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Now I'm confused. Crystal Dynamics claim that they are developing the game, and the rights to Tomb Raider are held by Eidos, not EA. Eidos also owns Crystal Dynamics.

Legend was the first Tomb Raider game developed by Crystal Dynamics, instead of Core Design, and the difference showed. I got it as a lesser-of-two-evils bundle game with my 360, and I completed it, which I can't say for many games these days. I suppose it was competently designed and constructed, but somewhat forgettable.

This game disappointed me so much, I felt compelled to write a review*. I didn't even go into the game with particularly high expectations. Some of my worries turned out to be unfounded (e.g. they pulled off the free running), while other fears came true and then some. Also, if any of you would like to critique my writing, I'd be honoured. I've written very little before, but Idle Thumbs' features were pretty inspiring in getting me to start (admittedly it was a somewhat delayed reaction). This post by Marek stuck in my mind as well, for some reason. *Hosted on a slightly less stupid domain once the DNS changes go through.

That says a lot about the state of the Sierra brand these days.

Flashblock for Firefox. Here's a screenshot explaining what it does.

I was really surprised how bad the comments are at The Guardian and The Times. You'd think that the average reader of those papers would be fairly intelligent, but the political stories seem to bring out all the wackos and generally every comment is either written so badly you'd think it was by a 7-year old, or utterly contemptuous of and venomous towards the (often very well-respected) journalist. My favourite was a recent piece written as a sort of 'open letter' to his fellow journalists for some common sense in reporting the Madeleine McCann story. Really thoughtfully written with several good points about the importance of only reporting when there is actually news and how the story isn't actually more important than Iraq or Darfur. The first comment was something to the effect of "OUR PRAYERS ARE WITH YOU MADDIE!!" Edit: This is much the same problem as the BBC 'have your say' feature Dan mentions.

A new review is up: it's Bioshock this week. All very funny and interesting as usual, but since I haven't played Bioshock yet, I'll say no more.

See the Shack's review and then all the comments complaining that there's no score at the bottom, or that the review doesn't tell you how well it runs on older PCs. I despair sometimes.

The problem with that is that there are loads of us (early Steam registrants?) who have an email address as our Steam ID. Perhaps there's some technical reason why they are reluctant to allow us to change our Steam ID, so the modifiable community ID is a compromise and workaround.

Carmack's comment about adding vehicles and terrain to id Tech 4 (i.e. the Doom3 engine) because players wanted them suggests to me that he has an incredibly simplistic idea of what makes games fun. It's almost as if he previously had a checklist for every game he made that looked like: guns monsters corridors Now he's realised the market has changed and the new checklist looks like: guns monsters corridors vehicles terrain This isn't really id Software-bashing, nor is it Carmack-bashing -- I have a lot of respect for his technical knowledge and skills -- but he came across as very naive about making games as opposed to game engines. That said, his stated dislike of the complexity of ET:QW strikes a chord with me.

I've been watching this recently. Quoth Neil Fox: "Paedophiles have more genes in common with crabs than they do with you and me. Now that is scientific fact - there's no real evidence for it - but it is scientific fact."

The 360 has a large number of solid games, decent but not amazing. Games I'm glad I've played, but in retrospect would have been happy to skip. Gears of War, while really solid and well-polished, comes under this category. Crackdown was a really pleasant surprise. What little story there is isn't worth mentioning, but the gameplay is really fun, and with the RPG-like skill levels, that fun can last a long time. GTA Vice City couldn't hold my attention but this game held it with ease. That said, I'd still err on the side of saying there are no "must-haves" out for the system yet.

I've just been on a buying-classic-games-for-systems-I-didn't-own rampage, including SotC and Ico. Amazon is still selling new copies of Ico, but I had to resort to Amazon Marketplace for SotC (no problem finding copies though). Now to actually get a PS2/PS3... I've also bought We ♥ Katamari for the PS2, and Metroid Prime I & II, Wind Waker and Pikmin 2 for the GC. Oh, and I guess RE4 for the Wii counts.

In the episodes I've seen they have had lists of the best SNES (I think) and N64 games, but the first GC review doesn't come until S1E5, where Ryan reviews Tales of Symphonia, saying, "It's the first Gamecube game review - unsurprisingly, Robert wouldn't touch it with a bargepole." There were some other anti-Nintendo sentiments, but nothing I can specifically remember now. Other than that, it's nice just to listen to people talking passionately and (usually) eloquently about video games - the same reason why I've been known to read well-written reviews/previews of games I have little intention of playing.