Previously: 2018 – 2019 – 2020 – 2021 – 2022 You know the drill by now. Aside from finally upgrading from a PS4 Pro to a PS5, my playing habits were broadly similar to last year – dipping into the (surprisingly decent) Playstation Plus offerings with minimal interest in new games released this year (with […]

Previously: 2018 – 2019 – 2020 – 2021 Once again the year draws to a close and it’s time to do my homework for the internet. I realise I managed to avoid playing nearly all the big releases this year. This isn’t a boast. I’m not really a Dark Souls guy so didn’t bother with […]

Here are some of the standout games I played in 2019. It wasn’t a particularly notable year for new releases, in part because the current console generation is winding down. I ended up playing a mixture of small scale indie games (mostly on Switch) and revisiting games I’d missed from the last few years – […]

I didn’t play a very wide variety of games last year: it was a pretty moribund year for big releases; most of my gaming time was dominated by three of the games listed below; and I don’t play a lot of new games per year in any case, not being a journalist, IGF judge, student […]

Do you like games? Do you like fun? Can you make it to London South Bank University on the 6th May? If your answer to all of these questions is “yes please!” you should probably consider coming to GameCamp. GameCamp is an annual one-day ‘unconference’ event that covers computer and video games as well as […]

Some extremely welcome and long-awaited news came last week: Greg Johnson, designer of the original Toejam & Earl games, has started a Kickstarter campaign to fund the creation of a new game in the series. You can pledge to the Kickstarter here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1578116861/toejam-and-earl-back-in-the-groove The original Toejam & Earl for the Sega Mega Drive is my […]

As you probably know by now, the UK government is leaning on the major ISPs to implement opt-out internet content filtering. This ill-conceived plan is being driven ahead (after a consultation process presumably akin to the tribunal scene from Aliens) to pander to the tabloid press, who can make almost as much money sowing fear […]

Doom is a game that has left commentators struggling to come to terms with its impact for the last two decades. Retrospectives of the game first started appearing fifteen years ago. These days only a total plum would fail to recognise it as one of the landmark achievements of 1990s popular culture. Terminator 2, Nirvana, […]

For the past few months my team at AppyNation has been working with publishers 31X (Chris Sawyer’s company) and developers Origin8 Technologies to help bring Transport Tycoon to iOS and Android. Transport Tycoon is one of my favourite games of all time, and one that has always seemed like an obvious fit for mobile (particularly […]

Earlier in the week we finally hit the big scary launch button on Isoball, the iOS/Android puzzle game that I’ve been producing at Zattikka for the last few months. You can get the lowdown in the launch press release, and versions for iPhone/iPad Touch, iPad and Android are now available on their respective App Stores. […]

As you have probably seen by now, it’s been revealed that PC Zone magazine is set to close, going out with a (hopefully) triumphant farewell issue, to be edited by stalwart OXM editor Jon Hicks. I’m slightly surprised that I’ve never written anything on this blog about PC Zone, a magazine which I took for […]

Ten years since I started regularly writing words on the internet it has occurred to me that there might be people willing to offer me money to do this. The first fruits of this experiment can now be viewed on Eurogamer, where I’ve contributed a piece to their regular Sunday morning retro strand about the […]

“People forget that to get the golden egg, somebody has to fuck the goose.” Scott Foe, Producer of Nokia’s Reset Generation Last Monday I was invited to take part in the 4Talent Mobile Games Pitch. This event, now in its second year, saw nine finalists chosen from over 200 entries and invited to Channel 4’s […]

In a break from our usual programming, I made a game: “Scrumper is a game that allows the player to engage in the ‘victimless’ crime of apple theft from the comfort of their own home. The object of the game is to catch as many falling apples as possible.” It has already received glowing testimonials […]

Spare a thought for us Windows 2000 users. I’ve been happily using the OS for close to five years, and have never had a pressing reason to upgrade to Windows XP (in fact, I prefer Windows 2000’s slightly more responsive UI and modest appetite for physical memory – not to mention the futuristic name). Until […]