It’s open to the public from 12pm tomorrow (3rd July 09). You can find all the details on my previous Gathering Hall post.

Here’s a shot of The Gathering Hall being made to look cool!

Don’t forget if you are going to The Gathering Hall you MUST have a UMD of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite and a PSP to play it on, otherwise you will be refused entry.

Happy hunting!

They’re doing it again. And this time, it’s open to UK residents, French and some others that I forget. Watch the video - Creative director Alex Hutchinson knows who’s in and who’s out.

Come to think of it, the press info I was given says “From June 23, 2009 to July 12 2009, participants can submit their ultimate weapon at the game’s official website (http://www.armyoftwo.com) for a chance to have it included in a future EA Game.”

I guess there’s a chance it could be some other game, not an Army of Two item?

Key points:

• Go to the US Army of Two Weapons Design Gallery
• Include a picture and 200 word description
• Submit by 12th July 2009
• Keep it realistic…ish

Good luck!

I know I’m usually the one going “narrative, blah blah, games need plot, blah, characterisation, blah blah blah…” Screw it. These are not hard and fast rules. I like virtual dollhouses open-ended simulations too.

In a nutshell, The Sims 3 is The Sims 2 only more awesome. Here are just some of the annoyances that they’ve fixed:

• Lives were too short: When I wanted to focus on career or relationships, my sim would insist on aging and dying. It takes time to build up all those logic and charsima points while trying not to set fire to your dinner! Now you have the option to give your sim a double-length lifespan or switch off aging entirely.



• Customisation: You can now put a custom skin on everything. Should you, for some obscure reason, wish to have suite of cow-print kitchen appliances, there’s no need to trawl websites looking. You can go straight into the Design function, chose from a huge range of textures and pick the colours you want. Or you could download them from my Sims 3 studio ;)
• Other sims are no longer a mystery: In 2, you could talk about certain subjects but you’d have to squint at the speech bubbles to see reactions and track inter-sim relationships, likes and dislikes by yourself. Yeah, right. I’d just guess and occasionally kill a friendship outright by flirting with the wrong person. Now you can discover traits, partners and jobs of the other Sims and look them up later when you’re planning parties. No more time wasted ringing people who are at work.



• Mood triggers and timers: Previously, you could sneeze at the wrong time and completely miss what your sim was complaining about. Now there’s a tracker that shows all the things affecting your sims mood and a rough guide as to long until she hits her tolerance threshold. Yep, she’ll still wet herself but you can’t say she didn’t warn you.
• Lifetime rewards are useful: Rather than buying effort-inducing gadgets like the money tree, your reward points are now spent on traits that make the game easier. I wanted a totally career-focused Sim that didn’t care about cooking, but a lot of my free time was still spend preparing food. With the Hardly Hungry trait, she now eats once every three days. Way more time to spend in the gym to become a a super-fit super-spy!

I should be balanced here; it’s not all brilliant. The community areas are smaller. Some of them don’t have interiors at all. I went on a date to a fancy restaurant with a prospective partner. All the camera got to see was the outside of the restaurant while the meal progress bar ticked away. Even so, it’s nice to be able to wander around the town watching other Sims living their little SimLives.

Content creation is limited to reskinning, so you can’t build your own custom items. It also seems to me that there are fewer interesting models of each appliance/furniture available out of the box. Everythings so far is very… conservatively designed. As in, they mostly look like furniture you’d find in Argos. Hopefully some more outlandish stuff will turn up in the online store over the next few months.

On balance though, it’s the Sims 2 upgraded, with lots of usability tweaks. Exactly what the franchise needed.

Screenshots

• 1st July - Secret preview session
• 3rd July 12pm - The Gathering Hall opens to the public
• 3rd July26th Jun 2pm - Meet up in HMV Oxford Street

To sign-up for the secret preview session go to the forums on http://capcom-europe.com

Also check out the http://www.encyclopedia-gigantica.com for lots of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite game info.

Finally, if you are going to The Gathering Hall you MUST have a UMD of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite and a PSP to play it on, otherwise you will be refused entry.

You think she looks silly, with her arms flailing about, well just wait till you play it. Actually, I can’t wait. I better remove any breakable objects from my living room first, as I’ll be flapping all over the place.

Project Natal will be out sometime in the future and Dr Horrible’s sing-along blog is awesome, so go watch it.

There is an Assassin’s Creed 2 video if you want to see the game in action and you can read my review of the first Assassin’s Creed game.

Assassin’s Creed 2 is due for release on the 20th Nov 2009 in the UK for Xbox 360 and PS3.

The Gathering Hall aims to be the ultimate destination for Monster Hunters. In it you will be able to meet other hunters, download exclusive quests, attend tutorial nights and meet the developers (when they are in the UK).

It will be open 7 days a week and free to enter if you have a PSP and a copy of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite. At the moment I don’t know how long it will open for, so take advantage while you can! Also The Gathering Hall has a Twitter account - http://twitter.com/GatheringHall.

The Gathering Hall can be found at: 121 Charing Cross Road, London (see below for the Google Streetview of the location).

Update 12th Jun 09: The Gathering Hall will be open for 2 months only, from the 3rd July. So use it while it lasts! Here’s a trailer for the game too.