Aussie Ben

Finally, I've conquered the werewolf fan market! ...I'm not sure if I wanted to do that.

Ah, I see. Yeah, it's been a while since I popped the disc in, but it seemed to be okay to control the Pikmin with the pointer. Taking a look at the manual now, and the controls page specifically states "You cannot use a Nintendo GameCube controller with Pikmin 2.". Which is a bit odd. =/

Thanks all for the kind words. It's been a crazy year, and it's nice to see the game is actually out and purchasable. (It's kind of weird, actually.) Rest assured that I am reading all comments and feedback, thanks for all of that. And most importantly, I hope you enjoy it!

Time to chime in with the congrats. Well done, Chris! (Actually saw the tweet earlier this morning, but it seemed too difficult to reply back then.) Hooray!

Yeah, the only real difference is that you can use the Wii pointer to aim the circle that tells your Pikmin where to go. Some SFX play from the Wii Remote speaker, too. Nothing much else, I'm afraid.

Hope you enjoy it guys - it's been exhausting. Also, I've been told that this is apparently very important to the Idle Thumbs crew: https://twitter.com/#!/AussieBen/status/192793826660851712

My Lego Rock Band tracks (which I imported into Rock Band 2 explicitly so I could play Ghostbusters) automagically turned up in Rock Band 3 when I first booted it up.

Well, I have Black, so get white! Haha. There's apparently two different areas to visit. In Black, you get a city (of the FUTURE) called, Black City. In White, you get a special forest called White Forest, which makes no sense at all. There's more version exclusive Pokemon there. And of course, in Black you get one super special Pokemon, while in White you get the other one. Aside from that, I'm pretty sure that's all the major differences.

So I've been playing Pokemon Black (got my seventh badge last night, yay!), and boy does this game have a massive tonal shift, as far as Pokemon goes. The main plotline has the latest evil gang, Team Plasma, questioning people about how the Pokemon themselves feel about being captured and used - which is a pretty reasonable question, actually. And some of these Pokedex entries, man. Yamask is perhaps the most terrifying of them all: SOMETIMES THEY LOOK AT IT AND CRY. Blimey. Nothing like capturing the ghost of a human, then forcing it to fight for the rest of its afterlife against electric mice and fire dragons. And when you get bored of it, you send it to PC Box purgatory on a whim. Overall though, I'm enjoying the game a lot - it's gotten rid of a lot of the niggling problems I hated about the old Pokemon games. You can reuse TMs over and over so you don't have to agonise over which Pokemon gets that move and Doctors and Nurses are strategically placed in dungeons so you don't have to trek all the way back to a Pokemon Center if you're in trouble. A cool new feature is the possibility of an instant capture when you throw a Poke Ball - very rarely, you'll here it go "PSSSSHHHEOOOOWWW" and the Poke Ball shakes once and catches it. It's such an awesome feeling when it happens. Also the fact that the old Pokemon are completely unseen before you finish the game really helps make it feel as though it's a "new" game. It really does feel like you're playing Pokemon for the first time again, with each new Pokemon and evolution being a totally new discovery for you. Has anyone else been having a go of the new Pokemon games? Have you been enjoying them at all?

Well, I joined Brawsome for Jolly Rover, and did some writing, scripting and a lot of proofreading/QA on it. :-) But yeah, Andrew Goulding, Brawsome's director worked on all those games. We're working together on MacGuffin's Curse, it seems to be working well, as we haven't killed each other yet!!

I think my favourite Assassin's Creed-related glitch was in the first one, when I killed someone and then just sat down on the bench, while people ran around me shouting AHHHHHHHH THERE'S THE KILLER AAAAAHHHH MURDERER Glitches can be fun - who on earth would have played Stunts if it wasn't glitchy?

So, at the start of this year, I decided to work on an indie game called MacGuffin's Curse. Bloody scary, I can tell you now, but it's been very exciting to work on something with full control over from the start, rather being told "No" to your ideas. The game is a top-down puzzle game (elements of Sokoban if you've ever played that, if not, think of the dungeon puzzles in the top-down Zeldas) with some adventure game stuff mixed in (so for example, inventory puzzles and branching conversations) because I've always liked those elements. The puzzles revolve around being able to switch between two different characters, a thief and a werewolf version of himself, to solve each puzzle. Each character can do some tasks but not others, so the player needs to use them both to be successful. Every Friday, we take a bit of time out to talk about some game-related thing that's happened that week. Partly for ourselves, and partly because it's awesome to tell people what you're up to and give them a little look into what's happening, I think. I always enjoy that kind of stuff, anyway. We also have a reporter character, and I have been told to include the phrase "hot scoops" in her dialogue at some point, so I guess that'll be in there somewhere.

Ho ho, I love how they end these games, they always make me laugh with their awesome nonsense cliffhangers. I find the games are great fun. TAKE THAT, MINSTREL The fact that with this one, you could summon an army of ninja-like Assassins to appear from nowhere and "dispatch" anyone you point at was totally awesome. It reminded me of The Magic Finger, in a way, only with less ducks and more murder.

Oh! I keep meaning to ask! I am working on an indie game, and I'd like to ask if people are interested in it, BUT - I don't want to be all like "HEY GUYS, I AM AN ADVERTISING ROBOT, BLARG READ THIS" cause that's not cool at all (and besides, would not be very pleasant). Are there rules that I should be pointed to regarding talking about my game? Is it okay to do so? Cheers guys.

Al Lowe seems pretty cool, if you flick through his Larry 5 design doc he posted on his site, even then he was pushing for the removal of frustrating deaths and stupid copy protection stuff.