Once all of the pre-Christmas-day fuss is out of the way, I always find the Christmas break a good opportunity to get some gaming done. Of course, the temptation is to get rather too ambitious and start thinking you’ll get through all of those games you haven’t had the chance to get into yet. This is a mistake because a) Christmas means a few days off, not retirement or the equivalent of the school holidays and b) you have to do things like buy and wrap presents, play Cluedo and generally be jolly and sociable rather than lock yourself in a room for several days.

And if you’ve been a good boy or girl this year, there’s always the chance that Santa will have brought more shrink-wrapped gaming goodies on the day itself, meaning that you actually return more game boxes to the cupboard than you took out in the first place.

Still, I’m not complaining, and in case this is sounding like a long-winded way of saying there won’t be an FFG update before the new year, worry not – there definitely will be (yes, you can take that gun out of your mouth now – it’s all going to be okay).

[Edit: Actually, no there isn’t. My fault entirely. Feel free to go ahead with those suicide plans. Or wait another day or two…]

Besides working on that, I have managed to get a little way into Fahrenheit, a curious adventure/’interactive-movie’ style game from the makers of The Nomad Soul. I can see why it might not be everyone’s cup of tea, and some of the dialogue is a bit clunky, but it’s still compelling stuff, much more involving and focused than the Bowie-based caper.

Anyway, hope you all had a good one. We should have some new content for you soon.

In the interest of, erm, not getting any retro gaming done for days I went ahead and got F.E.A.R. On the downside, it’s one of those games where so far the pallette consists solely of brown and grey; i hope it’s not all dingy warehouses and industrial settings. However, it is seriously atmospheric. Enemies aren’t thrown at you constantly; there are lots of quiet bits to build up tension between encounters. Also various creepy visions and ghosts pop up to taunt you, and i’ve definitely jumped and uselessly emptied a clip into one or two of them.

I have some other christmas gaming plans which may or may not result in site content… oh and I played a bit of Baldur’s Gate the other day. The review of which has become more or less our version of Duke Nukem Forever.

I don’t have a subscription any more, but to give myself something to read on the flight when I went on holiday last month I decided to pick up a copy of PC Zone. It just so happened it was the 200th issue, and as such featured a decent-sized nostalgia piece with memories from former writers, some of whom returned as guest reviewers. Former writer-turned-TV star Charlie Brooker even turned up to give his opinions on Euro Truck Simulator (a sort of newer version of King of the Road) – which you might have thought was beneath him these days, frankly. And Mr Cursor on the back page as well – what more could a 90s geek ask for?

Despite what I wrote here about the magazine’s best days being long gone, it’s since struck me that such an observation wasn’t all that objective. Nostalgia can never be discounted and there’s no way of telling whether the old Zone I claim to love so much would have been so impressive to me had I been a perpetually-frowning man just about on the right side of 30 rather than a greasy schoolboy back in the mid-90s. Now I think about it, I’m pretty sure I was sceptical of a redesign at some stage (late 90s I think) and even started muttering back then that “it’s not as good as it used to be”.

With staff leaving and arriving on a regular basis it seems unreasonable to expect a magazine to never suffer a dip in quality. I reckon you have to stick with your favourite, checking out the competition now and again to see if there’s anything better out there (I keep buying Edge as I think it’s what ‘grown-up’ gamers should read, but the tone of the whole thing just annoys me) and hope it comes good again.

200 issues isn’t bad going either. I think I might even renew my subscription – if the magazine ever folded, all we’d be left with is PC G*m*r. And no-one wants that.

Lately I’ve been feeling tempted to get myself a widecreen monitor. But havign shopped around a bit, I might shelve it for now. Thing is, I have a decent screen already, a 19″ dell. The logical upgrade size would be 22″… but apparently most of them use poorer-quality TN panels. Which the experts seems a bit sniffy about. And I’m not quite ready to splash out on a 24″ monster.

Oh well, be more sensible to save my pennies for now anyway.

Hi all. After being conspicuously absent for three updates in a row, I’ve had a look at Giants: Citizen Kabuto.

I obtained it from Good Old Games, a new digital-distrubution services dedicated to older PC games. A lot of their selection is of the roughly decade-old-vintage and, there are some quality items there like Operation Flashpoint and Fallout, it’s DRM free and should all work on modern Windows systems.

As I may have mentioned here and there, I’m not particularly good at racing games. Or at least, I lack the motivation to play them enough to become more skilled, usually just dicking around for a bit, completing an easy couple of races and then crashing into something. That’s why my only contributions to our racing reviews are Big Red Racing (which Rik hated) and Car and Driver, (which i jumped on solely for the sake of covering as much as we can of the works of Looking Glass studios, better known for amazing first-person action titles like Thief and System Shock).

That said, I do still get tempted by games on the 2-for-£15 range. And I think to myself “ah-ha! I’ll actually make some progress this time and won’t just shove it in a draw”. So I spotted Test Drive Unlimited, which had one key appeal: a huge continuous piece of countryside (an island of Hawaii) that you can explore freely. You can do races, or just goof about. Open spaces and freedom are big plus points in my book, so I had a go.

And, er, wasn’t very good at it. And now it’s shoved in a draw for the time being. I did attempt some races but sooner or later realised i was having more fun doing this:

[shot of Stoo driving through trees]

I think the town i was looking for was at the bottom of that hill. Maybe.

Oh also the game lets you design your own in-game driver – and there’s only really two worthwile options point. You either create a hot scantily clad chick, or attempt to replicate Jeremy Clarkson.

Oh well, I’ll have another go over christmas.

Recently i’ve been wasting a lot of time on TV Tropes, a website primarily dedicated to cateloguing recurring themes and ideas that turn up in fiction in all kinds of media, including gaming. t into related topics in various forms of media though – there’s a lot there and it’s it’s almost like a more light-hearted Wikipedia without the directive to be rigidly neutral.

I thought this quick overview on The Console Wars was quite fun. It briefly covers each generation and gives a pretty fair guess at who “won” in terms of sales and popularity. (short form: Nintendo in the early days, then they lost it in the late nineties, now they’re leading again due to the embracing of casual gaming)

I’ve never actually owned a console, and only recently picked up a handheld (the DS). Still I have followed developments on and off from the sidelines. I’m too young to remember the first two generations, but have been a Nintendo fan since the third (ie the NES). Even tho, now I’m actually in a position to buy their games, I find it a depressing exercise in flicking past boxes entitled Are you smarter than a 10 year old, All Star Cheerleader and Imagine Dream Wedding. PS and Xbox meanwhile have never attracted me – not to say there’s anything wrong with them, just little of interest to me that the PC doesn’t do better.

sidenote: I’m quite determined to try and get into the habit of more regular updates to this blog. Twice-weekly perhaps? The flow of new reviews is going pretty slowly right now, but i really should at least be able to think of something brief to say here every few days.

Hello.

Some of you might be aware that there’s a Max Payne movie out. So in a topical(ish) update, I’ve taken a look at Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne.

I also went to see the film itself, so just in case you were waiting to see what we thought before you rushed out to see it, you can now make an informed decision.

Another update, another game getting a lukewarm review and score. Some games you know are going to be a bit turdy but when you expect something more and are disappointed, well – it’s rubbish, frankly.

Much as I enjoy squelching through games of all standards and writing about them, it’s nice to be able to eulogise enthusiastically about something once in a while.

The recent release of Fallout 3 has prompted a few retrospectives with gamers and journalists doing just that about the first two games in the series. By all accounts they’re the type of deep, rich and affecting games that prompt people to set up fansites and write retro reviews in the first place.

Unfortunately, my own progress through the first game has stalled. I might go back to it, but my experiences thus far make me fear I just don’t “get it”.

Now, where did I put my copy of Max Payne 2?

Hello.

Another review, and another sequel – the ridiculously-named No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.’s Way.

There will be more, not sure when.