I’m off to Leipzig next week for the Games Convention and with any luck (and a strong internet connection) I’ll be blogging regularly from Germany as the show unfolds. I’m not really expecting any huge announcements next week, but there will be some new games revealed. More importantly, I’ll be sitting down and chatting with a whole bunch of developers about their games and getting some serious hands-on time with some pretty huge stuff.

Wednesday is my busiest day with lots of time looking at and talking about some things we’ve seen before. I’ve been lead to believe some new Mirror’s Edge stuff is going to be shown for the first time (hands on? I hope so) as well as some time to play Dead Space and Left 4 Dead. I’ll be sitting down with Street Fighter IV’s producer for a while, which should be awesome and a little later I’ll be hanging with Ben Judd of Bionic Commando fame. Most exciting to me is a full hour playing Fallout 3… ^_^

Thursday leaves me with a little more time to play with (only a couple of hours during the course of the whole day), but has some big games on offer. I’m looking forward to seeing Velvet Assassin up close in the morning, then Borderlands in the afternoon, but the last few hours of Thursday are going to be awesome. Alpha Protocol, Banjo-Kazooie, Lips, Halo Wars and then Bayonetta. Hoping to get some hands on with as many of these as possible (mouth on for Lips?).

As I’ve said, no big announcements expected, but no shortage of big games. I look forward to keeping you updated as the week progresses.

In an exclusive interview with 360 Magazine (Issue 39, on shelves now), Braid creator Jonathan Blow revealed that he might never bother making another Live Arcade game after the drawn out process of bringing his award winning platformer to Xbox 360. While positive sales of the game may well change his mind in the longer term he suggested that the 360 architecture and Live Arcade’s certification process could actually be hurting the quality of the games being offered rather than improving it.

When asked how he found development Blow said: “The Xbox 360 is an easy platform to develop for, although I wish they would have gone with a single out-of-order processor rather than three in-order processors - because of that decision I spent a lot of time optimizing things in Braid that I wouldn’t have had to optimize on a PC.” However, it was Microsoft’s control of the service more than the tech of the Xbox 360 that was the real barrier. “I don’t know that I would ever make another XBLA game, though,” Blow revealed. ” The certification process is annoying and, I think, counterproductive for XBLA-sized games: it actually lowers the quality of the games, instead of raising it. Furthermore, the new business deal that Microsoft is purportedly offering makes it very unappealing for anyone but large publishers to bring a game to XBLA.”

As anyone who has played Braid can attest, Live Arcade could do with more developers like Jonathan Blow, not less. Hopefully his critique of the service will be taken seriously and changes can be made to make the lives of smaller developers easier.

For the full interview and even more info on the background to Braid’s development check out Issue 39 of 360 on shelves now.

360’s sister publication SciFiNow has just announced a partnership with leading film marketing company Moviebeat to bring exclusive video content to its website.

The SciFiNow website has recently been host to a number of interviews for The Dark Knight and a premier report for the recent X-Files movie and, thanks to this new deal, it will soon be host to a number of exclusive behind-the-scenes featurettes, trailers and interviews for the upcoming movies The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, The Strangers and Death Race.

Check it out now!

www.scifinow.co.uk

Garrett - Thief: Deadly Shadows

Garrett was highly unfortunate not to make the final 50 in our Heroes poll, but alas he simply didn’t get enough votes. What makes him a stand out character though is his contribution to stealth gameplay. This is perhaps both a blessing and a curse. While the gripping set pieces are terrifying to play in Thief’s first-person view, it has contributed to a number of stealth sections in contemporary FPS titles.

We don’t hold it against him though as much like in the game he never asked for trouble, it just came looking. There’s something infinitely appealing about characters such as Garrett who don’t want to get involved, but get dragged into the storm anyway. While clearly cold and ruthless he avoids killing as best he can and takes great pride in his work. That’s something that anyone can respect, regardless of how bloodthirsty you usually are in such games.

While Deadly Shadows seemed to close off the series rather nicely there has been talk that Garrett or perhaps just the Thief series with a new protagonist will return. We would certainly welcome him back with open arms (and one eye on his hands - sneaky pick-pocket).

Here you go:

I went to Battle Of Destiny last Saturday (www.battleofdestiny.com) to enter the Street Fighter III competition, which thankfully turned out to be on the Sunday. Thankfully because I got absolutely kicked by everyone I played against. I won a round once, but everyone there was way, way better than me or using Ken.

Ken’s crouching medium punch seems to beat out nearly everything Alex can do. Obviously a head stomp will beat it, but these guys have perfectly honed reactions and kept parrying the move. It was all a bit depressing really.

What wasn’t depressing was playing Street Fighter IV, it’s awesome. And you can read about that, once I’ve written it, in issue 40 which goes on sale 4 September.

So it is:

Just got some new shots of Street Fighter IV for E3. Why is Blanka wearing a safari suit?

As I’ve said before we were inundated with votes for our 360 Heroes poll and I’d like to thank you all for your support. The final results took a long time to work out and as began to see certain characters rise to the surface others had to fall by the wayside. In the run up to the final 50 characters you voted for (which will be revealed in Issue 39 out August 7) I will be posting up some of the also rans who didn’t quite make the cut, but deserved a mention.

Richard B. Riddick - The Chronicles Of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay

To include a character who essentially belongs to another medium seems like cheating a little, but this prequel to Riddicks movie appearances is actually an incredibly strong example of good charaterisation and development. Starbreeze has since gone on to prove that this was no flash in the pan with its work on The Darkness, but Riddick was the beginning of those achievements. It was perhaps his association with the Riddick franchise that ultimately hurt this character’s chances of making the final cut, but some recognition seems only fair.

So we finally held the prize draw for the 360 Heroes competition. The winner will walk away with an Xbox 360 console and five of the top games associated with the winning characters. Read the rest of this entry »