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!

Whats the Story?

Wrapped up Modern Warfare on hardened the other night. Thoroughly enjoyable romp with the exception of the endlessly spawning enemies that had me gnashing my teeth on several of the stages. Oh, and don't even mention Mile High. Still, like the sucker I am, I will now go through it again on veteran to see if I can earn some extra points. Won't be for a while though as I have Assassin's Creed to work through first then Mass Effect and Blacksite after that. Oh Xbox joy!

Resident Tat

Maximum was one of the first mags in the UK to break the Resident Evil franchise to UK gamers. Of course the rest is history and no doubt it's success was purely down to our hyped previews... yeah, right! Still, despite Maximum dying on the newsstands it was much admired by the industry even if it was only for the chance to get more pages from one mag than all the others put together. Biohazard was also well up there on the office Tat-o-meter with large piles of T-Virus infected produce to enjoy. 99% of it was STARS gear like shirts, jackets and replica firearms which were just a little too expensive to hide from the boss. I picked out a few things I had left like this Anniversary collectors pack with the first three PSOne games and two bits of junk that came with the Biohazard briefcase. Both fall well within the circles of purest tat.

COD FTW!

Yes. It's superb. It's insanely superb. I want to play multiplayer ALL FREAKIN' DAY!!! I felt the same with Team Fortress 2 but no one plays that! No such problem with COD4 as the servers are packed with players. Ground War and 17 other guys going mental on each other is such a rush. A major plus is not having to listen to the usual crowds of pre-teen American 'doodz' with their squeaky, obscenity-laced drivel that we had to suffer with Gears of War. Speaking of Call of Duty 4, I threw together a background for the Live Theme contest they ran on the official COD website recently. Well, after the dust had settled and the votes counted I luckily got my entry chosen for the final pack! The theme is free and becomes available on Live on 16th November. My image will be seen on the 'Games' blade and doesn't look too bad seeing as I had little time to put it together. Congratulations also go out to the three other winners!

Modern Warfare in 12 hours!

That's how long I have to wait before it gets rammed through the letterbox and torn from the packaging for rampant playage. Well, I will have to wait a little longer as I have crackerjack deadlines on at the moment but when I get the chance. Of course that will mean all the other games get put 'on hold' for the foreseeable future. Orange Box, Sonata and VF will need to sit tight. Virtua Fighter 5 is especially enjoyable at the moment even though I am getting mixed results on ranked online matches. Plays like a dream online but, as I had not played VF for ages, I am extremely rusty and slow on the pad. As an ardent Wolf player I am getting mauled by the new characters like Brad, Blaze and Goh so got to keep practicing and figure them out. Still, don't have the time to learn like I did in the old days. VF2 was always a popular choice at the Emap haunt and was a Maximum favorite at the time. VF4 also got some serious workouts during our time on PSW but other than Richard there weren't too many others who wanted to play. Pansies.

It's all GO! here…

During my tenure with NMS I was asked to help out on the other Emap tomes every now and then. One such stint was knocking out the mini-handheld magazine GO! which was a freebie with C&VG. Working with Paul Rand we belted out this portable abomination every month and, as well as the layout of the pages, I also drew these dinky robots for the review section. I don't have any copies of it mind but I did hang onto the artwork.

Multi-tat! Gettit! Chortle... /coat.

Crawling through the attic unearthed this SNES tat treat from yesteryear. Once we sampled the four player antics this Hudson multitap provided we could never return to the Hori monstrosity we had been using before. Though we never used it for Bomberman I might add. Sorry Hudson!