Hi there.

It’s been a little while – sorry about that.

Our review for tonight is The Movies. The length of time it’s taken to get here is probably why you don’t see me in the strategy section all that often.

We’re working on…stuff. There may be more soon.

We’re Going back to Solstheim

And it looks like there’s some Morrowind-style buildings. iirc some Dunmer fled there after Morrowind itself got trashed. Could be a good way of appealing to player nostalgia, without having to do a full-game-sized landmass.

I’ve held off from expansions so far, after spending far too much time playing Skyrim itself, but this is the first one to seriously risk luring me back in.

If you follow geek news, or movie news, or probably any news at all, you’ve probably heard that Disney has spent about a bajillion dollars buying Lucasfilm from George Lucas.

The most important aspect of this is, of course, that they plan on making new Star Wars films. Which I’m cautiously optimistic about – after all, this is the same group that brought us Avengers. I’m confident they can beat the prequel trilogy, anyway.

For the purposes of this little blog though, our interests are regarding Lucasarts’ back catelogue. A few years ago they gave us remakes of the first two Monkey Islands, and put a few other oldies on Steam, but then they seemed to lose interest. So despite the ever-increasing ease of buying old games, we still can’t get TIE Fighter or Day of the Tentacle. Will their new corporate overlords be more eager to make the full range available?

As for what this means for *new* Lucasarts games, the future may not be bright. Rock Paper Shotgun suggest we could be in for a run of mobile and social media games and little in the way of big-budget releases.

(RPS seem as cool and trendy as it gets in terms of gaming sites. Does linking them make us slightly fashionable by association?)

(probably not)

Hello there.

Our new review for tonight is Quarantine.

In a change to our scheduled programming, it’s not the discussion review we’d planned, but I decided it was worth writing up my own thoughts anyway.

We’ll have more content, just as soon as we’re able to bring it to you.

Earlier this week the sad news emerged that programmer Mike Singleton had died, aged 61, after losing his battle with cancer.

Lords of Midnight was a little before my time, but I do have many fond memories of playing Midwinter on the Atari ST. As with many of my earlier gaming experiences, much of the time spent with this magnificently ambitious game was not invested in attempting to achieve its primary objectives. Instead, I preferred to arse about, skiing from village to village in search of a snowmobile, or another character to recruit. Most of the time I failed, with my quests usually ending after one head-over-heels fall down a hill too many, breaking most of my character’s limbs in the process.

On that basis, I’ve been reluctant to review the game here. But, while I might not have made much progress, trust me: I spent ages with it, and it represents a significant part of my early gaming life. So I reckon it’s worth giving it another go, and attempting to play it properly this time.

For more on Midwinter, Eurogamer brought us a retrospective a couple of years ago, while Mr Creosote also reviewed the game over at The Good Old Days.

So a while back I wrote about my disillusionment with action-rpgs. Well, lately I had another go at Torchlight and thoroughly enjoyed it. This is, frankly, a bit confusing.

At its heart its exactly the same thing as Titan Quest or Diablo 2. Hours of dashing around click click clicking firing off the same 2 or 3 abilities to kill waves of mooks. Gathering loot, occasionally picking out a pair of gauntlets 5% better than your current ones, and selling the rest. Occasionally making decisions on a talent tree. Repeat. Click click click.

So what’s this one doing better? Some thoughts:

1: It looks good. While the graphics aren’t particularly cutting edge, the aesthetics are appealing. It’s colourful and all just a little cartoony, almost as if Blizzard had done Diablo in a Warcraft style.
2: a few quality of life tweaks to the formula – like, every character has a pet that, apart from helping in fights, can also be loaded up with vendor trash (unwanted gear) and sent back to the town to flog it. This saves you the hassle of going yourself.
3: It’s relatively short. I don’t have numbers to hand to prove this, but I’ll eat my hat if it’s more than half the size of the other big names in the genre. Which is good, because a couple of hours a day for a week was quite enough. Once you’ve beaten the main quest there seems to be an extra dungeon for those who feel they want more. And of course you can just start again with a new hero.

So, a pretty solid 4/5. I still can’t be bothered to play (and write about) Diablo2 again, sorry. Also not in a rush to play Diablo 3. Although I might be tempted by Torchlight 2, which was pretty clearly timed to compete with Blizzard’s behemoth.

Hello there.

I can’t remember the last time we had a midweek update. Although the review was actually done and posted on Sunday; it’s just taken me this long to add all the screenies and get around to doing the newspost. [This isn’t a DVD, and this isn’t interesting ‘behind the scenes’ stuff – a reader].

Ahem. Anyway, here’s a review of a game called FlatOut.

Hi there!

In a slightly surprising move, I’ve reviewed an RPG, called Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.

It’s a relatively recent title, falling into the category of “budget releases from recent years” rather than being a genuine oldie, but we’ve always included such things anyway.

Hope you enjoy it. Next time: Zork.

It went pretty well last time, so I thought I’d try again. Unfortunately, having ruthlessly picked out another pile of items for sale, I suddenly went all soft-hearted and changed my mind about some of them. So this second list is shorter:

Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare – I hated the early games, and didn’t like the sound of this one either. Plus I generally hate creepy games. So, er, why did I buy it then? I blame GAME’s 3-for-£10 offers.

Anachronox – Stoo really likes this, and I’d loved to have given it a go. But if I’m honest with myself, I’m never going to find the time.

Prisoner of War – well, it’s a stealth game. I’d like to have hung onto it, particularly as it’s not a particularly well-known title, but I know that I’d never get anywhere with it even if I tried.

There could have been more; I ummed and ahhed over some others that, deep down, I know I won’t ever play. But glancing at the box takes you back to the time when you bought it, when you thought, “I’ll enjoy this”, and so you become reluctant to part with it, even though you’ve had years to give it a go.

There’s also a whole host of games that I’ve reviewed for FFG that I have little desire to play again, but I kind of have a rule that, if they’re a part of the site, I hang onto them.

The full list is here, and is supplemented by a couple of DS and PSP games, one of which is the DS version of Broken Sword, a perfectly serviceable port of the game, but it pales next to the Android/iOS versions these days.

Update! It’s all over. PC games failed to sell, a few quid for the console games. Perhaps worth taking one final look in the cupboard before closing the doors for a little while…

Hello everyone. I finally caved in and bought Skyrim a few weeks back. And have of course been playing obsessively, running jobs for the Thieves Guild, slaying dragons and shouting bandits off clifftops. So not a lot of retro-gaming going on, alas.

However I did make myself take a break long enough to play some Delta Force, an early example of a “soldier-sim” first-person shooter. Rik had a go also and we banded together for another of our discussion reviews. So have a read.