Category Archives: games

Next Generation – Which Way Now?

The lines have been drawn in the sand. We know what the next five years or so of video games in the living room is going to look like from Christmas onward, and now we just have to choose sides.

If you’d asked me a week ago, before the Xbox announcement, I’d have said Xbox – no question. However, looking at the way things are going and the importance being thrown at integrated media, it seems like an all-encompassing box-under-the-telly is what we’ll end up with.

I find myself in a bit of a quandary now though, as to which way I want to go. As I see it, I have three main options now, and I’ll have to decide what to do as the year goes on and more details are revealed about the new systems. This is how it stands right now for me:

1. Xbox One

I was really looking forward to the reveal last Tuesday as I had no idea what to expect. I thought they might go the way of adding more TV and film options, as they throw a lot of weight behind their  video streaming options at the moment, but the level of integration they showed was a surprise. I like the idea of everything going through one box; TV, blu-rays, games etc. But I’m not sure how well it’s going to do it. What I’ve read so far suggests that it’ll merely act as a pass-through for existing set-top boxes, but I can’t see how that works with the shown tv guide and voice-powered channel hopping. HDMI-CEC maybe? If they could properly integrate TV (e.g. PVR capabilities), they’d be onto a winner, but I can’t see it happening at the moment because of things like copyright and TV providers wanting to hang on to control (Sky for example).

They’ve not really shown much in the way of games yet, but they stuff they have shown suggests current high spec PC level.

I love the idea of continuing my Live account, my friends list, the excellent controllers and the way everything’s tied together.

2. Playstation 4

Sony haven’t really shown much of the PS4 yet, except for the controller, some games and a tease video showing some vents and close-ups of the machine. It’ll be a games machine first and foremost, and while they may still try to shovel some media through their store, it’s going to be less inclusive than Microsoft’s offering.

I wasn’t overly enamoured with the PS3. It’s a good enough machine, but I’ve had disproportionately more time playing blu-rays, streaming films and using Netflix than I have playing games on it. Once in a while I’ll fire it up to play something, but I’ll always go for the Xbox version of a game first.

The whole experience is a bit more disjointed that the 360 and they seem to have been playing catch-up the whole time (friends lists, cross-game chat and invitations, achievements/trophies etc.)

3. HTPC

This is the most tempting and most interesting option at the moment. A Home Theatre PC (HTPC) would fill the same void as an Xbox One, but by going down the PC games route instead.

It would mean building a PC with a nice-looking case, something suitable for sitting under the TV on top of the AV receiver. It would have to be as close to silent as possible, but conversely be powerful too. I’d need a graphics card happy to chuck out 1080p resolution at full detail – which isn’t actually that big a deal these days – and ideally something with 4K in mind, even though my current TV doesn’t support it.

The main bugbear with going down this road is the user interface. Consoles are designed to work with a gamepad from start to finish. While gamepads work nicely with PC games, navigating a PC interface with one doesn’t. One solution is Steam’s Big Picture mode, and while the idea of a Steam Box is a nice one, it would be nice not to be tied to that. A nice speedy linux distro would be great, but then I’d be tying myself to a limited amount of games. Stripped down, non-Metro windows 8 would be ok.

The major cons I’d be facing would be losing out on the community of Xbox Live and the feeling of an integrated experience. Everything ties together and works with Xbox. But the games are a lot cheaper on PC, and in theory I could have them looking a lot nicer and have a decent media center at the same time.

I’ll wait for E3 in a week or two and see what else comes out about the new consoles, and hopefully be able to make a more informed choice then. The times, they are a-changing.

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Curtains for Windows?

No, I’ve not taken up drapery along with everything else, this is about computers again (woo, yay, etc.).

I’ve mentioned previously that I’ve been using Linux as my OS of choice lately, and it’s still the case. I’ve only booted my laptop into Windows 8 once in the last few months, and that was to try and get a SilverLight plugin working which didn’t seem to like the MonoLight interpretation in Mint. The only other thing I’m still hanging on to a windows install for is certain games, ones I’m not really ready to let go of.

However, that reason is getting less and less significant with each passing week, mainly down to the awesome work Valve are doing with Steam on Linux. It’s gone from having a few indie titles and Team Fortress 2, to having a much bigger, much better selection. The two main additions for me in the last couple of weeks have been Portal and Half-Life 2. Both are still marked as being in Beta, but both are very, very playable with only a few small glitches so far.

Portal, if you haven’t played it, is one you really ought to. The clever portal mechanic is fun to use through the puzzle section of the game, working your way through level and level of figuring out how to get to the exit, but it’s when you get to the last stage that it really takes off. I won’t give away too much about cake and what happens later in the game, but it’s still one of the most clever and well-made games I’ve played in the last ten years.

Half-Life 2 though, even now, years after it was released, is still amazing. The orginal Half-Life still holds a special place for me as the best single-player FPS ever, but there’s no denying HL2 is much more polished and more involved. The Linux implementation is just as I remember it, and the advantage of it being a few years old now means that it runs very happily on the Core i3 with Intel HD3000 graphics in my cheapo laptop. I’ve only come up against one bug so far (LDR map versions not present on some levels, starting at Black Mesa East), but it’s well-documented, there’s a fix available until Valve patch it, and let’s not forget it is still in Beta.

As it stands right now, the only game I’d have to load Windows for is Battlefield 3 (and soon 4). As someone who’s been playing games on a PC under Windows for the last eighteen years, that’s quite a statement to make. Hopefully it’s just a precursor for the future as more and more developers and publishers not necessarily spurn Windows, but at least include Linux as an option. The Steam Box will no doubt see Valve continue to throw more weight at it, and hopefully encourage others to do the same, and so far the alleged fragmentation of Linux as a platform and community really doesn’t seem to be causing too many problems.

Microsoft are apparently about to do a massive U-turn with the release of ‘Blue’ (or Windows 8.1 as it’s expected to be called) by putting in an option to boot to desktop, putting the Start button back, and hopefully adding the Aero-style window decorations too. That would certainly make the choice to ditch Windows altogether a harder one, because with 8 as it is now I’m really not too adverse to getting rid of it.

Consider this: this weekend I was playing HL2 in Linux (native) on my 42″ via HDMI, and haven’t had to install a single driver myself yet. To me this makes Linux (well, certainly Mint) the easiest PC setup for games I’ve ever had. I honestly didn’t think I’d ever find myself saying that.

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Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K

Twenty-Five Games for my Son

This is something I’m shamelessly ripping off, based on something I saw on YouTube.

Randy Yasenchak of ElderGeek.com had the really nice idea of building a list of games for his young son to play as he grows up, and I was totally smitten with it, so I’ve decided to do the same thing myself, for my son.

Games are a massive part of my life, they have been for as long as I’ve had a computer, which must be about 1984 (give or take a year or so). It started with a Sinclair Spectrum 48K and kept going from there.

Along the way there have been some games which are indelibly etched on my memory for one reason or another. They’re not necessarily the greatest games in the world, nor the most memorable for most people I expect, but they’re important to me and tend to flood me with memories. These are the games I want RAR to play when he’s old enough to, just so he has an idea of what it was that has kept me playing to this day, almost thirty years later.

I told my wife about the idea and her initial reaction (after giving me a ‘really?!?’ expression) was ‘Twenty-five?! That many?’ I guess it seemed like a lot to her, but quite honestly I wondering how I’m meant to whittle it down to that few.

So now my task is to build a list of the twenty-five games which define my video game history. No mean feat! Off the top of my head as I sit here writing this, I’m looking at the following systems to potentially pick from: ZX Spectrum 48/128K, Sega Master System, Sega Megadrive, NES (although to be fair I didn’t pick one up until I was nearly thirty), SNES, PC, Amiga, Gameboy, Coin-op, Playstation, PS2, PS3, Xbox, Gamecube, N64, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS. (I’m probably missing some.)

Narrowing down this list is going to take some real thinking, but I’m looking forward to it, for nostalgia’s sake if nothing else. I’m debating making myself play right through each one again too.

So, does anything spring to mind for you? What would be immediate picks for you?

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tomb raider header

Tomb Raider

This is the first time I’ve felt compelled to write about a game in a long time, and it’s one I got ‘accidentally’ (accidentally in this case is me pre-ordering it a long time ago and forgetting about it until it appeared on my doormat.) The game in question is Tomb Raider, the recent prequel/reboot of the franchise. I’m still firmly a living room player, moreso with the arrival of my son, so this is all based on the Xbox 360 version of the game.

I really liked the first couple of Tomb Raider games, way-back-when, much like the rest of the world, but the more recent entries in the franchise left me a bit cold. They weren’t bad games, they just didn’t do much new and became stale very quickly. With this in mind, I was very excited when I heard about the reboot, and that excitement grew when the first videos leaked showing just how gritty they’d made it. I’m not usually a fan of making things more ‘realistic’ in games – it usually just means adding more shades of brown and grey to the palette, but this was a series due a good overhaul.

The first thing to strike you about Tomb Raider is the presentation; it’s off the charts. Lots of games have tried in the past to feel like you’re playing a film, and most have failed. In fact the only one I can think of in recent memory that came close was the excellent Heavy Rain on PS3. Tomb Raider redresses the balance though, you can tell from the title screen that this is a game that’s had a lot of love (and cash) thrown at it. Everything from the little graphical touches (like Lara touching the rocks as she moves close to them in passages) to the excellent sound (train-of-thought narration, ambient effects and voices) just shines.

tomb raider screenshot

Click me for a full sized image – gorgeous! (and yes, you do end up at the top of that radio mast)

The thing is though, does all of this polish make it a good game? After all, you can put lipstick on a monkey, but you’re not going to want to spend a quiet evening in with it. While the gloss might not make it a good game, the underlying gameplay and story do, and they’re both winners. Penned by Terry Pratchett’s daughter, Rhianna, the script and direction are awesome. It throws you headlong into the story with a few cut-scenes to add atmosphere and backstory, and it really takes you on a rollercoaster ride from there. Gameplay is tight, responsive controls, great combat and – naturally – lots of good platforming and clambering action.

If you’re expecting a game like the original, you’re not going to get it I’m afraid. This one is much more about the journey around the mysterious island and what happens along the way than about raiding tombs. But then again, it’s a prequel. It’s before diminutive Lara Croft became LARA CROFT!!!, and how she got there. That’s not to say there’s no puzzling and raiding, but the tombs are hidden around the landscape, so you’ve got to find them before you can try to figure out how to reach the treasure in each.

I’ve still not finished the main game yet, despite a very dramatic set-piece which made me think I was just about there, but I think for once I can honestly say it’s one I’ll come back to after the credits roll. There is an absolute ton of extra stuff to find and do, away from the main story. There’s the tombs I mentioned above, GPS caches to find, relics, books, and that’s without even mentioning being able to upgrade Lara herself (through experience points spent at campfires) or her weapons and equipment (looted from salvage crates and the bodies of people stupid enough to get in her way). For once, I want to 100% this game.

So in a nutshell, it’s a fantastic game, dripping with atmosphere, movie-like presentation and action, and a lot of ways to get things done. If you’re a fan of the Tomb Raider series it’s a no-brainer, you have to buy this game. Even if you’re not, I strongly urge you to consider it. If you enjoy 3rd-person action like the recent Batman games or Assassins Creed series, you’ll love this. There’s a lot of rubbish around at the moment when it comes to games, do yourself a favour and pick up this gem.

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Bananapad!

I’ve been meaning to tart-up my xbox pads for a long time, and given the cheap prices on ebay (and the fact that anything I want to do these days needs to be possible in an hour or two in the evenings and quiet while RAR goes to sleep,) I finally got around to doing it last week.

Controller shells are nothing new, they’ve been around for quite a while now, but they’re so commonplace these days that the prices have dropped to very-affordable. That coupled with the abundance of different colours you can get now makes it an easy option for just about anyone.

I’ve had my pads in pieces a few times now, so I wasn’t too worried about doing it. They’re fairly simple when it comes down to it, as long as you aren’t planning any soldering (lights, auto-fire etc.,) it’s just a plastic case around a small pcb with surface mounts for the buttons. I’d never used a third-party shell, so I was a bit worried about the build quality; no-one wants something squeaking and creaking like an arthritic mouse in their hands.

It turns out my fears were unfounded. There were only two small problems as such that I came across, the rest of the pad is just as solid as the official ones. Firstly the transparent ring around the guide button in the middle of the pad – the original was just too tight to fight in the new shell. I probably could have forced it, but didn’t want to risk it, especially as the new shell shipped with its own version. Secondly was the sync button. If you take one of your pads apart you’ll see that the sync button on the back of the pad is a teeny piece of plastic sitting on a plastic pin. The original is very tight-fitting, the new is much looser. In my ham-fisted attempts to get the two halves of the pad back together when I’d finished, I dislodged the button far more times that I’d have liked. With hindsight, the tiniest bit of blu-tak on the pin would have solved everything.

After about half-an-hour I had a completed pad with new triggers and thumbsticks, and best of all, a T8H (the security screw the controllers use) screwdriver to use again. The cost of one of these in mose shops would be more than half the cost of the whole shell, which only makes it an even bigger bargain.

bananapad

Bananapad!

As you can see in the photo, I opted to keep the original coloured guide and action buttons, the yellow replacements were just a step too far for me when it came down to it. With another two pads sat idle at home – with increasingly worn thumbsticks – some more changes are in the offing.

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*ahem* Hi there, how have you been?

I guess I owe the minuscule percentage of the world who actually read these posts an explanation. After all, it’s not often someone abandons their blog for the best part of a year without warning.

The truth is I have no idea why I stopped posting. I had a lot going on in my life at the time (more on that later), work got really busy and posting from there got more difficult… I dunno, I just got in a rut I guess. But as part of the new year, and trying to get all my sh*t in order, I’m going to start updating this more. After all, I pay for the hosting, why not use it?

So, bringing you all up-to-date then, where to start? I suppose the best place would be with the single biggest thing to happen in my life to date, and that’s the arrival of my first child, my son. Wow, it still feels weird to write and see that. RAR (as he will be known on here) is now 15 weeks old, and is completely amazing. The 15 weeks he’s been with us have been the fastest, slowest, most testing, most rewarding ever.

I had no idea what being a dad would be like, how I’d handle having a small life, completely dependent on me. I was most worried about having someone that I had no way to communicate with. All of that quickly evaporates though, along with all those worries about dirty nappies, sleepless nights, being covered in baby puke every waking hour – none of it is as bad as you think (with the exception of the sleep deprivation maybe, that’s pretty difficult to get used to). I look forward to each little milestone now like those other annoying new parents. I should hate myself for it, but I don’t, it’s awesome!

I dare say I’ll be talking about him more as the posts go on, so I’ll try to catch up with some of the other stuff I do as well. Training is non-existent at the moment, it’s just too difficult to organise along with work and having the little man, there’s very little time that’s my own any more, and while he’s anything but a nightmare baby, he’s still a lot to deal with. I want to be able to commit to regular training – even if it’s just one night a week at first – rather than doing a day here and there.

On the subject of training, I took and passed (barely) my 2nd Dan grading in the summer just gone. It was absolutely horrible, and very satisfying at the same time. I never really thought far enough ahead when I first started out in TSD to wonder what it would be like to get this far, but I’m very pleased and very proud.

Yes, I’m still a board and video game geek, some things will never change. I’ve obviously not even had time to take a game out of its box lately, but before the craziness started I was enjoying The Castles of Burgundy, Stone Age and Last Will on the tabletop, and more recently have been playing Fifa 13 (still…), NFS: Most Wanted, Dishonored and Hitman: Absolution on the big screen.

That’s it for now, I don’t want to bore anyone who might stumble here, but more to come soon, including my renewed passion for Programming, my return to Linux, and trying not to be quite so overweight any more.

(it all sounds very familiar, doesn’t it?)

 

Adam

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Carcassonne-meeple

Bringing it to the Table

My board game addiction shows no sign of abating. I’ve had to do a bit of bookshelf re-arrangement in order to get them in, but it’s worth it and they look great lined up. I’m not just arranging them on shelves though, I’m playing them too, and here’s what’s new in my table’s world.

First up I took a trip to a local (more like thirty miles away) games shop and picked up a couple of things, the main one being Hive. Hive’s a clever little two-player game where each player has a stash of large, hexagonal tiles each with a different insect on top. The tiles are laid next to one another with the objective of completely surrounding the opponent’s queen bee. Different insects have different movement abilities though and it quickly gets very strategic. It’s a bit like a strange, short game of chess, but it’s very addictive and the heavy bakelite tiles are very satisfying to use.

Hive

Hive. Lovely chunky pieces

 

Since Hive I’ve also picked up the venerable Carcassonne, which has turned out to be a surprise hit. The game revolves around drawing tiles which represent parts of roads, fields, cities and monasteries and placing them next to matching parts on the table, choose where to place your meagre allowance of workers (meeples) to best score you points. Simple to learn and quick to play. I’ve had an incarnation of it on the Xbox for ages now, but it’s never really grabbed us. Playing it with the card tiles and wooden meeples is very different though, and it’s very quick to grab you and leave you with that ‘one more go’ feeling. I’m eyeing up the Inns & Cathedrals expansion first, as by all accounts it’s the best one to get at first.

Carcassonne Meeple

Carcassonne. One of the Meeples claiming a city

 

Next up I scored a very cheap Forbidden Island from Amazon which turned up in its attractive tin. The game itself Is centred around a group of tiles that represent an exotic island that’s sinking. Before it sinks, you and the other players are trying to pilfer the various treasures by moving around, shoring up sunken areas, and making sure you all escape with the treasures intact. It’s fun, but in truth is a bit simplistic and relatively easy to win at, I can see why it’s recommended as a good gateway game for kids growing up. I might pick up its ‘big brother’ Pandemic at some point which is supposed to use similar mechanics but be a lot more involved.

Forbidden Island

Forbidden Island. Really nice tin and pieces

 

I was very excited to see my Valentine’s present turn up last week while I was on holiday. After a lot of agonising and indecision (I very nearly went for Merchants & Marauders) I settled on Arkham Horror, and I’m so glad I did. It’s a bit of an epic with a massive board and a lot of components, and it’s all set in HP Lovecraft’s universe. A team of investigators (the players) move around the city, balancing their skills as they go, trying to fight off the hideous monsters and seal the gates to other worlds that have been appearing. The idea is to try to seal them all quickly enough so that one of the the Great Old Ones appear, they being the likes of Nyarlathotep, Ithaqua, or everyone’s favourite, Cthulhu (no pedants please, I know they might not all be ‘officially’ GOO). It works really, really well and the feeling of everyone fighting together against the game is awesome. It takes a few turns to get your head around what’s happening during each phase, but once you’ve got it it ticks along at a reasonable pace. I love this game and can’t wait to give it a try with lots more players.

Arkham Horror components

Arkham Horror. Awesome game with a lot of pieces!

 

I wish I could say that’s it, but it’s not. We went to Plymouth for the day last week and I bagged myself a copy of Reiner Knizia’s Lost Cities. It’s a small game for two players, and as much as it tries to be thematic (players are explorers on expeditions around the world) it’s essentially a card game. If you ignore that though, it’s a great game with a good mix of strategy, luck and risk-taking.

Lost cities card game

Lost Cities. Small, cheap and very addictive

 

Good times then! And reading it back, it sounds like expensive times too, but actually it’s not too bad at all. Hive, Carcassonne, Forbidden Island and Lost Cities were all less than twenty quid each (lots less in some cases), Arkham Horror has been my most expensive game of all so far at £40. I know Spring’s on its way now, but it’s nice to have something to do in the dark nights that’s not just staring at the TV or going out and spending money. Obviously I’ve still got an ever-growing wishlist, but I’m content with what I’ve got for now.

(Let’s see how long that lasts)

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dominion

Play Your Cards Right

As part of my continuing geek conversion to the way of boardgames, I’ve recently added to my collection. I’ve been doing a lot of reading and research to try to make sure I only buy things I’m going to be able to play; that is to say, games that my friends and other half will play too. The one that kept coming up time and again was Dominion, so when I saw an offer on Amazon for 15% off the price, I saw it as an omen and ordered it :) .

Ironically, this boardgame isn’t actually a boardgame in the true sense. It’s a deck-building card game, and a very, very good one at that (like I’ve got loads of experience to draw on, right?). To explain it properly would take pages here, and as complicated as the set-up sounds – and looks initially – it’s actually incredibly easy to get the hang of. I think it’s going to take a lot of playing to get good at strategy, but of the three people I’ve played it with so far, no-one’s taken more than about fifteen minutes to get the hang of. Everyone starts with exactly the same deck of cards which they draw a hand of five from. They play these cards in their turn which consists of A, B and C. A is for Action, and lets you play an action card which can do anything from giving you more actions or coins to spend, to forcing the other players to discard cards in their hands. B is the buy phase, where any coin cards in your hand can be spent on new actions, treasures, or victory point cards. Finally C, clean-up. The cards you played are added to your discard pile, any cards you bought also are, and so is the remainder of your hand. You draw five new cards from your deck and it’s next player’s turn. The only time this changes is when you no longer have five cards in your deck to draw, which is when you shuffle your discard pile (including any new cards you might have bought) and it now becomes your deck. So in essence you’re building your deck as you go, trying to do it tactically.

The trick comes in deciding how to build your deck. The ‘action’ cards are also called Kingdom cards, and you play with piles of ten different kinds (from a stock of 25 different types) of them. They represent buildings or people within your dominion. So on your turn you might think ‘now do I buy the Militia to give me two extra coins and force everyone else to discard two cards, or do I buy a Throne Room to allow me to play one of my action cards twice?‘. Finding a balance between increasing your own wealth, making sure you don’t have much rubbish in your deck, and hampering your opponents at the same time is an art. The variety of card types available mean no two games are the same, and when you throw in the load of expansions available, there’s a ridiculous number of possbilities.

The game ends on one of two conditions: firstly if all of the ‘Province’ victory point cards are bought, or secondly when any three piles of the action cards are depleted. At the end of the game everyone counts up the victory points in their decks and the person with the most, wins. It might sound simple, or boring, or whatever, but it’s actually really good fun, very addictive, and every game has at least one person having an ‘ahhhhh!’ moment when an idea for a tactic, or recognising what they’ve done wrong happens. There’s a load of expansions available, and given the response of everyone on BGG and the fact that sites such as dominionstrategy.com exist, it seems like it can easily get very competitive. I’d really recommend Dominion to anyone looking to get something to play either with their other half, or up to four people, but looking for a break from the Monopoly/Cluedo route of normal, off-the-shelf games.

As well as this one I also got the heads-up on some ridiculously cheap Rio Grande (same manufacturer as Dominion), highly rated games from an online retailer, so I’ve now got the infinitely nerdier Notre Dame and Hamburgum to try to learn too. Good times :) .

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FFP0101_LastNightOnEarth

So Board

I’ve had a passing interest in board games for a long time now, although never going as far as full-blown pen & paper dice games a la Dungeons and Dragons. I’ve caught myself loitering on BoardGameGeek far more than I probably ought to, trying to understand the differences between the bewildering amount of games out there once you get past the likes of Scrabble and Monopoly. I’m getting there now, I know my Eurogame from my Gateway, and it’s seeming very easy to get sucked in.

My first dip into ‘something-you-don’t-see-in-town’ territory was the very excellent Last Night on Earth. I wasn’t sure what to expect, despite having read a ton of reviews, but I was really pleased with what turned up in the big box. Everything’s really high-quality and well made, and the artwork and presentation is awesome. There’s even a CD included with mood music! Saying that, I should probably explain what kind of mood, I’ve not said what the game’s about.

As the more astute of you might have guessed, Last Night on Earth is a Zombie game. It’s set in the same sort of scenario as dozens of films before it; zombies are taking over, the apocalypse is coming, and one hardy group of meatbags (humans) are trying to survive. The players take the roles of heroes or in control of teams of zombies, the heroes attempting to complete the scenarios on offer (there are quite a few to keep the game fresh), the zombies just trying to stop them by any means necessary (usually eating their brains). I really like the way the heroes aren’t just differentiated by having different shaped models; they all have individual statistics, traits and abilities, it feels more like playing a video game than a board one. The rules are a bit heavy-going at first, but it’s worth persevering with. Actually no, that’s not true, the rules themselves aren’t that difficult really, it’s more a case of remembering what you can do on every turn, and what order you have to do it in.

I played a game with my other half and two of our friends, and it was a hoot. Get some drinks involved, snacks on the table and a lot of ‘discussion’ along the lines of ‘you can’t do that! – consult the rules!’ and despite the game taking a couple of hours to finish, it’s really good fun :) . I’m already eyeing up the expansions which add a whole host of new map tiles, scenarios, heroes and event cards – these event cards are what drive the majority of actions and decisions in the game. Flying Frog have done an excellent job in creating something atmospheric and enjoyable, and the reference wiki on their website is awesome. Any time you’re unsure on any part of the rules, or how any of the cards work, you’ll find the answer there.

The world of the board game geek is a really unique sub-culture, and one I don’t think most people would ever really stumble on without knowing someone already in it, but I’ve got to say I’m hooked. I’ve started choosing my next potential purchases, and at the moment (this can and does change almost daily) I’m looking at Arkham Horror and Descent. The only thing I’ve got to be careful of is making sure I don’t get too carried away, I could easily spend a lot more on this than on my other games habits!

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Summer’s Slim Pickings

Summer’s traditionally a busy time for a lot of things; festivals, films, sports etc., but it’s also a very quiet time for other things, most notably news but also games.

Games traditionally have a very barren spell over the summer months, except for the titles held for ‘seasonal’ releases, which usually means tennis games. I can’t tell you how much seasonal releases annoy me, and the worst culprit in my eyes was Nintendo. Back in the N64 days there were a few games I was desperate for, and one of those was 1080 Snowboarding. Australia had it released in June or July (their winter), but Nintendo of Europe had the genius idea of holding the release here until Christmas time, as it was summer here and nobody wants snowboarding games in the summer, right? Well I did, and a lot of other people did, hence my first – and only – Australian import from a local shop.

Anyway, I’m getting away from the point in hand here, and that’s the lack of decent new games to pick up once summer gets here. I’ve got a couple of games on the go, but nothing I can really get my teeth stuck into, and I’m not the only one feeling the itch, friends have said the same thing to me. I got so desperate for something new, half-decent and involving to play that I trawled the games shops at lunchtime and still came up blank. Eventually I found one, and despite the ‘not bad, but not brilliant either’ reviews I picked up a cheap copy of Dungeon Siege III.

So far I think I must have put in about ten hours, and I’m really enjoying it. It’s a nice mix of RPG and third-person action adventure, with a heavy emphasis on loot and character development. Thankfully it’s all been given a nice easy interface which lets you get on with the important stuff – like actually playing the game -  rather than spending hours agonising over stats and figures. I love a good dungeon crawl, and that’s exactly what the game provides, powering up and getting stuck into a good fight. It reminds me of playing Neverwinter Nights on the PC, but with a bit less depth, making it far more living room friendly in my eyes. The story is pretty good too, and that’s high praise indeed from someone who finds it hard to get drawn into yet another fantasy back story. Oh and there are save points every five minutes too, whoever saw fit to put them in the game that frequently is a saint and deserves a pat on the back from someone who hates being forced to play for another hour just so he doesn’t lose his progress.

I have no idea how far into the game I am, but I think there’s still a good way to go yet. I’d thoroughly recommend it for anyone looking to fill the summer gap, and when you can pick it up for about 13 or 16 quid at Zavvi and Tesco respectively, you can’t really go wrong.

Now bring on Batman: Arkham City!

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