It was a nice treat today to find another of my previous projects, Jade Empire, has been deemed by Microsoft to be worthy of another go – this one being added to the list of games available for download on the Xbox 360’s Xbox Originals service – pick it up now for just around $10 without having to leave the comfort of your sofa.

Most people who haven’t played it wrongly assume it sports the same basic good/evil choices found in KOTOR, but one of my favourite elements of the project was that decisions made in the game surrounded the altogether more mature philosophies of ruling with compassion or force – an altogether less black and white affair.

Oh, and kung fu…

Mass Effect PC is released today in North America – go pick it up! I wish I had a PC that could run it. In fact, I wish I had a PC that could at least run Battlefield 1942 :-(

I had hoped to post about the fantastic leaps forward in ingame animation brought about by the highly publicised (in the gaming press anyway) integration of NaturalMotion’s behavioural/physics-based Euphoria middleware in the recently released GTA4.

However, I was one of the unlucky few whose copy would invariably freeze during the opening stages of the game. Even worse, the XBOX360 would also lock up for the next few attempts even without the corrupt disc inside. I have since bought a replacement copy but the current situation sees my machine now sporting the dreaded Red Ring of Death, (much too close to be a coincidence), so it looks like I won’t be playing any games for the foreseeable future – cheers Rockstar, cheers Bill.

In the meantime, above is a video demonstrating Euphoria in a standalone manner, which looks very interesting indeed. Reports from colleagues tell me that the movement and ragdoll look incredibly natural, but the player character unfortunately handles looser than in previous games – something to be expected of any move towards visual fidelity.