It's been over 10 years since I last got on a plane and went on holiday, so it was awesome to fly again! The trip was organised as a surprise for my mum, arranged by my Dad, who were halfway through there holiday when me and my sister turned up.
Between shopping, drinking, eating, swimming and catching some rays I also managed to do a spot of gaming. I'd recently got hold of 2 big new titles, Dragon Quest: Sentinels of the Starry Sky on the Nintendo DS and Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep on the Sony PSP.
Both are games I'd definitely recommend, especially Kingdom Hearts. As much as I enjoyed Dragon Quest, I found myself more tempted to play Kingdom Hearts when I had a spare moment...although in hindsight, perhaps I'd have gotten to play more if I had chosen Dragon Quest... Why is this? Simply put, as amazing as the graphics are on KH (and they are the best I've seen on the PSP) and as great as the combat mechanics are, it all comes at a price...
Heavy Loading Times
Not only that, but you can only save your progress at Save Points (much like many RPGs) which I found aren't all that frequent. Dragon Quest on the other hand can be saved where-ever you like, although is recommended for a 'full save' to head for a Church in the game's many villages. With it's more simplistic graphics, much like all the other titles on the DS, it loads a whole lot quicker and less frequent.
On another slightly geeky note, I purchased the first 2 volumes of the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels. I was a big fan of the film, and of the downloadable game, and I had previously been recommended giving the books a read. I was fairly impressed! It goes to show (at least at far as I am, I need to pick up the final 3 volumes yet) how close Edgar Wright stuck to the books when creating the film.
It was a fantastic week, and I'm already missing the sun, sand, cold Warsteiners and the pool...
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The day before I jetted out, myself and Mike went to Gamesday at the Birmingham NEC, which I've covered over on Blast Process.
As always, it was great to see all the new upcoming models, and the perfect excuse to purchase a new unit for my new Warhammer army (the High Elves).
Like the past couple of years, and as you may read on my Gamesday round-up, both THQ and Bioware-Mythic were on hand to talk about the upcoming Warhammer-based videogames. It's becoming very apparent that creating games based on the 2 major Games Workshop brands (Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000) is very profitable. I remember back a few years when I got really excited at the prospect of the original Dawn of War and getting to play a Fire Warrior in first person.
Warhammer-based games aren't exactly new. Way before Dawn of War and Fire Warrior, you had titles such as Chaos Gate which instead of playing out in real-time it instead played out more like a tabletop game, choosing to be turn based. And who could forget Shadow of the Horned Rat on the Playstation and PC?!
Carrying on the Warhammer theme, while at the event, me and Mike managed to get to speak to Bioware-Mythic's Community Manager, Andy Belford. Not only that, but we even got to interview him on camera!
I respected people who interview folks on camera even before I had a shot at it myself, but now I've done one, I have even more respect for them!
You can check the video out in this article over on BlastProcess.com. For a general round-up of Gamesday, here's a link worth reading.
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