A lovely big picture of one of the completely rubbish new characters they added to Street Fighter IV for no particular reason on the cover of this issue of Game Reactor, which mostly serves to remind me I haven’t played it enough recently and also to be annoyed that they didn’t put any of the brilliantly designed characters from Street Fighter III in IV (like Dudley, who I might have complained about missing before.)

This article has nothing to do with Street Fighter IV though – it’s actually some coverage of the indie games that had warmed my heart across the cold winter – specifically Super Hypercube and the all conquering Spelunky.

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I keep forgetting that I write this column. Unfortunate, really, considering it’s such a lovely magazine (in terms of design; being in Danish I still can’t read a jot of it.)

I should really have remembered writing this one, at the very least to let Jim Munroe and Jim McGinley know that I got some coverage of the Artsy Game Incubator/TOJam Artcade some coverage in Denmark. And probably to let Benjamin Rivers know there’s a whacking great picture of him in the article.

Oh well. I guess I can let them know now!

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In this article I talk about Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

At the time, I was playing it a lot. I’ll admit that for some reason my addiction waned, and I know why – it’s because I’m a completionist. Any time I came up against a public quest (which rely on grouping with nearby players to complete) I’d want to do it (because they were normally great fun.) Of course, if there was no one about, I’d have to wait until some other players were (or else get into the un-fun situation of repeatedly failing it.)

As a result, with both of my characters – a Chosen and a Witch Hunter – I found myself at public quests absolutely no one was ever around for. So I just stopped playing. Next time I have some free time (rare as it is) I’ll go back to it, though – they’ve made a lot of changes since. Guess I’m just kind of worried about getting addicted to it again.

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This article – my first back on the job -was titled, quite simply, “Leipzig sucks”. It’s a very self indulgent article – after all, it’s almost entirely me complaining about how complicated it is to get to Leipzig, and then complaining about Leipzig (the town, which I notably call “little more than a train station between real places.”)

In fact, I don’t even mention the event until the very last paragraph, where the most interesting thing I can note is that there was an FM Towns Marty on site which was running a copy of Raiden.

There was a Vectrex too, I remember. That was quite fun too.

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This article amuses me! I try list all the postives I can think about Sony’s record with the PS3 – remember this was in November 2007 – and, roughly, can come up with one – their commitment to excellent independent games like Everyday Shooter on the PSN.

Well, in February 2009 I’m really not sure I can come with any more, and the negatives I go on to list – removing backwards compatibility, introducing a Dualshock 3, and so on – still sting.

Despite all that, I should really get myself a PS3 considering this month they’re releasing Flower and Noby Noby Boy, but the price still puts me off. If only Sony would finally be kind enough to give me one (hint.)

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Looking back at this column – which celebrates the release of Sin and Punishment on the Virtual Console – reminds me how long the Wii has been about already. And also the fact that they still haven’t released Mario’s Super Picross in North America, which is an abusively cruel thing for Nintendo to do.

Not that anyone really seems to care about the Virtual Console these days – to be honest I don’t even really remember what comes out from week to week now, as it’s usually some awful Sega game they’re putting out for no reason other than habit.

Intriguingly, at the end of this column I promise I’ll play through the Halo trilogy, because other than playing about six missions of the first Halo one afternoon in London, I’ve never really played them. Here I am nearly two years later and I still haven’t bothered.

Maybe one day.

(You can download the PDF of this issue at the Game Reactor website.)

Publishing that last entry about GamesMaster has put me in a mind to update my site with some other other items that I’ve overlooked or simply forgotten to include here. For example, remember Game Reactor? It’s the Danish magazine that I write an opinion column from. I took a break for most of 2008, but I’ve been doing it again for a while so it’s worth noting.

Despite the fact I didn’t take a break from my column until 2008 I actually haven’t updated this site with my columns since mid 2007. Here’s the first one I didn’t update about – a column on Space Giraffe – in which I managed to shoehorn in some discussion of IGF Mobile.

You can still read the full article, in Danish, as part of the PDF found on the Game Reactor website.

Hmm! I’d actually forgotten all about this column, but it’s a good time to bring it up, as roughly half of it discusses my unusual excitement for the announcement of Major League Power Pros, the North American localisation of the (massively popular in Japan) Powerful Pro Baseball series.

I don’t even really like baseball (certainly not as a spectator sport, although my one trip to the Skydome was alright) but I’ll probably be picking up a copy when it hits shelves this week – the same week Sin and Punishment hit the Wii Virtual Console, so it’s a good week indeed.

The rest of my article is about the furore that surrounded Manhunt 2′s ban in the UK, and how this kind of controversy can stop people from trying to make truly mature games. Any kind of censorship is bad for expression. I’m anti-censorship, but I think my opinion is a little strange (particularly in North America) in that I have no particular problem with legislation stopping adults-only games getting into the hands of children, as long as adults can still buy them freely. Of course, stores are so stupidly squeamish about selling adults-only games, a bigger problem in my mind. People really need to be able to accept that legitimate culture really can be “adults-only” and that doesn’t mean we all need to be protected from it.

Anyway, you can read the full article, in Danish, as part of the PDF found on the Game Reactor website.

This is the article I mentioned a little while ago in my post about my Film Friday, “King Kong Fever“.

It’s mostly about how addictive I find the Xbox 360′s Gamerscore, even though I’m well aware it’s completely pointless. You gain absolutely nothing from it other than the joy of seeing numbers go up, and yet I’ve performed some of the most obscure and ridiculous tasks just to feel that rush of endorphins that comes when I hear the “plink” of another unlocked achievement.

If only Microsoft would convert Gamerscore points to Microsoft points at a rate of 10 to 1 or something. Then I could excuse myself.

In general, though, I don’t think it’s a very good thing. It adds another layer of abstraction that reminds you that you’re playing a game, and titles have to work extra hard to capture your imagination. I was completely surprised to find that King Kong was a title that managed to capture my imagination, considering it’s most well known for being 1000 easy achievement points, but it did. And I’m rather glad I played it.

You can read the full article, in Danish, as part of the PDF found on the Game Reactor website.

Perhaps surprisingly, 52 Gaming Similes To Describe Your Relationship still gains this site a ridiculous number of daily hits, mostly thanks to Stumbleupon, a site which I wasn’t actually previously familiar with. It’s done the article a lot more good than Digg did, strangely (I always thought Digg was where the action is.) Anyway, as part of my plan for global supremacy, the first language this has (officially) been translated into is Danish for Game Reactor. You can download the PDF from the Game Reactor website, but it’s also available online at Thomas Tangaard’s blog.

Interested in translating the article for your own regional publication? Do get in touch, dears.