of the games are getting terrible reviews from the press. Normally I would not give a monkeys left nut about what the unwashed masses of 'professional game journos' would happen to think but in some instances (Blacksite) I think they might be on the ball.
GameSpot of bother
The firing of some chap I don't know from GameSpot seems to have the interwebs in quite a state. His treatment is pretty shocking but it's really not a surprise. Having worked for a fair few publishers and heard enough tales from the places I did not work I can confidently say that the 'suits' hold most staff in the highest contempt. These businesses are run purely on profit regardless of what the lower ranks might believe. You are there to make them RICHER! Still, Jeff has balls and took the CNET BS on the chin and walked out with his integrity intact. No doubt he will be much better off because of it and you gotta feel sorry for all the chaps left behind.
Tee for Two?
A interesting retail partnership I formed with some dear friends is close to becoming a reality in the next week or so. Following on from some tshirt ideas I produced for the popular shirt site Teefly.com, I have expanded this idea into its very own site. Not much more to say on it really other than when it goes live I shall let you chaps all know about it!