Ten years of Tomb Raider, and only one of them was ever any cop. When the BBC and Design Museum ran a public poll for the greatest icons of British design, Tomb Raider was nominated the eighth greatest British Design icon. One notch ahead of Grand Theft Auto, no less. Which begs the question: has anyone who voted for it actually played a Tomb Raider game?

My review of Tomb Raider: Legend is now online at Pixelsurgeon. Surprisingly, the game doesn’t suck. Parts of it are, in fact, “rather good”. This was a turn-up for the books, so to speak.

From the second page of this interview at Eurogamer with him today:

If all we do with the power of next gen hardware is increase our poly counts we’re doomed. We have to use that power to create new gameplay experiences – up the simulation level… find new ways to exploit physics… create more interactive worlds than we could dream of before… create virtual actors that can do more than run and shoot.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes (even if the Gabe Newell/Richard Garriott school of game production has its merits, too). It’s a cracking interview – and today’s only the first part… so be sure to check back again tomorrow.

Ken Levine, creator of System Shock 2, talks to IGN about his forthcoming RPG Bioshock. Two choice quotations:

I’ve always said that, when we were working on Thief, I’d rather have a story element about the moss arrow then about some cult you never get involved with in the game or some god or something. That’s because I play with the moss arrow, it’s part of my game experience; I want to tie that into the story.

and

I think it’s all about making a world that’s believable. One that has an aesthetic point of view in which the player isn’t constantly bumping into the edge of thus pulls him out of the experience. It’s not about physics puzzles, it’s about having things behave the way I expect them to. Half-Life 2 uses physics puzzles really well; that’s not an issue. My response is not to create my own gravity gun. Our goal is to make this world in Rapture a real place.

Yes. Yes, yes, yes. More sharp, incisive, intelligent discussion in the full interview.

Matt Webb’s talk at Goldsmiths on Scfi he likes. On the plane to ETech, Matt showed me these slides. It was really interesting to hear him narrating the whistle-stop tour of the slides; I’m very glad to now have the chance to go over it all again more slowly. Plus, to click on the links.

I got a nice email from MacDara today regarding my mention in the Guardian. I spoke to Aleks after Technology 2.0 (albeit briefly – would have loved to have chatted longer) and didn’t realise that things would go this far, but it’s flattering to see. Infovore, for those of you who might be coming here having googled the word, is just the name of this domain and blog. It’s a made-up word that roughly describes my attitude to data around me: gobble it up, spit it out later.

And I’ve been thinking about show-and-tell, about something coherent just on “stuff I like”. Something on gaming, perhaps. A lot of people I know are interested in games, want to engage, but you know, it’s a big medium, you’re playing a lot of catch-up.

I got asked at ETech a few times what my favourite game was. I can’t answer that question truthfully – I have many – but I always gave the same response, explaining it away as my favourite example of “what modern games can be“.

That game is Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The original Prince of Persia was one of the first games I played, when I was seven. When I first played the seminal Tomb Raider, it reminded me of the joyous acrobatics and minimalist combat of PoP. POPSOT was the final piece in the puzzle – the Prince rendered truly, accurately, joyously in 3D. But it’s so much more – it combines remarkable play mechanics, a character that’s a delight to manoeuver, with a remarkable streak of storytelling that’s only really possible in games. It fills me with a glow when I think about it; it’s a truly sensuous game, a deliciously controlled aesthetic, and in its short, linear, seven-eight hours, it contains multitudes.

So, right now, I’m thinking about what titles you need to play – not for completism’s sake, but to get a hold on where games are now. Where they came from. What we mean when we say “games”. And what they mean for everything else.

In which I review Black. Another games review, up over at Pixelsurgeon. I didn’t like it much. Technically wonderful, entirely soulless. And I really tried hard to like it, too. Ah well. I traded it for Advance Wars DS before the California trip. Now that was a good idea.

So you may (or may not) be aware that I gave a 40-minute talk at Etech this year entitled “From Paddles to Pads: Is Controller Design Killing Creativity In Videogames?“. Well, I’m now doing a 15-minute recap of it in the UK (London, to be precise) at an event which (for one reason or another) is entitled Technology 2.0. If that sounds offputting, consider this: it’s basically ConCon 2006 (and that may still make no sense to you, so in short: people at US conferences recap them for those who couldn’t make it).

Anyhow, details of the event are linked above; it’s free, but it’s also RSVP only. Do come if it sounds interesting (or, more to the point, you want a quick yammer afterwards). I’ll be doing my best to ram an 8000-word, 67-slide extravaganza into 15 minutes, and give a rough overview of my argument (if not all the lovely evidence). There are fewer words in this version of the talk. There are, however, more slides than before, and a new joke about Larry Lessig.

Also, Yoz is talking about Ning, which should be fun (in a UK context) and there’s more promise.tv goodness from the Ludlams. And it’s all chaired by Internet Celebrity, The Dave Green (from NTK). More to the point, there’s drink later. So maybe see you then. Do say hello if we’ve not met before.

(Yes, I know I still haven’t got around to posting my Etech recap and notes. I will get around to this shortly, but it’s still percolating, which is probably a good thing).

“Seven years. That’s how long it’s been since Tony Hawk Pro Skater first rolled onto the PlayStation. Like it or not, Hawk is now a part of the gaming canon, committed to rolling out yearly updates. Indeed, Activision has exclusive rights to the Hawk brand until 2015 – we’re not even halfway through the series’ life.”

A new game review up over at Pixelsurgeon, this time of Tony Hawk’s American Sk8land on the Nintendo DS. Very impressed with this – an amazingly good online implementation, which, in terms of how it links up with the internet almost puts Mario Kart to shame; lovely cel-shaded visuals; none of the nonsense that the Underground games brought in. As the review says, it’s essentially Pro Skater 5.

Read the full review.

“It’s a hard life, being a games reviewer. You’d think it would all be peaches and cream – playing games for ages and then being allowed to write about them (and if you’re really lucky, being paid for the privilege).

But it’s a lot harder than that.”

Another game review up on Pixelsurgeon. This time, a review of the Xbox port of Half-Life 2. It’s possibly a bit too “heavy” (you’ll see what I mean when you read it), but it was fun to break away from convention for a while. There’s a horrific typo/crap sentence based around a pun that doesn’t quite work and I’m a bit embarassed about that. Other than that, though, one of the better things I’ve written in a while.

Read the full review.