I was able to visit the Edinburgh Interactive Festival 2008 (EIF 08) today showing off some of the latest games to be coming out of the UK and to act as a discourse for hot topics in the UK games industry. Much smaller in comparison to other well known games shows such as E3 and the Tokyo Game Show, there where still a number of interesting titles on show which I got the opportunity to have a play with.

Cooking Guide on the DS, already available, is much like having Jamie Oliver in your kitchen but conveniently squished down into a DS sized cartridge and around the £30 — cheap if you ask me. An interesting idea that I’m sure will appeal to gamers who already enjoy the quirky style of games that DS has become known for. The best thing on show though was a playable version of Little Big Planet on the PS3. A highly customisable platformer that really comes into its own when you— begin to create your own levels and environments which you can then share online via the Playstation network. I know it’s not an original concept but the barrage of available customisable options and tie-ins with the EyeToy camera and the very likeable artwork style will open the game up to a lot of possibilities that could work really well in the online community aspect of the game.

If your interested in either of these two games, I suggest you check out GameSpot.co.uk or GuyCocker.com. There is also an entertaining review of Cooking Guide on the DS, mentioned, as part of Start/Select and a Flickr set of EIF 2008 here.

I was talking to a friend the other day about a new collaboration and whilst doing some research for the brief I spotted this on Instructables. If you’ve never come across Instructables before it’s sort of like a huge wiki of user submitted projects and tutorials for just about anything.

The image made me laugh with envy. I’m sure if I look hard enough I can probably find someone in Edinburgh who’s already wearing one of these as part of their Fringe performance.

Anyone who’s played Doom 3 will know exactly what this video is all about and the pain these kids are putting themselves through.

Very cool, very geeky and very funny.

[Via Fubiz]

Some more delights.

I’m a sucker when it comes to a gimmick from time to time. I came across two cool new web apps this morning.

Favthumbs displays your del.icio.us bookmarks graphically with screen grabs of all the pages you’ve bookmarked severed a la cover flow style. Very cool.

Secondly Idee searches flickr for photographs that match colours you pick. Great idea for helping to select photographs. It’d be great if they could tie this in to the creative commons selection and high res photos on flickr and then it would be on to a winner.

[Via Lifehacker.com]

I just finished watching Shoot Em Up earlier today which was certainly an experience and worthy of some sort of script writing award as it really blew me away – yep! What really topped it off for me though was the cheesyness of the title and credit sequences matched the mood and pace of the movie so well.

Done by The Picture Mill in the U.S., it’s a shame I couldn’t find a video of them online to post here. However they are on their website under Work. If you have a spare five minutes then go check them out and cringe.

Although I’ve been living in Edinburgh for quite a while now, I’ve only been to Scotland’s National Museum a couple of times. Thankfully I took sometime to explore it fully the other day and discovered some amazing artefacts (like above) of retro music and tech equipment. They also had some amazing typewriters there like the IBM Golfball-I’m still trying to track one down for myself- and the beautiful Valentine.

If you get the opportunity I suggest checking them out just for their shear beauty.

IBM Golfball typewriter

Valentine Typewriter

This week I’ve also be questioning why I didn’t discover Sound of Silver by LCD Sound System?

This looks amazing. Can’t wait to play it but Xbox 360 might be a good start.