I’ve had a great week or so off from writing. It looks like I’m taking a fair bit of the next week off too which will be particularly nice considering much of my previous week consisted of visiting relatives so I haven’t had much time to just relax.

Father Christmas was very kind to me this year bringing me Metal Gear Solid 4, Broken Sword: The Director’s Cut for the Wii, Tropico 3 for the 360, Lego Rock Band and Uncharted. Not forgetting The Complete Popcap Collection through Steam from NokkonWud!

Yup I’ve got plenty to play now.

I’ve completed Broken Sword already and it’s great. The original is a classic anyhow but the additions, mostly revolving around Nicole, are brilliant touches that are sure to delight fans. Some of the new puzzles are a little infuriating but this is more down to the awkward Wii controls. Still very much worth a look for point and click fans.

I’ve played Metal Gear Solid 4 for a couple of hours now and it’s certainly got the grey matter stirring, but possibly not in the way that it wanted. It’s provoked  a question I’ve been pondering on and off for a while. If a game takes a number of hours to become enjoyable and compelling, can it still be a classic? It’s happened a few times lately with various games, most recently Metal Gear Solid 4. I’m estimating there’s about 10hrs of gameplay there (I use that term loosely considering the wealth of cutscenes!) yet I’m 2hrs into it and I’m still not entirely sure why I’m playing it. It hasn’t grabbed me yet. It’s easy to say ‘Well you’re only 2hrs in’ but that’s roughly 20% of the game. Possibly more considering I’m only estimating. Surely those people with less time due to a busy life might not have carried on as far as I have? I remember having a conversation about Fallout 3 with a work colleague a while ago. I was explaining to him about how it’s great once you get into it but it does take a little while to get into. As he pointed out, he’s got a wife and three young children. As much as he’d like to persevere for a number of hours, he just doesn’t have the time. Instead he put it aside and went back to Grand Theft Auto IV as its rewards were more immediately obvious.
I don’t have 3 children but I do have a lot of things vying for my attention, whether it be work, family commitments, or simply other games. So what to do when a game just doesn’t grab me? For the most part I crack on, hoping that things will improve soon. But I do wonder just why this is accepted in so many games. If a film was incredibly slow and dull for an hour or more, then was stunningly good for the last 30 minutes, would it still deserve to be called a classic? And how many people would have switched off long before the end anyway?

On another note: I’ve also returned to work in the past week or so. Only short shifts, unfortunately it still hasn’t gone very well. After the first three hour shift, I could hardly walk for the following three days with me even struggling to traverse stairs again. My workmates have been brilliant though so that’s some consolation. I’m not rotaed in until the 11th now thanks to my understanding assistant manager seeing how badly I was struggling to keep going.

I’m going for another X-ray of my foot on Tuesday to see if the bone has healed, and most importantly whether it’s healed correctly, which is the most worrying concern. I’ve also finally received a letter regarding physiotherapy so that should happen soon. Only been on the waiting list since October!!

I’d love to say I’ve been dealing with foot related things well lately, but it’s been getting me very down. It’s one thing to break your foot back in July and to be told it’ll take 6-8 weeks, but now that it’s nearly 6 months, it’s really brought me down. Never mind, it’ll have to heal eventually I guess.

So, since I last updated there have been reviews of Elven Legacy Siege, Elven Legacy Magic and James Cameron’s Avatar for Resolution, as well as an article on my GOTY. For play.tm there have been reviews of DiRT2 and Wii Yoga as well as articles on the best games for your iPhone, DS and PSP this season. There was Rumor Killers for TGR and the forthcoming Rumor Killers: Review of the Year. Oh and last but not least there were reviews of Age of Empires III: The Complete Collection and Spore Hero for VideoGameUK, and reviews of Dragon Age: Origins and Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues for RewiredMind. Phew!

In other news…

My Aion account got hacked, which was extremely annoying. I was lucky that thanks to a very helpful PR person who got me set up with the account in the first place, passed me onto someone associated with NCSoft. They got my account frozen quickly and then restored to me. Nothing had been stolen on the account so I was very lucky! Still no idea how they managed to reset my password as I’m very careful, secure password, no viruses etc. But at least no real harm was done.

The other big piece of news is I’ve got a new laptop! It was on the cards for sometime in the New Year but thanks to doing financially better than I expected, and the realisation it’d cost me 2.5% more in the New Year thanks to the VAT changes, I bought it this side of Christmas. After previous good experiences with Dell I bought another one. A Dell Studio this time round: Core2Duo T6600 2.2ghz, 4gb RAM, 500gb HD (desperately needed as I was constantly below 5gb with the last laptop!) and ATi 4570HD. Big upgrade from my old one and I’m very happy with it.

Only really played DiRT2 on it so far due to having too much work to do, but I’m downloading Aion as I type so I’ll enjoy trying that out. Also got Football Manager 2010 on the way which will be great.

I’ve got some interesting plans for the New Year so stay tuned. For now I’ll try to actually update a bit sooner than the gap between the last one!

Anyway, time to toot my own horn to start with.

This past week has produced reviews of Tropico 3 and LittleBigPlanet PSP for Resolution, a review of Family Game Night Vol 2 and a DiRT2 PC preview for play.tm, Rumor Killers for TGR, Secrets of the Mysterious Island review for ThePortableGamer, Puzzle Bobble Live for VideogameUK and Borderlands for RewiredMind. Oh plus two features on Modern Warfare 2 which haven’t gone live yet. That’s all in the past 5-6 days. Not bad I’d say!

I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve forgotten something, so as always the Portfolio is up to date for these things. It’s getting rather large now, not bad considering the majority of it has been done in 2009.

Currently I’m rather pleased that I have nothing to do for an entire weekend (it’s been a few weeks since that last happened) and I also don’t have a huge deal planned for next week either. What are the odds that by about Monday lunchtime I get twitchy? The curses of being lazy yet also hating having nothing to do.

Anyway, that’s about it for this very short update. Think of it as more of a page holder till some inspiration kicks in. Seems a shame to bump the Escapism post down with this drivel but guess it has to happen at some point!

It’s a terrible thing to discover that a close friend of yours has been killed. Learning through the medium of Google rather than through a ‘real’ person felt even worse. This was the story I found when I googled the name of a good friend of mine around 6 weeks after he’d seemingly vanished off the face of the earth.

Russell, or Elm as I knew him, was only 18 when he was killed. I’d never actually met him but he was and still is one of the closest friends I have ever had. I met him in a Yahoo Chat Room I used to frequent in my younger days. At the time he was an irritating and very cocky 14 year old that not many people really liked. I initially found him annoying and deliberately antagonistic but as time went on, we built up a strong friendship. It’s a cliché but a lot of the irritating sides to his personality were simply defence mechanisms. He’d been through a lot, his mother had some serious mental problems to the point that she tried to kill him once. It was lucky that he was a big lad otherwise he wouldn’t have got past 16. With a father that blamed him for the mother’s mental problems, Russell suffered badly from low self esteem. He really thought that he was completely worthless which was terribly sad as he was such a bright and caring lad. He just seemed to have drawn the short straw in life.

I treated him as my little brother. We might never have met but I truly cared for him. Once his PC died and he couldn’t afford to buy a new motherboard. So I sent him a new one to tide him over, he was my ‘brother’ after all; it’s what you do for loved ones. I’ve still yet to meet someone quite as genuine and kind spirited as him.

Besides computers, his one true love was bikes. He said riding a motorbike made him feel truly alive. Only a few weeks before his death, he had a fall. Only a minor one but enough to shake him up a bit. I reminded him not to screw up, that it can only take one mistake and that’s it. He promised me that he’d be more careful. Life at the time was finally going well for him. He was doing everything in his power to join the Navy to become a Communications Technician and make something of himself. He was constantly terrified that he would become like his mother, but I don’t think he would have. He had too much drive and too much of an urge to improve himself. He just needed a little more self confidence.

However it wasn’t to be. On his way to work one day, Russell swerved to avoid a tractor that had pulled out suddenly and hit oncoming traffic dying instantly.

The unfortunate thing about online friends is how do you find out these things? If a friend vanishes offline for a while, how can you find out if it’s just that they’re busy or that they’re dead? The sad truth is that quite often you just don’t know. As the days and weeks went on, I worried more. It was very out of character for him, especially as I’d only talked to him the night before the crash. His mobile phone was always switched off but I figured maybe he hadn’t paid the bill (a common occurrence). He wasn’t the kind of friend who just vanished, even when his internet connection had been cut off, he still found a way of getting in touch just to let me know. I knew it all along really, but it wasn’t until I dared google his name and the aforementioned news story popped up, that I knew for certain.

The other problem reared its ugly head then. I had never suffered any real form of grief. I had been fortunate that until 2005 I had never suffered any true loss but now I felt like I had nothing. I could tell my parents, they understood the online friendship thing. But my ‘real’ friends? They never got it. In the end, I just didn’t really tell anyone. Instead I retreated to Counterstrike.

I spent an entire week playing Counterstrike. I don’t just mean a few hours a day, I mean the entire time. I caught a few hours sleep but otherwise I was probably playing Counterstrike for 18hrs a day for the entire week. Clanmates would log on before work and I’d be there, they’d go to work and come back, I’d still be there. I wasn’t playing alone at least. I played alongside a good online friend of mine who was unemployed at the time so he was quite happy to be there for me the whole time. He didn’t know Russell, but he knew how much it was affecting me.

Counterstrike meant that my brain was always occupied. Simply put, I couldn’t cope with Russell’s death. It was all too much and I felt very out of control. I was returning to University in a mere week or two to complete my third year. That was scary in itself as I had no idea what I wanted to do once I’d graduated. Plus my boyfriend at the time had just cheated on me and left me. I had never felt so powerless before. So I picked up a virtual gun and stayed in the safe world of de_dust and cs_office.

I had control over this. All that was required of me was to kill the enemy and maybe plant or defuse a bomb once in a while. It was simple, I could deal with this. It was the world of emotions in my head that I really couldn’t deal with. So I hid.

Was it sensible? Probably not. I was avoiding facing up to the fact that my friend was dead, that’s not really very healthy. But I honestly think it was something that I needed to do. Just to give me a little time to try to figure it out. The truth is death isn’t something that you can figure out. It’s just plain old shit, no matter how long you think about it. There’s no solution to it. But I guess at least Counterstrike showed me that I did still have some control over my life. Even if that meant that I chose to hide in a game for a full week.

If you’re at all interested, more information on Russell is located here.

At some point I’ll write the second part of this, although that’s going to be a touch harder as it’s more recent and about my Dad.

As you can see I’ve spruced things up a little and changed the theme again. I’ve also added the Portfolio section which covers everything I’ve done to date.

There are quite a few updates as you can see! Most notably I’m now no longer Reviews Editor with GrE and TPG. I decided that it was for the best so that I can focus on my writing.
Since then, besides being much more relaxed, I’ve written a piece for one of my favourite sites Resolution and been writing a few reviews for a good friend’s site Hi-Score. Most importantly, I feel more in control of my work which is always good! Hoping to write a piece for this blog soon on escapism through gaming, something that has been ably written about by some of my peers here, here and here. The ironic thing is due to the content, I’m escaping from writing about it and waiting till I feel mentally up to it! I can think of two things I’d like to write about, and I’m sure it would be cathartic to do so, but sometimes denial is useful.

Anyway no guarantees, but I’ll try to write here a little more often now that I have more free time although I do seem to be writing at least one full article every day at the moment! Good old busy season. Certainly not complaining, I wouldn’t have been able to play the likes of Uncharted 2 if it hadn’t been for such review opportunities. Uncharted 2 is a bit good by the way, more in the next few days.

Oh and before I forget, I was hoping to attend the Eurogamer Expo next week in London but as my foot is still causing me plenty of problems, this almost certainly won’t be happening now. It’s looking pretty unlikely I’ll be returning to my day job soon too. What fun! Not.

I’m considering making this purely a portfolio site but we’ll see how it goes. It definitely needs a revamp of some sort as collecting up links of my work has fallen by the wayside a little.

Life
Well my foot is still broken. I went back to my hospital appointment on the 4th September and had an idiot of a doctor see me. Turns out the bone hadn’t healed at all since the last X-Ray But this doctor was completely stumped by this, acted very worried but then sent me home with no plaster cast and instead with a very flimsy support splint that offered my poor broken foot no protection whatsoever. I struggled on for a week thinking maybe I was just making a fuss over nothing as it was hurting so much more than before. Then when I realised that I could feel (!) the bone when I put weight on it and after mentioning it to a friend who was concerned, I decided it was best to go back to the hospital.

I saw a different doctor this time who instantly gave me a different form of cast: a removable one known as an airboot (think Robocop’s boot and you’re not far off) and told me that although it is slow healing that’s normal and I shouldn’t worry. Huge weight off my mind as I was really worried about why my foot wasn’t healing at all, but if it’s normal, then I’m ok.

So far, the airboot is much better than the support splint and I’m hoping it’s healing. I’ll find out in 2 weeks time on 2nd October when I go back for more X-Rays.

My foot and ankle however really are ridiculously weak and it’s a little depressing at times as I’ve already been warned to expect plenty of physio to get it back to normal

Work
Lots and lots of it too!

First of all, GamesAreEvil and ThePortableGamer are taking up lots of my time as I post lots of news stories, recruit new staff members, contact PR people to kindly request review copies etc. It’s going great and we’re really making good progress in our plans for world domination

As a sign of our great progression, I recently discovered that a line from one of my reviews for GamesAreEvil is featured in an advert that happens to have been published in both Edge and the Official Xbox 360 Magazine! Madballs In Babo Invasion was the game in question, located at: http://gamesareevil.com/2009/07/review-madballs-in-babo-invasion-xbla/
For anyone who owns a copy of Edge, it’s the October issue, Page 172. Very happy with that!
My line also appears on the Madballs site at: http://playbrains.com/babo/bi_reviews.php

On a similar note, Madballs In Babo Invasion is a great game so go buy it. It’s a bargain at 800pts!

As well as that, there have been reviews of DiRT2, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Ashes Cricket 2009.

For ThePortableGamer I’ve, as usual, been writing away on plenty of iPhone games. Currently up to 31 reviews over there which isn’t bad going at all! Currently available at: http://theportablegamer.com/author/haly/

For play.tm/playboy there’s been a review for Champions Online.

I’ve written a short piece for Hi-Score for the article: Top 10 Baddies….with a Twist.

For the ever brilliant TheGameReviews, I’ve carried on with my column Rumo(u)r Killers as well as written a Retrodotal article on Final Fantasy VII.

Finally, I’ve just featured in the latest BigRedPotion podcast discussion on the greatest console ever!

Oh and I’ll be featuring on Xboxer360 soon as I wrote them a piece on the Top 10 RPGs.

Phew. That sounds like a lot all written down!

Current plans are to cut back on taking on too many extras as I’ve just been offered something rather exciting that I’ll talk about next time round

Life
There’s not much to life at the moment other than my foot. Went to the hospital for a check up last Friday. It could have gone better but it also could have gone a lot worse. My foot is healing but slowly so I’m still not allowed to put any weight on it for at least another week. Once I’m allowed to put weight on it, I still can’t exactly walk on it, just occasionally put my foot down. I have got a new cast now though, a lighter, red one. You’d think that would be a good thing but it has its pros and cons. The main downside is it’s making my foot hurt more as there’s less support than with the bulky cast so I’m not overly keen on it. I’ve actually suffered more pain since this cast than in the second week of the bulky cast which is no fun at all! Here’s the x-ray shot from last week, bearing in mind this was 2 weeks after the accident. The break looked a lot more jagged when I first did it so it is getting there, just very slowly.

I return to the Fracture Clinic on 4th September to see how it’s going. Hopefully I’ll have the cast removed then but I’m not holding my breath as things are going slowly and I’ll have to wait and see. I’m also certainly going to need physio on it once I am able to walk again which sucks.

Work
Work is going very well now. I’ve learnt to adapt around when my brain’s rubbish and get on with work when I can think straight, always a handy skill. Three new notable pieces are up as well as a few more iPhone reviews.

First up is Motion Control and Disability for TheGameReviews. It didn’t fare too well on N4G and I suspect it’s a bit of a niche subject but I’m quite pleased with it. It’s a rather personal piece focusing on my Mum’s neck/arm disability and how it’s affected her ability to play on the Wii.

Then there was the latest Rumor Killers which is already old news as the developer GRIN is now officially no more.

Finally there’s the review of Steal Princess on the DS which is self explanatory really.

Things have been going very well at ThePortableGamer/GamesAreEvil. So well in fact that I have been promoted to UK Reviews Editor over there! So I now deal with European PR people and arrange review copies and that sort of thing for the site. Currently there are only two of us based in the UK or Europe for the site so I’m also working on recruitment too to make the UK side of things as successful as the US side. I’ve got at least one person in mind which should help hugely. For now, it’s a matter of getting the games in and the support! Done quite well already as a copy of Ashes Cricket 2009 for the 360 arrived on my doorstep the other morning so hopefully that’s the beginning of many.
This is something I’ve never done before but already I’m hugely enjoying it, I always like a change of pace and I’m very grateful for the opportunity.

Gaming
As you can imagine, I’ve played a lot of games lately when I’ve not been writing. It’s pretty much all I can do besides watch films and I’m sure my attention span is getting worse with every film.

The Playstation 3 has had a bit less usage recently with me only really playing Little Big Planet and Valkyria Chronicles. Little Big Planet is interesting and quirky but ultimately just makes me want to play Super Mario World. A nice concept but I don’t think I’d pay for it.
Valkyria Chronicles is great but I’m stuck on it so it’s a bit frustrating!

I can only have one system plugged in at a time downstairs and while I can’t plug stuff in myself easily so the 360’s ruling the roost at the moment. Particularly as it’s resting on a cabinet which means i can actually swap discs for myself!
I’ve been enjoying Tales of Vesperia, although again got stuck on a boss. According to things I’ve read, it’s the most challenging boss of the entire game despite being early on, which is very annoying. I’ll get there eventually but still….grrr!

I’ve successfully 1ked Night at the Museum 2 which is no accomplishment really as it was a very simple game, but I did quite enjoy it. I’m now working on G-Force which is quite fun and a bit meatier than most kids games. Funnily enough in both cases, I’m not playing them merely for the sake of gamerscore points. I wanted to see what the NatM2 game was like after seeing the film, and I adore guinea pigs so had to play G-Force! Pity I probably won’t be able to see the film at the cinema though.

As well as that I’ve been playing plenty of Fallout 3 on the PC after mostly completing it on the 360. Even bought the DLC again as I’ve been enjoying it so much. Bit scary how quickly I’m going through it really!
Finally, I’m about to check out Mithra a 360 community/indie game which a friend on Twitter recommended to me and then provided me with a DLC code for it. Looks excellent from what I’ve heard, and always happy to support Indie gaming.

Work wise, thanks to painkillers and general blehness stemming from the foot, I’ve cut back a bit on work. So not many links to pimp at the moment. The latest Rumor Killers is up at TheGameReviews and by the end of the week my article on Motion Control and Disability will also be up there.

Also up at ThePortableGamer is my review of Dawn of Discovery on the DS, and soon there should be an iPhone review too.

Last but not least, a review of Zenonia for The iBlog.

I’m also currently working on a preview for a game I can’t name yet. When I write it all down, I seem to have done a fair bit…..but for 2 weeks work, it’s relatively little compared to what I was doing before the foot incident, and it’s probably doing me good. I have far too many up and down days with this foot mostly down to the frustration of not being able to do….well mostly anything. I think when the Autumn comes, I’ll be hitting the gym a lot, I’m going to end up huge at this rate of sedentary life!

The past week didn’t really go to plan for me. That might be an understatement.
My workload was gradually going down, got the Harry Potter DS review done for PixelatedGamer, and the Madballs in Babo: Invasion review for GamesAreEvil. All going nice and swimmingly.
Woke up last Thursday, dozing and half asleep: ahead of me was half a day doing my Grandmother’s food shopping for the week and spending some time with her, the other half of the day I was going to get on with an article for TheGameReviews. The doorbell went, looks like the postman’s delivering a parcel for the neighbours again while they’re at work. I got dressed quickly and rushed downstairs. Rushing is bad. In my half asleep state, I managed to ‘forget’ one of the steps on the stairs despite living there for the past 21 years. I fell a few steps, not many, but enough that I ended up a fair distance from where I started. All the weight went on my right foot as it twisted and ended up hitting the floor the wrong side up bending mostly everything in my foot about. CRUNCH! I actually heard a rather nasty snap noise too, lovely.

And that was how I spent half of Thursday in Accident & Emergency, and how come I’m now sitting here with my foot in a knee high cast unable to put any weight on it. Nice I’ve never broken anything before, or been forced to rest up in this way. Needless to say it sucks! I broke my Fifth Metatarsal in my foot. It’s the bone that links my ankle bone to my little toe. In many ways, I was lucky, I was terrified I’d broken my ankle having had friends suffer badly from such injury. Instead, besides the foot bone, I ’severely’ sprained my ankle, which also hurts. Lots.
I’ve got my next appointment about it a week Friday, hoping I’ll then be given a weight bearing cast meaning I can actually put weight on it and walk in a vaguely human way. For now though, I have to keep it elevated at all times (otherwise it gets inflamed, burns up and is generally extra painful rather than usual painful) and rest it at all times. The fracture is jagged which means there’s a chance it won’t knit properly by itself if I don’t rest it properly, meaning an operation. Which is a very scary proposition so I’m trying to do everything right. As it is, I’ve got these two weeks in a cast, then the next 4 weeks after that in another lighter cast, then maybe, just maybe I’ll be free of the damned thing but then in need of physio and various exercises to rebuild my leg strength. And all because I rushed to the postman at the door, and it wasn’t even a parcel for me. Fun, eh?

Anyway, enough whining. My twitter followers already have to suffer enough of that! To try to keep me sane, I used my hard earned savings on purchasing a PS3. I was planning on waiting a bit longer but it made sense. So I now have that to keep me busy for a bit See my other post for my impressions of it.

Updates might be a little slower over the next week or so, a lot of it depends on how well my brain works thanks to lovely painkillers. I’ve cut back my workload the best I can so as not to let people down.

The past week or so has continued to be busy, in the good way but also in the crappy ill way. For the past week, I’ve felt rather crap. Currently I’ve got a high temperature, I ache all over and regularly have headaches. It could well be swine flu (the fashionable illness ) but it could also just be a regular virus. Either way, I’m trying to rest up now and hoping it’ll sort itself. I’m not one for going to the doctor’s unless I’m on my deathbed, plus having researched Tamiflu I’m not going anywhere near taking that stuff unless I get significantly worse!

Anyway, enough about my health. Damn, have I been busy.

I’m now a staff writer for TheGameReviews which is excellent. I’ve only written the one article so far: Rumo(u)r Killers which I’m pretty proud of. It involved a bit more thought than my usual stuff and I loved doing the research for it and backing up my evidence with sources, that kind of thing. My next article for the site is on Motion Control and Disability, a subject close to my heart due to my Mum’s disability restricting her choices when it comes to Wii games.

Review wise, it’s been mental too. I’ve completed the Sacred 2 review (although it’s not live yet, I’ll update with a link when it’s available).

Links wise:
Cocoto Platform Jumper for GamesAreEvil
Worms 2: Armageddon for GoOnlineGames
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince – Wii for PixelatedGamer

As well as a few more reviews for ThePortableGamer of course

Coming up this week are reviews of Zenonia and iMevil for The iBlog, Harry Potter on the DS for PixelatedGamer and Madballs in Babo Invasion for GamesAreEvil as well as the article I previously mentioned. That’s not forgetting reviews of the DS games: Dawn of Discovery and Steal Princess for ThePortableGamer.
Yeah it’s a busy time, and I could seriously do with some rest time. I enjoy the work but I could really do with feeling better! Hoping next week might be a little quieter at least. If nothing else, I’ve hardly gamed for fun the past two weeks! Except for a brief play of Super Mario Galaxy which was brilliant and I’ll definitely have to rent it again.