the background noise

Dear lord are we nearly at June already? Doesn't the time just zip past when you're blasting away at folks within the digital ether? Loo king back at the first half of the year I feel like it's been a robust period for my ever present gaming habit. Today I reflect upon a certain category of games that have taken up a sizeable chunk of my time lately. A category of games that have been around for a while now but which I feel is only now really coming into its own. I am of course referring to free to play games. Games that want the fast track to your wallet just without the cover charge at the door. I seem to have gone all in on these games lately and boy am I going to tell you about it...

Hello world, I am concerned. Perhaps even troubled. I am troubled by the implications of the video game experience that is Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit , or rather by the world in which it takes place. It is the story of the fictional world of Seacrest County, a familiar world to be sure and an unremarkable place one might assume by first glance. Very photogenic, good racing lines and a super keen police force. However not all is as it seems here dear reader, don't be fooled by the glossy exterior and the high incidence of high speed traffic violations, something is very wrong here in Seacrest County and I intend to get to the heart of it. For you see I believe the makers of this game may have pulled a masterstroke on us the gaming public. Oh yes I believe against all probability and likelihood that Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit is, not merely the racing game it purports to be. Oh no no, let's go down this rabbit hole...

There are those pivotal moments in one's gaming habit that come around every once in a while. Critical junctures or vital forks in the road where things could have been very different had the other choice been taken at the time. Usually you don't see them for what they are in the moment, they are very much things you only recognize retrospectively. Such is the case for the subject of today's post where I am going to ramble on at length on the subject of what might be my favourite game demo of all time. This would be the time-limited taster of everything the original Grand Theft Auto had to offer. Yes the first one that most GTA players at this point probably haven't played, an historical artifact developed by DMA Design out of Dundee and published by BMG Interactive back in 1997.

If any three words could sum up my gaming habits in the late nineties, those three words would probably be ' Command and Conquer ' or even ' Command & Conquer ' if we're going to be pedantic about it. Top down real time strategy games that I was well into back then. The gameplay was solid, the tone (at least in the early games) had the vague feel of the real world about it and most importantly for the subject of today's post, it had a stonking great soundtrack that still holds up all these years later. 

There is an art to playing old games, a   mindset even. A requisite state of mind thats required in order to play through its history. It's often said that you can't judge the past by the standards of the present and this is true to a point. Beyond that point the present can very much creep into your judgements and I think this is fine too as long as you are honest about it. The present moment can indeed cast a harsh light on the past, revered classics may not hold up even if you can still see what made them tick way back when. Such thoughts have come to mind recently as I found myself playing through the original 1987 release of Maniac Mansion .

The glitz, the glamour and the games! Yes it's the 2024 edition of  The Games Played Last Year Awards! The GPLYA's as I will continue to call them even though it  doesn't commit itself to the memory at all. It's that special time of year (the start of it) where I come together with myself (phrasing) to pick out the highlights and otherwise of the past twelve months of my gaming habit. Here I single out the very most notable of my gaming experiences of 2023. I've brought back most of the awards from last year's ceremony with a minimum of tweaks plus a few newbies to go around. Which games will win these prestigious and not at all fictional awards? What did I enjoy? What did I not enjoy? What is the point of it all? Stamp your ticket, take your seat and read on to find out...

So we arrive at the third and final part of my 2023 in gaming. Another classic year for my gaming habit, an even more classic year for compiling lists of games played that year. Indeed as I've come to the end of this year and reflect upon my gaming in general I feel like I am in some way on top of it for the first time in ages. Oh I'm sure there are still games from the last decade I've been meaning to get around to for ages but they are definitely becoming a rarer sight in my various game libraries. Heck I even played a game on the fabled 'Day 1' I hear so much about this past autumn, imagine that? So hip, so cutting edge, any further ahead of the curve and this may become the first blog to travel in time. So what about those games eh?