Nick Kyme

This is a quickie. How stoked was I (and pyro, judging by the comment) to discover a special promotional code in my inbox for the God of War III E3 demo!

I am massively anticipating this game – just see the post on ‘When gods walked among us…’ for some of my gushing, fanboy praise.

Must be strong, though. I have a bunch of stuff I need to do, not least of which is to put the finishing touches to my Ghostbusters costume for a Halloween bash tonight. Bustin’, does indeed, make me feel good.

In reference of to GoWIII, all I can say is:

Hail Zeus!

Can’t believe I missed this. There’s a stonking website (admittedly, a little spartan but still awesome) devoted to the new Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine game. This is the one described as an ‘action RPG’ that’s coming to consoles from Relic and THQ.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: the trailer for this game looks absolutely stunning. Even if you’re not into 40K, this just looks like a great gamer’s game.

And before you say anything, I’m not just banging on about this because I DO love 40K – it just looks so damn good. If it plays as good as it looks, there’ll be a lot of happy Space Marines out there.

Favourite bit of the trailer so far: got to be when the Ultramarine comes down with his jump and thunder hammers a whole horde of orks on their stumpy green asses. Classic.

If you’ve not been to the website or have it on your favourites – why in the name of the God-Emperor not? Here it is, right here. Ave Imperator…

So, it’s not a great surprise to learn I am eagerly anticipating the release of God of War III for the PS3. Also rather cool is the fact that there’ll be a God of War Collection, which comprises the first two instalments of the franchise (but not the PSP’s Chains of Olympus) in HD format together with a juicy voucher to use on PSN for an exclusive GoW III demo.

I’ll take one of those too Mr Computer Game salesmen, thank you very much.

I remember way back when, during an afternoon in Grimsby town centre no less, where I first got my mitts of the first God of War. What I loved so much about the game was the sheer level of bloody, visceral action but with a puzzle solving, adventuring-cum-platformer element to it. Levelling up skills and magic also lent the game a flavour of the RPG about it with all the tedious character building and endless pointless questing.

I liked (though ‘liked’ isn’t really the right word) Kratos, the central character, so much that he became part of the inspiration for Tsu’gan in the Salamander stories. All that rage and feelings of entitlement of being done wrong by the powers that be  – it was the perfect vessel for one of Third Company’s angriest members.

God of War, unsurprisingly, became a franchise and what a franchise. The launch of the sequel provoked quite a bit of controversy with a promotional campaign that included sacrificial goats and half-naked warrior gods. The game’s arrival on PSP was of the best selling titles ever released on the troubled system, really stretching its boundaries and limits, and even opening the door for other ‘big’ game franchises to find their way onto the portable handheld (Little Big Planet, Soul Calibur and Assassin’s Creed to name three).

Aside from the brutal gameplay and it’s central figure, one of the things that has remained consistent through each iteration is the monsters. God of War has some of the best and most brutal beasts ever conceived. Greek myth is a wonderful stomping ground for its creatives and I have fond memories of slaying gigantic hydras, basilisks and gorgons, amongst other horrors.

It’s not all about the hack n’ slash, either – a souped up Golden Axe for ground-ups this is not (not that there’s anything wrong with Golden Axe, you understand – that’s my misspent youth at the Empire Arcade in Cleethorpses that is). God of War is a step above not just because of the graphics, the story, the creatures, the character or the combat – it’s the gameplay. It’s riding a pegasus whilst fighting off hordes of harpies, it’s cracking ludicrous difficult puzzles, it’s freeing titans to reach the next part of the level, it’s climbing up columns of flesh embedded with razor blades in the realm of Hades – it’s all of this mad stuff and more.

So, why babble on, why take up our time with all of this God of War back slapping? Well, God of War III is soon to hit the shelves and the good people at IGN.com have put together everything they know about the game so far in one handy little article. Have a butchers and, if you don’t mind the sight of blood and violence, you should definitely check this game out. There are loads of screenshots and videos too.

It’s one of the game I’m looking forward to in 2010, along with a few others (Dante’s Inferno is also looking extremely good and I’d suggest borrows quite a bit from God of War’s uncompromising ethos).

Get your buts over to IGN and read all about it now.

And while we’re at it, here’s the games I’ll be shelling my pennies out for in the New Year… (keep going after the pics – there’s more…)

Cripes! I’ll be having nightmares after this lot!

Seriously though, everything I’ve seen so far makes me believe that these will be the games for me next year, so speaks the Console King!

Coincidental, they all have a sort of gods & monsters theme to them, too. Dante’s Inferno is obviously about one knight’s descent in the depths of Hell, God War III speaks for itself and Darksiders features War, one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, hunted by demons and angels at the world’s ending.

Epic stuff indeed. Here’s hoping they’ll live up to the hype.

So, brave readers, what’s floating your boat for the New Year? Answers on a blog comment-shaped postcard please…

Take a look at this link from Forjador’s blog/art site ‘Portraits of War’.

Here we have a group of stalwart and honourbound dwarf heroes straight from the anuls of the Black Library. Not only that, but there’s none other than Halgar Halfhand and Morek Stonehammer from my dwarf novels Oathbreaker and Honourkeeper!

I am extremely flattered to have been included in the cut (or leastways, two heroes from my novels) and I can’t wait to see this piece with some colour on it.

Top, top work from Forjador (aka Manuel Mesones) – thank you so much for doing it.

Just goes to show you can’t keep a good dwarf down…

Before I get into writing Firedrake, I have a couple of other smaller projects to finish first.

First up is Fireborn, which is actually now the title to my first Salamanders audio story/book and not the third novel (as it was previously). I’m writing up some notes from the verbal pitch I gave Christian a few weeks ago (conceived on the tube train towards Uxbridge, no less) and almost have the ins and outs of the story nailed.

This is actually part of my process when starting a new work. I think about the main conceit in some detail, deciding if there’s a story there and it holds my interest. Then I figure out how I’m going to pitch it, either verbally or on paper, or both – it varies. I’ve usually got some scribbled notes at this point: scraps of dialogue, the main conflicts and complications in the story, what my point of now return is, where the twists come, what the cliffhangers at the end of scenes will be. Then it’s about putting all of that material together, thinking about the characters I want to use to populate it and what their story and motivations are (though, some of this will have been done already).

This is the stage I’m at now. I have about eight pages of moleskin filled with notes of varying colour (I switch pens depending on venue and sometimes highlight if it’s something important) and am almost ready to start tapping my keyboard and getting that elusive first line (or any line for that matter  – you don’t always have to start at the beginning, just get started).

I’ll definitely go back to both Salamander and ‘Fires of War’ before I get onto the actual writing. I can remember my characters okay, but there’s always some little nugget of information, some thread I can tease that might make the story more interesting. It also reduces the problem of continuity errors creeping in that comes with when you’ve got several pieces of work about the same characters.

As for the story, well, I don’t want to reveal too much. It’ll run for about 10,000 words, which equates to roughly 70-75 minutes of CD time, and is set after Salamander. I know that Tsu’gan and Praetor will be in it, so its First Company Firedrakes but that’s all I’m prepared to say.

Apparently, there’s some cover art in the pipe for it, so as soon as I can reveal that (or some of it), I will.

Right, my working day is about to begin so I’m off. TTFN.