So, the blogging from Germany didn’t really work out. Quite apart from being booked up from 9am to 6pm every day I was there, with no lunch breaks and only pretzels for sustenance (I like pretzels, but really!?), the internet connection situation left much to be desired. The important thing though is that I survived and returned home in something that resembled a single piece. However, none of this is of any concern to you. What you want to know about is games and so you should because there were plenty. (more…)

So I was doing some work and came across this on Amazon. In the related tags for Too Human there is an odd one, look on the bottom right:

So I clicked it:

Too Human is the only thing on Amazon that has the tag ‘realistic genitalia’. The only thing. According to Jon D that’s because “it’s a bunch of cock”.

We’ve reviewed the bunch of cock (in issue 40 on sale 4 September) and there isn’t any genitalia in it. But it’s made us smirk and chortle quite a bit.

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