Hi everyone.

2016 was generally considered to be a pretty bad year for all sorts of reasons, and as we’re probably all back to work, it seems a bit late for a retrospective. It’s days since, for example, Spotify sent me an end of year email to confirm that I basically use their premium service to listen to music that I already own but have lost the physical copy and/or mp3 of. And those carefree Boxing Day hours discovering the gentle delights of Inkle’s 80 Days (ported to the PC and very kindly gifted to us by Cape Guy Games) seem like months not days ago.

But on the other hand, it was our 15th year, and as we get older fellas like us probably need to keep a running record of what’s happened somewhere. (My own personal how-old-am-I-again-o-meter has swung from “ooh no worries, late 20s/early 30s” to “nearly f*****g 40 oh jesus” in the last couple of years, although the latter is no more true than the former, and wouldn’t really warrant any panic or swearing even if it were).

Dreamfall: A bit talky, but we kind of liked it.

We started with our first and last discussion of the year, taking a look at Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. Stoo then brought us a write-up of the 00s FPS Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior while I disappeared down a cul-de-sac of old football and racing games: Championship Manager 2006, Striker, Superkarts etc.

Juiced 2: Somehow not as good as the first one, with extra stupidity thrown in for good measure.

In the early part of the year we also decided to mark the site anniversary with a few pieces that were slightly different from our standard format reviews and discussions. I decided to go back through some of my older reviews and pick out some of the games that were important in terms of my history with the site, and with gaming in general, and then waffled on about them in slightly self-indulgent manner. To be honest, I had no idea whether anything worthwhile would result, but I did want to avoid simply reworking some old content.

When I Played: It all started with Wing Commander III.

Anyway, it all seemed to turn out ok (and I had a few messages from people who said nice things, which was, er, nice). Along similar lines, Stoo took some time to talk about his own gaming history, with Tales of a Former Flight Sim Fan.

Stoo on flight sims: “I was never a great pilot, for all my enthusiasm”

Having clearly made the decision not to go back and rehash old reviews, we both then proceeded to rehash some old reviews. Speedball 2, Toonstruck and Diablo all received updated writeups, and I made another attempt to look at Sensible Soccer without being quite so much of a twat about it.

Football Glory: yet another sub-par 90s football game added to the FFG collection.

Journeying into the mid-late 00s brought middling results, most likely because of my choice of game: Stranglehold and Prey were a little disappointing, but I possibly enjoyed Space Siege more than most. Then after a fallow period I disappeared down a CSI-shaped rabbit hole and finished off our coverage of the series, including the oft-mentioned Nintendo DS release, CSI: Deadly Intent: The Hidden Cases.

RACE: Plenty of fun to be had, for a sim, beyond crashing and/or driving the wrong way around the track.

Things will continue in 2017, and who knows, maybe we’ll be back here again in 12 months with another smattering of new content to look back on. Thanks, as always, for reading, and all the best for the year ahead.