You'll notice I haven't updated for the entire year. If you like my entries and want to read more, I'm now writing everything on my personal blog!

This weekend marked the fourth anniversary of Island Gamers, the gaming community I co-founded for residents of the Isle of Wight, which is where I live. Over the last four years the community has grown to a userbase of almost 500 registered Isle of Wight gamers.

Only a handful of those gamers seem to get actively involved in the community, which is somewhat disappointing but then this is the internet we're talking about here.

So I was suprised to see so many new faces at this weekend's LAN. It's been over six months since we held our last gaming event - the longest we've ever waited between events. Going into the LAN, staff morale was low and we all had the feeling that this would be the last PC LAN, if not the last event ever that IG would be organising.

Thankfully, now we're out the other side we're all feeling much more positive. We managed to drum up almost 30 paying attendees, all of whom seemed to have enjoyed themselves immensely. We had a lot of positive feedback and a lot of questions about the next event. The next event that we thought we probably wouldn't be organising. So there you have it, IG is back from the dead and it makes me happy!

I thoroughly enjoyed the LAN. There was a shift in gaming toward consoles and there were quite a few attendees with both a PC and an XBox 360, myself included. I enjoyed my first ever LAN co-op Rainbow Six: Vegas game, which was a lot of fun even without a headset, which I stupidly left at home!

Going back to PC FPSes was strange. It's been maybe six months since I last properly played an FPS with a mouse and keyboard and the sensation I felt when jacking into my first game of UT2K4 this weekend was strange. It felt so wierd to be controlling with a mouse again, and took me a good few minutes to settle back into it. And you know what? It felt good. Really good. My biggest struggle with console gaming was the transition from mouse to thumbstick, and going back to PC again I realise why. It just feels so much better to shoot stuff with a mouse.

I pretty much sucked at UT for most of the LAN, though I did come second in the 1v1 tournament to the highly seasoned Dor1to, who's still in fine form. A pat on the back to Darkangelus though, who almost sent me out in the semis until I clawed my way back in the last 10 seconds to go for a draw and sudden death which I won by the skin of my teeth.

We had the local newspaper round for some photos, so it looks like we might be getting some free press again. The reporter looked most interested in the Wii, which took pride of place on the projector at the front of the hall. I think everyone had a go on it at some point, and it really did bring people together. I can see where Ninty's going with it now and I'm happy to say that the Wii has found its niche.

It was my Wii, by the way. It finally arrived two months after I renewed my pre-order. I've not had a whole lot of time to play with it, but Wii sports really is as fun as everyone says. I've barely dipped into Zelda, I spent 45 minutes trying to catch my first fish to get that damned cat to follow me, and I failed miserably. I must be doing something wrong.

I'm still waiting for Worms on XBLA. I played the very first iteration of the series on the Amiga and really got into it after Worms: Director's Cut on the A1200. I skipped the PC 2D worms, but did dip into Worms 3D a little. The XBLA version looks set to be straightforward 2D action, with great presentation and all the old-skool weapons that one would expect. I'm itching to spend my 1200 points and to get worming with my friends from IG.

Having said that, I'm getting a little frustrated with the infrequent Arcade updates. There are so many games we've all been hearing about that are due for release "anytime now", but with ony one Wednesday update per week, I'm left disappointed every time I see another 80s arcade game (which I could quite happily play on MAME illegally, thank you) or something equally silly like another expansion pack for Lumines. Then I wait another week only to be disappointed again. Ugh. More updates and faster QA please, Microsoft!

I think I've written enough for this update. If you couldn't tell, I'm quite excited about gaming right now, and this year is off to a great start!

Wowsers, I spent a LOT of time playing games over the last three weeks. Haven't played so many games so solidly for a long time - the 360 really has turned me back into a gamer.

But before I go into detail about that, let's talk about the Wii. I still have my pre-order, and I still have no idea when I'll actually get the console. After playing on one for the first time over christmas, I'm not really all that excited either.

Wii Sports is great fun. The movements you perform with the remote are translated to screen with an unexpected high level of accuracy. Bowling, tennis and baseball were a lot of fun and really show off what the Wii is going to be capable of in the future.

I didn't want to see Zelda (spoilers), so the only other game I got to play was Rayman. Some of the game ideas were okay, some were laugh-out-loud funny, but the majority were just "meh". Playing it, I was reminded of the Olympic joystick-waggler games of old.

And overall, the Wii feels old. I'm worried about the controller, it wasn't easy to use and it was very finicky at times, with cursors going AWOL and jerky motion problems. And I still have a problem with the overall level of the graphics in all of the games. After being used to the 360 connected to my VGA projector with a VGA cable and running in 1024x768, seeing the Wii running over a shockingly bad composite cable complete with the saturation problems and general fuzziness that one expects from such a setup I couldn't help but be disappointed. Low poly models and low-res textures simply serve to make matters worse.

Come on Nintendo, let's see those real Wii games released. Mario and Metroid already look great in screenshots. They needed to be out now, not in six months' time.

In other news, I completed Dead Rising, Rainbow Six: Vegas and Oblivion on the 360 this week. At least as far as single-player storylines go. I'm still working on the achievements for Oblivion with just the Dark Brotherhood and the Thieves guild storylines to go. I'm a little concerned about how many of the achievements for Vegas and Gears centre around the Online portions. I really don't have much time to dedicate to playing hundreds of matches of shooters online, especially when it's hard to find a quick match most of the time.

I guess I'll just have to buy more 360 games. Oh the sweet, sweet points.

I recently started getting into XNA, and I'm working on my first game for Windows and 360 (with the Creator's Club subscription). It's really fun and takes a lot of the hard work out of getting a simple 2D game up and running. You can follow my progress on my personal blog.

Dear Nintendo,

I lost faith for a while there. I'm truly sorry. I didn't mean to cheat on you with that hussy XBox.

I've re-ordered the Wii now. I'll try to be more faithful in the future.

But the points, those sweet, sweet points.

I'll get help, I promise.

Love,
-G

Reading my last blog post is rather amusing, given recent events. Last Sunday night I went ahead and ordered a 360 premium with Gears. After one week of being a 360 owner, I can gladly say that I am hooked.

It feels like I'm just discovering gaming all over again. The achievement points system is probably responsible for most of that feeling, as I now have the thirst for those juicy gaming achievements, and I'm forcing myself to play harder and for longer to get them.

Not that it feels like a chore, mind you. The mildly frustrating moments in Dead Rising, Gears and Burnout soon turn to elation when I get past them and get closer to that next achievement milestone. On the PC, I found that I was getting bored of games really quickly, and rarely finishing them. The achievement points system is helping me get over that. Take Oblivion, for instance. On the PC, I came so close to finishing the main quest, but never did. I finished the arena and the mage's guild questline, then put it down. Since starting it on the 360 - I've put in six hours so far - I'm already well into the main storyline, arena champion and halfway through both the mage's guild and fighter's guild quests. All because of points.

I've cancelled my Wii pre-order. As much as I love Nintendo and their games, the launch lineup just isn't strong enough to tear me away from the 360. As soon as a proper Nintendo first-party, non-port triple-A title is released (Metroid, Galaxies, Smash Bros.) I'll grab one with glee. Zelda, as awesome as it may be, just isn't going to tear me away from my quest for points. Plus I don't want to buy a new console just to play a port of a 'Cube game. I really feel dirty for abandoning the Wii after anticipating it for so long, but I feel good about my decision, knowing that I'll pick one up next year and I'll be getting a somewhat more mature console, with all promised features and some proper Wii games.

SPAAAAAACE MAAAAAGNUUUUUM

My Wii pre-order with Gameplay was confirmed a couple of days ago, making me a very happy chappy indeed. According to them, it's going to be delivered on the 8th, so I'm taking their word for it (after all, they've not let me down yet) and taking the day off. My first ever launch-day console and I'm excited.

I've only ordered Twilight Princess and an extra remote and nunchuk to go with the console. I put in an order for the RGB SCART lead as well, but I won't hold my breath for that one after reading about the shortage of component cables in the States.

The rest of the EU lineup is looking so damn mediocre. We're not getting Trauma Center or Metal Slug Anthology for ages. Excite Truck even seems to be a non-starter, but maybe that's not such a great loss. So as far as extra full-price games go, it's either Rayman or Monkey Ball for me. I'm giving the first round of FPS games a miss, despite what I've written in the past about the console being made for them. It seems that the developers aren't giving us enough options for control configuration just yet as far as FPS games go. I'm sure things will clear up soon, and I imagine Metroid Prime: Corruption will be the first decent shooter.

All the recent talk of Gears of War is making me want a 360 more and more. I can't afford it, and I have to keep telling myself that. I'm waiting for the first price drop on the 360 before I snag one. I'll talk myself into it eventually, as I want to take a look at the XNA Game Studio stuff, and the ability to make games for Live is becoming more and more interesting by the minute.

I can't afford it though, right?

Wowsers, it's been more than six months since I last updated my blog. I guess that's just the way it goes. Funnily enough, I've been fairly active as far as gaming's concerned, although a lot of that activity has been centered around reading about the Wii and hyping myself up in epic quantities. I'll get to that later.

So back in July, the World of Warcraft guild that I started at EU launch finally broke away from an alliance of three guilds to start raiding on their own. I decided to re-activate and get back in the game. So three of the six months since I last wrote anything were spent raiding Molten Core and Zul Gurub and ultimately starting out in Blackwing Lair. WoW is a lot of fun, but only when you're playing with friends. As the guild was made up of real-life friends, and friends-of-friends, going back for those three months was a great decision and I fully enjoyed every minute.

I stopped playing again last month, not for any particular reason; I just didn't log in for a week and didn't miss it. Then a week became two and so on. I expect I'll go back for Burning Crusade, if only for another three months!

What about other games? I'm racking my brains here. The DS is pretty much gathering dust (and I feel really guilty about that), and my PC is due to become long in the tooth anytime soon. This really makes me angry, because I love FPS games and the home of the FPS is still the PC for me. I just can't get used to thumbstick controls to be able to switch over to console completely yet. Still, I'm optimistic that my Shuttle will hold up well enough to run UT2007 and Episode 2 next year.

And I guess it can't be all bad, as Company of Heroes ran extremely smooth for me right out of the box. I had read that the game was a bit of a slut to run, but I had no such problems. I'm no RTS fan, but that game is fantastic. Of course, I was playing it through on easy and I didn't dare step into multiplayer, but the campaign is mesmerising. I'll get back to it and finish it soon, honest.

Introversion released a new game, Defcon. I'm a big fan of Introversion, they bend the rules and make games that are different from the norm. And they have to - they're just a small bedroom programming team from here in the UK. Now that they've partnered with Valve and are releasing their stuff through Steam, hopefully the rest of the world will come to enjoy their games as much as I do. And I hope that they finally make a decent living from it, too.

Defcon is a pretty interesting. It only takes a short amount of time to play a round, and it's pretty deep tactically, despite having very few actual units to make use of. Playing with a couple of friends has been great, and I think it's going to make for a decent small-hours LAN game.

And so to the Wii. The Wii will be the first console I've ever had on Day One. And that's only if Gameplay manage to fulfill my pre-order. There's a lot of talk about shortages in the States, and I can only assume we're getting less units here. Nintendo once seemed confident that they were going to be able to meet demand, but now Reggie's saying that it's going to be tough to get one. It's a little worrying.

I'm also a little worried about the direction that Ninty are taking with the Wii. Since getting my Gamecube (my first ever console) in 2003, I've become a Nintendo fan. I thought every single first-party GC game was fantastic. I thought the GC's third-party support was patchy at best. It didn't matter too much, because I came into the GC two years after launch, so there were already a wealth of amazing Nintendo games available.

With the Wii, I'm in it from the start. Twilight Princess is a killer app, no doubt about it. I can't wait to play. But in essence, it's a port. It was written for the GC. It looks like a GC game, about on-par with XBox visuals. I'm not sure if that's good enough. I'm no graphics whore, I've been playing games from years and could quite happily play a text-based game if it oozes gameplay. As much as Nintendo try to push their revolutionary new control method, the average gamer (and non-gamer) here in the UK is going to see the Wii next to a PS3 or a 360 in the shop, and is going to be blown away by the hi-def, crisply textured and highly-polyed graphics of the latter two. While I'm sure the Wii is capable of better visuals than most of its launch titles would suggest, a good first impression isn't being made.

And by some accounts, the new control system is full of teething problems too. Initial reviews all report high learning curves and distracting niggles when using the remote for both tilting and pointing. I can't comment as I've not had the chance to check the console out yet, but some of the things that I feared certainly seem to be coming true.

With all that said, I'm positive that subsequent Nintendo titles will start to offer more impressive visuals and the controller niggles will be ironed out both by the developers and by the gamers as we get used to handling the new controller.

And besides, with the PS3 costing £400 and being delayed until March (you fail, Sony) and with the 360 premium still costing nearly £300, there's only one choice of console for me. I'm confident that in a year or so, I will own a 360 as well as my Wii, because Gears of War looks phenomenal and because I like the interface and points sytem of Live (two weeks ago I played with the 360 for the first time ever - I was a bit late to that party!). I'll be waiting for the price to drop significantly first, though.

Three weeks until the Wii, Europe!

It really was. I finished it in a bit of downtime at last weekend's LAN. I'll add my voice to the "maybe it was just a little too short" crowd and suggest that a $15 price point would have been more suitable. I guess I breezed through it in maybe four hour's play time, but content-wise, there's probably two hours tops. I think Valve may have realised this - it would explain a totally unnecessary part toward the end of the game that seens you (Gordon) backtracking three or four times between two buildings, escorting a squad of City 17 evacuees. It certainly wasn't a landmark in game design.

The rest of the game though - pure gold. It was linear as hell, didn't answer many questions, had a complete cop-out of an introduction and was completely, utterly wonderful.

Having Alyx with you throughout the entire episode was a masterstroke of gaming genius. She provided some wonderful narration and helped with the plot continuity with some well-acted conversations with Eli and Dr. Kleiner, as well as her one-sided monologues with Gordon, who remains as mute as ever.

There wasn't really anything new in the game - all the old favourite weapons are used with nothing new added, the couple of new foes don't provide anything out of the ordinary and the scenry is pretty much more of the same from HL2. However, every set-piece is great to play and the entire experience just felt more polished than many similar FPSs. Six months until Episode Two.

As for the LAN, pretty enjoyable. We mostly played the old favourites: Quake (3 and 4), UT2004 and co-op SWAT4. Thankfully, no Battlefield was ventured into - the entire BF series is dead to me now, and would be banned from LANs entirely if I had my way!

I had a gaming first at the LAN as well - Guitar Hero. I play guitar for real, and while I won't pretend that i'm any kind of Hero, I at least thought that playing a pretend guitar game wouldn't be too much of a problem. You know, kinda like air guitar. You can always tell a real guitarist when they play air guitar, as they pretend-strum in time and move their left hands into imaginary chord positions. Non-guitarists just kinda let their left hand hang limply in the air whilst they flail around the dancefloor.

....Anyway. Guitar Hero. Real guitar skills are no use here, my friends. Stay way. It doesn't look cool, it's not clever in any way shape or form, and none of the songs are originals (much like Donkey Konga in that respect). Mashing those five fret buttons should remain the reserve of DDR fanatics only. I'll stick to playing proper guitar badly, it's easier to look cool whilst doing it.

I can't believe I sucked at Guitar Hero.

For shame.

Just a quick check-in this time. No long rants here, I promise!

Half Life 2: Episode One unlocked on Steam just as I got in from work last night. Having read that the game was incredibly short to anyone that has any skill whatsoever at first-person shooters, I decided to take it as slowly as possible.

The intro cinematic seemed like a bit of a copout, really. G-Man was nowhere near as badass as he usually is. Still, all that was quickly forgotten during the opening ten minutes of gameplay, with some excellent character interaction between Alyx, Dog, Eli and Kleiner. Gordon remains as silent as always, but that doesn't stop Alyx from trying, and her voice acting is top-notch once again.

I stopped at what I originally thought was about a third of the way through the game, but I've since come to realise it's probably more like halfway. Every single second of the game so far has been quality. And in the end, I believe that it's the quality that'll keep the fans coming back for more.

I'm completely prepared for a blueballs cliffhanger ending though. It's going to be somewhat like an episode of Lost, except rather than waiting a week or two, I'm going to be left cold for six months. Maybe I'll just not finish the rest of the episode!

Just noticed today that the demo for Sensible Soccer 2006 has been released. I've heard that it's pretty faithful to the originals as far as the feel of the game is concerned, which makes me happy. I'll post a trip report next week sometime. I can only hope it sells well - I'd really love to see more great games from the past get updated without losing too much of their original charm. I can only hope Cannon Fodder and Syndicate will someday get the same treatment.

This weekend is a LAN weekend! Myself and my colleague J are taking a back-seat this time and letting Island Gamers' third co-founder run a mini-LAN for about twenty-five of our members. It's quite tiring to run a twenty-four hour LAN complete with tournaments and big organised games for fifty attendees, so I'm quite looking forward to kicking back for just twelve hours of samller, more involved games without any of the added pressure. If nothing else, it'll provide me with something else to write about next week.

As mentioned in my previous entries, I'm not much of a console gamer. I'm slowly coming around to the idea, but having been bought up with computers, I still find a lot of things about these friendly little boxes that just don't click with me.

The first and most obvious thing is the joypad. I'm absolutely useless at accurately controlling games with my thumbs. Most of my non-gaming friends can beat me at Mario Tennis, Smash Bros., Donkey Konga and Super Monkey Ball. They'd have a harder time beating me at Soul Calibur 2 or Mario Kart, but that's only because I've put a lot of single-player hours in on them.

Those same friends stand no chance against me at Quake or UT. However, they'd more than likely kick my ass in, say, Metroid Prime: Echoes and Halo 2 for instance. Joypads just don't "feel" right for playing FPS games to me. That's not really the point of this entry, because the joypad vs keyboard/mouse argument is fully played out these days. What I'm trying to get across here is that no matter how amazing games look on the next-gen systems, I'm always going to feel reserved about getting into them, simply because I have to use a joypad to play them.

That's another reason that I like the premise of the Wii's controller so much. That thing is going to make console FPSs accessible to me for the first time, just as Metroid Prime: Hunters has done on the DS, with the touchpad freelook. When I look at Gears of War, it makes me a little sad inside, because I know that nothing like that will ever appear on a Nintendo system. I'm feeling a little alienated already.

And I'm starting to worry that the trend toward cross-platform development is alienating me from the PC games that I love. And so I get to the real point of this entry. Field of View.

The Field of View of a first person shooter, measured in degrees, has always been close to ninety degrees in PC games. Quake, UT, Half-LIfe - the three FPSs that have set the standard for a damn good shooter have always shared the same default field of view of ninety degrees.

When I played in Quake clans, we used to set our FOV to a hundred or maybe a hundred and twenty degrees, creating a fish-eye like effect. It was a little extreme, but it meant that we could see more to our left and right than our opponents could, and it gave us a slight edge, just like human peripheral vision.

Times are changing. Unfortunately, having a higher FOV setting means that the player can see more, and thusly more power is needed to render the extra scenery we're seeing. And the same goes for the reverse - lower the FOV and less needs to be rendered, saving vital frames per second.

And consoles need all the frames per second they can get. I first noticed a trend in console games using a lower FOV when the Halo conversion came to PC. I couldn't play it at first, the seventy-five degree field of view just felt claustraphobic and plain wrong. I persevered, but my enjoyment was severely reduced by this crazy consolish perpective I was given.

The same problem has reared its ugly head twice in more recent times. I'm looking at you, Oblivion and SiN: Emergence.

Both of these games have a default FOV of seventy-five degrees. UGH. I was disgusted to see it when I first booted up Oblivion. It just stank of console port. Coupled with the dumbed-down UI, getting started with Oblivion was a hard pill to swallow. I eventually found a way to change the FOV in Oblivion, but it reset back to default every time I entered conversation with an NPC, due to the face-zoom effect. Not nice.

I nearly didn't bother with SiN once I found the FOV problem. I noticed it the very second I took control of Blade. Fortunately, setting the FOV to ninety in SiN was relatively easy, but I had to enable cheats to do it (sv_cheats 1, fov 90). It felt dirty.

So here's my plea to developers of first person games. I know that you can't make money anymore unless you release on console as well as PC, but please remember us old-school PC hardcore and give us the option to change the FOV without breaking other aspects of the game. Or if you don't want us to be able to change it, at least make it ninety degrees as default.

And while you're there, stop dumbing down our user interfaces. I know that I could plug a joypad into my PC and play your first-person perspective game, but I wont.