One of my many Steam sale purchases this Christmas was a game called Blur. It’s a racing game from developer Bizarre Creations (of Project Gotham Racing and, a long time ago, Formula 1 fame) which received a level of critical acclaim, but failed to sell as well as they, or indeed publisher Activision, would have […]

Firaxis’ XCOM: Enemy Unknown announced 30-something PC (or former Amiga) gamers around the world are going to a special happy place in their heads, upon hearing this news. I for one fondly miss the days of my team of utter arseholes shooting each other in the back of the head and tripping over their own […]

I very rarely play new games. This isn’t just because I’m a retro fan, it’s also because I’m cheap. So my version of “latest games” is “couple year old games on sale on Steam”. What I’m currently working on is: Batman Arkham Asylum. Which I recall receiving huge amounts of gamer praise and critical acclaim […]

So Rockstar have announced GTAV. Here’s some speculation from PSM. My first thought is, will this be the sort of change we saw from GTAIII to Vice City – same technology but more features? After all there was much we saw cut from VC and San Andreas, like buying property or SA’s RPG style skills […]

One of the benefits of Steam is the stack of indie games they make available. I’ve been slow to look into such things, but this week have been enjoying some Nightsky. It’s a puzzle-platformer – popular format amongst indies, I hear? The idea is you have to navigate a sphere across the screen whilst obeying […]

Some screenshots for Skyrim at Rock Paper Shotgun. From what I’ve heard so far, it’s like Oblivion with upgraded graphics and more advanced combat physics. Rest assured I’ll be getting a copy; I missed the early installments of Elder Scrolls but have been a huge fan since Morrowind. My current thought tho is how they’re […]

It’s a crucial question for an RPG: what type of character are you going to be? Although the choice in Alpha Protocol may be a little narrower than in your more traditional beardy-type affair – you have to be a spy of some sort – there’s still the usual dilemma about where to spend your […]

Even if you’re attempting to explain your shortcomings as a gamer in a (ha-ha) humorous, self-deprecating manner, it pays not to over-do it, lest someone mistake you for a genuine idiot. So let me make the following point: I do understand what ‘RPG’ stands for, and that role-playing, by its very nature, involves making detailed […]

So, when I first decided to do this Alpha Protocol thing, I guess my initial idea was to play for a bit, find something vaguely RPG-like that would normally scare me off, and then write about it. There’d be all kinds of different things, I thought…it could be a kind of weekly ‘feature’ until the […]

Recently I purchased the game Alpha Protocol. Despite mixed reviews, it’s one I fancied getting ever since the first set of previews started doing the rounds. As I’ve mentioned before, genuine ‘spy’ games in the Bourne Identity mould are few and far between, and I reckon there’s definitely a gap in the market for a […]