Heavy Rain taps real anxieties for massive story

A few years ago, in a crowded shopping centre, game designer David Cage lost track of his son. Cage thought his wife was looking after Quentin; his wife thought the opposite. Cage rushed about, frantic, calling out Quentin’s name. The darkest thoughts rushed through his head: What if he never saw his son again?

Then, just as suddenly as the ordeal began, it was over. His son had wandered over to the videogame store, where he had been spotted by an alert clerk. The scare had lasted just five minutes, “but they were the longest five minutes of my life,” says Cage. “It was something really strong. I guess the story of Heavy Rain comes from these five minutes.”

Near the beginning of Heavy Rain, Cage’s new game for PlayStation 3, a young architect named Ethan Mars visits a shopping centre with his wife and children. Ethan pauses to buy a balloon for his son, and while he’s paying the clown, his son slips away. The player, as Ethan, sees the balloon bobbing in the distance of the teeming mall, and rushes toward it — but it’s a different child, a different balloon.

Simulated parental anxiety: It’s the latest gameplay innovation from Cage and his Parisian studio, Quantic Dream, which has been labouring for the last several years to bring a very different experience to gaming. At times, Cage’s vision seems hopelessly out of step with the gaming zeitgeist: As the Wiimote has brought a breathless physicality to gaming, Cage has criticised it for reducing games to "toys".

As games like Grand Theft Auto have emphasised sandbox-style play, and others like LittleBigPlanet have encouraged the boundless creative freedom of the gamer, Cage has made elaborately scripted games over which he towers as the central artist (his colleagues admiringly call him a videogame auteur.)

Yet despite his willful bucking of these positive trends in gaming, Cage is one of the most closely watched developers following his 2004 release, Indigo Prophecy. That game was praised especially for its story, which followed a man who wakes from a trance in a diner to find himself holding a bloodied knife over a fresh corpse. Though it faltered somewhat on implementation (a wonky control scheme, a slapdash ending), in its stronger moments it achieved the suspense of one of Hitchcock’s wrong-man films. Cage even gave himself a Hitchcockian cameo in the game’s opening tutorial.

But Indigo Prophecy was in some ways just a dry run for Heavy Rain, which will be one of Sony’s most heavily-promoted titles this year. One day in August, I paid Cage a visit in Quantic Dream’s studios on the outskirts of Paris to see the production of Heavy Rain in action.

The floor was abuzz in activity, with everyone rushing to polish a new scene to be debuted at a European videogame conference, where Cage was to also deliver the keynote on "Writing interactive narrative for a mature audience". All around me, animators and testers toyed with various moments from a scene meant to illustrate a facet of Heavy Rain that Cage has called "bending storylines".

In the scene, players control a private investigator caught in the back of a store while a robbery unfolds. Depending on the player’s choices, the private investigator might wind up shot, the storekeeper might be killed, or the thug might be knocked unconscious or convinced to slip away before things escalate. The decisions made in this scene ramify, leading to different outcomes in future scenes.

To account for all the branching possibilities, the Heavy Rain script ran 2,000 pages long, and involved 170 days with actors in the motion-capture studio in Quantic Dream’s basement. Featuring 12 hours of finished animation, Heavy Rain is the "largest motion-capture endeavour, ever", according to Cage’s collaborator Guillaume de Fondaumière.

The hold-up scene was dramatic, but others centre on decisions much more mundane. One scene involves little more than feeding your child and urging him to do his homework. Was Cage worried, I asked, that some gamers might complain that Heavy Rain, like Indigo Prophecy, was weak on gameplay? His response had the patient tone of someone used to responding to skeptics.

"When you think about what interacting means in games, it’s shooting, or killing, or being as fast as possible," Cage said. "This is what people call 'gameplay'. But I think it can be so much more than that. Interacting basically means changing something in your environment, but it could be changing your relationship with someone, it could be changing the way something looks, it could be so many different things that are more subtle than that."

It’s a novel idea, but a commercially risky one. Several months later, I finally got a trial version of the first few "chapters" of Heavy Rain, and I decided to give it the toughest test I could think of: I invited my friend Matt to play it with me. The most unapologetic philistine of a gamer I know, Matt was reluctant, not seeing the "point of a game where you don’t kill people".

And indeed, Heavy Rain proved a tough sell. At the part of the game where I had to press the thumbstick gently so as to not cut myself while shaving, Matt said, "I don’t like doing this shit in real life. Why would I pay money to do it in a videogame?" Later, when, with another sweep of the thumbstick, I buckled a seatbelt in my sedan, Matt said sarcastically: "This is going to set the gaming world on fire!?"

But as he grew accustomed to the game’s rhythms and its internal logic, even he had to occasionally admit that there was something interesting about it. "Well, that was kind of cool," he might mutter now and again, while I directed Ethan to play with his kids, or push through the teeming crowds of the fateful shopping mall.

During my visit at Quantic Dream, I asked Cage about the heartfelt note to his son Quentin that he included in the credits to Indigo Prophecy: An apology for all the weekends and afternoons missed playing with the boy while his father was busy making something for others to play with. Cage, bags under his eyes, said he was doing better, though "not as good as I’d like" -- many an evening and weekend was still sacrificed to his work. He told me, though, that on one occasion he’d been able to make work and life intersect. He had had Quentin come into the office and do some of the motion-capture for one of Ethan Mars’ sons, Sean.

Now I was playing one of these scenes in which Ethan, recently separated from his wife, was trying to patch relations with Sean. Father and son sat on a park bench as rain fell lightly from an overcast sky. When I directed Ethan to ask questions about school, Sean gave terse, grudging answers. Soon, I had Ethan reach into Sean’s backpack, where I found a boomerang.

With a few presses of the right shoulder buttons, and a swift downward flick of the controller, I shot the boomerang into the air, nabbing it just as it spun back. Sean applauded me, genuinely impressed, and soon I was giving pointers on Sean’s own throwing technique. With a few well-timed button presses, I had regained the admiration of my son, and it felt as satisfying as taking down the toughest of bosses.

James Cameron to write Avatar prequel novel

The smart money is on multiple Oscars for James Cameron's military sci-fi film Avatar. But the director has already been there, done that. What he hasn't done yet is write a novel. Until now, that is.

"I told myself, if [the movie] made money, I'd write a book," Cameron told The Wall Street Journal, confirming that he will flesh out the film's expanding universe with a novel explaining the origins of Avatar's characters.

The Avatar prequel book will lay the foundation for what is no doubt an extensive capitalization to come. Beyond Cameron's novel, as well as the obvious film prequels and sequels, the Avatar universe has the ability to go seriously viral in comics, games and more. If Na'vi nativists are the new Trekkies, then Star Trek and Star Wars will soon have serious fandom and franchise competition.

What's your take? Will you buy Cameron's Avatar novel? Should the surreal, strange Grant Morrison pen the comic? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Overhauled StarCraft II welcomes strategy noobs

It's been a long time coming, but Blizzard Entertainment finally released the StarCraft II beta last week. Wired got hold of an invite and proceeded to put the game through its paces.

I expected to have a rough time of it, considering StarCraft's reputation for incredibly complex high-level play. Released in 1998, the original StarCraft is one of the most influential entries in the real-time strategy genre and one of the best-selling PC games of all time. It's still so popular that it's played by professional competitors in Korea and elsewhere. Blizzard's stated goal is to make the sequel, 12 years in the making, much more welcoming to real-time strategy newcomers.

That's exactly what it's done. And I know, because that's what I am. I have almost no experience with StarCraftand very little experience with the RTS genre in general. My lack of RTS experience can be explained entirely by the fact that I always felt the genre was beyond me, because of the ungodly speed at which players need to react to events and carry out strategies in order to succeed.

But Blizzard is aware that there are players like me out there: Players who are interested in getting into an RTS game, but keep getting scared away. Blizzard has completely revamped its ubiquitous online gaming infrastructure, Battle.net, and come up with a system that welcomes RTS newbies with open arms.

The new Battle.net, which will be carried over to Blizzard's upcoming games World of Warcraft: Cataclysm andDiablo III, is linked to every single part of StarCraft II in a manner similar to Steam or Xbox Live. As soon as you start the game, you're prompted to log in to Battle.net. From there, all your gameplay stats, like the amount of time you've spent playing or your win/loss ratio, are constantly tracked and kept up-to-date. You can also check the profiles of friends you've added and check how they're doing.

The first time you start StarCraft II, you are asked to choose which skill class you fall into, ranging from novice to veteran. The game then puts you through five placement matches, using the data from these to match you up with players of similar skill level. This alone alleviates a lot of the stress that comes from getting in over your head against an opponent who is much better at the game than you are.

Furthermore, whenever you finish a match, a video replay of that match is automatically saved, and you can view it anytime you wish. These replays allow you to view the match from your own perspective as well as your opponent's, allowing you to get a comprehensive view of how the match went down. If you are not very good at the game, the replays are a great tool to see where you went wrong. However, the fact that you can only view replays while the game is running is a bummer. Uploading videos to YouTube or another video-sharing site requires a third-party recording application. 

The StarCraft II beta does not include a tutorial, but the basics are easy enough to learn. When you're in the middle of a game, you can bring up a Tech Tree and a list of units. These let you learn about the different units found within the game, as well as what upgrades they can receive. The game features quite a few new units, too, soStarCraft vets will likely appreciate this just as much as newbies will.

The new units seem to be the only area in which experienced and beginner players are on the same page, mainly because no one has yet learned how to use them effectively. So far, clever usage of the Zerg Baneling, a unit that can be thought of as exploding Zerglings, has been proven to produce hilarious results.

One of the most exciting features of the new Battle.net is its excellent custom map support. When the editor becomes available, anyone will be able to make maps and upload them to the servers, where they can be downloaded by anyone. Right now, only official maps made by Blizzard are available, but if the process currently in place is any indication, then getting player-made custom maps will be quite simple.

Blizzard has gone to great lengths to make sure StarCraft II is accessible to newcomers while still appealing to the professional gamer. Judging from my experience in the beta so far, I'd say they've succeeded in at least half that.

Sleep Cycle: iPhone app that helps tired parents

Your relationship with sleep changes when you become a parent. For a start you realise how little sleep you can survive on. The idea of an unbroken night's rest becomes a distant memory as you are woken every few hours to feed/change/settle your newborn.

Our kids are old enough now to sleep through most nights. But still, my other half hankers for that perfect night's sleep. Always keen to use technology to ease the pressures of modern life, I was interested to read about a new iPhone app that claimed it could help us sleep better.

Sleep Cycle uses the iPhone's accelerometers to measure your movement while you are sleeping and calculate your sleep pattern. At the end of the night you have a graph with highs and lows representing light and deep sleep.

But that's not all. The app is designed to make use of this information to wake you up when you are in a light sleep moment. This, the developers claim, is the best way to wake up and feel refreshed. The app aims to trigger the alarm when you are in a light sleep moment, as near as it can to the wakeup time you set.

I was a little sceptical at first, but I've been surprised by the results. Once I had sorted out a charging cable for the phone in the bedroom (you need it plugged in through the night), followed the simple calibration instructions it did its job very well.

Into my third night now and expectations are high to wake bright and refreshed. My next plan is to rig it up for my youngest who still has daytime sleeps -- and often wakes up grumpy. Perhaps it could help him get the most out of his naps as well. I wonder what technology you use to make these new baby years a little easier?

Can Google save free, open web video with VP8?

Google will soon control the patents around the VP8 video codec, one possible alternative to H.264 -- Apple's favourite video format -- for web video. And the leaders of the free software movement are banging their drum, urging the company to ditch those patents and offer the new video technology for free.

Shareholders of the video company On2 have approved an acquisition offer made by Google, which was initiated last year. On2 has developed the VP8 video codec, and currently holds the patents on it.

If Google were to release the newly-acquired VP8 as a free, open source video codec, it could significantly alter the web's HTML5 video landscape. After all, Google owns YouTube and puts out the Chrome browser, so adoption would get a huge kick-start.

Free software advocates unhappy with the license-heavy and patent-encumbered video codecs like H.264 and the video quality and performance of free alternatives like Theora have long been hoping that Google would take the VP8 codec and release it as a free, open source saviour for web video.

In fact, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has published an open letter encouraging Google to do just that. However, even if Google does release VP8 for any and all to use, that's no guarantee that the web's open video problems will be solved.

Even with Google at its back, VP8 would face an uphill battle against H.264.

While the picture quality and compression of VP8 is generally believed to be superior to Ogg Theora, which is based on On2's VP3, much of H.264's appeal lies in hardware optimizations. For example, part of the reason H.264 works so well on your iPhone -- offering smooth playback and little drain on the battery -- is because the hardware is optimized for H.264.

So, even if Google does release VP8 into the wild, it would still be some time before it could possibly catch up with H.264 on the hardware level. A similar lack of widespread hardware optimization also plagues the Dirac codec, another potential alternative to H.264.

There are also some unanswered questions around the patent status of VP8. Since VP8 is currently closed source and proprietary code, it's hard to say what patent claims it might be vulnerable to. The MPEG LA consortium (which oversees H.264) governs almost 2,000 video encoding patents. The odds of anyone creating an entirely new way of encoding video that doesn't somehow infringe on at least one of those patents is pretty slim.

In short, while we'd like to see Google do exactly what the FSF is suggesting, that doesn't mean that such a move would magically solve the web's open video conundrum.

iTunes 10: The 8 features it needs

If you're an iTunes user you'll know it can feel like an overly-bloated piece of "tankware". It tries to do everything. And while it's feature-packed, it needs a complete overhaul in terms of performance.

In lieu of something like "iTunes Lite", or "iTunes Shit Off A Shovel Edition", the software needs to be taken from its all-steak diet, and rebuilt as iTunes 10 on a diet comprising only chickpeas and ice cubes. But there are some other features I'd love it to have, and I'm far too arrogant to believe I'm the only one who thinks so.

So I present to you, dearest friends, the eight features I'd most like to see in iTunes 10, of which seven are actually feasible.

1: Content streaming from iTunes over Wi-Fi

iTunes 9 introduced Home Sharing -- the ability to copy content between iTunes libraries within the home. But that was only half of what needed to be done. In iTunes 10 I'd like to see the ability to have iTunes integrate with Apple's MobileMe service. This would allow you to stream your entire iTunes library over Wi-Fi and 3G to your iPhone and/or iPod touch, from your home computer.

2: iTunes Cloud

This is an extension of the above. In my first example, you'd need to leave your Mac or PC grinding away and connected to the internet in order to stream content from it. But what about if your iTunes library was mirrored in the cloud? Essentially it would let you log in (I would imagine via MobileMe again) on your iPhone, to stream your iTunes library from an online server hosted by Apple.

3: Restore library from iPod

iPod touches come with up to 64GB of memory, iPod classics up to 160GB. For most people this is more space than their entire library consumes. iTunes 10 should let you restore your desktop library from the portable one on your iPod, in the event that your hard drive is touched by Roland Emmerich.

4: SpiTunesify

That monstrous excuse for a portmanteau above is the combination of "Spotify" and "iTunes". I think you know what I'm getting at here. Last year Apple purchased streaming music start-up Lala, and rumours that Apple would finally get into the subscription-based streaming music business intensified. Although major labels may bludgeon the companies offering ad-supported streaming, Apple is in the perfect position as the largest music retailer in the world to crush the likes of Spotify with a paid-for subscription streaming service.

And imagine if that extended to TV shows and movies. And on Apple TV...

5: Texting from iPhone, via iTunes

This is something that has always annoyed me. Years ago I used Nokia's PC Suite application to compose text messages on my PC, but have them sent via my Nokia phone which was connected via USB. This should be built into iTunes, and could be integrated so conveniently within the software's iPhone tab.

6: Backup library to hard disk

If you want to backup your iTunes library, you need to using iTunes to save it to a DVD. If it's a large library, that'll involve several DVDs. If it's a gargantuan half-terabyte library like mine is, it would require almost all the blank DVDs I've ever touched. Where's the option to just back it up to a hard disk, huh?

iTunes 10 really should include this feature, as it would also save your playlists, ratings and other meta data which is embedded in iTunes' XML database. It would also make the process of switching from PC to Mac less of a worry.

7: One-click DVD ripping

There's more chance of me going to an X Factor concert out of choice than this happening, but it would be great if iTunes allowed you to copy DVD's into its library. This would be simple for home DVDs, but copyright issues would probably prevent this from being feasible for store-bought movies. Also, Apple wants to sell you movies itself, so why would it bother? Being flexible isn't on its agenda, after all.

8: Seriously, move the iTunes Store out of iTunes

Would you use Amazon as much if it forced you to use a bloated application in order to do so?

Just saying. It wouldn't have to be instead of the version in iTunes, but a web interface for buying DRM-free music should be high on Apple's agenda if it wants to keep AmazonMP3 at bay.

But now, I pass the megaphone over to you. Let me know in the comments what features you'd like to see in iTunes 10, and why. Incidentally, it should be out later this year.

Television will soon watch you (for instructions)

The days of rifling through sofa cushions for a television remote could be coming to an end, as 3D gesture-recognition technology finds its way into set-top boxes following a deal between Intel and Softkinetic-Optrima.

Like a hyperevolved descendant of The Clapper, the devices will let television viewers navigate menus and control volume by moving their arms in predefined patterns.

Gesture recognition technology -- previously somewhat arcane -- gathered momentum last year when Microsoft demoed its Project Natal to enormous acclaim. Natal applies similar technology to hard-core gaming on the Xbox, letting users play fighting games by actually punching and kicking in the air, using technology from Microsoft's acquisition of Israel-based gesture-recognition company 3DV.

In addition to a partnership with EA Sports for games, Softkinetic-Optrima plans to apply gesture recognition to the lean-back television experience, allowing people to turn up the volume by moving their hand in a circle, switch the channel by swiping to the right, pause by extending their hands in a "stop" gesture, and so on.

Softkinetic-Optrima's gesture-recognition technology, which links up with cameras with radar-like properties, will be bundled in a box running on top of Intel's powerful Atom Processor CE4100, Wired has learned.

That chip will appear in Orange's cable services in Africa, Europe and the Middle East by the end of this year or early next year. The jury is still out on 3D TV, but regardless of whether people are willing to don 3D glasses, Softkinetic-Optrima's gesture-recognition technique might come in handy (so to speak) because it works with regular broadcasts and menus.

"We provide basically the exact same technology, except not being Microsoft, we can adapt it to many other environments, like television and set-top boxes," said Softkinetic-Optrima managing director Michel Tombroff.

This soon-to-be-announced Intel deal sets the stage for cable and satellite set-top box manufacturers to bring gesture recognition to the masses. Softkinetic-Optrima also licensed its technology to Raytheon earlier this month, for military applications including soldier training, and the company is in talks with medical device manufacturers as well, to make computers doctors don't have to touch. Competitors, including Israel-basedPrimesense, are working on similar projects.

"Any place where a system would be controlled by gestures is a candidate for this technology," said Tombroff.

But are we ready to control televisions with movements? And what about the privacy issues associated with pointing a connected camera at your living room, 24 hours a day?

According to Intel, we'll need this technology in part to deal with the fire hose of content streaming through our television sets, which will grow stronger as internet-delivered television becomes commonplace.

"By the year 2015, it's expected there will be billions of consumer devices delivering billions of hours of video content, music, videogames and web browsing, so naturally we'll need much more sophisticated ways to organise and deliver content in interactive and intuitive ways," said Intel marketing manager Mike Tyson in Softkinetic-Optrima's statement.

In other words, once these systems evolve, gestures could prove more effective tools for finding content than our clumsy remotes and menus are today (although TiVo has demonstrated many ways to improve over the interfaces used by most cable providers, which force users to search for the first word in a program's title).

How It Works

The 3D camera Softkinetic-Optrima uses for these Intel-inside boxes produces a depth map of the distance of each pixel from the camera. These work more like radar than like a traditional two-lens stereoscopic camera (like the one used by Earthmine to make more detailed maps than Google's). That's because stereo cameras need visible light to make a 3D image, and people often watch television or play videogames in relative darkness. Making matters worse, a purely optical solution can't distinguish between a white shirt and the white wall behind it.

Because you shouldn't have to turn on the light or change shirts just to switch the channel on your television, the current generation of 3D gesture-recognition cameras shine their own invisible, infrared light against their subjects and judge the distance of each point based either on the time it takes to return (the "time of flight" method") or deformations in a projected grid.

Until recently, they were too expensive to be included in consumer devices, so SoftKinetic-Optrima focused on industrial uses, prior to its acquisition of Optrima, which makes the cameras. As tends to happen with technology, the price of gesture-recognition cameras has dropped significantly over time, to the point where set-top box manufacturers can include them in standard cable or satellite boxes.

The company's software analyses 3D camera data at 50 frames per second, recognising gestures and movements or recreating the bodies of one or more people in front of the camera on the television screen, like a lower-resolution version of the cameras-and-dots technique used to capture the movements of athletes for sports videogames. In the case of 3D programming, it can place your avatar within the scene based on the size of the room, where you're standing in it, your height, and so on, and allow you to grab objects that appear behind other objects.

Privacy Safeguards Apparently in Place, for Now

Today, advertisers and broadcasters pretty much guess at how many viewers they have because televisions don't know when people leave the room, or how many people are plopped on the couch. This technology could answer those questions.

The good news: Softkinetic-Optrima says none of the companies it is talking to have any plans to do so -- initially, at least.

Television advertisements in some regions already allow voting and other interaction via remote control, according to Tombroff, "but it's a decision whether they take part in that, by pushing a button. Here, it's different, because you are in front of your TV and you are passive, and you must be able to decide whether or not some other entity is watching you or not. For that reason, since it's a very delicate subject, the default position of all the companies we've talked with in the TV and set-top box companies is to say 'we won't allow that,' at least for now."

As viewers demand more interactive features, they could open themselves up to the positive sort of remote monitoring in the name of fun or fitness. "We are exploring with [France Telecom's Orange] and others ways to make the television experience richer. Imagine watching a fitness program, and you decide to participate, and you become one of the avatars in the group ... or watching a cartoon, and the kid becomes Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck." If this is the case, cable and satellite companies will have to offer transparent technologies that make it clear when the camera is on, and when it's off, similar to the indicator that lights up on active webcams, among other privacy safeguards.

Greenscreen Mobile Teleconferencing on the iPad? It Could Happen

The focus of this deal is the set-top box, but Intel also makes computer processors, of course. Tombroff pointed out that a computer with recipes in the kitchen could benefit from touchless, gesture-based controls, and said he's in talks with a casino game manufacturer about making slot machines that can be played with gestures, in addition to military and medical device manufacturers.

This technology could also improve mobile teleconferencing. As of now, the cameras are too large, but Tombroff said he expects cheaper, smaller, more power-efficient versions to appear in cellphones and other battery-dependent devices eventually. By mashing depth data from a 3D camera with visual data from a webcam, software can create an artificial backdrop, or include only video of the caller's face. Not only would this cut down significantly on the bandwidth required for mobile teleconferencing by eliminating nonessential visual data, but it would let people take business calls without the party on the other line knowing that they're at their kid's soccer game.

Set-top boxes with Intel's CE4100 chip will ship to Orange customers later this year or early next year, and there could be some kinks to work out before manufacturers decide to integrate the gesture-recognition feature. For instance, there's the issue of how the television knows when to take instruction, versus when you're reaching for your coffee or gesturing because you want Rooney to head downfield.

"You could raise your hand or shake your hand to capture the remote," said Tombroff. "It's also about controlling who in the family is the remote, if you have three people watching TV."

Grand Theft Auto: China Town Wars for iPhone Review

Chinatown Wars (iTunes link), Rockstar's latest Grand Theft Auto in pocket format, is an impressive mix. Part classic Grand Theft Auto game, with its top-down perspective, and the part modern crime sim, with its focus on narrative, its bevy of unique side missions and the condensed Liberty City it borrows from GTA IV, Chinatown Wars is easily one of the most impressive iPhone games yet.

Whatever flavour of Rockstar's crime epic it most closely resembles, Chinatown shares the same commonalities as every Grand Theft Auto instalment; free-roaming world, tonnes of missions, a handful of time wasters on the side and a hearty balance of driving and shooting. They all come together on the iPhone's tiny screen surprisingly well, offering the full 'Theft Auto experience in a pint sized edition and at a fraction of the cost.

Chinatown Wars has a significantly lighter tone than the sober Grand Theft Auto IV. The game doesn't take itself so seriously, the protagonist is brimming with sarcastic wit and the missions play out with reckless abandon -- less uneventful traversal and far more explosive shoot-outs. There's still an overarching narrative though, focussing on various Chinese mobsters vying for leadership of the Triads.

As you can no doubt imagine, controlling a Grand Theft Auto game without buttons or joysticks takes some serious getting used to. Moving, driving, shooting and fighting are all given virtual controllers in the screen's corners but, while requiring a good hours' learning curve, are eventually intuitive and accessible enough to pull off the tight driving and fast fighting that later missions require.

Like its DS cousin (the same game was available on Nintendo's handheld and PSP before gracing the iPhone),Chinatown Wars is filled to bursting with fun touch-based minigames. Hotwiring stolen cars, disarming bombs and rummaging through garbage for stashed firearms are all presented as immersive micro games and don't feel like gimmicks.

Festering beneath the surface of the main action is a subversively addictive sub-game, allowing you to make oodles of cash by buying and selling a handful of different drugs. With email tip-offs, geographically sensitive markets (the Jamaican gang has an affinity for Cannabis, while the Russian mobsters might prefer cocaine) and even profit and loss charts, it's a surprisingly deep and thoroughly engrossing timewaster -- perfect to sample in short, tube-ride bursts.

Outside of resizing the graphics and altering the controls, the game lands on Apple's handhelds unchanged. Plus, with concessions like auto-saving and super fast loading, Chinatown Wars feels like a natural fit instead of a stodgy port. You can even play your own music through your stolen car's radio; simply make a playlist on your iDevice titled "GTA".

Featuring all the action and content you've come to expect from a Grand Theft Auto game, Chinatown Wars is one of the most substantial and impressive iPhone app to date, and definitely one of the platform's must have games.

Note: This app was designed and optimised for the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS as well as the 2nd generation iPod touch. It will not run on the original iPhone and iPod touch hardware.

Tonnes of missions, loads of side content, an entire city to explore in your pocket.

Tricky controls will take some getting used to, say "bye bye" to battery life.

Lenovo IdeaPad U1 is CES showstopper

Judging by the crowds it attracted, the hit of the opening event of CES 2010 was Lenovo's IdeaPad U1, a hybrid laptop/tablet due on sale in the second half of the year.

A flurry of tablets had been expected - not least because Apple is thought to be on the verge of launching one - but Lenovo's is a bit different. In conventional mode it looks and works like a normal netbook, but the screen can be detached from the keyboard and used separately as a touchscreen tablet.

Intriguingly, it uses two different operating systems - Windows 7 when in laptop mode and a Linux-based system as a tablet.

From the brief demo of the prototype, it's hard to tell how useful the tablet element will be, but it's a neat idea that may tempt people who want the best of both worlds.

Lenovo would not be drawn on prices, but acknowledged that it would not be competing with the cheapest netbooks.

Google debuts Android-powered Nexus One superphone

Apple may have the Jesus phone, but Google has now rolled out its own "superphone".

Google unveiled its Nexus One touchscreen handset during a private press-only event at its headquarters in California. Developed in partnership with hardware manufacturer HTC, the Nexus One is Google’s first branded entry into the smartphone market.

The Nexus One runs the latest version of Google’s Android mobile operating system, allowing for several forward-thinking features. Nexus One users can rely on speech anywhere on the phone where text can be input — users can speak their e-mails, text messages, tweets and web searches. The phone also uses dual-microphone noise cancellation for improved voice quality and speech recognition, and has a vastly improved user interface which incorporates widgets that can pull in live data feeds from web services like Facebook.

"The Nexus One is where web meets phone," says Google vice president of Android project management Mario Queiroz. "It’s an exemplar of what’s possible on mobile phones. It belongs in an emerging category of devices which we call superphones."

In the States, the phone will retail for $180 with a 2-year contract with T-Mobile, but will also be available for $530 unlocked (around £331) (spot on with the latest speculation). It ships today and is available for purchase immediately at Google’s new online store. The Nexus One will be available on Verizon and Vodaphone networks this spring, Google says.

Google’s Nexus One will not only have to compete against other web-enabled handheld devices like the iPhone and Palm Pre, but also other Android phones such as the Motorola Droid. By releasing its own phone, Google puts itself in direct competition with other members of the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), a consortium of mobile hardware and software developers and carriers, all of whom have been working on Google’s Linux-based Android operating system. It could represent a tricky balance for the company to maintain.

The handset itself is sleek and gorgeous. It is housed in a thin exterior case less than half an inch (11.5 mm) thick, and it weighs only 4.5 ounces (130g). The Nexus One also boasts some impressive hardware. It features a zippy 1-GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, which Google says enables the phone to seamlessly run multiple applications at once. A trackball allows users to navigate the interface, and also uses different coloured lights to send various alerts - such as a new call or e-mail message. It also sports a 3.7 inch touchscreen AMOLED display with a native resolution of 480 x 800 pixels, a 5 megapixel camera, 512MB of RAM and ROM, and a microSD slot that’s expandable up to 32GB of storage (it ships with a 4GB card). It has a compass and an accelerometer, and light and proximity sensors allow the device to save power by dimming or shutting off the screen. A metal plate on back is designed for personal engraving. There is no hardware keyboard.

Although the Nexus One was only officially unveiled yesterday, the debut has been highly anticipated for weeks, as Google had all but announced it was on the way. The company gave a pre-release version of the phone to all of its employees just before the holidays, and posted a message to its mobile blog about the "dogfooding" process of testing a new mobile device.

The Nexus One runs Android 2.1, the latest version of Google’s free mobile operating system, and the phone relies on the new software for several key enhancements. For example, every single text field on the device is voice-enabled.

"The evolution we’ve seen around voice recognition in the past year or two has just been phenomenal," says Google senior product manager Erick Tseng, referring to the company’s Google Voice app and the voice commands on the Google Droid. "We wanted to take it to the next level."

Tseng demoed the voice applications, which were impressive. And while the speech-to-text translation was quite zippy, Tseng noted it will continue to learn more and continue to improve with every spoken command.

Other new Android apps demoed on the Nexus One including a weather app that lets you see weather predictions minute-by-minute throughout the day, and a new photo gallery application that resizes photos as you scroll through them, or skews the photos when phone is tilted to give the illusion of depth. Google’s Queiroz noted that all members of the OHA will have access to the 2.1 software once it is released in a matter of days.

Google’s new online store is, in some ways, bigger news than the phone itself. It allows the company to interact directly with consumers, just as Apple does. It lets users buy phones with or without service, which also lets Google do an end-run around carriers.

In an ironic twist, Motorola had been invited to the event, but CEO Sanjay Jha got stuck in traffic and arrived nearly an hour and a half late. Jha claimed Motorola was not concerned about Google putting its weight behind a competitor’s product. "This expansion of the ecosystem is healthy for both of us," Jha said.

The phone seems pointedly designed to move the United States towards a more European-style model, where consumers buy unlocked phones at a higher, unsubsidised price. The company made point to note this repeatedly during the Q&A session with journalists that followed the demos.

In a move perhaps designed to appease other members of the OHA, the company noted it will link to the Droid and other devices from its web store, and will add Google branding to "any great product". However, it noted that it’s only going to look at products that succeed both in terms of simplicity and performance.

"It’s not our intention to flood the web store," said Queiroz.

Google vice president of engineering for mobile Andy Rubin, who has headed up Google’s Android project since its inception, joined the team for the Q&A session.

Rubin left the door open to releasing a free, ad-supported version in the future. "The first baby step here is: Let’s get an online story going," he says, "and let’s figure out what they best way to enhance it in the future."

In response to questions about his previous assertions that Google was not building its own phone, Rubin slyly asked the press to look closely at his previous comments. "I said Google won’t build hardware," he quipped.

We will bring you more information about the phone's arrival to the UK as soon as it becomes available.

Microsoft claims 2010 will be year of the Xbox

Microsoft's keynote at CES was an interesting ninety minutes with a confident but relatively low-key performance from Steve Ballmer.

Most of the speech dealt with 2009's successes, specifically Windows 7. It was called “the best-selling operating system in history”, and much was made of its versatility. A selection of Windows 7 PCs on stage, from netbooks to gaming laptops to multi-touch PCs, were used to demonstrate the different strengths of Windows 7 and the various shapes and sizes of PC that run it. There were some oohs and aahs over an HP 'Slate PC' concept – a 10 inch-ish multitouch tablet PC running Windows 7. The slate was shown running the Kindle app, so the intention would seem to make it a more versatile rival to an e-reader.

In fact, convergence was the theme of the day. As well as PCs, Steve Ballmer and Robbie Bach, President of the Entertainment & Devices Division, took us through the joys of having a Windows 7 PC in your living room running Windows Media Center. Anything from recording four HD channels at once (in the US) to surfing the web, social networking and instant messaging is possible from your sofa. Not new news, but it fitted in well with the theme.

There was also a brief demonstration of Office 2010's collaboration abilities, with Robbie and Steve Ballmer writing a Powerpoint presentation together in real time. Flashier than Google Docs, if more expensive.

But Xbox ruled the day. Upcoming titles for 2010 include Halo Reach, which takes place before the events in the first Halo game and seems to concern itself with the fate of the Spartans, Crackdown 2 and, finally, the much-hyped Alan Wake.

This is a psychological horror game, where the writer protagonist struggles to make sense of a world where his writing comes alive. It will be told in chapters, with additional parts of the story available online.

Finally, Project Natal. This was pitched as a universal control system, which monitors all your limbs and uses them to control the Xbox. It's not just for gaming, but also to control your entertainment – cue shots of people waving their arms to flick through photos and change TV channels. There were also interviews with developers and footage of the simple full body-control games we've seen before, and a release date – Natal will be available to buy in November 2010.

All in all, no big surprises, but a confident keynote from a resurgent Microsoft proud of its recent successes, and some exciting news, as we predicted, about Natal's release date.

A gaming revolution at our fingertips

The first was from peripheral manufacturer Razer in collaboration with motion-control company Sixense (below).

This consists of an obelisk which creates a magnetic field and two hand-held stick controllers with buttons. It's a 1:1 movement system; each movement of your hands is mirrored exactly onscreen, including tilting and rotating. A special port of Left 4 Dead 2 was used to demonstrate the system – the man from Razer held a samurai sword in front of him which twisted and turned, exactly mirroring his hand movements, before a quick swipe dealt with an incoming zombie. It also worked perfectly to aim and fire guns, and a quick flick of the wrist reloaded the weapon.

It was far more accurate and sensed a much greater degree of movement than a Wiimote. There are also non-gaming applications. The controls could be used to pick up and scale objects and move the camera in 3D rendering applications such as Maya – the fact that you have two controls designed to be used in a 3D space, as opposed to a 2D mouse, makes the task more natural and intuitive.

The second input device was the Peregrine (above). This is a glove with five touch sensors in each finger, which you activate by tapping with your thumb. Each sensor can be mapped to one of your keyboard's keys. It's designed to replace the keyboard when playing games, and we were shown a demonstration on the Warcraft III mod Defense of the Ancients. The hero character you control in DotA has several powers, all of which can be accessed by keyboard shortcuts. It's far quicker, though, to simply tap your thumb to one of your fingers when wearing the Peregrine. As success in real-time-strategy games is often measured in the number of actions you can perform per minute, saving vital milliseconds when accessing spells and special powers is a distinct advantage.

Panasonic to launch 64GB SDXC card in UK

With its first step towards two-terabyte SD cards, Panasonic has announced the UK launch of the first 64GB SDXC card -- twice the capacity of the current SDHC limit, 32GB.

The SDXC format was announced little over a year ago, and promises capacities for cameras, camcorders and mobile phones that stretch into the hundreds, and eventually thousands of gigabytes.

Unfortunately though, the new cards -- which include a 48GB version as well -- will not work in most devices currently on the market. In order to read the data stored on them, new hardware is required. And that means new devices are required. The only known exception is Panasonic's stunning new DMC-GF1 camera, which already supports SDXC cards.

We're waiting to hear from Panasonic as to precise availability dates and prices for the UK, though we're expecting a February release. But be warned: at least in the US, a 64GB SDXC card is going to sell for $600 (£378).

Or a pair of 32GB SDHC cards will cost you about £120 today. Just saying

Google 'GDrive' becomes a reality

Google's often-rumoured, often-dismissed-as-never-going-to-happen GDrive -- a Google cloud service that lets you store any computer file online -- has finally become a reality. And it's called Google Docs.

Yes, Google Docs, the product with a number of birthdays already in its personal history. But Google has finally announced it is upgrading the Docs service to allow its users to upload files of any type to it, from .aac to .zip. Probably not .exe though, as they have a tendency to be naughty.

The service isn't without a more pressing limitation, though: capacity. You'll get 1GB of free space to store files up to 250MB in size. Additional space will cost extra. Odd indeed, considering Google's email service already provides 7GB of space for no cost.

But it's a start. And the ability to upload and then share such large files with friends and family certainly elevates its functionality above Gmail, which limits the size of files uploaded and sent to 25MB.

Whether this is the start of a more impressive cloud storage product from Google is open for debate. It certainly wouldn't be unfair to assume it was, with Google's Chrome OS around the corner.

But simple file storage is something other companies have been doing a lot better, for a lot longer. A worthy mention is Dropbox, which offers 3GB of storage, not to mention instant synchronisation of all your files across all of your PCs, Macs and iPhones, for no charge.

Google says the file-storage features of Google Docs will be rolled out over the next few weeks, so look for a notification when you sign into it. And look out for your nearest Dropbox employee, too. You'll recognise them by the worried look on their faces

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Review

Russians have invaded U.S. soil, and the player is trapped in a plaza filled with three fast food corporate giant restaurants providing the only cover. This should be a highlight of Modern Warfare 2, with Russian paratroopers continuing to file in, jets constantly streaming overhead, shattering glass, smoke in the distance, and air raid sirens blaring.

Instead, Modern Warfare 2 shows it's fallible, for a brief moment turning an intense, violent firefight into a chore. Forcing the player to run across a parking lot and up to a roof for an RPG is fine. Taking down enemy helicopters is a satisfying achievement, even in the steroid-driven Michael Bay-inspired action this series is known for.

Then, the design is such that you have to do it twice. A building on the opposite end of the parking lot contains the other RPG for the second chopper, and as luck would have it, the commanding officer happened to catch a glimpse of both weapons during the fight. This is not a short walk, particularly given the sheer amount of firepower being slung in the player’s direction as A.I. partners are gunned down. This is not necessarily challenging, certainly less so on lesser difficulties, but frustrating in how unnecessary it is.

The area is incredibly closed, and the level offers little sense of progression. Enemies come from all angles, orders are issued to defend a direction, and you respond. The stage design is a glorified square with bushes and a few buildings.

The problem with the level is that it stops the game cold following a morally questionable run through a Russian airport. The scene exists for a number of reasons, certainly establishing the villain, Makarov, as a callous human being. His troops, the player included as an undercover U.S. agent, exit an elevator and begin firing. Direction here is spectacular, as the player cannot run, forced to walk and witness the hysteria they are either part of or simply witnessing.

This is where the story is gaining ground, and a dual helicopter assault grinds it to a halt. So yes,Modern Warfare 2 is flawed, if only for a half hour or so. Everything else about the campaign is another achievement for Infinity Ward, capturing that same fast-paced, smooth first-person shooting experience this franchise consistently produces.

It is the little touches, and the scripted “wow” factor, that create the tightly wound whole. As the player starts, they walk an American military camp where two soldiers play a one-on-one basketball game. The animation is not repetitive, and incredibly natural. Others are working on vehicles, writing letters, or chatting. Small controllable game touches include a brief moment in space, while a fantastic finish makes the final boss logical and tense enough to justify its placement as a finale.

The “wow” factor is certainly in place, the highlight being a remarkable run through the streets of Washington, which are being rained on by helicopters after an EMP assault. Soldiers are screaming for you to move, explosions cause more explosions, debris hits the virtual soldiers in the face, all orientation is lost, and yet there is a sense of control behind the scene. Few games can manage that level of chaos, while still allowing the player the feeling that they remain in control of their life, or at least one that pushes them back to the prior checkpoint.

Modern Warfare 2 will live on through its multiplayer, now loaded with new perks including the ability to pick your kill streak weapon. Spec Ops missions fill in for the lack of campaign coop nicely, and if you’re skilled enough, versus multiplayer now allows you to drop a nuke at a 25-kill streak, instantly ending the match. Michael Bay would be proud.

Assassin's Creed 2 Review

Ubisoft Montreal left plenty of room to build upon the core concept established in Assassin’s Creed, developing their burgeoning modern day story of Desmond, a test subject who is made to regress back in time to former lives through the Animus. Assassin’s Creed II begins where the last game left off, with Desmond still confined to the Abstergo laboratories, staring at a wall of indecipherable code.

Shimmying along a ledge and pulling these guards to their doom is a much better tactic in this kind of situation.		Ezio is possibly more agile than Altair. He can definitely climb faster and is more adept in combat.

After a hasty escape from Abstergo with Lucy in tow, it’s not long before you’re willingly lying back on an upgraded Animus (or Animus 2.0 as it’s now known), ready to delve into the life and times of yet another assassin. The assassin in question is Ezio Auditore da Firenze, a young nobleman living in Renaissance Italy amid great political turmoil, brutal violence and emerging transcendent art.

Unfolding over thirty years, Ezio’s story is far greater in scope, seeing the young petulant noble suffer through family tragedy, taking him on an epic quest for vengeance as he adopts his father’s mantle of master assassin. While the transformation from immature teen to super assassin seems awfully quick and more than a little unconvincing, there’s no disputing how much more fluid and satisfying to control Ezio is when compared to his medieval predecessor, Altair. And the way in which you’re gradually eased back into the action and granted new abilities is brilliantly executed.

Ezio is a superior climber, better fighter and more athletic customer capable of limber acrobatics as he leaps and bounds across the terracotta-tiled rooftops of Florence, Tuscany and Venice. Your protagonist isn’t the only aspect of Assassin’s Creed II to be expanded since the previous game though – every single facet of the game has been enhanced to an astonishing degree, far exceeding our expectations by a considerable margin.

Not only have the fundamental mechanics been refined, making ACII a more pleasurable experience than the first game, but the sheer depth, breadth and variety of activities on offer is utterly staggering. Repetition is certainly no longer an issue as story-driven objectives are delivered in a far more organic way, making standing around and enduring lengthy cut-scenes a thing of the past. ACII’s narrative moves with a greater sense of pace than before, drawing you inexorably into its rich and detailed world.

These concealed tomb areas hide seals that unlock a very special reward back at your Monteriggioni villa.		Being able to disarm foes and punish them with their own weapons is brilliantly brutal.

Renaissance Italy itself is a glory to behold – a stark contrast to AC1’s cold grey and blue alleyways – Assassin’s Creed II’s regions are liberally draped in a startling palette of warm, sun-kissed hues all rendered in intricate detail. Synchronising your first viewpoint is every bit as breathtaking as before, if not more so, showing off the incredible draw distance and immense scale of the environments. Shadows and lighting are spectacular too, as are the overall visuals – a substantial stride forward from AC1, especially in its character models – lending a genuinely evocative sense of time and place to each of the game’s locations.

ACII’s Italy is not only home to Ezio’s story-led missions, but a host of other distractions, like courier deliveries, races, viewpoints and non-story related assassination contracts. Item collection still features heavily, but is nothing like the 400 or so flags you had to gather in the first game for apparently no reason whatsoever. Locating hidden glyphs, codex pages and seals all contribute towards ongoing puzzles. The collectibles are meaningful and actually unlock worthwhile extras all of which are proudly displayed at your family villa in Monteriggioni.

The villa in itself is an ongoing project that gives you something to sink vast amounts of your hard-earned currency into, whether you’re purchasing art or renovating your property, you’re always contributing to the cumulative value. Since Renaissance Italy represented the emergence of banking, there’s an entire economy at work in the game, featuring dozens of ways to earn florins and hundreds of things to spend them on, repairing your dilapidated villa and the surrounding town just one of many. Upgrading your armour, weaponry or dyeing your robes provides extra incentive to accumulate cash as you’re able to almost fully customise Ezio’s style to suit you.

Ezio can consort with thieves, mercenaries and courtesans that help him out for a small fee.		Obviously, falling from height means death, but Ezio always keeps a cache of medicine handy to heal his wounds. Selecting items uses an easy to use radial menu.

Still the crux of the game remains in the assassinations and with the array of weapons and new combat opportunities available to you, the number of methods you can utilise to dispatch your targets is massively increased. Abilities such as aerial assassinations, ledge kills, poison blades and more give you a greater variety of options, some of which are unashamedly cool. We dare you not to smile like a loon the first time you dive from a building, thrusting hidden blades into the back of two guards’ heads in one smooth, seamless motion, for instance.

Assassin’s Creed II is something altogether unique in its uninhibited size and wealth of ambition, few games managing to measure up in terms of depth and detail. The development team at Ubisoft Montreal has gone far beyond what we’d normally anticipate from a sequel too, delivering not only an unreservedly brilliant and compelling follow-up, but one of the finest games we’ve ever played. Boasting a suitably grand soundtrack, majestic aesthetics and masterful level design, Assassin’s Creed II is everything we could have ever wished for and so much more. Forget Modern Warfare 2, Assassin’s Creed II is without a doubt this year’s biggest and best.