Hello everyone. With the year drawing to a close, it’s time to take a quick look back at all things FFG in 2013.

In terms of content, things were pretty quiet during the early months, as the not-inconsiderable task of porting content from the old site to the new one took up the bulk of our time. In an effort to continue our discussion features, as well as actually play some of the modern classics that everyone else is always raving on about, we started off with a (spoiler-tastic) discussion of Mass Effect. Although the end product probably wasn’t very helpful as a review, both the game, and the discussion, were a lot of fun.

The next ‘proper’ discussion review on the schedule was an RPG of a slightly different vintage,  Shadowcaster, although it became a solo effort after yours truly wimped out early on. Later in the year, Jo joined us to chat about the edutainment classic, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? – but although we had other discussions planned, that was it for our new review format in 2013.

While Stoo offered his thoughts on Worms, in the form of our long-neglected second opinion feature, I was revisiting a true oldie from my Atari ST days – Midwinter. To my surprise, it had aged surprisingly well, and becoming engrossed in, and completing, the game some 20 years after I last played it was one of my favourite moments of the year.

Ignoring my oft-repeated promise to not play any more games based on the TV show, I added a review of the hugely-inconsequential CSI: NY to our database in March, by which time it was full steam ahead on the new site, which was finally unveiled at the beginning of June. It was sad to say goodbye to the old design that had served us so well for many years (even more so for my colleague, who actually put the thing together from scratch) but hopefully WordPress will better allow us to add tweaks and improvements without too much fuss.

For the rest of the year, content seemed to fit into one of two categories – abandonware from the early 90s, and more modern stuff from the middle of the last decade. Like Midwinter, reviews of the likes of Crazy Cars III, European Champions and Corruption were motivated by a sense of unfinished business from the 16-bit era, and it was fun to go back and revisit them all. Meanwhile, the likes of FlatOut 2, Test Drive Unlimited and PES 2008 represented some of my favourite titles of more recent years, and it was good to be able to write about, and recommend them, here.

Oh, and the JMan dropped by to offer a guest review of the first Euro Truck Simulator game, causing me to believe that I’d probably gone a little easy on the amateurish efforts of King of the Road a few years back, as well as stirring my interest in the critically well-received sequel (since purchased at a low, low price thanks to the Steam sale, breaking my no-games-in-2013-embargo in the process).

With any luck, the year ahead should offer a similar amount of more of the same. Aside from projects already in progress, we have no fixed plan – and, as always, we’re happy to take requests.

Thanks for reading, and all the best to you in 2014.