Correct me I'm wrong but we all love a pleasant surprise don't we? I looked 'surprise' up and the consensus seems to be something along the lines of:

So, restricting our discussion to the positive side of the spectrum of possibilities, we like to be struck with wonder at the unexpected. In the context of games, I think this is especially important and, sadly, increasingly rare. Titles are now launched on oceans of hype and we hear their intimate secrets months, years and in some cases (yes, we're looking at you Duke) decades in advance of release. Some titles are so drenched in the sickly syrup of hype that it genuinely puts me off playing them - they can't possibly live up to expectations.

Wouldn't it be better if all the marketing people just kept quiet (yes, I know...) until, let's say, three months before release? Would it impact sales? Positively? Negatively? Personally I love the serendipitous discovery of a unheard of gem and I'm far more likely to part with my cash in an impetuous moment. As it is, I get to read so many previews, "hands on"s and then reviews that I feel like I've played the game before it hits the shelves. Excitement is inversely proportional to exposure in my case.  

Having said that, I've recently been struck with wonder and amazement at the unexpected delights of a title that sags under the colossal weight of expectation. It received so much praise there simply had to be something afoot in the land of reviews. Surely no game could ever live up to the accolades and high priest-like worship it received. Here was a game that took a fairly tired story and shoe-horned it into a similarly tired gameplay mechanism with a few evolutionary twists and yet managed an average review score of close to 96%. It was released back when I was so eyebrow deep in working on Forza that I simply didn't have time to try it. Later on I looked for a cheap copy - I wasn't paying full price for a 9 month+ old game! Then I tried to pick up a 2nd hand copy - silly prices! Finally, two years on I got to play Resident Evil 4 - and absolutely loved it. A game lavished with so much attention to detail, beautiful artwork and atmospheric music / sound that I couldn't stop playing - not until my 3rd-party gamecube memory card lost my save game just before the final boss encounter anyway! With most games, a catastrophe of that magnitude would have left me gutted and disconsolate but a few weeks before the release of the Wii edition, I just thought "oh well, I'll either play it again soon or buy the Wii edition". Not since Deus Ex have I felt a title was so deserved of its status in the history of games. If you haven't played it then I strongly recommend picking it up in one form or another. I'll shortly be laying out the cash for the Wii edition I suspect although currently I'm absorbed by the unexpected delights of another title that absolutely reeks of hyperbole - but that's another story...

My cousin asked me to check out a PC spec for him recently on the Dell website - check it was value for money, decent spec for his requirements etc. He'd made a good selection, but I advised him to ditch Vista and go for XP - for his purposes, Vista would only cause him pain. Anyway, the Dell OS selector for that machine had no XP option - "surely not!" said I. Sure enough, I did a "live chat" with a (very helpful) sales rep and as if by magic, they sent me a link to an XP version of the same machine. I asked why it wasn't an option in the first place and got no reply. "It's ok, I used to work for MS, I *know* why it isn't an option" I replied to the non-reply. A smiley returned. The price was lower too.

THAT STINKS. If Vista was the fabulous all new OS that it is claimed to be then this kind of underhand tactic for pushing it wouldn't be necessary. Which brings me to my next gripe - spare a thought for those poor guys at the FASA studio in MGS. They've spent 3+ years producing what appears to be a beautifully balanced team based FPS. They've worked nights, weekends and long long days pouring their hearts into their creation. They've tried to advance the relatively stale genre and what do they get? They get an artificial "cap" put on their sales performance by restricting the game to Vista only - for no good technical reasons. THAT STINKS too.

I don't condone piracy, but I did smile to myself this morning when I saw that "Vista only" Halo 2 PC and Shadowrun have been cracked and are running on XP. It won't help the sales of course but it should (note that I didn't say WOULD) send a message to the management manipulators who forced the teams to deploy on Vista in the first palce. What's really sickening is that those same management teams will probably look at Shadowrun's sales figures in a few months and say "Ummmm... see what trying to be innovative does - it ruins sales" and they'll close the studio, or much much worse, force them to produce Blood Wake 2. Not once will they openly and honestly look back and say "Do you know what, trying to flog (the dead horse) Vista on the back of those decent games killed them - and we priced it too highly on 360 too". They'll probably get promoted to "Software Architect's" or something equally prosaic.

It's only fair to complete the story below - MS Support "came good" with the lost XBL downloaded content and a helpful chap from the US called back 2 days later. He totted up all the points we'd ever bought across all 3 accounts and refunded them to a new silver account created on the new machine. Actually, what he did was tot up all the points, divide by 2100 and then restore the *remainder* to the silver account. He then emailed me codes that could be redeemed for the 2100 multiples. I asked why not just restore ALL the points to the silver account and he said it was to do with expiration dates. Codes had a much longer shelf life (he stated 10 years+) than those refunded directly to an account.

So, to provide some balance to my whining below, this *was* a good Customer Service experience. The guy was knowledgeable, helpful and understood my concerns / complaints / questions immediately. He also restored all the points we'd ever purchased on the failed console, even those we'd not spent yet. Kudos to MS for doing the right thing this time.

All of which begs the question: why oh why do companies insist on contracting out their Customer Service departments to the lowest bidder in order to cut costs? Surely this has to be a false economy. Yes, it looks great to the bean-counters shuffling their excel spreadsheets whilst polishing their pens but the reality is that it REALLY winds Customers up!! It also doesn't forgive the hardware failure in the 1st place of course!

Talking of which, I've managed to fix the broken 360. I ordered a new DVD drive and resigned myself to being forced down the "modded and banned" route but it occurred to me whilst gutting the machine that since the replacement drive was the same model (Hitach LG) as the broken drive I might be able to simply switch the PCB in the drive itself. I carefully dismantled both DVD drives, swapped the PCB and voila! I now have two fully functioning 360s - neither "modded" and neither banned. Once again though: why did I have to do this? Without the pointlessly restrictive (and failed) security measures I could have just replaced the drive without having to gut it first. As always, I blame the nameless faceless warriors that parade the carpeted corridors of (Whitehall) Redmond - middle management, bean counting career guys who never question, just do what they're told. Wet lettuce, spineless... sorry, slipped back into corporate ranting mode  

The inevitable has happened and my launch 360 is dead. I'm yet another one of that tiny 3% minority that MS insist have problems with their 360s. Yeah right! There's a lot more than anecdotal evidence out there to suggest that this is absolute b0ll0x. Regardless, the machine is 18 months old and despite section 14 of the Sale of Goods act suggesting rather vaguely that this isn't acceptable for a £300 console I'm desperately unlikely to get a free repair out of MS. So, pay £80 for a repair that may or may not last or buy a replacement? The "Right" thing to do would have been to vote with my wallet and buy a PS3 of course but with a large library of games and two addicted (playstation hating) children I opted to buy a new Core system for £150 from boots.com and move the hard drive over. This all worked fine of course - until we hit the realities of digital distribution and discovered that xbox live content we'd purchased for the family across three different xbox live accounts no longer worked across the accounts. All downloaded content is keyed to both the downloading profile AND the console itself. With the original console gone, I can play PinballFX but I can't play Zuma and vice versa for my kids. "Never mind" I think, MS can fix that easily so off I got to Xbox.com and lodge a support request...

3 days later and I get the helpful response "Please call the helpline". The 1st thing you hear on the helpline is... "Please visit xbox.com". Brilliant. Nevertheless, I hung on... and on... and on... I was on hold for *21 minutes* which in my book is just plain ridiculous. When the friendly Indian lady eventually answers, I suggest calmly that this really isn't acceptable and I'm told "we're very sorry, but there's nothing that can be done about that". No? Really? One of the richest companies in the world can't put a few more (inexpensive off-shored Asian) support staff on their support lines? She helpfully notes this down as "useful feedback" upon my insistence and I explain the problem. 3 times. That's another 10 minutes gone. "Ah, create a new silver account and call back and we'll credit that account with the appropriate number of MS points" I'm told. Call back? Hohohoho! No way my friend - I'll do that whilst you're on the phone. So, another 10 minutes pass by with me busily trying to create a silver account whilst the Indian lady twiddles her thumbs (and ensures somebody else gets a 21 minute wait time no doubt). At last, I'm done and she says "great - I'll now escalate that and somebody will call you back and they'll credit the account". I suppose it makes some sense that only senior support staff can credit accounts, BUT let's just step back a little. I paid £300 for a console that should last at least 3-5 years but failed prematurely. I paid £150 to replace it. I bought digital content for my family which I now can't utilise properly and here I am on the phone for 42 minutes (with more to come) to simply get back to where I should have been. Acceptable? Would Peter Moore or Robbie Bach find that an acceptable consumer experience? If this were a one-off then fair enough, but the web is full of similar stories and these are not "isolated incidents". It simply isn't good enough.

To top it all off, the original 360 is easily repairable. Or should I say SHOULD be easily repairable. The DVD drive is failing to read disks - hardly a catastrophic failure but one which MS has made all the more painful in it's fight against modders / hackers / pirates. Something as trivial as replacing a standard DVD drive is well within my capabilities but of course MS has made it difficult by keying the drive to the motherboard. This has achieved *nothing* in the fight against piracy - there are thousands and thousands of people out there happily playing pirated games right now. Ok, they've recently had their consoles banned from Xbox Live but do they really care about that? I suspect it hasn't broken their hearts. Myself as a law-abiding, long time MS supporting and ex-MS employee however is punished and told I can't replace my DVD myself. Except of course I can and whilst I never had any intention of modding my 360, I've now spent several hours trawling the internet discovering how to do it and downloading the appropriate pieces of software to enable me to key a new DVD drive to the old system.

Ultimately, what has the heavy handed fight against piracy and absolute control over content achieved? It certainly hasn't stopped the pirates and the hackers that's for sure but coupled with a very dubious record on reliability it's forced me (and no doubt many others) into modding the old 360, subjected me to an *entirely unacceptable* Customer Service experience and generally diminshed any good feeling I had towards the 360. P1ss Poor Mr MS. P1ss Poor.

Me and the kids actually really love the 360 but it is difficult to recommend to friends / family / colleagues when there is so much evidence around to support the oft-quoted (and now experienced) reliability issues. Couple this with the Customer Service experience we've had and it's a sad story to tell - particularly when we have 6 rock solid Nintendo consoles in the house and 2 original xboxes. I always thought the reliability stories were exaggerated internet "me too" chinese whispers but...

Infatuation with the Wii has diminished here in Zenfross. Back in January, Wii Sports had introduced something new and fun to the family but we inevitably grew bored with it and moved on... but everything we've tried since has been somewhat shallow and disappointing. So much so that we seriously considered selling the once adored Wii. Excite Truck was a brief blip on the radar but it was very short lived. The only game with any depth was Zelda but we got bored with that and couldn't bring ourselves to finish it. We're currently trying to get to grips with SSX Blur which IS fun, does appear to have depth but is also infuriating at times... primarily due to the control scheme which *should* just be intuitive and fun but instead frustrates a lot of the time. Rather ironic really!

Having said all that, the Wii is a brilliant Gamecube . With component output I can finally enjoy some of those cube classics without the fuzzy visuals that Nintendo insisted on forcing upon us by denying us a component output on the cube. I've finally got around to playing Resident Evil 4 - and what an absolute classic it really is. One of the few games in the past 10 years to live up to the hype. IMO RE4 is right up there with perhaps my all time favourite game, Deus Ex. I just want to keep playing... if you never bought it / played it, pick it up and drop it in the barren wasteland that is your Wii.

Looking forwards, we have got some Wii love on the way with some decent review scores coming in for the likes of Mercury Meltodnw, Elebits and Mario Strikers. From our perspective though WHY is online play so slow in coming? Why is DS / Wii interaction so slow in coming. We're bored Nintendo - time to follow up before we get fed up of playing GC classics...

A couple of years back whilst having a conversation about the then still-under-wraps-and-unamed-Xbox-360 with an MGS exec, I remember being slightly aghast at his declaration that once the new box launched the old box was dead. "What?? I'll still use mine! I'll still be playing those great games and it'll still sit proudly under my TV" I proclaimed. I was of course talking cr@p . Whilst one does still remain under the TV, it does so for two reasons. Primarily, it is modded and runs XBMC and does still occasionally get used as a media centre. Secondarily, I do still intend to finish some of those old classics that I've begun and never finished or simply never got around to playing at all. Jet Set Radio Future, Fahrenheit, Crimson Butterfly, Jade Empire, XIII, Psychonauts... the list goes on. Realistically however the only time I've played Xbox in the past 13 months is at LAN parties. I need a reality check - I'll probably never play those games. Bugger .

"Hang on! The 360 is backwards compatible" you cry. Oh yeah? Not for most of the games that are on my priority list - and then of course how do I transfer the save games over? I'm not starting Fahrenheit again and losing those 12 hours I've already put in and I'm not even sure it is compatible anyway - it wasn't last time I tried it. So, MGS man was right the Xbox is an ExBox for me. Something of a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way of course. MS has quite blatantly abandoned its first-born and so it's not surprising that everybody else has too. What a shame though! It's a great little (ok massive) console and plenty of life (and revenue) could be squeezed out of it yet. Look at the PS2 sales for Christmas 06 - plenty of life there quite clearly.

Regardless, I don't love my Xboxes anymore. They both sit unused and unloved for the most part and I'm ashamed of myself - both for abandoning them and of course for being so naive in the first place. It is hard to go back though, regardless of game quality.

Back to BC though - what a complete and utter F**K UP by Sony with the European PS3! The past two or three years just seem to have been a continuous stream of lies from those guys and that's shameful. This latest sword-to-the-heart of European gamers is disgraceful IMO. Having spouted forth from on high about the importance of BC and doing it properly in hardware rather than software (sneering at MS in the process) they then remove the compatibility hardware for the European launch and expect us to be happy that 1000 PS2 titles (10%?) will work on our PS3 - oh and that's whilst charging us significantly more than Japan and the U.S. of course AND probably just before they reinstate the rumble that was never important and wouldn't work with your fabulously innovative motion sensing technology. Less for more - nice deal Sony, what do you take us for? A bunch of chavtastic, naive, brand worshipping suckers who'll splash out 0.5k regardless? Well,... you're probably right  Vote with your wallets people and make them suffer for their lies - after all, you'll only be missing some 2/10 giant enemy crabs on which to inflict massive damage in any case!

If you're reading this, you're either at work wasting time (good for you) or at home wasting time. If you're at home wasting time, stop it and go out and buy Crackdown for 360. If you're at work, nip out at lunchtime and buy it. Forget about the "Halo 3 beta" nonsense - who cares!! Halo was great, Halo 2 was rubbish and Halo 3 could go either way. Never mind that, that's later in the year and right now one of the greatest games ever has just been released for 360 and you NEED to buy it. If you don't have a 360, buy it just for this.

I played the demo probably 5 or 6 times and loved it but I've been playing the full game for the past few days and I'm totally hooked. It's like having all the best bits of loads of great games thrown together in a massive free-to-explore-at-your-whim world. True 3D Mario platforming? Check. Burnout / Midtown Madness driving / racing? Check. Transparent RPG-lite progression? Check. Deus Ex complete-the-quest-as-you-see-fit freedom? Check. Enhanced Half-Life 2 / Psi-Ops Physics? Check. "Black" explosives? Check. I could go on, but honestly, I simply can't recommend it enough. Just buy it!

I've read comments about it lacking structure, being too short, being too easy, having a poor story-line, pointless driving etc but all I can say is that these people don't "get it". Put this game on to the "Psychotic" difficulty level and it is far from easy. Combine that with a massive world to explore - horizontally and vertically - and it is far from short. Aim to get all the achievements and what you've got is a beautiful, fun and addictive game on your hands. It is like having all your favourite childhood toys and imaginary games come together in one massive compelling bundle.

GO OUT AND BUY IT NOW. Finally, a true "next-gen" game and the first that I'd happily recommend people buy a 360 specifically to play.

www.gameplay.com came up trumps for us and delivered our Wii on launch day as promised. I then spent a happy few days rigorously ‘testing' before wrapping the wii beasty up for Christmas Day.

It's been interesting to see the reaction of friends and family. On Christmas Day, Wii Sports was a big success and Nintendo's 'inclusive' mantra definitely rang true. Grandparents could finally compete with the kids on a level playing field. More importantly, they enjoyed it AND wanted more! They even claimed they were going to get a Wii for themselves and play with their friends. A similar story with friends who visited us over the holidays - everyone seemed to love it and grinned from ear to ear whilst playing.

So, 1-0 to Nintendo with a blinding shot from the halfway line then. Although let's call it 1-1 since you still can't get hold of the damn things very easily I've only just managed to pick up a 2^nd nunchuck and as for component video cables...

What has surprised me a little is that the kids have actually played a lot less than I anticipated. I should add that just before Christmas they got a copy of Viva Piñata for the Xbox 360 and quite frankly they're like junkies on crack; they simply can't get enough of it. That aside, they have played a fair amount of Wii Sports and occasional Raving Rabbids but, given solo gaming time, they currently prefer Viva Piñata. With friends around, the Wii is a big hit...

So, is the Wii purely a party animal? Bloody good question. Its merit as a single player console is in the balance IMO. Don't get me wrong, I love it - but if I were in the market for a copy of Call of Duty 3 for example then I'd plump for the 360 version without hesitation. That's slightly worrying isn't it? If 3^rd party titles (and cross-platform titles particularly) fail to sell well on Wii, then are we venturing into Gamecube territory in a couple of years time?

Currently I'd guess not. I know quite a number of people who have previously turned up their noses at my gaming obsession who are now keen to grab a Wii for that unique experience. If you extrapolate from that very small sample to the population as a whole, then there should be so many Wii's out there by next year that the 3^rd party question becomes irrelevant. Something akin to the DS effect. Having 2 or more consoles may appear "normal" to the likes of us, but most people want, or can only afford, a single console. Consequently, if those people fancy Fifa Gangsta Racing version 12 then they'll go out and get the Wii version...

Then of course there is the 1^st party question. I saw a report only today (http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4508&Itemid=2) that stated that Nintendo owns the top 2 best selling franchises of all time - and these lead by some considerable margin. They own 4 of the top 8 which is not to be sniffed at. Obviously these franchises will be exclusive to Wii (and DS of course) in the coming years so there's another good reason to get a Wii. We've got Zelda: Twilight Princess and it truly is a beautiful game. (As it happens, I'm holding off playing anymore at the moment because I want to play it in 480p and I still haven't got my Wii component cable. Grrrrrrr...)

Finally, there is the price, DS connectivity, wireless browsing / emailing, WiiConnect24 (although I'm not convinced about this yet). Not a bad deal then...

Without a doubt we love our Wii and it will continue to sit diminutively but proudly next to the hulking, whining jet engine that is the 360. Personally, whilst no graphics whore, I would have preferred Wii to support 720p - if only to make the decent Opera browser more usable. That said, I'd rather play 576i Zelda and Wii Sports than any number of 1080p unimaginative movie licenses / sequels on the macho consoles - so all credit to Nintendo for pushing the boundaries.

Enlightened consumer purchasing is presumably the primary purpose of a games review but clearly that particular target is being missed by some distance . Scanning Eurogamer’s recent list of “Xbox classics” (most of which, infuriatingly, don’t work on 360) only reinforces the point. Great games, great reviews, great scores, disappointing sales. Churn out yet another dull franchise instalment or shoddy license, get a universal spanking in reviews and enjoy sales in the millions. Are those marketing dollars triumphing over critique or are the reviewers so far out of touch with the general public that they should enter politics?

Without a doubt the answer lies in both camps. To take an analogy and stretch it to breaking point, reviewers have grown bored with the foothills of the past, outgrown the previously exciting Munros of their youth and are now venturing onto the dangerous peaks of niche specialism. That’s not a criticism because as a gaming zealot myself I’m right there with them clinging onto the rock face trying to find that next thrill but when you look around… there are very few people up here, there’s an eerie silence. The others, the mass market, the gift buying parents and grand parents are all wandering around on the well sign-posted footpaths of the lowlands being rounded up and taken to slaughter by grinning marketing shepherds in expensive designer smocks.

I love games and it pains me to see my friend’s children playing utter tripe like ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ BUT and this is a big BUT, those kids ENJOY it and that’s possibly all that matters? Who are we to criticise them for enjoying content specifically created to appeal to the mass market? It’s like looking down on people for watching East Enders, Big Brother or The X-Factor. Perfectly valid in other words!!

What we need is to start a revolutionary front who go around raiding people’s houses and collecting all the games with average review scores less than 50% (as a starting point). The faithful can then dowse the offending articles in fresh cow dung and send them back to the publishers in their millions. They’ll soon see sense when they have 10 tons of dung arrive on their doorsteps – after all, it’s no different to what they’ve been doing in reverse.

There is of course one problem with the plan (well, possibly quite a few but we’ll gloss over the rest for now) - like Morrissey almost said, “Some reviews are better than others”. A large proportion of reviewers are now so entrenched in a cycle of bottom stroking obsequiousness that no amount of “yes, I did get to drink copious quantities of free alcohol in Malaga BUT it didn’t affect my review” denials will ever convince anyone that there is ANY value in their work. Thankfully there are a few bastions of integrity still out there (I personally favour Eurogamer, Edge and GamesTM) where we can sup the offerings without undue fear of poisoning…

Next time you see somebody playing “NFS: Carbon Copy”, remember that it is YOUR duty to rip it from their console and replace it with something more interesting (don’t blame me if you get your face punched in though).

It is said that moving home is traumatic but this wasn't so bad . We've now made a clear distinction between our consultancy / scientific work and our games development. As such, we now have two distinct web sites. Clarity and focus...

Games development is proceeding nicely though of course we are (perhaps) overly critical of our own work. Consequently the iterations come thick and ... "leisurely" and it may be some time before we're finally happy to commit to a single "publish and be damned" game concept...

In the meantime, the consultancy side is now free to proceed without the "frivolous baggage" of gaming. If you're a gamer or involved in the games industry then that description may seem somewhat dimissive, unfair and perhaps insulting. I would agree entirely. Unfortunately, to a non gamer that's how the industry and its products can appear. This was at least part of the motivation for separating the two strands of the business; it was always very difficult to present the case for serious scientific consultancy alongside games and related technologies. Hopefully this "treatment" has now solved our split personality to a reasonable degree.

I don't know, corporate restructuring after only 9 months - and who says all those years in big corporations never taught us anything

Don't you just love game demos?

I've been thinking about them recently in the context of planning some of our own demos, which naturally led me to think about how I perceive and play them as a gamer. When you think about it, it’s clear that there is a really difficult balance to achieve in producing, timing and delivering a successful demo.

Once you’ve decided to produce one, what’s the target? How much effort do you put in? When do you release it? Is it professionally planned as a milestone in development? Or do you throw out a “stable” build in a hurry because marketing tell you to? A bad demo can kill a good game. “Bad” can mean poorly conceived, poorly timed, poorly produced, poorly scoped etc.  OTOH, a “good” demo can sell a crappy game – rather like those Hollywood “blockbuster” trailers that show you every single interesting moment of the film condensed into 2 minutes and 43 seconds.

Something that struck me yesterday was that a good demo that’s too comprehensive can satiate the consumer’s desire to buy. I downloaded the 360 Prey demo from Xbox Live. As it happens, I’ve been looking forward to this game since about 96/97 when it 1^st started getting hype for its “portal technology” so I was keen to see what 10 years of development had produced. It’s everything they promised way back then and the demo is huge. I didn’t time myself playing it, but I’m guessing it took me roughly an hour to complete. An hours HD gaming completely free – good deal! Even more so because having played it, I’ve saved myself £40! There’s so much in that demo that I feel like I’ve seen pretty much everything it has to offer, I don’t need to play it any more. Furthermore, the demo’s final “Someone’s got to save Jen” tagline just left me feeling completely indifferent – I don’t care what happens to Jen because I feel no emotional connection to the characters at all. Was Prey a good demo? I’ve no idea really. It’s slick, comprehensive and played well. Did it stop me buying the game? Does that make it a “bad” demo?

One thing is for sure, if you’re a keen all round multi-platform gamer you probably don’t need to buy games anymore; just download all the latest and greatest demos and you’ll find you don’t have time to play anything else anyway!

When I was 14 or so and waiting for 3d Monster Maze to load on my ZX81, loading times were tense and exciting, almost to be savoured. On edge, eyes following the on-screen thunderstorm, ears attuned to every blip and trill, sensing immediately the moment a single byte had failed to load correctly. Then ... you were immersed in the game (or cleaning the tape heads) and load times were forgotten (until you accidentally touched the 16K RAMPack!). Now ... they drive me NUTS. They can completely kill a game for me. In fact, they have completely killed an entire platform for me.

I was impetuous enough to import a PSP back when the UK launch was but a twinkle in Sony's eye. I instantly fell in love with its beauty and its promise and then as the first UMD spun up... I suppose on a conscious level it barely registered just how long it took to start that 1st game because I was gripped with child-like excitement - but unlike the ZX81, or all its home computing successors, "Loading..."  gradually became a more and more of an irritation and well before the UK launch it was dust-laden at the back of the cupboard - ignored by me, and perhaps more significantly, the kids.

Its not just the PSP though - those plastic slabs beneath our TVs are often worse! They have no real  excuses. We can all (almost) forgive initial loading times but repeated in-game "Loading..."? I'd rather not pick out any one game in particular... but I'm going to, not because it is the worst by any means, simply because I played it a few nights ago. PGR3 is a great game and I have immense respect for the guys at Bizarre but for me, it quickly became a cupboard buddy for the PSP. 6 months on, I dragged it out and dusted it off thinking "I really should have played this more...". Within 30 minutes it was snuggling back down with the PSP and Fuzion Frenzy at the back of the cupboard - not because its a bad game, but because I wasn't prepared to sit and wait 30 seconds every time I had to restart an event. The nature of the solo game (for me) is that I want to beat it at the highest level. Inevitably this means I fail some events. Over and over again. Every time I do so, I have to look at that "Loading..." screen when I know I shouldn't have to. Any geometry / texture changes are minimal, everything is in memory. Just reset and go! Its such a shame - I'd love to complete the game but I'm just too impatient. There are loads of games MUCH worse than PGR3 and there are many reasons why "Loading..." is so prominent but ALWAYS (IMO) it is immensely irritating.

Perhaps 25 years of gaming has turned me into a Grumpy Old Man but when you see games like Halo cunningly disguising and technically minimising load times it just reinforces how unnecessary those delays sometimes are. Despite larger textures, more detailed models and complex world geometry it would be nice to think that at least somewhere out there, people are working to eradicate this scourge of gaming.... Or maybe I should just chill out a little and take the stance that those enforced breaks are a great time to put down the controller and relax my aching thumbs...

Well, here we are. We finally got around to creating the website. Ok, WE didn't create the website - our good friends at Logic Red did the creating and we created the content - but the important thing is that we're live at last. (I swear I have several albums / CDs with that title). I've never been one to maintain my own web presence in the past and, perhaps rather childishly, refused to comply with corporate regulations to do so in previous employment. Inexplicably, my previous existence is still there in all its stark emptiness - as lovingly maintained now as it was then . Is it going to be any different here? I hope so. There's plenty to say now and its all stuff that matters to me and not just a corporate "tow the line" scenanario. We're working on some cool and interesting stuff here so the intention is to keep our Technology section reasonably well populated with fresh stuff as we progress. We'll also be posting our personal thoughts, interests and probably rants in our blogs too when we get a chance - so, another couple to add to the swelling ocean of 10s of millions