Summer Plans

The below is a press release I knocked up for Skinny Lister outlining some of the exciting things we'll be getting up to this summer. I'm so chuffed to be playing Glastonbury for the first time, it's as little bit of a dream come true.

Press Release --- Press Release --- Press Release

Skinny Lister Announce Packed Schedule of Festivals for Summer 2010

London, 20^th May 2010 – Skinny Lister are excited to announce a packed summer schedule of festivals for 2010. The band yesterday confirmed a spot at Glastonbury Festival which will be the highest profile date the band has yet played.

Other highlights over the summer include, Isle of Wight Festival, Bestival, Camp Bestival, Winterwell, Lounge on the Farm, Festibelly, Festinho, Screen on the Green and more to be announced. The band are also planning an international tour for this autumn as well as a stint in the studio.

Skinny Lister are a 21^st Century folk band from London specializing in acoustic original song writing while keeping true to traditional English folk traditions. You will hear a blend of original and authentic English folk tunes in their set dependant on the venue and audience. The band are preparing to launch an EP later in 2010 which will precede a debut album penciled in for 2011.

Hear a sample of Skinny Lister at myspace.com/skinnylister

Forthcoming Live Dates:

21^st May - Liverpool Sound City, Liverpool

22^nd May - Proud Gallery Camden, London

22^nd May - The Gladstone, London

12^th June - Isle of Wight Festival, Isle of Wight

19^th June - Winterwell Festival Kemble, Gloucestershire

26^th June - Glastonbury Festival Worthy Farm, Pilton

10^th July - Lounge on the Farm Merton Farm, Canterbury

17th July - Latitude

31^st July - Camp Bestival Lulworth Castle, Dorset

28^th August - Festibelly New Forest, Hampshire

29^th August - Festinho Hinwich House, Bedfordshire

11^th September -  Bestival Isle of Wight

For more information, images, music or to request guest list, please contact Sam at Brace PR.

email: sam (at) bracepr.com

mobile: +44 (0) 7813 988908

tweets: @themule and @skinnylister

Uncharted

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is Sony's first exclusive title which finally makes a PS3 console purchase essential. As a staunch 360 supporter these are not easy words to write. Very few of the many games released on Sony's platform to date has encouraged me to evangelise the machine to my mates, I always side with Xbox. In fact, it's the first time I've been moved by a PlayStation game since Shadow of the Colossus on PS2 and that feels like a very long time ago now indeed.

Uncharted: Drakes Fortune (released Xmas 07) was the first game I played on PlayStation 3 that made me feel Sony were starting to get things right on their sickly child of a console. I'd been wanting a decent Indiana Jones/Tomb Raider style game for the current generation of machines since Xbox 360 came out back in 2005. This was the first title to come close to satisfying that desire. But it was by no means perfect. Combat was clunky and slow, there were frequent frustrations with control but the story was engaging and it kept me going to the end.

Fast forwards to October 2009 and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves arrives. The devs at Naughty Dog have clearly been working like racing greyhounds rather than rug peeing spanials because this follow up is a masterpiece. Everything that was bad or slightly crappy about the first game was taken out and replaced with brilliance. I was in shock at how good it looked let alone how good it played.

I remember seeing it moving properly for the first time at Eurogamer Expo the weekend it was due to launch. I sat down and played through the initial dangling train level, it blew me away. I stood up breathless not wanting to play more for fear of spoiling the full game. I went out the next day and bought a copy immediately.

To be fair the game doesn't quite scale the heights of that first section again but it does come very close. The overarching story and gameplay experience are beautifully executed. It's well paced, combat is much more fluid than in the original with enemies more easy to despatch. The whole thing is a sexy sleek engine emerging like a phoenix from Uncharted 1's sticky sloath-like shell.

Nathan Drake is a man's man. He's a charismatic lead and is without doubt one of the most believable and likable characters you will ever control in a video game. He's not a hulking super man, he doesn't have super powers. He's just a guy hunting for treasure. And what can be more exciting than that? I want to be a guy hunting for treasure! It's perfect, from the beachy island setting at the start of the story complete with evil British bad guy to the sexy female side kicks and Sully your oldest and most reliable drinking partner, it all comes together to form the kind of digital catnip you need for a gamer like myself to delay bedtime to stupid o'clock.

The adventure plays out across various jungle, city, underground and snowy locations and is complete with a ludicrous sci-fi style climax as happened in the original, but I won't go into that too much apart from saying that Yeti's are definitely cool again...

There are puzzle based elements but for the bulk of the gameplay you'll be, popping in and out of cover, taking out henchmen with whatever weapon comes to hand. There's a good variety to your arsenal and you'll be changing guns regularly depending on which shooter runs out of ammo first. One of the most satisfying parts of combat is actually stealthy movement. I usually detest stealth preferring instead to run amok and blow the crap out of every destructible item as quickly and as spectacularly as possible. But this is different. Creeping up on a bad dude and silently dispatching him is always a joyous occasion, the animations are super satisfying and I spent a lot of time trying to take out most targets in this fashion.

With its wonderfully lucid gameplay, gripping story and the most sumptuous visuals I've ever seen in a game, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is close to gaming perfection. You know you've loved a game when you get to the end and you feel gutted that it's over. If you haven't sampled this diamond yet, you need to get it right now and if that means buying a PS3, do it.

iPhone killed my Xbox

There’s no denying it. I've spent much more of my gaming life of late fiddling with my iPhone over playing 'proper' games on my consoles. It surprises me when I think about it, partly because I didn’t notice it happening and also because I’ve been deeply sceptical about handheld gaming for years.

I think it's because I always feel video gaming works best on a big screen. There have been a few exceptions over the years - Phoenix Wright: Ace Attourney (Capcom, above) and Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (Capcom/Nintendo, right) both for DS. They didn’t stop me fully believing that Nintendo’s retro style handheld was doomed to failure however. Two screens? Who needs them? Oh, everyone apparently... Fail.

I was first alerted to the potential of iPhone as a platform when Flight Control (Firemint, below) came out, but I wasn't sold. Everyone was raving about it but the experience felt far too gimiky in my hands. Guiding planes in to land with a flight path created by your finger is immediately rewarding but it didn’t have legs. I was ready to give up in about 10 mins.

The real closer came in the form of Airport Mania: First Flight (Reflexive Entertainment, below). Playing air traffic control has never been more fun, the graphics were cute, the gameplay addictive, it was the first complete game experience I'd had in ages that held me in a spell. 

All you have to do is land planes, disembark passengers, refuel and then take off again. You get a set number of runways and planes circle over head waiting to land so you have to be quick or they get upset and fly to another airport costing you valuable points. It's deeper than I’m making it sound but I couldn't stop playing it until I had finished the campaign and that hasn't happened to me for a very long time. 

So imagine my joy when this mini addiction happened again, first with Peggle (Popcap), then again with Plants vs. Zombies (Popcap), and then yet again with Rovio’s Angry Birds! It’s a gaming renaissance for me, I haven't felt more joyous about gaming since the days when I used to wait 30 minutes for a cassette tape to load up the likes of Chuckie Egg or Double Dragon on my Speccy.

Peggle is old news for most of the gaming fraternity, but I'd missed out on its charms until just recently. It's the simplest of concepts. Fire balls into pegs to make them disappear. Score big to progress while using various special powers bestowed upon you by the 'Master' of the level. The finest of these is surely the Zen Ball Owl Master. Spooky Ball must also be mentioned for its wondrous use of that Bach Toccata & Fugue pipe organ tune which is wheeled out for many a spooky moment in film or game media. You know the one…. (Click here to hear). Also, when you finish a level, 'Extreme Fever' happens and they play Beethoven's Nineth at you whilst the level explodes into celebratory fireworks, it's cheesily fantastic. And that’s about all there is to it but for some reason it works, and it had me going back again and again.

Popcap followed Peggle up with Plants vs. Zombies, I had briefly sampled the trial version of this particular offering on my mac book but I couldn’t warrant the £20 price tag. No such worries on iPhone, It’ll set you back £1.50 or thereabouts. 

All you have to do is stop a zombie hoard from crossing the lawn which leads to your backdoor. Defence is mounted by growing various aggressive forms of plant life. There’s an endless supply of pea shooters or melon launchers for you to choose from and the zombies have a similar depth to their ranks featuring stock shufflers to American Football style sprinters, Pole vaulters and even a Michael Jackson style Thriller zombie dance troop.

The touch screen makes gameplay flow so naturally and quickly. Every level is perfectly weighted so that if you're clever and pick the right kind of floral resistance, you will defeat the zombie hoard. But any slip up and they’ll be across your lawn in a flash and be eating your Braaaains like ice cream.

 

It's genius, the music is perfect and the different levels, which are essentially all the same just with different environmental elements (night, fog, swimming pool, night fog pool combo and roof) are a delight. It’s like the purest gaming crack I have ever sampled. And boy is it high quality stuff.

Angry Birds is quite new, I believe it got downloaded over 500,000 times in its first 24 hours which is amazing for a new game on the App store. The price probably helped as it's only 54p. Surely the best value for money entertainment experience you could ever hope for.

This one is possibly the simplest of them all but deceptively so. At its basic level the game is a catapult and target style affair. I’ve played plenty of these in the past and have stopped after 2 mins, but this one with its charm laden graphics and variety of ammo/target material sucks you in when you're not expecting it. 

Ammo is made up of different kinds of birds and the targets are naughty pigs. The pigs have stolen the birds eggs and the aim of the game is to get the eggs back whilst crushing the pigs who are hiding out in various knock down-able shelters. The aim is to use different birds for different kinds of materials within each shelter. Knock the structure down and crush the evil pigs. So simple but so so fun. I couldn’t recommend it more.

All these titles contain hours of entertainment. They leave you with a sense of content satisfaction few of the recent big AAA console titles can hope to muster and for a fraction of the price. It’s their unexpected complexity in the face of a simple gameplay mechanic that grabs you. Almost like Beatles songs, you just can’t help loving them even though you think you probably should have had enough of them by now. I can't wait to find out what the next unputdownable game will be!

The iPhone has forced developers to rethink how games should be made. More advanced touch screen technology has opened up possibilities far beyond that of capability of the DS and into a whole new happy digital land of gold. All hail Apple and their marvellous technology pioneers, they all deserve to be knighted.