Yes! Only Chicago and Stockhold have been announced so far but the list of game music is to die for. Shenmue in particular is one of my favourite game themes of all time. I hope they announce a London date soon or I’ll just have to head to Sweden for a few days - tempting anyway since that’s the only stage to include the brilliant music from Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. Of course, if any of the stages, anywhere in the world, include Rich Ragsdale’s soundtrack to AvP I’ll be there in a shot. (via ShackNews)

I knew it. The music in Sonic Rush is a) utterly stonking b) strongly reminiscent of the hugely funky Jet Set Radio music. The connection? Hideki Naganuma. Seems he’s back doing music for Sega - I eagerly await news of what project he’s on next.

I had no idea the DS homebrew scene was so active and impressive. You can use your DS as a joypad, for war driving or even to remote admin your PC. I think I need to investigate what kit you need to run all these. Such a shame your average console manufacturer doesn’t officially support or encourage but rather hinders great work like this, especially Sony with the PSP.

It’s about time. Anyone remember when publishers believed magazine ads or box art with “hot chix” were all they needed to sell games? Booth babes at E3 have long seemed like a tacky leftover from that era when publishers though games couldn’t sell themselves, instead falling back on the old adage that sex sells. Somehow this seems a minor but important part of an industry gradually finding its feet and growing up.

It’s hard being a fan of a niche sub-genre of games. Halo, Serious Sam, System Shock 2 and many others let you battle from start to finish with a few friends, but there’s a type of game that can be almost as much fun as that. I call them solo co-op games, and they’re sadly few and far between.

The idea is simple - switch between characters in a team, using their distinct abilities to progress past obstacles and help each other. Throw in the occasional bout of violence against enemies for good measure and voila - fun gameplay guaranteed.

Lost Vikings introduced me to this tiniest of genres. Olaf the Stout has his Shield (impenetrable and a solid platform to stand on), Eric the Swift can run and jump and Baelog can shoot arrows at enemies and buttons. These merry vikings get captured by aliens and must escape back home - deep fiction it is not, but ingenious puzzling it most certainly is. A worthy sequel followed on the SNES as well as a PC version with rubbish pre-rendeered graphics.

Project Eden was the last decent game Core ever made. It undersold but to me it’s just one of those games that I enjoyed far more than the average reviewer seemed to. This time we got an engineer, a fella in a hazard-proof suit, a hacker and a leader security privileges. Again, the name of the game is working out who needs to do what where in order to progress. Such a simple idea and yet far more satisfying than staring at a frustrating 3D puzzle for an hour. The puzzly level design was excellent, never feeling too forced or contrived. Here, try the demo.

Commandos should be on this list however the puzzles there felt too frustrating to be fun (though Strike Force has my interest for certain). There were a number of unimpressive clones such as Star Trek: Away Team. Desperados, however, I utterly loved (demo here). The combat was well done (you could queue up actions, often creating memorable shootouts) and once again you had to work with the distinct abilities and vulnerabilities of the characters to complete a level. Unlike Project Eden and Lost Vikings there was more flexibility in how to finish a level since there were far more abilities to play with. The 2D artwork was also beautiful, and somehow they’re recreating that look in full 3D for the sequel. Can’t wait.

Everyone knows of Pixar and ILM but there are plenty of great CG animation studios loaded with talent and producing some great work for TV, film and games. Here are a few I’ve run across, by all means add any of your own in comments.

Blur created my favourite game intro of all time, the superb Blood Ravens versus Orks battle that opens the equally superb Dawn of War. They’ve also done CG for Spiderman 2, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Unreal Championship and a bunch of other games as well as some amusing CG shorts.

Zoic are CG machines. They’ve done Buffy, Angel, Firefly and their crowning achievement is clearly the uniquely stylish and spectacular space battles in Battlestar Galactica.

Rust Monkey created the movies seen throughout the Thief trilogy. Their work still stands as some of the most uniquely stylised game cinematics I’ve yet seen. These are the guys responsible for them.

All of these guys have demo reels of their work, go see for yourself.

Sadly not a feature length version of the utterly superb TV series. Instead it’s a movie by the Equilibrium director and writer. So expect storming action and a decent plot that takes itself a little too seriously - fine by me!

So utterly bizarre yet faintly amusing, watch it and make up your own mind about what precisely compelled them to even consider it.

Oh this is too good. Return of the Sith done quick with bonus giggles aplenty. (via The Force)

While still fighting through the first one I already eagerly await God of War’s sequel. It’s coming, you know it is, but I eagerly await it for a different reason - they’ll hopefully ditch the single level so far that is horribly, frustratingly flawed. It looks amazing but some of the puzzles are astonishingly frustrating, death after repeated death, and I’ve got a pretty high frustration threshold thanks to time spent in QA.

The fact that the rest of the game is so astonishingly superb earns it forgiveness. Still, it’s such a pain when an instant classic is marred by one single horrible level, often near the end of the game (ala Xen from Half Life).

Months late but this neat little fan film deserves more love. Final Fantasy fans will love it twice as much of course (my boss certainly did), but I enjoyed anyway. For Vishnuuuu!

Don’t fall asleep just yet, this could be good. Mad Doc are working on it, they of Ex-Looking Glass fame, and it’s their first proper game. Sensibly, they started on sequels and expansions, but now it looks like they successfully pitched a full original game with a safe license to shore it up. Nice going guys!

Seems it’s an action/strategy title with up to 8 player online co-op and spans all three generations. Published by Bethesda too. I’m a lapsed minor Star Trek fan and a major Looking Glass fan mourner so this is firmly on the radar as of right now. Blue has more info.