no, no, no.. november...

  Hullo, and welcome to the column. It's a busy busy season, so let us jump right in. The irony is that I perceived this fall as being a pretty dull season, last spring (and even into summer) - I guess I was being a bit clueless then, as it is one of the absolutely fullest schedules on record! I thought last year could not be beaten, between Halo and Mario and Ratchet and Clank and Crysis, Portal, COD, a bunch of other things - man was I wrong! Right now we are looking at Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero IV, Resistance 2, Gears of War 2, Left for Dead, Saints Row 2 (to a lesser extent, but still!, Mirror's Edge, LittleBigPlanet, of course the new WOW expansion is out in a couple of days, I believe a new C+C just released. The new Tomb Raider game is looking fine as well. Motorstorm if you like that genre.. Whew. If you are a gamer, you are a busy guy right now. It sorta sucks that all this stuff releases at the same time, in some ways..

  Surely there's a couple more I missed in there, but ya get the drift..

  As for what I have been up to, well I did manage to get my hands on LittleBigPlanet, honestly the only game I have really had my eye on for some time. It's a hot little game, a very powerful engine in there and I think we are going to see some wonderful product from the fan community. So far much of the user-created stuff I have looked at has been pure drivel, but I can suspect that some amazing stuff is coming down the tubes. Myself, I have not made it terribly far through the tutorials, but what I have messed with has piqued my interest - when I get some time to do so, I will put it trough the motions. I will tell ya, as my job already is somewhat close to design, it is a bit hard to wanna come home and start cracking the book with this thin, though - but geez. What a canvas. My mind keeps racing, how I would have loved this toy when I was a kid, that would have been IT for me. Every aspiring game-maker owes it to him or herself to pick up this masterpiece! I mean, it's definitely limited, but they could certainly use this for college courses at the high-end, and prototyping at the low end...

  I downloaded the mirror's edge demo on PS3, a gorgeous game - some things are off about it, but I appreciate the balls to put out a game like that. Hopefully it will fare well in it's reception. As with most things of it's ilk, I had enough from merely putting in some time with the demo, but I would say it's worth looking at, some very very good looking shots in that game. I'd like ot see them use it as a springboard, use that tech and those ideas to get away from this clean sterile city, make it alive and rich. Kind of swing halfway between this and a tony hawk game, or something - just a playground that you can pull amazing, adrenaline-dripping stunts out of, get that wonderful rhythm going.

  Work is going alright, as usual there's a billion things going through my mind about Obsidian these days. I am on the Aliens project about 6 weeks now, I have learned so much in the brief period - getting chances here and there to express that, it's coming faster now. I have said it before, it is truly like working at a completely different company since I've migrated from the previous title, in some ways..

  That should do for now, lots on my mind gaming-wise but as is often the case, I will have to get into it later...