Feels like a long while since I've blogged, and indeed it is: Almost 2 months. In that time we've had a Steam sale and now the Olympic Games. I don't follow sport at all, but I have really loved the Olympic Games this year, partly/mainly because of the resounding success of my namesake Team GB. We've had the best Games since 1908. For a country of 60 million people, to be 3rd in the medal table with only China (1 billion people) and the United States (500 million people) above us is quite an achievement for a small island nation. As a result of this I have been watching more television than normal, and been playing less video games. Couple that with work being extremely busy (it won't mean anything to you, but it's Impact Factor season in the Academic Journals world and this is when everyone in Journals goes crazy, even those who don't write Schizophrenia Bulletin). Therefore my time for video game-playing and being on GameSpot as of late has been rather limited, much to my chagrin. Still, I have been playing some things when I have been afforded the time. First was Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City. I had 100% completed GTA IV back in 2010 I think it was, and bought the EFLC in a Steam Sale, probably last Christmas. It was nice to dive back into Liberty City, and instantly know where everything was. Episodes from Liberty City is the two DLC packs from GTA IV rolled into one, with some additional unique radio stations thrown in for good measure. So far I've finished The Lost and Damned and played approximately 2/3rds of The Ballad of Gay Tony. The Lost and Damned was good, but I never understood the motivation for Johnny. Nonetheless, interesting characters and the gameplay is just as strong as ever. The Ballad of Gay Tony I think it even stronger, with a better cast and quite a few more interesting side missions to do, such as base-jumping, drug racketeering and club management. Once again though, I fail to understand why Luis would be happy to devolve to a life of crime when he seems to have a very respectable and well-paid job running nightclubs. Still, the game plays excellently on my newer computer and with the widescreen monitor Liberty City has never looked so gorgeous.

On from that, the title of the blog is a nod to the Olympics and a nod to the inexorable rise of Steam in PC gaming. I look back to 2005 when I joined Steam, and the service I see now is unrecognisable. In 2005, Steam was a patching service for Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike: It did nothing else. It was lambasted as another form of DRM being put on the shoulders of PC gamers. But as the years have rolled by and its given us a gigantic library of games at reasonable prices (many of which, often sadly, seem never to actually get played), the benefits of Steam have outweighed whatever problems it has. I think the console manufacturers underestimate the power Steam and Valve currently hold. Today it has never been easier to be a PC gamer, and it has never been easier to play games for either very little, or no price at all. The rise of free-to-play means that even if a kid hasn't got much pocket money and only a second-hand laptop, they can still enjoy a plethora of games with untold hours of content for zero cost unless they choose it. The price barrier to entry on consoles is still remarkably high, whilst most homes have at least one PC in them which is used for work, but can also be used for play. Now I'm not going to go out and say that the PC is going to come back to the dominance it had back in the 1990s, but I do think that it isnt going away any time soon. Anyway, tangent back into the games: Just Cause 2 multiplayer is insane. Oh yes, there is multiplayer, after a fashion. A crazy mod team has managed to make the absolutely enormous playground of the Republic of Panau a virtual sandbox for apparently around 1000 players at the same time. I think the way the stop the server from failing is to only show you players who are within 500 metres of you, but even so having to track where everyone is on the enormous map must be a nightmare. At the moment the game has no objectives aside from messing around and trying to kill players, but its nonetheless a lot of fun to just drive around watching the carnage. As development continues I think it would be interesting to do a kind of Cops and Robbers style objective where half the players are the Revolutionaries tasked with destroying things and the other half are the Panauan Military. Anyway, must stop now because my eye is twitching, which I think means I need to go to sleep.