Everyone's a critic...

... and now, so am I! I wrote my first restaurant review for dinehere.ca, which is a favourite website of mine for checking out local restaurants. The review is for a place called Guu with Garlic that Steph and I visited on Monday evening. Check out the gastronomic musings of jamesb here.

Scarface previews

Scarface is the first game I have been involved in since I started at Radical in October 2005. It's similar to the GTA games but with a stronger main character and much more sophisticated meta-game mechanics. I've been working on collision and physics for the game for the last few months. I think it's going to be a great game and hope that it sells well, but don't take my word for it - check out these previews of the game at IGN and GameSpot. And then buy it when it comes out later this year :)

Bravo Italia

Well done to Italy for winning the World Cup Final yesterday! Steph and I got up early and met up with some friends on Commercial Drive to watch the match. The area is known as Little Italy, and the Italians were certainly out in force. They were queuing outside cafes and bars at 9am, even though the match didn't start till 11. We ended up in a very crowded sports bar for the game which soon became disgustingly hot. Still, the atmosphere was good. I thought it was a very even match, but that on balance Italy deserved to win. France's goal from a penalty kick didn't seem like much of an achievement, and they played a pretty dirty match - lots of diving and theatrics. The police closed the street during the match and for some time after, and everyone went crazy when Italy finally won. The atmosphere turned into some kind of crazy, flag-waving mardi-gras. It was quite a sight to behold. They were still cheering and driving up and down with horns blaring at 6pm when we finally left the area. I expect it probably continued into the evening :)