Ordering this shit on Friday. Hells yeah.

I once made a painting. This was 1 and a half years ago, I took a photo of it before it was finished because I wanted to show a friend. Within the next few days I cocked up the painting horribly by putting colour into it.

I dug up the photo on my computer this morning and I am gonna trace it in ArtRage and finish what I started.
PROGRESS!

There should be an Irish Meet Up. We know how to drink. >:(

SHIT

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/* */

And Im free, free fallin
Yeah Im free, free fallin
Free fallin, now Im free fallin, now im
Free fallin, now Im free fallin, now im

I wanna glide down over mulholland
I wanna write her name in the sky
Gonna free fall out into nothin
Gonna leave this world for a while

And Im free, free fallin
Yeah Im free, free fallin

IT IS COMING

inFamous is an upcoming game developed by Sucker Punch Productions (Creators of the Sly Cooper franchise), the game is a 3rd person sandbox game in which you control a character name Cole McGrath (Bike messenger and resident of "Empire City"). inFamous combines games like City of Heroes and Grand Theft Auto, creating an open ended superhero game world, allowing for the player to choose the path of the hero or antihero. Enough though, I'm sure you're all dying to know how the game plays out, hit the jump for the chills and thrills.

inFamous starts like any good game does, with an explosion. A pan of Empire City shows a huge blue hemisphere engulfing the city, destroying everything. It cuts to Cole talking about the explosion, and how he was caught in it. Unconscious for weeks as the city began to fall, desperate bands of criminals vied for power. Murder, rape and thievery were all common place in Empire City. No cops to stand against the gangs as those who attempted bravery are now dead, and the rest are too afraid to do anything. Not only that but some kind of plague has struck the city, allowing the government to quarantine the whole place, locking in innocent civilians with all the murdering psychos. Cole goes on to explain that he was gifted with new found electrical powers, and he has an inner struggle to decide his path. Everything bar the explosion at the beginning of the game is shown through comic book style screen-shots, it looks great and gives the game a really superhuman feel.

It's game time. At the beginning of the demo it shows you the controls, which are extremely simple to use but there is a deeper level to them than meets the eye. You are given a number of powers to play around with, although most of them aren't available at the start of the retail game (they have to give you something to mess with in the Demo or it'd be no fun). Some of the powers you are given are; Lightning Bolt, Shockwave, Shock Grenade and Thunder Drop, each of these are unique and just as awesome as each other.

The more intense electrical powers use "Batteries" which are displayed in your top right corner, run out of these and you have no juice. Cole can only manipulate energy, not create it. Luckily by pressing R3 all sources of power are highlighted on your mini-map, so you can run to one and suck all its electricity. Although the Lightning Bolt doesn't use this up, and you can use it to recharge yourself by electrifying objects than sucking power out of them. Perpetual energy!

Not only is the fighting awesome, but running around Empire City like a madman is just as enjoyable. The free running is very cool, as you can grind along telephone wires and train tracks at high speeds to get to your destination. Another cool power is the ability to hover by holding the R1 button in the air, it allows for some wicked maneuverability at high speeds as it slows your descent. Through the times I've played through the demo around 65% of them was just running around taking on goons. Its great fun and you don't get bored of the powers as there are endless combinations!

There is quite a lot of content in the actual demo. As far as I am aware the whole of Empire City is available to you, although there isn't much to do! Four missions to be precise, two as evil Cole and two as good. Doing the missions in specific ways doesn't affect your karma meter in the demo so feel free to kill everything you see. The first mission involves you escorting a train full of civilians to safety, the second has you fighting Reapers who are contaminating the water supply. The last two involve protecting a medical crate and tracking down and destroying a Reaper van. All four of the missions are great fun, although Evil Cole's electricity tends to make things explode a lot more.

Although I previously stated that there isn't much to do in Empire City save for the missions, there is one other thing. Throughout the city are little blue lightning bolt shards that increase your batteries. These aren't essential for demo completion, but tracking them down while kicking Reaper ass is damn fun, especially as a lot of them are difficult to find. I had just as much fun shard hunting as I did doing the missions, which says a lot about the game's longevity. I can't see myself getting bored of this demo, even with the limited content.

The demo plays great, the only way to describe playing it to someone who hasn't would be... It plays how it looks; damn awesome. I'd have to say that my overall impression of the demo is that I'm very impressed. Normally for a game hyped this much you'd expect some kind of let down with the gameplay, of course we won't know till the full retail game is released. But as far as the demo goes, it WILL make you want the full game, and isn't that the purpose of a demo? inFamous is the most fun I've had in a sandbox game since GTA Vice City, and it's worth a look. inFamous will be released on May 26th exclusively for the PS3. I've already got my copy pre-ordered.

It seems 2009 has already kicked off to a magnificent start on the gaming front, with plenty of great titles still to be shown. However there has been an abundance of a single genre this year, and its one of my favourites; Fighting games. Everyone loves a good fighter, whether you play competitively or casually you can have some serious fun pumping out Ultra Combos in Street Fighter, or pile-driving in Tekken. But is 2009 the year of the fighter? In my opinion it could well be, hit the jump to see why.

Lets start with the games that have already been released; Street Fighter IV. The Street Fighter series is without a doubt the most well known fighting franchise ever created. Shout Hadoken at a stranger in the street and they'll probably know what you're doing; though they won't know why. With Street Fighter IV released in February the world was pumped with fighting spirit, ready to kick the tar out of each other online people strengthened their thumbs for the factor that would take over their social lives; Online play. As of the end of March the game has sold over 2.5 million copies, that's a lot of fighting.

It's no exaggeration to say Street Fighter IV was popular, but many gamers (Including myself) saw this as just the start, with Street Fighter at the start of the year and Tekken at the end we looked at what would come in between; and we smiled.

Marvel Vs. Capcom 2: New Age Of Heroes is my personal favourite fighting game of all time. The fast paced action, huge combos and insane character variety keeps me coming back for more every single time I play. When I heard that the game was being ported to the PSN and XBLA I nearly had a heart attack. The game holds 56 characters in total, which is more than enough to keep you entertained. You play in tag teams of three, which gives a lot of thought as to who you should partner with who. A demo was recently released on the US PSN, with 6 characters; Ryu, Strider, Chun-Li, Spiderman, Iron Man and Wolverine. This game is pure gold, and another fighting game coming out this year. But there's more.

King Of Fighters XII is also coming out this year, and while it's not on my list of games to get, I'll still probably rent it for a week. KOF XII has the lowest amount of characters ever in a game from the series; 20, which technically speaking is still a nice amount. It also uses the 3 on 3 battle system and should be another great addition to the series. I don't really know why, but I never got into the KOF series as much as I would of liked to, I guess Street Fighter, Marvel Vs. Capcom and Guilty Gear kinda dominated my childhood.Speaking of Guilty Gear the next game on my list is called BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger. You can catch the trailer for the game above. BlazBlue is the spiritual successor to the Guilty Gear series, which means its a launch day buy for me. Guilty Gear was 2D fighting at its best, and I expect the exact same out of BlazBlue. Unfortunately there is no set release date for the game in Europe, which means I may have to wait till NEXT YEAR. Unless I import. You may be wondering why the new Guilty Gear game wasn't mentioned, well truth be told I'm more excited about BlazBlue. Also I'm still sulking about it appearing on PS2 and Wii and not PS3. not to mention Guilty Gear XX ? Core Plus isn't exactly a NEW game.

Last but certainly not least is Tekken 6. It comes out in October and I'm semi excited. I have already played the game in the arcades and I only have one thing to say about it; "It plays exactly like you'd expect Tekken to". Does that make sense? Of course you want a Tekken game to play like Tekken, but i haven't seen a noticeable change in the franchise in so long. Leading me to completely skip Tekken 4 and 5 and just stick with Tag. Although there have been notices of the game changing a lot, such as move lists and character animations. I've also heard that the stages will be much bigger and interactive. Sidetracking a bit now, am I the only one who would like to see Namco develop a 2D Tekken game? I think it could be amazing, crisp 2D sprites always look better than clunky 3D models.

So that wraps up my list of fighting games for 2009. Chances are I've messed up and missed some, but if I have it just strengthens my argument further. All we need now are new Super Smash Bro's, Mortal Kombat and Dead or Alive. That would complete the package for me, and make this the gaming year of my life.

My PS3 Games:
Assassins Creed
Burnout Paradise
The Darkness
Devil May Cry 4
Folklore
LittleBigPlanet
Lost Planet
The Orange Box
Prince Of Persia
Resident Evil 5
Resistance: Fall Of Man
Skate.
Street Fighter IV
Uncharted: Drakes Fortune

PSN - Cloud-1409

Hey art forum goers, seeing as I'm such a nice guy and an artist myself I have an interesting propostion for all of you. I am a writer for a gaming site called Gamer Limit. We are looking for a new banner and logo for the site. If you want to do it for free be my guest but the big boss, (Colin), says he's willing to put some money down for a good one.
Being an artist myself I thought about doing it, but to be honest I suck with photoshop. I'm only any good with traditional media.

The dimensions are:
Banner - 960px × 174px
Logo - No set dimensions, something we can scale to different sizes would be excellent.

Also, the colour doesn't have to be red. We're open to other colours. If you're interested show me your stuff and maybe we'll get back to you. Our current banner with the logo is below.

Who Wants Some?
PSN: Cloud-1409