A Belated Happy New Year

Hmmmn bit late with this one, I've been sooo busy in my private life and not had time for much at all.

My little daughter is growing up so fast now, she's nearly six months old and about to start eating real food, Awesome!

I'm hoping to take a leaf out of my friends book and start blogging a bit more, so expect to see more bloggage, if you're the gaming type, you might want to check out his page here.

Don't say I told you but he can be quiet witty and presents a good read, he also gives some valuable insight into developing XNA projects and such like.

Just got hold of a couple of new books as I really should read more. I've got part 2 of the Dark Tower series and I also bought Magician, looking forward to getting stuck into those.

I recently completed the excellent Heavy Rain on the PS3, if you have a PS3 I recommend you give it a try if you haven't already, really is a breath of fresh air. I seem to be developing an obsession with upping my PSN score, i cant see that turning out well for me.

Christmas, Bambino & Borderlands!

So my 29th Christmas approaches, going to be an interesting one that's for sure. As most of us know life has a funny way of throwing us a few curve balls from time to time, and it's certainly done that recently!

Nevertheless I carry on marching forwards, my baby girl is growing up so fast it's scary. You hear parents say that fairly often but it's mad just how right they were. She's started smiling a lot now and there is nothing better than seeing that face after a day at work.

My wife Jodie has been an absolute legend looking after Summer whilst I work in Leeds, hopefully I can give her a much needed break when I break up for Christmas. Though I'm sure the recent beauty treatments for her birthday got me some brownie points! :)

I recently played through the COD MW2 single player campaign and really enjoyed the game, some bits were a little OTT as I always thought that COD was relatively grounded, but hey it's a video game. I guess if I was to be picky I could pick out the re spawning enemies as a downside but I still enjoyed the game regardless.

Been online a few times and that's really where it's at, was slightly disappointed that Boot camp from Treyarch's previous attempt was seemingly ignored I thought that was a great way of getting into online play gently. With having Summer it's much more difficult to put the time in like I used to so my friends march on ahead whilst i try to grab the odd hour.

I also recently purchased Halo ODST and Borderlands, really looking forward to giving both of these a whirl, I always lap the Halo games up and Borderlands looks to bring something interesting to the table. Looks very nice too.

My team Nottingham Forest seem to coming along very nicely, sitting pretty in 4th position level on points with 3rd placed Cardiff. We've seen some resounding victories too not to mention against top of the table Newcastle. I'd love for us to make the Premiership again, but only if we can compete and become a steady mid table side. The yo yo'ing a few years back was awful to see.

My gorgeous little girl

So a lot has happened since I last posted. Myself and Jodie are now parents to our beautiful daughter Summer, and may I say that being a dad is the most amazing thing that has happened to me.

In my work life we've released Chinatown Wars on the PSP to much critical acclaim which I'm very happy about as we all put everything into ensuring that the game was rocking regardless of platform.

I got rid of my BMW at the weekend which was a sad moment but my new car, a Seat Leon FR is very nice and has softened the blow considerably.

I'm always trying to improve my game design mad skillz, and as previously mentioned I've started learning a little more about coding, I don't want to be a programmer I just like knowing what I'm talking about so this can only help and more excitingly for me I've been getting back into pixel art at home, having much fun with that too.

Today I visited the Eurogamer Expo in Leeds with a few colleagues, some great games were on show and I was especially impressed with some of the stuff I saw in the Indie Games section.

One game called VVVVVV by a guy called Terry Cavanagh was much fun, I recommend watching the video link.

Another great effort was a title called Plain Sight, this will be released on Steam pretty soon and again it's well worth checking out.

Although I did enjoy the show I did feel some things could have been done much better, apart from the games the event was relatively low key. There were hardly any freebies given out and there was generally a lack of excitement, that said it is a new event so hopefully it was successful enough to make them consider another and they will have a steady platform to build upon.

A Week In Boredom

OK so I've been trying to find things to do with no money (thanks to Ibiza and the car) and being stuck in the house. So mainly all I've done this week is watch films and play games.

Watched Charlie Wilson's War the other night that was a really good film that both me and the wife enjoyed, very entertaining.

I was told by a friend of mine to watch a film called Session 9, he said it was one of the scariest things he'd seen. We put it on the other night and it was possibly the worst film to grace our DVD player. It felt like I was watching an Aussie soap rather than a US film, and it was about as scary as my dog.

Our dog may be named after a popular TV serial killer but believe me he isn't scary. Suffice to say we didn't watch the whole film.

Another film we watched was Son of Rambow which was very good, the kids in the film are very funny especially Lee Carter. Definitely reminds me of my childhood, me and my brother always used to grab our folks video camera and make our own movies....

I downloaded the demo of The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition on Xbox live yesterday, I love the new look of the game and cant wait to spend some time with it again. I didn't see the demo through I'd rather wait until I grab the full thing and start from scratch.

Better now

Feeling much better than I was now, all I have left is a tickly annoying cough. Not allowed back in to work for another week, so it's fair to say I'm more than a little bored!

I'm not officially house bound anymore so I went for a couple of drives around in the beast listening to the new Subliminal Sessions CD mixed by Eric Morillo. Well worth a look if you love music of the house variety.

For Better or For Worse?

OK I admit it I committed the cardinal sin in the world of football I switched allegiances, last year I turned my back on PES for the first time since the great war started.

Now I've always dabbled with both games throughout their history but I would often not buy FIFA, however you could guarantee I would buy every PES or International Superstar Soccer (as it was once affectionately known) released.

Last year however I didn't buy PES not even on budget! I got hold of the PES demo and quite frankly I was disappointed, now it's very shallow to judge a game on a demo alone but with PES 2009 it was difficult not to. Some might say it's even harsh to judge a game on it's presentation and for the most part I agree.

I just felt that after so many years of putting up with the cheesy front-end and woeful commentary, I thought I deserved more, yeah the game-play has always been the jewel in PES's crown. But I've been playing this game since I was a teenager, PES has little to prove here. That aside I did think the demo felt a little unresponsive, but I think you always feel a little like that when the annual update comes along.

The one thing that FIFA does well time and time again is the presentation. You have great music playing throughout the menu system and everything looks very slick and polished.

PES on the other hand looks like a mid nineties Sky Sports broadcast, whilst great back in the 95 /96 season, these days it's simply lost it's edge and isn't good enough.

The debate has been raging for over a decade now and I think we can all agree that as a games player you takes your choices. I mentioned I switched to FIFA I think it was more in protest than anything else, as I don't enjoy FIFA 09 as much as I enjoyed PES 6 or PES 2008 on the PS2 or 360 (yeah I even had both versions of PES 6!). Yeah I know, cutting your nose off to spite your face is not big or clever.

That said I firmly believe you have to give credit where credit is due. And EA to their credit have clearly pushed and pushed to bring FIFA in line with PES and in all fairness they are about there.

I bring this up because it's nearing that time of year where once again the great debate will crack open. In my opinion PES needs to do only a few minor things to get itself back in shape and I will be a loyal follower all over again. But it looks like FIFA has some great ideas up it's sleeve such as the 360 degree control of the players.

It will be interesting to see how they fare this autumn.

Breaking News:

Alien Breed is on it's way back.

Our good friends over at Team 17 have today released 3 screens on Eurogamer from the Alien Breed remake they are currently working on. It's titled Alien Breed Evolution.

I'm very excited about seeing this, I'm sure my brother will be as excited as I am, we spent many weeks on the original game as kids.

See all the pics here..

Eurogamer