Temple of Game

Green Shoots

2010-02-21T23:30:00.002Z

It is just possible that things might be back on, blogwise. Is anyone out there still subscribed to this? Let me know in comments if so.

Fzzzzzzzzzzzzzt

2009-05-16T15:05:00.003+01:00

My ATI Radeon 4850 is no more, seems never to have quite worked as it should and the VMU is hosed, artefacts all over the screen. I've now got a thirty quid Maplin white box Nvidia somethingorother instead, while Cyberpower replace the knackered behemoth. Even my screen saver plods along now, I think my Oolite posts will have to wait even longer (short version - get on the Oolite forums wiht any headaches, they are lovely people and will get your game tweaked for comfort and nostalgia in short order) and all testing is now out of the window.

At this rate I'll be picking up my DS or at a stretch cracking through my active list on 360.

Pwned by Real Life again

2009-05-09T13:20:00.004+01:00

I have to confess it's been nothing short of ungamely in the Temple recently. Hope is not beyond me though, the beta has landed. These are testing times...

Other things I'm not writing about - Far Cry 2 is clearly one of those broken games you play anyway - is it cognitive dissonance or the call of the pretty jungle that keeps us going? XBox 360 wheel - it turns the Temple into Namco World, but now I've got a massive wooden futon sofa and nowhere to shove it for the wheel to get in front of the Temple Altar... and finally - Oolite has turned a corner. More to follow, unless there isn't.

Putting the smackdown on Crackdown

2009-03-30T21:55:00.004+01:00

I couldn't choose two. GTA4 and Mass Effect cleared, I couldn't choose two. I'd done them in my week off, and bought Bully: Scholarship Edition that week also. I liked Bully when I bought a second hand PS2 and a few non-GC/Wii titles about a year ago. I bought it for Ico, Colossus, The GTA Stories games (with a proper controller, not a PSP shoehorning), Transformers (the good one, Armada?) and Okami. This then came out for the Wii and Bully for the Wii and 360 but in any case my PS2 got about three week's love before I was paid a bonus and spazzed half of it on an HDTV and a 360 Elite in anticipation of GTA4's imminent arrival. When Blockbuster had it in mint condition for twelve quid the other week, I abandoned all thought of my fifteen percent done PS2 version, seeking the version with the achievements which also saw me trade my Wii Lego Star Wars Complete for the 360 incarnation.

Two weeks on from getting Bully 360, I'm on another week off and reached the stage in that game I had on the PS2. Obviously Bully went onto my reserve pile but as I had two spaces in my active pile, I got straight into it to ease my GTA pangs and then the panic hit. I was lucky to have nailed two titles in two days - whichever game I moved over would be a no-brainer... I just picked the one I instinctively wanted with no regrets, because I have another choice left. I can't make that next decision. Too much commitment to one game, a lack of which caused me to implement the pile system in the first place. I'm supposed to be forcing myself.

Plan B then was to reassess my tactics. I concluded that I could do the second half of Crackdown in two days. And I just did. Crackdown is the game I shelved far too quickly. It was supplanted by GTA4 in my tray and never stood a chance during my first months with the 360 - too many other titles being picked up. Despite a decent start and a swift clearance of the first island, I let my attention slip. I'd fire it up to chase more orbs when I should have been working on other skills, go meandering like Nico and get annoyed at the constant gangs and lack of interaction. This due to not having been interacting in the correct (violent) manner. With this one out of the way, I can always count one of my two as an option in reserve, never filling the gap until I am desperate. Maybe even, I might forget all abut it, maintaining a smaller active pile of games and therefore being more focused and productive in my gaming.

In just under 48 hours I've racked up many achievements, climbed and jumped from the tower, hit a few stat landmarks, pwned the entirety of both the other gangs and found many hidden orbs. I'm on about 420 agility orbs but I'm not getting the lot, nor the hidden ones. These are for players who have no other games, no jobs, no missus or anyone else living with them. No books, no washing up to do, no acquaintances, no TV or radio signal, no tiredness, no daydreams, nothing in the departure lounge of their digestive tract, no window to open or close, no mirrors, no space to pace up and down in and no past to think regretful thoughts about, nor future to speculate upon. Only then can you be the sort of person who will get all the hidden orbs, because most people are probably like me - didn't play the whole thing inside a week with a photographic memory. And if not, there'll be a point where even with a map of the things, you'll have one left from, what is it - 300? And no clue which ones you've definitely done. And it's in some building, in the basement, behind a stairwell. If you want to 100% Crackdown, you get a map and divorce your friends and do that bit in a weekend, or die trying.

Instead, I'm now researching the different weapons, will respawn the gangs and max out each of my five stats, getting the achievements. I'll do the jumps, scour the FAQs for things that seem like fun at the time. It's now living in my reserve pile, but it will visit my 360 tray from time to time. It's a good, good game.

Criticisms, though:

Targeting - once there's no point in me shooting someone, let me not be able to target them again. Make it easier to select a target because on a 20" HDTV, when there's an enemy in front of you with a pistil and another just behind and to the right of him with rockets, I should be able to aim at the dangerous one.Even when pistil bloke dies, I can swing away, then back, and still target the now crumpled pistol bloke whilst the rocket chap stands there hoying explosive death at me with impunity.

Driving - I've barely cleared the first upgrade on this. I've finished the plot though, which can only be a bad sign. According to threads on forums of repute, I'd doing it wrong, though.

Camera - be nice on the side of building to be able to zoom out a little.

Map - I realise the idea is to learn and know the city from above, but even then the map is a bit simplistic.

Boss 'waves' - or lack thereof. One of the last guys on the north island was up a big tower block. Got to get from starting point to ground, along, up next door building, then inside, each time you die. Then up through four or five distinct clear areas, before the big garden atop the skyscraper. I died right at the top three times, two due to my own stupidity. Each time I had the GTA feeling. Like I was being made to repeat something I'd earned the right to be beyond, so maybe in future such games could have the boss battles zoned?

Progress

2009-03-20T15:57:00.002Z

I have completed the Mass Effect and GTA4 Stories. I feel no compulsion to crack on with side activities or DLC in either. Now a harder challenge awaits - choosing two from my reserve pile to swap into the active pile. I'll probably end up with Bully and Saint's Row 2, I imagine.

Some Things are Immeasurable

2009-03-17T20:50:00.002Z

Such as the annoyance I feel when 77 hours of gaming come down to my having to make a jump ramp in a very twitchy game. A finale tends to lose its excitement the fifth time you try the bloody thing. I am embittered and don't want to start anything else until I've finished this.

Decisions, decisions.

The Measure of Things

2009-03-17T19:27:00.002Z

I write this with GTA4 on pause behind me. I've blitzed the last 20 or so missions this last couple of days, to get it out of my active pile and get some momentum. I think the big games need clearing, I may start something unplayed now or I may try and polish off act 5 of Mass Effect next.

I'm driving my car on the last mission. I made it this far last night but I was 3:30 red-eyed and my jaw was not unlike that of a zombie, or an inflatable sex lady. Or a zombie inflatable sex lady. On comes the 360 this evening and away I go, last mission. Now, I leave the apartment to meet my two companions, no car in the spaces, my Infernus (is it called that?) disappeared after the last mission. Don't take your Infernus on the penultimate mission. So I'm jacking something. It's the Citroen Xara clone. Just need to get to my friends. I canter along, and get to one of the bridges, switch to cinematic mode and realise I'll not be seeing anything like this again until I get the Lost and Damned (I'm waiting for it to be deal of the week on principal, and so should you - anything over 800 Microsoft Euros).

The next thing that happens is a song I like finishes and the news comes on - it's about

*****SPOILERZ!!!!111!!!!*****
*****SPOILERZ!!!!111!!!!*****
*****SPOILERZ!!!!111!!!!*****
*****SPOILERZ!!!!111!!!!*****
*****SPOILERZ!!!!111!!!!*****
*****SPOILERZ!!!!111!!!!*****
*****SPOILERZ!!!!111!!!!*****
*****SPOILERZ!!!!111!!!!*****
*****SPOILERZ!!!!111!!!!*****
Kate being killed, and mentions me.
*****SPOILERZ!!!!111!!!!*****
*****SPOILERZ!!!!111!!!!*****
*****SPOILERZ!!!!111!!!!*****
*****SPOILERZ!!!!111!!!!*****
*****SPOILERZ!!!!111!!!!*****
*****SPOILERZ!!!!111!!!!*****
*****SPOILERZ!!!!111!!!!*****
*****SPOILERZ!!!!111!!!!*****

and I'm sad. I'd read about what might otherwise have happened but in the end I tried to put such things out of my mind and play according to what I knew from the game, and what would most closely have resembled how I might respond, were this real life. It's how I play Mass Effect, Fallout 3, KOTOR and all other cod-moral slapstick digital pacifiers, because the reality is that they are games, the choices are no more moral than 'Yoshi or Bowser for Rainbow Road?'. There's more morality in my USB porn drive. Doesn't change that I'm unhappy what happened happened, though.

Then the news moves on, something about the ketamine and irony generation (mine!) living to regret their excesses when their physically or mentally malformed children are born. I'm overcome with the urge to go and discuss the feelings I'm experiencing with strangers in a cafe in Montmatre. I'm regarding the in-game life I've built for myself, and I'm wondering what that tells me about humanity as a whole.

My criticisms of GTA4 are on record, alongside a million others. It's not Vice City and it's not San Andreas, but it is the game I bought a 360 and an HDTV for. I'm only just polishing off the story and that will leave my progress in the high sixties with many achievements still locked. I'll be off to look into other things, like Bully Scholarship Edition and Saint's Row 2, but I'll be back, and not just for the Lost and Damned. I'll be pining at some point for an afternoon's money-making with Nico Belic. Whatever happens after the next mission, I'd like to see the chap again, we've been through a lot together. Which led me to conclude... have I done the right thing by this game? Should I have done a few side missions and chased 100% and a few achievements, only 100%ing the thing with the completion of this last mission? I've done the pigeons, months ago - the worst is over, not forgetting multiplayer.

The answer doesn't matter, because any game where I get 80 hours into it and I'm still playing and nearly done and want to know what happens next - if that game can then make me take a breath and ask myself if I've treated it right - well, you can't really not say it's a brilliant game, can you?

Indisipline

2009-03-14T18:36:00.003Z

I've been trying, I really have.

I've cleared no games from the Active Pile, the Reserve Pile has grown. A little. The arrivals are:

Sega Superstar Tennis
Dead Space
Bully: Scholarship Edition
Saint's Row 2
Lego star Wars: The Complete Saga

I had wanted to spend February finishing the GTA 4 story (100% is for when I'm bored) in time for the Lost and Damned, now I'm looking unlikely to get it done within a year of the game's release. I've never head Rockstar's response to the mission checkpoint question. I've seen the scarce trip skip bits from San Andreas and apparently Saint's Row has the checkpoints but it's not GTA. I get that missions want replaying if you are made of fail, but let's break a mission down for a moment, shall we?

First, you've got to drive to where the mission is triggered - fair enough, different things in different places is what makes the city. But it's still time, and it still counts. Then you trigger the mission and watch the cutscene. Most aren't worth watching more than once. Then (in 'Tunnel of Death' for example) you have to go from point 'a' to point 'b' to pick up vehicle 'x' and get to point 'c' ... and then the real mission starts- the scripted stuff, the stuff that differs from normal gameworld navigation. And there''s where the restart point should be. I don't need the cutscenes again, or could be asked if I wanted them. I don't feel I should have to prove I can drive a lorry into a tunnel over and over. My failing point is in the gunfight through stupidity or the chase through bad luck... so let me work on both without spending longer retreading the path to the sticking point than I spend at it. How is this fun? There is no justification I can imagine. No response yet from Rockstar that covers it in any way, that I'm aware of. In particular when the grey flatbed looks like the grey road and the grey tunnel walls and the grey gun, I shouldn't suffer ten minute's deja vu because I was a couple of pixels off to the left with my aim.

I want Nico's story to end. I want to get him there and I want to remain engaged in the story as I do so - but Rockstar don't want me to, for some reason. And my time is something I can't afford to be liberal with any longer. After I get to the end of this grind, anything on the Active list I can't get into after a couple of evening's effort gets swapped to the reserve or shunted back onto the shelves at CEX.

Discipline

2009-02-01T16:45:00.003Z

Problem: I'm drowning in games

Solution:

I'm being disciplined. I'm giving my gaming some order and impetus. I've divided my 360 colleciton into two piles. Pile one is games I've either completed in single player, haven't started in single player, or played maybe a level of and never went back to. This is the pile:

Ace Combat 6: Need to restart
Table Tennis: Not started
Perfect Dark Zero: Finished
Orange Box: Not started
Dirt: Not started
CoD2: Need to restart
Rock Bank: Not started
Viva Pinata: Not started
The Club: Not started
Halo 3: Finished
Fallout 3: Finished
Assassin's Creed: Not started
Lost Planet: Not started
Dead Rising: Not started.

That's my reserve list. I'm not allowed to touch it. I have to clear games from my active pile first, which means a playthough on any difficulty depending on my interest in the game. My active pile I'll here separate into games I'm a good way into:

Mass Effect
Pure
CoD4 (finished single player, now on multiplayer grind)
Guitar Hero WT
Burnout PAradise
Midnight CLub LA
Bioshock
Crackdown
GTA 4
Ridge 6

...and games I've made some headway on but not much:

Gears of War
O'blivion
GR:AW2
Tomb Raider Anniversary
Bullet Witch
Sega Rally
TD:U
Forza 2

So the rule is I'm not allowed to play a game from the reserve list until I clear a game from the active list. I was planning on saying maybe that a 'nearly completed' game polished off would get me one title from the reserve pile but a game like Bullet Witch cleared would give me two, but I'm not sure whether that shouldn't be the other way around. Vote on the right... I'll go with what people reckon and see how it affects my experience.

Perfect Dork

2009-01-25T19:05:00.003Z

Nearly grafted through Perfect Dark Zero in an attempt to whore some achievements (none so far, even though I'm on level twelve out of thirteen!). So far, so not as good as the original or Goldeneye but bless it for being enjoyable enough to complete, despite everything. Until 'Escort Jonathan' comes along and saps my fundrenalin like a gothic girlfriend hell-bent on moving in.

He's probably the best in-game depiction of severe autism I've ever experienced. I'm to escort this 'Top Operative' to the peak of this temple, where a bridge waits for us. I get him to the top despite himself. Every time I break cover, he breaks cover because I've no means of directing him. Every time I get into zoom and squeeze rounds off against some enemy grunts, his head pops up in the way. If someones got a heavy weapon, he'll make a bee-line for any clear space in front of them.

Ten goes in now, there's no checkpoints by the way so there's a whole open space filled with snipers and grunts I've to wade through each time (fun!) and Rain Man still has a deathwish. At this point, we're looking at a gamebreaker. I'm putting it down though safe in the knowledge that in a fortnight when I come back to it, I'll breeze the level like it ain't no thing, because that's what always happens.

Give me back my licence fee, part 563

2009-01-13T19:36:00.003Z

Every year a company called Capita take a hundred and fourty pounds off every TV-owning household in the UK that submits to its intimidation tactics. This is then given to the BBC. The BBC breaks down licence fee spending as follows (probably):

1% - Doctor Who
1% - Top Gear
1% - Radio 2
47% - Broadcasting complete and utter shite
25% - Management consultancy fees to outsourced thieves such as (hey!) Capita
25% - The BBC News, voice of correct in a world of Fox

Now normally I tend to be fine with this sort of thing but when the news resorts to this level of cockwittery, I lose my rag. First of all, the guy looks like Private Pyle from Full Metal Jacket, which is a dead giveaway - face like a mong? Keep 'em away from the firearms. Second of all, his parents put the game in a box with a GUN?!??!?!!?! Thirdly, Halo 3 is a 15 rated game in the UK, specifically to prevent children being exposed to the cartoon excesses it contains. I can only imagine the country that brought us the PRMC and the 'kcuf' in rap records will have a similar or more servere rating on it. If you have to confiscate a game from a seventeen year old, he's mentally not going to be his physical age, is he? So why let him play a game rated for older teens in the first place? Give him a Wii. Although the judge reckons it is premeditated - in which case if the kid can't think as far as where he's going to live once he's killed his parents,that again points to him being a bit of a mouth breather and I loop back to my how is he allowed a "grown-ups' game?" point.

Daniel Petric, yesterday

What really ticks me off though is the Beeb's quote here:

"they took away his violent computer game"

Not really they didn't, they took away Halo 3. Halo 3 is violent in the same way Tom & Jerry is violent. It is cartoonish - the physics, physicality of the 'human' characters, the places it is set, weapons used, dialogue, all exaggerated nonsense. It is more closely approximate to something one could do in real life to complain of the cow rolling in Katamari Damacy.

Won't somebody think of the children??!?!!?!?

But heck, 'violent game' is a headline, a seller, a clicker, whereas the truth is someone annoyed their retard offspring and sent him on a path which led to a firearm they knew he'd be able to get to. Furry muff, if you are Fox, but you aren't, BBC, you are there to inform, educate and entertain, as Reith prescribed, and peddling this fetid dross as news just does not qualify. If it were lazy journalism that would be one thing. Cynical journalism is another entirely. Violent my arse.

Beyond Good and Evil?

2009-01-08T19:48:00.006Z

Well no, not that. Rather some more unresearched, ill advised Microsoft motivated mental meanderings. Because they are evil, aren't they? I was reading these comments just now and enjoying the complaints of Playstation 3 owners regarding the lack of DLC on their big games (GTA4, Fallout 3, Gears of.... no, they don't have that one. Um... Hal... no, nor that one. How about Mass Eff.. no. Crackdown, then - they must have Crackdown, surely? Or Dead Rising. What?).

First thing to cross my mind (other than the Valeria Bruni Tedeschi film I watched last night) was that Sony fanboys can surely come up with something better to hate Microsoft for? Sony are easy pickings these days - Lik-Sang, being happy to offend Christians but not Muslims, The Dreamcast lies, the PSP - I could go on, and probably might at some point. Nintendo were the big bad of the Eighties and early Nineties, bullies and monopolists and so on - my love for Nintendo really blossomed with the Gamecube and has wilted with the Gamecube 2: Sore Arm Edition and the reprehensible shovelware, fucked online system, storage drought, Stars theft and ludicrously overpriced Virtual Console faffery I've been mug enough to invest heavily in, believing that one day I'll suddenly become overwhelmed with happiness. Because Nintendo love me. Microsoft though... well, what are their sins?

She might not be everyone's cup of tea but she's my Moet & Chandon

Red ring of Death? I'll grant you, they rushed the console out, they cut corners - and they've done the decent thing and are making good on their mistakes in an efficient and honest manner so far as I can tell. Had they not been first out of the gate, they'd have been buried by PS3 and Wii despite the cumulative console experience being pound-for-pound better than the two alternatives. I'm willing to forgive them the almost inevitable RRoD my machine will one day suffer, because the two weeks I'll be waiting to get my machine back is still less time than I'd spend on mandatory hard-drive installs through the life of the alternative console.

People recently criticised Live Gold carrying a fee on the forums I frequent - but look at what you are paying for - the worlds' most reliable and popular online walled garden in which to play for 12p a day (I'd gladly pay that for the same on my Wii or PC, or DS for that matter. In fact no, I'd pay a pound a day to get rid of friend codes on my Wii). So that one doesn't wash with me either. I'm stumped here - the cash-for-DLC-exclusives deals are no worse than the HD disc format wars where Sony were more than happy to hold onto their exclusives. It won them the war and what's good for the goose...

I doubt the likes of Fallout 3 would have been quite the title we ended up with were it not for Redmond chucking a million or so at Bethesda while they were still spending on development. I cannot see how this is a valid reason for Microsoft or specifically XBox to be evil, so I'm throwing it open - surely there must be something, surely there must? The last time I had the hump with them it was for acquiring Rare, but would Perfect Dark Zero, Viva Pinata or Banjo Nuts & Bolts have been any better on Wii? Would Perfect Dark Zero have been good at all? Help me out here - give me your best shots at dissing the Beast of Redmond - because this is the games industry we're talking about here and I refuse to believe that everything is fine and dandy.

Of course we might have moved beyond this good/evil debate in the more sensible corners of the web. This isn't one of them though, so flame away.

Holocaust Season

2009-01-06T14:21:00.003Z

There's Armageddons and there's Armageddons. At the Temple, there's been two recently - the one affecting my PCs and the nuclear one in the history books of Fallout 3. Both have conspired to prevent me from opening the Temple doors to readers for a very, very long time. When I built the Temple originally, I was all like
And shortly after September began, I was all like

And now I'm feeling better. Only I can't talk, because I'm 137 hours into Fallout 3 and I really really want to get it finished. In the meantime, you can read some proper writing about games over at Snappy Gamer, and pick them up cheap, like if you follow the links from SavyGamer.

This post was brought to you thanks to Cyberpower Systems, whose machines are substantially less prone to breaking than those of Acer.

Nintendo's subversive 80's agenda

2008-09-22T00:49:00.001+01:00

I've just noticed that when moving from one active channel (say, a game) on the Wii to another (one of the internet channels perhaps) that I could have strolled across the living room and swapped out Excitebike for Duck Hunt on my old Nes is less time than it took to come out of one little window and into another. Clearly the plumber-bummers are attempting to see the dominant force in electronic entertainment dictate the speed of the world's gaming mojo at a specific, hypnotic and sinister pace.

There's nothing else for it - all right thinking people should trade in their Wiis for a PS3, because let's face it we couldn't trade our 360s in or we'd have no-one to play with online. Let Cex take the brunt of the Nintendonslaught, so Sony get none of your morally sound cash, and we'll free ourselves from the yoke of Wii tardiness.

That said, nothing loads slower than Burnout Paradise with the motorbikes patch installed. And where do the riders go? My disbelief remains unsuspended. Goodness me, have we grown unaccustomed to watching people come off motorbikes in games since Daredevil Dennis?

Microsoft Notebook Optical Mouse 3000

2008-08-31T19:21:00.004+01:00

It's a tenner in PC World!

It's a Cylon!

(It's rather good, actually)

Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2

2008-08-02T19:38:00.005+01:00

Well you have to start on a high note, haven't you?

Anyone unfamiliar with Geometry Wars in any incarnation (or its Dad, Robotron) should understand from the outset, as should you all, that I'm not going to do your Wikipedia searches for you. So for the rest of us, how does the latest increment in the development of a modern classic, born almost perfect, justify itself and the pricetag? Particularly to someone whose Geometry jollies are usually had from the boxed Wii Galaxies, released about thirty seconds ago?

Firstly, the fine-tuned neon vomit approach to rendering the gameplay onscreen is as lairy as ever. The Wii's grizzled 480p effort is quaint by comparison and the juxtaposition of the two forms a good corner from which to punch your way into an argument for hi-def graphics in games. There's something fairer about how the 360 describes the action to you, though this doesn't make the game feel easier by any means at all. Quite the opposite - the first thing I noticed when the going got tough was how much I've been coddled by my little Galaxies drone, powered up to full attack capability and cleansing acres of level with a glorious arc of murderous shot. I suppose on balance I should concede that the 360 pad is the natural controller for this series and the wiimote/classic options are simply too experimental to be definitive.

Rightful pad in hand, then, the excited gamer fires up the new title and is presented with a rack of six game types, which are unlockable in sequence. I'm not blessed with outstanding skill at these (any) games, and I found myself playing each mode about three times before the next started giving me the come-on, which is reasonable. I'm still bitter about Smash Bros. Brawl making me graft for Snake and Sonic; unlockables should never, ever be a chore. Each game mode supports you in a different way, depending on how you suck. Opening Deadline mode covers general ineptitude (much to my relief) in this timed game you can die a thousandfold and still get to the end, though it won't help your high score. Following that you find yourself clockless and hopping from circle to decaying circle, only able to shoot within them, only collecting Geoms without. Tense and occupying the same space in your mind as a cover-happy FPS, King mode is a fantastic change in direction, which precedes the return of Evolved (bigger, better). Thence to Pacifism... no longer just an achievement, vast swarms of blue diamonds play paparazzi to your Lindsay Lohan as you dive through gates, triggering explosions that keep just enough of them explodey to stay your execution for a few seconds more. Waves returns as punishing as ever and the coup de grace is Sequence, wherein you take limited lives across multiple scripted, time-limited levels. So it doesn't matter whether you can't shoot, steer, memorise patterns, abide dying or games that just get more difficult until you die - there's a relief in there for you somewhere.

Frustratingly the same cannot be said of the gun, which lacks the powerable spread of previous GW iterations. In and of itself, this is a fair dinkum proposal, but when it comes to green thingies and snakes, by crikey, I've had enough already. These are very difficult to take down now, greens individually (a swarm will always thin out nicely if you are canny) and snakes when there's so many of the sods you can't make head nor tail of them (which is the key to pwning them). An individual green is now just too nimble, you line of fire just too narrow to make you feel like you have the same control as in previous games. They dance at the periphery of your rage like a child whose lobbed some rocks at your car, safe in the knowledge that you can't touch them or you'll end up as a schedule 1 offender.

Your business end might not be able to do what it did as a fresh-faced youngster anymore, but this is more heart breaker than deal-breaker. With a classy, inventive and attainable set of achievements, there's so many angles to approach this 800 points-worth of game from that you'd really be a bit of a cock to download, say, 1942 instead of this. And therein lies the titular geometry. You play the angles, and very rarely question that the angles might just be playing you.

From mighty acorns... no, wait....

2008-08-02T19:18:00.003+01:00

A wise old blogging guru advised me to make the first post count.

This counts as one post. Hopefully the worst you will read on here.