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.

Still, I like the sound of Machinima.com’s new competition. They’re opening a new UK portal and celebrating by asking people to create music videos to one of two tracks supplied by Jonathan Coulton - Bacteria or Todd the T1000.

Compo Details:

• Competition end date: 8th August 2008
• Top prize: Alienware Laptop, pre-loaded with Adobe Premiere Pro CS3
• Other prizes: Undisclosed but some runners-up will get prizes, as will a random selection of voters
• How to enter: Get the track, make your video, upload it to Machinima.com. Techinically, it’s only open to UK residents but I’ve been told that if non-resident makes a video and gets a UK-based mate to do the actual submission, they’re fine with that.

Everything you need to know should be available at the competition page. [It appears to be down as I type this, so can’t confirm right now]

The launch is also sponsored by Rustlers. Yes, the “nought-to-tasty” microwave burger company with the hideous TV ads. Please, for the love of all that is tasteful, don’t use their marketing strategy as a jumping-off point.

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.

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….

Amiga classics like The Secret of Monkey Island, Stunt Car Racer, Turrican 2, Alien Breed II and Flashback are all available to watch in their entirety. Most of the videos consist of someone playing each game from start to finish (longplays), but there are several speedruns as well. Also you can either stream the videos (via YouTube) or download them from the Recorded Amiga Games website.

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.

As you can imagine, I was fascinated when I found that a blogger had got his hands on the drive holding emails, design docs and code for the never-completed sequel to the HHGTTG. There’s some really interesting stuff published, including a number of programmers outlining the conditions under which they would or wouldn’t work on the game. Clearly there was no controlling pointy-haired-boss culture at Infocom.

“I’ve found myself in possession of the “Infocom Drive” — a complete backup of Infocom’s shared network drive from 1989. This is one of the most amazing archives I’ve ever seen, a treasure chest documenting the rise and fall of the legendary interactive fiction game company. Among the assets included: design documents, email archives, employee phone numbers, sales figures, internal meeting notes, corporate newsletters, and the source code and game files for every released and unreleased game Infocom made.”

There’s also some remarkably civilised internet drama, for those who like that sort of thing. The staff involved weren’t contacted before their emails were published, and have turned up in the comments. Pop over to Waxy.org to see the whole thing. Milliways: Infocom’s Unreleased Sequel to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy [via Neil Gaiman’s Journal]

I did find one gem in the comments that I couldn’t put better myself.

I’d like to let all the Infocom people here know that, despite the obvious drama, anger, and disappointment that seems to have gone on with at least some aspects of the job, your output caused many *many* people to laugh, think, and eventually create.

Just for one aspect, I suspect you’ve singlehandedly raised the problem-solving techniques and skills of a whole generation of us. Thank you for that.

- Dave Rutledge

Problem-solving seems to have largely disappeared from gaming, except where the problem can be solved by using a large weapon or a suspiciously shiny object from the next room. I miss having to think during my games.

In that vein, LevelUp’s Gaming Tidbits last week pointed me towards Improving Usability in Games. I fully agree with the points in part 1, with particular emphasis on point 5: Know what the f’k I’m doing.

A player should be able to put down a game for a period of months at a time and still be able to hop right back in. Anything else is self-defeating and counter-productive.

How to Make Games User-Friendly: Part 1 - James Portnow on Next-Gen

This problem is exactly the reason why I’m so passionate about journal systems in games. It applies to games as simple and linear as Army of Two or as complex and unwieldy as Deux Ex: Invisible War. I and so many other gamers, simply cannot afford to play every day or even every week. When we do find the time to get return to a game after a holiday, (or after a month of Guitar Hero 3 obsession ;) we need to be reminded of what the hell we were trying to achieve before RL got in the way. A simple log of what’s just happened and where we could go next would make our game experience so much happier.

I’m not quite as enamoured with part two of the series but James makes some good points about the advantage of an in-game manual and SD-TV compatibility. Read them yourself at How To Make Games User-Friendly: Part 2

What are your most reviled game design decisions?