Home to the older gamer, chat on retro and modern gaming for the more mature gamer

The home computer that launched childhood dreams of game design as well as allowing many people to experience a keyboard that was best described as “touching dead flesh” turns 30 today. 

The ZX Specturm was a small home computer with big ideas priced at almost half that of Sir Clive Sinclair’s competitors to the exclusive BBC contract. Thousands flocked to the cut price computer in the UK, shelling out almost £180 for the 48K model (in today’s money that equates to the same value as a small tropical island) while sticking their tongues out at both public schools and those parents that genuinely believed that buying a computer would encourage their children to understand what a all the fuss was about (rather than playing games on it). A technical marvel (of sorts), many a classic game etched themselves upon a willing host of wannabes. Read more »

With the clock ticking away until Ubisoft’s Ghost Recon Future Soldier beta, it’s time to revisit the modern Ghost Recon series and see just how far things have come along since.

Sluggish but good looking was often a description of the GRAW series of games, a slight departure from the original Ghost Recons featuring a third person rather than first person view. Beyond the sluggish controls and lack of cover feature that the single player game had, the GRAWs excelled in promoting team work over run and gunning. While other similar titles tried to encourage a co-operative mindset, playing as a Ghost required a sense of communication and team work. This is not saying that those who played the lone wolf failed to achieve any success within the game – far from it, but the whole emphasis was on playing together. Yet this is where the game both succeeded and failed.

Communication is a funny thing over Xbox Live – while many people would love to shout “He’s behind you!” to warn a fellow team mate about his (or her) impending doom, it can rather degenerate into a third rate panto after a few minutes (“He’s behind you”, “Oh no he isn’t”, “Not you, you”, “Oh yes he is”, “Frank was that you shouting?”, “He’s still behind you… oh wait too late”) especially when you are playing with randoms , other members of the gaming community that can infuriate you one second then surprise you the next. The GRAW series expected a level of communication between people that was unfortunately too high with expectations from the more hardcore members almost impossible to achieve. For someone like myself who is painfully shy, communicating often with some very bad tempered players was not my idea of fun, an option that was akin to visiting the dentist and discovering that the rather nice lady that normally treats you has run off with the rather nice receptionist and both have been replaced by a clone of Steve Martin in the “Little Shop of Horrors”. Read more »