Supporters (Page 39)

I've played a lot of games this year. Too many, perhaps. I've been like the kid grabbing handfuls of pick 'n' mix, even the sticky horrible jellies with bits of fluff and hair stuck to them. Here are the Ones That Got Away. Games that probably deserve my attention - and in many cases received attention from other RPS folks - but managed to slip through the net. I'm only writing a few sentences about each and will rate the using my 'crisps and associated sacks'/10 system.

I was sad to hear about Transformers Universe entering permanent stasis lock, but far more from sympathy for affected staff and a generalised disappointment that it's one more failed Transformers game than because I mourned its particular loss. I tried to play it, but this frenetic team shooter in which you could neither design your own characters or play as the most famous ones wasn't at all what I wanted, and I couldn't think of anything to write about it that would have been more than a long, drawn-out sigh.

I do that now, but with an eye on a possible future rather than annoyed resignation.

As you can probably guess, the majority of this job involves gaming at a PC. But I wanted to talk about why one of my games of the year - possibly my *THE* game of the year is something not to be found on the platform, and why it's important that it's not a PC game. It's Destiny.

I love end of year lists. They're reductive and arbitrary, usually ignore anything that happened before March, and even though I claim I read them to discover the things that I might have missed, I'm usually much happier when I find a best-of collection that confirms my own beliefs about the months gone by. There's something very silly about critics accepting a start date and an end date and attempting to construct a cultural narrative. "This is what happened and this is what mattered." Here's my year in music, film and maybe a game or two.

Okay, so the old RPS Book Club For Games had a bit of a false start. Sorry about that. I went and had a baby. But, let's get this thing cracking, because it's going to be ace. We're all going to pick one game a month, play it, write about it, and share our thoughts.

I'm an Independent Games Festival judge every year, and it's like Christmas for a game journalist - hundreds of indie games, released and unreleased, waiting to be downloaded and played and thought about. It's through this process that I first played FTL, months before its Kickstarter, and over the years it's led me to similarly find dozens of games I might have otherwise missed.

This year's judging just came to an end, and for me, it felt like a weak year. It's got me questioning what the IGF awards are really for.

Adam and Graham have been delving into and dying inside NEO Scavenger on and off for the past year, but now the wonderful turn-based RPG is nearing release, they couldn't contain their chatter about poison puddles, drunken combat and shabby deaths any longer. WITs and Verdicts will come in due course, but for now here's some thoughts and words on the Fallout-ish, roguelike-ish, permadeath RPG.

There are places that we can never visit, caught up in the amber of memory, myth and imagination. Games can rebuild them for us, using their own impossible architecture to bring the forgotten and the lost back into being. A computer can be a tool to open up new realms. Let's dig with it.

Player is knowledgeable in plants.

I like games that tell me stories, but I love games that give me stories to tell. Why don't more games make that easier?

This isn't a plea for more non-linear games. I'd like that, sure, but it feels to me that the rise of systemic roguelikes, procedural open-worlds and multiplayer survival games mean that we've got more of those than we've ever had before.

No, instead, I'm asking for games which make the process of remembering and telling the anecdotes from those games easier, by making the written narrative of your experience available to you.

These past 12 months, as much of my spare time has been spent fiddling around inside Game Maker: Studio as spent playing games. For all my efforts, I've released zero games, finished zero projects, won zero IGF awards, made zero millions of pounds. I do have a new found sense of self-importance though, which makes me the perfect person to impart tidbits of wisdom on the internet.

I’ve been playing videogames for 33 years. It’s been my job to write about them for 15. Over this time I’ve played many thousands of games. And yet I still feel like it’s my first day on the farm every time a game asks me to pick a character’s stats.

There has never been an artificial intelligence as wise and handsome as baking's Paul Hollywood. That's just a fact. Here are a couple of other facts. There hasn't been a strategy game as smart as Len Goodman or a piece of software as brilliant as Tim Gunn. You've never played anything that focuses on craft and skill as strongly as Masterchef does. SpaceX founder and high-falutin' eau de toilette Elon Musk might believe that advanced artificial intelligence is an existential threat but until I can play a game that judges my work, I won't be losing sleep about the rise of the sentient chatbots.

Football Manager 2015 is mere weeks away from being released and prompting a huge population of people to rush towards their computer screens in order to lose themselves in a rich, detailed simulation of an alternate world. An equally huge population will be prompted in that same moment to tut and start shaking their head. "Football," they'll say. "Cuh! Just a bunch of rich haircuts. And the game's basically a spreadsheet!"

Let me tell you: hating things can be an interesting business, but I think you can do better. Whether you genuinely do feel animosity towards Sports Interactive's long-running sports simulation series or you're simply a contrarian, there are better ways to belittle your friends' genuine fondness for a harmless activity they enjoy.

In survival games the threat of death is omnipresent. Even when the environment and its inhabitants aren't trying to kill you, your own in-game body is a liability.

Graham offered up a definition of survival games as those where you risk death through inaction. In just standing still you're courting the grim reaper because your body temperature, your hunger, your thirst will continue to change. It's a more realistic depiction of the body than you often get in gaming and yet it comes nowhere close to approximating the threat your real meaty avatar can pose.

There is no greater feeling in the world than discovering something new. Flush with excitement, anticipating your own enjoyment, brain on fire with the possibility of some new thing.

Hello! Ooh, you smell nice today.

So, based on your polling and comments last week, this is what we're going to do in terms of making subs-only bonus posts public. For the time being, anyway.

The very best thing about finding an old VHS tape isn't the shows you planned to record at the time, but the commercials in the breaks betwixt. That excellent mix of nostalgia and horror, as haircuts and moustaches try to sell you long-forgotten products makes gooey-eyed idiots of us all. Yes, even you. So does the same work, I wondered, for videogame trailers. Answer: Oh yes. I've cobbled together some trailers and TV ads, old and slightly less old, for your slightly supercilious pleasure.

Well then. How's it all going? Are you having a nice time? I've thrown my back out from lifting up my increasingly heavy toddler too many times, and am sleeping poorly as a result. Yup, that's the sort of red-hot scoop reserved only for RPS supporters. Well, that and the various features we've been running each week day for the last few weeks. (Hope you've managed to catch them at the time, but they're all under this tag if you want to catch up.)

Which is what I wanted to talk to you about, if you've got a minute.

I'm here to share a story about one of the worst games I've ever played and I'm here to try and understand why it's stayed in my head for almost a decade, despite having no redeemable features whatsoever. I'm here to share Midnight Nowhere with you all and I hope you can forgive me.

A few weeks back I was writing about the disappointing reincarnation of Shadowgate, and in it mentioned the phenomenon of how screenshots of certain games from my past have great power. Obviously seeing a shot of a fondly remembered game brings with it nostalgic pleasure, perhaps even associated memories, and is always a treat. But when it's a game you'd forgotten you loved - perhaps because it was from so early on in your childhood, or perhaps because your brain had to make room for more phone numbers or something - the reaction to seeing it once again can be something far more powerful.

For me, there's a dizzying rush, as well buried memories suddenly burst to the surface, images whizzing past my eyes of where I might have been sat, how old I was, who I was with. It can be a wonderful, spinny feeling. So I'm going to see if I can offer that to you today.

Hello there. Thanks for being here. We really do appreciate it so, so much. This is just a quick post from me about Supporter things: I wanted to answer a few questions and address a few suggestions. I'll do that below!

This is so brilliant. A whole new, SECRET, section of the site. You’re our favourites! And because you’re our favourites, we want the Supporter Secret Treehouse to be a place where we listen to what you want us to be writing about. Where your ideas merge with our ideas, to form hyper-ideas – ideas that are maybe even too good.

So, we’ve come up with a selection of polls for you to nominate where you’d like to see us start.

Hello, and welcome to The RPS Book Club. For Games. You, our special, lovely, bright-faced and fine-fettled Supporters are invited to join our monthly play-and-say gathering for classic gaming discussion. It’s too good of a treat.

The idea is, each month we pick a game (hopefully nominated by those participating), all run away and play/remember it as much as we possibly want, and then gather the following month to discuss it. One of Team RPS will write up a retrospective article about their experiences, and then we encourage you to do the same in the comments or on the forum, or link to your own blog, Tumblr, Storify, howsoever you wish.

As a writer, I get more than my fair share of solitude. The job is mostly about sitting alone in a room typing, for the rest of my life. However, that fact has only served to emphasize to me the importance of solitude. It's not something everyone yearns for, certainly, but I'd argue that most of us need some quiet hours. Taking time out from the throng of humanity, or even the quiet burble of domestic existence, is crucial to a rounded life.

Those solitary hours spent with a videogame, I would argue, are more important than most.

In spite of my reputation as one of Manchester's leading players, I spend a lot of time not playing games, although on occasion that time is spent looking at games. Like the person who spends many hours of the day reading about a hobby but none actually participating in that hobby, I'm guilty of watching games when logic dictates that I should be playing them. This has nothing to do with Let's Plays or other user generated content though - this is about watching my computer play with itself and I think it can be one of the most enjoyable ways to experience and understand a game.