Play to Learn to Play

Therese and I finished Halo ODST co-op campaign last night on Heroic difficulty. We enjoyed playing Halo 3 in co-op and on the whole we weren’t let down by ODST. There are some great set pieces and it really brought the experience right back to Halo 1 and 2; the Hunters scared me again and there was a nice balance to the battles. I liked the addition of the visor which really improved the atmosphere by having quite a few dimly lit scenes. On the down side, it was quite short for the price, the detail on character models is pretty average, and the story-line was weak (a bit like a short story rather than an epic). Firefight is a good addition, but I think for me Gears of War 2 still beats Halo for this type of gameplay.

As usual, I am playing several other games at the same time. Shadow Complex on Xbox Live is excellent, really like Super Metroid (which I adored). I also  tracked down the PSP game Jeanne D’Arc which is fun tile based RPG. It is funny having historical based gameplay with actual locations and historical characters mixed in with turn-based battles with orcs and mages!

While I wait for the endless updates for the new mmo Aion I have started playing Mario Galaxy on the Wii - what a great game. In between trying to get some work done in the afternoons I find myslef being called into Kaci’s room (6 yrs old) to help her progress in Spyro for the Wii. All good fun.

Its been my busiest summer ….ever! The only holiday I’ve managed to take this year was last week. I wasn’t resting though, we got our house completely repainted and new carpets in every room. Lots of carrying of furnature and plenty of drilling of holes for new curtains etc.

The end of June was devoted to writing a journal paper for BJET – no word on this yet. We completed three papers for CIG 2009, two of which have been accepted.
July was spent working on a consultancy report on the use of games and virtual worlds for construction industry education and engagement. We focused on OpenSim and Metaplace. Metaplace proved to be a very popular choice and it is now likely that we will be using this virtual world technology on a two year Knowledge Transfer Project. XNA was also suggested for the creation of wiimote educational mini-games and we may be creating some prototypes for this in the near future.

In August, one of my students Ben Cowley, successful passed his PhD viva and Leo Galway will be doing his this week. I also finally found out that my paper was accepted for ECGBL 2009 so a bit of work needed on that before I send in the completed version. Tomorrow I’m making a presentation on games and virtual worlds to enhance student engagement at a T&L symposium within the university. I hope to find some time to prepare for my two semester 1 XNA based modules soon!