Before I went on holiday (which seems like an age ago, incidentally) I bought myself Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - The Director's Cut.

I have reasonably fond memories of the PC original and the feeling had always persisted that I was perhaps a bit harsh on it when I reviewed it, so I welcomed the chance to play it again in a slightly different format.

First things first - the 'enhanced' Director's Cut doesn't include the original (or indeed any) voice-acting. Perhaps the storage capacity of a DS cartridge doesn't allow it [that's right, dumbass - someone who knows something about anything] but it doesn't seem right to read George's moronic outbursts rather than hear them.

What we do get is an extra section early on where you get to play as Nico, some additional touch-screen puzzles, and some new close-up animations of each character (provided by Dave Gibbons) during conversations. In summary - not a whole lot to get too excited about.

Still, the original game still holds up pretty well, and aside from the sound it loses little in translation to the smaller screen. But another play-through reminded me that it's full of little annoyances that get in the way of you being too fond of it. Perhaps they could have taken the opportunity to review some of the script along the way - particularly George's more aggressive or tasteless remarks that came as a bit of a shock first time around.

Worth a look for DS adventure fans - but only at a knock-down price, I reckon.

tags: broken, sword, ds

So Starcraft 2 is out. From what I've heard it's not all that different to the first one - perhaps a disappointment to some in these days when RTS games try to be a bit more detailed, with features like morale and cover. Others will probably love having their old favourite return with a shiny facelift and new units.

Me? Blizzard owns enough of my soul already so I'm in no hurry.

tags: starcraft

In recent months I've joined Abandoned Places as an updater. I've tried to keep a regular update schedule, and take some time to mention a bit of detail as to what's in each update (as that's what I would want as an AW webmaster).

Unfortunately, things have gone slightly wrong with my latest update, which seems a bit, well, brusque. To add an explanation: I did my homework and attempted to add a newspost as usual, but for some reason it wouldn't work unless I did an EXTREMELY short update.

So, apologies to all members. Voh's working on the problem as we speak (I have no technical knowledge whatsoever) and when it's resolved I promise to mention all updates in full in the newspost.

Also, new sites - I can't add or reject you, but hopefully something will happen later this week. Thanks for your patience.

tags: aplaces

Despite never having watched the TV show, or displaying any kind of predeliction for poking around with dead bodies, I've recently found myself playing CSI: Deadly Intent - The Hidden Cases on the DS.

In the game, you play through four cases as a rookie CSI, joined by famous faces from the show (none of which - with the exception of Larry Fishburne - I recognise, of course). Most of the time, it's simply a case of, sweeping around the crime scene with your stylus, solving a few mini-games, and then sitting back and enjoying the story.

It's certainly a pretty passive experience in which it's pretty hard to get stuck, but all the same, I rather enjoyed it. Any game that allows you to enter your own name so that it crops up in all the dialogue is okay by me - it makes any 'amusing bollocking' scenes all the more entertaining.

So now, I want more, but apparently the last CSI game wasn't much cop on DS.

So what else is there to do? I find myself suddenly wanting to watching the show. But wait! There's a whole host of CSI games for the PC! To Amazon!

tags: csi, ds

A year or so ago I grumbled about the Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection not being released on PC. Well, now they've gone and added a bunch of games to Steam.

It's not as big a collection as that console release, and Sonic (apart from 3D Blast) is conspicuous in his absence. No Streets Of Rage either, boo. Fortunately they do have classic 16-bit fighting game Golden Axe, which as far as I can tell matches the Megadrive version perfectly. So i should probably make a note on our review of the slightly lacking old PC Port from 1990.

Also after a few beers I went and bought Altered Beast. Which, er, isn't a classic. Actually it's kinda crappy.

Meanwhile, the greatest event that will never happen is of course Nintendo releasing any of their classics on PC...

tags: sega, golden, axe

It's getting towards that time when everyone who doesn't like football prepares to be extremely bored for weeks on end.

As for everyone else (in this country at least) the question remains: "Can England do it this time?"

Pro Evo says yes...




tags: football, world, cup

Well I thought that, since I've kinda failed to keep up with Rik's output, it's time to get cracking on more content. So I'd have another go at King's Quest 6. This must be about the sixth attempt, somehow I've just never succesfully played through, but we really should get a King's Quest on board some day. I keep telling myself that, and then not actually playing any King's Quest. So enough procastinating let's go, er, quest.

Load it up today and savegame says:

Error on Explode
Script # : 0, IP: 8dc

Okay, well, attempt seven sometime this year I guess.

So I finally made it to the magic 100. As achievements go, it's hardly on a par with discovering the cure for...well, anything, but hey, if you can't put a little note about reaching a milestone on your own website without feeling like you're blowing your own trumpet rather too loudly, then you probably shouldn't bother putting your words on the internet in the hope of people reading them [Good idea - FFG reader].

Don't worry, though, we'll save the self-indulgent retrospective for our 200th site review or our 10-year anniversary, whichever seems more appropriate. For now, we'll make do with the briefest of glances over my personal list of reviews (list kindly supplied by Stoo).

The site started with a clear mandate for covering old games that we'd enjoyed in the past and that we wanted to recommend to others. For me, that meant tapping out some brief words of praise for Blade Runner and Wing Commander 3 and e-mailing them to Stoo for him to add to the site. My own contributions were pretty flaky back then, with my esteemed colleague cranking out 3000-word epics on some strategy game or other, while I did little more than occasionally cast an eye over some late-90s favourites that I'd revisited during a particularly dreary weekend. The stats don't lie: no reviews for Rik in 2003. But I can't honestly say what I was doing instead.

Things got a little better from that point, with review #25 - the awesomely cool Full Throttle coming in the middle of a period of semi-regular content during 2005.

Even so, I was still lagging well below 50 reviews (although I honestly wasn't keeping count back then - but #50 was Tiberian Sun) by the time we got into 2007, whereupon I launched myself into a frenzy of reviewing activity which saw two and sometimes three(!) reviews being added at once. I can't say exactly what prompted such enthusiasm and focus, although it has to be said, discovering the entertaining and regularly maintained content at Just Games Retro did sort of shame me into trying harder.

By this stage, newer games were coming onto the radar (#75 - XIII being a case in point), with the old philosophy of previously-loved favourites being abandoned by necessity in order to keep the new content a-coming.

Which brings us to the present day. Looking down the list, I'd have to say that it's a fair reflection of my gaming habits over the years. Possibly there's a slight indication of having acquired and played rather more games of average quality than I might care to remember, but that's probably fair enough - give me a choice of buying a single, well-thought-of game for £30 or a whole heap of miscellaneous budget nonsense from the bargain bucket, and I'd choose the bargain bucket every time.

Perhaps then, it's fitting that these latest reviews represent not only the worst of what can happen when you go fishing in the 'reduced' pile, but also the rewards that splashing out on a quality title on the day of release can reap.

And when you find yourself writing that kind of nonsense, you know it's time to stop. If anyone's out there - thanks for reading...

tags: reviews, site

So I picked up Blood from gog.com, and sat through what has to be the ugliest, most plastic-looking pre-rendered cutscene I've yet encountered. Were we once impressed by this kind of thing? It's aged horribly.

In the interests of being positive, here's a mid-90s intro done right:



Yes we're rocking out on midi music there.
>air guitar<

tags: blood, ufo, intro, cutscene

Getting older, I've decided, is a process of everything changing so slowly that you never really notice at the time, until five years of sneaky, incremental change eventually adds up to one moment of consequence which suddenly hits you when you find yourself doing something that you never, ever, would have done once upon a time, and the horrible truth of it all sends you into a spiral of self-loathing that only a weekend's worth of solid drinking will cure.

What the hell am I talking about? Well, I think I just realised that I now know absolutely nothing about music. The fact is, I haven't acquired any new music for what must be at least two years now, and when I have, it's been songs that I've heard while playing a video game.

Now just to clarify: I'm not talking about actual game music, like the Orange Box soundtrack, or some arty re-interpretation of the Super Mario Brothers theme music, I’m talking about real-life rock, rap, metal and dance, licensed for use in games made by big-name publishers to impress idiots.

So the other day, I found myself downloading a song that I first heard while playing Need for Speed: Underground and it hit me that I’d already got a handful of other songs from the game, as well as noting the significant number among my recent acquisitions that were featured in the Guitar Hero series.

There are two ways you could react to such a realisation, and so far I’ve been vacillating between the following two thought processes:

1) “It’s not so bad. Songs featured in Guitar Hero are chosen because they have fairly broad commercial appeal, and if you like rock music but hadn’t heard those songs before, you were always going to like them. The same goes for Need for Speed: Underground – okay, so the music’s aimed at 15 year-old boys, but that’s roughly your mental age anyway. And if you spend the number of hours required to become reasonably proficient at either game, you’ll hear the featured songs often enough to find yourself humming them on the way to work and want to own one or two of them. It’s no big deal.”

2) “This is a new low. What’s next – buying a song because you heard it on the fucking Homebase advert? You’re one step away from downloading Dancing in the Moonlight by Toploader, and when that happens, it’ll be the last thing you do before you kill yourself.”

Only one of these can be right, and I’m coming to realise which one it is. And you know what, dear reader? I’m not sure I like the answer.

tags: music, hate, self