Blimey that looks nice!

It's starting to hit me. The post-Xmas blues are almost over and games that were previously distant on the horizon are now right around the corner. I knew it would eventually sink in but I didn't imagine it would hit me quite so hard.

The realisation of what I'd gotten myself into finally struck me whilst wandering round Next over the weekend. The missus was looking for some clothing and I, caring not for that sort of thing, chose to hang around the gadget section instead. It was there that I saw it. A pristine brand-new PAL C64 DTV for under £10. These things may be scoffed at by the purists but for someone like me it's a very quick, cheap and space-efficient manner of playing some of those 80's classics. But of course I can't, can I? I was simply only able to look at it folornley, powerless to buy.

Following up from that was some video of the new Ghost Recon game (click on the HD version) that, whilst not being in any way true to the series, looks like an amazing online game. There are niggles with the graphics engine and I, for one, reckon that diving's out of place (at least the way it's been incorporated doesn't seem to "fit") in this sort of game but I can't deny that it looks pretty stunning and I'm really going to miss being able to play along with my mates in this. Even if I do get a 360 at the year end, buying GRAW will be futile as the peeps I play with will have moved onto something else and therefore the experience will be somewhat muted.

Lastly, an impressive range of screenshots from the expansion for Guild Wars seem to have hit the net this morning and it's really stirring lustful elf-love feelings in me. The idea of a "casual" MMORPG (one with no subs and no real requirement to be part of any sort of clan) is really appealing to me and the screenshots (see above) make me long to explore the world NSoft have set out here.

But I'll not cave at this stage. Space Rangers is grabbing any spare time I have at the moment (single-handedly resolving my focus issues) and I've not even opened the GTA double pack, Rome, Call of Cthulhu or Brothers in Arms 2 yet.

The Windmills of your Mind

I got back into my US copy of Psychonauts this weekend and finished The Milkman Conspiracies - bloody excellent stuff! I read today's re-review on EG and I think they're pretty much spot on with the 8. As much as I've previously protested that it wasn't just a platformer, it essentially is exactly that and it's more than a little frustrating in parts. I wonder just how it would have been received if it were a "proper" adventure game as compared to a bit of a mish-mash of different games.

Focus!

I'm in a completely bizarre limbo at the moment, unable to concentrate on any games whatsoever. I think my MTV mindset has kicked back in for a while.

In the past ten days I've:

• installed and played the stunningly good Anachronox for an hour
• installed and played the reasonably impressive Silent Hill 2 (for an hour, then I uninstalled it)
• rediscovered and subsequently bored of The Movies, uninstalling in the process
• ditto Far Cry
• installed then uninstalled AVP2
• got back into Psychonauts on the Xbox, only to stop playing altogether after 2 hours

I'm toying with the idea of trying something entirely new, something to revitalise my love of gaming, but I don't know what it should be. Thinking back this isn't a side effect of the ban as I've had this happen many many times before. The difference this time round is that I have to get over it using what's in my collection rather than "buying" my way out.

I'll keep you updated :-)

One down, eleven to go!

Well that was actually much easier than I expected. One month's out of the way and there's only the rest of the year to go. In fairness January was always going to be the easiest month. It's by far the quietest month in the gaming calendar and remains set to always be the case as long as Xmas is draining wallets in December.

So what have I learnt from the first month then? I've learnt that Brothers in Arms is bastard hard, I've rediscovered the joys of sim racing, I've realised handheld gaming is mostly not for me, I've learnt that games look great in widescreen and I've learnt my PC is, in general, extremely noisy. Above all I've learnt that my attention span matches that of a distracted mosquito. My main plan of sticking to one game on a system at a time has massively fallen on its face (I blame BIA for this) and the net result is that I've yet again only placed tiny amounts of play time into around ten different games. This month I plan to correct this by finishing Brothers in Arms above all else. Within the next few days I will endeavour to ensure Baker gets to where he's going and that he gets there with his entire squadron intact.

On the subject of the noisy PC, I've gotten back into The Movies this week. I loaded my save game to find that I'd not helped Cinder Toffee Films progress up the movie-making charts since early December. I'd stopped playing because the tutorial had become very boring 4 hours in, but it seems I only had a little way to go because almost immediately upon playing again I found that the full game was starting to make itself apparent in front of me. I found myself getting extremely engrossed in maintaining the studio lot and the stars within and before I knew it a couple of in-game decades had passed. Great fun indeed and even though I suspect I'll never touch the movie-making suite within I'll still rate this pretty highly. I'm away in Hull this weekend but I'll be putting more work into the studio as soon as I can.

I've not been blogging this past month too effectively so I'm going to make an effort to update things twice a week at least, even if it's only to give a mini-review of a game I've rediscovered. The updates may well end up being very short but I'll try to ensure they're sweet ;-)