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.

Hi there!

It’s been a while, but we’ve got a new review for you this evening. Check out CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder.

We’re going to work on something special now. Maybe not for next time, but over the coming weeks and months, there should be some good stuff coming. Stay tuned.

My current gaming project is: Gothic 2. If you’re not familiar with the Gothic series, imagine something like Elder Scrolls (single character, open world, action combat) but with a steeper learning curve. By which I mean, expect your pitifully weak hero to get casually murdered by every wolf, bandit and oversized insect lurking 20 yards outside the town gates. This is not the sort of game to hold your hand in the opening chapters.

I think a lot of people found that off-putting, especially given the funky default controls. In fact it can feel like some sort of RPG hazing ritual at first. But it’s worth it once you get the hang of suriviving in the wilderness. You can become proficient in melee which involves your own skill as well as character stats – blocking, dodging, recognising enemy attack patterns etc. Or you can be cheap like me and go climb on top of rocks and shoot stuff up with bows. Anyway once you’re capable of handling the more common enemies, there’s loads of exploring, questing and looting to be doing. All quite rewarding.

Anyway if you fancy a go yourself, it’s going stupidly cheap on gog.com. There’s a major JoWood sale on until next tuesday. Given the latter’s impending bankruptcy, who knows if their stuff will still be on gog this time next year.

Hello all.

Today I bring you one of the greatest PC RPGs: Planescape Torment. I’m glad this one’s a classic as it marks a minor milestone here: our 200th game covered.

For those of you who have read a signficiant number of them, you have our thanks. And hey even if you just flick through a couple, I hope they are of interest. We do genuinely wish to be useful, for those of you seeking to experience some PC Gaming of the past, in helping you decide which titles are worth your time.

Hi all. Today’s review is Starship Troopers. Which would be the game of the film of the book.

It’s kindly provided by guest-reviewer the J-Man. While it’s no longer updated, he still has a lot of quality reviews up at Just Games Retro and we recommend you have a read there. Especially as he’s covered some oldies I keep meaning to get around to but never will, like Dune 2. He can also be found writing at the rather professional-looking Gamecrashers.

Stumbled across this completely by accident: Ascendancy for iOS

Originally an MS-DOS title from 1995, Ascendancy is a space-based 4X strategy game – the sort where you colonise worlds, build up an infrastructure, build a stack of warships and go conquering other civilisations. It’s actually somewhat flawed, for one thing the AI is lamentably dumb and limited. Still I had a lot of fun with it – distinctive artwork and music, detailed ship design options. And you have to love it when you get to build a weapon called a Long Range Orbital Whopper. Go read our review if you like. I wrote that ages back but the conclusions mostly still stand.

I can’t comment as to how well Ascendancy handles on iDevices, although I imagine the interface should work fine on a touchscreen. Also I’m glad to see the Logic Factory are still around, given how since Ascendancy they’ve only released one game, and that was in 97. (the odd-looking Tone Rebellion, which I intend to play and review sometime).

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 realistic laws of physics. There’s no “jump” button, your basic controls are just roll left or right, so to accomplish that you need to take a run-up (rollup?). If you can’t do that, probably have to go another way something else.

It’s not just about jumping gaps – you get subtleties like the ball rolling onto a car (transferring momentum). Or having enough momentum to follow a wall and roll along an ceiling briefly. Or releasing other movable items to clear a path. The game likes to show off its physics especially when you get a feature like two platforms hanging from one chain strung across the sceren. Which you might have to navigate carefully or you’ll just go tumbling off.

There are no bad guys, the only way to “die” is to fall off the bottom of the screen. But then you just start again from the start of that little section. That leads to a fairly relaxed pace. There are some fiddly\twitchy bits but they tend to come in short bursts, and you can usually sit still a moment to figure out what to do next.

On those ground we’d have a fun little distraction, but Nightsky also has a really distinctive design style. It’s all in monochrome, with a backdrop of sunset hues. The soundtrack is ambient and moody. So it becomes a quiet, introspective experience. Even if it’s just a game about, er, a big marble, you feel like he’s diligently rolling his way home across a world that’s forgotten and empty. Now there’s just owls and the occasional creaking leftover piece of machinery.

So it’s a very “evening” game, and has helped me relax anyway after a shitty week. £6 on steam, if you fancy a look.

Good evening.

Double update tonight.

First, Stoo takes a look at 90s console RPG Shining Force – which recently arrived on PC via Steam. [Archive note: this later moved to JGR]

Our second review is of something a bit more recent – the TV tie-in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: Dark Motives.

Hope you enjoy them. We’re coming up on a milestone soon. So we might have something special to celebrate. Or it might the be usual rubbish; we haven’t decided.