In our “news you’ve already heard but I figured it needs mentioning here anyway” section

Duke Nukem Forever out next year

In it’s honour here’s a list (last updated last year) of developments in gaming, technology and the real world since the game was first announced 14 years ago. The entire GTA series has happened, Link went 3D, we’ve had about 5 Final Fantasies, and Blizzard went from little sprites of orcs bashing knights to online consumption of entire lives. Gaming hardware has gone from the Playstation, Pentium 2 and first generation 3D cards to quad core monsters. Internet has gone from geocities fansites built in notepad to grabbing your games (legally!) off online services. Meanwhile we all turned from teenagers into (nearly) 30 year olds with careers and stuff. (some people allegedly even get married?!)

So let’s take a moment to salute Duke’s return. If we can actually believe it. I might wait until the game is installed and I’ve played it for 3 hours, before I’m sure.

Apologies for the lack of retro-gaming activity lately. Having got myself a shiny widescreen monitor I felt the need for something more modern and grabbed myself Grand Theft Auto IV in a steam sale. So far I’m mostly loving it, with two caveats. One is, I can’t race for shit so I’m hoping you don’t have to beat that last Brucie mission to complete the core story.

The other is tough missions that involve lengthy driving before, say, a shootout. After the fourth failure I find having to drive there AGAIN is kind of a pain. I know you can instantly jump to the mission start upon failing, but the problem is when there’s a load of driving between that and where the actual action begins.

For example that Jimmy P mission (“catch the wave”) where you have to clear a load of Russian mobsters out of a warehouse. Jimmy accompanies you and if he dies, the mission fails. Yup it’s that bane of gaming, “protect the hapless computer-controlled ally”. His well-reaonsed tactic: a suicidal charge right through the front door. Once you’ve failed, you have a slooow 7-minute drive across town in a truck. God dammit!

Bitching aside though, I’m mostly loving it. Having a city to romp across is as great as ever. I’m more an open-spaces kind of guy, and I’m hoping a future installment will go cross country San Andreas style, but this is an amazingly convincing faux-New-York we have here. With plenty of opportunities for exploration or random mayhem. I’m not the kind to get off on murdering sprees these days, but I did greatly enjoy parking a helicopter in the middle of a busy road in Manhattan then casually strolling off as if all was perfectly normal.

Story-wise it manages to balance Nico’s status as hired thug with keeping him a sympathetic character. It’s all a bit less over-the-top than previous outings but there are still moments of humour and some colourful characters. Cousin Roman is whiny but I couldn’t help liking him and the rasta guy has some great moments. Also I think the moral guardians should note that crime is hardly glamourised here; pretty much everyone is miserable, paranoid and has a drug problem. And when you finally meet someone at the top of the criminal brotherhood he’s an old man dying in a hospital.

In terms of features I kind of miss the property-buying options, but between missions and random goofing I feel there’s plenty enough to be doing. The “friendship” system can bug me sometimes (ROMAN I’M BUSY DAMMIT) but I think helps you to engage more with the key characters and the rewards are useful. That said I mostly skipped the girlfriends. Not sure Nico’s attempts to get into various girls pants is something I need happening on my screen.

So, yeah, 9/10 so far. Also reminds me that the GTA3 generation is definitely viable material for coverage on this site.

(tip for that mission: Jimmy charges once all enemies immediately in front of him are dead. So leave one alive, and run around the back of the warehouse. The mobsters will mostly have their backs turned, still waiting for Jimmy, so are easier targets).

It’s been a little while since this announcement, but I came across it for the first time today.

It seems that Britain’s oldest PC games mag, and long-time inspiration of FFG, PC Zone, is to cease publication after some 17 years. The giant publishing behemoth that is Future have decreed that there’s no point in churning out three PC magazines with games reviews in them and as Zone is the smallest, it’s going to be the one to go.

To be honest, such a move always seemed on the cards once the magazine started to be published by Future, who also produce one-time rivals of Zone, PC G*m*r. I guess the only surprise is that it’s taken so long to happen.

To get too incredulous about it is slightly hypocritical when you don’t even buy the magazine anymore (as I don’t) but it’s definitely a shame that it’s come to this. I did subscribe until a couple of years ago and although I definitely preferred the writers from the mid-90s to early 2000s ‘glory days’, it was still a pretty enjoyable read. But I gather there have been more changes of staff since then and the writing was on the wall.

It’s been a few years since we wrote this but most of it still rings true. Farewell, PCZ, we’ll miss you.

And I’ll even shell out £6 for the last issue.

Before I went on holiday (which seems like an age ago, incidentally) I bought myself Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars – The Director’s Cut.

I have reasonably fond memories of the PC original and the feeling had always persisted that I was perhaps a bit harsh on it when I reviewed it, so I welcomed the chance to play it again in a slightly different format.

First things first – the ‘enhanced’ Director’s Cut doesn’t include the original (or indeed any) voice-acting. Perhaps the storage capacity of a DS cartridge doesn’t allow it [that’s right, dumbass – someone who knows something about anything] but it doesn’t seem right to read George’s moronic outbursts rather than hear them.

What we do get is an extra section early on where you get to play as Nico, some additional touch-screen puzzles, and some new close-up animations of each character (provided by Dave Gibbons) during conversations. In summary – not a whole lot to get too excited about.

Still, the original game still holds up pretty well, and aside from the sound it loses little in translation to the smaller screen. But another play-through reminded me that it’s full of little annoyances that get in the way of you being too fond of it. Perhaps they could have taken the opportunity to review some of the script along the way – particularly George’s more aggressive or tasteless remarks that came as a bit of a shock first time around.

Worth a look for DS adventure fans – but only at a knock-down price, I reckon.

Howdy.

Been a little while since I was last here, so it’s high time I came up with some new content.

It’s strange what can jump to the front of your gaming queue sometimes – but anyway, here’s a review of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

So Starcraft 2 is out. From what I’ve heard it’s not all that different to the first one – perhaps a disappointment to some in these days when RTS games try to be a bit more detailed, with features like morale and cover. Others will probably love having their old favourite return with a shiny facelift and new units.

Me? Blizzard owns enough of my soul already so I’m in no hurry.

Oh dear where did June go? Well, Rik’s very busy with Important Real Life stuff and I’m… I’m just lazy really. However today the review machine lurches back into motion, with a look at the highly entertaining Blood.

In recent months I’ve joined Abandoned Places as an updater. I’ve tried to keep a regular update schedule, and take some time to mention a bit of detail as to what’s in each update (as that’s what I would want as an AW webmaster).

Unfortunately, things have gone slightly wrong with my latest update, which seems a bit, well, brusque. To add an explanation: I did my homework and attempted to add a newspost as usual, but for some reason it wouldn’t work unless I did an EXTREMELY short update.

So, apologies to all members. Voh’s working on the problem as we speak (I have no technical knowledge whatsoever) and when it’s resolved I promise to mention all updates in full in the newspost.

Also, new sites – I can’t add or reject you, but hopefully something will happen later this week. Thanks for your patience.

Despite never having watched the TV show, or displaying any kind of predeliction for poking around with dead bodies, I’ve recently found myself playing CSI: Deadly Intent – The Hidden Cases on the DS.

In the game, you play through four cases as a rookie CSI, joined by famous faces from the show (none of which – with the exception of Larry Fishburne – I recognise, of course). Most of the time, it’s simply a case of, sweeping around the crime scene with your stylus, solving a few mini-games, and then sitting back and enjoying the story.

It’s certainly a pretty passive experience in which it’s pretty hard to get stuck, but all the same, I rather enjoyed it. Any game that allows you to enter your own name so that it crops up in all the dialogue is okay by me – it makes any ‘amusing bollocking’ scenes all the more entertaining.

So now, I want more, but apparently the last CSI game wasn’t much cop on DS.

So what else is there to do? I find myself suddenly wanting to watching the show. But wait! There’s a whole host of CSI games for the PC! To Amazon!

A year or so ago I grumbled about the Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection not being released on PC. Well, now they’ve gone and added a bunch of games to Steam.

It’s not as big a collection as that console release, and Sonic (apart from 3D Blast) is conspicuous in his absence. No Streets Of Rage either, boo. Fortunately they do have classic 16-bit fighting game Golden Axe, which as far as I can tell matches the Megadrive version perfectly. So i should probably make a note on our review of the slightly lacking old PC Port from 1990.

Also after a few beers I went and bought Altered Beast. Which, er, isn’t a classic. Actually it’s kinda crappy.

Meanwhile, the greatest event that will never happen is of course Nintendo releasing any of their classics on PC…