That was the year that was: 2012

A lot can happen in 12 months. 2012 has been a tough year for certain studios, one where we've lost the legendary Sony Liverpool (formerly Wipeout developers Psygnosis), troubled publishing house THQ, and even good old Eurocom (who gave us The World is Not Enough, easily the second best Bond game on the N64). The U.K games journalism scene nearly tore itself apart over rows about integrity, while Kickstarter launched its British operations with mixed results for industry veterans Molyneux, Braben, and the Oliver twins. Speaking of Molyneux, his studio 22 Cans faced no end of issues with their controversial debut project Curiosity, which at one point had the man in tears. E3 proved to be an oddly compelling car crash of conferences, with Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo jostling to outdo each-other in the let-down stakes. Perhaps most sadly of all, 2012 saw the closure of some of the best loved games magazines on the market, a depressing indictment of the state print media finds itself in these days. Rest in peace Nintendo Gamer, PSM3, Xbox World, and in the U.S the Official Playstation Magazine and the legendary Nintendo Power; you'll all be sadly missed. And of course we can't forget the sad passing of the Gamesmaster himself, Sir Patrick Moore. So long and thanks for all the cheat codes.

At least as a legend he'll live forever

But with death comes new life. The next generation of home consoles sorta-kinda launched at the start of this month with Nintendo's Wii U. Sure it may not be as powerful as the PS3, but we were so starved for new hardware we'll take whatever comes our way. In March the government finally popped its thumb out and offered the U.K games industry some long overdue tax breaks, the benefits of which will hopefully be felt as we move further into the next gen. A personal highlight of the year came in raising over £200 for Sick Kids Save Point through my 24 hour gaming marathon. Never in my wildest dreams did I think people would sponsor me to do something so daft, so I can't express how grateful I am to everyone that supported the cause. I'm already planning for next year.

And, believe it or not, I managed to play some games outside of that as well. Not as many as I'd hoped to, mind, but a couple of decent ones. long-term fans of the blog, if such weirdos exist, might remember me counting down my top ten games of the year around 12 months ago. I stand by the feeling that in 2011 we were truly spoiled for choice when it came to quality titles, which made picking a top ten a fairly easy task. I haven't been so lucky in 2012. Through a mixture of not playing enough games, not owning the right systems, and good old fashioned shite releases, tossing out ten games of the year would be impossible. I'm having to settle for five, which better reflects my feelings without having to resort to padding the list out with games that don't really deserve to be there. Nae luck, Playstation All-Stars.

So in the next few days leading up to new year's eve, look out for five upcoming posts on my games of the year. All being well I'll have the first up tomorrow, and the final one up before we ring in 2013. What a rush that'll be, eh? Christmas is coming a little bit ea... Oh wait no, that's not right at all. Er, merry Christmas! Disregard that I'm clearly not as organised as I thought I was. Oh well!

Wii U- Hands on

The launch of a new Nintendo console is always a reason to get excited. Few, if any, games companies can boast such a rich history of quality releases, while so many of us will have cut our gaming teeth on one Ninty machine or another. After the stunning success of the Wii, and the intuitive motion-controlled revolution it brought, eyebrows were raised when details about its successor began to emerge. Back in June 2011 Nintendo unveiled the Wii U, with a strong focus on its key selling point: the GamePad. A sort of Swiss Army controller, the pad boasts a number of features, including a front-facing camera, microphone, gyroscopic control, traditional face buttons, and of course a tablet-esque touchscreen right in the middle. But in the 18 months since announcing it Nintendo have done a poor job of communicating why exactly the Wii U is something we should want to buy. After the universal simplicity of the Wii's motion controls the feature-heavy GamePad came across as confusing, and the more Nintendo tried to explain the more baffling it seemed.

The console finally launched in the U.K on Friday, and courtesy of a very accommodating pal I was able to get my hands on one for a few hours that evening. Even after a short time it became obvious that this is something people are going to have to try for themselves. Picking up the pad, you're immediately struck by how light it is. For its size you're expecting something a bit weightier, though it does feel very robust. The size makes it bulky but not unwieldy. It's comfortable to hold and use, though people with smaller hands might find it tricky to juggle using the face buttons and the touchscreen.

On that, the screen itself is the real treat here. Brilliantly clear and bright, it's almost a surprise to see it display everything with the same sharpness as your TV. The Wii U allows you to stream your console game onto the pad. So if, for instance, someone wants to interrupt your gaming so they can watch something, you can switch to playing on the pad's screen with no issue. This is the sort of innovation you feel could become quietly revolutionary, especially considering that it'll work at a range of up to 25ft. Quite apart from being able to take games with you into different rooms (finally, a home console you can play on the toilet. The future is brilliant), built-in Lovefilm and Netflix apps will make streaming films in bed a tempting proposition, and surfing the internet should be simple too. For anyone that doesn't have a dedicated tablet, the Wii U could prove to be an ideal substitute.

The touchscreen also proves to be an entirely natural way to navigate menus, much more so than the slightly skittery Wii pointer. The screen isn't as touch-sensitive as you'd find on an iPad, instead making use of a stylus that slots into the back of the controller. It feels nice and precise though, with the pad easy enough to hold in one hand. Small functions, like being able to use the pad to change channels on your TV, are a very nice touch as well. Overall you realise that, as a selling point, the GamePad isn't too bad at all. There's something that just clicks when using it, and after no time it feels completely natural.

But how does it work for gaming? Nintendo are clearly pushing the social side of the pad first and foremost, with their minigame compilation Nintendoland filling the Wii Sports role of introducing people to the new controller's potential. As a collection it's typically charming, a virtual theme park that acts as a love letter to Nintendo's past. The games themselves range from the chaotically brilliant to the surprisingly dull, depending on how many people you have playing at a time. My own experience was with two other people, one on the pad and two with Wii remotes. The GamePad player will typically have a different role to play. For instance in the riotous Mario Chase the GamePad gives you an overview of a mazy stage in which you run and hide, while the other players on the TV have a limited view and have to hunt you down before the time runs out. It's a neatly balanced concept that comes to life after a few drinks, with a lot of shouting and giggling as you chase each other around the level.

Other games in the collection provide plenty of laughs. The Pikmin dungeon-crawler is charmingly tricky, while a Zelda-themed slash 'em up has you using the GamePad to fire arrows at onrushing enemies. Sadly Nintendo run the risk of over-explaining everything to players. Each game is preceded by lengthy tutorials telling you the exact rules for each player, what the controls are, and it all flits by so fast that you can go in fairly confused. Things click easily enough in practice, but it highlights the downsides of Nintendo's explanation-driven approach when marketing the console. It's tricky to communicate, but the best way to sell this to people will be to simply put it in their hands.

I sampled a couple of the other launch titles as well. New Super Mario Bros U is what you'd expect from a brand-new 2D Mario game, offering some brilliant platforming challenge and a great multiplayer. Given that this is Nintendo's first console to support HD, you can imagine it looks pretty wonderful as well. Everything's so bright and colourful you can't help but smile. Though it lacks the striking style of Rayman Origins, you get the impression that Nintendo and hi-def graphics are going to be a very nice match indeed.

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 has already been out on the PS3 and 360 for a few weeks, but Namco have upped the ante for the Wii U release. It looks just as good, if not better, than the other versions, showing off the console's graphical muscle, but it's the Wii U specific modes that stand out. Mushroom mode sees the stage littered with Mario mushrooms, that make the characters larger or shorter, all while thumping remixes of Nintendo tunes play over the action. The characters have alternate costumes based on Nintendo characters as well, adding a hell of a lot of charm. There's nothing like seeing a massive Mario-suited Kuma battering into a tiny Yoshimitsu in a Link costume to have you in tears of laughter.

Outside of Mario, the big launch title is clearly Zombi U. Ubisoft's survival horror exclusive has been developed with the console's features in mind, and it shows. The game has you stalking through a deserted London, fending off attacks from the rabid undead hordes. The GamePad is used to access your inventory and tools, but all in real time. There's no pausing to manage your items or solve puzzles, meaning you're constantly on your guard. What little I saw of the campaign seemed suitably tense, bringing to mind games like Bioshock and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. It includes some Dark-Souls style twists, with a brutal difficulty level making death almost inevitable, and online components that will see your game world crossing over with those of other players'. It also includes some interesting multiplayer modes; Capture the Flag has one player strategically controlling zombie placements on the GamePad, while the others survive in first person on the TV. It's fun when it clicks, but that will take a while. It's clear that Zombi U's real strength seems to be in its single player campaign.

And that's lucky, because the Wii U is strangely lacking in solo titles at the moment. It's launched with a handful of third-party ports, including Assassins Creed 3 and Darksiders 2, but it's unusual for Nintendo to release a console without a big first-party title that has solo players in mind. While you can play through games like NSMB and Nintendoland yourself, they'll be at their best with some mates round and a few drinks down. This has been designed as a party console first and foremost, and it seems you're best keeping pals in mind if you're going to pick one up for gaming, at least until the big first-party titles start dropping. Then again, I wasn't able to touch on the online modes during my time playing. Reports suggest that the Miiverse, Nintendo's stab at a sort of Wii U social network, is an absolute joy, with the potential to change the online side of console gaming.

Even as a bit of a Nintendo fanboy, I have to admit the Wii U has surprised me. For months I'd been telling myself this wasn't for me, that Nintendo didn't really know what they were doing with it. But having had one in my hands I can say that Nintendo might have convinced me they were right all along. It's now much easier to see why this touch screen integration might be the next big thing, one that will doubtless be copied in some way when Sony and Microsoft bring up their own next-gen offerings. However, as with the Wii the real key to its success will be to get people trying it. A few hours playing on a Wii U has done more to convince me it's worth buying than 18 months of marketing and explanatory videos ever could have. And as far as first impressions go, that's not too bad at all

Curiosity- Enter the Hypecube

I'm fairly late to the party on this one, because I've been really conflicted over whether or not I should write something about Curiosity. Not because I'm unsure about the project itself, or because I feel it would be unfair to judge it when the whole thing's suffering from so many teething problems. Nah, it's because I genuinely believe there are better things I could be doing with my time. Cleaning my room, for instance. Or perhaps eating biscuits while staring at the wall. These also happen to more entertaining and fulfilling pursuits than actually spending minutes of my day with this inane block clicker.

Fuck-all of interest, no doubt

For the blissfully ignorant, Curiosity is the latest blue-sky concept from the mind of Peter Molyneux. Billed as the first in a series of experimental titles from indie studio 22 Cans, Curiosity presents you with a white room and a giant cube. When the first players logged in back on Tuesday morning the shape was black all over. Tapping it zoomed you in to reveal that it was made up of millions of tiny, breakable squares that could be cleared by tapping the screen. Since, naturally, clearing away millions of squares by yourself would be a bit of a task, we're all happily battering away at the same cube in real time. Soon large patches of green peppered each side, as more players joined in with the fun and started adding their own patterns. People were getting creative, as the swathes of flaccid cocks, swear words, and warped smiley faces proved. By the time I managed to battle my way through the server issues to become the 16,825th person on the cube whole sides of it were nearly cleared.

For about five minutes it threatened to be some kind of vaguely interesting community drawing experiment. Tapping away squares has a nice tactility to it, coupled with some relaxing chillout tunes it becomes almost soothing. I zoomed in to what seemed like a blank patch and imaginatively scrawled out the word "Hello". That was immediately wiped out by some marauding tapper blowing chunks out of the area. Oh, well fair enough. Zoom out and pick another bit. Think I'll go bigger this time. Really take this graffiti wall concept to heart and tap out "Fuck" in giant letters. Yeah, that'll turn some heads. Well it certainly wasted a couple minutes, and as I zoomed out and realized you couldn't see it from any real distance anyway, dwarfed by the shapeless scrawls of other players, I had to ask why I'd bothered.

Though I'll admit tapping this out made me smile.

 Of course by now the first layer's been peeled away, revealing a picture of a lava lamp. Tapping away at that told us the next layer was red. Fascinating. It's been widely reported that something "life changing" lies at the centre of this monolith, but only the player who taps away that final square will get to see it. So we're all co-operating in a race against each other for some unnamed prize, hidden under an unspecified number of cube layers? Quite apart from sounding like the world's shittest gameshow concept, you have to ask what Molyneux could possibly have to offer that would change my life in any meaningful way? Given that it's already been revealed as a video link, and that the man himself admitted it wouldn't point to wear he'd buried a suitcase full of money, I'm really scratching my head.

This has been widely billed as some sort of large-scale social experiment, one whose data will provide the basis of 22 Cans' next release. I can't for the life of me work out what this experiment is attemtping to prove, unless it's perhaps working from the hypothesis "How many otherwise sensible punters can we get tapping this cube for hours on end?" Judging by the number of folk downloading it, and the subsequent server crash it's caused, the answer is clearly "Too fucking many". Is that useful data? Perhaps it's a variation on the infinite monkey theorem. Will a million gamers tapping at a million screens eventually produce something other than scribbles and dicks?

The game's technical issues aside, auld-Pete's clearly relying on the pull of this overdone mystery box routine to keep people tapping away until it's done. But he should have learned from shows like Lost that when people put time into waiting for a resolution to your mystery, they tend to get pretty pissed when it ends up being nothing of interest. This'll be a bigger problem when only one person gets the resolution, especially if the cheeky beggar decides to keep it to themselves.While I don't doubt there are going to be a few hardy souls sticking it out to the end, the vast majority will give up once they've satisfied their curiosity and realised that the game offers nothing but pointless busywork for no reward. Sure there's some kind of coin system there for tapping away enough squares, which you can spend on tools to, er, tap away slightly more at a time. That's just another layer of the deceit on offer, tricking you into believing this is a game that's worth the hours you're expected to put into it.

It is none of these things stop lying

But it's difficult to even think of this as a game. The closest comparison I could muster is with is the National Lottery. It's equally competitive, with everyone hoping to win that jackpot, and co-operative, as there'd be no jackpot unless we all kept buying tickets like the gambling sheep we are. But at least the lottery has more than one actual life-changing prize, often revealed several times a week, and as a player you're not expected to waste large chunks of your time playing insipid minigames before they'll crank out the numbers. Just buy your fucking ticket and wait. Pretty simple, pretty effective. Perhaps 22 Cans can look into that model for their next release.

Maybe I'm being too cynical here. A whole chunk of the games press have had a great time writing about this over the last week, and I must admit to thoroughly enjoying CVG's ongoing blog about the progress being made, packed with funny speculation and pictures. But there's the problem with this project: following the progress of it is proving to be more fun than actually participating. I'm presuming I won't be the only person to have downloaded Curiosity, given it five minutes before tossing it, but with the intention of keeping tabs on how it's going as time moves on. I'm willing to bet that'll be an ever-growing crowd over the coming days.

Maybe Curiosity is the purest form of Molyneux's special formula of "interesting in concept, disappointing in practice" we've seen so far. But when the man's output is properly overlapping with that of his twitter parody, you've got to start asking questions. I'm all for experimental ideas in gaming, but this kind of thing pushes the envelope just a little. One has to wonder what exactly we'll see from his studio next. And while there may have been many better ways for me to spend my time than typing up this fairly ill-formed rant, I know some poor souls will have probably spent that same time tapping away on the cube. And if nothing else, that makes me feel a whole lot more productive than I really should.

The Ship: Full Steam Ahead!

Thursday saw Edinburgh based studio Blazing Griffin kick off their Kickstarter for the long-awaited sequel to PC classic The Ship: Murder Party. After picking up the IP from defunct developer Outerlight in 2010, BG were finally able to reveal their plans for the franchise. Dubbed "Full Steam Ahead", the project was given its official reveal at a press event attended by the development team, who were keen to chat about what we can expect to see from the title.

Perhaps most interesting of all was a radical change in setting. Gone are the 1920s period trimmings of the first, jettisoned in favour of a move into steampunk territory. Lead concept artist Paul Canavan explained the potential the change allows them, saying: "The steamnpunk aesthetic has been well explored in various media but it's an environment that isn't often seen in the games space. It's dabbled with, but generally on quite a small scale whereas what we're trying to present here is really the sort of grand vision, of the sort of futuristic V|ictorian setting. Rather than keeping it on the low end and keeping it simple we're really pushing the scale of this concept, which is exciting."

It was clear from some of the lovely concept art adorning the walls, some of which you can see here, that it certainly will be a grand venture.The striking designs hint at some interesting potential. But we can still expect to enjoy the backstabbing gameplay that made the original such a success, as Media Manager Phil Harris was quick to point out. "People are still playing The Ship because they like that gameplay. To mess with that would be a fool's errand, and we're no fools."

Of course it's all just potential at this point. They have the kickstarter fund to get through first. Launching on October 31st, the same day that Kickstarter's U.K site goes live, it will run right through to the end of December. Hitting the initial target of £128k will see the team release the game as a multiplayer title, but anything higher would give them the freedom to take other ideas on board. Phil explained "If we hit the target of 128k we get a minimum viable product. If we double that then we'll be able to look at doing lots of other things. If we hit $1m then we can make The Ship free to play, which would be great because we want lots of people to be able to play it while they wait for the sequel."

If the fund raising is successful, development should begin in the new year. And we can expect a lot of community involvement along the way, with Blazing Griffin keen to take on board what fans want to see. Lead designer Stephen Hewitt told me: "It's always interesting doing a sequel, because obviously you've got a lot of people that are already aware of the game. You're trying to make something different that hopefully the original audience will appreciate and like, but without breaking what they liked about it. The whole project will be done open development so everyone will be able to look at what we're doing and comment. We want to involve our audience."

 It paints a picture of a studio that really cares about its audience, a sentiment that Phil endorsed. "Blazing Griffin's guiding principle is to involve the community. We don't feel there's a point in creating any game that fans don't want to see." Given the popularity of the first game, as well as the passionate steampunk community out there, you can safely assume that a lot of people will look forward to seeing Full Steam Ahead released.

Also on display was some of the art from upcoming strategy title Distant Star. Ostensibly a re-imagining of the Blazing Griffin's first title, a self-coded iOS hit from studio co-founder Trevor Fountain, it promises a sprawling sci-fi universe for players to enjoy. The art is packed with detail and imagination, bringing to mind childhood memories of building Lego spaceships and playing out epic space battles.

With both Distant Star and The Ship the team also have high hopes of expanding the universes into other media. From films to fan fiction, there's apparently a lot of potential for new stories if the franchises prove popular. And as they're quietly confident at the success of their kickstarter fund, it seems that the future could be bright for Blazing Griffin.

Hotline Miami Review: Dial M for Murder

It's 1989. You wake in a dingy bathroom. The lights are out, flies hover lazily around the broken furniture. A guitar wails over plodding bass strums. Staggering into the living room, you find three masked men sitting, waiting. They seem to know you. They speak in riddles, their animal faces betraying no humanity. You've apparently done terrible things. Do you remember? Time flashes back. You receive a coded phonecall, it tells you where to go. The drive takes no time at all. You pull on a chicken mask. Why? There you'll slam a door into a gangster's face, knocking him senseless before spreading his pal's brains with a stolen baseball bat. Techno thuds away, adding a pleasing rhythm to the bloody action. This is Hotline Miami, and you won't have played anything quite like it before.

A top-down sort of shooter with a very retro sense of style, bringing to mind a more innocent era of videogame violence, Hotline Miami is a little tricky to describe. Not the look so much: imagine the bloody 80s haze of Vice City built in the original GTA engine and you're close. Nor the action, which mixes the twitchiness of a bullet hell shooter with Hitman's brutal improvised violence, and Canon Fodder's simple “kill everything” objectives. The punishing difficulty brings to mind Dark Souls as well, another game where frequent death is as inevitable as it is rewarding.

And Hotline Miami is a game built on death. Missions have you hitting up a building full of thugs on the strength of an answerphone message. The identity of the caller is a narrative mystery, but the objective is always the same: Everyone in this building must die. There are many more of them, they're better equipped than you, but you'll still have to kill them all. Of course, just as it would be if you attempted to take down scores of armed gangsters by yourself, rushing in isn't always the best approach. More often than not it'll result in a swift and messy death at the wrong end of a crowbar. A playthrough can be over in a flash of blood and noise. This isn't quite your standard shooter, you have to take the time to plan things out.

Being aware of where enemies are, and taking them on in manageable numbers, is key. Stealth, melee kills, and patience will serve you much better than an itchy trigger finger. You can spend a long time planning out every move before you make it; Outside a room with two gun totting baddies. Boot in the door to knock down the first guy, quickly throw your knife at his pal with the shotgun, before sprinting over to grab it and blasting the first now getting to his feet. The noisy shot will attract others, so you'll stand behind the door and calmly blow away everyone that runs in. Of course, while you're standing thinking this out a dog will sprint up from behind and tear your throat out. Fuck. Hit R to retry. 

Because of this, each level is as much a puzzle as it is an action set-piece waiting to happen. Take in your immediate surroundings and patterns begin to form. Tread carefully and you'll be clearing rooms as cleanly and efficiently as a SWAT team. Well, I say cleanly. As you'll be able to tell, Hotline Miami is an almost unprecedentedly violent game. Blood sprays the walls as you split skulls to pieces, limbs vapourise with a single shotgun blast. The violence is brief, bloody, and brutal, almost sickening despite the retro visuals. Half dead villains will desperately try and crawl away, some end of level characters will beg for their lives before you gouge out their eyes. But there is no mercy, everyone has to die. And when all the floors are finally cleared the action halts abruptly, the music swirls into an ambient fuzz as you stagger back to your car, past all the pools of blood and guts and staring eyes. It's the closest you'll come to regret.

But that's quickly forgotten when the action is so damn satisfying. Few titles will ever make you feel as slick as Hotline Miami when things go right. Whether it's as a carefully laid plan comes together, efficiently smashing your way through enemies faces with absolute precision, or when you frantically improvise your way through a series of blundering kills, you're in the zone for the duration. Neon combo messages flash up as you speedily empty a room, the technicolour visuals pulse and warp with the pounding music. Every death you suffer, and there will be many, just makes it all the more satisfying when you eventually triumph; bloodily battering that bastard with the pipe that's killed you ten times in a row to beat the level. And as your car drives off, and your kills are tallied up and scored, you can enjoy a satisfied smile. It may grow wider with the unlockable treats, including various named animal masks, each of which gives you a different quirk. This might be starting with a weapon, lethal door slams, or longer combo chains. They add some extra strategy to the open-ended action, and give completionists an excuse to chase some high scores.

All the atmosphere on offer owes a great deal to the soundtrack, which in many ways is the true masterpiece here. Oozing with retro cool, from the slightly sinister, off-key ambience of the menu melody to the brutal electronic beats during your assaults, you realise that Hotline Miami wouldn't be half as brilliant without those tunes. The action takes on a measured rhythm as you start to match hits with beats, lacing together with the cocaine fuelled 80s style perfectly. A decent set of headphones can add a whole new layer to a playthrough, and with the repetition of the action and the sounds looping again and again and again you mind might start to melt alongside your character's.

That's where the story comes in. A surrealist trance of nameless characters and warping reality, perfectly charting the steadily decaying mind of a killer. The normality between missions clashes with the violent rampages. You'll visit video rental stores and pizza places, happily chatting with the bearded worker who calls you his friend. A love interest rescued early on hangs around your apartment, saying nothing. But cracks soon start to appear. The consequences of the violence catch up with you, human elements in your life fade away. There's a lot to be said for a a surrealist narrative, one that makes you want to keep playing in the hope of having your questions answered. It's part of what made Mikami and Suda's Killer 7 so compelling, despite the fact that you so rarely had any idea what was going on.

In fact, you could be forgiven if you mistook Hotline Miami for a Suda title. It shares his surreal sense of style; from the brutal, almost comic violence and collectables of No More Heroes, with similar hack and slash rhythmic combat of Lollipop Chainsaw, to the twisted narrative and macabre atmosphere of Killer 7. Swedish developers Dennaton have done a great job throwing together something so compelling from such a simple engine.

It ain't perfect. Simple WASD controls come across as shockingly fiddly at first, though you'll quickly adjust to the twitchiness. Enemy AI will see your foes fail to spot you lopping their friend's head off mere feet away, or loudly busting in on them while they're taking a piss. Glitches abound as well, with disappearing weapons and flickering walls often the order of the day. These are forgiveable. Less so is the occasionally unfair level design, with perfect playthroughs often spoiled by the same unseen enemies again and again; or the wickedly unbalanced boss fights, which leap out of nowhere and offer screen-breaking moments of frustration. It's short too: I blasted through it in about four hours. Maybe too short for some, though the replay value is there. If not for the high scores, then at least for the fun of it.

But you won't be thinking about the flaws. You'll be too focussed on the sickeningly addictive violence, the satisfying savagery of the kills. You'll be taken in by the beautiful 8-bit portrayal of an 80s underworld, all seedy clubs and drug fuelled pulses of colour. You'll be attempting to make sense of the twisted narrative, a feverish nightmare of masked killers and revenge. Your ears will be busy with the brilliance of the soundtrack, as it flows over the action and builds an atmosphere of absolute cool. In a year that's seen so few quality releases Hotline Miami stands out as something special. A delightedly demented orgy of ultraviolence and retro style. It's the modern-day videogame-nasty: cheap, brutal, and fun as hell.

Out now for PC.

SKSP Hour 24: Eden Reached

As we hit noon I'm delighted to realise that I've now completed my 24 hours of solid gaming. Maybe it's the sleep deprivation, or the remnants of the wine sloshing around my system, or it might even be the aftereffects of playing Child of Eden for the last hour, but I feel kind of floaty. In a good way! Er, I think.

Big thank you to everyone who supported me during this, especially everyone who was kind enough to sponsor me to the point of more than doubling my target amount. I've seriously been blown away by the generosity of you guys. Good luck to everyone that's embarking on their own marathon as mine draws to a close. I hope you all have as much fun as I did. Thank you and goodnight!

listen to ‘SKSP: Heavenly Stars’ on Audioboo

SKSP Hour 22: On the Edge

With a couple of hours to go I ran into yet another Playstation related mishap, as my PS3 decided it didn't really fancy playing Yakuza 3 for me, preferring instead to spend half an hour installing it before crashing. Ah well, lucky I was able to lean on Mirror's Edge as a backup. I'm glad I did as well, since it's proving to be pretty fun, even if it is a glorified suicide simulator (in my hands). Have already lost count of the number of times I've thrown energetic heroine Faith to her grisly death. maybe I'm just thinking too much about falling from a great height.

Nearly done! Will round things off with Child of Eden, that divisive spiritual sequel to Rez. I need the upbeat boost before bed, to be honest.

listen to ‘SKSP: final stretch’ on Audioboo

SKSP Hour 20: Rezurrection

Just after my last update I suddenly realised I was in real danger of crashing. Kept lapsing into those micro-sleep moments, where your eyes shut of their own accord and you feel yourself gently drifting off... then catching it before it happens and jolting back into consciousness. Well with six hours of this marathon to go that wouldn't do, I knew I had to wake myself up. Being slightly the worse for wear, what better way to do that than by turning off all the lights, plugging in my headphones, and blasting through the first level on Rez?

Of course once I finished Buggie Running Beeps I just had to do Protocol Rain. And then I couldn't miss out on Creation the State of Art. And so on, until I found myself watching the end credits roll and wondering where the last couple of hours had gone. Rez is one of those games that I always turn to when I'm at my lowest ebb. Something about the pounding visuals and intense beat of the soundtrack puts me in a zone of absolute concentration, a perfect trance-filled bubble. Ideal for that point in the night. But now I'm in the home stretch, I can practically see the finish line.

It's 8AM, Yakuza 3 is in the Playstation, and I've finally finished my red wine. Four hours and counting...

listen to ‘SKSP Hour 20’ on Audioboo

SKSP Witching hour

Seven Hours on from my last update, and I've been doing two things: Playing Resident Evil 4, and drinking too much red wine. The former was a blast, a finely ground blend of survival horror and action movie cliches. The latter was more of a mellow warping of inhibitions and bad vibes. Truth be told I'm not one for scary games. At the best of times I'm about as brave as a five year old child, and as such I don't tend to make much progress in the more terrifying titles. Christ, I don't think I even reached the first enemy in Silent Hill 2 before giving up.

But that's where being an adult helps; because getting a drink in me can certainly help build up a sense of bravado, that makes it easier to face the scary moments I do my best to avoid. It's funny, this year my brother suggested I run through the first four Silent Hill games for this marathon. I turned him down on the basis that standing in a corner weeping for 24 hours wasn't exactly what my sponsors were after. Now it's time for a wee blast of Rex/Child of Eden before I hit Yakuza 3. Stay strong...

listen to ‘SKSP hour I don't even know’ on Audioboo

SKSP hour 10: Prophetic Pro-evo

Approaching 10PM, and I've just gotten done with my full length Scotland V Wales game on Pro Evo. It was a crushing, dispiriting, and truly boring experience throughout, so pretty much exactly like a Scotland game. Wales scraped a 2-1 win, but the majority of the 90 minutes involved players randomly running into each other and booting the ball as far as they could at every opportunity. So pretty much exac- *ahem*

Perhaps more interesting was the fact that I wasn't following the actual game at all. So imagine my surprise at switching over after the final whistle, only to find that Scotland had somehow managed to lose 2-1 in the real world too. Well, I say "surprise"... I don't really expect much of Levein's Scotland team at all to be honest. Still, I'm evidently a wizard, so that's nice. Resi 4 is up next, and I'm cracking open the wine.

listen to ‘SKSP: Scotland Shenanigans’ on Audioboo

SKSP Hour 7: Sonic Terror

I had to give up on Half Life 2 due to severe boredom, and after 7 hours I was in severe danger of falling asleep if I had to run through another sewer pipe. Was searching for something to wake myself up a wee bit and stumbled upon the Gamecube's Sonic Mega Collection. Technically I've never really played Sonic 3, so I stuck that on for a bit to punch some sense back into me. I bit off more than I could chew though, the speed has done my screen-addled brain and eyes no favours at all. Four game overs later and I'm almost looking forward to the sedate change of pace the Pro-Evo 2011 session will bring me. Let's go Scotland!

listen to ‘SKSP Hour 7’ on Audioboo

SKSP Hour 6: Wake up and smell the ashes...

Current mood: frustrated

I've just hit the six hour mark in this gaming marathon, and come to the crushing realisation that I'm only a quarter of the way through. My head's already going a bit funny. Need a slap in the face to wake myself up. Might be on account of the monotony of crawling through Half Life 2's sewers for the last couple of hours. I've no idea if it's a game that uses any kind of mission structure, but if it does I guess that means I'm still stuck on THE FIRST LEVEL. I knew I should've plumped for Portal instead. Been having fun with it, great atmosphere and everything looks lovely, but the skittery handling isn't helping my headache much. I keep sprinting off pipes and missing simple jumps because it's

Coming up is my football bonus though. Playing through the entre Scotland Wales fixture. But since my copy of FIFA seems to have gone missing, I'll be playing it on Pro Evo 2011. In which the Scotland squad still features international superstars Paul Hartley, Chris Iwelumo, and David Weir. Good stuff. The bottle of red wine in my cupboard is looking more tempting by the minute, and that's a bad sign...

SKSP: Hour 4, disaster strikes!

Quick update as I enter my fourth hour of the SKSP marathon. My list of shame idea had to get booted out the window thanks to my brand new PS@ deciding it couldn't really be arsed anymore. It kicked the bucket just as I was about to start playing Ico, which has fisted my plan to death. I just knew buying it for £15 off that dodgy guy at the car boot sale was too good to be true... A quick recalculation has me now playing through PC classic Half Life 2 on my PS3, and struggling manfully with the wonky controls on offer. I'm just not an FPS guy, so this should be fun...

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SKSP: 12-3pm

So after whiling away an hour on Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and having my coalition defeated in our attempts to "liberate" a city for the third time in a row, good old Regmcfly popped over midway through his own marathon to absolutely school me at Tekken 5 for an hour. I thought I had the skills to handle someone that had never played it before, but I guess I need to train a little harder. After rinsing through every single character in the game, we turned our attentions to Blaz Blue: Calamity Trigger. A typically mental Jap fighter from the team behind Guilty Gear, it became clear after the first round that neither of us had the faintest idea what was going on. Between the flashy visuals, laughable use of Engrish ("Da Wheer Of Fate Ish Turnig. REBEL 1"), and an assortment of characters from my worst anime nightmares, we were stumped.

Then it was onto a true classic: Soul Calibur II on the Gamecube (the best version, natch). I can't tell you how much time I lost playing this as a teenager. I used to go onto the practice mode, whack the opponent difficulty up to maximum, and just practice combos for hours on end. This, Tekken 5, and Smash Bros Melee were my go-to games back then. An agreement that the first to four victories would be the true champ led to some tense bouts, culminating in a tense finale between Mitsurugi (Reg) V Talim (Me) at 3-3. I triumphed in the end, of course, proving that I'M THE BEST. And I did it with my favourite controller.

A thing of beauty

Before he left, Reg insisted on trying the PS3's savanah snoozefest Afrika, at my recommendation. Imagine N64 classic Pokemon Snap, with all the charm, character, and fun stripped away and you'll get an idea of what it's like. In the end his intrepid photojournalist (a slinky young French babe called Vince) was mauled by a rabid hippo. Truly a noble death. Jambo!

The true boss of Afrika

Now with Reg gone I'm going to kick on with SKSP properly, getting my teeth into Ico for the first time ever. I'll end up weeping tears thinking about how I'll probably never get to play The Last Guardian. As a bonus, I grabbed a quick interview with Reg before he boosted off. Enjoy!

listen to ‘Regmcfly interview’ on Audioboo

SKSP- Begin!

After an auspicious start to the day, where my alarm failed to go off and it turned out I didn't have any milk for my tea, I'm about to kick off my SKSP marathon. Some pounding techno courtesy of Paul Chambers is giving me the kick up the arse I need to wake up. Makes me feel like I've got the industrial plant from the end of Terminator inside my skull. Er, in the best possible way of course.

I'm kicking off with a cheeky go on Romance of the Three Kingdoms VIII, while I wait for Reg to show up so I can boss him at Tekken 5 for a bit. RotTK is what I'm pinning the blame for my laughable sleeping pattern on. After picking up a cheap PS2 last weekend I've had a hard time tearing myself away from it again, and 4AM finishes have been the norm for a good few days. Just entered an alliance to take down the warlord Yuan Shao, and a series of disastrous pitched battles have followed. I'll never conquer China at this rate...

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SKSP- Getting Prepared

So this time tomorrow I'll have started my 24 hour gaming marathon for Sick Kids Save Point, raising money for Edinburgh's Royal Hospital for Sick Children. The last time I did any kind of sponsored charity thing was back in Primary 3, at the tender age of eight. I vaguely recall it being something utterly daft like trampolining or somersaults, and that I managed a pitiful sub-20 count before bowing out in tears. I might well be in a similar state by the time this is over, but at least I feel I'm a bit more prepared for the challenge. My sleeping pattern is suitably skewed, my eyes have developed a resistance to screen-burn, and I'm fully stocked on sugary snacks and the blackest coffee money can buy. Would probably still break down if you asked me to give you 20 somersaults, mind.

After being handed this 24 hour time slot, one of the trickiest things was deciding what to do with it. Some other participants were dead creative with their ideas (I'm especially looking forward to following Scott Murdoch attempt to survive for 24 hours in Day Z), which made me feel that I should do something interesting with it myself. I thought of digging out creaky PS2 RTS Romance of the Three Kingdoms VIII, and attempting to conquer all of China within the day. Trickier than you might imagine, and as a real favourite of mine it's one I'd be happy to pour the time into. But then I realised that, unlike me, normal people have next to no interest in reading about the obscure fictional exploits of long-dead Chinese generals. Let alone for 24 hours. And since I'm liveblogging this thing, having people understand and stay interested in what I'm writing is key. Gutted, eh?

So back to the drawing board. I don't have a working PC, else I'd be on some timesink MMORPG for the duration. No 360, which means no hours wasted chatting with fellow sufferers on Live. I'd thought of booting up a game of Football Manager, maybe see if how far up the career ladder I could climb. Sadly, my laptop would melt under the strain of running anything for 24 hours solid, so that was out. Dark Souls had crossed my mind, but the memory of being stuck at the Taurus Demon for six hours is still too painful. Back to the drawing board!

Long story short, I've returned to my original idea of tackling my list of shame. I've far too many games that were bought but never played, but that sadly includes modern classics like Resi 4, Metal Gear Solid 3, and Ico. So I'll be throwing at least five hours into each of those, with the aim of finally seeing what I've missed out on. First though, I get to kick the day off with some fighting action courtesy of my pal Martin, who'll be stopping by on the way home to his own marathon.  I also noticed that I'll have to miss watching the Scotland Wales game in the evening, which is distressing. So to numb the pain, I'm going to play the fixture myself, in full, on FIFA. Should be a riot. Plus, if I get a better result than the real team, I might be in with a shout of Craig Levein's job. Bonus!

There's still time to donate as well. Thanks to everyone's kind efforts I've smashed through my target of £100, but every penny helps, so if you haven't already please consider donating through my JustGiving page. You'll be able to follow my progress on this blog, where I'm aiming to post at least once every hour, and on my Twitter, where you can enjoy my inevitable meltdown in bite sized chunks. By using the #sksp hashtag you'll be able to keep up with all the weekend action as well, as a legion of gamers across the country kick off their own marathons.

See you on the other side!

Tokyo Jungle- Review

A few minutes into Tokyo Jungle you'll have used a pomeranian dog to take down and eat a few rabbits, marked your territory before catching fleas from a potential mate, and wandered the deserted metropolis before dying from starvation, toxic poisoning, or at the hands (paws?) of a bigger and fiercer predator. All in a day's work for one of the most original games to hit the Playstation Network in, well... ever.

Tokyo Jungle tells the story of Japan's capital post-apocalypse. For whatever reason the humans aren't kicking about anymore, which has left the streets free to be claimed by the various animals that now run free from the shackles of ownership and captivity. And as you'd imagine, it's a fairly chaotic scene. Packs of hyenas roam the sewers, battling wandering bears or hunting flocks of chickens. Wild Gazelle flock to watering spots alongside herds of rabbits, before being chased off by a particularly vicious alley cat. This isn't quite your standard arcade survival game.

You've got two game modes to choose from: Survival, which is where you'll spend most of your time, and Story, the name of which implies more than it delivers. Initially, the story isn't something you're allowed to pursue, so you're instead thrust into the Survival mode's urban jungle to fend for yourself in one of two guises; pomeranian dog, or sika deer. While the difference between predator and herbivore is theoretically the essence of the game's variety, most of the gameplay remains the same regardless of your choice.

So after being walked through the mechanics in a charming tutorial, you're plumped in the middle of Tokyo and left to fend for yourself. Three bars up top represent your health, hunger, and stamina. To keep the first from dropping down to eventual death, you'll have to keep the hunger at bay. For predators, this means hunting and devouring other creatures. Rudimentary stealth mechanics allow you to hide in patches of tall grass, sneaking up on prey before delivering a killing blow with gratifying aplomb (the "Clean Kill" banner that flashes by sure does help). Munch the body until it's nothing but a pile of bones, and hunger is staved off for, ooh about 10 seconds. The constant need to eat adds a real urgency to the challenge of survival; find yourself starving to death in an underpopulated area, and you'll be frantically searching for any tasty looking green dots on your radar, be they cat or crocodile.

For veggie animals the goal remains the same, seek out food before you painfully starve to death. Only now you're after plants to chow down on, and they're usually surrounded by an assortment of predators that want to tear chunks out of your skin. So stealth becomes the order of the day, hiding in tall grass and learning an animal's patrol pattern until you can sneak by, Metal Gear-style. But there's more to living than just eating. Since your animal has, at best, 15 game years of life in them, you'll need to find a mate. This is done by marking territory to "claim" an area. Do that, and interested females will start to show up. Impress her enough to let you breed, and you'll take control of the litter of offspring to continue your journey. Prime females produce more babies, and having a pack at your back is handy in a fight or flight situation.

The game certainly does its best to keep you on your toes. Random events will hit the city's various districts every so often. It might be a toxic cloud poisoning the food and water sources, or legendary animals making an appearance somewhere on the map. Either way you'll need to stay on the move constantly, which is also the case with the sets of challenges that roll around every in-game decade. These are usually of the "kill this many animals, reach this area" variety, but completion is often rewarded with a new bit of stat-boosting kit for your critter to wear. There's nothing quite like dressing your beagle up in kitten boots and a baseball cap to raise a smile.

Also dotted around the town are archives, files that explain the story of mankind's vanishing act bit by bit. They're also key to unlocking chapters in the Story mode, which is really a set of standalone narrative driven missions. These range from the heartwarming to the hilarious, and are a nice change of pace from the vicious battles of Survival mode.

But that's where you'll spend most of your time in Tokyo Jungle. As with most other roguelikes, death is inevitable but also a learning experience. You start each new game a little stronger, a little more aware of what you're doing, and as such you'll get a little further each time. Unlocking stronger animals gives you more of an incentive to try again, and the initially brutal difficulty curve starts to make sense the longer you play. It's not a forgiving game, far from it. And unlike, say, Dark Souls, you will sometimes feel that its difficulty is unfair, with your deaths coming more often from random factors than your own mistakes. But the rewards are there if you're willing to work for them.

It helps that the decaying ruins of Tokyo are a pleasure to explore, with a ton of secret nooks and crannies there to be discovered. It's what you'll find in them that stays with you though. From herds of wild horses running across the rooftops to meandering hippos double-jumping away from packs of wolves, you'll have a hard time predicting what might show up next. These random encounters are at the heart of Tokyo Jungle's humour and charm. Really, where else are you going to be able to kick a rabble of dogs to death with a kangaroo?

There are some real flaws. An all-too-close fixed camera means you'll find yourself dying in the jaws of unseen enemies far too frequently. That green dot on the radar could be a tasty chicken, or it could be a hungry bear. You often won't know until it's too late. The map is fairly useless in its un-zoomable state, and while you've got over 50 animals to unlock, aside from the herbivore/carnivore split it's a repetitive experience. Killing with a pomeranian is much the same as killing with a tiger, it seems, while a giraffe munches the same plants as a chicken, and can seemingly jump just as high. You'll scream out for something different once in a while.

But that's unfair, because really Tokyo Jungle is about as different as they come. There's nothing else quite like it (though it shares more than a little DNA with the Gamecube's oft-forgotten mutate-em-up Cubivore/Animal Leader). It's also the kind of game you can only really imagine happening on the Playstation, thanks to the whatever they're putting in the water over at Sony's Japan Studios. Wickedly addictive, wildly entertaining, and completely bonkers in equal measure, Tokyo Jungle is a game that needs to be tried once. And at just under a tenner, it's well worth a shot.

Goodbye to Nintendo Gamer (Worth £7!)

This morning I caught up with the sad news that Future have cancelled Nintendo Gamer magazine, making this month's issue their last ever. Though I'd heard this was happening a couple of weeks back, the official announcement still managed to catch me by surprise. After 20 years in various guises, and some of the best games writing there's ever been, it's hard to believe that I'll no longer have that monthly fix of Nintendo coverage flopping through my postbox every few weeks. I started reading it as N64 Magazine back in '98, drawn in, as only a ten year old me could be, by the heady promise of a review and tips for Ocarina of Time. Sure I'd dabbled in other Nintendo magazines, having picked up the odd issue of Nintendo Official, and been a long-term reader of the utterly dire N64 Pro. But N64 Mag was something special. With a loud and colourful cover, and perhaps the biggest title I've ever seen (how can a 3-letter name take up so much space?), it just begged to be picked up and read. And I haven't missed an issue since. 

The much-loved Super Play

Super Play kicked things off in 1992. It was well before my time, but is one of those games mags that people of a certain generation refer to in almost reverential terms, like Amiga Power, Digitiser, and CVG. It ran until 1996, before being re-launched as N64 Magazine. Many of the staff were carried over, and with them the style of writing and the irreverent, often absurd humour that readers found so endearing. As soon as I started reading I loved it. When I was a lad videogames were about the most important thing to me. Playing them, reading about them, thinking about them, I just couldn't get enough. My N64 was my most treasured possession, and getting any new game was like an event. Considering they cost about £60 each (bloody cartridges), I think my mum was more than happy to pick up a mag each month that told me which ones would be worth buying. That backfired on her though, since reading about them so often turned a hobby into an obsession, and suddenly there were about ten times more games, consoles, and assorted bits of tat that I just had to have. Er, sorry mum!

But what came across through N64 Mag was the sheer passion the team had for everything Nintendo. They were fans first, and so obviously enjoyed what they were doing. Through in-jokes, characterisation, brilliant writing, and a whole lot more besides, the magazine was dripping with personality. It seemed like it must have been as much fun to put together as it was to read. Tales and photos of office hijinks, nicknames, and just general humour made it feel as though the editorial team were a truly close-knit bunch. It was as if a load of friends who just happened to love Nintendo had decided to get together and make a mag. And that was important in developing the character of the magazine, turning it into something more than just a bunch of colourful pages put together by some names in Bath. 

Were magazine covers just better ten years ago or something?

Behind that though was a hardcore approach to games coverage that extended all the way back to Super Play. This was a magazine written by gamers, for gamers, and that was always clearest in their reviews. Nothing stoked my excitement for a game quite like a proper spread and a good score. Jes Bickham's definitive Ocarina of Time review has become famous, but the one I'll always remember is their wonderful 16 page deconstruction of Perfect Dark. With the wealth of preview space given over to that game in the months before I could not have been more excited for it. When I sat down and pored over the review, with all the information about the weapons, levels, and the sheer size of the game, my jaw hit the floor. It was the kind of review you could only really get in a magazine- no amount of metacritic surfing these days could generate the interest and excitement that those 16 pages did for me. The writer (and former editor) Martin Kitts put up the scans on his website, and reading through them made me feel like a wee kid again. 

But in a way, I used to look forward to their bad reviews more than anything else. Those were always guaranteed to be just about the funniest part of the issue, and showed off the creativity and talent of the writing team to great effect. They were particularly barbed, with a fantastically cruel use of language that still has me in stitches. Wheel of Fortune was "worse than accidentally falling off a cliff. And surviving." Playing Batman: Dark Tomorrow was "like having the skin flayed from your fingertips." If you ever spotted a copy of Carmageddon 64 in a shop, you were instructed to "take it off the shelves, rip up the box and throw the cart repeatedly against the wall until it breaks.", while Cruis'n USA was simply described as "dump." Daft as it sounds, this was the kind of thing that made me want to get into writing. I wanted to be able to put things in such hilariously simple terms, and make people laugh with it. I've been a subscriber to Edge for the same amount of time, and their po-faced verbosity (good as it is was) never resonated with me in the same way as Nintendo Gamer's reviews. There was always something much more... I dunno, human about them. In the way that I can genuinely imagine Tim Weaver going into a blind rage before writing up his Superman 64 review.

Features were often as creative as they were hilarious

 

The humour is what people usually remember. Brilliantly creative features usually hit the right note, and it was packed with inexplicably hilarious in-jokes and memes; from Nintendo themed Mills and Boone rip-offs, to Paul's Sense Talks, Lex Luthor's "Solve My Maze!", and even the more recent Iwata Asks, it was funnier than any other games magazine on the market. You could tell when it was a slow news month, since they seemed to pack in more enjoyably daft features and piss-takes just to fill the space. There are few things I find as funny now as I did when I was ten, but thumbing through back issues of N64/NGC can still reduce me to tears of laughter. Part of that seemed to be lost somewhere along the road. Whether that was down to the team members from the previous era heading to pastures new, or my own tastes changing, I don't know. But the tragedy is that as Nintendo Gamer it had started to recapture some of that previous magic, and that came right at the end of the Wii's life. With a new console right round the corner, we'll never get to see what the magazine would have been like in its prime.

I'm sure that I'm in the same boat as a lot of long-term readers are. We're of a certain age that means we've grown up reading these magazines, and in a very real way they've shaped who we are and what we want to do with our lives. I know that my desire to go into journalism, games or otherwise, was really driven by reading such a fantastic product, put together by people that seemed to genuinely care about their readership. One of the funny things is that having now done some work on magazines, I can appreciate what a stunningly well put-together piece of work Nintendo Gamer was, in all its forms. To reach that level of quality month in month out, even making the most of having no games to review or news to report, must take such a mind-bending level of skill and commitment. It makes me admire the various teams over the years all the more. What's gutting is that for a magazine that will have inspired a load of people to want to work in games journalism, its closure just highlights how much more difficult than ever that dream is.

The final issue, with a lovely Will Overton penned cover.

Finding out today, on my 24th birthday, that Nintendo Gamer was going to die on its 20th, is  the worst kind of coincidence. And with my subscriber copy arriving today, that'll make it simultaneously one of the best and worst things I'll receive this year. The best because I'll be reading through an affectionate final bow from an incredible games magazine. But the worst because I'll be entering a new console generation without Nintendo Gamer there to guide me through it. It's like a part of my childhood has died. What's worse is that I was there to see it happen. Last week I was down at Official Playstation for a work placement. Now as someone that's grown up reading these mags, the idea of going down to Future was like a dream come true. So on my final day someone across the office pops a bottle of champagne, and everyone gets up to see what the fuss was about. I didn't think much at the time, but now I know that was what remained of team Nintendo Gamer celebrating/commiserating sending the final issue off to print. 

The outpouring of shock and genuine sadness at this news has shown what a loyal following Nintendo Gamer enjoys. Their book of condolences is a lovely read, featuring an outpouring of grief from readers, writers, former and current staff, and a handful of stories much like my own. And we can be grateful that web editor Chris Scullion gets to keep up his stellar work through the website, though sadly flying the Nintendo Gamer flag solo from now on. It'll never really replace the magazine, but at least we'll have something. So goodbye Super Play, N64, NGC, NGamer, Nintendo Gamer. Thanks to everyone who worked over the last 20 years putting together what was easily the best games mag on the market. It may not be much, but I know that if I do end up in games journalism, I'll always be measuring my work against the job that you guys did.