Toomanywires

The Best & Worst of: 2023 /  2022   /  2021  /  2020  /  2019  /   2018  /  2017  /  2016  /  2015  /  2014  /  2013  /  2012  /  2011  /  2010 I bought a GameCube this year. It's orange. I also bought and played things that aren't twenty years old. New things.  Whether I was pumping dozens of hours into the latest blockbuster, discovering a charming indie, revisiting an old favourite, or ticking something off my endless retro-must-play list, I had plenty of fun with games in 2024. And I bet you did too. I spent the vast majority of my game time on PS5 and Series X, and continued to strongly favour digital purchases over physical. I don't need new boxes cluttering up my shelves, as I've got plenty of old ones already doing that. I mostly opted for PS5 for blockbusters, whereas Series X was for whatever was on Game Pass.  The first half of the year w...

As kids, we were sometimes allowed to play games on the big TV, but only on special occasions. The big TV in the living room, shared by everyone. You couldn't hog that with your Sega or Sony. And besides, there was no room under the TV to permanently store a console. It'd have to stay out on the carpet, a mess of RF boxes and power cords; controllers and cartridges. No one wanted that, and god knows what our spaniels would've done with an exposed Sega. Terrible things, I'd imagine. We, my brother and I, usually played upstairs. We were fortunate enough to have portable TVs in our rooms, albeit tiny ones. And I do mean tiny. Looking into the screen of my TV-VCR combo was like peeping through a letterbox. Sonic the Hedgehog, Street Fighter 2, Sega Rally, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy 7 - everything pre-PS2 was experienced on that minuscule screen. Games that still loom large, played on the smallest of displays. Sometimes, our consoles came downstairs. For example, on bi...

This week marks the 30th anniversary of the Japanese launch of the Sony PlayStation. To celebrate, I decided to dust off the PlayStation Demo 1 disc that came with my PS1 in the summer of '98, and relive some memories. Physical demos were once of great importance. Or at least they were to me. Packed-in with consoles, given away as freebies at the point of sale, or bagged with magazines, they were to be held on to and enjoyed over and over. I played Mission Impossible on my Official PS Magazine demo disc so many times that I could swear I actually owned the full game. Ditto with Steep Slope Sliders and Panzer Dragoon Zwei on Sega Saturn. Two paragraphs into a celebratory PlayStation post, and I'm already talking about the Sega Saturn! I'm nothing if not reliable. Porsche Challenge, which was featured on PlayStation Demo 1, is another example of a demo I played to death. I can remember racing through the streets of an unnamed US city, screeching around corners and trying, and...

I was looking forward to playing UFO 50. An anthology of 50 fictional 8-bit-style games, it sounded like the perfect thing to dip in and out of between the longer, more demanding games that seem to eat up so much of my time these days. I consider anything over 15 hours to be long and demanding, and am right to do so. Anyway, I'm not playing UFO 50, and that's because it's currently PC-only and I don't have a gaming PC. I just assumed that it would, at the very least, already be on Switch, but I was wrong. I'm sure it'll eventually land on consoles but, right now, I've got serious FOMO.  Or UFOMO, if you will. In an age of dwindling platform exclusives, and as a multi-platform owner, I rarely find myself missing out. But back in the day, things were different, and that fear led directly to hardware purchases that I wouldn't have otherwise made, or asked my parents to make come Christmas or birthdays. Some of these purchases were inspired, others less so. ...

You can find all of my Tokyo Game Show 2024 coverage here Metal Gear Solid . Like a Dragon . Monster Hunter .  Dragon Age . My choice of demos at Tokyo Game Show was very predictable. Very me. So I thought I'd mix things up towards the end of Day Two and try something a little different. And that's how I ended up playing Level 5's Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road. To be fair, there were other motivating factors. For one, the demo booth was seated - a rarity for higher-profile games - and my legs were sore. More crucially, I wanted to have another go at Professor Layton and The New World of Steam, having failed miserably at solving the first demo puzzle the day before. Level 5 were smartly offering a priority system where, if you tried one of their demos, you could join significantly shorter priority lines the rest of the day. This was an excellent way to get punters to try multiple demos, which is exactly what I did. Inazuma Eleven had the shortest line, around a twenty-minute ...

You can find all of my Tokyo Game Show 2024 coverage here Upon checking in for the Tokyo Game Show 2024 Monster Hunter Wilds demo, I was asked by the booth attendant whether I preferred to hunt alone or in multiplayer. Being that I hadn't played Monster Hunter since the initial release of Rise in 2021, I decided I'd be better off figuring things out on my own.  Given my clumsy performance in the first half of the 30-minute demo, I think I made the right decision. The demo opened with a limited version of the character creation tool, which I rushed through. Past experience has taught me that a show demo is not the place to spend time and effort trying to recreate Silvio off The Sopranos. I skipped through the intro movie, because it was a demo, and gained control of my hunter, who was loitering in camp. I instinctively headed to my tent and made sure I had a full selection of items. Going through my inventory, I was recognising familiar icons and starting to compile a list in my...

You can find all of my Tokyo Game Show 2024 coverage here I was chatting to a member of the dev team while waiting in line for the TGS Dragon Age: Veilguard demo. After a bit of small talk, we naturally got on to the topic of Dragon Age, and we shared our experiences with the series. He asked what I'd enjoyed about Origins, DA2 and Inquisition, and then shared some insight into the development of Veilguard. He spoke about the backlash to Mass Effect Andromeda, and a desire to go back to basics. He asked me what aspects of past BioWare titles I'd enjoyed most, and we spoke about the importance of memorable companions and how they resonate differently with different players. That was when he told me that he'd worked on Mass Effect 2 back in the day. "Mass Effect 2 is one of my all-time favourites" I excitedly blurted out. He gave a knowing smile and told me to enjoy the demo.  With renewed interest, I got stuck in. I wasn't entirely sold on what I'd seen of ...

You can find all of my Tokyo Game Show 2024 coverage here We knew it was coming. Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio had already confirmed that it would be announcing the next Like a Dragon in time for Tokyo Game Show, and the RGG Summit, streamed just a few days before TGS, seemed like the logical time to do it. It was reasonable to expect that this would be a Gaiden-like spin-off, as delivering a full Yakuza experience so soon after Infinite Wealth would surely be an impossible task, event for a studio as prolific as RGG. We knew it was coming, but we didn't know it would be this. In Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, Goro Majima, the Mad Dog, has amnesia, and has decided to become a pirate captain. He's got a ship and everything - he brought his own eye patch. Having washed ashore in Hawaii, Majima makes friends with some kind souls who take him in, protects them from some ruffians, gets a boat and becomes a marine menace. Beyond that, the story is a mystery. We don't know when it...

You can find all of my Tokyo Game Show 2024 coverage here Konami was my first stop at TGS 2024. As soon as the doors opened for Day One, I headed straight for the Konami booth and the Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater demo. The free t-shirt and a Calorie Mate were nice extras, but I didn't need freebies to convince me to play the remake of my all-time favourite game. I arrived in good time and grabbed my Calorie Mate, before realising that I'd actually entered the booth at the wrong location! Flustered, I almost careened into a cardboard standee of The Boss, before a Konami employee took pity on me and guided me to the correct spot. My press credentials were checked and I was ushered into the very first demo of the day. I and twenty or so other attendees were led into a small room where we patiently sat and watched the Delta intro movie.  All fifteen minutes of it. I may be mistaken, but it appeared to be a shot-for-shot recreation of the original opening movie, and served as...