This was meant to be a topical, Olympic-themed update, but somehow it didn’t happen that way.

Anyway, if you’re a fan of the controller-bashing track and field games of old (or even if you aren’t) you might like tonight’s update – a review of The Games: Summer Challenge.

More soon…

My to-do list got interrupted this weekend by Portal. I’d heard a lot of good things, but also that it’s really short, so waited until it hit $10 on steam (altho that might have been a special offer).

The short form is, it’s a hell of a lot of fun. Really novel gameplay concept. What’s especially fun is when you drop a long distance into a floor portal, to send yourself flying sideways out of another on a wall. Or setting up an endless fall between two horizontal portals.

Also bizarrely, it puts me in a position of using the words “gun turret” and “impossibly cute” in the same sentence. No, really, they call out in singsong voices then reassure you that they forgive you when you knock one over. Of course the game has spawned a whole load of in-jokes and memes across geek circles so I’m not even going to mention the most famous ones. But it definitely has a character of its own.

It IS short though, and over half of it feels like tutorial. I took about 4 hours, and I consider myself fairly slow and plodding. Actually the whole thing comes across as some sort of side-project which Valve hit on, that they didn’t have the resources or confidence to make into a full-sized game. But at this price I’m not complaining.

on a tech note, been having some problems with Technorati not indexing our posts properly, am taking steps to hopefully fix it.

So says this guy:

If there was an award for silliest, least scary villain in a game, I reckon ‘Razor’ from NFS: Most Wanted would win it. Frankly, he looks like he spends more time plucking his eyebrows and applying anti-ageing cream than hanging out “on the street”.

His “gang”, meanwhile, are vaguely reminiscent of those friends of Derek Zoolander who died in a freak gasoline fight accident.

Good game though.

I’m happy to report that we now have nearly all of the Lucasarts adventures covered. Given that the favourites were so well loved, and even 2nd-tier stuff like The Dig is very enjoyable, I do think comprehensive coverage is a worthy goal for a site like ours. All that’s left now are Zak McCracken and Grim Fandango – games from the start and the end of their adventure days respectively.

After that we could turn our attention more to the Sierra adventures. Even though they invented the genre they always seemed somehwat outmached to us – lacking the wit, style or imagination of Lucasarts games. Certainly we’d like to expand our range somewhat, but right now I’d say it’s very unlikely that more than about half their pantheon will be covered. Feel free to let us know if there are any particular that deserve a look.

I do think we should have a King’s quest at least – this is where the Graphical Adventure began after all. Unfortunately my last attempt was to try the remake of the original, and for the record: it’s really dull. There’s no story to speak of, and the world consists of just a castle in a forest surrounded by wolves and fairies and other fairytale cliches. I might give number six a go instead.

Looking at other series, we already have reviews of the VGA remakes of the originals from Police Quest, Space Quest and Quest for Glory. The first of those three series is the most likely candidate for further investigation. Don’t hold your breath waiting for Leisure Suit Larry.

Hi all. We have a double helping of Lucasarts adventure goodness tonite!

First up, Jo has reviewed Escape from Monkey Island for us. Meanwhile scooting back a few years earlier, I’ve looked at the classic Indy adventure Fate of Atlantis.

Well, the Olympics got underway this weekend, and I have to say I personally couldn’t really care less about any of it. Inevitably though, with the BBC shoving aside the majority of their programming to show it, I found myself watching Sue Barker introducing the women’s weightlifting final on Saturday morning.

Though the spectacle of extremely slightly-built Asian women lifting massive weights above their heads with consummate ease was mildly diverting, my own (extremely nerdy) thoughts were centred on exactly what button combinations and techniques were required to succeed in the weightlifting event on International Track and Field 2 on the Playstation.

Despite the dubious appeal of athletics as a spectator sport, when it comes to games I have to admit to a love of the joystick waggling/button bashing genre. What started it all was Daley Thompson’s Decathlon on the Amstrad CPC, a game loosely based on Konami’s arcade classic International Track and Field which saw you guide the Great Britain’s favourite moustachioed decathlete through a variety of running, jumping and throwing events.

Of course, success in virtually every event was mostly contingent on your ability to waggle a joystick from left to right at a frenetic pace (punctuated by the occasional press of the fire button). With an old Atari joystick in my hand, I was unstoppable, even managing to negate tricky timing issues in the hurdles event by simply ploughing through each and every one of the bastard things – although an almost superhuman amount of physical effort was required to achieve the necessary waggling speed (who needs Wii Fit?).

Obviously DTD isn’t eligible for inclusion on FFG, but a quick perusal of Abandonia revealed one or two familiar titles on which I’ve also wasted a few too many hours. Expect a review of something more recent and PC based sometime soon.

We’ve got something new for you this evening. It’s a review of XIII, the amnesiac spy shooter from 2003.

That’s right, I said 2003. That’s five years ago. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Next week – a review of Zork. And Pacman.

Spending hour after hour on a game that never ends just to achieve a high score isn’t something I’ve ever been particularly interested in, but it has to be said that my recent dabble with pinball reminded me that occasionally such an obsession has taken a hold.

Some time ago I spent a not-unreasonable amount of time playing a game called Major Motion on the Atari ST. Although times (and games) were simpler then, it has to be said that a Spy Hunter clone with fairly dreadful graphics didn’t represent the cutting edge of 16-bit gaming and as a relatively early release, it was doomed to a life on a mail-order budget label being ordered by those happy to make a purchase based on a game’s name and a postage stamp sized picture of the box cover.

Luckily, my Dad was one such person and my obsession with driving up a never-ending road smashing evil blue cars into the grass verge was born. For years I toiled to finally knock the names of the programming team off the top of the high score charts, an achievement I was proud of until I downloaded a copy of the disk image for my ST emulator and saw my best efforts failing to register on the high-score chart, for they had easily (and repeatedly) eclipsed by whoever had owned that particular copy of the game. The bastard.

If there’s no new content from me for several weeks, you’ll know what I’ve been doing. Now, even though this journal has never been the most active (or ‘interactive’) place, I’ll ask anyway, for the hell of it: anyone out there got a favourite high-score type game? Anyone else had their feelings of supremacy on an oldie shattered by the entries on the high-score table after downloading from an abandonware site?

A friend of mine sent a link to this: GOG.com. It’s an online distribution service, focussing on older games – the front page has stuff like Fallout 2 and Sacrifice.

Ever since Steam came along I’ve been hoping for more oldies on online services like this. There’s certainly some demand out there for the classics, and even if it’s not a really huge market, the costs involved should be pretty small. Apparently the guys behind GOG have enthused about one day adding the Lucasarts back catelogue, which I’d especially like to see.

Anyway i’ve signed up for the beta test so if i’m lucky I’ll let you all know.

Hello.

No summer holidays for us, we’re staying inside with the curtains drawn, all in the name of retro-gaming.

We’ve added one new review – of Codemasters’ Psycho Pinball.