Toronto Thumbs

Industry and Community
Verold

Verold’s humble office space.

Verold is a haven of collaboration. Situated just north of Yonge St and Bloor St in downtown Toronto, Canada – unassumingly on the second floor of a building that looks like every other one on the block, the folks at Verold are hard at work making 3D content universally accessible using Verold Studio. Verold hosts a number of indie projects on their site in gallery form, hoping to shine a light on local talent.

I had the chance to sit down with Jad Yaghi (CEO and Co-Founder), Leslie Bradt (Marketing Communications Manager), and Ross McKegney (CTO) about their operation.

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Posted in Community, Industry, The Future Is WOW | No Comments »

IN10
The King of Prince of Persia

The opening and keynote session for IN10 was interesting; not only was it a fascinating look at one of the most successful franchises in video games; it was also a glimpse into the mind of a really great person. After a brief welcome from Ian Kelso, President and CEO of IO, and a short introduction by Karen Thorne-Smith, President and CEO of Ontario Media Development Corporation, the keynote speaker walked out into the spotlight.

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Posted in Events, Film, The Future Is WOW | 3 Comments »

First Person Shizzle
The Voice of the Future

I was thinking about video games the other day (surprise!); specifically, how far we’ve come. I remember playing Flashback on the Sega Genesis for the first time, immediately thinking, “how much better looking can video games get?” Flashback was highly cinematic, the characters looked and moved like real people–I was sure that we had reached some kind of ceiling in video game progress. Well, obviously: wrong. Look at Uncharted 2, Heavy Rain, or Infamous; look at just about any driving game right now—we’re a quantum leap from where we were back in the day.

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Posted in Commentary, The Future Is WOW | No Comments »

The Future Is WOW
Pure Will Bring Unrealistically Fun ATV Racing to 360, PS3

Last month Toronto Thumbs was treated to a preview of Black Rock Studio’s upcoming ATV stunt racing, adrenaline-pumping title, Pure. While the game shown wasn’t the actual final build, it was polished enough to be more than impressive and, oddly enough, sent me on a stunt racing games kick lately (hello, Excite Truck!).

While on the surface Pure may look like your standard racing game, it isn’t a typical racing sim. Instead, the game adopts a much more arcade feel and puts a greater emphasis on being able to pull of stunts rather than actually finishing the race in first place (though that’s a good bonus).

The courses are all off-road and there’s no “one set path” to take to get from start to finish. You can come across alternative pathways that take you on more scenic routes or even be sent over crazy, death-defying jumps. There’s a stunt metre that fills up with each successful stunt you perform and ultimately allows you to execute more complicated tricks.

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Posted in PC, PlayStation 3, The Future Is WOW, Xbox 360 | No Comments »