I’m a very fussy gamer, often owning consoles only for one or two games, and often abandoning games to ebay after about 30 minutes or so if it fails to entertain or show signs of promise. I’ve recently abandoned such critically-acclaimed gems as Shadow of the Colossus and Final Fantasy XII, and I’m giving serious consideration to giving up on Dragon Quest on the DS, despite having eagerly waited for it for months and only being three hours in. I’m tempted by Chrono Trigger, also on the DS, despite knowing deep-down that I’ll probably play it for five hours over the space of a fortnight and then forget all the controls. I’m about six hours into Okami with perhaps another 50 to go, and despite being an utterly beautiful and joyful game, the notion that I may not be putting the final thing into the thing until fucking April fills me with dread.

So with all that in mind, I hope you’ll understand the gravity of the following statement: World of Goo is one of the best games I’ve played in about a decade.

Read more »

Recently I visited London’s Famous Borough Market for the first time. I’ve lived in London now for nearly two years and it was only ever a brief Tube journey away (as brief as things can be on the Tube, that is), but then I’m someone who lived in Canterbury for five years and still only visted the Cathedral during my final month, so the jaunt to Borough Market is still pretty rushed by my standards.

Read more »

So, apparently, the last thing I wrote here was a rant about GAME; I suppose the experience must have been pretty traumatic, as it happened over a year ago and I’ve only just recovered enough to write something new. I’d like to say that I’ve spent this gap year doing interesting and exciting things, but I’m afraid that mostly I’ve been dithering, faffing, and generally otherwise mooching.

Read more »

We hear a lot these days about how the internet is killing high street stores, and although I do feel a smidgen of nostalgia and sorrow for the passing of chains such as Fopp, every time I find myself in a branch of Game I end up hoping for imminent bankruptcy, because Game is rubbish.

Read more »

As happens often — probably more often than is strictly healthy — I’ve found myself fantasising about what I might do if I was suddenly offensively, disturbingly and disgustingly rich. This fantasy varies; sometimes I think I’d end up living in Italy, perhaps owning a small espresso bar; other times I imagine I might end up back in Oxford, where I would spend my days lounging in the QI Bar discussing, I don’t know, Anthony Eden’s handling of the Suez crisis, or whatever’s happening in the world these days.

Read more »

Nintendo are often criticised for their first-party releases being largely based around the same few franchises. Mario in particular appears to whore himself out to all manner of genres — platform games, sporting games, puzzle games, even non-game software such as art and music packages. What critics don’t realise is that the inclusion of Mario is, more often than not, a sign that the game will be of a high quality, just as, for instance, the inclusion of Sonic the Hedgehog can be taken as a sign that the game will blow goats in a big way.

Read more »

We hear a lot about how generic English town centres are due to the proliferation of chain stores and restaurants, and I’ve complained about this in the past. Today, partly because I’ve just had a nice lunch in Café Rouge (nearly 100 branches throughout the UK) and am sitting in a comfy brown leather chair in Café Nero (over 300 branches), I’m going on the defensive. Is a generic English town centre actually as bad as we’re led to believe?

Read more »

I consider Raimi’s previous two Spider-Man films to be perhaps the best comic book films ever made; bright and colourful where required with just the right blend of comedy, action and pathos, and perfectly cast as well. With the possible exception of the dreary Aunt May and her tedious moralising, these were films that did everything right. Now…let’s take a look at Spider-Man 3.

Read more »

Anybody who has been to the cinema during the last year or so will likely have seen an anti-piracy advert that warns people of the poor quality of pirated DVDs, and highlights that you miss out on the big-screen experience. Now, I’m going to overlook the fact that whoever made these adverts has obviously not spent much time trying to find decent DVD rips online, and look instead at how we can make the DVD experience more like the cinema experience because if, as they say, it’s the experience that counts, it ought to be an experience worth duplicating.

Read more »

I am contemplating buying an Xbox 360. This is not because I particularly want an Xbox 360, though they do hold more appeal to me now than the original Xbox ever did. No, the reason I’m contemplating this is due to a process of elimination: aside from handhelds, the X360 might be the only console I can both buy and use, and I find that mildly upsetting.

Read more »