Good luck, man. Every now and then, something comes along that takes priority over reviewing video games online, and I suppose this just about registers as such.

I actually composed a top fifty list for albums, but I only posted it on Facebook. There are a few adjustments I'd probably make (having since seen them live, Kasabian and Bombay would both be higher), but here it is:

50. The Go! Team – Rolling Blackouts
49. Kasabian – Velociraptor!
48. Mother Mother – Eureka
47. Austra – Feel It Break
46. Bon Iver – s/t
45. TV on the Radio – Nine Types of Light
44. I Break Horses – Hearts
43. The Rural Alberta Advantage – Departing
42. Cold Cave – Cherish the Light Years
41. Boris – Attention Please
40. Lykke Li – Wounded Rhymes
39. Little Scream – The Golden Record
38. Yelle – Safari Disco Club
37. Cults – s/t
36. Moonface – Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I’d Hoped
35. Jessica 6 – See the Light
34. Patrick Wolf – Lupercalia
33. Arctic Monkeys – Suck It and See
32. This Will Destroy You – Tunnel Blanket
31. Hooray for Earth – True Loves
30. The World/Inferno Friendship Society – The Anarchy and the Ecstasy
29. Asobi Seksu – Fluorescence
28. Yuck – s/t
27. Friendly Fires – Pala
26. Florence + the Machine – Ceremonials
25. Zola Jesus – Conatus
24. Is Tropical – Native to
23. Radiohead – The King of Limbs
22. Bombay Bicycle Club – A Different Kind of Fix
21. The Decemberists – The King Is Dead
20. Explosions in the Sky – Take Care, Take Care, Take Care
19. MUTEMATH – Odd Soul
18. Battles – Gloss Drop
17. Holy Ghost! – s/t
16. Handsome Furs – Sound Kapital
15. Iron & Wine – Kiss Each Other Clean
14. The Black Keys – El Camino
13. VHS or Beta – Diamonds and Death
12. The Rapture – In the Grace of Your Love
11. Starfucker – Reptilians
10. Junior Boys – It’s All True
9. Justice – Audio, Video, Disco
8. Wilco – The Whole Love
7. The Joy Formidable – The Big Roar
6. St. Vincent – Strange Mercy
5. Feist – Metals
4. The Dodos – No Colors
3. The Antlers – Burst Apart
2. Cut Copy – Zonoscope
1. M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming

It's a round number, so I'm noting it as a milestone of sorts. Which gives me an excuse to celebrate heavily today. CHEERS!

Can you provide a link? I think I know where it is on Amazon, but I'm not sure.

I decided to join on the Apollo 18 20th anniversary tribute which was posted to the text adventure forums back in December. I probably took too many games--the organizer wanted them all to be claimed by January 1 or so and so I stepped in with some ideas by January 15th, worrying nobody was going to take things. So I feel bad having taken so much, and I didn't really go after reciprocal testing, but I have to say this: it was a ton of FUN when I had the time, and despite being rather sick for 10 days, the 3-month buffer was enough.

And other people started picking things off. Some members of the Chicago-IF group took one here and there. Some other people I'd never heard of dropped in, too, some writing their first games. And if there aren't any super-big-long-time-historic traditional names writing (except Nick Montfort) I really enjoyed the opportunity to beta-test other people's games, which gave me ideas for my own.

I have a hard time finding what sort of criticism and creative trade I like, but with text adventures, I think I am really happiest at the moment. The sort of criticism where I know someone is going to fix Obvious Bug X (e.g. they say there's graffiti there and the player can't examine it) or they don't respond to a standard verb (e.g. SING in a game with a guitar, or maybe BURN PHOTOGRAPH in a game where the room is on fire.) It gives a chance to be positive and suggest a person can do more. That's when criticism's at its best.

So whom would I recommend? I had a blast playing Carl Muckenhoupt's game (My Evil Twin) before it was fixed, and I know he will--his game The Gostak will either annoy you or blow your mind or both.

I was able to provide a lot of checking for Ben Collins-Sussman and Jack Welch's Narrow Your Eyes. As they co-wrote it, and they live a thousand miles apart, they used Google Code. I enjoyed being able to report issues to the issue page and also being able to see the source--which I learned so much from.

Ryan Veeder also won IFComp 2011 (just ahead of someone else here's fine effort on HonestGamers) and his two games are almost certainly worth playing. He writes funny stuff.

Whether or not you're familiar with TMBG, it's probably a lot of fun to poke around. I have to admit, I've got a potential embarrassment if some of my games don't work (hint: Space Suit received the most testing) but I think if you're in the mood for a quick text adventure game, any of the Fingertips will do. They're all intended to be 1-movers and many have VERY different ways of looking at things.

And I just like how this collection acted as a sort of farm system for people who were maybe newer to writing text adventures to join in.

Anyway. That's what I've been up to. I'm already planning my next game, too. It may not get wide exposure, but after my 2011 IFComp entry, I finally wrote a game (as I wanted to.) Now I want to write one really well.

So I know Jason has a full-length novel. What's everyone else doing writing-wise outside of HG?

LR for WonderSwan

I wasn't aware of the WonderSwan until I went searching for new versions of Lode Runner (LR.) It was a last resort. You see, so many ports of Lode Runner contain the same levels from the original. Maybe they throw in a story with animals to rescue or something, but it that couldn't disguise the exact same levels made by kids pulled off the street long ago back in 1980. Which is annoying to see after I've poked my way through several Japanese menus. Yeah, first world problems, rom downloads aren't perfectly legal, and so on. But when so many Lode Runner games come with level editors (also part of the original) that the developers themselves never seem to use, it's hard to believe much care went into these products.

Not so with the WonderSwan port (WS.) It's not brilliant, but it doesn't have to be. It hits all the basic LR puzzles and adds a few more. As in other LR games, you basically climb ladders, walk on ropes, and dig holes to the left and right for enemies to fall in. The holes can fill up, trapping the enemies, who reappear at the top, or even you. Get all the gold, and you will get a ladder or door to the next level, often positioned awkwardly. You die if enemies touch you, but it's also common to get stuck with no way out, which is awfully frustating but also the source of some of the best puzzles. You may have to dig through a whole structure for that one last gold piece without getting trapped, or you may need to make an educated guess about which blocks are fall-through--they look the same as the regular ones. It's part logic and experimentation, and often after thinking I knew what a square had to be, or thinking the game was vague, the solution tipped off other things. LR: WS is really good at forcing this educated guesswork or giving these a-ha moments.

And here the game changes more than just enemy speed or how fast the holes fill in--those have been enough to create vastly different puzzles. The biggest is the crumbling block--it, like the fall-through block, is indistinguishable from the regular sort you walk over. However, it disappears after a second once you step over it, often making a one-way passage or ruining an obvious digging sequence.

The other new feature is water. It's an amusing one, where a small pool can spill out to the whole level. If you dig a bounding block, it pours out to that side and below. Water slows you down, unless you chose the scuba suit at the level's start--and then, you aren't able to outrun monsters until you're in the water. There're also lobsters that scuttle back and forth in some pools. They're often guarding gold, but if you're clever, you can get the lobsters to block enemy. You can also walk on top of the lobsters for some tough-to-get gold pieces if you're very careful. And if all of this doesn't sound like much, it doesn't need to be. LR is very basic without ever approaching the total dryness of, for instance, Sokoban, and also unlike Sokoban, the action and interaction allow for believable added enemies and challenges like this.

LR also makes challenges optional, so you don't get stuck as easily. Non-gold items you can get in WS compromise between die-hard fans and people new to the game and a great way to get around the usual "gee, you're stuck" in a puzzle game. For instance, cake slices just get you points, and getting 90% of feathers unlocks the sort of bonus round Lode Runner fans love. Often you need to do something like jump and run on a falling enemy, or futz with a certain area at the start, to get these. Sometimes you just need to pray that the ladders that pop up after you get the gold will let you grab everything.

All this gets more demanding and nastier, and I mean this in the most complimentary way, as you reach the end of the 125 levels. Sometimes you need to freeze the screen to see the whole board--the WonderSwan screen not being very big--and that leaves the game feeling like busy work at times, because you have to scroll up to see where the enemies you just killed are about to reincarnate. This doesn't ruin the game, of course, but often feeling like the WonderSwan is asking you to check your work can get in the way of basking in a nice solution.

This is about the biggest nuisance, though. LR is a good game for black-and-white systems, and here the lobster and your squid-like opponents are more than acceptable. The scuba suit you wear is also very cute, with little bubbles coming from your guy either way (no, he won't drown if he stays underwater.) And if there are no especially wild puzzles, the game never seems to be mailing it in.

All this left me with a very favorable impression of the WonderSwan. Not that I found another game to play. But it's good to find a port of my favorite series on an obscure system that upholds the tradition and does something new. It'sabout the right balance of challenging and inviting, and if every port had thrown in a tweak like water or crumbling blocks, it'd have been quite exciting. It's too late to hope that Lode Runner will ever make a comeback, and I think I've exhausted all the old-school systems that might have new levels, so I'm grateful to be able to find games on the Nintendo 64, TurboGrafx and, yes, the WonderSwan which at least reminded me that other people enjoy the challenges in Lode Runner and were able to pass them on.

I didn't even listen to 300 new songs in 2011, probably. Wow.

Lol...you might be right. Since, while CC was a long review, it wasn't 350K words long.

I don't know if its just because I've had a lot to say about certain games like FF XIII and Chrono Cross, but I've been more in the 8-9 MB realm than the 5-6 MB realm recently. Might have to do a couple short-n-sweet reviews just in case I'm just getting overly verbose.

OD's Thought for the Day

I always (as in, both times thus far) enjoy reading about your expliots at Gamejam. Long may it continue!

I found it worth reading through too. Kind of jealous really :). Great that the event grew so much.

I've tried other text editors but can't believe I didn't discover Notepad++ until recently. I really like NoteTab Standard for organizing things that need chapters, but Notepad++ is great for typing one-off stuff like reviews I don't need/want to take too many notes on--it even tracks the # of bytes a file is, and so forth, which is nice when I don't want to bloat a piece of writing too much.

I'd actually heard of Notepad++ before but assumed it was too much like Notepad for some reason. But it's not. After trying a pile of other text editors geared towards HTML coding and such (which I bet some people here might find useful) it took me about fifteen minutes to realize that I'd found something I wanted and probably should've done so years ago.

So what finally made me take the plunge? I got sick of Windows 7's Wordpad asking if I wanted to save a text file as text, because it might lose all the formatting I never put in anyway. I could kill this in XP or even Vista by closing and reopening.

Can't give any non-windows recommendations, but it's great to find a freeware that -works-.

I'm playing through Longest Journey myself right now.

Well...yeah. I was confusing. It's good to see people glad to have me back.

Basically I have to admit I'm not trying to hit a home run with my reviews. But I don't want them to be low quality and boring all the same. I just want to make sure I am writing when I want to write. And it felt good writing the last one. I'll see where I go from there. Who knows, maybe I'll discover some old NES games I never played and I'll have something to say about that.

On the other hand there are games I'm glad I played like Kickle Cubicle that I have nothing to say about. I guess I needed some time away from review writing and feeling I really should--now that other writing is picking up, I feel better coming back to it every once in a while. I mean, it's great to read everyone here's writing, but just being physically around writers (regardless of talent) and throwing around ideas has its benefits.

Here's a weird thing I noticed online. Epic Dungeon is no more. It's now called Cursed Jewels or something like that with an extra class to play as.

I tried to read why, but can't remember. It just seems kind of lame because you and Joe have outdated reviews of a game that no longer exists in that form, I have a game I have no reason to review for that reason AND, most importantly, even if you have "Epic Dungeon", you still have to pay $1 to get this updated version. I mean, the money's no issue, but the principle of the matter is. To me, it'd be like if Bethesda came out with a patch for Skyrim where they fixed things, added a couple minor details, changed the name to NordWorld and charged you $50 more for it.

Since I'll be reviewing it in the next couple weeks most likely. Love the game, but am starting to get a bit tired of it. 150ish hours of something does do that.

1. Avoid Fast Travel when possible. I only use it to get back to base and/or collect quest rewards, but try to walk everywhere. The game's really attractive and immersive, but when you rely on fast travel, it really devolves. Which is why I'm still going strong after 150 hours. That walking takes time.

2. Most alive world I've experienced. Just the sheer number of quests you can get from just about everyone, as well as all the little randomized events that can happen as you're walking around the countryside.

3. If you play aimlessly with the purpose being to wander around and see what trouble you can get in to, it's near-perfect. If you play in a more regimented style, things kind of fall apart, as most of the game is based on a repetitive style. Get quest, go to dungeon, kill stuff, get item and/or kill boss, go back and get reward. If you're freestyling, you don't notice (or you notice, but don't care), but if you're planning to sit down and, say, knock off 4-5 missions for a guild or something, it kind of grates on you.

4. Even that's better than in Oblivion. Just because the dungeons look so much more varied. You might be getting sent to 30 different caves for fetch quests, but at least they don't all have the same general look.

5. Difficulty balancing is still an issue. Around when I hit the late 30s level-wise, virtually everything got very easy. It might have been because, thanks to smithing/enchanting perks, I massively boosted my armor rating AND added superior enchantments to everything. But, whatever, when you get to a certain point, it does get a bit depressing, as I went from needing to use stealth and guile in many situations to just being able to destroy everything with my fire-enchanted warhammer.

6. And by "stealth and guile", I mean "exploiting enemy AI issues". Hello, Mr. Bandit Marauder! You're a tough mofo, so how about I use sneak to peck away at you with arrows while you only make lackluster attempts to find me even though I'm only about 30 feet away! Man, I got pissed when I fought Movarth the Vampire, as he apparently regens health, so that strategy didn't work and I had to actually man up and fight melee style.

7. Gotten lucky with glitches compared to things I've read. Only quest that really glitched in any way was the Brotherhood quest where you have to assassinate a woman during her wedding in Solitude. Apparently, the town gets hostile and one of your DB buddies creates a distraction. Neither of those things happened and I also didn't get the reward for the perfect kill even though I did push the statue on her while she was addressing the crowd. The most annoying thing is that I did all three Bard's College fetch quests, but the special instruments never left my inventory, so I have 10-12 pounds of non-droppable quest items cluttering things up.

8. The inventory, for MISC items, is a bit glitched. Things don't always stack, which makes the list obscenely long. Also would have been nice if they created sub-menus for ores/ingots and soul gems and quest items. MISC just gets so long and cluttered.

I'd planned to write one. But I didn't. Still, I've been going through my writing notes. I have lots of other things to do, but sometimes I get hung up on something I always wanted to do and figure I might as well just have done with it.

Quite bluntly if I'm more interested in what people have to say about other games than they are about this, I can't blame them. I'm glad to be able to express something and to have that forum for it, even if I don't have nearly as much to say on this as I used to. And I'm glad to see several reviews already out there competing for RotW. And to see old names I know and new names I don't.

But with this sort of review (assuming it gets accepted) I always hope to act as a sort of pace car, e.g. if ASchultz writes about this--surely I shouldn't be worried about the sort of game I want to write about?

Astonishia Story (January 1st) [PSP]
Hits: 962

So, it was Xmas again and my sister was heavily pregnant with her first child. This meant she could not travel very far and, in our immediate family, she lived the furthest away. Being the selfish child, she demanded we all go and spend Xmas with her, condemning me to three nights on the world's most uncomfortable couch. I didn't sleep much, so instead, I played the PSP a lot, which had been left sadly ignored throughout the majority of the previous year. Despite having access to Ys, I spent my time playing Astonishia Story instead, for reasons I still do not fully grasp.

So, there you have it. I had a cold, energy-draining holiday, and you got a review for a game you've never heard of from it.

Red Dead Redemption (January 8th) [360]
Hits:1994

I got R in the Alphas. Remember when we used to have tourneys? Good times, those. So, yeah, we had one and I won. With this review. That, according to Will that week in the RotW, didn't even make the top 3. Take that, you kooky Canadian!

It really was a ramble review. I'll never be a refined writer; my reviews are basically rambling on a word document then trying to make sense of the mess of worlds that stick at the end, but this really came out so much better than I expected. I never wanted Redemption to end, yet I knew it had to at some point, so I procrastinated as much as I could and still didn't complete every side quest or challenge. It gives me an excuse to revisit Marston's world now and then. And shoot people who probably don't really deserve it.

101-in-1 Sports Party Games (January 11th) [Wii]
Hits: 2006

Because, sometimes, you can have to much of a mediocre thing.

The start of this year was just about the end of getting review codes through the post for me, and this would have been a depressing end. Around the end of last year, I got a few 101 game collections, the majority of which were by no means awful, but hardly stand out. What they did do right was make a lot of the games insane enough for you play through just to see what they might come up with next. This collection just had a lot of broken sports stuff thrown in, most of which barely worked.

Medal of Honor (January 14th) [PS3]
Hits: 1175

So, at the end of 2010, I was approached by a gaming site of sorts who wanted to commission me to write a few things for them. I told them I would listen, and sold out a little. I hear it's the in thing to do. Anyway, I was asked to write something on Medal of Honor, which I'd previously done, so figured it wouldn't be that hard. I had a draft done by the end of the day, but they asked me to hold off because they had other things they wanted on the front page that day. I didn't care, so held off. No response a week later, so I gave them a nudge and was told that, that close to Xmas, they weren't bothered about getting new stuff on the page as traffic was culled. I shrugged and waited for them to response. New Year rolled by, and I nudged them again, were I was sent a message telling me I had taken too long to get the review to them, and that further commissions would need to be completed in a much more timely fashion. I didn't bother replying, and HG got a free review. Everyone's a winner.

Xenon 2 (January 23rd) [GEN]
Hits: 1162

Not even going to pretend to be humble about this; I love this review, and it'll probably end up being the best review I've written that no one will ever really read. I wrote it primarily at the end of 2010 for that alpha-marathon I remember caring about once, then deciding to save in for the next year when it was clear I had won. Joe destroyed me in the 2011 race, but I wasn't to know that then!

I'm glad -- happy, even -- that after this I never need to go anywhere near Xenon 2 again. Some things are best left to nostalgia.

ZPK2X (January 24th) [XBLI]
Hits: 1135

EmP: Remember at the start of the year, I said you should buy that live game with the kitten AK47 and zombie hoards?
DoI: Uh
EmP: Then mocked you for liking Unreal more than Quake III?
DoI: That's been going on for years
EmP: Never gets old.
EmP: I made a review intro from the corresponding nagging, anyway.
EmP: I'd forgotten about it until now.
EmP: Ever get around to picking it up?
DoI: I never did.
EmP: Almost exactly a year later, and I still might get the chance to mow you down with a kitten-shooting automatic rifle.
EmP: Isn't that, really, what a Christmas miracle is?
DoI: Now that I think about it, it does sound pretty magical

Cthulhu Saves the World (January 28th) [XBLI]
Hits: 1564

Much like Zeboyd's last Indie game, the dev shot me a message through HG mail to offer me a review copy. Unlike last time, I'd not already purchased the game and wasn't already most of the way through the title. But! Much like Breath of Death, the game rocked.

Stuff like this is what kept me glued to the indie service through the end of 2010 and the start of 2011.

The Ball (February 6th) [PC]
Hits: 875

The Ball turned up on my doorstep one day, much like a lost child nobody wanted and were looking to pass on. I am a charitable soul, so I took it in, played it through my PC (which struggled, alarmingly) and decided the kindest thing to do would be to then review it. I did. And that's how I saved February.

Still don't know why I bolded I remember twice.

Mass Effect 2 (February 28th) [360]
Hits: 734

Here's an odd statement. I put off and put off playing Mass Effect 2 because I know that as soon as I started, I'd play nothing but, and I didn't want to run out of game time so quickly. Hell, even now I have DLC missions I've not played because the thought of having no new Mass Effect to be able to play right now distresses me.

ME2 lived up to this ruinous self hype by being almost effortlessly better than the first game, which I still openly adore. I went into the review know I'd made a bit of a hash out of the review of ME1 by bouncing all over the world in an attempt to prove its vastness, so reined this review right back in. I'd learnt a few things when I took some risks with Red Dead that paid off, so reemployed them here. I'm more than happy with the result.

Thunder Force II (March 15th) [GEN]
Hits: 895

Man, I wish we could have carried stuff like this on. THE PLAN was to release a new Thunder Force review each day, and it's something we more or less managed to pull off. Flanked by site titans like OVERDRIVE (est 1845), MASTERS (obligatory Canadian) LEROUX (Missing, presumed drunk) and DarkEternal (Second best writer with dark in his name) we went back to the obscure beginnings, ran riot through the 16bit era and came out the other side with JP-only imports. It was awesome; even if Jason's messing around with the coding then changed the colour scheme of the page and endured me to hours of further HTML coding, and his efforts now have sunk them into oblivion along with anything else I put in score box summery. But there is a bitter rant for another time.

Along the way to our great success there was betrayal, desertion and hissy fits aplenty, but we all looked forward to doing it all again a month later. Sadly, the disastrous 'Arnie' week, featuring games made off the back of California's former head of state, never came into fruition, and my grand plan of a theme week each month ended with this one glorious shot. I don't care; it rocked.

(Also, just in case it was in doubt, this won the RotW, and is, as such, THE BEST Thunder Force review on the site.)

Epic Dungeon (March 31st) [XBLI]
Hits: 927

I like to think of myself of a bit of a pioneer. It's one of those things that helps me feed my mammoth ego, but covering the Indie scene really did give me a lot of satisfaction; especially so when I knew people were buying games they would have otherwise never hard of based at least somewhat on what I'd reported. In this case, Joe beat me to the review of this game, but only because I'd gotten him into XBLI in the first place! You have a lot to thank me for, Joseph, and I've yet to see a gift basket.

Hydrophobia (April 14th) [360]
Hits: 934

Sometimes brilliant, sometimes dodgy, it's still such a crazy improvement on the game that first hit XBLA a year or so before, they might as well rename it. The recent update dropped the price of the game by half, fixed more or less every major complaint leveled against it, and left a decent survival horror-like game where your biggest fear is the environment.

Nevertheless, this review was a huge headache for me. I'd been writing pretty well up to this point and it was this review where it all started falling apart. I had horrendous writer's block and, as I always have done in the past, decided the best thing was to power through it. This led to several finished drafts but they were, to be blunt, absolute shit. Hell, this one isn't great; Bloomer rightly pointed out that it has a confusing voice where it jumps back and forth between the old and the new, but, by that point, I simply had to wash my hands of the thing and try to move on.


Beyond Good & Evil HD (April 23rd) [360]
Hits: 928

Despite the fact that this a cheaty rewrite of an older review and I still use large chunks of that review in this one, I really struggled to get this one out. It was probably the beginning of the end of my regular output because I got all kinds of frustrated that I couldn't finish the bloody thing so locked myself away in a corner until all three (I think three?) of the drafts were done. It was about then I decided I wasn't enjoying it anymore. I wrote out of obligation.

There's a little slice of drama out the way. I then won a RotW. Yay!

Alan Wake (April 26th) [360]
Hits: 910

I'm a bit of a survival horror junkie -- have you noticed? As such, I was psyched throughout the entirety of Alan Wakees production. Then I purchased the game later than everyone else, because that's just how I roll.

Suskie and Marc (and most of the interested world) played this before me and gave very different accounts of their experiences. Through Suskie's excellent review, he made the game sound fantastic, and through Marc's constant bitching over AIM (which I've missed the most in my time offline) he made it sound like a one-trick pony. I guess I thought they were both right as I took the middle ground.

The second game is reportedly underway. I'm hoping they can build upon Wake strengths and perhaps dial down the trees.

Ravan Squad (May 2nd) [PC]
Hits: 614

This was a bit of a cheat. When I wrote for the original Raven Squad game for this very site, I also worte for another one which has since closed its doors. I reclaimed my earlier works, lest they fall into the pist of Oblivion, and posted them back up here. Or, at least, I did for this one. I had the others on a USB key along with a handful of drafts and recently found out it had died. It also had most of the Year in review on it, so I've had to write this entire list again from scratch with a much fuzzier memory. On the bright side, it means you, one of the three people to read in this far, have to put up with 33% less pretentious bullshit.

Shining Force II (May 10th) [GEN]
Hits: 841

It's taken me years to actually review this game, despite the fact I must have beaten it a good half dozen times while I've been writing reviews, and countless times before that. Shining Force II is my go to game. I have it on a USB key on my keyring so if I'm ever stuck somewhere, and therefs a PC nearby, I always have something to do. This review came off the back of such a game; work was dead, so I spent more time playing Gen roms then doing what I was being paid for.

I actually have a very small list of games I want to review before I throw this crazy reviewing gig in, and, now this one's down, it's now almost exhausted.

B-Team (May 30th) [DS]
Hits: 1030

Not everything has some story behind it. Sometimes I just play a game on a whim then review it. This was one. Rubbish, rubbish game thought it was.

Akane the Kunoichi (July 17th) [XBLI]
Hits: 944

We got a message asking us to review this Indie game because one of us used to be pretty hot on reviewing the Indie scene (it was me before I got lazy!) and so I did. I had heard of Akane's dev team before as I had downloaded the trial of their previous XBLI game, Ace Gals Tennis, and it was rubbish. I expected the worst on this account, but found an extremely worthwhile title included instead.

I should delve back into the Indie scene again should I discover the free time ever again.

Neptunefs Pride (July 26th) [PC]
Hits: 835

Spared the label of the longest review I've ever written by the absolute monster that is Oblivion, Pride is still a huge rambling wall of words that doesn't ever really delve into the obligatory trappings like how the game works or what the controls do. It's a condensed gaming diary, I suppose, that talks about my favourite subject. Me.

But, still, I love this review. It's easily the one I spent the most time on during last year, not just because it's huge but because I spent a lot of time editing it. It used to be a lot bigger, believe it or not, but I scaled it down to what it is now over several rewrites, and I wasn't going to publish the damn thing until I was ready. Hell, it was sitting in storage while I wrote B-Team and Akane.

Pride still weighs on my mind and you can expect something else to come from the game sometime in 2012. Itfs a fascinating concept, and I'm simply not done playing around with it and bragging about my results.

(P.S: Second RotW in a row. Watch the record break)

Dead Space (July 28th) [360]
Hits: 910

AKA: The review were Gary forgot who directed his favourite film.

Yeah, that was a gaffe, made better by a quick edit but forever immortalised by a bit of forum banter now stuck to the bottom of the review for eternity. No one to blame but me.

But, yeah, the review. Came out okay, didn't it? I'll assume you said yes, voiceless reader. Thanks, dude.


Trapped Dead (July 31st) [PC]
Hits: 713

I'd like to say it seemed like someone out there in Dev land still loved me when a copy of Trapped Dead showed up on my doorstep, giving me a perfect chance to be momentarily excited. A strategy game set in and around an undead apocalypse? X-Com with zombies?

Except, no. Trapped Dead is an ambitious RTS that plods on like the stereotypical foes that dot the game. One laden with bugs and errors that the games more likely to crash that have you get your brains munched on. Patches were released, but only in German, which made keeping to a review deadline pretty hard going. My German is a little rusty. Or non existent. One of the two.

On reflected, 4/10 seems a little high. Oh well.

L.A. Noire (August 13th) [PS3]
Hits: 1378

Good old L.A. Noire. Like the slightly retarded friend you keep around out of pity, Noire could have (and kinda has) got by on just how obvious it was that an impossible amount of hours were ploughed into the game. The fantastic graphics, the highly professional voice acting and the stellar period-perfect soundtracks all failed the mask the fact that all they had been stapled to was a very pretty game constantly telling you to press X to win.

L.A. Noire is several steps too close to being an interactive movie and too far removed for comfort from being a video game. It doesn't so much as hold your hand, but lifts you up in a fireman's carry and dumps you face first into the solutions it wants you to find. Then, if you manage to mess that up anyway, it doesn't care. You win regardless. What a steaming pile of wasted potential.

The only noteworthy thing it did was allow me to write a review that won me a forth straight RotW victory thus granting me the highest streak record. Congrats, Team Bondi. Rockstar might now think you're a bunch of dicks, but you're alright by me. So long as you stop making shit games.

Fire Mustang (August 20th) [GEN]
Hits: 664

In my attempts to win RotW #5, Fire Mustang threw me for a bit of a loop. Out of games to review, I needed something I could beat quick and decided to jump into the crazy world of 16bit scrollers, pick out a dud, and there tear the sucker to shreds. People seem to love that kind of thing around here -- a sad commentary in and of itself. I was then quite annoyed to find the game was actually pretty good, and that I enjoyed it enough to sink all the time I had to find a new game into playing it. I was stuck, then. A praise review it was. I'd not planned on that.

Someone else won RotW that time around. Suskie even came out of the shadows briefly to try and end my run early, and I salute him for it.

Tropico 4 (November 6th) [360]
Hits: 481

Back in the hazy month of August, Jason and myself sat down to compile a large list of games we should try and get review copies from. It was a list of some size, and many e-mails were sent. One game arrived. This one. I was a little annoyed at first; I'd asked for the likes of Rage and Deus Ex, and I got bloody Tropico 4. Then the game very slowly took over my life. It's still the title I sink the most time into now. Hell. Ifve not even beaten Deus Ex yet because I spent more time building a civilisation on tropical islands instead, then watching the bastard people turn on me because I feed them nothing but rotten bananas, or sold their homes to criminal immigrants.

I'm currently in the midst of ruining a former partner. I've bought his company from underneath him, and am trying to have one of my pretty islands host the Olympic games, just to bankrupt him a little bit more.

Get to tha choppa 2 (November 29th) [XBLI]
Hits: 514

Man, Ifm clever. Have you read this review? Go do so, it's not very long, and I think you'll agree Ifm clever. Yes. Me.

Smart.

I don't like it.

Boo.