Happy New Year to you all.

As we get to the end of the year and the inevitable question of whether to do a reluctant-sounding round-up of 2022 on FFG (spoiler: we will) I figured it might be worth trying something a little different as well.

I do quite like our semi-official policy of mainly only talking about games that fall within our remit in a full review, perhaps because in the old days I was guilty of acquiring and flitting between different games at the expense of sitting down and focusing on one thing. Choose the game, play the game, review the game: it’s a simple enough formula.

However, just as the introduction of the Vault of Regret allowed us to dig through our thoughts on games that we probably aren’t ever going to finish or write about, I figured it might not be exactly the worst thing in the world to share a note on a few write-ups that didn’t come to fruition this year.

This is neither a list of all the games that were considered, nor everything that has definitely been ruled out. All were tinkered with for a short while this year, with the idea of a possible review as motivation.

I might play or write about the games on this list again, but for the time being, they’ve had a fairly strong line put through them (in pencil).

And so I present to you: The Unreviewed (2022 edition):
 

Clive Barker’s Jericho
(Codemasters, 2007)

I bought this ages ago on the basis that I liked Undying, even though I knew the two potentially had very little in common. Rather than an olde-worlde spooky supernatural vibe, this one is a more modern caper with manly shooter men (and women).

I haven’t played a lot of FPS games in recent years, for whatever reason, and even though I didn’t play Jericho for anything like as long as I would need to in order to form any kind of serious opinion, there was something about its vibe that was just an instant turnoff.

It could have been the horror elements, the prospect of managing a squad, or the fact that the opening was a bit like those 80s action franchises where you think, these guys are dicks and probably all deserve to die at the hands of whatever it is they’re looking for, but it just didn’t seem like my cup of tea at all.

Jericho is also one of those relatively recent games that has been deleted from Steam and I found out, via an RPS feature on the topic, that unused keys apparently fetch over £100 these days. Or are at least being listed at that price anyway.
 

True Crime: Streets of L.A.
(Activision, 2004)

After finally completing Vice City last year, I developed a bit of a taste for exploring other 00s open-world action games, and this contemporary title had been sitting on my shelves for a while.

Early signs were promising, with extremely amusing, irony-free cut-scenes featuring a protagonist, Nick Kang, who seemed destined for the ‘dickhead hero’ hall of fame. And, like GTA, there were a number of Hollywood heavyweights among the voice cast, too.

Unfortunately it kept crashing every 15 minutes or so, erasing any progress, and it was all just too annoying to persist with. One to come back to, maybe.
 

Fuel
(Codemasters, 2009)

Having hammered early-mid 00s street racing titles pretty hard already, a slightly later era of arcade racers has been on my radar for a little while. Fuel, an open-world effort with a post-apocalyptic setting, always looked quite interesting.

Contemporary opinion was that it was too much open-world and not enough racer, though, and based on my limited dabbling that seemed like a largely accurate summary. Not off the list entirely, then, but put on the backburner for now, in favour of games from the same era that people actually thought were good.
 

Old World Cup Games
(Various)

My line on old footy games – and some may disagree – is that they remain quite interesting to look at, even if lots of them might not actually be very enjoyable to play.

They do, however, have to be broadly functional. With maybe one exception, even the horrors locked at the bottom of the FFG Football League provide a few hours’ entertainment for moderately spoddy enthusiasts such as myself. Those that don’t make it are, in my humble opinion, only for the truly hardcore sado-masochists among us for whom pain, torture and gnashing of teeth are all part of the fun.

As the sketchiest real-life tournament in history kicked off at the wrong time and in the wrong place, I realised that we’d never actually featured a World Cup tie-in before, and set about examining various candidates. World Cup USA ’94 had previously been dismissed, on the basis that the last time I tried it I hadn’t been able to get past the opening menus, and I then whizzed forward a couple of generations to EA’s 2002 tie-in, which was based on the generally-awful FIFA 2002 and of little historical significance other than being representative of how crap FIFA was in the early 00s.

And so with some trepidation I ventured back further, to 1990, and two similarly-titled games: World Cup Soccer: Italia ’90 and Italy 1990. The first of which ran far too slowly to be playable; the second was more promising, but also kind of a struggle. And, to be frank, both of these DOS relics appeared inferior not only to the ST and Amiga versions, but also to those released on 8-bit machines as well.

(Which was the ‘official’ tie-in? Mr C. notes over at The Good Old Days that World Cup Soccer: Italia ’90 was the official game, but U.S. Gold were allowed to make one as well – Italy 1990. The much better-looking Amiga version of which he doesn’t seem to rate very highly. On PC, the players all look as if they are wearing nappies, presumably in service of recreating the tiny shorts of the late 80s/early 90s era.)

In desperation, I turned to World Championship Soccer by Elite, which I remembered did feature the 1990 tournament and even had real player names. Like Italy 1990, it was briefly playable, but is one of those games where you get hemmed in by the opposition because you can’t lamp it out of your own half.

Plus, you have to take manual control of your (hat-wearing) goalie, leading to mildly farcical self-imposed defensive catastrophes that you could well do without. Probably better experienced on the Megadrive, or maybe not at all.

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As previously promised/threatened, we will be back with a round-up of the previous year before too long, but I’ll take this opportunity now to thank you all for reading, and wish you the very best for 2023.