Viva Pinata Party Animals launch today

Its Viva Pinata Party Animals launch today. So far there are two reviews:

Team x-box who appraised a kiddies/family game with 8.0
and IGN - 5.6 -

The IGN reviewer made it clear that the adult reviewer found the kiddie family game too easy and moaned that it was a kids game. Shock! Horror! Really - a kids game you say. For mums and dads to play with their 6 year old! You mean it ISNT Halo or Bioshock!!!

Go figure IGN. Its supposed to be played by little kids. Give the controller to a 6 year old and they'll love it. I know. My soon to be 6 year old son is obsessed.

Oh and for the record IGN - rather than assuming that the in game assets were verbatim from Rare, it would be wise in future to confirm if that truely was the case with Krome. The two incarnation of VP are very different engines and called for a rework of every facet. And I'll defend both companies here...since I've worked for both - so lets be fair huh, and stop the assumptions?

So. There you go.

ps. Additionally - these comments do not reflect the position of either company.

Fella with a big chopper

Aud and I had a busy weekend. We had the Orange trees scalped by a fella with a big chopper. It would have taken me ages, and even with the right mechanical tools between two blokes, it still took two hours or so. But, we are now the owners of 5 scalped and slightly bald looking Orange trees. Seems that the flying foxes, Bats, like them all the more - since they spent the evening savagely raping each other in the trees last night - judging from the screams and the grunts from them last night. Uhhhgh.

I also advertised my greenhouses - two huge metal things covered in sun cloth (not glass) on a site called Freecycle. Check it out - its international. In essence its like E-bay, but you give things away for free. There can be come amusing junk on it. It's a community website, so we got to meet a few Kiwi's and a few Ozzies and we had a fun two days taking these monster green houses apart. They aquired them and carted them away and now, we have an even BIGGER garden. And no greenhouses - hurrah. And the labour was free too - great stuff.

Viva Pinata Party Animals marketing has started in the US

http://www.bk.com/vivapinata/index.html

Looks like the marketing has started for the game.

Intense storms

It's spring borderline early summer here in Brisbane. Currently the sky is a milky white, and its cool enough almost for a light denim jacket. The ground is wet from evening storms that went mostly through the night. Its good here when its been raining. The air has a earthen smell, palpable and almost metallic and the trees look a rare green versus their usual blue grey green colour.

The sun comes up here in Brisbane about 4 am. So the day starts pretty early for some. Getting up for work at 6am is not the chore that it seemed in the UK. Audrey and I are still blurry eyed, putting clothes on back to front and Jack, bless him, stands in the corridor not understanding where he is and rubbing his eyes and scratching his tufty bed head.

As I say, its approaching summer and we are now beginning to see the approach of storm season. We've had two days of intense storms, predominantly dry electrical storms which begin high in the atmosphere, in the west, over the desert, charging the clouds and the air and decending over the more lush coastal regions.

On the way home last night, I was crossing Story bridge on the 222 Bus. Story Bridge is a huge metal bridge in the traditional iron girder heavy engining style. It spans fantastically over the river Brisbane to Kangaroo Point which has a magnificent panoramic of the city frontage and ferries passing underneath. The Australians drive like lunatics across it – despite the long drop to imminent death below, and on to high rise apartments I might add.

All around, the sky was slate black and lightning flashed and arced behind buildings. It looked like a movie set. Almost artificial blasts of blue light and long dramatic streaks of lightning flew across the sky with very little rain. It was practically a dry electrical storm. Straight form Ghost busters. I was hoping for a dramatic hit on one of the big skyscrapers. All very entertaining.

We're to expect a good week of this – and you can feel it in the air.

You get this enormous build up of humidity, suddenly you start sweating, and the clouds build and build, getting blacker and blacker. Then, enormous flashes of light rip the sky, and a sudden pressure of icy cold decends rapidly causing the wind to build, moving the warm heat from the air.

People like the lightning here. The sky is so big that you really feel small and exposed in a way I never felt back home.

We are now the owners of a fish tank

We are now the owners of a fish tank - spurred on by the two fish that my sister gave us, it was either take them or they're off down the loo. No sooner did the fish enter the tank, they died within an hour of Jack naming them. A tad annoying - but Audrey and I felt like murderers and ended up not speaking for the remainder of the evening. Pathetic - huh?

We've started again - and are now the proud owners of a giant water snail called Brian and some plants. We have no fish yet.

Bad news; Re: old Perfect Entertainment colleague

Well - Just heard through the grapevine that an old work colleague from Perfect Entertainment has just died at the age of 37 from a rare form of Lung Cancer.

Apparently the doctors thought he shouldn't have lasted as long as he did. I knew he was ill from years ago, but I never knew the full story and I thought he'd recovered as I heard people mention him from time to time.

I hate cancer. I really do - I know too many people now who have been affected in one manner or another, my family included. Well - Mark Booth - you were a stubborn old sod - but good on you! All the best mate. - Jim.

Ps. Thanks to Warren Hawkes for letting me know.

Summer is defiantly creeping in here

Well - summer is defiantly creeping in here. Its been a consistant 29 degrees here with little humidity which is good. The heat has suddenly hit though, and I have just learned on TV that its FireStorm season. This is where swathes of grassland or Gum Bush flicker into flame and obliterate houses in some weird random swipe. People can remain unaffected while all the houses in the road are in flames - nice.

There have been a few random blazes in pockets not far from us - you see odd parts of fields blackened and chared - but to be honest - I couldn’t really say I’ve seen much - except to say that on the Telly - poor buggers in NSW’s are watching their homes burn to the ground. Its highly unlikely anything like that would happen here though.

But - since its summer and since VPPA has now ended, there is a hiatus in work so I've got a week off which is great since Jacks on School hols and Aud has a week before she starts her new job. Hopefully new projects will be announced soon so Fingers crossed for some continuity, but since I now work for an Indi, and not Mothersoft - it’s a case that beggers can only be so choosy in the end.

Now that we have summer - I took Jack to the local outdoor swimming pool. It’s on the beach and, its pretty small, though, just the right size. He loved to back in the water, but its been ages since he last swam and his water confidence has sunk to an all time low. He clung to me and it was a bit embarrassing, watching Aussie kids being so brazen in the water. But then the little “Okkers” are brought up swimming before they can walk, unlike us Brits.

Jack finally graduates from Prep (Reception) and OFFICIALLY starts 1st year of school next week and they have a school pool which he now has access to. Swimming is a big chunk of the curriculum here as is football and cricket. Footie and Cricket sounds like hell to me. I hated PE. *Phrr…..I say give ‘im high level maths. Double. *grin