Her name is Violette Summer and she is supposedly inspired by a Special Operations Executive agent named Violette Szabo. The real Violette fought and died for the liberation of France in 1944. I’m guessing that the game inspiration was so loosely-based that they felt the need to change her name. Head on over to Wikipedia and read about Violette Szabo.

Going by the promo stuff on the official Velvet Assassin website, it looks like you’ll be able to choose how to approach missions, so I’m enamoured already. I know that I blither on about choice in games. I was a huuuge fan of the old Eidos Commandos games where you would kill guards, or hide their bodies or just sneak around them. I loved working out a guard’s vice, throwing cigarette packets or wine bottles to get him and then bopping him over the head and stealing his uniform. Every mission, I left behind a little room with a pile of tied-up guards in their underwear. The thought of doing it all over again in a high-res third-person game is enough to make me go *squeeeee!*

Then again, I could be sorely disappointed. I wait eagerly for more information.

In the meantime, here are some rather brown screenshots and a teaser trailer, just for you.

You can pick one up online for around £33 (Gameplay or Play.com). Also there’s a list of DualShock compatible PS3 games as a handy reference. Ooooh, Wipeout HD is on the list. Want!!!!

Video showing the in-game XMB:

Video showing the new trophy system in action:

Super Stardust HD will be the first game to offer trophy support, with Quiz TV following on the 4th July 08. The following games will also offer trophy support:

• BUZZ! Quiz TV
• LittleBigPlanet
• MotorStorm Pacific Rift
• NBA 09
• PAIN
• PixelJunk Eden
• Resistance 2
• SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation
• Warhawk

A half-decent firmware update then. Nice one Sony. Keep it up!

Update 3rd Jul 08: Mmm, the firmware was available for a bit until it started bricking PS3s so Sony yanked it. No word on when it will become available again. Boo.

Update 8th Jul 08: Sony have fixed the problem and released firmware 2.41. The bricking problem arose when “certain system administrative data were contained on the HDD” according to Sony. Spooky!

Since it’s release last year Valve have already enhanced the Medic class with new weapons and achievements. Now Valve have decided to tweak the Pyro class. This tweaking involves 3 new toys (flare gun, the backburner and the axtinguisher) and 35 new achievements. These new weapons can be unlocked by earning 15, 20 and 25 of the new achievements respectively. These sound like fun:

• Dance Dance Immolation - Kill 3 enemies while they’re taunting
• OMGWTFBBQ - Kill an enemy with a taunt
• Makin’ Bacon - Kill 50 Heavies with your flamethrower
• Next of Kindling: - Ignite an enemy, and the Medic healing him

If this wasn’t enough, Valve are also releasing 2 new user-created maps for lots of flamy fun:

• CP_Fastlane - A 5 control point make in the style of Badlands

• CTF_Turbine - A capture the flag map set inside a large industrial compound

Both these maps were built using the Source Engine SDK. If you fancy building some awesome maps simply follow the TF2 level creation guides contained in the Valve Software developer Wiki.

See you all at the TF2 bbq this weekend!

Update 22nd Jun 08: Valee have launched a Team Fortress 2 blog. It’s a bit post lite at the moment. Valve say they intend to update the blog with information about the state of the game and the reasoning behind development decisions. This could prove to be an interesting portal into how Valve is evolving TF2.

GTA 4 is a great game, but not the perfect game that many reviews would lead you to believe. It’s extremely playable and great fun, with multitude of different gameplay elements crammed in there. You’ll also get somewhere approaching 40+ hours of entertainment from just completing the core missions (i.e. following the main game’s plot). I haven’t even factored in the multiplayer aspect, which is another game itself and a very welcome addition too. But there are a few unsavoury bits in GTA 4, and I’m not talking about the dodgy characters! I’ll discuss these bits as part of my look into 2 of the main elements of GTA 4; in-game artificial intelligence (AI) and in my next post the in-game graphics.

The AI - A bit dim, me:

If GTA 4’s AI was asked to hand over its end of year report to its parents it would show a D+. Shows glimpses of intelligence but spends too much time asleep in the corner, dribbling.

Although to be fair, the GTA 4s AI had a mountain to climb to be anything remotely good when all the previous games were a bit thick. That’s not to say that the AI hasn’t improved. It has, but not as much as I’d expected, or even felt was needed. I can’t help but feel that Rockstar has been a bit lazy in this department. Given the ridiculous budget ($100 million depending on who you believe on the internet) that was available to develop this game we should be marvelling at the realistic, living, breathing, sprawling metropolis populated by realistic inhabitants. Instead, we get a bloody great city populated by idiots. As such I present to you 2 examples of GTA 4s rather stupid behaviour:

It wasn’t me Officer - There I was sitting in a taxi, enjoying the sights and sounds of Liberty City, when my ride came to an abrupt halt. I could see that we’d stopped because of all the traffic ahead waiting to get over the bridge. Fair enough, citizens dutifully paying their tolls. But as the minutes ticked past, and we failed to move an inch, I became just a little bit board. So I paid the nice taxi driver and decided to go jack the car at the front of this toll booth queue. It’s the done thing in GTA, trust me. However, as I got closer to the toll booth the actual cause of the gridlock became clear. A police cruiser. I stood there and watched the pathetic sight of this cruiser gently rocking back and forth stuck between a concrete wall and a toll booth. It was mildly funny until I realised that it never looked like it was ever going to escape. I hadn’t expected the games AI to trip itself up so easily. All very disappointing, even if a little funny to watch.

I seem to be missing a gear – Your character is the only person in the whole of Liberty City that is able to put any car into reverse. I’m serious. I’ve not seen a single, damn car try to reverse itself out of a tight spot/pile up/around an obstacle. Due to the AI being generally rubbish, these situations occur all the time. Also there always seems to be one of these traffic jams when you’re trying to outrun the cops or tail/chase/kill someone. Mmm, suspicious. Couldn’t Rockstar have engineered with a better way of challenging the player than using lazy AI?

Here’s a video illustrating some of the more interesting “features” of GTA 4. As you’ll see it’s not just the AI which is a little bit buggy, its affected many of the vehicles in Liberty City as well:

So that’s the AI covered; lazy and frequently buggy, but hey that’s part of the GTA charm! For my next post I’ll cast my eye over GTA 4s graphics. Next-gen lovelyness or another case of Rockstar being lazy?

According to the competition page on the forums:

Procedural generation, or procedural content generation, is a term to describe the creation of content algorithmically “on the fly” (i.e. after the software executes, rather than before). In video games it is generally used to either generate “random” content (like graphics or levels), or to reduce file size. This competition is focused on the former, but you may choose to apply the theme however you see fit.

Tikipod’s entry is called Laser Bunny - Adventures in the Alien Death Mines and can be found here. It’s only a 4mb download. Think Bomberman with bunnies and very long levels and you’re just about there. Oh, and replace the bombs with lasers. Yeah, that covers it! Enjoy….

It’s basically a collection of web games with a flashy interface and some social networking features thrown in. As I write this, there are 52 web games available. They range from the standard fare like Sudoku and variations on Bejewelled to the oddly relaxing Amoeba. Even though most of the games are classics, they’re usually drawn with enough style that you don’t really mind.

The best thing about Doof is that you can play against other users. I’m not entirely sure how the matching system works but here’s the gaming experience. You buy credits. Playing a match against someone else requires you to bet a fixed number of credits on yourself. Winner takes all slightly less than all. You can also play all the games in single-player mode for free.

OTOH, they’re still in development so there are a few downsides. For one, you get popunder advertising. I hate any kind of pop-out advertising. It’s a small mercy that these ads are silent. Next is email spam. I played one competitive game and got two emails with commiserations and an invitation to try again. And this WITHOUT responding to the address confirmation email.

Worst of all, there was an error in the competitive game which meant that neither my, nor my opponent’s scores were saved yet our credits were still deducted. Boo! Glad I was using the introductory 10 credits.

No matter, I’m sure these problems will be ironed out soon enough. It’s definitely one of the nicer gaming portals I’ve seen lately.

• Go to xbox.com and sign in
• Go to support and click on the repair agent box (right side of the screen)
• Click on register a new device and enter your Xbox 360s serial number (found next to the USB ports, under the white falp on the front right of the console)
• Now click on your newly registered device (under manage devices) and click request a new repair
• Follow all the on screen instructions to “order” a repair from Microsoft
• Ignore the bit about being sent a shipping box as you will never be sent one (in the UK anyway). I confirmed with Xbox customer support that Microsoft doesn’t send out shipping boxes. You will only recieve an email containing the UPS pre-paid shipping labels



• Now check your email address (the one attached to the Xbox Live account)
• You should see an email called UPS delivery label. Click on the “retrieve UPS returns label” link and print it
• Also click on the “get the receipt” link and print it too (more about this later)
• Now find a box and pack your Xbox 360 inside it. Obviously use packing materials to protect your Xbox 360 during transit
• Attach the UPS delivery label printed earlier to the top of the box and make sure its either in a plastic pouch or covered to prevent damage. UPS need to scan it after all
• You can either request UPS to pick up your package, or you can go to a UPS drop off location
• Important: If you go to a UPS drop off location don’t forget to take the receipt that you printed out earlier. The UPS person will stamp this as proof that your Xbox 360 has been received by UPS
• Wait 2 weeks for the console to be repaired and sent back

Our repaired Xbox 360 came with a 1 month’s free Xbox Live gold membership and a letter identifying what the fault was and what they had done about it.

I hope that Microsoft has corrected the inaccurate and misleading information relating to sending you a shipping box. It caused a 2 week delay in getting our Xbox 360 fixed as I was waiting for a pesky box that was never going to arrive.

• I liked Trauma Centre but games like that are fiddly on a moving train.
• I loved the Ace Attorney games
• I hated Harvest Moon
• Animal Crossing was okay but ultimately leaves me feeling empty
• Same goes for Cooking Mama
• And Pokémon
• Don’t even bother with Brain Training
• I already have Tetris DS

What game should I buy next?