Happy New Year! As it’s the season for continuing unwelcome traditions, here’s my annual roundup of the year in FFG-land. [Yay! – a reader].

Overall, we managed a reasonably steady stream of content across the year, roughly on a par with what we’ve produced in previous years (with the exception of the magical, industrious 2007, but we’ll have to dismiss that as a miraculous one-off). A couple of monkeys were removed from backs in 2012, as I finally managed to play, and review, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, while my esteemed colleague produced the long-promised King’s Quest VI write-up. I think he had slightly more fun than I did. Jo’s review of King’s Quest VII followed later, further boosting our coverage of Sierra adventure series (okay, it’s incomplete, and out of sequence, but it is there, at least).

The FFG sports section was bolstered by significant football game coverage this year, with a Kick Off vs Goal! face-off early in the year, and reviews of not one, not two, but three FIFA games. (Although don’t expect any more anytime soon). The best thing that can be said is, at least we had a cricket-free year.

April saw the introduction of a brand-new feature on FFG, the discussion review. Following our brief experimentation with the format while revisiting some old favourites for last year’s anniversary features, we decided to take the plunge and apply it to some games we hadn’t previously covered. Hardball III was the first, followed by Bio Menace and Delta Force.

Elsewhere, more modern games started to feature, with 2006-era titles such as Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (I reviewed an RPG, mum!) edging themselves onto the site. Another modern(ish) game to feature was The Movies, which saw the two of us immortalised as a buddy-cop duo.

So, what will 2013 bring? I’d be lying if I promised anything other than more of the same, in roughly similar quantities. Although somewhere, FFG v3 is being worked on by, ahem, top men, and I imagine we’d hope to have something to unveil at some stage in the next year or so. As always, if you have any requests, be sure to let us know. Otherwise, thanks for reading, and here’s to the year ahead.

Hi there!

There’s been rather more rushing around and feeling below-par than I might have liked over the past couple of weeks, but anyway, here’s the now-traditional, in under-the-wire, 31 December review: FIFA 07.

Season’s greetings to all our visitors and readers. A 2012 round-up is coming soon, along with some more content, as soon as we can get it to you.

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.