Technology that changed gaming #5: The 3Dfx Voodoo accelerator

This is the first in a series of posts I'll be writing that pay tribute to the really big hitters of the gaming world - the kind of technology that was so cool or advanced that everybody remembers the first time they saw it. We'll be starting at number 5 and working up to the top of the tree where the winner will be revealed.

#5: The desktop PC transitions to 3D powerhouse

I absolutely loved my 3dfx Voodoo accelerator card. It turned a struggling Pentium PC into a gaming monster that thrashed the games consoles of the day. PC games usually ran at 320x200 MCGA resolution in 256 colour mode, but the arrival of the 3dfx boosted that instantly to 640x480 in 16-bit colour with eye-popping results. The 3dfx also ensured there was a high enough fill rate to deliver very good frame rates for a silky smooth gaming experience.

The idea of a stand-alone 3D accelerator card was inspired and in some ways it's a pity we don't have that option any more. Back then people could buy a 2D card that suited their needs - usually a card with some basic 2D acceleration for the Windows GUI - and then choose the level of 3D power they wanted for games. With hindsight it wasn't particularly practical - the VGA passthru cable used by 3Dfx cards was well known for degrading the picture quality of the main graphics card, but it was certainly a flexible option.

The 3dfx hardware was originally developed to power arcade machines and was used in machines from Atari and Williams. These systems were significantly more powerful than other arcade cabinets of the time and generated quite a bit of attention, and when the company entered the home PC market with a PCI accelerator card things really took off. In what would become a model for other graphics card businesses, 3dfx designed the chipsets but left the actual manufacturing, branding and distribution to third parties.

In the late 1990's the 3dfx became the dominant 3D acceleration platform for gaming on the PC, and quite a few manufacturers sold 3dfx Voodoo cards including Diamond Multimedia, Orchid, Creative Labs and French manufacturer Guillemot.

The Guillemot Maxi Gamer - this is the Voodoo card I owned

Behind great hardware...

An important part of the 3dfx was software support. Early games written for Voodoo cards used the native 3dfx-supplied Glide 3D - a fairly low-level OpenGL-inspired API which didn't try to abstract the hardware capabilities away too much. Performance was excellent and made full use of the capabilities of the platform, delivering results far better than more abstract frameworks like Direct3D could initially muster. Titles like Diablo, Tombraider II and the excellent Wing Commander: Prophecy looked great at the time.

Wing Commander Prophecy and Tombraider II running on the 3dfx

When Voodoo cards first entered the market, hardware-accelerated 3D was at a very early stage on the PC and each competing platform had it's own native API. While this approach may have made best use of the hardware, the downside was extra work for game developers - which was multiplied by each 3D card they wanted to support.

A very significant factor in the success of the 3dfx platform was arrival the MiniGL driver that was written so that Quake and it's sequel could run in hardware-accelerated mode. When iD Software developed Quake they took a pragmatic view of the state of existing 3D API libraries and decided they didn't want to support an array of different graphics accelerators and their native libraries with varying capabilities, so they opted to support just one: the Rendition Vérité. The Rendition platform was chosen because it offered OpenGL support which - at the time - seemed to offer a middle ground for developers. There was more capability on offer than the immature Direct3D but it still had the write-once hardware abstraction that native API's lacked.

After buying myself a Voodoo card, I can clearly remember getting the MiniGL driver, adding to the the Quake folder and launching the game. Viewing the game for the first time running in hardware accelerated mode was simply stunning. The difference between hardware and software rendering was so huge that it was hard to believe it was the same game. It was at this point that the realisation hit home of how far game development had come when slotting in a 3D accelerator card completely changed the visuals of a game. In the past, games talked directly to hardware and wrote to a computers video memory directly. Quake ushered in the era of powerful modular game architectures, one where a central engine manages the physics and environment of a game, and defers the visual rendering to separate software components that either render in software or talk to 3D acceleration hardware when available.

Quake software vs hardware 3dfx rendering at double resolution and 16-bit colour

Successors

There were a number of successful upgrades to the original Voodoo card. The Voodoo2 launched in 1998 and offered a significant performance upgrade along with the innovative possibility of running two cards in parallel via Scan Line Interleaving mode - a feature that will be remembered well by PC gamers for excellent 3D performance that remained competitive for quite a few years.

The Rush (Voodoo generation) and Banshee (Voodoo 2 generation) were combo cards that had highly effective 2D graphics as well as 3D acceleration, although they were always somewhat less powerful than the dedicated 3D cards so were not an optimal solution.

Decline

Sadly, the wave of success that 3dfx rode on in the early days didn't last forever. By the time the Voodoo 3 was released they were losing the performance crown to NVIDIA who had doggedly upgraded their combo 2D/3D cards over the years. Their cards had always had a big advantage in that OEM PC makers could use them more cost-effectively than separate 2D/3D cards and this resulted in bigger sales figures and more money for R&D.

Although unimpressive in early releases, Direct3D continued to be developed by Microsoft and became far more capable - eventually normalising much of the differences in 3D acceleration hardware. Today Direct3D is the universal standard for PC game development, with OpenGL's early lead being lost due to lack of standardisation and development.

3dfx were also not the most effectively managed company around, and were prone to some pretty big gaffes. Firstly, a business deal with Sega that could have seen 3dfx technology in the Dreamcast went sour and the blame was widely attributed to 3dfx's handling the partnership. Secondly, they acquired graphics card maker STB but the perceived benefits didn't materialise and it was a spectacular failure.

End of the line

Finally, the unthinkable happened and as 3dfx fast approached bankruptcy they were bought out by their arch rival NVIDIA. It was the end of an era for a technology that - along with the sound card - was one of the defining advancements in PC gaming. 3dfx popularised the concept of a separate powerful 3D graphics processor to relieve the main CPU from having to do all the work. Although the NVIDIA cards available when  3dfx closed it's doors were already more powerful and continued development at a great pace, 3dfx is still the 3D graphics company remembered most affectionately by many PC gamers.

Game quick review: Limbo (xbox 360)

From looking at a simple screen-shot of Limbo it's obvious that it's a very unique game. It's currently available for purchase on the xbox360 via Xbox Live at a very reasonable at 800 points - less than 10 UKP in real money. A screen shot is good for getting across the dark and claustrophobic visuals of the game, but a video demonstrates the fluid animation and level design better:

The graphics are deceptively advanced. At first glance it looks like a simple 2D platformer but there are multiple levels of parallax scrolling combined with blurring and fuzziness effects topped off with a lighting system that has you walking into dark areas where the whole screen nearly turns black. Although I've never had a nightmare like this, it seems fitting to describe it as a game that successfully captures one, or at least some other altered state of conciousness. The first time I played Limbo (on a large projector screen in a dark room) it was absolutely captivating in a way that I can't remember experiencing with gaming for a long time - if ever. It's hard to avoid the sense of dread and fear that the game can instil into you: trying to coax the deadly leg of a huge spider to stab something is a genuinely uncomfortable experience. The game is monochrome throughout and the overall visual quality is slightly reminiscent of an old black & white TV with a poor signal - that's not to say it looks bad though - in fact it looks amazing throughout. It's a first-class example of how to create a piece of art using modern technology.

Although the game is incredibly atmospheric, isn't just a case of style over substance. It's an addictive and enjoyable platform/puzzle game, and to a retro gamer like myself this really appeals. There are sections involving electrified signs where timed jumps are required to avoid being fried, as well as huge machines that have you jumping from one huge cog to another. It's a game that takes it's time - unlike a manic platform game like Sonic, patience is rewarded as you sit on a cog or moving cart waiting for it to move to the right spot for you to make your more. Towards the end of the game there's an anti-gravity section which is fun but maybe goes a little bit too far and oversteps the otherwise minimalist level design.

Limbo gets my highest recommendation and is one of the most memorable gaming experiences of the last few years. It's quite a short game but not in the context of the asking price, and for the most part the level design is fun. Expect to die an awful lot - it's all part of learning how to deal with the puzzles, and fits in with the desperately gloomy atmosphere. The only thing I found slightly disappointing was the ending - I won't give away what happens I thought if the game had switched from monochrome to glorious colour for the final scene it would have had more of an emotional impact and left a lasting impression.

The best Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas experience (in 2010)

After completing GTA IV and the Liberty City stories, there didn’t seem many options left for getting a GTA fix. But there was one interesting possibility: due to my lost decade of gaming I’d never played GTA: San Andreas, and word on the street is that it’s great - quite possibly better than its successor. But I don’t own any old consoles, so playing the game wasn’t going to be straightforward...

Xbox version

The obvious choice was to get a copy of San Andreas for the original xbox and play it on my 360. It would be hassle-free to get running and I could use the excellent 360 controller. A copy arrived in the post from an eBay seller and I fired it up expecting great things. What appeared on the screen turned out to be a massive disappointment. I was surprised at how poor the visuals are, even for an old game. It runs in a non-widescreen mode and the 3d rendering is very basic, but the biggest issue is how blurred and washed out everything looks. It reminded me of the old composite video outputs from 1980’s computers. To be fair, my use of a 720p Optoma projector throwing an image roughly 8ft across is not an ideal display for pre-HD gaming, but even so the results were very poor. My hunch is it must look better running natively on the original xbox.

Left wanting from the xbox version of the game, I was interested to see how other platforms fared. A video on Youtube shows a comparison between the xbox and PS2 versions, but I find it inconclusive. Lighting looks better on the PS2 version but other elements looked worse. It didn’t really matter anyway because I don’t have a PS2 (or a PS3 to use in backwards compatible mode).

Over to the PC

The only remaining option is the PC version. I have an Atom/Ion powered HTPC, optimised for quiet/cool running but it should be powerful enough to run a 2005 game. So another eBay purchase got me the PC version of San Andreas. Although the game is old, it will run on Windows 7 - the OS detects the game and applies some compatibility settings, turning off Aero to avoid issues. When I got the game running it was obvious from the start that is was streets ahead of the xbox version. Significantly, widescreen resolutions are available and 1280x720 suits my 720p projector perfectly. As you would expect, the graphics on the PC version are still basic by today’s standards, but even so they are a massive step up from the Xbox. The game’s display options page offers a number of settings, so I upped the visual quality to very high and added some anti-aliasing. Although not a powerful machine, my HTPC copes nicely even when the draw distance is  increased to prevent pop-in.

Configuration woes

So all would be well, except for the Achilles heel of the PC platform – control methods. The game works fine on the keyboard but that doesn't suit me – my keyboard is a really cheap wireless model with no keypad. Besides, the GTA IV control system using the xbox 360 controller is superb and this is the experience I wanted with San Andreas too.

I bought an xbox 360 controller for Windows and tried to get it working with GTA:SA. Using the games built-in configuration options was hopeless – the biggest issue being no support for using the second analogue stick to move the camera around.After trawling through a bunch of GTA forums I discovered a utility called SAAC which allows a much fuller set of configuration options for San Andreas. This is an excellent piece of work and a credit to its author. Unfortunately it took some serious faffing about to get working. I had to grab a patch that installed some older DirectX DLL’s just to get it running. When it did run, GTA refused to load, crashing on startup. Eventually I realised that this was because my version of the game is 1.01 which doesn’t allow any hacks or plugins. To fix this I had to find a 1.0 version of the game EXE file and use it to downgrade my copy. Once this was done, GTA would finally run. Except for one annoying issue - the widescreen resolutions had disappeared. Apparently these were only added into 1.01, so I had to find another patch to re-enable them on 1.0. Grrrr!

I used an existing SAAC profile for the 360 controller off the internet, but tweaked a few settings to bring it more in line with the GTA IV control system. One minor issue is that I couldn’t replicate the left/right trigger set up for targeting and shooting because the triggers are on the same axis and conflict with each other. Strangely, they work fine in vehicle mode to handle braking and acceleration.

Success at last

Once the controller was working well, I finally started to settle into the game. It’s still great fun six years later. The dialog between the characters is entertaining and frequently very funny. The opening sequence of the game where your character and his gang are on BMX bikes is hilarious to play. As I spent time with the game only a few more tweaks were necessary – I had to increase the dead-zone on the analogue stick in SAAC (the D slider) to stop the character walking around on his own. I played about with the graphics a bit more and got a nice compromise between frame rate and detail – but this wouldn’t be necessary on more powerful PC’s.

So it is possible to get a good game of San Andreas in 2010, and if you can’t you’re just a buster man - a buster!

Call of Duty: Black Ops - campaign story

I've recently blogged a full review of  Black Ops, where it came in for some criticism for dated graphics and poor computer AI. Although I felt the game is of fairly average quality, one high point for me is well fleshed out story line and it's brilliantly chosen Cold War setting.

Story background

The Cold War is a unique forty year period in history - for the first time ever humanity was in possession of weapons so powerful that the two major superpowers of America and the Soviet Union could lay waste to the entire planet. The threat of a full-scale nuclear war was something the world had to live with and during the Cuban missile crisis we were on the brink of it actually happening.

Fortunately the act of firing nuclear missiles at each other remained unimaginable for both sides, but the USA and USSR remained in a state of tension, fighting proxy wars against each other in Korea, Vietnam and later Afghanistan. Rather than fight each other directly, they funded and supported third parties who fought against each other. The main driving force behind the conflicts was America trying to prevent Russian communist rule from spreading further around the globe - much of Eastern Europe fell under Soviet control at the end of the Second World War.

With such a tense setting, Black Ops has massive potential for a great story line and it tries to make the most of it. The story begins with your character - Alex Mason, seemingly being interrogated and midly tortured - while facing questions relating to involvement in various operations in the theatre of the cold war. As your character recounts these episodes, you get to experience them by playing out the mission. This is an excellent way to allow lots of flexibility in the time frame and geographical location. A summary of the campaign story follows below - with spoilers - so don't read further if you don't want to know the key plot twists and turns!

Opening sequence and early missions

The opening sequence of the game takes place in Cuba where you carry out an assassination attempt on Fidel Castro. Although never officially acknowledged, Castro survived a huge number of attempts on his life, the majority of which are thought to involve the CIA. As the mission draws to a close, Mason does shoot Castro but it later appears to be a body double. You are captured and Castro hands you over to Nikita Dragovich, who throws you in Vortkuta prison. At this stage you meet Victor Reznov - a former Russian captain who becomes a central character in the story arc of the game. He helps you accomplish a difficult escape from Vorkuta but is seemingly killed.

Back on US soil, there is a lengthy cutscene where your character walks through the Pentagon and the White House, leading up to a meeting with JFK about the threat that General Dragovich represents. Dragovich is involved in a plot use a Nazi-developed biological agent against the USA, and President Kennedy asks you directly to put a stop to his plans. The campaign against Dragovich begins with you infiltrating Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan - initially in disguise - to stop a missile launch and kill Dragovich. Arriving too late, the missile launches successfully but you have an opportunity to shoot it down. At the end of the mission you destroy a limo carrying Dragovich but fail to verify his death. This turns out to be a poor decision as you will later find out.

Vietnam

The next chapter of the game takes place in Vietnam and has you taking part in the battle of Khe Sahn as well as seeking intelligence on Soviet involvement in the war. At one stage you are reunited with Reznov, which you might find a bit odd - and you would be right.

In the middle of the Vietnam section of the game is a mission called Project Nova (my personal favourite), which is a flash back of Reznov relating to his experiences at the end of the World War II. He was part of a squad led by Dragovich and Lev Kravchenko who found a smashed boat containing Nazis and V2 rockets loaded with the Nova biological weapon. Dragovich tries to kill Reznov at this stage but the arrival of the British SAS scuppers that plan and Reznov survives.

Back in Vietnam, intelligence relating to a downed cargo plane that could be carrying a biological weapon needs to be investigated.When the plane is found there are a few nasty surprises - firstly the weapon has already been retrieved by the Russian special forces who then capture you and hand you to the Viet Cong.

Recalling scenes from The Deer Hunter, a very tense scene involving Russian roulette takes place, but Mason manages to make a break for freedom along with his comrade Frank Woods. After finding a helicopter the pair fly to intercept and kill Kravchenko. Reznov reappears again in this mission. When Kravchenko is located he puts up quite a fight and clobbers Mason pretty badly, but Woods intervenes and stabs him. Kravchenko's last act for hate's sake is to set of his grenades, forcing Woods to throw him and himself out of a window to save you.

Intelligence in Kravchenko's office makes it known that Steiner - the Nazi scientist who developed Nova - is continuing with development on Rebirth Island. Your character gets into the compound and after a fight, Reznov kills Steiner, and it's at this point that the story starts to unravel.

The big reveal

The CIA arrive to late to stop Steiner being killed, but they arrive just in time to see your character - Mason - kill him. But didn't Reznov do it? Well, it turns out that Reznov doesn't really exist, or rather he doesn't exist in reality after the escape from Vorkuta. Reznov is a creation of Mason's mind, caused by the brainwashing he suffered while held captive in Vorkuta.

So who brainwashed Mason? Well initially it was Dragovich, who was trying to programme him to assassinate JFK - but Reznov later brainwashes him to have him kill Dragovich, Kravchenko and Steiner as an act of revenge.

If you've seen the film Fight Club, the framework of the story will seem familiar. Just as Tyler Durden was a figment of Edward Norton's character who he became at certain stages in the story, it is the same with Reznov and Mason.

Redemption

Even though Mason has been compromised by the enemy, the US still needs Mason because he may possess the ability to find Dragovich and stop his now imminent plan to activate sleeper agents in possession of Nova weapons across the USA. If this Dragovich isn't stopped, World War III would start when the USA counter-attacks Russia with nuclear weapons.

Under further interrogation, Mason remembers that the numbers station - the trigger for the sleeper agents is onboard a Russian ship. You immediately scramble to attack this ship using a helicopter, and then land on the ship and clear it of enemy personnel. After searching the ship it becomes clear that there is an underwater base beneath the ship, connected by a tether. Mason proceeds down to the base and finally confronts Dragovich. After a fight sequence, he is defeated and the transmission from the numbers station is prevented.

Call of Duty: Black Ops vs Modern Warfare 2

This comparison review is a follow on from my full review of Black Ops, and again focuses purely on the single player experience. After finishing Black Ops last week I returned to Modern Warfare 2 after a break of nearly twelve months. The game was a Christmas pressie last year which I played and completed disappointingly quickly but found very enjoyable. So how does the older game stack up against it's younger rival?

If ever there was a way to prove how average and overhyped Black Ops is, it's to go back and play MW2 again. It's a considerably better experience in almost every way. The presentation is far better - the story interludes are a fictional computer user interface that projects satellite tracking information onto maps, while narration in the background explains the story. It's very professional and polished, although at times it can be a bit difficult to follow the story as it jumps around the globe and frequently changes from one character to another.

Amazingly, the graphics are signficantly better than Black Ops. The second mission in particular (cliffhanger) demonstrates some superb blizzard effects that reduce visibility, and in general this part of the game looks gorgeous all round. Throughout the entire game, enemy characters look better drawn and more detailed, and the splatter of blood when they take a hit provides an effective confirmation that your shot has hit the target - something that I found lacking in Black Ops.

The overall flow of the game is far better - scripted sequences integrate well with the main action and feel less jarring than some of the Black Ops equivalents. One standout sequence has you exiting a dry deck shelter on a US submarine and using an SDV to rise up underneath an oil rig and take it by force. Brilliant stuff.

My main criticism of Black Ops was the hopeless enemy AI, and while MW2 doesn't compare to the very best examples out there such as the Halo franchise, it is good enough to not draw attention to itself and provides a satisfying challenge, with enemies hiding in cover properly and ambushing you during some of the missions.

Although I can't comment on the multiplayer element, MW2 is a much better single player game. Black Ops had so much promise because of the inspired setting - the Cold War era is rich in opportunities to provide compelling missions, but this time round I can't help feeling it was a slightly wasted opportunity.

Call of Duty: Black Ops campaign mode review

I’ve just completed the Black Ops campaign mode and here’s a review of my experiences. This review focuses entirely on the single player aspect of the game as played on the Xbox 360.

Black Ops is developed by Treyarch who are I tend to think of as the B-team of CoD development. So far they've delivered CoD3, CoD WaW and a number of Wii ports of the Inifinity Ward titles. With Black Ops they seem to have made a particular effort to deliver a first-class CoD experience, especially with the storyline of the single player mode. The framework of the story is clever - your character is seemingly being interrogated and asked to provide information on various events that took place in the American Cold War campaign to contain the spread of Communism across the globe.

The game starts with a very small introductory mission in Cuba. You battle through a street and then dive into a car to escape. The car controls are bizarre - you appear to control forward and reverse movements but not the steering. This heavily scripted scene feels jarring - wouldn't it have been more believable if the player character had simply jumped into a passenger seat rather half-controlling the car?

The first half of the game feels particularly weak to me. The missions are dull and rely almost entirely on frenetic pace to provide excitement. Khe Sanh in particular is a bad mission. The gameplay is tedious and the colour scheme makes the visuals look badly dated - it reminded me very much of CoD 3 graphically. A big issue with Khe Sanh currently being discussed in various forums on the web is that you need to kick some barrels of napalm, but the game doesn’t prompt you properly to do this. Given the highly linear nature of CoD games and lack of interactivity with the environment, I think this is a very valid criticism. Unaware of what I had to do, my solution was to run like hell and get shot up badly, but eventually I made it to a checkpoint that triggered the next part of the mission.

As I reached the half-way mark in the game, every mission had been a big disappointment. It was so rare that any kind of strategy element was brought into play. You are bombarded by unrealistic numbers of enemies, but they are all spectacularly dumb. To add to this, the turkey shoot is ruined by your computer-controlled allies almost always running ahead and getting in the way of your firing line. They often occupy the only decent cover points as well, leaving me to regularly lurk behind them in a cowardly manner - which isn't in keeping with the way the game portrays your character as something of a badass!

Just as things looked dire, I embarked upon a mission that flashed back to end of the Second World War, base on the memories of the Victor Reznov character. At this point my experiences of the game improved dramatically. The snowy colour scheme of the Arctic circle setting really lifts the visuals and the smaller (but more open) playing area with lots of cover is fun to sneak through. The references to Nazis and the presence of V2 rockets at the site really adds a historical weight to the story. It gets even better as the second part of the mission involves repelling an attack from the British Secret Service. Pitted against their snipers I had to pick up a sniper rifle myself, a welcome relief from the close range combat of the rest of the game.

A particular highlight of the later parts of the game for me are two helicopter control missions, which are far from gimmicky sub-games - the helicopter control is nice and the destruction you can wreak makes for lots of fun. The final mission which involves an assault on a ship (and more which I won't ruin the surprise of) is also excellent stuff, and features the return of the helicopter.

The final twist in the in the plot is signposted in the last few missions, and then rammed home really hard in the final scenes. It draws upon the plot of a number of films (Fight Club is a primary example) but works reasonably well.

Summary
This applies to all of the CoD games I've played, but I would much rather have a smaller but more intelligent set of opponents in every standoff. A room of six intelligent, well dug-in opponents would have been far more tense and enjoyable than a constant barrage of enemies arriving from a respawn point. Consider Halo where the computer controller characters will change from attacking to retreating if you switch to a particularly devastating weapon - that type of intelligence is desperately needed in CoD.

Compared to a title like Halo Reach, I found the visuals very disappointing in places, and almost certainly a backwards step from Modern Warfare 2. The notable exception is the character animation in cutscenes - face renderings are excellent.

The Call of Duty franchise has become a series of fairly average games which are overhyped to a point where they are purchased regardless of quality. I'd like to see a minor reboot of the franchise to become a more intelligent and strategic game, with more genuine tension.

R3PLAY - 6th November 2010

I attended R3PLAY today and had a great time. As well as all the pure fun that was to be had playing the  games on a seriously impressive range of systems, it was the overall buzz of the show that really resonated. How? Well:

Brilliant atmosphere - rare systems like the Japan-only NeoGeo and NEC PC-FX  - machines that I read about in cool games magazines as a teenager, the Atari Mega ST, the cult vector-graphic Vectrex and various Sega/CBM/Sinclair/Acorn machines were all there. These beauties were not just on display, but ready to play by anybody who sat down in front of them. If you put your drink down on the table near the machines as you played, no-one told you off for your "dangerous" behavior. Some systems had loads of spare carts available for you to choose from, just spread across the table. As you changed cartridges and played your game, never once was there a sense of being watched: that sense of "looking out for bad behaviour" that you so often get in this country. The organisers and equipment owners assumed that you weren't some monster there to steal stuff or knock drinks over the expensive/vintage equipment.

Open-minded scene - something obvious from attending the show is that the retro scene isn't consumed with arguments about about new vs. old. To use an analogy, I used to drive an MG (a modern one) and it was clear that some folks in the owners club didn't accept these cars as true MG's. This isn't the case in the retrogaming scene - the hall was full of PS3's and Xbox 360's as well as retro. There was the chance to sample some of the latest games, including the Wii GoldenEye that's not even released yet.

Jeff - later in the afternoon I entered a room and barely noticed the Llamasoft sign outside. Looking around, it soon became obvious that each of the varied systems was running Revenge of the Mutant Camels or similar. Then I became aware of a guy stood in the corner - it was THE Jeff Minter! I chuckled as I heard a guy talking to him say "yeah so I sent you a friend request on Facebook yesterday, if you wouldn't mind accepting it?". The guy has groupies!!!!

Pinball is still huge - in a wide side corridor there was a fairly large collection of pinball tables. Before arriving at the venue I was looking forward to getting onto these beauties and satisfying an unrequited pinball addiction, but it seemed that the almost total removal of pinball tables from pubs and other venues across the country had others feeling the same way - the tables were jammed up almost all day. When I did get chance to to have a quick game it was on a basic table with very tired flippers - getting power behind a shot was impossible.

History - the show was definitely not without depth - the British Computer Museum from Bletchley Park were in attendance and had some very interesting exhibits. The partially dismantled Digital PDP system they had was amazing. The mainboard had hundrens of pins and a massively complex loom of hand-crafted wires running across it; it just goes to show how difficult it was in the 1960's and 70's to build any kind of computer.

Games played today included Crazy Taxi, Streetfigher IV, Speedball 2, Afterburner Climax, Wii GoldenEye, F-Zero, Vectrex Scramble, Outrun, Outrun 2. Of the two player games we played my parter in crime Chris B managed to thrash me at everything except for my surprising turn of form at IK+ on the Amiga. Green belt rules!

Xbox 360 Kinect

I’m starting to get worried about the Xbox 360. It's a superb piece of kit but the Kinect – Microsoft’s attempt at motion control – seems too clever for its own good. And it’s starting to attract some criticism. Nintendo and Sony have developed systems that are at the same time simpler and more flexible, particularly at the moment when we’re in a transition period between gamepad games and motion control games.

The technical brilliance of Kinect is the crux of the problem – it relies 100% on motion detection and this means you have no wand or any other type of controller in your hand. This means you have no physical buttons at all.  It’s an amazing piece of technology but in terms of the games it can support, it seems incredibly limited. The early Kinect version of Forza 3 under development allows you to steer the car using your arms, but they haven’t figured out how to do acceleration and braking yet.

Consider a Kinect version of any modern game and the lack of buttons always seems to be a problem. How do you fire a gun? How do you switch weapons? Or throw a grenade? So it’s not going to work for first person shooters.

Maybe Kinect isn’t intended to bring motion control to existing games – perhaps the idea is to bring in a whole new genre of game that is designed with pure motion control in mind right from the start. It might just take some time for developers to get the hang of it. Meanwhile, the PS3 is already getting patches to existing games that can take advantage of their Move system straight away. The more conventional system integrates much more easily with existing titles.

It’s funny how the PS3 was always hyped to be more powerful than the 360, and when this didn't materialise into the games released the argument was that it would take time for developers to harness the power. I’m not convinced by this – they haven’t managed it even now and although the theoretical processing power is higher, it seems like in the reality of game design it’s just not accessible. With motion control, Microsoft look to be heading down the same path – it will take time for developers to get to grips with Kinect – question is – will they ever?

Liberty City rice rocket

As one of countless examples of the amazing levels of detail crafted into Grand Theft Auto IV, today I boosted a really interesting car I hadn't seen before in nearly two years of playing. From the front it looked exactly like my late-model IS200, with the black-backed headlights. But the carbon fibre bonnet had a huge air scoop, and the car was a coupé rather than a saloon. Most interestingly, a dump valve could clearly be heard, and the car was very quick. Barrelling down the straights caused motion blur to kick in and the camera to automatically shift angles.

I picked the car up nearly destroyed after attacking it and damaging it heavily during a Ballad of Gay Tony drug mission. A lick of paint was definitely required, and was well worth the wait!