Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

"It's a little bit hard to work out without knowing the altitude of that dragon..."

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Psst, hey, check out SpyToy

NOT SO LOUD. They'll hear us!

Clearly buoyed by the fact that we said some nice things about EyeToy: Work Out, You Lazy Sod or whatever the fitness game's called [you've done that joke -Ed], Sony has announced another EyeToy game which isn't in fact that much of a game. And, again, it sounds pretty nifty.

SpyToy it's called, developed as ever by SCE London Studios and due out this September, and as you've probably guessed by now it's a way of setting up your EyeToy to spy on things - monitoring who comes in and out of your room by recording video and audio, setting up personalised alarms, taking snapshots, and more.

"And more" will include lockable profiles, the option to play back videos (with rewind, fast-forward and slow down features) and edit them, store things on the memory card, and take advantage of facial recognition software.

Oddly, the word facial reminds us [lots of this sentence has been cut -Ed] could abuse the system to satisfy their own perversity.

Wait, what happened there?

Oh well. Sony also notes that, amazingly, there are even some spy-themed games to play with SpyToy. For these you'll need to use photo fit, break codes, sky dive, disarm bombs, and zoom in on locations via satellite. Although presumably not in the sense of riding it.

SpyToy is doubtless aimed at children at that "difficult age" where brothers and sisters must be destroyed, downtrodden and generally done away with, and sounds a good deal more ingenious than our own pre-pubescent tactics of cutting strings off plastic guitars and smashing windows with tennis balls. And fair play to Sony for finding new and interesting ways to justify that EyeToy.

We'll be giving SpyToy a good going over nearer its release. So watch out, Kristan.