A Fine Fantasy VII

The number seven was clearly on my mind at the end of last year. What follows is a re-worked version of an article I orginally wrote for GAMES? in October 2010. Sadly it seems GAMES? has more-or-less died now, which is unfortunate because I thought the concept of an online champion of left-field/indie games that didn't take itself horribly seriously was a good one.

Anyway, the piece was simultaneously grumpy and silly - in keeping with the previous FF(P)S column I'd written. I'm pretty pleased with most of it, except maybe what I've written about UFO: Enemy Unknown...

Seven Ages of Sebastian Grice

So my buddy Josh and I wrote a screenplay. It's probably slightly preposterous to believe we have any chance of going anywhere in the BBC's Laughing Stock competition, as this is the first time either of us have tried our hand at this kind of thing. But my naive optimism is probably one of my favourite flaws, so no doubt I'll end up paying a little more attention than usual to what the postman brings for the next few weeks.

Shall I show you some of it? Okay, here's a tiny bit of it:

The Sound of Tumult

Kerfuffles and malefactors.

Indiscretions and perfidies.

And of course, supercilious c-bombs.

Those are words. These are songs: on Spotify or Youtube

The Bestest Videogames of 2010

I obviously haven't played every videogame that came out in 2010. I mean, who does that? But I definitely played more of the videogames that were released this year than I watched new movies or listened to new music, so this really had to be the unimaginative end-of-year, can't-believe-I've-only-posted-once-in-December blog content de jour. Or err, "blog content cette année" I guess.

I'll get on with it, shall I?

Pretty Graphics

If it's true that the cutscenes of the current generation of videogames give a pretty good idea of what the in-game graphics of the next will look like, then it seems we'll be hitting proper photorealism a little earlier than you might have thought:



Slightly astonishing, no? And if you're sceptical about the theory, here's the once jaw-dropping intro to Resident Evil: Code Veronica (released on Dreamcast and PS2), which could now easily be mistaken for an average-looking 360 or PS3 game.

AI War: Fleet Command

So I reviewed AI War by Arcen Games. It's probably one of my worst reviews, but I hope a fairly breezy piece of writing. One day I'll manage to be good at reviewing and sentence-crafting at the same time, and there'll be much rejoicing.

The fun and games in the comments (where Christopher Park, CEO and lead programmer of Arcen turns up to respond) makes me think that maybe I should try to formalise my thoughts on "how much do you need to play a game before you're qualified to review it". Trouble is, I'm not sure I've yet worked out my answer.

Hmmm.

Hungover and Hung Up on Power

Last weekend, Beefjack began a weekly series on "videogames to play when hungover". I sometimes play videogames when I'm hungover, so I volunteered to do the first article for them. You can read it here.