“It’s shocking that someone would think it acceptable to recreate the acts of the Taliban. At the hands of the Taliban, children have lost fathers and wives have lost husbands. I am disgusted and angry. It’s hard to believe any citizen of our country would wish to buy such a thoroughly un-British game. I would urge retailers to show their support for our armed forces and ban this tasteless product.”

- Liam Fox MP, 23 August 2010, on the then-unreleased Medal of Honor

Dumbass has a point. Medal of Honor is pretty un-British, being a Swedish-made and US-published game which lets you play as fake Taleban as well as fake US Marines. Why, just yesterday I was berating a playground full of children playing Army for daring to depict opposing forces in their make-believe conflict, right before I was tackled to the ground by a mob of frenzied parents.

But Alice is just teetering on the edge of the rabbit hole – poor Dr Fox is clearly unaware of how deep this vicious strain of un-Britishness goes. I, on the other hand, am a staunch defender of truth and stuff, which means I am unafraid to brave the vilest recesses of unpatriotic gamery that has blighted Blighty’s shores in recent years. How am I able to do this? By becoming one of them.

Ladies and gentlemen, from this moment forth, I am un-British. And I am on a quest for the un-British Ideal.

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The Joker has it wrong - Batman doesn’t dress like a bat. Batman is a man who dresses up like a man who dresses up like a bat. Which makes me, playing Batman: Arkham Asylum a man who dresses up like a man who dresses up like a man who dresses up like a bat. And if this seems unreasonably convoluted, spare a thought for Sammy “Two Wigs” Wiggerson, my professional body double, who dresses up like a man who dresses up like a man who – oh you’ve already lost interest. (more…)

Being a Siren’s basically about being a bitch. Every time I go invisible – or stop being invisible – I explode with a burst of lightning. When I hit someone, my acidic fingertips start melting their faces off. Even when I’m just standing around I can continue electrocuting and setting fire to any poor soul who gets too close. Oh, and I’m a dab hand with shooting them in the face, too. You might think that this very special sort of bitchiness makes it difficult to form long-term relationships with people, but luckily, I have guys to back me up. Like that big guy and that other big guy and that slightly less big guy.

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Escape from Monkey Island was released in 2000, fourth in the series and an attempt to marry the fancy-dancey 3D engine from previous combine-things-with-other-things smash hit Grim Fandango with the juggernaut-like momentum and humour that the Monkey Island games were still known for. It was swish, stylish and a very big deal on its release into the eager maws of the ravenous gaming public, who were dying for one last chomp on the delicious marrow of adventure gaming.

It was also the one of the biggest gaming cock-ups since Beth the Bashing Battery Hen took on ‘Ravisher’ Reggie the Raping Rooster in the cockfighting summer slam-down of 1184. Bear that image in mind, dear reader – keep thinking back to chicken-on-chicken non-consensual sex as you read on. It’ll help keep this whole matter in perspective. Despite being initially warmly received, fans quickly began to voice their botheration at the rather sharp downturn in quality that the game had taken. Complaints ranged from weak humour to awkward controls and a nonsensical plot. But, with nine years distance on this pain and brains fired up on a revitalised love of all things Monkey Island, we owe it to our modern brains to sort the good from the bad, and give Escape the treatment it really deserves. Strap in. (more…)

What’s best. Cricket or Spelunky? Or cricket AND Spelunky? Can one man battle for his life and the safety of more dames than his lips can handle… while at the same time keeping in touch with the sporting greatest giggle? Summer is the time for The Ashes, biannual titanic struggle of cricketty goodness between England and England’s Wayward Kid. Armed only with a radio bleating out the BBC’s Test Match Special, a whip and an inappropriate level of confidence, the internet’s Bobsy goes Spelunking…
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I don’t think any of us quite expected this.

Lucasarts, the company that perfected, popularised and nearly destroyed adventure games as a genre, have gone back to the original Secret of Monkey Island and given it a bit of a makeover. What a way to celebrate the brilliance of a true gaming classic on its, er, 19th anniversary.
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It’s a title that needs to be pronounced in slow, gravely tones, like the sound of a gravestone being dragged across shattered bones. Feeeeeaaaaaarrrr…

But you can’t say it like that; note the full stops. F.E.A.R actually stands for First Encounter Assault Recon, which is apparently a branch of the US military now. I know they have their funny little ways, but naming a squad of elite super-soldiers FEAR? Have they gone m-

Oh.

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Zuma is a game by PopCap, and that should really tell you all you need to know. It’s neatly presented and brightly coloured, the gameplay mechanics are simple and repetitive, and it’s addictive to the order of making Colombian drug warlords slap their own foreheads and say “Oh, of course!”. It is available over Steam individually for a few invisi-dollars, or as part of a PopCap Favorites (sic) combo pack for slightly more invisi-dollars but you also get Peggle, Bookworm Adventures and Bejewelled, as well as something called Insanaquarium, which isn’t very good.

But: Zuma. It works a bit like this. A stream of brightly coloured balls rolls slowly down a winding trough towards a hole, and if the balls ever reach the hole then all the balls fall down the hole and it’s game over oh noes except you have three lives. In order to prevent this calamity you, as an immobile stone frog apparently on a Lazy Susan or something, must fire more balls at the ones already in the trough. In true puzzle game style, getting three or more balls of the same colour in the row causes them to disappear for some reason and we can all agree that’s basically a good thing and we can get on with our lives.

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So here it is. World of Warcraft is the best worst single-player MMO you’ll ever pay money to not play.

I’m quite pleased with that.

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