What's with the lack of posts?

Those of you who have been following and enjoying my news and opinion posts about the Games Industry may be wondering why the post rate has dropped of late. I can't say I have a great excuse, other than sometimes real life gets in the way of firing up Blogger to post about the latest industry press release. We've also been in a bit of slow period, releases-wise, and there are plenty of other blogs out there able to post endlessly about the random, boring crap that often rates as gaming "news" - *cough* Kotaku *cough*.

Personally, work and family life have been a real drain on my time and energy lately, and so while I have been keeping tabs on what's been happening, nothing has really blown my skirt up enough to both posting about it. This Easter, my family and I are heading Into the Wild camping for a few days, and while I'm no Outdoors man, frankly I'm looking forward to getting away from technology and games for a while to recharge my batteries.

As we head into the middle of the year, we'll definitely start to see things ramping up considerably, with the mother load of GTA4 hitting on 29 April. Can't wait to check it out.

Just to prove that there's still interesting stuff happening, heres a new (and breathtaking) trailer of Codemasters' new racing game, Grid. Built from the next iteration of their outstanding Neon engine, Grid is looking like something truly special. Looking forward to seeing more about the game in the near future.

Have a safe and happy Easter all. Get lots of gaming in, and may all your frags be headshots ;-)

Mark@GameTheoryOnline.

Gaming news of the day

• New Facebreaker screenshots (Shacknews)
• Call of Duty 4 does another tour of duty in Game of Year Edition (Joystiq)
• New Forza 2 Car Pack DLC incoming (IGN)
• THQ joins offroad racing party with Baja (Shacknews)
• Epic Games collection breaks free of retail with Steam (Evil Avatar)
• Prey 2 officially announced (Voodoo Extreme)

Burnout Paradise Interactive City Map

Don't want to fire up Burnout Paradise to check out the location of all the challenges in the game, or to learn a race route that you can't win? No worries, you can now do it online with the Burnout Paradise Interactive City map.

An enterprising developer going by the name of Senocular has managed to use the google map system to display a scrolling, zoomable map of Paradise City that allows you to overlay a variety of the challenge content in the game, ie. race routes, gas stations etc. It's pretty cool, check it out below. I've also posted a link to the developer's blog so you can read about how he did it!

Burnout Paradise Interactive City map
Developer Blog

1942 remade for XBLA and PSN

The messengers at IGN today bring word of another classic game remake for the XBLA/PSN generation, this time it's the arcade smash hit 1942 getting the treatment in the form of 1942: Joint Strike. Sporting updated visuals and co-op gameplay, the IGN lads seem optimistic about the chances of this remake, by developer Backbone Entertainment, getting it right.

We've seen a number of arcade games remade as digital downloads. Many have failed to properly upgrade the graphics, sound or gameplay. From our brief time with 1942: Joint Strike, it doesn't seem developer Backbone Entertainment has fallen into this trap. In fact, Joint Strike stands out as an example of how to reintroduce an arcade game to a modern audience.

Head over to IGN now to check out the full preview and first direct feed vids.

1942: Joint Strike Preview (IGN)