Guy Cocker

This week, I wrote about Battlefield 1943, hosted a Start/Select special with developer DICE, invited the Guinness World Records onto the GameSpot UK Podcast and made a guest appearance on the CNET UK Podcast.

Battlefield 1943 is the next game in the acclaimed multiplayer shooter series, and I travelled to Sweden to be the first person in the world to play it. It will be downloadable-only on Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and PC.

Start/Select this week focusses on DICE, the development team behind the incredibly successful Battlefield series and the recent Mirror’s Edge. The offices is one of the most lavishly-designed development centres in the world, and we were given full access.

For the GameSpot UK Podcast, we invited the writers behind The Guinness Book of World Records Gamer’s Edition onto the show They tell us about writing their second annual compendium, while CNET UK’s Nate Lanxon joins us to talk about completing Gears of War 2 on insane.

Returning the favour, I also appeared on the CNET UK Podcast to talk to the team about taxing the internet, Gears of War PC problems, and all the other big news from the tech world. The CNET UK Podcast is well worth listening to anyway, so subscribe in iTunes to get it delivered to you every Friday.

On the preview side, I also attended a Sega event to speak to Sonic creator Yuki Naka and see his new game Let’s Tap, as well as Hearts of Iron 3 from Paradox. This week, I’ll be talking to the composer behind Killzone 2 in central London, and reviewing PlayStation Network title Flower.

…is not good.

This rather fantastic Killzone 2 press kit came through yesterday, complete with the actual game. I’m looking forward to playing through it this weekend, but check out my video walkthrough of the kit!

We’re taking GameSpot UK’s video and audio programmes weekly in 2009. They’re subscribable in iTunes, natch, so make sure you check ‘em out!

Subscribe to Start/Select (iPod res) in iTunes

Subscribe to Start/Select (high res) in iTunes

Subscribe to the GameSpot UK Podcast in iTunes

Just over a month ago, I posted a rather cryptic blog titled ‘YouTube HD‘ with an example video in high definition. I’d read on Wired that YouTube had just started rolling out HD support, and as I already uploaded many videos in such a format, a bunch of my movies automatically received an update.

In the meantime, it looks like HD has been fully integrated into the site, and compatible videos automatically have a ‘Watch in HD’ link below the picture. This feature is only possible with reasonably fast connections–my parents’ 1MB broadband is far too slow–but for those with the bandwidth, YouTube HD is a mile away from the blurry videos that have typified YouTube content.

I’ve been a bit of a sucker for high definition ever since I took my first job writing for a home cinema magazine. Earlier in the year I paid $35 for Viddyou, just because it supported unlimited uploading of HD videos. But with Viddyou’s chuggy video player and Vimeo’s recent removal of all my game-related videos, I’ve never really had the proper solution I’m after. YouTube HD may not be ‘proper’ HD, but as it’s the most popular video site and has no limits on the size and content you upload, it’s just become my favourite video site again.