Infinity Blade and Epic Citadel yet to achieve their full comedic Monty Python ,Holy Grail and dappy English Kernigit potential

While the world and their  feline swipe away at their iOS  screens entranced by the absolute beauty of the Unreal 3 Engine in Epic Citadel and now Infinity Blade .  My mind is mashing up years of dormant Python quotes and scenes from The Holy Grail as I play the games. I cannot play either of these games without getting Manchurian Candidate style Monty Python flashes..

And so on with the riff:

walking round the Epic Citadel I look up and see a French Kerniggit staring at me :

in the courtyard there are dappy English Kernniggits  of the Round Table singing when they are able :

and egads they seemed to have narrowly avoided being Vached 

and naturally they need to RUN AWAY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and RUN AWAY a little more :

By the time I launch Infinity Blade  the Francais  have of course given the order to fetchez une autre Vache 

With each sword slash in the combat of Infinity Blade I am back at the Black Knight scene 

each battle takes me back to yet another classic Python confrontation 

the dueling gets ever harder I persevere till I face my latest onerous foe

knowing I have a dreaded killer Rabbit flash on the way , and out of holy hand grenades of Antioch I take to writing this blog entry ......

I firmly believe the true potential of the iOS platform and the Unreal 3 engine will only be realised with the addition of a Monty Python Holy Grail mod , complete with dappy English Kerniggits , Vache lobbing , coconuts , a killer rabbit , and of course the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch , and much singing and merriment.

Infinity Blade is a milestone in gaming, and I do not mean from a solely  technical point of view - it will be iOS gotyr , the real genius is  drawing serious  amounts of industry attention and punters  money away from old skool games devices , in fact this launch one of a wave of iOS and Android games ends the stranglehold of Sony and Nintendo traditional hand  held gaming altogether , for  we no longer just game on handhelds , we expect them to be portable pcs cameras ,tablets , we expect to own the game and download as many times as we like, across devices even .  None of these criteria is satisfied by your PSP or DS,present or future tense . The ease with which you purchase the game , store the game , play on your phone or tablet , that is what hits me most when it comes to the iOS and Android gaming revolution . We also expect the price of the game to be $10  down to absolutely free. Gaming that is free of any physical media , this is not going to happen it already did in the space of 2 years . And the fuel for this engine comes from the opportunity for millions of developers to develop and publish games . Infinity Blades launch also brings with it the release of Epics UDK Unreal 3 development software , and with it a generous return model .  This new gaming evolution is being shared amongst the masses , it is taking the masses with it , whereas the traditional games dev scene has just told the gamer what they will be getting later on in the year , you can now download the same software free and develop your own game , so what are we waiting for? Time to take on the giants , much like the protagonist of Epics own Infinity Blade.


check out Monty Python if you missed the riff ....but we warned those lines will stay with you ..!

CHECKOUT THE APPLE I PAD APPS  AVAILABLE NOW 

The Monty Python lot live here virtually that is , and Cliffy B and the Epic boys and girls can be worshipped at their online home  now if only some canny person could bring them together....

and then all my flash backs marrying this  

with this

would be reality and I could be released from the Cuckoos Nest  !

CHECKOUT THE APPLE I PAD APPS  AVAILABLE NOW 

Not long before we play full Unreal Engine powered games from our browsers

Revolution or evolution ,probably a bit of both the Unreal engine now runs in Flash...that is as long as your hardware runs Flash ...millions of iOS users live in hope.....everyone else bow your heads to the Epic game boffins in thanks...

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Two Infinity and beyond? Infinity Blade II for your iOS device prepare to insult sword fight once again

Infinity Blade II is the oh so serious technical show piece for Epic`s "cutting edge" Unreal 3 technology on iOS ...hmm cutting edge may be there is some humour in there somewhere after all , best played shouting your best sword play insults ( Monkey Island people) or Monty Python Holy Grail insults ..or basically just shouting "Ni" a lot  whilst wearing a spare saucepan.. The game is out today and already topping the iOS charts: 

 

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Gears Of War 3 Limted Edition £29.98

Gears Of War Limited Edition for £29.9 just part of this year.s extensive Game  up to half price sale

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Infinity Blade 2 is $4.99 for a finite time only

gotta a new iPad? fancy some ios insult sword fighting ? You won't do better than Infinity Blade part deux…

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Epoch is free for your iPad and iPhone right now ...for now!

EPOCH. - Uppercut Games Pty Ltd possibly the nicest looking Unreal skinned shooting gallery on iOS is free for now on iPad and iOS  

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Spec Ops The Line : Yager's Song of War and Sand...

Yager are known for... well Yager , an impressive  vehicular scifi shootemup from Xbox days .Like that other great German softco Factor 5, Yager excelled in technical prowess and games where you flew around making things go boom in very pretty explosions. Yager was an awesome scifi flight sim in the vain of Incoming Forces only several magnitudes of excellence better ..

Spec Ops is a long lived strategic military combat franchise, competitor to the great and most excellent Hidden and Dangerous series on the PC .. Never quite managing to out do Illusion Softwork's greatest , but holding it's own through the years and now surviving it's competition in Spec Ops The Line. Sad thing that most of today's reviewers will see this game as a reaction to Call of Duty forgetting the heritage of the much older Spec Ops series altogether .

THQ throwing together the talent of Yager and the Spec Ops brand has produced one of the finest series reboots in recent memory . 

Playing Spec Ops The Line is going to surprise you ,Yager have nailed what makes a great FPS or TPS game great . And I do not refer to the games deep morally twisting story line , or the excellently paced in fire fight songs and music that together manage to place  you in your very own Heart of Darkness. From the above shots it looks like a generic TPS , but keep playing and the game starts to play you...

As Aliens was the best Vietnam film ever made without being set in Vietnam , Spec Ops The Line  is quite the finest 'Nam game in living memory not set in Vietnam.. or the the African heartland...But this is  Nam in the sense of all those tripped out surreal War movies which themselves are interpretations of classic tripped war literature. 

The thing that makes Spec Ops The Line a truly great game for me though is the combat.


Great PC shooters have an essential game mechanic , one which involves you getting a rush from barely surviving each fire fight by the skin of your teeth.  Yes you can save every second and replay , but skilled players achieve a zen like state of just about surviving . Take Doom or Half Life for instance , the most fun is had when playing at the highest difficulty setting , and making every piece of ammo count , taking hits and trying to survive whilst constantly attacking .. in Yager's game we get to do this whilst soaking in all the psycho babble ,Sun and sand of  Duabai too...

Now this gaming dynamic was totally done away when the Gears of War Epicdemic arrived and had people hiding behind school desks popping over to blast enemies as wide or wider than the entire screen with auto aiming precision .. ad  nauseum..  Unlike Mr Phoenix and his crew , the stars of Spec Ops The Line are nimble , have necks , and fight with almost a Ninja Gaiden esque style...

Spec Ops The Line doesn't entirely do  away with the old way of playing hide and shoot but  brings the FPS survival rush dynamic , into a third person shooter . So there I am playing an impressive TPS , music and tunes blaring and mysteriously mysterious happenings pulling the narrative along when I am dropped into the most ferocious fire fight this jaded gaming Vet has had since the good old days of those Half Life fire fights or rushing into a hall full of 100 imps in Doom and making it to the other side with 01% health .. 

Rush .. that's what you get with Spec Ops The Line : Did I expect this excellence.. no I did not .. check out the fire fight in question below : And try it out for your self when you get hold of this excellent game .

If you are fan of gaming you owe it to yourself to take a leap of faith with Yager's Spec Ops The Line ... 

I play Spec Ops The Line on a Lenovo X220T with 4gb Ram , Intel HD3000 , and using the siliconmicrodisplay ST1080 hmd to give me a 100"  screen to get lost in. 

 Ahh cliff hangers ... check out the game from Steam now to find out what happens next.....

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Carl Zeiss Cinemizer OLED Headtracker Review Part 6: Unreal ! Anti Chamber in 3D and PlayStation 3 games played with head tracking

The cool dudes may be messing with Unreal Engine 4 , but there is still plenty of mileage in the old Unreal 3 Engine yet... 

With regards to testing games with the Cinemizer OLED headtracker it gives us two specific boons : Firstly the engine has been around so long that independent games developers are producing games that outshine Cliffy B and co  and can easily be played in 3D using Tridef 3D. Secondly the use of the Unreal engine on PS3 means there are several games with native mouse control that we can now play using the Zeiss headtracker and any developer out there can add headtracking support simply by turning mouse support on for their Unreal Engine PS3 games ..  

First up today let's look at a little play of Anti Chamber ( the demo ) using head tracking and also in 3D using Tridef 3D. The demo is a little hard to find but Google around and you will find it ! Anti Chamber is one of the finest games you can play at this point in time , on a static 2D LCD it looks pretty esoteric but on a 3D ghost free headtracking hmd like the Cinemizer OLED ..well ...welcome to the future .. This is just a few minutes of play recorded with FRAPS , all FOV movement is through use of the headtracker alone . In this example we just connect the headtracker to the USB port and go . 

Now let's take a look at the PS3 games we can play using the headtracker . Starting with the DUST 514 Beta 

In the following video I connected the Cinemizer OLED headtracker to my PlayStation 3 which is connected to a TV without the hmd  in order to film the action . 

You should be able to see the headtracker can easily operate the PlayStation 3 menus , jump into  a game that supports mouse control and you can actually control your field of view .... When wearing the headtracker attached to the Cinemizer OLED hmd the gaming is far better , but the only way I could film the action on the PS3 is by taping the headtracker to the back of my head ..John McLane style... 

I also finally dusted off  the original PS3 version of Unreal 3 : the playing of which is aided by the head tracker as you tend to look around whilst playing this game even without the headtracker attached, so it feels far more natural to game this way. You have been moving your head around to look for years whilst playing FPS games without being conscious of it. Now that real world movement is reflected in the game world upping the immersion  factor. When in game , headtracking is very cool when you ride that hoverboard , turning to travel where you look and in any of the ground or air vehicles , doing this with a thumbstick or mouse always felt artificial similarly looking down from an airborne Cicada targeting adversaries far below you on the ground just became far more impressive. 

In the FPS sections , you will find yourself looking round at your enemies before you move your joypad , decades of console gaming have you used to instinctively reaching for a controller to have your avatar act in game .... you can still do that ..but now you can refine your movements .. you might strafe with the joypad whilst looking round the other way back over your shoulder with the headtracker creating an action in game that is quite impossible or unnatural to reproduce using a joypad... 

Headtracking then in games is not about VR immersion , it is about refining and adding to existing control options , combining with them to produce subtle changes that most of  the time are so natural you do not even notice ... an enemy flying by that you raise your head to look at , or a highlighted objective that you turn towards and so does your character or FOV ... you just performed all these in game actions without thinking or actually doing anything to input those changes through a mouse or joy pad... 

None of the PS3 games are actually optimised for dof axes headtracking .. I would love to see the developers of DUST 514 add this option to their game ..... however emulating mouse input to give us fov control in 1000s of existing games on PS3 and Xbox 360 is something we can aim for..

My use of the headtracker with DUST 514 or Unreal 3 on the PS3 did not slow the games down in any way ...there are no overheads that you can perceive ...most of the time is initially spent going wow, followed by the realization that you have never really occupied these gaming worlds before you got your headtracker ..and why didn't anyone come up with this tech sooner... ?

My next mission should I decide to take it ( which I have)  is to get mouse emulation working with all PS3 and Xbox 360 games , this can be achieved in many ways from Eagle Eye ( which failed) type hardware to GIMX ... Once I have that up and running I will be playing Halo,Rez, Wipeout, Child of Eden, Uncharted, Battlefield 3, Crysis 3 and more all with headtracking on console ... Well it will give me something to do whilst waiting for PS4 and Xbox 720 ..or the iPad 5...

If you are a console fan constantly fighting for gaming space , TV space or time a hmd like the Cinemizer OLED is heaven ...personal gaming without interruption .. anytime anywhere .. in the smallest corner of your noisiest and busiest room ... throw in headtracking and you will be a happy gamer indeed. 

All of this is possible because of the ergonomics, optics, comfort and the ace in the hole headtracker attachment of the Cinemizer OLED hmd..

And as for PC games ... I dare you not to say wow when you try out a game like Anti Chamber in ghost free tridef 3D  on the Cineimizer OLED with headtracking all powered by a single USB cable connected to your laptop ...

Yes there are people paying $16000 for GLASS, the whole VR world is resting on Palmer Luckey's shoulders ..hmd fans are as foolish and hungry as they come still trying to fit their  HMZTs for extended Avatar 3D viewing sessions ..but you know you can get some pretty decent VR and AR gaming on right now with the very decent tech around you ... including the likes of the CInemizer OLED hmd + headtracker which you can take with you anywhere ..right now ..no jumping through flaming hoops or out of planes or swinging kids round to pay $1500 for a dev unit if the Google Gods select you ... 

hmmh that may be a little bit of bitterness on my part that GLASS is not available to UK hmd fans!

more to follow 

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