I’ve been lucky enough to get hold of a Beta key for LittleBigPlanet.

Wow. What a charming game, brimming with little touches and brilliant ideas. From the second Stephen Fry’s voice kicked in I knew I was in for unique treat. So what is LittleBigPlanet about? well I’m lazy sod so I’ll pinch the description from Wikipedia

In LittleBigPlanet, players control small characters (nicknamed either “Sackboy” or “Sackgirl”, owing to their material and appearance), each of which can jump, move, and grab objects. Players can use their abilities to shape and develop the highly manipulatable environment to build custom spaces either individually, collaboratively, and/or competitively. Levels focus on co-operative, physics-based gameplay, and players can use mechanisms such as cogs and blocks to build anything from small level parts to large, complex worlds. The game will also allow opportunities for players to acquire new skills and tools.

It’s a joy to play. At face value the gameplay can seem simplistic, sure it’s not a deep or complex platformer like say Super Mario World. But that doesn’t matter as there is just so many cool little ideas and fun things to do. The level creation mode is where it comes alive. The scope of what you can do is staggering, the game comes with an enormous toolkit of stuff to play with and build levels. Levels can be published online and shared for everyone to play, picking through some of the user created levels online has been a mixed bag - but several of them have shown stuff I didn’t think was possible, and you come away with ideas for your own creations!

I’m in love with LittleBigPlanet - roll on the 24th Oct when it’s released fully.

So it’s that time of year again, the time of year where 99% of publishers release their “triple A” titles.

Gaming has always been a seasonal hobby, and it’s inevitable that publishers are going to release games in the run up to Christmas, but I think things are getting silly. For example this year in the next 3~4 weeks we have coming out: Fable II, Fallout 3, Dead Space, Little Big Planet, Mirror’s Edge, Far Cry 2, Gears of War 2, Tomb Raider: Underworld, Prince of Persia, Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty 5. And that’s just the ones I want off the top of my head, that’s a LOT of games. Four of those games all come out on the SAME DAY.

Now personally it’s not about the cost, although I appreciate for many people this is a major complaint. Really how can we give our time and dedication to these games, to do them justice? Titles like Fable II and Fallout 3 I’m hoping to get a good 40~50 hours of play out of, which is probably a month or so of play each.

Something will have to give, some of these games will not be bought straight away. Using a bit of willpower I will wait - maybe till next summer when there will be no games being released and play them then. The games will also be half the price at that time.

I’m curious how the game publishers expect to benefit by this glut of choice? Inevitably some of these games will sell far less than others in the face of all the competition, and I think the publishers are shooting themselves in the foot.

I’ve knocked up a command for Ubiquity to integrate with Blippr

To install & use it, visit this page you should see a notification at the top of your browser, click the Accept button and follow the process to install it.

You will need Ubiquity installed for it to work, dhur.

Enjoy!

I wanted to show my Amazon wishlist on my blog, actually I have a custom ‘wishlist’ on Amazon, listing what I’m currently playing - it was that I really wanted to show.

So I thought Amazon will provide that as an RSS feed and I’ll embed it in, no problems. No. They don’t, no idea why this obvious and useful feature is not provided! Grrrrr

To cut a long story short I found nothing out there that would do this (and worked for the Amazon UK site) so I knocked up a quick Wordpress plugin to do it. You can see it in use on my site.

Features:

• Show small/medium/large images for the items in your wishlist
• Links through to Amazon
• Include your Affiliate ID (If you have one)#
• Supports all Amazon locales (US, UK, France, Germany, Canada, Japan)

Usage:

• Install as you would any other standard Wordpress Plugin
• Go to: Design -> Widgets and add the widget to your sidebar
• Set the options as required, note the List ID is a required field

How to Find your Amazon wishlist ID:

• Logon to Amazon and click the “Gifts & Wishlists” link near the top
• Click Wishlist
• In the “Your Wishlists” section on the right click the relevant wishlist
• The ID will be in the URL of the page, e.g. /gp/registry/wishlist/2GMNFC0FKPU37/ref=cm_wl_rlist_go

Download - Wordpress Amazon Wishlist Plugin v1.0

So Capcom finally realised they had a sweet bit of IP with their old Bionic Commando game, we’re getting a full blown next gen sequel at some point. But Capcom have also put out a remake of the old NES Bionic Commando game for PSN and XBLA called Bionic Commando: Rearmed. Summary: It’s a 2D platform/shooter where the main character has an extendible bionic arm thingy, enabling him to grab and grapple his way round the environment. Firstly it’s a very good looking game, clearly a lot of love and attention has been put into it. The 2.5D works really well, and there is a surprising amount of detail in the backgrounds and levels for what is essentially a 6 quid game.

Very little comprise has been made with the controls, so it’s fairly unforgiving, and yes there is no jump button - which does take some getting used to. It’s difficult too, small mistakes can result in instant death especially on the later levels. Old gamers like myself (ahem) will remember a time when all games were like this. I had a bit of a on/off thing going with it - often giving up as it was too hard (If I’m honest I claimed it was impossible and switched it off in a huff several times!) only to come back the next day and breeze past what ever level or boss was causing me pain.

Anyhow I finished the game last night - a real genuine sense of achievement. I more than got my 6 quids worth of fun from it.

I hope developers pumping out cheap ports and remakes on PSN and XBLA will take note. This is how a proper remake is done.

And who said game titles aren’t getting longer!

I picked this up as a cheapy a few weeks ago (it can be had for about a tenner) and completed it last night. OK first things first, it’s a flawed game. The graphics are sub-par especially the textures which are woeful in places. The plot is utter 3rd rate, high fantasy tosh. It’s heavily cut down as a RPG with little customisation, choice or real depth, and it’s got quite a few glitches and bugs.

But… despite all of that I really rather enjoyed it! It starts off pretty badly, in fact I only continued to play in order to see how bad it could be and laugh at it. But soon I was sucked in, the game definitely improves by about Chapter 4 when the settings and enemies start to get interesting

In a way I enjoyed the fact it didn’t have all the depth of a real RPG or thousands of side quests like say Oblivion (which would be the closest game to compare it to, given the fantasy setting and first person view). The lack of options and choices basically meant I got on with playing the game, rather than the hours of buggering about that I normally do. The game also rewards exploration, something I like in my games; so if you go clambering up to the top of that hard to reach, ruined pillar there is generally something there to reward your efforts & curiosity (other good games in this regard are Tomb Raider and Half Life 2)

Anyhow, if you are after a light weight, action-RPG with a bit of hack and slash & dungeon crawling and general daring do - I’d say you can’t go far wrong with DMMM:E (as it’s know to it’s friends!)

The weekly Weight Watchers meeting could get a litte fraught once the biscuits arrived

Just completed this on the PS3

Wow so that’s 2 games in 3 days! Well I’d been playing this on and off for a while. What can I say? It adds very little to the series, it’s a cut ‘n paste job of DMC 1, 2 or 3. Now I guess Capcom reckon if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. But by the time you get to a forth game in a series you expect some innovation.

Well it’s very pretty, very, very pretty in fact; but all this eye candy comes at a price - interactability (I don’t even think that’s a word - but you get my drift). In gameplay terms 95% of the environents are basically box rooms and corridors, they don’t look like box rooms and corridors, they look like ultra detailed, epic pieces of gothic architecture, but you just glide through them, there is nothing to do in these places. The locations merely serve as a sumptuous backdrop to yet another demon slicing fest. OK maybe I’m being unfair, Devil May Cry doesn’t pretend to be anything other than a beat ‘em up with completely OOT sword and gunplay, and in those regards it’s fine. Special mention has to go to the cut scenes; these were gorgeous, well choreographed and even more OOT than the game, which is going some. Extra special mention for the cheap shot Capcom pulled making you fight through the same levels twice (once as Nero, once as Dante) you even get to fight all the bosses twice too, yay! actually some of the bosses you fight three times! Come on Capcom that’s really lame!

Still not a bad game. And defintily one to show off to your mates if you are looking for a true HD game that doesn’t just look like a PS2 game with extra varnish.