Lead And Gold: Haven't I seen this before?

Just received an email about "Lead And Gold" by Paradox Interactive. It looks pretty neat but...isn't there something familiar here?



I've not got sound on but I'm guessing it's a team based shooter with...a western theme...

So definitely not a well know team based shooter with that sort of scenery set in more modern times.

And those silhouettes...they look...hmmm...

Well let's call it a coincidence and not even mention the other game for now. I'm probably being very unfair...probably...

Otherwise it looks pretty good and something I'd be interested in playing! Some of the action snippets looked impressive and the different game modes look like fun (even if it is a bit dim in the video at those points.)

For it to be successful will probably depend on the price. In my case for example, the only reason I've bought previous team based shooter games is if they're included in a pack with other single player games. So unless this matches price with other big team based shooters I reckon it'll have a hard time (this goes for the other big team shooter games that are due to be released soon.)

That is, unless there's a strong single player element too? Or a bunch of co-op based missions?

I'm not sure about the number of playable characters either. Four seems a bit of a small amount these days. Then again Counter Strike is still popular!

So something to watch with interest for now.

My time with: Blimp Wars!

Blimp Wars Online is a free to play browser game from the creators of the mad professor mmorpg Golomizer.

So I thought I'd have a quick go - actually I had a quick go on my laptop a while ago and had chalked the bad performance of the game down to the speed of that. I tried again on my gaming machine just now and...well it's not good news.

It's not that it looks particularaly bad, or that the idea is bad. In fact I quite like the idea! Online RTS with airships? It's a good idea!

Unfortunately the execution is what lets it down here. I'm almost sure it's because of my connection speed or because I'm using Internet Explorer or whatever the issue might be here. But any game that is slow to respond to commands is going to be frustrating to anyone.

When I'm desperately trying to look past the slow gameplay issues it doesn't seem like a half bad game. And I'm guessing it's mostly down to the speed of the database that end because it's on a shared server or something. I'm also hoping that for anyone nearer the server it will perform better. I've not even dared to play against other people yet!

Other critisisms I would have revolve around there being no sound and there being a strange offset when clicking where to move to (eg, the X to signify your next position is never quite where you've clicked)

I think it would be great if the obviously prolific author of the game would look into something like the free Unity3D engine with it's marvellous web browser plugin stuff as they would create something that probably ran a lot smoother because of it....providing it's just not me that is!

Anyway, it's definitely worth checking out if you're bored of the norm! http://www.blimpwarsonline.com/

Cheapest Sam And Max Ever!

That says it all really.

The Sam And Max revival is what really kicked Telltale games into our concious collective and made us love Pointy/Clicky adventure games again. This season is a bit older now but for this price...

Well if you like Point/Click games it's an unmissable offer. It's only until sunday so get clicking!

Click here to visit the official site for this offer!

New Review: Bob Came In Pieces!

Time for a new review and this week it's "Bob Came In Pieces"

It's a game about building a ship and flying it through a puzzle laden world. All physics based of course, and it reminded me a little bit of Trine from last year, but that's probably because of the in-game viewpoint.

Anyway, as always it's worth checking out!

Read the full review here!

Kingmaker - Majesty 2 dlc?

I wasn't expecting that to be honest! Majesty 2 is quite the neat little package of a game and it was a good blast, but dlc? Not so sure yet!

So they've released this trailer that shows...well clips of this new "Kingmaker" addon/expansion/dlc whatever they want to call it these days. It doesn't look bad, more of the same hero influencing, I can see a few new characters in there and abilities plus, obviously, some new maps.

In fact it makes me want to go and play the main game again, which is a good thing!

From the press release I read: "Ino-Co is a Krasnodar-based studio" and I have to admit I'd never heard of the place! It's somewhere in Russia by the looks, good for them!

So anyway, here's the trailer:


Possibly a review here if they feel like throwing it my way!

Midweekly deals - A Psycho In Rome...

Couple of deals that are going round the big portals right now that might be worth a look!

Steam has Psychonauts on offer for two dollars or one pound sterling. That's a pretty good deal for this game whose creator is often called a genius. I remember playing the demo a while ago and it was quite enjoyable so I'll probably go for this myself soon!

Direct2Drive are having a sale on Rome Total War right now - again I've heard (I hear a lot of things) that this was really good? Might be worth a check for anyone who is into that kind of thing...

Also, does anyone know what the countdown is for on Good Old Games? Countdowns are excitin' and I have no ieda what I'm excited about! It's all a big mystery!

Gotta Catch Em All...

Hey Ash Watcha Playing (or HAWP as it's often shortened to) can sometimes be a bit hit and miss. I really liked their L4D original last year but out of the various episodes only a few have caused me to laugh.

Luckily their latest is one such episode! It's not exactly PC game related, but I thought it was funny (sound and a slight knowledge of the Pokemon TV Series needed):

And obviously it helps if you know about the, now saturated, Saw movie series - but it still works a bit if you haven't.

Makes me want to do a new video (remember to check out Be A Sniper Today! if you've not seen it yet!)

A Meier Offer...

I was going to go with "A Meier Trifle" and I'm sure I'm not the only person to have thought of that before...

Anyway, the point is there's a huge discount deal thingy for Sid Meier games going on down at GamersGate right now. You can get the complete CIV4 package (inc. all the addy ons) for £15 which is bargain for any Civ fan. or you can get the basic version for half of that. Even though Civ3 is far cheaper still, I really do not recommend it compared to the latest one!

"Sid Meier's RailRoads" - which is pretty much a more up to date version of transport tycoon - is only £2.50 which is a no brainer for anyone who likes tycoon games.

I've been told that "Sid Meier's Pirates!" is also good, never played it myself but that's going for £2.50 also.

Quite impressive deals for a number of impressive Sim games. Since it's the end of the month, what more could you want for a cheap price?

Bullseye! Interstellar Marines Gets Real!

Have you had enough of walking around the 3D Screenshot museum thing they call "The Vault"? (The vault was pretty good I reckon) Are you wondering if this is going to be worth playing? If the combat is good enough?

Well, wonder no more!

They've recently released a section of the site called Bullseye which is a training simulator with RPG elements showing off the shooty bits of the game.

For anyone who's not yet seen this, Interstellar Marines is a browser based game using the Unity3D engine. It's going to be a single/co-op based mission game with all those bells and whistles. It's an independent title and they're attempting to invent a new phrase "AAA Indie" which I'm not too sure about but perhaps it will grow on us all.

I'm strangely impressed and addicted to this simple target shooter! To the point where I was very close to ordering the whole bloomin trillogy! I certainly looks like all the elements for a good game are appearing now. If all 3 games are created and they're good, then $50 is not going to be a bad price. I do worry that it might not get completed, but even if it's just the first episode...

Anyway, Bullseye is free to everyone! You just need to register, as usual with stuff these days, so get out your secondary email addresses!

Click here to try Bullseye

Bioware are evil

It continues to tempt me...



I think I'll probably crack by next Thursday...here's hoping to a super cheap pre-order offer soon!

Chains! (review)

Time for a new review methinks. This week it is stylish puzzle game "Chains" going under the microscope.

Not many puzzle games are worth a second glance and with Chains...well you'll just have to read it to find out!

Click here to read the Chains review!

Shocked? Bioshock 2 and a great Steam Deal!

I haven't been too worried about the upcoming release of Bioshock 2. The first game was certainly good and had a fantastic twist to it, but like anything that has a fantastic twist it's not something I've found much re-playability in. And this surprises me, from a game that has it's origins in the Systemshock series.

The problem is that you can go through the whole of Bioshock pretty much just using that wrench and the lightning power. The gameplay trailer to the sequel makes me think that's pretty much the same:

I think my major issue is that with all the talk of these games being fairly open to character development we still don't have the kind of choices that we had back in System Shock 2 where you could choose (essentially) brains, brawn or "magic" as your main specilisation. This gave a fair bit of replayability the next time you played the game. It's something that was missing from Bioshock as the powers are basically forced on you.

Saying that the Steam 4-pack deal is looking quite tempting. £20 for this might be acceptable? Perhaps I should be less worried about comparisons to old games (old classics more like) and take it for what it is? Well, if I do get it you can, as always, expect a very honest review!

What I put up with being a PC gamer

I've just received the following as an email , as yet another of a long line of "You play games on a PC!" digs from my good friend and partner in crime over at http://www.bumpkinbrothers.com/ :

You'll have to click on it for the larger version,  but you can probably already tell its a version comparison and that the PC has been likened to a text adventure game.

Yes. Very amusing.

Actually I'm not too bothered else I probably wouldn't have mentioned it. The point is, with the right hardware the PC can easily look as good if not better than it's console counterparts. This will always be true to some degree, but yet the PC still gets bashed for being the jack-of-all-trades of the computer world.

Macs look down on it for being a home based entertainment and communication machine, not to mention being virus ridden and supposedly worse at graphics and sound manipulation. Consoles look down on it for being a lesser gaming machine.

However none of this is well deserved!

The PC has far more software available for it than the Mac, most of it free too. Paint.net for example, and renoise (although that's for both pc and mac)

Going back to gaming I am eagerly waiting for a decent FPS where I can play against Console users. Usually the response to this is "That's not fair because you can 'twitch-aim' on a PC" and I can't help but think such replies speak volumes to which is the better gaming machine. That is until they finally decide to give me a mouse and keyboard for my xbox. The closest contender in terms of devices is obviously the Wii, but there are still serious issues with that waggle stick thing they call a controller, even with the new add on. Natal might prove to be good, but I doubt it will work very well for fps games.

And everyone says the big advantage to consoles is "You don't have to keep upgrading and worrying about if your hardware will run the game or drivers" etc.. And while this is kind of true, there will always be a next gen of consoles and the games are more expensive than their PC equivilent. So I reckon it probably works out the same eventually.

My point is obvious, the PC has far more games, better hardware (at least for us serious gamers) and there are more PC's out there than any one type of console. Not that I'm being childish about it or anything but...

We win! Neh Neh!

A Blast from the Past: The Original Aliens Vs Predator on Steam!

What a nice surprise for the weekend - the original Aliens Vs Predator turning up for a mere £3 on Steam. Like most people I view the past with a much higher regard than the present or future, especially the games that are on offer. So I went ahead and snapped this up with barely a thought!

Does it stand the test of time?

Unfortunately not for me, I don't know whether it was like this back then or if it's because it's running on a much faster PC now but it feels like it plays at twice the speed that it used to. I'm not discounting the possibility that I'm just getting old however! But you need super-twitch skills to be able to even shoot a single alien, let alone a bunch of them. Also I felt like the marine was on some kind of super movement enhancing drug because of the speed he was walking everywhere! I kept getting stuck on scenery because you only had to tap the forward key and you'd end up walking more than 5 scale metres and examining the texture art on the opposite wall.

Looking at some gameplay vids I'm pretty sure this is just me and if you're a fan of the series it's probably worth the £3 for the nostalgia trip anyway. Even if the acting from the marines is pretty awful!

Anyway, take a look at this gameplay vid which is the closest you'll get for a demo if you needed one!



Egh, face huggers...a nasty way to go. Of course all of this is in preparation for the release of the new Aliens Vs Predator game that's coming out in about a month.

I know a lot of people who are looking forward to this! Here's the "story" trailer if you've not yet seen it:



Edit: Looks like a patch has sorted out AVP gold speed issues! Glad to see it wasn't just me!!

Music Makes The Game: The Spirit Engine 2

I didn't have a Best Music Category" in my 2009 game "awards" but if I had done I think The Spirit Engine 2 would probably have had to win that as well as the best rpg of the year.

I can't remember if I mentioned before that Josh Whelchel, the composer for TSE2, is an old aquantance from my old music making games on esper.net (the world was a simpler place back then...) so I'm glad to see he's done well and been involved in a project like this. In fact you can get a shed load of his musical offerings for free from his traxinspace (ah, TiS) page here: http://www.traxinspace.com/artistmusic/twiterror

The following piece of music however is a good representation of the music from TSE2. The arpeggio harp is quite reminiscant of the Final Fantasy Theme. Soon it turns into one of those tunes that you sometimes come across in RPGs that concrete your belief that you're part of the good guys team and that whatever evil stands in your way had better watch out!

Of course that could just be me, it's very good though so have a listen...

A few site updates!

New Game Wallpaper!

I've been waiting on a response from several people to add some wallpapers that they've made - unfortunately only one person has replied!

Luckily my favourite from the bunch did reply, who created this wallpaper of the gang from the new Tales Of Monkey Island game!

Check it out on the PC Game Wallpaper page!

New Release Dates Added!
I've been making some additions to the release date calendar, there's quite a few games on there now, but still not enough!

Please let me know if you see a game I've missed - especially if it's one that you're working on and have planned for release this year!

Go visit the 2010 release date calendar and take a looksee!

More articles coming soon...
I've had a great response to my article: Top 10 Excuses for playing games! So that's enthused me to do a few more over the next few weeks.

I've got some great subject matter I'm researching for them right now so stay tuned. And don't forget the Articles I've written are nicely listed in reverse order there so if you want a good read go and take a look!

Tell me about your game!
I'm on a bit of a quest to receive more gaming news since although I've been doing this for a year now (can you believe that!) I'd like to be constantly posting about games I've heard about. So even if you've contacted me before and I've not done anything about it (sorry! I had a bad month in Sept/Oct!) let me know again!

Really, let me know about your game using the contact form.

Can you handle Snow? - Cubme!

Since we're unusually snow bound here in the UK right now I though this would be a fantastic time to mention Cubme! An independent title written by one man band Kristaps Auzins, also known as Matuda Games.

Acutally that first part was a lie, I should have mentioned this months ago when Kristaps mailed me about it...Ooops! But it does seem coincidental that I happen upon his email during these snowey times.

So Cubme is all about clearing snow! Something the character certainly does better than myself (It took me well over an hour to clear my drive yesterday...but enough about that now) Luckily the snow has droped into managable cube shaped pieces that can be moved around the levels. Most of the puzzle element of the game consists of throwing snow over your shoulder to clear particular areas. The first level wants particular areas cleared, the second wants you to pile all of the snow in particular places. The third level was a little more interesting, especially the first part where I had to follow a wire on the ground by moving snow out of the way so I could open a gate.

If the rest of the levels are like this third one then the full game would probably be quite a lot of fun. The snow shovelling in itself wasn't that inspiring for me but when it was combined with a new challenge it was ok. By the looks of the trailer it does seem that they keep the idea new:



The most disapointing thing for me was the music, it felt like it ambled, going nowhere in particular as if to say "I'm not sure why I'm here so I'll just play a few notes..."

Graphically, well you can see for yourself in the screenshot. It's cartoony and it works pretty well however the system requirements surprised me: 2.4ghz machine for this? The look of Cubme reminded me of the Retro64 (now aquired by Popcap) platform puzzler: Best Friends - and I'm sure that didn't require such heavy cpu power.

Anyway, aside from all this it might be worth a play for anyone who's a sokoban fan or likes this flavour of puzzle game. As usual there is a free demo so go and check it out at their site!

My Time With: Crayon Physics

I remember playing the beta of this ages and ages and ages ago - or at least it seems like a long time ago.

It was the first physics based puzzle game I came across so it's forever implanted in my mind as the title that kicked off the sub genre. Many hundreds of physics based puzzle games were then spawned by this rejuvination of the puzzle game outside of the casual gaming space.

But forget all that! If you've not played it before then all you need to know is that it's flippin awesome. You draw shapes on the screen which then become solid interactable objects in the game. Drawing them in the right place is very important as you must get the ball to collect each star in the level. As you can see from the screenshot it gets quite tricky later on!

Aside from the clever thinking side, the other great thing about the game is it's atmosphere. The look of the thing and the music actually rekindles memories of drawing when I was a kid, which puts one simple thought into my head:

I've never been able to draw!

Anyway, if you've not picked this up yet in the amazing pay what you want(!) sale you're seriously missing out. Today is the last day (15th jan 2010) so make sure you don't miss out!

Review: Elven Legacy!

Time for another review, and this week it's Paradox Interactive's Elven Legacy- a turn based strategy game featuring, yes you guessed it, Elves!

I'm not usually one for strategy games like this so...well, you'll have to read the review to find out exactly what I thought!

Click here to read the Elven Legacy review!

Or alternatively, keep reading...

Shopping Around: Mass Effect 2

Are you excited about Mass Effect 2? Are you eager once again to battle hoards of robotic Geth (as well as some other new major enemy), build up a new team of talented team mates and have plenty of alien...relations?

If you said No, then you're either mad or just haven't played through (arguably over-talky but still awesome) original Mass Effect game. In which case I suggest you leave straight away and get it from Steam(cheapest when not on offer elsewhere), GamersGate or Direct2Drive.

Moving on, I'm often asked how I manage to buy so many games. Lets face it, it's expensive no matter how you approach it, with new titles constantly pusing past the £30 mark these days there's a real challenge to play the latest titles and not become bankrupt!

For some people the only choice is to pirate games - I have to admit I understand why this happens. Game developers and publishers can make all the comparisons to movie tickets, movie rentals or the number of beers a game costs but it doesn't matter to the consumer. Games are something completely different and everyone has their own measure to which they size up costs. Most of the time new games are not worth the price they are initially sold for for most people.

Anyway, now my rant is over I wanted to talk about my hunt fo Mass Effect 2 and the terrible reality that faced me by the end of it.

Usually, for any AAA game (although that's a tag I don't like using) I'll log onto steam and take a look there first; it's a good benchmark and they often have pre-order deals that are worth taking notice of. Oddly enough, although it's listed when searched for, there is no pre-order ability or indication of price.

My second port of call is usually either Direct2Drive or GamersGate, mainly because they are different to the client based portals. I was absolutely aghast at the prices from both. D2D has the "special edition" listed for £45 which is far more than I have ever paid for a single game while the standard version costs £32. GamersGate had it listed for the same.

I'd love to have the Collectors Edition but I'm not paying an extra £15 for add ons. I made that mistake with HL2 "Gold Pack" and now, many years on I would say to my younger self "Just settle for the Silver package!" As the Gold, which I bought at the time came with a nice collectors box, posters, book and baseball cap (which I've lost.) But worse it came with an additional bill from those lovely people at HM customs: for the pleasure of them searching my package. Anyway I'm getting off track...

So I turned to Impulse, which is similar to Steam and found their collectors edition, which appears to have nothing less than what other sites are offering for only £36 including the comic, special armour and all sorts that come with it. So that's a good new benchmark for the special edition! Their standard edition is £31 so not much between this and other sites.

Time to take a quick look at retail copies now, do you remember the physical discs you used to put into your machine to install games? My usual haunt for this is play.com which had the standard version of the game for £27 and free postage as is customary from those good people in Jersey.

That's pretty good but I was determined not to stop there. While searching on play.com I noticed a link to the EA store for Mass Effect 2 and decided to see what their own publisher's online store was offering it for. Not that I was completely surprised but this would cost me £45 for the collectors edition and £35 for the standard - which is the most expensive price for the standard version so far!

In desperation to find my hoped-for-price-point of £25, which is the most I was prepared to spend, I did some google searching and looked at price comparison sites, which only included comission based sales and other portals I'd never heard of before, none had the right price and some were down right laughable. Also I'm very glad I'm not buying it for the Xbox, which is even more expensive!

So where did I buy Mass Effect 2 from in the end?

I didn't, I knew how much I wanted to spend and nowhere had it for that price. As much as I want to play (and of couse review) what is is probably going to be a totally awesome game, I'm not prepared to pay such a large percentage of my monthly paycheque for it.

Deciding on a limit for buying a game is a good idea, as boring as it may sound. Also as soon as it passes that threshold I will probably snap it up immediately!

How crazy is it that it's cheaper for the boxed physical version than the download?

Sometimes it's as if they don't want my money...

*Prices shown as correct on 11th January 2010

Ten Excuses for playing games that never work...

Have you ever had to make excuses for playing video games? Certainly when I was younger I had to give all kinds of reasons for wanting new games, or to carry on playing rather than doing something else such as the fabled "tidying of thy room."

I'll bet anyone reading this has been in the same situation and felt the need to explain themselves. When you get older this becomes a game in itself. You start thinking: what kind of excuse can I give now I'm twice the age of the target market for this game?

10: Because if I don't the [insert bad guys here] will conquer the [insert here kingdom/planet/universe] and I'll never rescue [insert damsel in distress here] which would be really bad!

I've found that if you get into even more detail than this it's even more effective! Girlfriends and wives get exasperated with too much gaming detail and if you're lucky you'll get the "Yeah, whatever - just go play!" response. You may also get the "Yeah whatever, go do the dishes anyway!" response but it's worth a shot I always think.

In some ways it was easier when I was younger. Older games, being less sophisticated and without quick disc access made it easier to give valid excuses to carry on playing! Even if for just a bit longer. The most obvious being:

9. I can't save here! I have to get to a save point!

Which was nearly always true. In many cases, especially on the Spectrum (my first computer with games), you could never save your game and you had to start from the beginning every time you reloaded or lost. This excuse still works today for some titles where, inexplicably you can't quick save at any point. Nintendo are still buggers for this and are unlikely to change their approach for some time.

"Almost" valid excuses don't end there, there are still other ways to try to convince parents or spouse that playing games is a necessity rather than just obvious fun. One of the earliest excuses I remember is:

8. It helps my hand eye co-ordination!

Does it? Does it really? I can't say I've ever noticed any improvement in myself from playing games. In fact I often play a little game to see if I can throw a pen in the air, making it spin round and catch it. Often I do it without thinking and work colleagues have started to count how often I manage to catch the pen again. I have an embarrassingly small percentage of successful catches, so I can't help but disagree with this excuse. Of course I would never admit that to my parents back then, nor my fiancé today!

I suppose you could argue something similar, something that can be applied to nearly any game these days.

7. It's Educational!

There is actually some element of truth here. For instance, time management games help teach time management skills, hidden object games help with visualisation and shape recognition, while Grand Theft Auto 4 helps with...um...crime based skills? Okay maybe not the best example, but what almost every game does help teach is problem solving. It would be hard to argue a case against that, especially if you have kids who are asking for the latest Professor Layton game!

These kind of excuses can be pushed a bit far though. There's a threshold of acceptability where the receiver of the excuse will see right through your veil of lies. And you can't get more blatant than this...

6. It helps keep me fit!

Which is probably going to become a more common excuse in the future, especially with the popularity of the Wii balance board and the soon to be released "Project Natal" on the xbox. Both have the goal of making the human body more of the controller, Natal more so as it requires no physical contact with the controller at all.

Unfortunately it's a fact that only a balanced diet and plenty of exercise can get you fit, not a computer game. I'm sure it can help but it's not an excuse that's going to wash with many parents! It's not that parents don't understand these days, I'm sure! Many parents probably want to get their kids off the console and off to bed so they can play their own games too! In fact that leads to a whole new area of excuse creativity.

5. I want to see what all the fuss is about!

Which I have to tell you only works once or twice per game. Once your wife or girlfriend remembers the name of the game (they'll never remember what it looks like so feel free to lie about that too) you'll have to give another, more elaborate excuse for subsequent gaming time.

Luckily I have the answer here, something which I've used well to my advantage before and is almost certain to work at least once. I got the idea from a Dilbert comic (Wally is my Hero!) where they need their boss to make the right decision on a product name. The method they use is to give the boss two options, one good option and one really, really bad option. The boss obviously wants to feel important and make a management decision so they choose the good option, which is what the team wanted in the first place rather than days spent discussing it and over analysing it. Therefore I give you this:

4. Would you like to play a multiplayer game?

Which works fine as long as you suggest a multiplayer game that they would never ever want to play. Gears Of War is good for this, as is WiiPlay if you have either of them. Otherwise anything you're good at and they're not works too.

More than 90% of the time I get the response "No, it's ok - you go and play." Which is obviously the intended response and even better it's their suggestion! There's also a powerful variant of this that is worth sharing and is even more similar to the 2-choices method mentioned earlier. This is:

3. Shall we or shall I go play for a while?

Obviously if your girlfriend is a hard worker and loves cleaning the house or going out shopping you may have to think more carefully about what the task is. For me cleaning the house works very well as it's vary rarely tidy or even tidy-ish.

There's also a good suggestion for everyone co-habiting with either their wife, girlfriend or even their families. Something I've started using this year, cleverly disguised as a New Years Resolution. It would probably work even better for people immune to the previous two reasons and it's to do with scheduling! This year I don't want to let any of my commitments slip, so I devised a schedule for each evening to make sure I spent the right amount of time on each. It's worked out very well for the previous two weeks and I expect it will continue to work, but it had an interesting side effect. Here is my schedule:

Monday - iPhone programming (I'm writing more apps this year!)
Tuesday - blog and article work
Wednesday - Finish this week's review
Thursday - Wedding Planning(1hr min) and iPhone programming (1 hr min)
Friday - Decide on next review game, Date night with fiancé
Saturday - Friends/Family visits
Sunday - Day off for anything (usually more review time!)

It's not set in stone and if I ever manage to do this full time it will certainly change, but that's how it's worked generally so far! So when it came to Wednesday night, where my fiancé is usually at college I was able to say...

2. It's review/gaming night!

How can you argue with a well-defined schedule! Well, quite easily as it turns out - but at least you can play guilt free that you'll meet all your other commitments as well as having something to look forward to every week!

And that's almost it, those are all the clever and not so clever excuses I really know of. I know the last one is kind of boring and negates the point of playing games rather than doing real life important things. And I don't want to ruin the whole thing with some kind of "Internet addiction is a real thing!" warning, so I won't. Then maybe the simplest of excuses, and the most childish or stubborn of all is the greatest of excuses:

1. Because I want to!

Thank you Billie Piper...
Other more specific options exist of course; such as "Because I run a gaming blog" (hehe) and "Because I'm writing a game, I need inspiration." This means that you then have to prove it by creating and contributing to the blog, which is more work than it probably looks!

Perhaps the point here is that if we need to make excuses for games they're not as important as other things in life? Maybe we should all stop and take a look at the wonderful world we live on in all it's splendour and reflect on the beauty that surrounds us all...

...Just as soon as I've completed this level...

Slate PCs - a Casual Gamers Dream Come True?

The BBC ran a small report on Slate PC's the other day, showing MS boss Steve Balmer showing off models from HP (ugh) and other hardware companies.

My immediate reaction was "Oh it's a giant iPhone..." and indeed they will cost the same as a (high end) mobile phone and be shipped with windows 7. They look like netbooks without the keyboard basically and I was also reminded of the "Windows 7 was my idea!" ads that are on at the moment, specifically the one about touch screen tech...or the "Touch Screen Experience" as Mr Balmer calls it in the BBC Video

When I'd thought about it for a few minutes I suddenly thought "It's a giant iPhone..." which yes is exactly the sames response but I thought of the thousands and thousands of touch screen games that are available on that and how it might increase the awareness of the independent games market for the PC platform! The iPhone/iPodTouch has done much for indie devs around the world, but you still have to buy a mac and the development license (each year!) to make games for it.

PC's in contrast can be 100% free to develop for. How MS's "Touch screen experience" will differ from Apple's touch screen "pinching" for zooming I don't think there's been any news on it. This may be the major challenge for developers to start with as obviously there's just one mouse pointer right now!

I also worry that it's an uncontrolled environment, unlike the iTunes store and not having a keyboard causes problems if trying to resolve any issues that require a lot of cmd window typing. I wonder if retro games will work, or text adventure games!

So this is hardly new in terms of technology but it is a first for PC users.  I don't think it's an iPhone killer (nothing else has been so far!) But it's certainly tempting to get one when they're released...

Weekendly Unmissable Deals!

Oh there's a fair amount going on this weekend, as if Christmas hadn't already passed us by! Portals must be doing very well out of these discount schemes as there seem to be more and more each week. The only game to be exempt from all this are the Modern Warfare games!

And talking of Christmas, it's Russian Christmas time at Gamers Gate! They've got a fair few top titles going cheap such as Warhammer Age Of Reckonning, Machinarium and the awesome Space Rangers!

S Rozhdestvom! (Google says that's Merry Christmas in Russian, although I'm not sure I believe it!)

Here's something you don't want to miss out on! Crayon Physics peeps are following in the footsteps of World Of Goo creators 2DBOY who last year held an offer to pay whatever you want for their game. Can you guess what's coming next? Yes, PAY WHATEVER YOU WANT for Crayon Physics! but be quick, this only lasts until the 15th of January!

Impulse are having a bit of a sale with titles like Kings Bounty Armoured Princess and Trine as well as others.

Lastly Steam are offering Serious Sam HD for 66% off. I've never played that and probably won't bother, but if you have to play anything with guns it's probably worth a look!

BigFishGames, the casual gaming super site, are running a deal where you can get 20% of their best games of 2009! Now I'm not the worlds biggest casual gamer, however there was one game they selected as a "runner up" which I thought was their best game of the year. That was "My Kingdom for the Princess" which was a fantastic time management game which is certainly worth checking out! Click here for the BFG page for My Kingdom for the Princess but remember, if you want the 20% off You'll need this code: GAMEOFTHEYEAR to use when purchasing it...if you like it of course!

Zombie Driver Review!

Ah christmas was a wonderful couple of weeks off for me - and I spent a fair bit of it running zombies over driving a bus!

Of course this was not real. I understand that, I'm...better now thank you...

And no Zombie Driver is not about a "Zombie Driver" like my brother thought!

Click here to read the Zombie Driver Review!

Graduate Games: 2 Games For 1 - Are we learning yet?

That's probably a mean title, but I couldn't resist it! I certainly don't mean it...

Actually all I wanted to do was bring everyone's attention to the 2-for-1 deal they're currently running over at Graduate Games: Their two titles: Magic Toy Box and Storked can be picked up as a package for $20.

I've heard of the Magic Toy Chest, but not storked. I picked up the former's demo to have a good go and it reminded me of crayon physics quite a bit - but with pre-prepared objects. The idea mostly being getting the toys into the toy box by dropping/placing other toys around the room.

The vague story being about tidying your room, but I'm sure I was leaving it in far more of a mess than when I started!

I've not played Storked yet, but as it features penguins it's bound to be awesome. Anything featuring penguins usually is!

Actually the description does make me wish I'd tried that instead:

Help the Stork protect the egg and use each penguin's unique abilities to solve puzzles. Control 4 Unique Penguins across 4 worlds and over 100 different levels in this family friendly retro inspired puzzle & platform game.

Anyway, the deal seems pretty good if you like the look of both of these. They each have free demos as usual so those are at least worth checking out!

So the link for the deal is here.

The homepage is here.

And they also have a couple of free games/prototypes here!

Gratuitous Space Battles: Campaign Mode coming soon?

Something I've not reviewed yet, even though I own it ready and have done since the beta, is Positech's ship design/strategy game Gratuitous Space Battles.

The reason I've not reviewed it is because I've been puzzled by the lack of what seems such an obvious addition to the game: A Campaign or Universe Domination mode.

Designing the ships is good fun and watching the resulting destruction can only be described as spectacular, even from it's birds-eye view perspective. The music is very Starwars-y and the pre-prepared tactics all work exactly as you want them too. It's extremely configurable!

There are 4 races (5 including "The Tribe" from the add on which I don't yet have) and each has it's own set of varying ship hulls which has can keep the game interesting for quite some time. Unfortunately I'm not very good at forward planning and in space-conquest type games usually rely on my superior base building and resource gathering skills to build the bigger force. Therefore I've not enjoyed this quite as much as I'd hoped.

However, going back to the campaign stuff, from spying on Cliffski's twitter posts it looks like a campaign mode may be soon on the way! He's been making mention of User Interface for a galaxy screen and such so I'm hoping that this will be the next major update, something which I would definitely look forward to (if that wasn't clear by now!)

Here's a video of the game in action - bask in it's gratuitiness!


You can find out more from the Positech GSB home page!

Plants Versus Zombies - In Real Life!

Plants Vs Zombies was one of my favourite games in 2009. But one often has to ask the question, what would happen if they invaded in real life? These guys have the answer:



Well, it's not the funniest video I've seen, but it's far from the worst and at least the last 10 seconds are funny! Yay for Crazy Dave!

Games From The Sales: Zombie Shooter 2

During this years sales I've managed to pick up a few fairly recent titles for a very modest sum. One of these is Zombie Shooter 2, a third person zombie shoot-em-up made by the creators of Alien Shooter and it's sequels.

It's really an RPG as you increase your speed, health, fighting abilitiy, etc... and also buy new, more powerfull weapons in order to become a better zombie killer.

It's fantastic for simplistic zombie killing violence, you don't have to think too much to play it which is always good for me! It's very much run and shoot all the way, although there are a couple of things that could have made it better. Weapon switching is restricted between three weapon sizes; pistol size, rifle/shotgun size and heavy weapons. It would have been better if I could have quick-switched between shotgun and assualt rifle more readily.

I also recognised a lot of the music in Zombie Shooter 2 as it was also in Alien Shooter 2. It's good music mind you but that's not where the copying ends. The playable characters are the same, but between playing this version and the demo I downloaded a few weeks ago I'm glad to see that they at least updated the character Bio's to something different!

I've not yet completed it so I can't say for sure if there's any huge new plot elements that are worth getting this for. On the other hand if you've not already bought/player Alien Shooter 2 and prefer shooting zombies rather than aliens then this might be worth a try!

Both Zombie Shooter 2 and Alien Shooter 2 are available from GamersGate.

Last Day Of Big Sales!

If you were planning on taking advantage of the sales the Steam Sale and the Gamers Gate Sale are finishing today!

Just thought I should remind everyone as it will be another 12 months before all of these titles will be so cheap again!

Music Makes the Game: Is everything Black and White?

I'm well known for my annoying singing during working hours...well not just working hours. In fact I'll hum and sing quite constantly, especially if I've got a lot on my mind.

Often the selection of tunes turns mostly to game music. Theme Hospital tunes, Mario tunes, even Dizzy (from the spectrum) tunes feature highly in my repetoir (help me with spelling here!)

But another tune that keeps cropping up is the sailor song from Black And White - while most of the music is orchestral/synthy "big reveal" type tunes this was the most distinctive piece of sound from the game.



What a tuneful ditty!

2010 PC Game Release Dates Calendar

I've had a first attempt at creating a calendar of PC Game Release Dates for 2010 as I've only seen a couple of half decent ones around.

It's not perfect and is missing quite a few games but I'll be constantly adding to it as I hear of upcoming releases. I'd also like to invite any independent game creators to send in their projected release dates for their games and I'll add it in.

The current dates have come from a mixture of sources and probably get less accurate the further ahead they go, as is always the case. If you spot anything you know or suspect is wrong let me know!

Click here to view the 2010 release date calendar!

Starting off with a new review! Torchlight!

Well it's always good to start the year with a bang! So spent a fair amount of my holiday playing Torchlight. Luckily it had been vastly reduced in the steam sales - unluckily I completely missed that day so I had to pay the more expensive price.

So, that aside I thought it was...well, as usual you'll have to read the review!

Click here to read the torchlight review!