Sometimes I get Bono to cover for me, for no obvious reason.

If you’ve never been exposed to UFO, and like pixels, you can download the game right now from Steam for a few pounds. It’s what I did a while back when my craving to jump back into it became too much.

It looks like I wasn’t the only one with that craving, though. A few clusters of developers and publishers seem to have noticed that there is one influential series in particular that hasn’t yet been remade, and so are looking to plug that gaping hole with a release of their own (ignore that). I’ve already written about the new XCOM FPS title, which regrettably appears to have slipped off the edge of a very large cliff.

You can play the beta of Xenonauts right now, which is Goldhawk Interactive’s exciting community-fuelled re-imagining of UFO in a cold war setting.

Also looming onto the horizon is Firaxis’ (the studio behind Civilization) recently announced XCOM: Enemy Unknown, which will release for consoles and may offer an interesting alternative approach to that taken with Xenonauts.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

None of that is the reason I’m here, though. No, the reason I’m here is to relate to you a story of extreme bravery in the face of extraordinary peril. I’m here to tell you the story of my recent revisit of UFO.

When I first fired up the game I chose the hardest difficulty setting. Not because I’m confident, or because I am in any way proficient at the game. No, I selected the hardest difficulty setting because I am an idiot.

UFO essentially boils down to arming and equipping a group of multinational soldiers and sending them into battle with the alien forces in an attempt to fight off their gradual invasion of Earth. As in life, it can be difficult to remember the often seemingly random combinations of letters that make up foreign people’s names. So before I did anything else, I renamed my squad of soldiers so that, in the heat of turn-based battle, I could remember which ones to protect and which to sacrifice.

What was needed was a simple naming convention. Obviously, I chose to name the weaker, less accurate soldiers after Manchester United players. Naturally, the stronger and more accurate soldiers were named after Liverpool players. The players with French-sounding names were left as they were, because in battle they can be instinctively disregarded as Arsenal players.

As you can see, they all look exactly like their namesakes, with the possible exception of Ryan Giggs who looks like Guile.

My merry band of X-Com operatives named after famous footballers (and Dirk Kuyt) initially fared well against the alien horde. The only soldiers we lost were French. Ryan Giggs was leading the charge with Paul Scholes, and they formed a formidable partnership, until on a mission in Jamaica Ryan Giggs was shot in the groin by an alien had to recuperate back at base for two weeks.

He actually took out a super-injunction on me. He was really shot in a far more embarrassing place.

As it goes, I forgot to put Giggs back in the squad after he recovered, so he missed a lot of action. I like to think that he was running around the base on his own with a football the whole time. Meanwhile, Paul Scholes killed three aliens with one grenade on one mission and was accordingly promoted.

'You can take back all the medals I've won in football - the finest moment of my career was when a fictional and poorly rendered represention of me was promoted to Sergeant.' - Paul Scholes, last week.

The whole tactic of sacrificing Manchester United players in favour of Liverpool players was failing horribly, mainly because Paul Scholes was killing everything with grenades before the Liverpool players could get there. This changed, though, on a mission to secure a landed UFO on a farm near Chicago.

As soon as Paul Scholes wandered out of our plane he was shot in the knee, suprisingly not by an arrow, but instead by searing green alien plasma. Two aliens were holed up in a farmhouse right next to our vehicle, and were taking potshots at my poorly rendered representations of professional footballers, who simply couldn’t return fire accurately given the superior position of their foes. I had one more soldier left to try to kill the aliens before the end of our turn (and certain death for most of my squad). I’d given dependable Dirk Kuyt the rocket launcher, and he’d carried it into battle on every mission without even using it. However, he was now my only hope. I peeked his head out of the plane, and he took aim and fired. Did he do us proud? Did he step up?

Yes. Yes he did. For none can stand against the might of Kuyt.

Sadly though, it was the last true moment of glory for my merry band of fake millionaire sportsmen. Just one day after Paul Scholes returned from knee knack, the aliens attacked our base. I hadn’t installed defences, because (as I think I’ve mentioned previously) I am an idiot. The aliens landed on the soil above our base, and poured in through the hangars and access lift. My squad were scattered all over the place. I formed them into two groups, and tried to hold down their respective sections. Rio Ferdinand, Eric Cantona, Peter Schmeichel and Dirk Kuyt were holed up in the west living quarters. Paul Scholes bravely led the other team, comprising the rest of my force, in the east storage area.

The west team were first to bite the dust. An alien popped his head around the corner and took a shot at Eric Cantona, who took a solid hit to the chest but was still standing. Before the alien could take another shot though, Rio Ferdinand instinctively dispatched the extraterrestrial fiend with a laser rifle headshot. The game doesn’t render it, but I like to think that the alien’s head exploded dramatically and wetly. It’s irrelevant anyway, because the very next moment, all four of that team were obliterated by what can only be described as a small nuclear warhead.

Those evil alien bastards.

So, it was down to Paul Scholes and my other five remaining soldiers.

I really should have hired more soldiers. I was employing 40 scientists at that point. 40 scientists! Not one of them was around at the time of the alien attack. Not one. I could have strapped live grenades to them and walked them right up to the aliens, but no. They were all out buying test tubes or something. Selfish.

Anyway. I still felt the situation could be salvaged. Paul Scholes had proven himself in grenadefare, and he was in a room filled with grenades. This was simple. I would instruct Paul Scholes to gradually and methodically throw grenades into every corner of the base until his arm got tired. Then I would strap live grenades to the remaining Manchester United players and walk them right up to any remaining aliens. Essentially, as long as my team still had the air in their lungs to strap live grenades to each other, and walk up to aliens, we were golden.

What I had forgotten is that aliens in UFO can use mind control to take over your soldiers and use them to kill your other soldiers. So, when I looked up from the sketch of Paul Scholes throwing a small grenade at a larger grenade that I was working on to see John Barnes being taken over by aliens, walking over to Ryan Giggs, and firing his rocket launcher directly into his back to kill both of them and Nick Barmby, it again dawned on me that I am an idiot. Yet, I still feel that much blame lies with John Barnes here.

Why, John Barnes? Why? Not this. Never this.

I’d packed my forces too closely together, and now they were all dead, apart from Paul Scholes, Luis Garcia and Ole Solskjaer. The next turn, aliens took over Luis Garcia and he shot Paul Scholes three times in the back with his laser rifle. It was down to Ole Solskjaer.

The first point of order was to kill the now alien-controlled Luis Garcia. Ole Solskjaer did so. The next point of order was to be shot at by every alien in the base, and somehow survive to the next turn. Ole Solskjaer did so. The following point of order was to start throwing grenades. My new plan became to have Ole Solskjaer pick up all of the remaining grenades, fight his way through to the hangar, and then hide in the corner and throw said grenades at the door until there were no more grenades.

Ole Solskajer did so.

To say that Ole Solskjaer went on an insatiable grenade-fuelled rampage of alien bloodlust would be to sell short the unbearable glory of what occurred. He killed five aliens single-handedly in hand-to-grenade combat. That is to say, he used one of his hands to throw grenades at five aliens until they all became green stains on the wall. Even the game itself had to pause proceedings and pass comment on the sheer awesome it was rendering:

Yes. I know.

At that exact moment, I received an email from an unknown sender, with just the below picture attached. I will never know for sure who sent it, but I am assuming it was God.

He also killed a man with a trident but it happened so fast I couldn't get a screen-grab.

All good things come to an end, though, even insatiable grenade-fuelled rampages. Especially insatiable grenade-fuelled rampages, in fact.

The aliens presumably got bored of being blown up and fired a small nuclear device into the hangar, rupturing the fuel tanks and turning brave Ole Solskjaer into such a fine mist that the game couldn’t even render it.

With my forces spent, the world was defenceless. The aliens had won.

This is the screen you're shown when you lose. It might as well be the title screen.

In fairness, though, that picture doesn’t look too bad. What you’ll essentially have is a bunch of people with extra arms, crouched around a campfire singing songs about Norwegian ex-Manchester United players. I’d call that something to aim for. Sounds a bit like Skyrim.

Boom! Headshot. Happy Trails! Also, welcome to the party pal. Also, Yippee-Ki-Yay. Also, I'm an exceptional thief. Also, let it snow.

I mention all this because circumstances in my life are pulling me away from that community, and severely restricting the time I get with those friends. I’ve struggled with this fact for months, and have felt angry with the situation. Like the Hulk but with more crying. Now, though, I have come to terms with it. What you learn as your grow up is that you can’t be everywhere at once. You can’t be all things to all people. If you have an open heart, and make friends readily, you won’t get to spend time with them all.

Like a prostitute with too many clients. Sorry.

Of course, most people probably learn that lesson when they’re 13 years old. My development has always been behind, though, due to the four solid years of my adolescence I spent trapped inside the Water Temple in Ocarina of Time.

Four years. Six hours a day. The water-cake is a lie.

Although as you get older the amount of free time you have to spend with those you care about becomes more limited, you don’t forget about them. You miss them, and you idly think about what they might be doing on some rainy Thursday afternoon (usually you conclude that they’re probably dicking around on Facebook with the rest of the world).

So this article isn’t a call to arms, a request for all the friends I’ve met online to meet up in a Minecraft server and build a giant, throbbing heart of love and fellowship.

Or a giant, throbbing anything of love and friendship.

I’m writing partly to encourage anyone who ever feels lonely when gaming, or wants people to boast to when MrCuddleswick only kills them three times in a round of Modern Warfare, to pick up the figurative pen and introduce themselves on a forum of their choosing. I recommend Character Select, because it has the highest handsome levels on the Internet, but the choice is yours. Think about how many people in the world there are that have access to the Internet (I saw a computer with a 56k modem in Wales a couple of weeks ago so it is definitely reaching some pretty remote areas now). If you don’t fit in with the first community you find, then try again with another community. The rewards are worth it.

In truth, however, this article is really for me to wave and say hello to the friends I miss. The friends I used to speak to every day but no longer can. As the community has grown, it has widened, divided, expanded within those divisions and evolved. Some people fell out with each other, some grew incredibly close, and some even totally hooked up and got it ON.

I’ve raised a glass to you all over this festive period. Thank you for the good times, and the bad times, and the sexy times. I’ll see you all as soon as I can.

Or next week when I get fired from my day job for constantly referencing 80s movies and play games forever instead.

Yay.

I’ll assume you just stopped reading to go and buy it, and this is now three hours later. You have completed all the levels. Unfortunately, I have something unpleasant to tell you: you played it wrong. Let me tell you how you should have played it.

The true glory of Scribblenauts is the same as in real life. You have to become really good at just one thing. One skill that you excel at. A niche.

Plumbers are good at plumbing. Gardeners are good at gardening. Doctors are good at having cold hands. Footballers are good at cheating on their wives.

In Scribblenauts, you can summon any object you wish to try to complete puzzle-like 2D levels. In the end, it becomes too simple.  The main test is jumping through the hoop of figuring out what exactly it is that the designers want you to create in a given context. What you have to do to truly make the most of Scribblenauts is train yourself to solve solutions using a pre-conceived “special skill”.

My special skill is velociraptors.

Yep. This is happening.

Anyone can complete Scribblenauts. However, only a gifted few have the nous to best the game using velociraptor-based solutions wherever possible. It’s like speed-running, without the speed and the running, and with more velociraptors.

Prepare the Schoolhouse for a new year? Velociraptors. Help with the pit-stops? Velociraptors. Give the workmen their tools? Velociraptors? Velociraptors. Velociraptors, velociraptors, velociraptors.

Velociraptors.

Now, granted, some problems are not easily solved by the enthusiastic application of velociraptors.

Ok! I know just the thing!

It is a big challenge.

That man does not look refreshed.

What you’ve got to do is mix it up. Work around the problem, whilst staying true to yourself.

Right... I think I understand...

Don’t be afraid to think outside the box. There are many types of velociraptor.

Big. Small. Baby. Angry. Vegetarian. Scottish.

When pursuing velociraptor-based strategems, you will quite naturally often find yourself under threat from rampaging hordes of velociraptors. When this inevitably occurs, may I recommend the anti-velociraptor turret?

Accuracy can be a concern, yet still notably less of a concern than the velociraptors.

So, find your own way. You can’t be the velociraptor guy. That important position in society has already been ably filled. Figure something else out.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I was Ready Up’s man, live on the scene as it happened. For your convenience, I took notes so I could provide a breakdown of the main talking points:

00:01 – We see a notice that this trailer may contain inappropriate content for children. There is also a URL displayed below this cryptic message – www.esrb.org. I’ve been to this website, and I’m 90% sure that it is some sort of viral marketing ploy. Supposedly “esrb” stands for “Entertainment Software Rating Board”, but absolutely no one has told me so far that “esrb” isn’t the Norwegian for “GTA V will be set in a zoo in Norway”, so that is now the front-running theory.

00:08 – We’re on a beach. There is a couple walking towards the sea, possibly suicidally. One of them might be David Hasselhoff – it’s impossible to be sure on this point. Importantly, they have a dog. Will there be dogs in Grand Theft Auto V? Yes. Can you car-jack a dog? Maybe, I guess. Can you car-jack David Hasselhoff?

Hell. Yes.

00:12 – We’re looking at some palm trees in the foreground, and skyscrapers in the background. It looks warm. I should also mention at this point that there is a man saying words constantly throughout the trailer. I’ve watched the trailer 400 times and I still don’t know what he’s talking about. Something about dreaming of velociraptors in a field of barley, I don’t know.

00:18 – Golf! There is golf in Grand Theft Auto V. Golf buggies too. That will be seen as a huge leap forward from the golf buggies of Grand Theft Auto IV. Huge intersection between the two markets of golf and Grand Theft Auto, always has been. Rockstar are still wise to this. Also, BLIMP! There’s definitely a blimp up there in the top-right corner. I now can’t wait for the blimp mission, and the series of missions leading up to the blimp mission.

00:19 – Jet Ski! Were there jet skis in the other Grand Theft Auto games? No one remembers, or answers.

00:21 – Mountain! Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas had a mountain. God I wish someone would remake that game with current tech.

00:23 – There is a man in a car. This is the first hint we see in the trailer that you will be able to drive cars in Grand Theft Auto V. Wait a minute – that car appears to be transforming. Is this, in fact, the first hint we see in the trailer that you will be able to drive Transformers in Grand Theft Auto V? Almost definitely.

Fat bastard simply will not fit in my garage. Tried everything.

00:29 – Windmills in a lovely desert-like landscape. Looks like Red Dead Redemption. That can mean only one thing: Sodding. Cougars.

00:32 – We see an authentic-looking American highway, complete with signs. It was impossible to read them and I don’t know how to rewind the video.

00:33 – A blonde lady in a bikini walks away from the camera. Could be Bridget Fonda in Jackie Brown. Can’t be sure. It might just look like her. Decide for yourself.

She is the one on the left.

00:36 – Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air is confirmed.

00:41 – We see a burly man in a suit who looks a bit like Tommy Vercetti from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. This is particularly exciting because Tommy Vercetti wasn’t just a simple amalgamation of Tony Montana and Michael Corleone, and in fact he had his own totally original and intriguing story arc which we’re all very excited to hear more about.

00:45 – Planes, plants, wicker baskets and choking men – all now confirmed.

00:47 – Some men jump out of a van wearing masks. It looks like some sort of heist. On the side of the van it reads “Pest Control” and “Los Santos”. Oh my GOD! That’s it! It’s the confirmation we were waiting for! There WILL be pest control vans in Grand Theft Auto V.

We will have to wait for confirmation that you can actually drive the pest control vans.

00:53 – Some homeless people standing on the sidewalk under a bridge. Looks like a main road. Every Monday night, the Ready Up community will accidentally crash into these people during Cops ‘n’ Crooks. Might as well get used to it, so this is the first thing I’m going to make everyone do when the game is released.

00:54 – A man in sunglasses and a nice red top walks past. We can see the letters “L”, “O”, “S”, “S”, “A” and “N” painted in graffiti on the wall behind. No idea.

00:57 – Prostitutes and liquor. Both fine on their own, but never mix them. That’s my advice. Use it well.

00:59 – A poverty-stricken chap holds a cardboard sign up asking for money. People are saying he looks like Niko Bellic. He doesn’t. Interestingly, there is a sign behind him that might possibly say “San Fierro Bay”, or maybe “Send Fred Bongs”. I don’t know what any of those words mean.

01:00 – More homeless people under another bridge. Some have tents. I don’t think I’ve ever crashed into a tent in a car in a videogame. I’ve done it in real life, obviously. You have to do that when you join the staff team at Ready Up. At least, I had to. At least, I did.

01:01 – Tony leaned in and shouted “fighter plane” at this point. Not to be pedantic, but it really is more of a fighter jet.

01:01 – On closer inspection, that isn’t a fighter jet. It’s STARSCREAM!

Yep. 100% confirmed. Give us a wave.

01:04 – We see some large machinery doing……something……in the foreground. In the background we see some impressive draw distance. We can make out the blimp again, quite clearly. Rockstar are really pushing the blimp. Will the final battle be atop the blimp? Yes. Will the 20 missions before that involve raiding enough ladders from enough DIY stores to be able to build one enormous ladder that reaches the blimp? Yes. Will Italian guards throw rocks at you as you climb the ladder? Wrong game but probably still yes.

01:08 – A flaming car. In the background, skyscrapers. The skyline looks slightly different to before though. The sky is overcast. Maybe we’re looking at a different city? Overcast, burning car…..Glasgow is on the cards.

01:09 – No wait, the camera rises above the burning car to reveal…….the blimp. Glasgow is off the cards. Stupid blimp.

01:10 – We see a great big jet plane zooming over a nondescript hill, and the camera pans over to finish the trailer with a wide sunset shot of the city, mainly showcasing the blimp. Draw distance is superb. Blimp distance is difficult to judge.

Throughout most of the video I’d been thinking it was a very small blimp in the foreground; a blimp that a hamster might use to move between tall hamster buildings perhaps. However, I’ve spent a few hours visualising and drawing the blimp, and I’m now thinking that it is a normal-sized blimp that is simply far away.

For your convenience, I have highlighted the blimp in the above picture.

What we have learned

1) If the game is set in a Norwegian zoo, it is a large, diverse zoo, with a blimp and only one animal.
2) You can probably drive cars in Grand Theft Auto V.
3) Transformers are in. 100%.
4) Pest control vans.

In summary then: the blimp.

N.B. Please let me know if I missed any appearances of the blimp.

Ha! Try shooting our heads off with a flamethro-oh wait she has.

Thus, AbsoluteGaming is right up our street. They run gaming nights and challenges all week long, and offer prizes and (more importantly) bragging rights to those who finish top of the pile. Unlike much of competitive gaming on the web, there is no particular focus on shooters. Of course, Gears of War, Halo and Call of Duty are all on the menu. Alongside those though, AbsoluteGaming offer regular Grand Prix and time trial competitions in Codemasters’ Formula One series and Forza 4 (along with similar action with the likes of Dirt 3, Blur and the Need for Speed), and match-ups in the Pro Evolution Soccer and FIFA football series. If you need something a little more slow-paced, you can compete in the Tiger Woods golf games, or take part in some poker tournaments. You may be more likely to find us in those tournaments because Laura hasn’t yet figured out how to shoot our heads off in those particular arenas.

absolutegaming.co.uk

Their support for the FIFA series in particular is comprehensive. They’ve blended some great new ideas with tried and tested formulas, leaving plenty of room for glorious, glorious banter:

- A variety of different multi-tiered leagues, featuring club, international and Ultimate Teams, with relegation and championship battles each season.

- Monthly ladders for games between members, and monthly tournaments ranging from World Cups to the Johnstone Pain Trophy and Simulation leagues.

- Their site currency “Scudo”, which is earned through playing games through AbsoluteGaming and can be used to buy teams for the season ahead – the more active you are, the more chance you have of getting the team you want for the coming season.

- Every other Tuesday is 2 v 2 night – two AbsoluteGaming members team up with each other to compete against other pairs.

- Any night of the week there should be players available for some relaxing Pro Clubs action.

- They have even hosted worldwide tournaments on behalf of the Xbox Community Network.

If he was really playing to win, this tackle would be one metre higher. Shame.

Now is a good time to check out AbsoluteGaming and get involved, as they’ll be marking their 2nd birthday with three special tournaments between the 10th and 12th of November. On Thursday 10th November there is a Forza 4 Grand Prix, on Friday 11th November there is a FIFA knockout tournament and on Saturday 12th November they round it all off with a Modern Warfare 3 Carnage Night. For each of those that you participate in, you will receive an entry into their prize draw. Check out this link for more info.

The introductions of “Tactical Defending” and “Precision Dribbling” have significantly altered the balance of the match engine. Possession is turned over less frequently than in FIFA 11, despite a slightly heightened chance of passing interception on default settings this time around.

In previous FIFA releases from recent years there was little timing required in tackles. Players could simply hold down a certain button, and the defender would automatically run directly towards the opponent with the ball to attempt a tackle. As such, defending was notably simplistic. Some timing was required, but the defensive side of the game was starkly under-developed in comparison to the finesse-laden shooting and dribbling aspects.

In FIFA 12, though, under the default control setting, this system has been replaced. A button can be held down to instruct the defender to automatically follow an opponent who is running with the ball, maintaining a distance of one to two metres (or you can do this manually if you wish). Then, to actually move in and attempt a tackle, you must then press a second button. This action can be easily mistimed, at best leaving your defender trailing in the attacker’s wake and at worst resulting in a conceded penalty kick and disciplinary action from the referee.

On the dribbling side, attackers running with the ball will automatically slow their gait when approaching an opposition defender. This gives the player controlling the dribbling attacker far greater room for error than in FIFA 11. The value of playmakers like Wesley Sneijder or Andres Iniesta increased in FIFA 11 because greater finesse was required in passing. The value of those players has further grown in FIFA 12. Their agility and responsiveness makes them even harder to tackle now that player-controlled defenders suffer greater risk from misreading dribblers’ intended direction. Instruct your defender to stab out a tackling leg at the wrong moment against a Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo, and there’s a good chance the opposition team will be exuberantly somersaulting and posing in celebration near the corner flag seconds later.

As such, depending on the competing formations and strategies, FIFA 12 matches become open, end-to-end affairs far more commonly than in FIFA 11. This may reduce the sense of realism for some players.

However, those players probably won’t notice, because that crucial sense of realism persists due to the new animations provided by the heavily augmented player impact engine. The new engine is not quite as dynamic as the promotional material implied. Patterns will appear as you spend more time with FIFA 12, but for every time that a collision appears overly familiar there will thankfully be another time when players collide in a painful-looking manner that rings so true that you’ll involuntarily wince as if it were happening to your groin.

It’s important to stress how well all of these new elements come together. There aren’t any apparent exploits, and tussles for possession never feel scripted or even anything less than fluid. The testing team at EA Canada have produced truly great work here, with just a year since FIFA 11.

Beyond the match engine, EA Canada have added functionality and modes, many of which are in response to requests from the community. A myriad of gameplay sliders can be tweaked to your heart’s content, governing items such as opponent passing reliability and full-backs’ enthusiasm for overlapping. Online, your progression in adversarial ranked matches is tracked through a league structure, with promotions and relegations according to success. Players now choose their team before these matches. The game then automatically pits you against an appropriate opponent. The history of unranked matches against friends can be tracked, with the victor of each 10-game series receiving a shiny trophy. The Pro Clubs mode has been further enhanced, and will no doubt continue to grow in popularity. Competing in almost all modes in FIFA 12 will gain you XP, which goes towards your own leveling progression and if you wish it can also contribute towards a score for your chosen real-life club, placing you in competition with the fans of other clubs. The new EA Sports Football Club interface serves as the hub for this functionality. The overall interface and presentation of the game has been polished, and menus are generally a little more responsive to navigation than before, although there is still plenty of room for improvement in that respect.

However, with all these refinements and new ideas, there is a risk that the FIFA series is becoming a jack of all trades and master of none. The Career Mode illustrates this worry most clearly. If you play dedicated football management games, then FIFA 12’s Career Mode remains a pale imitation in comparison. It offers initial promise of depth but quickly becomes staid. Some players may find it more permanently diverting, but most will bore of the tired scenarios after one or two seasons. Taking multiplayer out of the equation, the only other real longevity for the lonesome player is in unlocking accomplishments with their Virtual Pro and taking on the Ultimate Team Mode once again. Both are experiences that haven’t really changed much since FIFA 11. It will be interesting to see what EA Canada can come up with for next year to truly freshen things up for the single player.

Not that setting up the game was a walk in the park for us three PC players. As best we can tell, playing a Football Manager network game over the Internet requires three things:

1) Pseudo-VPN software (we used Hamachi).
2) Firewall software that doesn’t act like a dick (impossible – we had to delete our firewall software).
3) A small novelty bottle of gin with which to ply your router (pour into a free ethernet port).

Even then, you still have to add Glaswegian guile, Suffolk resolve and Berkshire whinging to the mix to get it to work. Oh Lord how I did whinge. I whinged at the router, I whinged at SI Games and I whinged into Skype at my friends. If I hadn’t put all that energy into whinging, they probably wouldn’t have worked it all out for me so quickly.

We chose to compete in the English Premier League, and drew teams out of a hat (leaving the top four from last season out, because we are just a little bit hardcore). I was doing the actual draw myself, with everyone else intently listening to a Skype group chat. As such, my friends had placed their trust in me – the team I follow, Liverpool, was sitting there in the hat, and it would have been oh so easy for me to fix the draw.

I drew for myself first, and Liverpool came out. I put it back in, out of sheer chivalry. “Amazing scenes”, said John, disbelieving. I drew again, and Fulham came out. I was happy with that, because Fulham are the team with the comedy statue of Michael Jackson outside their stadium, and I’m a huge fan of making unpopular and regretful decisions. As my new chairman, Mohamed Al Fayed, eventually found out.

Home sweet home.

Ste got Newcastle United, and John got Tottenham Hotspur. In the data update we used, Tottenham are one of the best sides in the league and comfortably have the strongest squad of the three teams we drew, Fulham are a stable mid-table team with a modest budget, and Newcastle have a weak (newly-promoted) squad and a huge wad of cash to spend.

We set to work in the first transfer window. I splurged my entire transfer budget on a Croatian playmaker (I didn’t need) named Milan Badelj that I’d bought in a previous singleplayer season, largely because the words “Croatian” and “playmaker” excite me. In that way, yes. John called upon his rich knowledge of Football Manager to sign a young, quick Czech striker named Vaclav Kadlec. I did not dare ask if this excited John in that way.

Ste called upon his rich (and, it turned out, pernicious) knowledge of rubbish ex-Liverpool strikers to ejaculate a combined £16 million or so on Milan Baros and Djibril Cisse. Ste also forked out around £5 million for the Manchester City striker Jo, which was surprising because by that point John and I were expecting Ste to bring Stan Collymore out of retirement. “Just wait”, said Ste. “Just wait”.

We waited. Nothing happened. Certainly no goals.

For those unfamiliar with football, what Ste might as well have done with his transfer budget is buy Jedward, cut all of their legs off and play them up front. This also almost definitely would have gone down better with the Newcastle faithful.

Ste started cutting the legs off of the left one first.

Towards the end of the first transfer window, I took the important step of finally looking at my current playing squad. As it appeared that Fulham had only one left-back, and because I had already wasted all of my money on a presumably handsome yet ultimately pointless young Croatian midfielder, I suddenly realised I was screwed. I needed a left-back, fast.

John came to my rescue, by signing my skillful moneybags Senegalese striker Diomansy Kamara for £1.5 million. I was happy to see him go not just because of the much-needed cash injection, but also because Diomansy Kamara has a Decisions attribute rating of 5 out of 20. This conjures up images of Kamara arriving at training each day wearing nothing but a rubber chicken, because he’d given away all his possessions to a company that sent him an erectile dysfunction email once. Nevermind – he’s John’s problem now. See below for the video John made regarding how well that went:

Click here to view the embedded video.

We cried with laughter for 5 solid minutes when that happened. It was the greatest moment of my life.

Even with the cash from the Kamara transfer, I was struggling to find a new left-back. John recommended that I sign the Hearts left-back, Ruben Palazuelos. In case you didn’t know, Hearts play in Scotland, so I was understandably highly skeptical of his abilities. Nonetheless, I quite like saying his name – “PA! LA! ZUE! LOOOOOS!” – and that is more than enough for me so I signed him up.

However, it soon became apparent that this was not a good call. Palazuelos moves so slowly across the pitch that you’ll swear that he has only one leg, or at least you would if the lack of grace with which he kicks a football didn’t strongly imply that one of his legs is three times the length of the other.

He's the one in red. That's how he runs.

Once our transfer business was completed, we began the far less interesting business of actually playing matches. All three of us started the season brightly. Ste’s Newcastle racked up a win away at megabucks Manchester City, my brave Fulham side bravely secured a 0-0 draw at the hideout of the shadowy corporation Manchester United, and Vaclav Kadlec scored roughly 10,000 goals every game for Tottenham, propelling John into a tussle at the summit of the league.

However, as the Autumn drew to a close the cold, harsh winter weather began to take its toll on the hastily assembled Newcastle squad. Almost all of Ste’s players had one of their limbs snap, twist or burst, leaving him with a threadbare collection of shankers and bottlers. He even had to play Alan Smith.

Smith is paid £50,000 a week. Ste could not shift him for love nor money. Nobody offered either.

Newcastle plummeted down the league, closely followed by my Fulham side. I also had injuries to deal with (Ruben Palazuelos’ one good leg contracted gout or something, keeping him sidelined for five months), but Fulham’s big problem was psychological. The epicentre of ennui that swept my squad was our main striker – a man named Bobby Zamora.

My “friends” quickly discovered that Zamora’s achilles’ heel is apparently that, if you praise him publicly in the press, he can slip into a sort of existential reckoning. This cripples his morale, and makes him even less likely to score a damn goal at least once in a while (which is very unlikely indeed at the best of times). I tried whinging at him, but it didn’t help.

So, every week, either John or Ste would release a press story praising Bobby. The AI managers even got in on the act – just when Zamora had perked up a little in mid-December (mainly because Ste and John had grown bored of prodding him), Wolverhampton Wanderers manager Mick McCarthy, out of nowhere, said that he thought Zamora was an excellent striker, and he would love to have him in his team. This somehow destroyed Zamora’s fragile psyche once and for all. I put him on the transfer list and moved on. I like to imagine him sitting in a darkened room, painting abstract art and listening to The Cure.

There he is, telling everyone to be quiet so he can listen to The Lovecats again.

With Zamora locked safely in his fortress of solitude, and the Icelandic striker Eidur Gudjohnsen now leading Fulham’s line, we rose back up the table to glorious mid-table mediocrity. John was still riding high in the league, battling for first place. He was also through to the final of the league cup after beating Wolves in his semi final (shove that up your pipe and smoke it, McCarthy). Ste and I had to face each other in the other semi final to decide who would win the right to have Vaclav Kadlec score 14 goals against them in the final. I won the first leg 1-0, and we drew the second.

The exit from the league cup piled the pressure on Ste. Knee-deep in a relegation dog-fight, and also eliminated from the FA cup by lower-league opposition, he had been fearing for his job for a few weeks. Eventually, we all woke up one morning to the news that Ste had been relieved of his post as Newcastle manager. John and I initially were stunned and left numb by the news, but after a few milliseconds those emotions were overruled by a powerful inclination to laugh out loud. Ste was the Geordies’ new Chosen One. He was supposed to bring balance to Newcastle, but all he did was figuratively shag Natalie Portman and kill Samuel L. Jackson.

Pictured: Ste meeting disgruntled Newcastle fans on the steps outside St James' Park.

That’s where we’ve left it. The next game is the league cup final between John and I. In the league, we’ve each won once in our two fixtures, so it’s surely going to be a hard-fought battle. My plan hinges on introducing Zamora to Kadlec 15 minutes before the start of the match, in the hope that Zamora might depress Kadlec so acutely that he won’t leave the dressing room at Wembley because no-one understands him.

Beyond that, many questions linger. Will Newcastle accept Ste’s new application for his old job (they’re apparently “considering” it at the moment)? Will John win the league/league cup/FA cup/Champions League (sigh)? Will Ruben Palazuelos apologise to me for existing (as he very much should)?

I’m looking forward to finding out.

Kazuya’s team-mate, standing behind him, was called Yoshimitsu. He was wearing a full coat of armour and was carrying a sword. Ryu remarked to himself that this situation did not seem fair.

Ryu glanced to his rear, and exchanged a sage nod with his team-mate, a small Chinese lady called Chun-Li. She was not carrying a sword, and the only armour she had was a pair of spiked bracelets that were bigger than her head. She also seemed to be suffering from acute elephantiasis of the thighs, which looked painful and restrictive.

Ryu looked back over at Yoshimitsu, who at that exact moment was stabbing a rhino to death with his sword whilst teleporting. Ryu again remarked to himself that this situation did not seem fair.

Dying rhino not pictured.

The fight countdown started. Ryu cast a glance out of the screen to the man controlling him, seeking reassurance. The man with the Ready Up t-shirt did not look like he knew what he was doing. Ryu recognised him as Simon, one of the members of the Ready Up team who plays Street Fighter. Sadly, though, Simon is too cool to actually be any good. Ryu gulped, then stiffened his resolve and focused his mind on the coming battle.

“FIGHT!” shouted the announcer.

Kazuya leapt forward and kicked Ryu in the chest so hard that one of his bounteous pectoral muscles burst, showering them both in hearty chunks of man-breast and nipple. Ryu staggered back, clutching the empty space where his left pec—his best pec —had once been.

Bounteous.

Ryu looked down at his exploded boob, then turned to look at Simon through the screen. There was an understandable look of concern on Ryu’s face. Simon nodded authoritatively, and surprisingly pulled off a dragon punch.

Ryu soared through the air, letting out an involuntary “Shoryuken!”. The tattered remains of his left pec flapped nastily in the breeze.

The dragon punch did not connect. Simon had mistimed it, as usual. Kazuya waited patiently below Ryu as he helplessly fell from the air. Kazuya then produced some sort of scissor kick thing that was so fast that it made the air glow yellow for no apparent reason. It was quite something. As if God himself had painted Kazuya’s feet with radiance.

This is pretty much how it happened, except that Ryu was crying at the time.

Anyway, the move slammed into Ryu so hard that his spine actually flew off. It bounced off through the jungle ruins, as Ryu yelped in pain. Ryu’s anguished cries registered with Simon, and so he asked his opponent how to tag in a team-mate. He stopped playing to ask this, but his opponent didn’t.

As Ryu gingerly and inexplicably rose to his feet, with no spine and no left pectoral muscle. Kazuya performed some sort of grab move and, whilst Simon’s opponent explained how to tag in team-mates, Ryu was spun around and thrown to the ground. This got lots of dirt from the floor of the jungle ruins into Ryu’s wounds, which was generally seen as unfavourable by Ryu.

Simon tagged Chun-Li in at this point. She bravely entered the fray, and launched towards Kazuya with a spinning bird kick. Simon was pretty happy that he’d pulled off a spinning bird kick; even after 15 years the charge moves still give him trouble.

Whilst spinning around upside down and moving very slowly towards Kazuya, Chun-Li noticed that she was going to fall short of her opponent, and started to fear for both her and her breasts’ safety, having seen what Kazuya had done to Ryu moments before.

Her worries were short-lived, though, because Yoshimitsu tagged in for Kazuya and immediately cleanly sliced Chun-Li in half. Well, it wasn’t immediately. There were roughly 10 seconds of mistimed blocks from Simon that Chun-Li had to execute as Yoshimitsu delivered a flurry of kicks, punches and slashes directly to her brain care of her face. Also, it wasn’t exactly a clean slice in the end either but let’s not dwell.

The important thing is that her life bar was gone. So, Ryu came back into the mix with a sliver of health remaining.

Then Simon’s opponent treated him to a Cross Art attack, where both team-mates get involved in some sort of unpleasant super move. Yoshimitsu started pummelling Ryu, who flew up into the air with an understandable look of concern on his face. Then Kazuya came back in for the finishing move, during which he essentially minced Ryu. Ryu’s white dressing gown thing landed neatly on top of the pile, giving it the outward appearance of Shepherd’s Pie.

Yet again, Ryu cursed the day that Simon discovered Street Fighter.

Guan Ma Rippenden Ho-Wah Exclusive 7

Wisely eschewing the more showy zeal of Guan Ma Rippenden Ho-Wah Exclusive 6 in favour of expanding on the strong foundation of Guan Ma Rippenden Ho-Wah Exclusive 6 Arcade Edition, Guan Ma Rippenden Ho-Wah Exclusive 7 was the first game in the series to utilise Thunder Action Response combos.

An explosive moment of Thunder Action Response in the seminal Guan Ma Rippenden Ho-Wah Exclusive 7.

Holy Blast Brush Challenge

Another timeless Japanese underground classic, inexplicably overlooked by the mainstream. This bouncy, upbeat horror title cast players in the role of a schoolgirl armed only with a hairbrush that displays ghosts when held up in front of a torch. Although its true meaning is endlessly debated on forums, few argue that the highlight of 2002 was the scene in the garden, despite, or perhaps because of, the controversy regarding what the nude mountain goat did to the hairbrush. A masterstroke, either way.

Screenshot.

The Hidden Chair

Edgy survival horror designed and built in its entirety by one man - the guy who says “Resident Evil” and “Resident Evil Two” quite slowly and very loudly on the title screens of Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2. He had no prior experience of programming, so he cleverly turned this to his advantage by implementing the project through Microsoft Powerpoint, saving time and resulting in very little compromise in final quality. The twist ending kept us all guessing, as we clicked the final slide’s contents slowly into view, one-by-one. The Hidden Chair also featured some amazing use of fonts to convey growing tension.

Note the soft edge of the chosen font in this memorable early scene from The Hidden Chair.

Go Go Happy Hamish Rhythm Explosion Deluxe

A piercing deconstruction of the human condition through the medium of Kinect-enabled dance action, Go Go Happy Hamish seamlessly blended live action clips from 90s television shows with charmingly quirky graphics. It received some notable pockets of critical acclaim, but was shunned by a general public laughably more concerned with fluffy baby tigers and promises from Peter Molyneux of small boys called Milo.

Go Go Happy Hamish Deluxe. The only reason anyone should use Kinect.

Minecraft

Minecraft allows you to build a giant urinating penis in the sky.

Pictured: a giant urinating penis in the sky.

Knowing and delicate satires such as Duke Nukem: Forever and BulletStorm skewer the reportedly dire situation so intelligently and dryly that they knowingly ironically appear submissive to the trend.

So you’d think that when a genuinely complex protagonist is wheeled out in front of them at great expense and effort, and he isn’t wearing space marine armour, and doesn’t sound like Nathan Drake or have massive tits, they’d all stand up and applaud with renewed vigour. They would clap until left with blunted stumps, surely, if a talented writer/director was empowered by innovative technology to weave a cautionary parable around their story’s tortured central soul?

Or, perhaps they just wouldn’t bloody notice.

There he is. Right there.

Of course, the reason they didn’t notice is because the game is five hours too long so they got bored. Also, crucially, the narrative is fragmented with all the elegant grace of an unconscious bear on a trampoline.

VYou is what’s new.

VYou is the newest and most fun thing about the Internet ever. You create a profile. You ask people questions, and they answer back in the form of a webcam-filmed video. Then they ask you questions, and you also answer back with your webcam. All your reponses line up on your profile, and can be instantly clicked and loaded up by anyone with even a passing interest in your face. You don’t even need a profile to ask questions. If you like, you can just roam the site endlessly and anonymously, asking people who their favourite character is in EastEnders, or why they don’t watch EastEnders.

Some people say it’s as if Twitter and YouTube made sweet, sweet love and created VYou as their offspring. Others see it more as a forum, where you can add body language and intonation to your posts. It is assuredly its own beast though. One of our favourite things is how futuristic it all feels. This is the sort of thing Tom Cruise would use in Minority Report, probably to post videos asking where his minority report is. What really matters, though, is that it is a warm, inviting community that continues to grow quickly.

Most important of all, however, is that Ready Up have the premier gaming channel on VYou. The team are on there right now waiting for your questions. Ever wondered what we look like at 1:00 AM on a Wednesday, and wanted to ask us if Sonic could beat Mario in a fight at that exact moment? Visit our channel, check us out in all our bedraggled glory, and do so with glee.

Ready Up on VYou. Our faces, in you eyes, on demand - http://vyou.com/channels/readyup

So, now you need to decide what to ask us. The world is your oyster. Want to know if they have Halo in Wales? Ask Laura. Want to know why Sonic is on a horse? Raise it with James. Burning desire to know the last game that made Lauren throw up? Get on VYou and ask her.

You can use VYou however you like. People from all walks of life are signed up. Some users are candid and insightful. Some are more playful, or have inappropriate relations with their teddy bears. Some of them are writers. Some of them are relationship or fitness gurus. Some of them are dancers. Some of them are pensioners. A few of them are celebrities. One or two of them will draw you a picture of a velociraptor riding a jet-ski for no other reason than the fact that you asked.

Get on there and get involved. You might even find Tom Cruise.

When you move your arms, the Jedi might also move his, and then you will be immersed.

I watched all the footage, read all the copy and listened to all the podcasts. I still didn’t care.

Then I suddenly realised I was tired of something else. I was tired of the cynic inside me. The part of me that sneers at all the sequels, sneers at Microsoft for peddling Kinect, sneers at the new Sony handheld and sneers at Nintendo for apparently allowing reception classes at primary schools to design their consoles. I can’t moan about all this familiarity, and then also moan that Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo are all pushing new hardware that can potentially empower developers to produce truly fresh experiences, fail as they might.

This time ten years ago, Grand Theft Auto III was probably just about falling onto my radar. This year, the games industry is nonchalantly farting out games of that quality for fun. There are consoles with better graphics than the PS2 that fit in your pocket. There’s a console that you don’t even need a controller to play. There’s a football game that’s more realistic than actual football. There’s even a new Tomb Raider game, for the love of boobs.

Pictured: Boobs.

Videogames are capturing the imagination of an ever-widening market. E3 is the epicentre of that buzz, and the aftershocks are more powerful than ever. So, I’ve made a choice. I’m going to let it all wash over me. Instead of pointing the finger at the re-imaginings and sequels, I’m going to wallow in them, munching at them like a full bag of Skittles until I feel sick and pass out. Then, when I wake up at some indeterminate time in the future, we’ll all be assessing whether or not Kinect, Wii U and Vita are empowering developers in the way the manufacturers have claimed they will.

For now then, it’s going to be an incredible year. Modern Warfare 3 is surely going to somehow top its forebears, presumably by causing the entire world to explode in a shower of moustaches. Battlefield 3 will do its best to rain on the parade. Uncharted 3 will similarly deliver an interactive big-budget action movie experience directly into our faces. FIFA 12 and Forza Motorsport 4 will take authenticity to dizzying heights, ensuring that most of my Christmas holiday will be spent between trying to realistically injure the groins of the entire Manchester United squad and racing around the Top Gear test track in a reasonably priced car. Deus Ex: Human Revolution will give both my new PC and my moral compass something meaty to chew on. Dark Souls will immerse, Gears of War 3 will bring us together and Rage will dazzle us with its sandy splendour.

Rat-a-tat-a-tat, neeeyown, dukka-dukka-dukka, ka-boom. Yay.

Those are just the tip of the iceberg. Bring it all on. I’ll moan about sequels properly next year. Scout’s honour.

It’s been nearly six years since I had a decent gaming rig. Even then it was just a matter of slapping a mid-range card into a three year old shop-bought system. Before that we had a modest Pentium unit, whose main contribution to my gaming world was that it could run Championship Manager without a boot disk.

For those who are too young to know what the hell a boot disk is, allow me to provide a metaphor: imagine that your car doesn’t have enough power to drive to the shops, but if you put a floppy disk into it and then turn it on, it will suddenly have enough power because it no longer has seats, brakes, mirrors, indicator stalks or furry dice.

If you’re too young to know what the hell a floppy disk is, I hate you.

Before the Pentium system, we had a 486 DX2. It cost well over £1000 and had 8MB of RAM and 263MB of disk space. I know these figures well because I needed to compress the hard drive to install Championship Manager 97/98, and had to use the aforementioned boot disk to free up enough memory to run it. The processor ran at 66MHz. 66! For reference, that’s only 1/8 the speed that Tony’s brain can come up with obscene jokes. If my family had bought Tony instead, we could have run Championship Manager 97/98 on him, and it would have saved me a great deal of bother.

Bad news Simon - Alan Shearer just equalised so you've been relegated. To lighten the mood, have I told you the one about the vicar and the filing cabinet?

It was so sweet to finally play those games after having to go to so much effort to simply load them up. It made classics like UFO: Enemy Unknown, Sensible World of Soccer and Syndicate even better. As a result I love them all dearly and, yes, I would mate with them too if I could (but CDs shatter and pierce nastily when you try that).

So, PC gaming might just be where my heart truly lies. Those formative experiences have been the basis for not just my hobby, but also my career. However, this new PC represents the first time I’ve ever built a system from scratch.

I think the blue Intel box contains the gerbil that powers the USB hub.

Daunting at first, but I realised something early on that helped greatly.

You see, building a PC is very much like making love to a beautiful woman. You insert things where you think they should go, and then you enthusiastically flick what appears to be the switch several times only to have it stare back at you glumly.

Also, it will start to smoke if you use it too much.

The biggest problem was mounting the stock CPU fan on to the motherboard. I couldn’t get it to sit right for ages, mainly because every time I tried to push it down into place, the motherboard creaked sickeningly, as if at any moment it was going to explode a shower of green plastic directly into my eyes. Fitting the processor was similarly troubling. There was a metal lever that I had to push down to lock the cover in place. However, the lever was stiffer than Ryan Giggs at a Miss Wales competition and, you guessed it, the motherboard made a sickening creaking sound as I forced it down. My face was locked in an uncomfortable cringe throughout this and many other stages of the process, but eventually we got there.

Here is the depraved, unholy orgy of wires you ordered sir.

So, now I’m back on the PC gaming scene. I already feel persecuted, and suddenly I’m filled with incandescent rage by lacks of dedicated servers, or by choppy frame rates. I’ve spent 80% of my time so far changing settings in games, trying to achieve the best balance between performance and quality that I can. It takes me back. I’m already considering installing 64 bit Windows, just in case it gains me an extra 5 frames per second in Rift.

Of course the flip-side of all this excitement is that I now have no money, for PC gaming is like throwing your wallet into a special jet engine that explodes just after it shreds wallets.

Aesthetically, Red River is generally strong. Throughout the admittedly familiar campaign (expect it to last around 10 hours), the player orders their four man squad through huge open areas against beautiful mountainous backdrops, always alongside friendly squads with convincingly animated and detailed character models. On occasion, however, low-res textures fail to upscale as you move closer, and also trees and buildings will noticeably pop into view whilst travelling in vehicles. Proceedings are enlivened by snappy, genuinely funny dialogue, in particular from your commanding NCO, who seems to be on a personal mission to out-swear Bulletstorm. A particular highlight was when he berated me for being a “slack-ass pussy fart”, which I confess I did probably deserve at the time. This exuberance is also present in the similarly entertaining cutscenes between missions, and is a welcome addition to the series, although taken out of context some content could perhaps be fairly criticised for racial insensitivity.

As mentioned, Red River places the player in the role of squad leader, tasking them with the command of three soldiers. The unpredictable behaviour of those squadmates is the game’s biggest failing. As with most shooters, cover is the lynchpin of strategy, and will determine both the route you take through the large maps and your success against an accurate and tactically aware enemy force. It’s disappointing then that, as with Dragon Rising, your squadmates continually fail to grasp the concept, and will consistently move out of cover like it smells funny despite explicit orders to the contrary. It’s not uncommon to spend more than 60 seconds in the middle of a firefight carefully positioning each of your squadmates in what appear to be sound tactical positions, only to then have them inexplicably wander out of cover towards the enemy force like a lost lamb.

Enemies can incapacitate you and your squadmates in just a couple of shots, and will do so even in the rare cases when your team holds their ground, let alone when they wander off. It’s good then, that the co-op experience is a different kettle of fish. Up to four players can tackle the campaign together, but things improve immensely with just one human companion in tow. The expansive battlegrounds you find yourself in provide ample opportunities for flanking and surprise attacks on the opposing forces, and those sorts of tactics are far more easily realised with some voice chat and another pair of human hands.

Friends can also join in with additional game modes, called “Fireteam Engagements”. These take the form of stock mission types, e.g. escorting convoys or holding a single point against endless waves of enemies. They’re good fun, and bring to mind the oddly relaxing Terrorist Hunt mode of Rainbow Six Vegas and its sequel. One of the key differences between Red River and other tactical shooters like the aforementioned and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter is the range at which you engage the enemy. It feels easier to hit your target despite this range (and the resulting need to account for bullet drop) in Red River than it was in Dragon Rising, thus making the resulting pitched firefights less frustrating.

Your character has several attributes, for example sprint speed and assault rifle accuracy, which you can improve using experience points earned for success in campaign missions and Fireteam Engagements. There are four classes for you choose from in all game modes: Rifleman, Grenadier, Scout and Auto-Rifleman. As you play as each, you unlock weapon customizations, gadgets and combat bonuses (perks), which can open up new avenues of strategy and help to keep things fresh. There is a lack of competitive multiplayer modes, but in fairness the game lends itself far more greatly to co-operative rather than adversarial action so this is no glaring omission.

For the most part, Red River improves on Dragon Rising, providing as it does a more accessible balance between authenticity and gratification. However, it is still a challenging game that tests players’ reflexes, aim, decision-making and concentration regularly, often with little margin for error. Unfortunately this healthy challenge is compounded by teammate AI that frequently leaves a lone player with almost all of the work to do themselves. Co-operative play with communicative friends improves the experience greatly, and is where Red River really shines.

Personally, I didn’t find the content of the trailer offensive – if anything I suspect that it had developer Techland’s desired response on me, i.e. it established that we can expect to face a powerful and indiscriminate threat in their game. Believing that literally anyone is at risk of death from the enemy is a good way of delivering a successful horror experience not just in films and television productions but also in games. It also primes prospective players with the knowledge that, if they found the trailer unpalatable, the final game may not be for them (whether or not a trailer should do that was presumably a question broached in board meetings at the developer/publisher).

On the other hand, there is a subjective line that can be crossed where the entertainment value of the horror doesn’t amply offset how uncomfortable it is to experience the emotions provoked. In other words, most people have a limit to how uncomfortable they are prepared to become when watching or playing something like this. Clearly, this line was crossed for a great deal of people who saw the trailer.

Many of us feel the same effect when we watch The Only Way Is Essex.

So, I was fine with the Dead Island trailer. It only convinced me further that I will enjoy the game; that Dead Island is so far up my street that I’ll probably have to spike the Union Jack flags directly into its spine for my imminent Royal Wedding party. However, something else has dampened my expectations.

This.

In this game, I want to be caught in a zombie apocalypse. That means survival horror, and that means scarce resources and difficult decisions. It does not mean that I want to be a matador to a giant enemy called “The Ram” that will promptly run into a wall and expose a glowing red weak spot on its back. That sort of thing is great in a Zelda game, or a Spiderman game. It’s even great in a Resident Evil game, coupled as it is with their core themes of body horror and biological exploitation.

Almost everything else I’ve seen of Dead Island has given the impression that it will be Dead Rising but dirtier, prettier, more mature and with added viscera served by a first person viewpoint. We’ll get a close up view of the collapse of civilization trapped within the microcosm of a Pacific island. We’ll be able to improvise solutions to challenges within a varied open-world environment. We’ll have to add enhancements to degrading weapons found in that environment. We can do it all with friends in co-op. This is supposed to be the closest we will be able to get to living out World War Z, or being in a Romero movie, or hanging out in Atlanta with that bloke from Teachers.

Apparently, we will also get to shatter that illusion regularly by briefly pretending to be Kratos.

Oh man this guy is going to drop so many green and red orbs when I tear his head off. Reminds me of Dawn of the Dead so much.

I’m also assuming that the military will show up towards the end, and we’ll be forced to clumsily engage them with firearms, just like in Dead Rising. That endgame was an aberration on Dead Rising made all the more galling by the fact that the developer clearly knew out how to make the shambling zombie horde consistently challenging without turning their game into a crummy third person shooter. Dead Rising was made compelling by the constant deadlines and escorts. Some players found those aspects understandably frustrating but the fact is that deadlines and escorts are Dead Rising. They returned in the hugely successful sequel, thankfully for many players with the difficulty ramped down a notch, and a less incongruous endgame.

I understand that, from the developer’s perspective, it’s difficult to come up with new variations and situations involving the same shambling vanilla zombie horde and little pockets of survivors over the course of 10 hours or more of campaign. The Ram, and the other special zombies that have been announced for Dead Island, will empower them to more easily build a natural difficulty curve. Trouble is, with every power you give these special zombies, you get further from the baseline zombie lore that people hold closest to their decaying hearts.

Pictured: Vanilla Zombies.

A quote featured in PC Gamer from Techland themselves stated that, in comparison to Dead Rising, “Dead Island is more about the characters you play and the story, and how it unfolds”. Well, if that’s the case, then the survivors and their situations should drive the narrative and challenge, not a menagerie of special zombies designed to fill the few holes and variations left untouched by Left 4 Dead.

Er........this was taken on the holodeck.

But the final 12 or so hours really turned things around.

Firstly, the Overlord DLC is a great example of what DLC can and should be. Genuinely unsettling at times, imaginative, with a sharp twist in its tail and set against a beautiful backdrop easily at least on par with anything Bioware provided out of the box, I was impressed.

My sense is that, much of the time, DLC offers false value and often transparently exposes active efforts from developers/publishers to provide less product out of the box for the same price. I wouldn’t take away their right to do so, but I would still smack them round the face with a wet kipper for it, should both opportunity and a wet kipper present themselves to me.

The Bring Down the Sky DLC for the original Mass Effect is a case in point, but, the DLC for Mass Effect 2 marks a big improvement. Not just Overlord, but Lair of the Shadow Broker too. They offer refreshing substance with worthwhile plot arcs, and it’s very easy to believe that they simply couldn’t be completed in time for the retail release of the game.

So, two space-faring thumbs up for the DLC.

Pictured: two space-faring thumbs up.

The second reason I’ve fallen for Mass Effect 2 is the finale. Even great games often struggle to close out on a bang, especially fairly open RPGs such as this which can naturally suffer from pacing issues as every Tom, Dick and Harry meanders through the quests at their own speed. Fallout 3 fizzles out with a slightly wet pop, and the finale of Dragon Age: Origins offered little more than an opportunity to discover whether the 1,000th or 2,000th time you ineffectually club a dragon in the chops with your sword is the most disappointing.

Many times, developers apparently feel that they have little remaining recourse but to provide some sort of lumbering menace with a glowing weak spot and, while Mass Effect 2 does succumb to this convention, what comes directly before before is fantastic. Your decisions made both earlier in the game and as you plan your attack on the enemy stronghold quickly come back to haunt you in what is initially a seemingly arbitrary fashion, but on closer inspection can be seen as a relatively smart comment on the importance of knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your friends, and taking the time to earn their loyalty.

Failing that, at least there will be less of a queue for the Mass Effect shower each morning.

So, I’m going back for a second bite. Partly to best it on Insanity for the kudos and achievements, but also partly because I now know the finale is worth getting to, and this time I’d like to see it through different eyes. Not just those of a dirty Renegade, but also those of a converted cynic.

Plus, there are other things Shepard needs to tend to.

The first 15 hours were, admittedly, a bit of a thankless trudge. As with its forebear, Mass Effect 2’s attractive presentation and pleasing emphasis on conversations are tempered by clumsy combat and levels that are too often dominated by dull, linear metal corridors.

The narrative thrust is based around the threat of invasion and annihilation of some sort of galactic alliance by some sort of uncompromising alien danger known as the Reapers. Obviously, this threat is not recognised swiftly by the government of the alliance, because, well, shut up. So, it falls to me, playing the role of Commander Shepard, to attempt to thwart the looming destruction of all that is dull and linear in the galaxy by bringing together a rag-tag group of disparate alien combatants. The mission is bankrolled by an organisation called Cerberus, which appears to be a cross between a fascist terrorist group and an intergalactic corporation of unknown vocation. Either way, it’s a cool-sounding name so they have my full support. Also, they gave Shepard a new version of his ship, the Normandy, which was nice of them.

Shepard immediately set the crew to work on a Mass Effect radio and, if possible, a Mass Effect Nintendo system.

This being the sixth title in the ongoing Knights of the Old Republic series a Mass Effect game, the initial structure involves mincing off to various corners of the cosmos to recruit said combatants. This encompasses all the varied zany antics we’ve become accustomed to in Bioware releases, grounded in the dull, linear metal corridors we’ve apparently grown to love.

My favourite crew-member (whose bosom isn’t spilling out of their clothing) is Jacob. Here is a list of things I know about Jacob:

1) He is a tall, handsome man, commonly found in the armory.
2) If there is a Normandy fight club, he doesn’t talk about it.

Nope, still not talking about fight club.

Also of note from the first 15 hours – Shepard bought a space hamster for his quarters.

So, I’m now presumably around halfway through the game and Shepard has successfully rounded up a confusing menagerie of alien things wearing leather flight suits/hilarious fake stormtrooper costumes, all with the explicit objective of saving the galaxy/cosmos/universe/space hamster from the evil Reaper threat. We’ve shot the Reapers’ soldiers in the face several times already, but at some point in the near future we’re clearly going to need to shoot them in their main face with a larger gun to stop them.

However, all this is usually forgotten when I chew the fat with my team. Once they’re on-board, each of them wastes no time in insisting that we take time out from the mission (to save civilisation itself from destruction, lest we forget), for example:

“Can we go find my Dad? I think he might have died in place X.”
“Can we go find my sister? I think she might be in place Y.”
“Can we go find my daughter? I heard she was in place Z.”
“Can we go and destroy a friendly military installation? It’s just outside place Z. I don’t like it.”
“Can we stop for ice cream? A guy in place X had a flyer for a new stall that just opened at place Y. I like ice cream. We’ll need that flyer too. I didn’t pick it up because I was tired.”

It is said that completion of those requests is required to gain the loyalty of Shepard’s team. Unfortunately, I couldn’t give a flying brown one about their loyalty because, as I quickly discovered, their use in combat is on a par with that of an insubordinate trifle with a wet toilet roll sticking out of it. They are nothing more than an irritating distraction to Shepard as he miserably doles out the requisite six sniper rifle headshots to each enemy he encounters.

So, ignoring my team’s constant pleas for us to head in the opposite direction to our mission, and despite their abject ineptitude in “battle”, we’ve still been making good progress in gaining intel on our enemy.

Sadly though, we’ve lost focus over the last few hours. The reason for this loss is round and looks quite firm.

We've had reports that someone is smuggling large amounts of pizza dough on to the Normandy somehow.

I caved in and took on Miranda’s loyalty side-quest. You might think it was because she’s attractive, but such a conclusion would be unfair and in fact would be a little insulting to me. The true reason is that her back-story is genuinely the most interesting. You see, she was the result of an experiment to create something, which went horribly wrong/right, and now she is conflicted by several important and memorable feelings on the matter.

Such an interesting back-story.

After completing her loyalty mission, the content of which I’m unsure of (but I can confirm that it involved metal corridors, specifically of the dull and linear kind), Shepard was rewarded with a new outfit for Miranda. This simple addition has single-handedly crippled our efforts against the Reapers. My Shephard has become consumed by a simple question. In which outfit does Miranda’s bum look better? The white one, or the black one?

Before this conundrum ravaged his soul, Shepard’s free time was spent in his quarters making his space hamster pop out repeatedly (no). Now the walls are plastered with photos of his second-in-command’s bottom, as the Commander paces to and fro. The long dark corridor that leads to the cockpit has been converted into a photo-development studio. We explained the new mission to the Illusive Man, and he signed off on it instantly, agreeing that this new cause was markedly more important than the previous one. The studio runs non-stop 24 hours a day. Jacob and Shepard take shifts. It has brought them closer together.

We’re now working through the remaining loyalty missions after all. We need to discover new worlds, and the new dull, linear metal corridors they hold, so that we can compare Miranda’s outfits in as many different lighting conditions as possible.

So, I’ve engaged with Mass Effect 2 after all, despite my misgivings. I definitely haven’t been driven mad by tedium. Oh no.

The weaponry is perfectly judged. Every single nuance is exactingly designed to provoke an instinctive, guttural response in the player. It will reach in through your chest and vigorously massage your stomach almost to the very point of violent and inexplicable explosion, before teasingly winding you down again. In particular, the choice to force the player to first select the melee weapon before using it is the very definition of inspiration. Neanderthal shooters like Halo or Call of Duty will allow more limited players to simply mash the pad with their rudimentary misshapen hooves to perform the same action. Half-Life 2, however, forces them to make a considered tactical decision beforehand. A masterstroke. Bravo!

The graphical model of the helicopter inhabits the role with vigorous relish, commonly leading to comparisons with those other great antagonists: Shakespeare's Tybalt and the helicopter from Stallone's Cliffhanger.

The game opens with a man in a suit talking to the player with an odd inflection in his speech. He also appears at other points, including the splendidly avant-garde, peerless dénouement. His motivations and true importance are cleverly guarded from the player, who is constantly kept guessing by the mind-bending abilities of this deliciously ambiguous enigma. You’ll note that the player is never granted these powers, and so is led to feel a crisp, satisfying sense of futility. It makes perfect sense, and I’m 100% in my conviction that this is exactly what they were trying to do.

In fact, the philosophical ideas explored in Half-Life 2 completely decimate any previous efforts by anyone else in any craft ever. The message is focused and coherent throughout, especially during the sections where the player is tasked with piloting a “boat”, occasionally stopping off to twat wooden boxes in the face with a crowbar. Of course, as all those of purer intellect quickly come to realise, the “boat” represents the id, the water the ego, and the bouncing bomb-balls click into place as the super-ego. The boxes? They represent the greatest mystery of all. Love.

Bioshock can’t even understand that paradigm, or even the concept of a paradigm, mostly because it is not a body of sentient intelligence and is instead a collection of inert programming modules. This irrefutably proves beyond all reasonable doubt that Half-Life 2 is a far better game than Bioshock.

The character is an amalgamation of every notable philosophical notion for the last 10,000 years, and the colour grey.

The basic structure of Half-Life 2 is a swirling cacophony of brilliant and all-encompassing genius. Much time is spent crawling through vents and hitting small crab-like creatures in the face with a blunt instrument. These fruitful times provoke intense and sincere existential rumination in the player. One memorable section tasks the player with hopping between pieces of driftwood on a sparse beach of ruined dreams. The driftwood represents hope. Masterful.

The decision to give the most prominent NPC in the game, Alyx, dark hair is one of the smartest clues to unlocking the secrets at the heart of our souls that Valve deign to dangle before us. Her hair is dark, and so is what is truly within us.

Plus, blondes are kinda fugly, so win-win.

The physics engine showcased in Half-Life 2 is the most important single moment in the entire sphere of human scientific achievement. The developers utilise this exciting technology to create fresh and challenging spatial and logical puzzles in practical contexts. What could be more logical and practical than an entire city and coastline where every door is opened using some permutation of heavy objects, pulleys and see-saws? In an orgy of verisimilitude they have captured the very essence of modern society, and have boiled it down to its basic constituent elements – picking things up, and them putting then down somewhere else. The human condition, exposed in all its horrible glory.

If George Orwell was still alive, this is the Orwellian dystopia he would be most likely to cream himself over. The strongest evidence is in the health and energy stations dotted throughout the game world. The health stations are Winston, and the energy stations are Julia. Often together, sometimes apart, you’re left yearning for them to be united forever. Then we realise, perhaps with a sudden start in the middle of the night, that the player is O’Brien – draining Winston and Julia of their power, of their souls. Also, the lack of inventory management in the game represents the destruction of individuality. So I think we can all agree that this is an airtight line of reasoning.

The triumphant icing on the delectable cake is the gravity gun. A metaphor for the source of man’s power, the penis, it gives us all the opportunity to live out our deepest fantasies. Chiefly: ejaculating toilets and radiators at alien invaders. Yet more perfectly-judged social commentary ensues when the player finally reaches the Citadel and receives an upgrade to the gravity gun, thus increasing its potency. As we all know, the Latin for “citadel” is ” viagra”. Delightful.

All those capable of rational thought are able to acknowledge and celebrate the reasons why the developer has made these choices. They’re the choices we would all make if we too were perfect beings. The result is something that speaks to our very essence on a profound level.

Therefore, Half-Life 2 is not just the greatest game ever made, but also the best answer to every question that has been or ever will be asked, in any context.

A decade ago, if you wanted to envelope yourself in meticulous true-to-life accuracy and realism, then the Championship Manager series was the best (and often the only) option. These days however, the primary consoles have the processing speed and memory capabilities to power a complex back-end for the high-res action they lovingly splash onto our HDTVs. They can not only make their representation of Wayne Rooney look like him, but they can make it feel like him too. Try not to think about the mental image of feeling Wayne Rooney too much.

Seriously, try not to think about it.

Look through a footballer’s profile in FIFA 11 or Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 on the Xbox 360 and you’ll be presented with a longer list of attributes than ever, governing the core skills such as shooting, tackling and passing and including an almost exhaustive range of variants. We’re seemingly getting to the stage where player representations in simulation titles such as FIFA and PES can rival those seen in pure management titles.

Titles like FIFA are providing more and more underlying complexity.

The hardware capabilities of mobile devices are also increasing, and so we’re seeing some impressive complexity and depth under the hood of games that can fit almost as snugly in your pocket as Leo Messi.

Football gamers themselves are a diverse bunch. Some have their friends round each Friday for a tournament on Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer, others stay up all night obsessing over the relative merits of Swedish full backs in SI Games’ Football Manager series, and if you look around on the bus or train in the morning, odds are you’ll catch a glimpse of someone totally absorbed by the likes of Exient’s X2 Football on their mobile phone.

So, there’s a large, diverse and growing market out there for football titles across a wide range of platforms. Developers continue to be faced with a challenge – what does the intended market actually want from a football game? Will the management game fan accept less statistical realism in exchange for a more advanced 3D match engine? Would PS3 owners rather have a true-to-life “foot-size” attribute for each player, or 30 new celebrations to play with? Does a gamer who just wants to pick up and play a few matches once a day care whether or not West Ham’s reserve full-backs have correctly modelled speed and strength ratings?

Charles Chapman, Technical Director at Exient, the award-winning UK development studio behind a range of successful titles including Nintendo DS versions of EA’s FIFA, Tiger Woods and NFL series, has to make these sorts of decisions on a regular basis. He has kindly taken time out to answer our questions on some related issues:

Do you feel that the public conception of a sports person and their strengths and weaknesses can sometimes differ from the actual truth? For example, your average fan might believe David Beckham to be better at shooting than the statistics actually suggest.

I think yes this is true across the board really. The purpose of video games is to entertain, and be fun. Much of what goes into a sports simulation is tuned to appeal to what people believe the sport is all about rather than a direct simulation. Many sports have rather mundane periods of low drama, and little action – sports games tend to avoid this or even dress it up to be more exciting in some way. Player ratings are a part of this really. For a star player people expect them to be good at pretty much everything, so that follows through to the stats.

The bigger question here really is what do the stats actually mean. What does a 99 rating for shooting mean compared to a 50 rating? This is never laid out for consumers – we just know that 99 is better than 50. For speed, is a 90 rating player twice as fast as a 45 rating player ? Probably not. Ultimately the ratings are there to inform a little, but not be taken too seriously or literally. The game itself is more important.

Do you feel that developers are forced to meet these public conceptions? Is it something that is considered in development? Have there ever been any debates?

For data we’ve created we’ve never been aware of adjusting stats to meet public conceptions. Of course there are some debates between members where, for example a fan of a particular team or player will dispute a rating of a player, but it’s all pretty light hearted. Another example would be that we would not suddenly drop a players stats due to a run of bad form i.e Rooney, Torres, Almunia. The public conceptions about these players recent performances would not affect the fact that they are still world class players.

Relatively, how much time is spent looking at players’ specific strengths and weaknesses? What form does this analysis take? Do you utilise external data sources, e.g. Opta?

To be honest, not that much. Greater focus is placed on getting core details such as position correct. Many ratings in our data are procedurally generated (ie semi-randomly), and we’ve had no complaints from people about them. In a football game there are generally plenty more things to worry about, such as the AI, control methods etc before players start getting worried about specific player stats.

As development cycles are subject to limited time and resources, how often do notions of completely accurate player representations have to take lower priority to ensuring the core gameplay itself functions properly?

Completely accurate player representations are not a priority for us – the game must come first. You can have a great game with incorrect player data, but accurate player data with a game engine which doesn’t cut it will still be a poor game. Of course with resources and time both could be achieved!

Thinking more specifically about football games, when developing for a handheld platform is there naturally less scope for providing a large quantity of player attributes? Does a lack of variance between modelled players then become an issue? Is the balance difficult to strike?

For the handheld titles we’ve worked on we’ve generally been able to have close to the same level of attributes as home console games. The influence of some may be negligible, or even non-existent, though the illusion is more important than the reality. Lack of variance in stats never becomes an issue, going back to the prior question it is more important to provide a game that plays well and is fun then having technically accurate player stats.

Broadly speaking, would you say it’s more important to provide a fun game rather than one that is meticulously accurate? Does it depend on the platform?

For us, a fun game always comes first. Racing simulations are a good comparison here – the most popular racing sims tend to be either unrealistic arcade racers, or racers which create the illusion of being realistic, whilst being not very realistic atall. The original Gran Turismo is a great example of the latter. Also, it’s not platform dependant, whichever console we’re working on the idea of creating an enjoyable game is much more of a priority.

Any players in particular that you’ve enjoyed using in your games, or any players Exient have modelled in any sports title that you’ve been especially proud of?

To be honest, probably not – for us no player has ever received any genuinely special attention. The only time they have done so would be a cheeky rating increment from a team member who is a fan of a particular player. Also, we’ve had fun creating our own versions of ourselves for various games we’ve made!

What non-Exient sports titles have you enjoyed in the past? Are there any that have done a notably good job at accurately modelling real-world players?

Within the team here we’re still fans of FIFA on next-gen. Most of the team made the move from being PES die-hards a couple of years ago to FIFA now. It’ll be interesting how this year’s round shakes things up.

Exient is an award-winning UK development studio and is one of the world’s leading handheld video games developers. It is best known for its work on the award-winning Madden, FIFA, Need for Speed and Tiger series’ for Electronic Arts and the multi-award winning DJ Hero for Activision. They have a dedicated football development team, Team First Touch. You can find out more at www.teamfirsttouch.com.

But, those days are over. The blue cheese-flecked Wii is basking in relative glory on the bottom shelf now. Above it, the 360 is now poking precariously off the edge of the shelf to allow space for a new arrival. A new arrival that takes severe liberties with the title “Slim”.

Yes. I finally have a Sony PlayStation 3.

Before you all turn up trying to burglarise me, note that the stilton is now sentient and grows in strength each day.

I swear on my life, at the end of the third week it broke through the wrapping on its own.

So, it’s been 10 days since I welcomed the sleek, slender… no I can’t do it. The PS3 is immense. I killed four dogs walking down the high street with it in a bag, swinging it gaily. It knocked a bus over when I turned around too fast. It took eight of us to lift it onto the shelf. The weakest is now in a coma.

I’ve wanted one all along, but it’s only now that the pricing has lowered enough that I’ve taken the plunge. PlayStations were my main consoles for 10 years, but I jumped ship to the Xbox 360 because it simply offered far better value than Sony’s offering. At the time, there was around £150 price difference between the two consoles, which happens to be the price of a nearly-new Wii and a decent-sized chunk of stilton.

So, what have I got up to with my PS3 since it came into my life? The first couple of hours were spent downloading updates, wondering why I didn’t have a TV icon on the Media Bar, then restarting and finally receiving the glorious ecstatic release of the TV icon and the 4oD, ITV Player and BBC iPlayer functionality therein. Next stop?

Home.

I remember reading about Sony’s plans for Home a few years ago, and thinking, “Damn, that’s going to be amazing, I’m really going to miss out”. Well, go figure. All I was missing was a brief, confusing wander around a virtual settlement that’s so subtly unsettling that it gives Silent Hill a run for its money.

I don't spend much time in the apartment because my next-door neighbour is Pyramid Head.

That out of the way, I tried the web browser. Then I looked down at my iPhone, and back at the TV, and back at the iPhone, and back at the TV, then back to the iPhone and then the stilton caught my eye and I stared at it for 17 minutes.

Next I checked the PlayStation Store. This is more like it. WipEout HD – I’m on board. Then I spotted the back catalogue of classic PlayStation games, available in most cases for a nominal fee, and I had a nostalgia-gasm. The idea of having stonewall classics like the original Metal Gear Solid, G-Police, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy IX always sat waiting on the hard drive was an unbearably pleasant one.

Wait… what? There was a Final Fantasy IX?! It was about the childhood of Zinedine Zidane you say? Sounds brilliant, sign me up.

He rarely bothers summoning Shiva these days.

Later that first day, I headed to the local video rental proprietor to purchase Inception on Blu-Ray. I was suitably impressed. In HD, you can make out the consternation on Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s brow more vividly than ever as he watches Leonardo Di Caprio make up the plot as he goes along. Worth the extra few pounds.

It was a while before I actually played a game on my PS3. First one was Little Big Planet. I enjoy most things that feature Stephen Fry, especially when he repeatedly says the word “Sackboy” so very sweetly. It’s good clean fun. I was looking forward to finally adding it to my collection and it has lived up to my expectations. I played it with a lady I know who is sometimes in the flat when I am, and we richly enjoyed it. Even the stilton cracked a smile. Although something black with quite a few legs crawled out and ran under the sofa when it did so that was regrettable.

A lasting impression from the PS3 exclusives I’ve seen over the years is the polish. Little Big Planet takes you by the hand and exudes a constant sense of quality design in every facet. Uncharted 2 and Heavy Rain are other great examples of this. And now they’re all at my fingertips, which is genuinely exciting.

Seeing as how I’m now effectively involved in two console gaming communities, obviously that means I need to purchase multiplayer games like Call of Duty: Black Ops and FIFA 11 twice. The lady I know who is sometimes in the flat when I am did, admittedly, find this a little perplexing. Thankfully I couldn’t hear her protests because I was being pwned by noobs on a whole new console. Loudly.

It’s odd. I’d never have imagined back when I did most of my gaming on the PS2 that one day I wouldn’t be used to the control pads, but when it comes to FPS games, it took some getting back into the groove. I still find it lacks the precision I can get out of the 360 pad when aiming, but I forgive the DualShock 3 because it’s pretty and familiar and it doesn’t display those sodding flashing green quadrants as soon as it’s below 90% battery life.

Plus, every time I see it resting on the arm of the sofa I remember.

I remember that, soon, I’m finally going to be playing Metal Gear Solid 4. A game that I’ve never played before. I’ve been saving it. Just like I was saving the stilton. The stilton came back to bite me in the arse though. Literally. It caned.

AAAAARGH JESUS CHRIST THAT TANGY BLUE CHEESE IS TRYING TO EAT MY BUTTOCK