Games of 2011 Or 50 (more) reasons to avoid your friends and family

I find it hard to get genuinely excited about things any more. I certainly feel anticipation, but excitement? Not so much. Which is a pity as I miss it. I’m not sure why I don’t get excited any more. Perhaps its because so many things turned out to be a let down, perhaps I’ve become overly cynical, perhaps the tragically comprehensive previews of the modern media machine rob everything of mystery, perhaps I’m not quite as chemically tweaked since they stopped making Stinger’s (fuck I’d like a Dan Bar). Even though I don’t get all big in the pants thinking about whats coming I do still generally enjoy weeding through information on whats coming out and deciding what I’m really looking forward to. At this point in the year its hard to say whats going to be coming out for the entirety of 2011. Each week see’s new games released or release dates change. We also wont see very many announcements for the Autumn and Winter releases until the summer. So while I’ve called this “Games of 2011” it would be more accurate to call it “Games of the first half of 2011”. Continue reading…

Best of 2008 – Definitive Edition

I think only the lucky or the terminally un-opinionated actually fully enjoy reading Top X lists. For the rest of us it’s an experience all too often filled with bewildering disbelief that some idiots voted item X above item Y even though it’s clearly inferior or why poltroons who engaged in voting entirely forgot about item M. The one advantage of public Top X lists is that they have at least the pretence of objectivity as they’re based on public votes. On the flip side this means they’re an indication of popularity rather than quality (as only the naive believe the two are inseparable). Though I suppose “Top X” has always been shorthand for “Most Popular X” rather than “Best X”. I sure do love me some variables. Continue reading…

Around the noble god are borrowed things

To quote myself:

“I also think I shall unleash some rating fury on the tried and tested one to five scale (1=crap 2=average 3=good 4=excellent 5=”perfect”). I suppose I should come up with some kind of unit for these as well, but I’ll hold of on that for the moment and go with stars. I would also like to point out in advance that the reason so many of these ratings are so high is that I usually research what I’m downloading/buying and try to weed out the shite in advance.”

Also, because I love you so (and certainly not because I’m an anal retentive with too much spare time), the titles of all the items below are linked to further (and almost certainly more objective) sources of information about the item in question. Continue reading…