Author: Simes

  • Red Faction: Guerilla Contest Winners

    We had many excellent entries for our Smashing Things With Hammers photo competition; but, in the end, there can be only one winner. Er, ten. There can be only ten winners. Whether it be cruelty to animals (real or fake), giant eggs, or actual self-harm, you’ll find it here. Thanks, folks; your dedication to the…

  • 24 Hours in Paradise

    As some of you may know, six members of the Ready Up staff attempted to set a World Record by playing Burnout Paradise for 24 hours. As some of you may also know, they succeeded. This is their story. I thought I should write up some stuff from the player’s point of view, while throwing…

  • Ready Up…grade

    Ready Up will be unavailable for a while this weekend, while we move to our new server. As the site has grown, so our server needs have grown with it, and our new home should be better able to cope with those needs. How does this affect you, the reader? Well, at some point during…

  • Pounding the Skins

    With the new year upon us, many will have (as usual) made resolutions to exercise more or lose weight which they will (as usual) probably fail to keep. For myself, I resolved some years back not to bother making any more New Year’s Resolutions. It’s about the only one I’ve ever managed to stick to.…

  • Transient Possession

    With the busy holiday season upon us we’re absolutely deluged with shiny new games to play, and yet I still feel that there may be older games I’ve missed that I ought to check out. Just to see if I’ve missed anything. So I’ve been renting them. No doubt game rentals are another thing, along…

  • Northrend Ho!

    It’s been just over a week since Blizzard unleashed Wrath of the Lich King on the teeming masses inhabiting the World of Warcraft. A whole new continent to explore, and a shiny new Hero class to potentially do it with. The Death Knight starting area is a great piece of storytelling and Death Knights themselves…

  • Tom Clancy’s EndWar

    What’s that title about, then? Is it the End of War? A War over an End? And if so, which end? And of what? All these questions and more will not be answered through playing EndWar, the newest product of the mammoth Tom Clancy franchise factory. A brief plot synopsis: terrorists (curse them!) have nuked…

  • The Woes of a Giant Publisher

    Poor old EA. Things seemed to be going so well for a while, there. They’d decided to stop churning out so much utter dross, come up with a bunch of compelling new titles, announced the inevitable plans to sequelise the life out of every single one of them, and things seemed good. But now they’re…

  • Digital Wrongs

    DRM is a major talking point in the PC gaming world right now, with Spore being review-bombed at Amazon.com (and the subject of a class action lawsuit) and Red Alert 3, a member of a massively popular franchise, set to have similar restrictions as that game and potentially facing a similar backlash. So first, a…

  • Mercenaries 2: World in Flames

    Mercenaries 2 is a game of contrasts. Of yin and of yang. Of dizzying highs and spirit-crushing lows. Join me on a journey through this most explodey of landscapes, in search of the game within, to answer the most burning question of all: Is it worth your money? Travel the world, meet new and exciting…