Hello there.

It’s been a while since there’s been anything from me, but at least I have a good excuse. How’s married life? It’s good, thanks. Thanks for asking.

Anyway, we can’t stand around here waffling all day. How about a review, of Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon, instead?

Expect a return to semi-regular updates again in the very near future.

A two month gap! Rik was off getting married, so congratz to him. Meanwhile I was meant to keep productive in his absence and, er, blatantly didn’t. Getting sucked into Grand Theft Auto IV didn’t help.

Anyway though the retro-gaming wheels are turning again, and here’s a look at Serious Sam: The Second Encounter.

So, it was indeed a publicity stunt. Gog.com will be relaunched later today, finally out of beta.

At the time of writing there are a few youtube videos telling us what to expect. The site doesn’t actually look all that different, just re-organised a bit. So being cynical you have to wonder if there was much point to their little hoax, or if it was worth pissing the fans off. Although they did drop some heavy hints that they weren’t disappearing off the face of the earth. Anyway the important bit is, gog is still around and still delivering DRM-free games. Which is great.

So I surfed over to gog.com today and was greeted with this message:

Dear GOG users,

We have recently had to give serious thought to whether we could really keep GOG.com the way it is. We’ve debated on it for quite some time and, unfortunately, we’ve decided that GOG.com simply cannot remain in its current form.

We’re very grateful for all support we’ve received from all of you in the past two years. Working on GOG.com was a great adventure for all of us and an unforgettable journey to the past, through the long and wonderful history of PC gaming.

This doesn’t mean the idea behind GOG.com is gone forever. We’re closing down the service and putting this era behind us as new challenges await.

On a technical note, this week we’ll put in place a solution to allow everyone to re-download their games. Stay tuned to this page and follow us on Twitter and Facebook for updates.

All the best,
GOG.com Team

That’s… pretty much out of the blue.

It might not be completely bad news. One of their guys said on twitter “doesn’t mean GOG is gone! We’ll have some more info soon”. I’ve heard a few hypotheses out there – GoG has been bought out, or will start selling newer games too, or has had to bring in DRM (maybe with a steam-style launcher). Or that this is a huge publicity stunt based around finally coming out of beta.

Anyway we’d be seriously sad to see GoG go; they’ve done some sterling work in making classic PC games available at reasonable prices. Hell, I bought Duke3D from them last week. So here’s hoping they continue in some form.

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.