I recently bought myself a second-hand PSP. Now, given that I already own a DS, it may seem like a slightly strange decision, especially as I like my DS, which has kept me thoroughly entertained on my journeys to and from work over the past four years or so (despite me having no previous predilection for Nintendo consoles or properties – I don’t care about Mario, Zelda, Metroid…any of ’em – sorry).

Furthermore, if we must reduce everything to a who-won-the-console-war (and for my purposes here, we must) then it’s fair to say that the DS won the battle of the noughties handheld gaming devices, fashioning an image for itself as a wholesome, accessible gadget for normal people and celebrities that could somehow improve your brainpower.

The PSP, on the other hand, was for antisocial teenage knobheads (ie the stereotypical gamer) to play the same old FIFA and Need for Speed on, year after year. Pity the poor PSP owner, the forum-dwellers and games-website-comment-leavers would say, for he has no brain and he is not a real gamer. (And then they’d also say something about the DS being for female children – perhaps for balance, but mainly because that’s just what forum-dwellers and games-website-comment-leavers, basking behind the cloak of internet anonymity, like to do).

But for some people, playing FIFA and Need for Speed is not particularly something to be sneered at. And while the DS has a jolly good go at both (NFS: ProStreet on DS is a particularly creditable effort), it’s fair to say it just wasn’t built for football or racing games. And those just happen to be my two favourite genres. Hence, my purchase.

One wonders how it went so wrong for the PSP. There was so much cooing about its superior hardware when it was first released, and even now, it’s an impressive machine. It’s been said many times before, but PSP games are effectively PS2 games with slightly longer loading times and a layer of audio-visual polish chiselled off. Perhaps that was the problem: I mean, why would you pay full asking price just to play a very similar game to one you already own on the move?

I won’t speculate any further on it, because if I knew what was going to be a success and what wasn’t, I’d be a rich man working somewhere else*. Will the Vita be a hit? I predict…nothing. All I know is that for around £50 I’ve now got decent portable versions of, among others: Pro Evolution Soccer, Need for Speed, Football Manager and Midnight Club. Which is nice.

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*Here’s some further speculation: despite some interesting news here and here, in all likelihood, the PSP is a dead system. Games shops don’t have PSP sections now, and if they do, they’re very small indeed.

Also: only a retro-bore like me could take some pleasure in owning a technically competent but defunct system because it reminds him of previous times when he owned a technically competent but defunct system. I had (still have, actually – somewhere) an Atari Lynx and thought it was awesome, but the gaming public preferred that silly little one with the green screen. There were some good games though – if you could ever find anywhere to buy them. And it really was a decent machine. You know, back then, we had to use batteries in our handhelds, you couldn’t charge them…[continues on in this vein for several hours]

Hello all. We’ve gone and covered another CSI game: this time it’s Miami.

I do appreciate that’s the third this year. If you’re of the opinion that we should be playing more “worthy” titles rather than TV tie-ins then, well, some of that on the way soon I hope.

Good evening.

In between all of this discussion-review tomfoolery, there’s no getting around the fact that new reviews have been thin on the ground of late.

Here’s one, though – I take a look at Michel Ancel’s Beyond Good & Evil.

Hello.

Our series of retrospective discussions continues, as Stoo, Jo and myself take a look back at Broken Sword.

We hope you’re enjoying these, and hope to do more, but watch out for some brand-new reviews in the near future.

So I got the CSI Miami game.

It’s… not very good. I was warned, of course, since it’s basically just Dark Motives with new missions and the Miami cast. I think I’m going to give myself RSI from mass-clicking every screen, and showing every bit of evidence to every suspect, so maybe I should just wimp out and turn on the visual “you can do something significant here” aids.

Also the voice-acting is pretty disinterested so far, not helped by the blank expressions on the CG models. Calleigh is hardest hit, going from sunny and cheery to a dead-eyed stare.

I’ll probably hack through to the end, but I’m already thinking that if you want to go muder-investigating on your PC you’re probably better off digging out a Police Quest.

Hello all. Because we like playing at features that proper professional gaming magazines and websites do, we’re continuing our series of discussion reviews. The idea is to revisit some of the games we’ve covered in the past 10 years, to celebrate this site lasting that long (hurrah for us).

So far we’ve covered an ancient example of stunt-driving and the world’s most obscure football game. Today we add to those a look at the classic 2000 action-RPG Deus Ex.

Hi all. I’ve not been doing great for generating content this year. Sorry about that! Unlike Rik, I don’t have the excuse of being out of the house doing grownup married stuff. I just ran out of motivation.

But to make up for it I have now spent several weeks slaying orcs, and here’s another entry in our RPG section: Gothic 2.

Good evening.

Tonight, as part of our 10-year anniversary-thing, we continue our look back over some of our favourite games, and reviews, of the past.

This time, Stoo and I talk about Puma World Football.

Hope you enjoy it – there’s more to come.

As you may or may not know, FFG is now 10 years old. Given that we’ve unexpectedly managed to make it to this fairly significant milestone, it seems only right that we try and mark it in some way.

We’ve got several things planned. Exactly how many of these things will come to fruition depends on the usual time constraints, but one thing that we definitely wanted to do was go back and revisit some of our past reviews (or rather, the actual games that we covered) and facilitate some kind of discussion.

The main influence for this was undoubtedly the old “Supertest” features that used to run in PC Zone magazine, in which a number of their writers would be ordered to play a handful of broadly-similar games and then go down to the pub and discuss their various merits. They were pretty good fun to read, and most of the time they actually added something to the original review of the game – either an alternative opinion, discussion of something funny that they’d all noticed, or just sharing opinion and experiences. Look, it was better than it sounds, okay? We didn’t all have the internet in those days.

Of course, these days you have your technology, and your podcasts and whatnot, but we’ve gone for the old text-based conversation, partly because a) we wouldn’t know how to set up a podcast even if we wanted to; b) we don’t want to; and c) we really, really don’t want our hesitant and awkward voices to be broadcast on the internet – we’ll hide behind the written word, if that’s okay.

Part of the point of having a website like this – or the motivation for setting it up, at least (and Stoo – do correct me if I’m wrong) – is to be able to hark back to shared experiences, to read something and think “Yeah, I remember when that was out…I liked that too”. As we get older, our ability to enjoy and review old games isn’t necessarily impaired (indeed, we do intend to continue with that) but the ones that you really enjoyed at the time are limited to the ones that you actually had time for when they were out. Any memories of committing entire days to these games, or indulging in late-night multiplayer with friends, are just that – memories.

[For more on this kind of thing – here’s a link to Will Porter’s “Gaming Made Me” piece at Rock, Paper, Shotgun.]

Since we started FFG, we’ve both just reviewed whatever game we wanted, in isolation, but we’ve also experienced a few of them together and it’s worth capturing that, I think. Obviously, we’re limited to the games that we’ve both played – and where appropriate, we’ll invite others (for example, our sometime-contributer Jo, weighs in on this first review) to share their memories too.

Aside from all that, discussion reviews can be pretty good, anyway – I know The Good Old Days have started using them, and they’re something I like reading. Hopefully our efforts will be enjoyable also.

Finally, just to show that this isn’t just self-indulgent laziness (ideally, we should write new reviews instead of this kind of retrospective) we’ve added links to extra screenshots and – in the first case – sound files to illustrate our points. Whether we can do this for all the discussions to follow, without introducing spoilers, is open to debate, but I hope you’ll enjoy them this time.

Hi there.

Did you know that we’re 10 years old this year? Well, we are. No, don’t you worry about a present.

We’ve got a few things planned. The first thing we’re going to try, though, is a series of discussions of some of our previously-reviewed games on the site, starting with 4D Sports: Driving (also known as “Stunts”). The two of us gathered with FFG contributor Jo, for the following discussion.

For more on the discussion reviews, and our 10-year celebrations, you can also check out my journal post.