After a brief (ahem – 12 month) hiatus I returned to, and completed, Braid.

It’s criminal that I was away from Braid’s hauntingly atmospheric world for so long, but it seems the break was exactly what I needed in order to tackle one of the game’s later, more devious puzzles. [continue reading]

After many years of Acorn Electron and Amstrad CPC gaming, I finally found my true love. The Atari ST, along with a carrier bag full of pirated game compilation disks (all individually wrapped, god bless you Mum) became mine one Christmas morning, and I have used one ever since. My Atari ST has been in the company of a multitude of systems throughout the hardware generations and never once played second fiddle. Until now, that is.

Last week I placed my Atari STE in the loft alongside its three STFM brethren in order to make room for the impending arrival of the fourth member of the Game & Write clan. What better way to mark this sad happening than with a look back at my favourite games for the system. [continue reading]

Despite my chequered past regarding Japanese Role Playing Games, Final Fantasy XIII‘s recent price drop (and a rush of blood to the head) made it an irresistible impulse buy.

Though widely received as a vast and enjoyable game, Square Enix’s latest instalment in its blockbuster series received some criticism upon release. While some reviewers lauded its new features and dismissal of JRPG norms, others lambasted the developer’s disregard for its loyal fan-base, citing its linear level design and character progression. [continue reading]

Plenty of games are amusing. Not many games are laugh out loud funny. Very rarely will a game go beyond a smirk or giggle and inspire a full on rip-roaring belly-jiggling snort like Grand Theft Auto IV has on many occasions. Within five minutes of ripping the cellophane off of my copy, it had me in stitches.

After a drunken night out with Nico’s cousin Roman, they stumble out of a club. The screen swims, and your previously solid control of Nico becomes a wrestling match with the analogue stick just to get him to stand up straight. Baulking at the thought of walking all the way back to Roman’s apartment (read save point) in this manner, Nico jumps into his cousin’s taxi. Unsurprisingly, controlling a car while under the influence is no easier than walking, and it’s not long before the local law enforcement take an interest. [continue reading]

Do you like big blocky pixels? Do you like garish colours? Do you like weak space-bars? If the answer to these three questions is yes, then boy do I have the microcomputer for you! Welcome dear friends to the wonder that is the Amstrad CPC 464.

While I was tapping away at my Acorn Electron’s oh-so-tactile keys, my uncle was beating the crap out of his Amstrad. He broke the space bar during one particularly infuriating game of Emlyn Hughes’ International Soccer – it still worked if you pushed it in the right way, but it didn’t sit right and couldn’t be relied on in a crisis. After a while, he moved on to pastures 16-bit, and he called me up and offered me his old Amstrad CPC. His offer was met with tears of joy (that’s right Speccy/C64 fans, TEARS OF JOY) and an emphatic yes. [continue reading]

My first real experience of video gaming came early in my life when my dad treated us all to an Acorn Electron. My dad was always a sucker for a piece of new technology, and the beige beauty had caught his eye a few weeks before at a friend’s house.  His motivation to buy one for the Johnson household was steeled upon the realisation that said friend had a vast library of games which we could purloin through the ingenious invention known as the tape-to-tape cassette recorder.

Thus began my journey through the world of video games. My father had chosen the path and I would stick to it diligently from that day forth. The mainstream wasn’t for me; Johnny Popular could keep his Spectrum, his Commodore 64, the Elk was for me. Further down the road I would shun the Amiga in favour of the Atari ST, turn my back on the Playstation and fling my arms wide open for Nintendo’s 64-bit beauty. Playstation 2? Pah! I’ll have a Dreamcast please!

My friends would always be looking down on me, but I was impervious to their jibes and taunts. Aside the occasional lapse (there were a few exclusives I would secretly covet, but they will wait for a future post), I was more than happy with my lot.

What follows is a potted tour through my gaming past. Each post will be a chronological record of systems owned and the games I most enjoyed on that platform. First up: the Acorn Electron. [continue reading]

I picked up a second hand copy of Mirror’s Edge for just a fiver about a month ago. Boy, am I glad I didn’t pay full price for this. I came very close to doing just that after playing the downloadable demo on XBox Live back in 2008.

Mirror’s Edge should be brilliant. A game that enables us pie-eating chuggers to experience the exquisite freedom enjoyed by the perpetrators of parkour should be an absolute revelation. So where did Mirror’s Edge go wrong? [continue reading]

Who would have thought that De La Soul could have got it so wrong? It seems that 3 is not the magic number at all. For me it is 60: the magic amount of Great British pennies which I am willing to spend when taking a punt on something new, throwing caution to the wind.

Luckily, there are two outlets for my oxymoronic thrifty abandon: XBox Live Indie Games (see Shoot 1-Up) and Apple’s App Store feature some super games at the bargain price point of 80MSP and 59p respectively. This week, my Star Bar fund was depleted by Rovio’s Angry Birds. [continue reading]

Although I’m a big fan of their western equivalents, Japanese Role-Playing Games (JRPGs) have always seemed utterly impenetrable to me. My attempts to break into the genre are invariably met with poorly translated Japanese memes, repetitive battles, translucent character design, and many other irksome traits that die-hard fans seem to revel in.

There is a section on my games shelf that I have dubbed the ‘JRPG graveyard’. That’s where Final Fantasy III, Phantasy Stars I and IV, Earthbound and Eternal Sonata are interred, all unfinished, abandoned after ten or so hours of play each. [continue reading]

It’s only 60p! I spent more than that on a Star Bar last week. To put Shoot 1-Up’s incredible value into perspective, consider the following comparison: 20 seconds of peanutty goodness, or 20 minutes of unadulterated shoot ‘em up bliss. It is technically possible to enjoy both at the same time, though caramel is known to have adverse effects on the XBox 360 thumbstick’s responsiveness.

It would be hard to turn your nose up to even a generic shoot-by-numbers title at 60 pennies, but at its heart Shoot 1UP has a genuinely unique play mechanic that makes it impossible to pass up. [continue reading]