I began to think about what things I like most – I like physical websites, ones that seem real. This interest also crosses over to films – I’ve always had a love for props and other ‘viral’ items which make a film more realistic. While they are largely irrelevant, films would not be the same without it, and two films which feature such props to excellent ends are Memento and Se7en.

Memento

The notes in Memento, as well as the photos taken, are all from the protagonist to himself. Leonard Shelby has to send himself scribbling, desperate notes before he forgets what he was thinking.

Se7en

In Se7en, the antagonist John Doe records his life in diaries. The team for the film had to write all the books, and it took $15,000 and two months to write them.

Inspired by this ‘physical’ style with realism, I set about making a simple but effective site that fit the style. I worked out a few styles I thought might work, before settling on the ‘paper strips’ design. I set about working out the wireframe, first on paper and then in Photoshop.

I then opened up Dreamweaver and set to work creating the website over a few days. Unfortunately I forgot to take screenshots of the development of it as I worked out each part and applied my knowledge to craft it into what I wanted.

The Portfolio area is still a work-in-progress as I try to work out how to display my work. I will probably split each area (Graphics, Web, Photography) off into a page all of their own. I am keeping the ‘handwritten’ theme going throughout.

Lyrics from the Poets of the Fall song Where Do We Draw The Line from the album Revolution Roulette.

Sites such as bbc.co.uk and skysports.com throw lots of information at the user from a huge variety of areas and it can be disorientating. However, the BBC website is well designed to avoid this, with clear divisions and user-customisation. The Sky Sports website on the other hand feels like it’s too much, throwing all this information at the user. I really wanted to avoid this.

As far as inspiration was concerned, the Twitter homepage inspired me. The very simple, very clean design of both the logged-out homepage and the main logged-in homepage were very good examples of easy to use, easy to consume websites.

I decided to design a website based around a building, with the header being the rooftop and the main body being one side of the building, with the sky making up the background. The billboards at the front right would serve as the links to pages.

Above: The Skycraper Rooftop Concept

In crafting a skyscraper, something that was important was depth and a sense of scale. Inspiration for this came from the iconic, almost clichéd Lunch Atop a Skyscraper photograph.

Above, Lunch atop a Skyscraper by Charles C. Ebbets, 1932

The picture is a key centrepoint for my inspiration as it shows a huge degree of depth and height. You can see the buildings hundreds of feet below and New York City stretching off into the distance, as well as Central Park. The scale is staggering, and it only increases the surprise that these men are so high up and casually eating lunch.

I also needed a way of displaying the portfolio in a manner that fit the scene. I decided on a concept of banners hanging from the side of the building. When creating this sort of image, I was inspired partly by the James Bond 1997 film Tomorrow Never Dies, in a scene where Bond and Wai Lin escape from a skyscraper using a huge poster of the villain, Elliot Carver. I wanted to capture the same sort of imagery that the original poster tried to achieve – hopefully with less ripping!

Above: The Portfolio “Building Banner” Concept.

When it came to the mockup of the rooftop in Adobe Photoshop, I was inspired by the videogame Mirror’s Edge (Electronic Arts, 2008). It’s futuristic visage of rooftops and skyscrapers was unique and refreshing, and it’s use of (or lack of) colour was inspiring.

Above: Two shots of the Mirror’s Edge cityscape.

I then mocked up the website in photoshop, adding detail over time to create a lifelike, but abstract scene. I plan to add detail in the future to the rooftop and sides.

And it was FANTASTIC.

View the gallery here.

Easily the best live gig I’ve ever seen. I can’t actually think of the words to express how good it was. NIN are one of my favourite bands and it fully lived up to expectations. Also saw a really good band called Mew that did the support, and Jane’s Addiction who were brilliant in their 80’s glory. Also, Gary Numan came on with NIN for a few songs including ‘Cars’ which was brilliant – it’s one of my favourite songs of all time!

The problem came when I tried to join a game server. None could be found. I managed to join one but lost connection after 5 minutes and couldn’t join another all day. I don’t understand how on launches of fairly major free (albeit, in this case, a free trial) games like 1943 and America’s Army 3 can go so badly. Did they not expect so many people to want to play it? That’s not very ambitious is it.

Once I finally got into a game I had a ton of fun. It takes what was great about 1942 – Islands, Boats, Planes, Guns, Explosions, and so on, and distills it down into a simple, easy to use gameplay. You have unlimited magazines for all your weapons and equipment. There are 3 classes. As a 1942 player, like myself, it’s easy to think “Wow, what did they do?”. The multiple classes of old BF games are gone. Long live the three class system.

The Rifleman is my favourite. Armed with an 8-round semi-auto rifle (The Garand… or it’s Japanese equivalent, the reskinned Garand) the Rifleman is really good against infantry at almost any range. Coupled with the rifle grenades and normal grenades he becomes a great class to use. His bayonet makes a quick mess of anyone up close.

The Soldier is the class to use when dealing with vehicles, either driving them or killing them. The magic Battlefield wrench returns, and the soldier can use it to fix vehicles or as a melee weapon to batter someone to death. He also has a rocket launcher to blow the stuffing out of any tank. or wall. More on that in a bit. He’s also armed with an SMG for those tight moments when you bail out of a tank and are up close with an angry enemy. He’s the best at CQB because of this, but I find the rifleman is better overall.

The Sniper is the specops character. Armed with his bolt action and pistol, he’s a standard sniper, and his bayonet (wielded in the hands) is lethal enough. He also is equipped with explosives – think BF2’s specops C4 – which is effective. I find the class to not be to my liking – the Rifleman is accurate enough as it is.

So, overall, the game is pretty damn fun. The classic BF1942 Pacific maps are there – Wake Island, Guadalcanal, and Iwo Jima, with Coral Sea to be unlocked once 43 Million community kills are made (shouldn’t take too long!). Each map has each side starting on a carrier before making their aerial and sea based assault upon the land and fighting over it, which is a change from the usual attack-defend maps in 1942.

So, all the ingredients are there, and the cake is certainly well cooked. It’s a damn fun game. Frantic, explosive, and fast paced, it keeps you on your toes. The scale feels just right too, with tanks rolling and planes zipping overhead and bombers (the replacement for the Commander Artillery from BF2/2142) exploding everything.

The Frostbite engine is used to full effect. Anyone who’s played Bad Company will know what to expect. A house is no match in Frostbite, as a tank can smash through walls, rockets can blow holes in almost everything, and entire bases can be levelled. It just works. And before I knew it, my 30 minutes of alloted trial time was over.

As it stands, the game should perform as an excellent middle ground between the arcadey, cartoon shenanigans of Battlefield Heroes (3 class system!) and the upcoming Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3.

It’s arcadey, it’s fun, it’s packed with explosions, death, and vehicles. So yeah, check it out. It’s on PS3 as well from today. For 1200MSP on 360 and $15/£9.99 on PS3, it’s certainly a good, fun-filled deal. It should be coming to PC in September time – Frostbite hasn’t been used in a game on PC before, so it should require some optimisation. Maybe the player count will be increased, but as it is 12v12 is crazy enough.

Gears of War 1 & 2, Rainbow Six: Vegas 1 & 2, Mass Effect, Army of Two, Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway, The Bourne Conspiracy, 50 Cent: Blood On The Sand are the prominent ones. On second thought… looking at the list of games using UE3, there are so many more games than I expected to use UE3. The cover-shooter games are kinda dwarfed. I thought it was a overwhelming thing.

Oh well. But looking at the Cover-Shooter to Non-Cover-Shooter Ratio, Unreal Engine 3 has the most. And it has the largest Grimy-Dark-Brown-Games to Non-Grimy-Dark-Brown-Games ratio.

On another note, Uncharted 2 looks absolutely awesome.

Ever since the first footage of the game was shown, I was in awe. What a beautiful, amazing game. From the stunning visuals to the unique gameplay, to the lovely soundtrack… it looks stunning. And I’m sure you’ll agree. And nothing has changed drastically in either the gameplay or the visuals department. So what went wrong?

The pitfalls of Mirror’s Edge have been talked about by pretty much everyone. Having played it myself, I can agree wholeheartedly – the combat, and level design. Oh, and the story. After the first mission, you’re forced into this story you don’t really care for. You’re confined into a building almost immediately after having only a taste of the freedom of the outside. Sure, you get some of that later, but it’s all underground tunnels and sewers elsewhere.

The game sometimes knows it’s good. Sometimes, you catch moments of brilliance and a truly classic game inside. But somewhere, somehow, someone thought that saying you should “always avoid enemies” and then forcing you to fight your way through groups of them was a good idea. And the first time it did this, it didn’t even make it clear – I was sprinting around in this small area trying to run my way out while being shot to bits. It was disastrous.

I could go on for a bit longer about this. I can only hope that Mirror’s Edge 2 (Subtitle: At the Edge Again) will be greatly improved. DICE, I know you can make a good game. The battlefield series are good. (I can forget about 2142, it’s ok.) So please, make Mirror’s Edge 2, if there is one, better. You have the vision to do so.

And now, I point you towards what other people have written about the game. Tom Francis (Of PCG) has written loads about it. From the police, to the combat, to art and motion, to simply taking in how stunning the game looks. And RockPaperShotgun’s take on the game is a good read too.

Spoilers ahead, obviously.

GTAIV was groundbreaking, in my eyes. Not just in it’s technology or gameplay, but in it’s storyline. It was unpredictable at times. Many times during the storyline you’re given choices between life or death, or between two people. Sometimes the choice is clear – Person X deserves to die, or deserves to live. But at other points the choice is not so clear, even in very obvious circumstances. The choice to kill Darko or not had me deliberating for too long.

It throws these unexpected choices at you, and once choices are made the game throws unexpected consequences. This is a vital part to it’s feel of realism – in the real world, we can’t predict the result of our actions, and this is one of the first few games not in the RPG genre that throws unexpected results at the player.

The ending is one of those most unexpected things. No matter what your choice (Revenge or Money), the death of an important and deep character comes as a shock to the player. It’s either Kate or Roman, and the death(s) are not expected by the player at all.

And is this why people don’t like it? Because the game takes the power away from the player? Perhaps this is something a game shouldn’t do, the player should be in control of the world. But it’s something different, and something that should be congratulated. Although the ending felt flat or anti-climactic towards the final chase, the actual consequences of your actions are not. It’s a risky move, and although it didn’t quite pay off with the end game, it certainly was groundbreaking in it’s risk-taking.

I can’t wait for the next GTA. Or the DLC.

I’ve played my fair share of Eastern-European games, and some of the games coming from that area are both refreshing experiences, damn good, and excellently made. But damn, are they harsh.

Probably the best example of this is Operation Flashpoint or Armed Assault. From Bohemia Interactive Studios, based in the Czech Republic, both of these games are probably the most harsh representation of war you could ever play. Death is a bullet away. And it is so harsh.

Original War was one of my favourite RTSes when I was younger, and I’ve started playing it again. It was by Altar Games, also from the Czech Republic. But it’s harsh. So, so harsh. With so few people (who die easily, and who can’t be replaced) the loss of one means your mission will be much, much harder to complete. Even with a full crew, missions are rock hard. OW is $6 on gog.com now, and I strongly suggest you play it, as long as you’re prepared to put up with a tough time. But aside from that, it’s a truly amazing game – the storyline is brilliant, and the intros to both campaigns (USSR one in particular) are absolutely genius. But it’s a tough game.

Soldiers: Heroes of WW2 is a game from Best Way (who are from Russia, I believe), is also rock hard. But it’s also a fresh take on the WW2 RTS and is also well worth a look. Faces of War, the sequel, is much easier, but still has harder difficulties. (it’s also on GOG, as is Operation Flashpoint). I can’t wait for the 3rd game in the series.

Mafia is one of the greatest games ever made. But it too is from a Czech developer. And guess what? It’s hard as nails. So, so hard. But it’s still an absolute classic.

I’ve been playing Stalker: Clear Sky and that too is really harsh. I didn’t enjoy the first Stalker but I decided I’d give this a shot and it’s pretty good once you get used to it. But it’s hard, even on the lowest difficulty setting. It’s harsh – there are lots, and lots of things out there to kill you, and the busy HUD and lack of notifications means you’ll be running around draining health without noticing, and before you know it, you’re dead. It demands a lot of attention from the player at all times, and there’s a lot to manage.

IL-2 Sturmovik and Lock On: Modern Air Combat are flight sims from Russia. And guess what? They’re hard too. But then again, they’re sims.

I definately don’t meant to say I hate any of the games here – OFP/ArmA are probably some of my favouritest games ever, and Original War is an absolute classic. I’m enjoying Stalker: Clear Sky as well, as much as it is possible to do so.

But maybe all of the games here are ’simulations of real life’? Maybe it’s not that they’re harsh, but what if they’re realistic? I certainly wouldn’t disagree that any of the games here are unrealistic, while I would say a game like CoD4 is unrealistic. Maybe all of these games stem from their drive to make gritty, realistic games, even if it means the player has a hard time? I like that outlook.

But is having a hard, harsh game a bad thing? I mean, a game like CoD4 is a blast, but unless you play it on Veteran it’s not exactly the most hardest game around. It’s almost as if western devs are scared of making games hard in the fear it’ll drive players away. And it does, in many cases. But it’s nice to have some refreshing ideas from eastern europe, even in such a way as to make a game hard.  All of the stuff coming out of Russia and Eastern Europe is both excellent, imaginative, fresh, and a new take on many of the things Western Devs take for granted, and I can’t wait to see what they come up with in 2009.