People of America: It's time to Re-Elect the President. I'm not talking about the current pretender to the Presidency: I'm talking about your one true and everlasting leader, President Max. Your day of reckoning is at hand, and only Max can bring about a return to more prosperous times. A time when giant thunder-lizards marched over the Midwest praying on the upstart mammals, a time when the United States was free. This 4th of July, Max has a dream. A dream that one day, he will be in an all-nude production of "Death of a Salesman" on ice. He believes in a chicken in every pot, and vice versa. I can forsee an America under one rule: An utterly iron-fisted rule. One rabbit, one law! Let your neighbours know that dissent will not be tolerated! Remember, we have nothing to fear except fear itself… And the Chupacabra! Madre de Dios, he'll kill us all! Max has again appointed former Vice President and ghostly evil goldfish Mr. Spatula to be his running mate, with his best friend and partner in crime-fighting Sam acting Chief of Staff. This is a team you can believe in, who have not only saved the world countless times, but also managed to halve the national debt by selling the United States to Canada to make it Lower Saskatchewan. So Re-Elect Max! Afterall, he did manage to defeat one of America's greatest Presidents: The giant animated statue of Abraham Lincoln from the Lincoln Memorial.

So Sam & Max are amazing, in case you had been wondering. Prior to my computer spontaneously combusting it was all I had really been playing. Alas, my computer is now dearly deceased. The hard drive itself is still fine, but the chipset fan and chipset itself seem to have worn out and ceased to function, and my guess is that this means information is not being pushed from the Northbridge to the Southbridge and vice versa (I don't really know what that means: I just said it to sound more tech-savvy than I really am :P). So I bit the bullet and have now bought a new computer, which I expect to arrive (hopefully) next week. In the meantime I've been trying to play a bit more of the Wii to make it feel more loved, because most of the time it is very under-utilised. I still don't want to pay nearly £30 for Super Mario Galaxy, when it came out in 2007. In other news the dreaded and much-anticipated Steam Summer Sale is upon us and we shall quake in terror at the great deals which are going to be thrust upon us, begging to be bought. Normally I have pretty good restraint when it comes to needless spending, but the Steam sales are so ingeniously designed so that it feels like you need to buy, rather than just want to. Already I have succumbed to Dreamfall, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Magicka. Finally, in other, other news I will be starting a new job from 18th July. I've managed to get a permanent position at Oxford University Press (the largest and dare I say most prestigious university publisher in the world) as a web marketing assistant, so I am super-excited to be working in that field considering I've been interested in publishing and the media for a good many years.

Wishing you all a Happy Independence Day! :D

So You Think You're Free?

Disclaimer: This posting contains science, maths and philosophy, some (or all) of which I may have misinterpreted, miscalculated or misconstrued in various ways. I profess that I am a poor philosopher and an even worse scientist and mathematician. Feel free to pick apart my argument or examine holes in my logic. But if Philosophy of Science has taught me anything it is that it is better to say what you think and look stupid than to simply keep quiet. :)

Video games are only just beginning to experiment with the idea of player choice. In the past, the vast majority of games followed a single pre-determined path: You played the game, beat the final boss and that was it: Job done, roll credits, put the game back in the box and onto the next one. But we are currently in the midst of a slow but gradual revolution in games design, where the ending is not absolute and your choices will influence the course of the game's events. Gameplay is beginning to introduce a number of limited aspects of player choice into our gaming experiences, and more detailed, intuitive and realistic choices are only just around the corner. However, at the moment the nature of the choices and the way they have been implemented into games is creating an unnatural, false sense of reality, where all choices are made along a defined probability axis (otherwise known as Black vs. White, Renegade vs. Paragon, etc.). This determined, strictly controlled reality is a dangerous trap to fall into, because it will very soon limit the degree to which the player can ever truly interact with a gaming environment, or influence the plot. Now is the time to fight to preserve genuine player choice, and prevent our freedom from slipping away. French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre said that "man is condemned to be free". Let us stop being condemned to be determined within our games. This is why I believe that we must bring new principles into games design and this is how I intend to make video game history: By positing the creation of video games which are completely random. How can we achieve this? The answer to that is quite interesting.

Before we can understand how current iterations of player choice can constrict gaming freedom, we must first recognise why a gaming environment has always been a determined one. As GLaDOS once said, let's look at a real world example. When you walk down the street, random events of which you have no prior knowledge are likely to happen. A man could for example run out of a shop saying that his wife had just hit him with her handbag and you would have no prior indication that that event was going to happen. As far as we are aware (assuming the world itself isn't determined) it was a random event. Now we can look at video games. If you walk down a street in a game, and a character runs out of a shop saying his wife has just hit him with her handbag, the chances of that event happening are never going to be random: They have been determined from the beginning. Either the event is definitely going to happen (often called scripted events) or the event has a definite chance of happening, but might not ('random' events, although this is a very bad misnomer). An example of a series of scripted events could be the beginning of Half-Life 2: Dr. Freeman starts off on the train, walks through the station and out into the plaza. No matter how many times you play the game, all of the characters will remain in the same locations and will always deliver the same lines, and moreover, Freeman must proceed along a strictly linear path. Chance, or so-called random events are best characterised by encounters in RPGs. Whilst wondering through the Mojave Wasteland in Fallout: New Vegas, you might meet a group of bandits who want to acquaint you with the finer points of their baseball bats, but equally you might happen upon a Bloatfly, or a Radscorpion. The chance of meeting an enemy is determined according to a probability equation, taking into account your location, enemies you've met previously, and player level. In this fashion, it is unlikely the player will ever be confronted with something which is impossible to defeat. The world is scaled to meet your expectations. Clearly, this isn't anything like real life.

So, games currently make use of both certainty and probability in their design, and a combination of scripted events and chance encounters inevitably make up much of the gameplay experience today. Depending upon the game in question, the percentages will alter upon whether you are playing a predominantly scripted or more a randomised game. But is it possible to have a game where the player is truly free? Where nothing has been planned by the games designer, aside from setting the stage for the game to play out from? I believe that this will, at some point in the future be possible thanks to one of the most important scientific breakthroughs of the 20th Century: Quantum mechanics. At the moment, computers can use pseudo-random number generators (and hardware random number generators) to approximate a "random" choice, but neither of these is fully random. If you know the algorithm and the conditions in which it was set in motion, you can predict the results. Something truly random cannot be predicted. Our universe at the quantum level is truly random and chaotic: Things happen at such a speed and complexity that we still understand very little of it. Is it possible to take the principles of quantum mechanics, the power of this randomised, chaotic universe and use them in computing? The answer is yes and research is already well underway to build and run functioning quantum computers. For example only last month the Lockheed Martin Corporation entered a contract to buy the world's first commercial quantum computer. These computers use qubits rather than bits to process information. Please don't ask me how they work because I haven't the foggiest, but if you're interested Wikipedia goes into some detail about them. So in the end my dream is quite simple: To have the world's first quantum computer game, playing on a quantum computer. I expect it will take decades or maybe centuries before quantum computing becomes commonplace, but I believe that it will happen eventually. And maybe, just maybe, then we will really be free.

If you're interested in further reading, here are some interesting articles:

Quantum Minesweeper: Scientific journal article in which Michal and Goren Gordon examine how a game of Minesweeper would work using quantum computing.

Will the QC Kill the PC?: Article in The Daily Telegraph which discusses various aspects of quantum computing, including application in video games.

Quantum Superposition in Video Games: Two great videos which demonstrate excellently the endless possibilities which quantum computing could bring to gaming.

A Brief History of Quantum Computing: Very readable history courtesy of Simon Bone and Matias Castro at Imperial College London: http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~nd/surprise_97/journal/vol4/spb3/

In the last week I have been playing a bit of Crysis, a game known for its astoundingly high graphical fidelity and mammoth processing requirements. In fact, I was rather surprised that my computer could run it, since back in 2007 when it first came out the system requirements seemed so outlandish that it was as if there were no computers currently available on the market which could run the game at the highest settings. Although the frame rate is prone to bog down in some places (especially when there is a lot happening on screen), my system can still run the game on high settings although I have not tested it on ultra high, for fear I might kill my PC. This is preferable to medium settings, because with the graphics turn down everything becomes chunky is undefined. Still, the game still looks gorgeous and is very fun to play with some great special abilities which the nanosuit gives you. For example, the cloaking ability is essential if you want to remain undetected by the North Korean military. It's very exhilarating to stealthily sneak into an enemy base, taking out soldiers one by one with a silenced pistol. Inevitably you will soon be discovered however, and from then on it becomes a game of hunter verses the hunted and the Korean People's Army would like to think that they were the ones doing the hunting. However, in reality it is often the other way round. It's also good fun to punch through the wall of a house and bring the entire building down around you, although that's a sure-fire way of attracting unwanted attention. I can feel the plot starting to go somewhere, but at the moment it's simply been "infiltrate the enemy base and there's something weird going on with aliens but never mind that now! You've got a war to fight soldier!" All in all I like where the game is going, the way it plays and the way it looks. I know that Crysis 2 got a bad wrap from many PC gamers, but when you look what the original was like you can kind of understand when they said it was a step backwards.

In other news, I'm looking forward to the next Fallout: New Vegas DLC which is released tomorrow, titled Honest Hearts. Hears hoping that it's more open-world than Dead Money was and that the gameplay is also improved since that was the biggest criticism raised with the previous pack. I absolutely loved the characters and plot of Dead Money though, so I really hope that it keeps those strengths. Next, PC Gamer magazine recently shared their thoughts on Deus Ex: Human Revolution in a special podcast, and the many good things they had to say about the game and how it lived up to the original have put me in a really positive mood, so I'm excitedly looking forward to that come August. Played some more of Portal 2 and have now collected every single player achievement, and just need to play some more of the co-op to mop up some of the rest. The co-op definitely seems to have the more challenging puzzles, since it was only once or twice in the single player campaign where I felt bamboozled, whereas in co-op this feeling occurs frequently. There are a lot of ideas floating around out there about what actually happens during the ending of Portal 2, and I have my own theories. My feeling though is that Aperture Science isn't gone yet, and that they'll be there in either Half-Life 3 or Portal 3 (or both please Valve!?) Also, can you believe the Electronic Entertainment Expo is only three weeks away? It's crazy how fast it has snuck up on us all. Alas, I currently have work for the entire week of E3, so I doubt I will be able to engage in the shenanigans to the degree I might have wanted to. Still, I will make the effort to watch the press conferences that are only at reasonable times and to blog about what was shown. There are already so many things to look forward this and next year, what with Skyrim, Mass Effect 3 and BioShock Infinite among others, but I'm sure E3 has many more surprises waiting for us. What are you looking forward to at E3? :)

Hello, and again welcome to another standardised blog post, tailored to suit the various needs and requirements of the readers as authorised at this juncture. This past week heralded the return of the Aperture Science Enrichment Center and the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, with the release of Portal 2. And may I say, it's good to be back to testing again. For science, not for the fun! Alright, it is quite fun as well. :P As a matter of fact, Portal 2 is a blast to play. Let me say here that I will refrain from any major spoilers, but I may include minor ones from early in the game, so anyone who hasn't played Portal 2 would be advised to stop reading at this point. Although I would hesitate from deeming Portal 2 to be in all regards better than the original Portal, this is a much grander and all the more complex experience. There are more characters, more varied locations and altogether a more refined style of presentation which ties into other Valve games like Half-Life 2 and Left4Dead. There are also some relatively fiendish puzzles, which can take a little bit of time to get your head around. There are one or two minor issues which, for me, hold Portal 2 back from perfection. The first is the fact that the game finishes with a cutscene, which is normally a big no-no in Valve games. Cutscenes remove the player directly from the action, and I felt that everything which happens could easily have been done in-game. The second is the fact that the one thing I felt missing from Portal 2 was a tangible sense of mystery. There were many elements of mystery (the whole second act which takes place in the bowels of the Enrichment Center was my favourite part of the game), but because you are already familiar with GLaDOS and the questionable ethical standards of Aperture Science, a part of what made the original game so entertaining was absent for me. Nonetheless, please do not let my comments indicate that I don't still love Portal 2. It's a great sequel, and it's a great game.

Some of its many strengths include some great new characters (Wheatley slowly grew on me as the game progressed, and Aperture CEO Cave Johnson quickly became hilarious), and a much more emotive plotline, which goes in some interesting directions towards the end. Furthermore, graphically this game is a tour de force, with what I deem to be the finest lighting and shadows I have ever seen. The lighting just looks right, and the way the shadows are cast is astounding. Indeed, they are so good that occasionally I had to remind myself that they were computer generated. There are also some very good particle effects with things breaking apart or collapsing, which do so in an entirely realistic way. The confined test chambers give way to much more spacious and epic locales, which still feel right within the Aperture Science ethos. Also worth noting that the Co-op campaign is certainly great fun when playing with friends, although I haven't played very much of it yet. It's often the simpler actions, such as handing over a Weighted Storage Cube to your companion which feel the most rewarding and being able to emote by hi-fiving and hugging is really sweet. GLaDOS also has some good lines of dialogue tucked in here, which if you're just running by solving puzzles you might miss. It was disappointing that Valve thought it appropriate to include a Team Fortress 2-esque store from which you can purchase hats, skins and other items of superficial value, but most of it can be unlocked by just playing the game. Anyway, I must fly. GLaDOS has asked me to go to the wing of the Enrichment Center that was made entirely out of glass and pick up fifteen acres of broken glass… by myself. It's OK: I'm in it for the science! 8)

If there is any game setting I know for a fact that I would definitely not want to visit in real life, I think I can safely say that the USG Ishimura would be one such location. Give me Rapture, mad splicers and all, over the Ishimura and its former crewmembers. At least splicers are still vaguely human, whereas the creatures that inhabit the Ishimura are normally only tenuously still humanoid, if you're lucky. Every deck is metallic, grey, dark and blood-splattered, with flickering lighting and ominous noises. No where is safe, and around every corner lurks yet another vent from which a necromorph can jump out of. So far I have completed the first three chapters of Dead Space at a snail's pace, and have just reached the Bridge where a bad situation is quickly getting a whole lot worse. It's very tense, and very atmospheric. The kind of horror Dead Space goes in for is mainly jump scares, which are appropriately orchestrated by ramping up the high-tensioned string orchestral soundtrack, ala Hitchcock's Psycho. Whilst you can normally guess exactly when a monster is going to lunge out of the shadows at you howling in a grotesque fashion, it doesn't make it any less unpleasant when they do jump out and startle you. Every time my reaction is the same: "Ah! A monster! Die inhuman monstrosity! Keep away from me! I've got a Plasma Cutter and I'm not afraid to use it!" and proceed to shoot wildly at the thing until finally, it keels over. And then I stamp on it for good measure: Partly because it feels quite satisfying, and also because corpses tend to drop ammo or credits.

I've also noticed that this game likes blood… lots of it. From the grisly remains of the Ishimura personnel scattered over the ship, to the death throws of the Necromorphs, to the numerous horrific ways in which protagonist Isaac Clarke can be decapitated, dismembered and disembowelled, there is no skirting around the gore here. If anything, the game seems to relish it. While I personally do not particularly enjoy bloodthirsty games, I so far have been enjoying Dead Space. It's got a solid plot starting, and it has a very engaging and dramatic atmosphere that never lets you go. Furthermore, it is also a technical success, with some excellent graphics and the very interesting decision to make most UI and menu interfaces interactive within the game itself. The one thing I perhaps would say against it is that it lacks proper pacing. So far, everything has felt like a sprint. It is relentless in the constant barrage of monsters it throws at you as you wonder over the ship, and you'll only get a moment to yourself if you backtrack to locations you've previously cleared out. What it really needs is some down time where Isaac (and the player) can relax a bit, because I can't play for more than an hour without wanting to stop for a break due to the fact that I'm frightened I'll have a heart attack if I continue. But then again, perhaps this is all part of what Dead Space is aiming for. If a spaceship had actually been overrun by an alien necrotic infection, then it's very probable there wouldn't be a chance where you could rest up and take stock of the situation.

So, whilst Dead Space might not be as psychologically frightening as, say, STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, it is definitely a game which raises your pulse. I'm not sure what Dead Space 2 is like, but if it's half as tense as the original, I think it will take me a while to recover the courage needed in order to play it. :P

Since I was at work for most of today and am out most of this evening I haven't had very long to write this, but seeing as it's my Birthday I thought I should write something, since it's traditional. It's my opinion that on your Birthday you should be exempt from going to work, but that's another matter. Birthdays are a curious thing in that they remind us to take stock of what has been and they encourage us to consider what is to come. I think I'm good at examining my past but I am distinctly poor at planning for the future. As Benjamin Braddock said when he was lying in the swimming pool in 'The Graduate', "I'm just drifting". I've got a job at the Council, but it isn't what I want to do and it's only short-term (about 4 months or so). But I think you are very lucky if you already have a road map planned out for the rest of your life. I'm on the motorway, but I'm not sure in which direction I should be travelling. Still fighting my way out of this labyrinth, to borrow a phrase from South American revolutionary Simón Bolívar.

Anyway, I will shoehorn my thoughts about a game quickly into this shorter-than-normal post, and if you noticed the title, silence is very common in a little old town called Silent Hill. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is the first Wii game I have bought specifically for me to play, and I very much enjoyed my first playthrough. I've never played any of the other Silent Hill games so I'm not aware of the series history or mythology, but Shattered Memories is the kind of reboot the series deserves. It takes bare essentials: A spooky town, a lost protagonist and a missing daughter, and then works upwards from there. There occult rubbish is discarded and what remains is a formless, menacing horror which freezes the world over and ceaselessly stalks you through the rest of the game. It has to be said that, for a Wii game, Shattered Memories looks great. The swirling snowfall scatters across the ground in the wind, and Harry Mason's flashlight casts a powerful beam of light whilst creating dark shadows in the surrounding gloom. Overall, it's an engaging experience, but I wouldn't ever call it downright frightening. More psychologically tense.

No time for pictorial goodness at the moment, maybe later: That's your lot for now! I'm outta here to have a meal. Help yourself to Birthday cake. :)

I want start this Sixth Anniversary blog by trying to recall what brought me to GameSpot back in the halcyon days of 2005. I remember than for my sixteenth Birthday that year I was given the Collector's Edition of Half-Life 2 (one of the best Birthday presents my Dad has ever given me, and since he's in the last year begun his vendetta against video games and the Internet, probably the last proper video game I got as a present). I remember that Steam was simply a patching service for Half-Life 2 and Half-Life: Source, and that there was not a whole lot more to it other than that. However, I don't remember the exact reasons I had for signing up, and furthermore I didn't really start posting on GameSpot until 2007, and so basically lurked for two years, reading news stories, commenting on articles but never touching the forums much. I know that during 2005-6 I became rather involved in a TV series called "How to Start Your Own Country", where comedian Danny Wallace tried to establish a micronation out of his flat in London. This became the online entity known as The Kingdom of Lovely: A nation founded on the principle "Be Nice". Part of this involved a heavy role-playing element online, where I declared myself to be Minister of Health and Executive Officer of the Army. There then ensued nearly a year's slow but terminal decline, during which time I was (through self-appointment) Vice-Admiral of the Navy, Air Vice Marshal, Field Marshal and Minister for Information. There were about a hundred or so other crazies like me pretending we were running this country, and for a while it was kinda fun. But in the end it all sort of coasted to a stop because everyone had got bored, and that's when I came to GameSpot proper. The rest is history, and I'm pleased to say that it's been fantastic. I am very happy to be here! :D It's thanks to all the great, friendly and generally nice people on the site that I consider GameSpot not only my favourite website, but my "home" on the Internet, if one is entitled to such a thing. So this is a thank you to everyone. Thank you for anyone who's read, who's chatted, who's given advice or who's listened. You are all wonderful, and I hope we have many more wonderful years ahead. :)

Now we've got the sentimental bit over and done with, let's get down to the real business here: Indie games. I have been playing a few. Specifically, Braid, VVVVVV and Super Meat Boy, with a few minutes of Osmos, Gish, Flight Control HD and The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom thrown in. First Braid: What a game. Hauntingly beautiful soundtrack, and really clever use of time manipulation, which varies dramatically in each level. Also, for what is ostensibly a platformer it has a rather touching plotline as well, which culminates in a dénouement I certainly wasn't expecting. For a game where you can't die (you can just rewind time to prevent your death, no matter how many times it happens), it nonetheless has a complexity which requires quite a bit of ingenuity to be able to solve some of the puzzles. And the puzzles are just that: Puzzles, with pieces. Next we have VVVVVV: A game with an unpronounceable title, but a really nifty premise. You play as Captain Viridian, whose spaceship has crashed in Dimension VVVVVV: A place which looks like it has jumped out of the Commodore 64. The rest of the crew (Violet, Victoria, Vermillion, Vitellary and Verdigris) have been lost in the dimension, and it's your job to rescue them and bring them back to the ship. Viridian can't jump, but can inverse his personal gravity: Falling upwards to the ceiling or downwards to the floor. Again, in Commodore 64 styIe, the levels are individual rooms which need to be navigated using this flipping, in order to rescue the crew. The result is a game that is very tough, but also quite forgiving, since there are ample checkpoints in every room. Furthermore, if you get truly stuck there is an Invincibility Mode which allows you to play through the whole game without Viridian ever getting killed, which for awful players like me is a Godsend. And finally, we have Super Meat Boy: A game that hates all players with a vengeance. It was designed by the descendants of the Marquis de Sade. People who have completed it are either lifelong masochists or have had their soul surgically removed. It is one of the most frustrating games I've ever played, and I haven't even managed to beat the first boss. And yet, despite all of this, I still want to play more of it. The controls on the PC are pretty dire: The keyboard is finicky and either ultra responsive or not at all. This isn't helped by the fact that the developer RUBS IN YOUR FACE how bad the keyboard controls are in the opening loading screen. Thus I have decided to buy an Xbox 360 controller for Windows, with which I hope to be able to at least complete World 1. Super Meat Boy may hate me, but with its charming personality and great soundtrack, I'm finding it tough to hate it.

That's it for this Sixth Anniversary extravaganza! :D

In late 1989, the United States invaded Panama. In 2010, one man called Rico Rodriguez invaded Panau. Panama survived its brief war with the US. Panau has not been so lucky, as Rodriguez has been laying waste to the various airports, military bases, villages, towns and cities of the once peaceful Southeast Asian island nation. The gas supply across the country has been severely disrupted thanks to numerous exploded pipelines and off-shore rig explosions, and the President's power is looking very tenuous judging by the hundreds of toppled statues and destroyed propaganda trailers. In case you haven't already guessed, I have been playing Just Cause 2, and it is a very entertaining game to play. Whilst the original game gave you an enormous country to roam around, but nothing to do in it, JC2 does not suffer from this problem. I am now getting to the point where I wish there could have been a bit more variety in some of the missions and tasks, but other than that, the game definitely takes a better approach to open-worlding. Panau is exciting and absolutely gigantic, including a variety of topography, with lush tropical jungle, searing desert and windswept, snow-capped mountains. On top of that, the controls are much better. Using the parachute in conjunction with the grappling hook allows Rico to pull off absolutely ridiculous stunts and tricks, and can easily get him across terrain in quick time. The ability to grapple onto anything is a definite improvement, meaning that Rico can act like some kind of weird Spiderman, grappling up the sides of skyscrapers before launching himself off the top and sling-shooting back into the ground, completely defying the laws of motion, naturally.

However, Just Cause 2 is far from a perfect game. For one thing, the plot is very 2-dimensional, and is basically your average regime-change 101. Baby Panay is evil and crazy, and it's your job to destabilise his administration by wreaking havoc. The voice-acting is also, categorically, the worst I have ever heard. I thought Just Cause original had bad voice-acting, but it is nothing compared to this. It definitely gets into that golden area of "so bad, it's good." Highlights include "My name is Bolo Santosi"… to "We have reclaimed this holy temple!" via the amazing "I want you to help me transport this very sensitive cargo!" You get the impression that Panau is entirely populated by second-rate British actors with incredibly forced accents, who cannot convincingly ever pretend they are from Malaysia. Having been to Malaysia, I can definitively state that nobody actually speaks like the citizens of Panau speak. Still, it does make the proceedings quite funny, in a bizarre way. The game also gets quite tough in places when they start throwing dozens upon dozens of soldiers and helicopters at you, but for the most part it is easy enough. The game is however a completionists' walking nightmare. In order to get 100% in each location, you must not only destroy every bright-red government installation, but also find the scattered boxes of money, weapons and vehicle parts which have been presumably air-dropped by the Agency. Doing this is a very time consuming process, and since you normally will have the Panauan military on your back at the same time, it's no walk in the park.

Anyway, that's Just Cause 2. Have also been replaying The Sims 3 recently, and enjoying it more now that I've been able to put some of its shortcomings behind me. There will be more from me on the various indie games I've also been playing coming at some point in the near future, but other than that, I hope you enjoy your January. :)

Welcome once again to the end of the year, and so the customary selection of the very finest (and the very worst) 2010 had to offer for me when it came to playing games. As a reminder, this is my roundup of the games which I actually purchased and played during this year, and does not necessarily include games which were actually released this year. Nevertheless, I did actually play some games which were released this year and I'm pleased to say that for the first time, my Game of the Year is actually a game from 2010. 2010 was a great year for games, and more than that, a great year for PC games. Both StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty and Sid Meier's Civilization V showed that PC gaming still matters, if anyone was thinking that it was continuing to "die". However, I also saw a number of games (Alan Wake, Red Dead Redemption, Heavy Rain) which made me lament not having a console, but I am still very disinclined to stump up the cash to actually buy one. Anyway, let's have a look at our first category. :)

Highlights
Best Role-Playing Game
Mass Effect: This was the year I was introduced to the Mass Effect series. When I first looked at GameSpot's video review of the original game, I thought what I saw looked interesting, but didn't consider it my cup of tea. How wrong I was. Mass Effect is space opera writ large. It naturally takes a lot of inspiration from Star Trek, Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, but it invents its own unique narrative and a universe which feels distinctly separate from all others. For one thing, there is a conscious effort to ground the fiction within reality, such as the entire principle upon which the "Mass Effect" of Eezo is derived. Then there are the characters that inhabit this world, each of whom is interesting and multi-faceted. And the glue holding all this together is Commander Shepard, who is the catalyst for change across the galaxy. A truly wonderful experience.

Best Racing Game
Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box: The thrill is very much in the chase within Burnout Paradise. What it does best is simply capture the exhilaration behind the act of driving at an outrageous speed, with no regard for other traffic or the laws of physics. The racing in Burnout Paradise is fun: Nothing more, nothing less. The good variety of modes, unlockable cars and the sheer size of Paradise City mean that you'll be ruling roads in no time. There is also great online integration, which compares your race times against other people also playing around the world. Motorcycles are also fun, but their inclusion is a bonus alongside the more substantial car career. The best racing game I have had the pleasure to play since Midtown Madness 2.

Best Action-Adventure Game
Best Licensed Game
Batman: Arkham Asylum: Batman Batman Batman. Arkham Asylum is a bloody great game. Indeed, I fully see why it was awarded the BAFTA Game of the Year for 2009. No other licensed game has been this well designed, or simply been so fun to play. Licensed games are normally an area most people try to avoid because the general standing for these games has remained relatively low. Arkham Asylum doesn't just move the goalposts: It redraws the entire playing field. It's gorgeous to look at, the gameplay is really tight and exciting, and the fighting in exciting in both stealth and action elements, which mix together excellently. All in all, it makes you feel like you are Batman, and this is the biggest praise I can give it. I eagerly await Arkham City, because if it is anywhere near as good as Arkham Asylum was, it will still be an excellent game.

Best Original Soundtrack
Best Point-and-Click
Machinarium: Machinarium is a perfect encapsulation of all that is good in indie game development. It takes the old-fashioned medium of a point-and-click adventure and makes it charming, accessible, fun and rewarding for new players to experience anew. Couple into that a cute but minimalistic storyline and a soundtrack which is utterly screaming out for awards, and you really do have something special. The sound design itself is absolutely superb, each sound effect and musical theme blending perfectly to create a very unique atmosphere. Alongside this there are also the beautiful hand-animated thought bubbles which convey most of the plotline, which is a great touch. I certainly hope Amanita Design make many more games in the future.

Best Use of Nostalgia
Best Use of Cheese Squigglies
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge Special Edition: Monkey Island 2 was the first game I ever played, and I was absolutely thrilled when I discovered the original floppy disks for it in the attic. But what pleased me even more than finding the original game was the great love and care that went into making Monkey Island 2 Special Edition. The soundtrack has been gloriously re-mastered and sounds wonderfully lush, whilst the pitch-perfect voice-acting revitalises the cIassic jokes once again. This Special Edition is definitely better than that of the original Secret of Monkey Island from last year, partly because the new animations are smoother and the art-styIe has improved, but also because Monkey Island 2 is simply a better game at heart. In essence, Monkey Island 2 Special Edition is the greatest thing LucasArts have done since Grim Fandango in 1998.

Most Addictive Game
Best Use of a Post-Apocalyptic Setting
Fallout: New Vegas: The call of the wasteland is instilled into the grain of my bones by this point, and it was inevitable that I would play Fallout: New Vegas very soon after launch. My love for Fallout 3 was only really hampered by the various bugs and errors, and it is disappointing to note that New Vegas is not lacking in this deficiency either. Nevertheless, I would tentatively say that New Vegas is a better game than Fallout 3, but not by a massive margin. Fallout 3 definitely has a better sense of scope and grandeur, especially given you're walking around a ruined Washington D.C. Whilst New Vegas does many things better than Fallout 3, such as the storyline, the characters and the voice-acting, it doesn't really have the same sense of scale its predecessor had. That aside, the Mojave Wasteland has a lot of interesting characters, places to explore and things to do. It also in many ways feels more true to the Fallout vibe established in the first and second games, and so I don't feel uncomfortable with dubbing New Vegas "The Real Fallout 3".

gbrading's Game of the Year
Best Storyline
Best Sequel
Best Character Design
Best Downloadable Content
Mass Effect 2: If I though Mass Effect original was great, the sequel definitely upped the ante. Mass Effect 2 takes almost everything that was great about the original game, and then either polishes it or improves it in some other noticeable way. Aside from the very tedious planet scanning and the fact that almost every level now feels very linear, the game has advanced in several major places. The plot is stronger, the voice-acting still fantastic, the gameplay and gunplay are far more satisfying and the entire thing is still almost painfully beautiful to look at. Plus, the immersion level is simply superb. You really do feel very much attached to this universe, because the characters within it are so expressive and detailed. Everything about the game just feels right, from the beautiful interior of the revamped Normandy to the varied landscapes of every alien world you visit. The game has also been supported by some great DLC, from the interesting Lair of the Shadow Broker which expanded on Liara's story, to Project Overlord, which was its own self-contained set of missions. Mass Effect 3 will have a lot of expectations heaped upon it, so I will be fascinated to see if it can stand alongside its predecessors.

Lowlights
Biggest Mixed Reaction
Worst PR Fiasco
BioShock 2: Oh, BioShock 2 you damn rascal. I don't hate you, I don't love you, and I don't know what to think about you anymore. It is difficult to even talk about the game anymore. To save myself from further injury, I can only suggest you read my BioShock 2 review, in which I get as close as I can to summing up what I feel about this game. My love of the original BioShock significantly coloured my feelings towards this sequel, but nevertheless from a gaming perspective alone, BioShock 2 is still a pretty good game. It's just a disappointment when it is compared to its predecessor. However, in terms of a PR fiasco, the cancellation of the BioShock 2 DLC Minerva's Den for PC and a major patch to correct issues, followed by the sudden un-cancellation of it were definitely a PR disaster for 2K Games. As of yet the DLC and patch still haven't been released, but they schedule it for early 2011. Let's hope they stick to their promises this time.

Most Generic Experience
Just Cause: Just Cause original is a huge game, to be sure. The islands of San Esperito are sprawling and very tropical, but sadly are very much devoid of interesting activities in which to entertain yourself. All you have to do is the same very small variety of derivative missions over and over again, ad infinitum, until you have eventually liberated the entire archipelago from the clutches of despotic President Salvador Mendoza. It's a cIassic example of wash, rinse, repeat taken to the extreme, and the end result is that the most fun you can have in Just Cause is when you are mucking around on your own, rather than doing any of the activities the game provides for you. The sequel Just Cause 2 however, understands this and takes steps to rectify it. More about JC2 at a later date.

Biggest Waste of Potential
Mirror's Edge: I really wanted to like Mirror's Edge more. For one thing, it is a staggeringly beautiful game. For another, it plays with some fascinating ideas, and when it comes to the first-person platforming it pulls it off rather well. There is a real flow to your movements and when pulling everything off right, it feels fantastic. However, it was majorly let down by several critical design flaws. First, forcing the player into very bad gunfights in several points and second, by not allowing the player to simply run, dodge or avoid confrontation with enemies. There are multiple points where you are in a room with a dozen heavily armed soldiers and the only way to progress is to take them down. If you try to run, you will fall in a hailstorm of bullets. This completely breaks the flow of the game, making it stupidly difficult and is a giant hurdle which definitely needs addressing.

Biggest Grindfest
Star Trek Online (Beta): 2010 marks the year I first played a MMO (aside from Second Life which I must admit I toured around once several years ago. It was confusing as hell and didn't seem in any way fun, except that I got to name my character Dostoevsky Huldschinsky). The beta of Star Trek Online for a while gathered quite a mystique thanks to it being featured in a couple of Giant Bomb videos. Since it was free, and since I do like Star Trek, I thought it was worth a look in. What I found was very formulaic; Missions which normally didn't have much variety and would have to be repeated time and time again in order to advance in rank. Still, although the game itself doesn't amount to much, it did allow me to achieve my first few seconds of semi internet stardom. I am featured in the final Giant Bomb video (as Heywood Floyd), helping to revive Jeff Gerstmann in several places, as well as dancing the Running Man alongside him. So I do appreciate the game for giving me that, at least. :P

Worst PC Port
Grand Theft Auto IV (+ Episodes from Liberty City): Although featuring as a last minute runner-up in this category last year, having fully played my way to 100% completion in GTA IV over the past year I feel perfectly fine as including it as the winner of the category this year. Although the game is excellent, GTA IV is not a good port by any definition of the word. For a start, you'll need a powerhouse of a PC to run it in the first place. If you do get it running, you will need to turn off many features, such dynamic shadows or higher quality textures. Indeed, I have never seen the "High" settings of GTA IV since my computer stops me from selecting them. Even with these things turned down, the framerate still has a tendency to slow in several places, and texture pop-in rears its head. Since a big patch earlier this year the game now looks even worse because anything you're not looking at is unloaded to make things run faster, similar to GTA: Vice City. Although this might have sped up the framerate in several spots, it overall contributes to worsening the look of the game significantly.

Any Other Business
Games on the Wii: Wii Sports Resort/Wii Fit Plus
This year was a relatively quiet year for the family Wii. Last year we got Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit Plus, and this Christmas we have just gotten Mario Kart Wii, which we have been playing quite addictively. Wii Sports Resort is a great collection of games, and the use of Wii Motion Plus makes the actions feel more delicate and precise. Archery is very entertaining, as is table tennis, sword-fighting and bowling. Air sports are fun for a while, but are not as fully-fledged as the more realistic sports. Wii Fit Plus is still Wii Fit, but with more customisable features and a better selection of activities. It's still good at improving your balance though. In 2011 I'm going to resolve to try and play some of the really great Wii games such as Super Mario Galaxy and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, because since the Wii is there, I feel I should make use of it.

Christmas Games: An Indie January
Coming into 2011 I will be playing through quite a deluge of indie games, including Super Meat Boy, Braid, Osmos, Penumbra: Overture, Lugaru HD, The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom, Gish and Aquaria. Most of these I got as part of the Humble Indie Bundle #2, which operates a pay-what-you-want strategy, with a percentage of the money also going to charity. Also, if you paid above the average, you were given all the games from the original Indie Bundle for free, which was incredibly generous. The games were also available to be redeemed on Steam, which was an added bonus. In total, the Humble Indie Bundle #2 managed to raise $1.8 million. I also bought Super Meat Boy myself, and I think that I'm going to have to buy a Windows 360 controller if I want to play more of it (which I do), because they make quite a point of saying that keyboard controls aren't very good, which is true. Nonetheless, something is compelling me to want to play more. It would also be very useful for piloting helicopters and planes in Just Cause 2 and Episodes from Liberty City.

Thanks for reading! I wish you all a very Happy, Safe and Brave New Year. :)

So, most of you can safely disregard this blog posting (unless you want to copy my answers, which I encourage you to do! ;)). It sadly doesn't contain any of the usual vaguely interesting rambling other this little preamble. This is simply my set of answers for the Christmas GameSpot Staff Ornament Scavenger Hunt, which I also encourage you to participate in. If anything, this taught me that there a lot more GS staff than I initially realised. :P My 2010 in Review/Game of the Year Awards will follow quite shortly before the month is out. Until then, I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. :)

Clue #1: Van - Van Nguyen
Clue #2: JodyR - Jody Robinson
Clue #3: guy_cocker - Guy Cocker
Clue #4: mgravish - Matthew Gravish
Clue #5: Chris_Watters - Chris Watters
Clue #6: Kevin-V - Kevin VanOrd
Clue #7: AirDog80 - Aaron Sampson
Clue #8: sebFlyte - Alex Coby
Clue #9: wornstar - Wernher Goff
Clue #10: Jan_Meja_Heir - Jan Heir
Clue #11: RandolphRam - Randolph Ramsay
Clue #12: AndrewP - Andrew Park
Clue #13: markypants - Mark Walton
Clue #14: JusticeCovert - Justin Calvert
Clue #15: Sophia - Sophia Tong
Clue #16: Yarvem - Kurtis Seid
Clue #17: Giancarlo - Giancarlo Varanini
Clue #18: jporter313 - Justin Porter
Clue #19: RyanM - Ryan Mac Donald
Clue #20: TylerW - Tyler Winegarner
Clue #21: Maxwell - Maxwell McGee
Clue #22: kozanecki - James Kozanecki
Clue #23: frank7731 - Frank Adams
Clue #24: SarjuS - Sarju Shah
Clue #25: shaunmc - Shaun McInnis
Clue #26: RicardoT - Ricardo Torres
Clue #27: TomM_GScom - Tom Magrino
Clue #28: Chippa7 - Dan Chiappini
Clue #29: gshomer - Homer Robara
Clue #30: Takeshi-GS - Takeshi Hiraoka
Clue #31: thorsen-ink - Tor Thorsen
Clue #32: jmaybury - Jim Maybury
Clue #33: carolynmichelle - Carolyn Petit
Clue #34: TomMcShea - Tom Mc Shea
Clue #35: neur0sis -Dan Mihoerck
Clue #36: janedouglas -Jane Douglas
Clue #37: Polybren -Brendan Sinclair
Clue #38: Lozzica -Laura Parker