Waking bleary eyed to this today was awesome - thanks Heidi!

UPDATE: Rez HD is out today (30th Jan), and its a fiver. FIVE WHOLE POUNDS. Just five hundred new pence for this glorious piece of audio-visual gloriosity. 1UP gave it 10/10, so what the hell are you waiting for?

Ah, Rez, can I compare thee to a summer's day? Probably, provided there were some mind-altering substances on offer. And colours, and shapes. And colourful shapes.

And, of course, a brilliant soundtrack in Rez: Gamer's Guide to.... This album has been back in circulation for me: the brilliant 'Rez Edit' version of Adam Freeland's Fear (you mean Mindkiller? Hip-hop overdub? No thanks!), Creation The State of Art by ケンイシイ (Ken Ishii), Coldcut's Boss Attacks and Buggie Running Beeps 01 by Kenichi Sugiyama being particular highlights. Just don't play it loud in the car, driving home late at night, in the rain. On mind-altering drugs. It could be quite mesmerising.

Anyway, looks like Steve managed to get his mitts on Rez HD a bit earlier than usual, thanks to "PartnerNet - the closed Xbox Live Arcade network which is like peering into the future - game developers across the globe chuck stuff on there for other devs to download and play to death". I guess there are perks still working in the games industry: strike me particularly envious. Rez HD... mmm... I feel a disturbance in my trousers. Or is that just the Rez Trance Vibrator?

Old news, but I also noticed another of my faves, Ikaruga, could also be available on Xbox Live Arcade. I still play Ikaruga on the GameCube, probably cos it's ludicrously hard.

If you own the big grey n' green, keep your Microsoft lovin' ass on the lookout for these two diamonds.

The Tempest is was a World of Warcraft guild site built initially on Drupal 4.7 and recently upgraded to Drupal 5. It provides guild membership management via user accounts and roles, forums with public and private access, raid listings with sign-ups and other groovy stuff like private messaging, image galleries and a links/resources directory.

For managing raids and sign-ups we use a CCK type called 'raid' which includes fields for:

• Date using the Date API;
• Instance as a drop-down list (see the attached instance_list.txt for the values we use);
• Notes for anything else, eg what the goals of the run are.

A slighty tweaked Sign Up module allows guild members to sign-up for raid nodes. We also use the Calendar module along with trusty Views to provide both an Upcoming Raids List and a Raids Calendar.

I was pleasantly suprised yesterday when Dylan informed me that he'd got hold of a (somewhat short) demo of Ico 2. Sorry, Wanda and the Colossus. Wait, no. Shadow of the Colossus.

The first reviews are appearing, and for the good of gamers everywhere, its looking darn impressive. According to sites like IGN and Game Informer, its "... an absolute must-play experience", "one of the most important games you'll come across anytime soon", "a truly unique experience" and even "a true work of art, the likes of which we've only seen approached by a very, very small number of games".

Today, Nintendo finally showed off the Revolution controller. And a revolution it just might possibly be. Check out the images attached. The main body doesn't look that much different to my TV remote. It has an attachment which is held in the left hand, with an analogue joystick on, which I'm not convinced about (how many games don't use the thing, at least on the Cube?). Steve and I mentioned the possibility of "splitting" the controller up in order to provide more freedom last week: how bizarre.

The official Nintendo word on this set-up is a classic:

>"The controller also allows for a variety of expansions, including a "nunchuk" style analog unit offering the enhanced game-play control hard-core gamers demand,"

Another game I've been enjoying recently is killer7. I wrote a review over at demolicious.org. Here's an archived copy.

killer7, a stylish 3rd person adventure game which chronicles the connection between two men whose intertwined paths develop into a compelling tale of revenge and altering personalities. Woo. Well I’ve been waiting for this one for a while, and though I’m possibly just half way through, here’s a review anyway.

killer7 is strange. Strange and wonderful. I’m still not too sure, but I think you play as Harman Smith, a wheelchair-bound old man who has access to several different personalities that collectively form the infamous bunch of assassins known as ‘killer7’.

Recently, my social life has been eaten up with the fantastic Guild Wars. I've been afraid of online (or more specifically, MMO-style) games for two main reasons: the first is the monthly subscription fee, and the second is how much I'd feel I'd have to play it once I was forking out a tenner month on a game I'd already paid £30 for.

Guild Wars is free. Or as close as dammit: I picked up a copy of the game from Play.com for a measly £17, and it comes with no subscription fee whatsoever. And for this much content and gameplay, thats the cheapest game I've ever seen.

I've started the game through a second time after realising that I couldn't redo the parts of the tutorial I'd missed the first time round. I foolishly thought the tutorial map was the game. Cue jaw dropping to the floor when I first saw the world map proper...