My Top 30 Games of All Time / 2021

Adjusted for 2021, this is my top 30 games of all time. The only rule is: one game per franchise. (Where necessary I will also list other games from entry franchises that are important to me.)

Spiritual. PlayStation Home

Is it cheating a little bit? Sure. Originally this was 30th, but it was not a game. But I have such fond memories of PlayStation Home, and (perhaps against most people’s perception) is one of the most important things I ever played. I got my legal name from PlayStation Home, spent hundreds of hours with old and new friends on it, and got to explore so many video game locations in such a unique way that I’ll remember PlayStation Home forever.

30. Far Cry 5

A series that was mostly entertaining to me had its peak with its latest major entry so far, Far Cry 5. I loved the new aesthetic, the incredible pause music, the ability to finally play as a woman, and the memorability of all four major antagonists.

29. Crash Team Racing

I’ve always had an appreciation for the Crash Bandicoot series, but never got on with their difficulty. To date I’ve only managed to complete three of them - Crash 3, CTR, and with great pain (and owing to the infinite lives), Crash 4. Crash Team Racing definitely takes it for the series as a whole thanks to its accessibility, nostalgia, and how fun the original remains even in the wake of the also-excellent Nitro Fuelled.

28. Uncharted 4

In the future, I think Uncharted 4 is the game most likely to be knocked off my favourites list by something else. A phenomenal ender (nb. I’ve not played Lost Legacy) to a trilogy that helped define the PlayStation 3, and a breathtaking showcase of what PS4 could do with a lot of fun set pieces that was broadly made fantastically.

27. Hogs of War

Hogs of War is my favourite Worms game. There’s just something about it - it’s not flawless, but the roamable worlds, the pick-up-and-play that ensures I can play it with friends even after 10 years of not doing so, and perhaps most importantly, the impeccable voiceover work from Rik Mayall, one of my favourite human beings.

26. Burnout Paradise

I wanted to put this a lot higher. The reason I didn’t? When only choosing one game per franchise, Burnout suffers - I have always kept copies of Paradise AND Revenge around. They’re a total power couple, offering everything that the entire Burnout franchise ever excelled at between them. So sure, special note to Burnout Revenge, but the place goes to the one I probably played a little more, Paradise.

25. Crazy Taxi

Ya ya ya ya ya! I’ve not got a lot of pure nostalgia spots on this list - as games get bigger and better, they tend to override my favour. But nothing has ever beaten the feel of a 10 minute session of Crazy Taxi every now and then, it’s a timeless experience even 23 years after its original release. Just have to make sure I play the version with the Offspring and Bad Religion soundtrack.

24. Pokémon Shield

Some what of another victim of “one game per franchise”. Pokémon Shield is not the most important instalment of one of my most important-definining game series. It’s not the one that was the best at the time. But, for me, it’s the best one now. It’s the one I’d pick up for a 2021 session of Pokémon. It’s the closest to my dream Pokémon game - big explorable expanses with hundreds of monsters to catch and breed for hours.

Special credit goes to: Pokémon Yellow for being my first; Pokémon Silver for being my second; Pokémon Gold for being the one I got in France and completed anyway; Pokémon TCG (GameBoy) for the immesne soundtrack; Pokémon Pinball for being superb for pick-up-and-play; Pokémon Snap for being a monstrously playable videogame even to this day (the sequel’s great too); Pokémon Ranger for nearly knackering my DS; Pokémon Black for being my reintroduction to the series; Pokémon Omega Ruby for housing the birth of my love of shiny hunting; and Pokémon SoulSilver for Voltorb Flip.

23. WarioWare! Touched

I was torn between this and the GBA original, but I think Touched got the longer playtime for me. I still have my original DS copy, completed and played up to the eyeballs. What a perfect, perfect portable experience those first two games were - WarioWare just didn’t quite have the same magic in the GameCube console version, and newer versions have tended to be a little messed up by their gimmicks. Gold was a bit of a return to form, but playing so many of the old games with such a mix of gimmicks all at once made it pretty incohesive. Fingers crossed for the Switch WarioWare coming out this year.

22. Mashed: Fully Loaded

This is my favourite multiplayer game of all time; I couldn’t exclude Mashed. A stunning little title, expanding on the ideas of the Micro Machines games with a little shade of realism, Mashed is instantly pick-up-able and yet so, so competitive to play that you constantly feel like you’re developing new tactics. I wish the game wasn’t so hard to play these days - the PC version on Steam lacks the bells and whistles of Fully Loaded and takes a bit of poking to play in high resolutions, while console versions are stuck on PS2. And the pseudo-sequel, Wrecked: Revenge Revisited, was broadly a bit of a downgrade.

21. Grand Theft Auto IV

Grand Theft Auto, for a time, was my favourite franchise. It’s still stunning - it’s just that my priorities have changed, and the gritty “everyone is awful” atmosphere every GTA either side of Vice City isn’t so much my thing any more. Furthermore, while the most influential GTA for me is III, my favourite setting is Vice City, and the best at the time was San Andreas, I find the entire PS2 GTA anthology in modern times is almost unplayable thanks to frustrating difficulty spikes. IV is the best balance of the old and the new for me - I can still play it, I still get the feeling from it I used to, and thanks in no small part to the two major DLC packs it got, it’s a stellar all-rounder.

Special credit to GTAV, but IV takes it for soundtrack, story and DLC reasons, as well as filesize annoyances. I can’t often find enough interest in playing GTAV to install 100GB+ of hefty game including online gumpf I don’t care about, whereas GTAIV is a fraction of that. Also special credit to GTA 1 and 2, which introduced me to the series, although didn’t compel me in quite the same way (the immersion of the 3D world was what really brought me into the series).

20. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Deus Ex is one of those series I got into late. Completely missing the first wave of instalments, my introduction to the series was 2012’s Human Revolution. That was a fantastic game which I can no longer play because of how unconventional its controls are - iron-sights on L3 will never not break my brain.

Mankind Divided rectified these issues while providing an equally compelling experience, with wonderful semi-open areas I can while away hours in cracking open every door and safe, hoovering up little slices of lore and scavenging. It seems like Mankind Divided may (against the original intention) have been the swansong for Deus Ex, which is heart-wrenching if true - there was so much more for this series to give, and to see Mankind Divided these days sell for so little when it’s given me so many hours of enjoyment is a shame.

19. Psychonauts

Once, in the late 2000s, a contender for my favourite game of all time, Psychonauts has significantly dropped these days but is still very firmly and deservingly in my top 30. A fiercely memorable, breathtaking platformer, let down a little by a couple of shaky levels and an infuriating difficulty spike with an annoying point of no return that makes finishing the game the low point of it. Still, that cannot take away fully from its highlights, the highest being the Milkman Conspiracy, which is probably still my all-time favourite level in a game.

18. Portal 2

Portal 2 is a rare case of a game I felt nostalgic towards days after first finishing it. It’s the expansion and improbable perfection of the formula the first Portal already knocked out of the park. New characters that match GLaDoS on sinister comedy, an array of settings and new mechanics that keep such a basic core idea remarkably fresh, and even an entirely separate equal-length two-player campaign with its own story and characters. One of the greatest puzzle games of all time.

17. Spyro: Reignited Trilogy

If you consider this cheating, replace it with just Spyro: Year of the Dragon. But all three are a joy to play in Reignited, with its beautiful enhanced graphics, superior controls and consistency (I rarely touched the original Spyro game in the PS1 era because I found his voice and the different SFX strange, having been introduced to the series with 2 and 3). It also takes the edge off a couple of the difficulty spikes, notably the bit in Spyro 2 where you’re catching crystals against Hunter and the awful mole escort mission in Spyro 3. There’s still one brutal bit - Agent 9’s on-rails western shooting gallery - but one side area in one mission of one game does not sour a stunning trilogy of games that were my first true gaming loves.

16. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Ooooh I wanted to put this in a higher spot. So much. My favourite system of all time is now the Nintendo Switch - for my money, it already has a mix of the most diverse, modern-era and retro library any console can legally provide. And Breath of the Wild was my introduction to that. I’ve only played it in one period - the month of March 2017 following the console and the game’s release - in which time I spent 200 hours immersed in the world of Hyrule, enamoured with the game as a whole.

It’s a game so strong that it dethroned Minish Cap from its original safe spot in my favourites. It’s so strong that it knocked Skyrim out of contention. The only reason it’s not higher? I don’t know if I ever want to play it again - that first run through was a breath-taking voyage of discovery, and despite being four and a half years removed from it, I still remember it like it was yesterday.

15. Tony Hawk’s Underground 2

This and #13 can be considered joint placements because I can’t separate my two skating babies. The arcadier of the two series, Tony Hawk’s has been with me since I first owned a PlayStation in 1999 and it came with a demo disc that included a demo of Tony Hawk’s Skateboarding. I followed the series near-religiously from then until the dark Robomodo days, and find it extremely difficult to pick a favourite from the series with all these contenders:

• Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 is nostalgic for being the first full Tony Hawk’s game I owned, but nowadays is pretty stiff to play and lacks many core moves like reverts

• Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 was my second-ever PS3 game and is much more playable but again lacks a lot of the newer move pool

• Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 is the earliest game that contains a move pool where I don’t miss any newer moves too much (spine transfers baby!) and was the first to ditch classic mode, but has some very iffy missions and the levels aren’t the best selection of the series

• Tony Hawk’s Underground contains the best story and the best levels, let down by awful often-mandatory driving and non-skating missions and difficulty spikes towards the end

• Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 basically perfects the move pool at the cost of the compelling story that only THUG1 really tried, although I do have a lot of nostalgia for Jackass so it works for me at least a little

• Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland has the “ultimate” move pool and I’ve always loved one big open world even when it’s reasonably compromised, and there’s even BMXing that is remarkably fun, but it’s very bloated and the story is weirdly easy and short

• Tony Hawk’s Project 8 (PS3) is the most explorable single area of the series and was one of my first PS3 games, but the humour swings and misses more than any previous entry and a lot of the THAW additions were carved out

• and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2, which was an incredible return to form, is beautiful, expansive, replayable, and also is limited to classic mode, which hurts it for me - I always preferred the singular goal format introduced by THPS4

Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 takes it in the end - just by an inch. It’s the finest balance of what I love about the series.

14. Skate 3

As stated above, this and THUG2 are equals - and so are Skate 3 and Skate 2. I’m giving the spot to 3 purely because it feels like 3 takes a lot of abuse compared to 2, and I’m calling it now - bs, Skate 3 is a phenomenal entry.

More of a sim series, Skate started off shaky (literally - the camera in the original game is nauseating) but you could toggle to a more normal one in Skate 2 and by Skate 3 the better camera was straight-up default. And the games are just superb - a wonderful move set to get to grips with, fabulous expansive open worlds (one large location in 2, three still-formidable separate areas in 3), and to boot, a lot of fun features that make Skate 2 and 3, for me, two of the best games you can have for on-the-side distraction and aimless relaxing time-killing. The only thing I never liked were ANY of the actual missions - the games are strictly sandboxes for me.

13. The Witness

My favourite indie game of all time, my second favourite puzzle game of all time, and one of my favourite “let’s just be in a world and do what we want because it’s directionless” games goes to The Witness. I’m actively jealous at how simple the premise is and yet how much utility it has across this entire game - it’s used in so many ways throughout The Witness that your brain starts melting.

What I really love about The Witness is how deep it goes - not in terms of the (slightly pretentious) readings of classic quotes, but by just how much the game has to offer if you’re willing to dig. You can complete like half of the towers and waltz over to the exit and reach an ending, sure, but the harder you look, the more the game gives you. This digging kind of culminates in a sequence known as “The Challenge” which puts you through a procedurally-generated stress-inducing gauntlet from hell complete with that part of the Peer Gynt Suite that I burst into tears before I completed it.

But I did complete it. And I will never do it again.

12. Hitman III

Taboo fact of the day to any Hitman fans: Absolution was my entry point into the series. Less taboo fact: okay yeah after I’d played Hitman (2016) and seen how the more open formula fared, I’d never go back to Absolution.

The World of Assassination trilogy of Hitman that ended with this year’s Hitman III was a trio of stunners, ticking the majority of my boxes - “here are expansive places”, “most of the doors are openable”, “there is no time sensitivity, spend hours exploring and collecting if you want idk” and “yeah sure kill literally every NPC in the map if you want to, I don’t care”.

And what a trilogy, with so many level, story, and dynamic high points. The first time I killed everyone in Marrakesh. Hiding in a cupboard in The Isle of Sgail and eliminating the level’s entire security staff one unlucky entrant at a time. The first time seeing the beautiful underground nightclub in Berlin as one of my first PS5 experiences. All three games had levels I’d never want to be without - for any other such strong trilogy, the three games would have been fighting for my favourite. But with this series, you can import the entire level pool and story from 1 and 2 into III, so III wins by default - it’s the third game, and all three games, at the same time. And by the end of it all, it’s probably the biggest single tied experience on this list.

11. Ape Escape 3

Hitman III nearly knocked this out of my top 10, but… it couldn’t. Ape Escape 3, the pinnacle of the main trilogy of Ape Escape games (and all three games are 9+/10 for me), is one of the most interesting, surprising games out there. The series as a whole has such a unique feel and gameplay loop - traditional 3D platforming, with open-map exploration, and then tactics and stealth as you work out the best way for any given monkey to get close and capture them with your net.

Every monkey has its own name, personality, and tendencies, which you can discover with a radar, something that gave the Ape Escape games a crazy level of depth that I don’t feel like really became the norm until things like Watch Dogs added NPC profiling. But on the whole, yes, Ape Escape is a trilogy of wonderful games that take a little getting used to but broadly haven’t really aged at all - I can still pick up any of them and complete them happily.

10. Tearaway Unfolded

Just squeaking into the top 10 is, in lieu of the Vita’s Tearaway (which I didn’t ever manage to play), the PS4 port Tearaway Unfolded. The love was instant - Tearaway is a beautiful, diverse game that uses a lot of gimmicks but all to fantastic effect, with an awe-inspiring soundtrack and a perfect game length that pairs fun gameplay with remarkable atmosphere. The game is like Nintendo at their A-game mixed with the technology of Sony systems, and I’d recommend it to anyone in the market for a platformer.

9. BioShock Infinite

Bring us the girl, and wipe away the debt. BioShock Infinite was a total surprise to me - I bought it on a whim despite the horror elements of the original BioShock and its sequel making those two games unplayable for me. What I ended up with was a beautiful game, with a setting I adore, gameplay I find fun with that “explore in your own time and clear out areas of loot that feels actually useful and usable” je ne sais quoi I’ve mentioned loving in other entries and that will continue to dominate a lot of this list.

A lovely story and a unique (at the time - I’m aware this theming has since found its way into several other games) complete the package. BioShock Infinite also ousted the likes of Dishonored from the list - I loved that game as well, but any time I’d want to play that, I’d always probably just play BioShock Infinite instead.

8. The Outer Worlds

This was my surprise entry of the entire list. I honestly wouldn’t’ve pegged it for an entry here, but every time I paired it with games that have already been here, it kept being favourable. It’s the damn genre.

The Outer Worlds takes some of the elements of what I love about Fallout and puts them in a collection of smaller, sometimes denser, locations, largely to great effect. There’s the odd duff location, but they’re made up for by so many other amazing ones - the sinister glitz of Byzantium and the small civilisation of the Groundbreaker spring to mind as game highlights. Anything that lets me create a version of myself wins a lot of points for me, too.

The Outer Worlds is imperfect as a game in its own right, but the last thing that really elevates it for me is hope (pun not intended but the Hope elevating is a great pun so ner) - it’s a phenomenal establishing game. I couldn’t be more excited for The Outer Worlds 2 if I tried. Knock out the point of no return, make it a little more expansive (TOW ended fairly abruptly when you’re used to Fallout’s length) and throw in some settlement stuff so I can Allie and The Outer Worlds 2 will be a force majeure.

7. Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask

The representative of a septet of stunners - I don’t have a true favourite, but Miracle Mask had a beautiful location and was the series’ 3DS introduction. The Professor Layton series as a whole, though, is about as tailored for me as anything could be. Lateral-thinking puzzles accessible through an explorable world tied together with a story - absolutely divine.

I just hope the series comes back in some form. It’s a shame Layton’s Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires’ Conspiracy still had a lot of what I loved about the six preceding Layton games and Katrielle was an amazing protagonist but was let down by a lot of rough puzzles, a butler that kept trying to escape the friendzone and a dog called (I wish I was lying) Sherl O.C. Kholmes that would not shut the f**k up.

Even just a port of the first six (or the first three!) to Switch would be a phenomenal start.

6. Super Mario Odyssey

This was the game that made the Nintendo Switch feel immortal. Already having possibly the strongest launch year in a console’s history, with Breath of the Wild, a new Splatoon, a deluxe port of Mario Kart 8 and some promising weird stuff like Arms, Super Mario Odyssey came along and blew me away.

It’s that formula again - “here big world do whatever”. But then Odyssey is so much more than that - because all those little nooks and crannies lead to reams of challenges of various shapes and sizes, from little separated platforming areas to whole 2D levels to unique control style challenges. It’s all tied together with the game’s signature character, Cappy, allowing you to capture things temporarily for a wider specialised move pool. And everything’s just done so perfectly that it broke my heart to reach the end of the game and know I had to go back to the average 2017 experience again.

Super Mario Odyssey is an absolute beast of a game, from a series that continues to inspire with every generation it’s a part of.

5. Bully

Oh, how the mighty fall.

Bully, until I decided to crack open Notepad and start ordering by my 2021 gaming preferences, was my #1 favourite game of all time. Rockstar’s signature open-world format established in GTA, but condensed from bloated cities with entire streets of nothing to do to a smaller town and school campus that still packed in the activities, and in a unique setting I’ve yet to see replicated successfully.

Bully’s bank of missions covers some of the quirkiest topics that no other game’s ever touched, including a stealth raid of the girls’ dormitory for a dodgy PE teacher, to the takedown of a sports team via mascot sabotage, to more leftfield later-game stuff like exploring a power station and fighting King of the Greasers in a junkyard. But it doesn’t stop there - the game has a wealth of side missions, school lessons, collectibles and activities that add to your abilities and your inventory and really complete Bully - on any given in-game day you can be fully productive towards story advancement, or do lessons, or explore, or just mess around, and you’ll have a good time whatever you plump for.

Why isn’t Bully still #1? Age. It’s suffered just a little bit - it has some of the PS2 Rockstar traits that prove a little frustration in modern times, like a mission failure resulting in a total boot-out back to the open world even when said mission is 20+ minutes long.

That doesn’t detract a lot, though - Bully is still absolutely worthy of #5, some fifteen years after its original release.

4. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

And this is the reason the mighty fall.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is two things - my favourite platformer game of all time, and at time of writing, the last game I finished. There’s definitely at least a little “new game sheen”, but I can say with confidence that Rift Apart is my absolute favourite Ratchet & Clank game, a series that for me is the most consistently-entertaining (counting the main line entries at least) out there. I can always pick up a Ratchet & Clank game and know I’ve got 10 or 20 hours of great fun ahead of me.

But Rift Apart adds so, so much to that formula. The old’s still there - you get the expansive diverse arsenal of exotic weaponry to kick the crap out of hordes of eviltons with. But the new is evolutionary - the ability (once unlocked) to zip around at high speed on hover skates in any location makes level traversal a joy. The actual rifts are oftentimes an amazing addition - the biggest highlights for me are when boss fights are randomly interrupted with an instant scene change or the racing level in the arena (the arena’s back!) takes you through chunks of every setting in the entire game in a minute flat.

And it looks stunning. It’s a technical powerhouse and a PlayStation 5 showcase, but that’s not all it is - it’s also a masterclass in world design. There are fewer planets in Rift Apart than previous entries but each one is about a hundred times more alive and deep-feeling than anything before it - and you can see all of it, all the time.

Super Mario Odyssey may have a few more nooks and crannies, but Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart topples it in my list - by a whisker - by the sheer scope and the second-to-none atmosphere consistent throughout the entire game.

3. Watch Dogs 2

My favourite “crime sandbox” game, and it’s not close. I’ll give love to the other contenders - Sleeping Dogs, the rest of GTA, Saints Row 2 and The Third, and Watch Dogs Legion, but the second game wins for a very specific, very silly reason.

The qualities true across all three Watch Dogs games first - I adore an explorable open world, and the more to do in it, the better. And it turns out that giving people a name, job, income, tagline and small back story? That’s all I need for hundreds of hours of exploring, scanning and imagining. But there’s a lot more - the world hacking makes for a load of great possibilities I find myself yearning for if I play any other crime sandbox game.

What elevates Watch Dogs 2 above 1 and 3, besides San Francisco being a far brighter and more diverse experience than either Chicago or London, for me is how missions are structured. For one, almost every mission is the same basic idea - area, full of baddies, complete object with or without baddies dying. So you’re never stuck in some dodgy mandatory side-mission like having to defeat an AWFUL boss in Legion. For the other, you can unlock a few key things - a jumper and a drone, both deployable, for remote objective completion, and gang and police APBs to falsely have baddies in the level taken down.

You can complete a lot of Watch Dogs 2 without ever setting either of Marcus’ feet into the boundaries of the level you’re on. And I find that captivating. I will absolutely spend an hour on something I could rush in five minutes if it means sitting a little jumper on a truck and remotely guiding the truck outside with a bunch of little hacks here and there.

These hacks can be used outside of missions too for some of the wildest chaotic dynamic moments. Like if there’s a little Bratva-controlled area guarding a bag of money - call a rival gang on one of them, call the police on another one, stand back, watch the chaos ensue.

In five years of owning Watch Dogs 2 I have completed it four times, and I hope that is the ultimate testament to how much I love it.

2. Fallout 4

My ultimate action-RPG-Bethesda-em-up, Fallout 4 adds a few things that absolutely blew everything else away for me.

On top of the standard fantastic gameplay, Fallout 4 introduces settlement building. The moment I saw that, I knew my time was screwed. Across three major save files I’ve probably built up 50 areas as far as the object limit would allow me, with a few biggies taking 10+ hours by themselves - my original save file’s Taffington Boathouse springs to mind, which is where I painstakingly optimised things to get the Benevolent Leader trophy and finally platinum the game on PS4.

There are elements of 3 and New Vegas I do wish had propagated into 4, but on the whole, 4 is so far up my Hangman’s Alley that the decision to put Fallout 4 #2 all time was extremely easy.

Honourable Mentions

I’ll be quick:

Miitopia and Animal Crossing New Leaf miss out because it feels weird to me putting something so “experiential” in my favourites. They’re almost not games to me - they’re just part of me.

Tetris Effect is not here for a similar reason. I just can’t compare it to anything I have on this list, it appeals to me in such a different way.

Jak 3 and Spider-Man Miles Morales miss just for being in genres I’ve already got so many favourites in.

Gravity Rush and a handful of others miss out because I have a huge fondness for them, but realistically, I can’t see myself ever wanting to play them again.

A few games missed out as I limited the number of spots multiplayer games could take up in favour of games I could rely on continuously enjoying regardless of my company. This impacted eg. the Worms franchise, the Jackbox Party Packs, Rocket League, Unreal Tournament GOTY, board game adaptations etc. There are occasional exceptions where games are so important to me that I couldn’t exclude them.

Beat Saber, Gitaroo Man, Frequency and Amplitude are all games I want to give nods to for being my favourite rhythm games - I haven’t included those on the list purely because my increasing terribleness at rhythm games means I play them a lot less.

A couple of games are disqualified for being too difficult for me to appreciate as much as I’d want to - here’s looking at you, Baba Is You.

Lastly, anything I suspect I will like but haven’t finished or reached yet is obviously not eligible yet. I’m still partway through Cyberpunk 2077 and have been more impressed than I expected - this might end up squeaking in later on.

Let’s go!

1. Tombi

Fallout 4 was, at the time I started compiling my list, the definite unshakable #1. The more I thought about it though, the more there was only one #1 in my mind. It’s the one where no other game matches it in gameplay style or gamefeel.

If I wanted an action RPG, I could play Fallout 4, sure. Or I could get my fix with The Outer Worlds, or Skyrim, or even BioShock Infinite. Crime sandbox? Watch Dogs Legion or Sleeping Dogs are perfectly adequate if I’ve had too much WD2. I have options, there are plenty of contenders.

There isn’t a game like Tombi (Tomba in US). It did get a sequel, Tombi 2, but that feels like it exists as somewhat of an inferior extension of the original, with uglier more-badly-aged 3D graphics and weirdly awful music - the original Tombi’s soundtrack contains earworm after earworm.

In over 20 years, Tombi hasn’t aged a day beyond the resolution it runs at. It’s still as fun, it’s still as appealing, the art design is still as eye-catching, unique and varied across the entire game. And every little scrap of it, down to your move set, is totally unique to Tombi. You don’t jump on enemies to kill them - you jump on them to grab them, then you frontflip and throw them with the might of Zeus into walls, cacti, off-screen, or even into other enemies for combos. Or you clonk them with a mace. Or you jump on a puffball and yeet it into their stupid faces.

And this silly, funny platformer RPG also has an inventory and quest mechanics with unique challenges.

I don’t want to say anything specific, because if you’re reading this - please play Tombi if you haven’t. It was on the PS3 store last time I checked. It’s expensive as hell to actually buy an original copy. But we’re living in the age of high-speed internet, and it’s a 20-odd-year-old video game. Just… you know. It’s like 200 megs. ePSXe is tiny. No shame when it’s so impossible to buy for a reasonable price on any system you’d still have plugged in.

Tombi is my favourite game of all time.

Shown: the proudest item in my game collection

Series Nostalgia: Tony Hawk Games

There are quite a few game series out there that have been with me for a long time and provided a slew of happy memories. I'd like to start with the Tony Hawk series - as I type this, I have a music playlist of all of the tracks from the series, and I find them firing off these little bits and pieces of nostalgia.

My first taste of the series, albeit a small one, was with the series premiere - Tony Hawk's Skateboarding (Tony Hawk's Pro Skater outside of UK). I never actually owned a copy of the original, but I did have the demo. I remember not knowing how to do anything in it - I worked out how to Ollie and how to turn, so for the score challenge in the demo, I would just be rolling around the Warehouse level continuously performing 180s.

In 2000, both me and my best friend of the time got the full copy of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. I played that game so much that I, to this day, know pretty much every nook and cranny of every level (even the weird outer-space one).

It was playing this that I, for the first time ever, stayed up past midnight, too - aged 9 and at her house playing it with her while our parents and their friends had a bit of a party. In the same session, I remember us discovering the art of in-game swearing - in the New York level, you could anger taxi drivers, who would then proclaim "you are pissing me off!". This, to a 9 year old, is comedic nirvana.

It took a while for me to get Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 - never got it for PlayStation 1, and only got my PS2 in 2002. But again, that one was played to absolute death. I remember that I would always play as Elissa Steamer, while my friend of the time (a different friend - I've just realised how I can use the series to chart when I was friends with people as a kid!) would create a bizarre sister character to her called Stephanie Steamer. I remember that he had to remake Stephanie every time we played the game thanks to me not owning a hideously-expensive PS2 memory card for about a year (they were dearer than new games, and I preferred having the games). I'm convinced I could remake Stephanie near-perfectly despite her non-existence for 14 years - spiky pink mohican, night-vision goggles, white tank top, camo trousers - sorted.

We wouldn't even necessarily skate - we'd use it as a tool to pretend we were our respective characters and make up stories. But when I was alone, I would then most certainly play the game as a skating game. Like with THPS2, I know the vast majority of every single level inside out.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4, I didn't play as much. Thanks to its freeform career mode (I really, honestly didn't like the "two-minutes, ten goals" thing from the first three games), I got into that quite a lot, but casually, it didn't see much action from me. I guess at that point, the whole Pro Skater thing was a wee bit done. (I've returned to THPS4 recently, and think it's actually really nice. Love the Alcatraz level!)

The announcement that the sequel, Tony Hawk’s Underground, was a massive overhaul of the formula, however, was very exciting. I remember looking through each issue of Official PlayStation 2 Magazine with delight - the revelation that the new Tony Hawk game would contain walking, would have an actual story, you created your character and they actually had character... everything looked superb.

Christmas Eve, 2003, a day I can recall so clearly. Me and one of my friends of the time (another different one!) were swinging on the swings at a small hidden park in Redgrave coated with a thin layer of snow, excitedly discussing the game with the knowledge that, the day after, I'd own it, and the day after that, he could come over and we could play it all day.

Christmas Day, and yes, Tony Hawk's Underground was mine. This game is still my favourite entry in the series - although it had plenty of goofy gimmicks (car driving was fairly hideous, the "parkour" could have been implemented a little bit more thoroughly since it's so prevalent in the game's missions, and dear Jesus, that stealth mission that caps off the first level can suck one), there was just so much to do, so much to see.

The levels in THUG were well designed and varied, taking you around the world. I loved the sense of scale the game gave, too - far from the Pro Skater levels, which (excluding THPS4) mostly felt like you were in a segmented-off area, actually made it feel like you were in an inhabited world. It wasn't to the game's detriment, either - you could still, with ease, do massive lines of tricks, and were always close to the nearest skatable object.

Another part of THUG that captured my imagination was the improved level creator. Although still fairly limited by size and object limits, the ability to place things like buildings meant that you could create surprisingly convincing little districts. Me and my friend would often play a game where we would make a level and then hide the SKATE letters as well as possible, seeing who could find the other person's placements the fastest.

Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 should have been doomed to lose my interest, but didn't. A week or two before the release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, a game I was awash with excitement for, I found myself with ANOTHER DIFFERENT friend in Woolworths (RIP) of Diss, with ~£40 in my pocket. In there, I was greeted by a rack of copies of Tony Hawk's Underground 2, a game I had not paid any heed to up to that point thanks to my aforementioned obsession with GTA:SA. But due to my impatience and lack of anything better to do, I bought THUG2.

Well, up to the release date of GTA:SA (also the first game I ever preordered), I played the absolute heck out of Underground 2. What an excellent game - even if you're not a fan of the Jackass brand of humour, it's an absolute stonker of a game. Tons of stuff to do, a MASSIVE library of levels (including a bunch of neat revisits of old levels)... great game. I've played through the entire game again recently and it's still an absolute blast. If I remember correctly, I went back to THUG2 after about a month of playing San Andreas non-stop burnt me out and I needed a little palate cleanser before I could return to SA and obsess over it again.

Tony Hawk's American Wasteland was another instalment I didn't really get too fussed over. However, I bought it a few months after it was released at about the £15-20 mark - and was promptly reminded why I loved the series. The ability to traverse between levels without loading times (sort of) was a welcome if relatively inconsequential addition. Bikes were surprisingly fun, kind of making THAW the third Mat Hoffman game as well. Had a lot of fun with THAW.

I didn't get Tony Hawk’s Project 8 until May 2007 as a 16th birthday present (along with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion), since I went with PlayStation 3 as my Gen 7 console of choice. I remember going to Diss with the same friend as from the THUG2 excursion the day of my birthday, and spending the entire time wanting to come home so I could game my face off. I enjoyed Project 8 a fair bit - I remember that (still not having broadband internet until July that year) I spent a ton of time between May and July simply skating around the world in free roam while listening to my music.

The magic had dissipated a little from the series with Project 8, though, a process completed with Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground. I got Proving Ground towards the end of 2007 with EMA money, and... good lord, that game was boring. I still finished the story, but it was a really dull game. Even Project 8 had managed to make its (now entirely freeform) world interesting, with the funfair, the steelworks, the school etc - Proving Ground was brown. It was entirely brown.

So I wasn't entirely heartbroken when, having moved onto and subsequently fallen in love with EA's "skate." game, Tony Hawk's gaming legacy was snapped in two like a bailed skateboard with the absolutely dreadful Ride and Shred games. Skate 2 and Skate 3 followed the original and brought more improvements to the table, but then both series disappeared.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 in 2015... well, yeah. I finished THPS5 after finding a copy for £8 in late '15, if only for a deprivation of skating games (Skate 3 was five years old when THPS5 came out, and the genre was pretty much untouched in that time bar the vomit-inducing THPSHD).

I won't lie, THPS5 would occasionally show off shades of what made the original series such a blast to play. But those scraps of past brilliance were diluted by a poisonous ocean of dodgy new physics, overall glitchiness, and the entire game seemingly having next to zero thought or care put into it. Nothing about THPS5 was really fun.

And so stands the Tony Hawk game series. I miss it. I miss good extreme sports games in general - SSX, Aggressive Inline, Dave Mirra's Freestyle BMX, Rolling, Jet Set Radio and a ton of other Tony Hawk spinoffs occured (Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX, Shaun White's Snowboarding, Kelly Slater's Pro Surfboarding off the top of my head - all good games too). I hope next month's Steep can sate my growing appetite.Not mentioned were all the spinoffs of the series, most of which I missed and returned to later. The GameBoy/GameBoy Advance ports tended to be fairly bad, Downhill Jam was the best of the bunch but still nothing to write home about, and there was a DS instalment that clamped a plastic piece of crap to your DS and took tilt controls - if you wanted to see the series be worse than Ride and Shred, I'd strongly recommend that one.

RIP, Tony Hawk's series. I will always hold out hope that you, or a series strongly based off of you, rises from the ashes like a beautiful skateboarding phoenix. And I hope Robomodo is nowhere near it.

Top 5 Favourite Pokémon Soundtrack Tunes

Because why not. Here are my five favourite tunes features in main Pokémon games up to XY.

Honourable Mention: Santalune Forest (X, Y)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSGZqdfZj4g

Lovely theme, but not as memorable as 1-5!

#5: Dark Cave (Gold, Silver, Crystal)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyPamrElGOM

The only time I've ever been happy to trawl through the colourless hell of a cave in a Pokémon game.

#4: Pokémon Contest Reception Hall (Ruby, Sapphire & Emerald)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ29daov4o8

I spent a lot of time berry blending and contest entering in Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald, so I heard this a lot. Thankfully, it's exceptional. The Hoenn trumpets are in full force. Sadly didn't like the ORAS version as much.

#3: Versus Legendary Pokémon (Black, White, Black 2, White 2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCkmgssjhvo

Legendary hunting for me has never been a tenser, more stressful experience than in Black and White thanks to its excellent theme tune. I'm in love with the bit when the tempo warps.

#2: Route 4 (Red, Blue, Yellow)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLcJois9yTs

My first Pokémon game was Yellow. Being inexperienced, it meant I spent hours and hours of my young life stuck levelling my Pikachu and nothing else until its normal-type moves could defeat Brock. When I finally did, I was greeted with this theme - and that's a feeling that's embedded deep within me. The Route 4 theme is like nostalgia dropped its trousers and did its business in my ear.

#1: Team Plasma Grunt Theme (Black, White, NOT the BW2 remix)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB87TndHlFg

GODDAMN, THAT INTRO. It nearly single-handedly made Plasma look like a credible threat instead of the gaggle of spanners that evil teams in Pokémon always are.

Ideas for Life: "Unpasswords"

This is an idea I've come up with, though I'm sure I'm not the only person to have thought of it.

Wherever there are accounts, there are reports of scamming, hacking and stealing. On Facebook, people can have their identities nabbed or false statuses/etc posted under their name. On things like Habbo and Second Life, if you've put any money into them, your account is seen as valuable. If you follow some kind of notorious "get free credits/money" link associated with these games and give them your password, it takes one guy just a few seconds to empty your character of everything he or she has. On banks and PayPal... well, I'm sure the huge amount of phishing you've heard about, or even noticed through dodgy spam emails, has shown you how scammers are out to get your money.

So my idea for life for today is the Unpassword. When you sign up for an account with any website, you put in both a Password and an Unpassword. What exactly is an Unpassword, then?

The idea's this - if somebody tries to sign in with your username, and the Unpassword as the password, they get shit for it. It could be their IP on the site's blacklist, some sort of tampering to their computer, whatever you like and whatever would be most feasible (I have no idea what'd be best).

So what do you do with your Unpassword? Simple - if you ever get one of those spam emails, virtual life free-credit website things, anything like that, you don't give them your password. You give them your unpassword. They try logging into your account with it - they lose, and you could be notified when you next sign in (properly) that there was a dodgy attempt.

Especially for minor-league scammers this would be a massive deterrent. I'll use Habbo as a good example, as put simply, anything you scam off people in Habbo is only of any use in Habbo. Imagine every item/credit you'd ever scammed, locked out of your reach because you'd tried logging into someone else's account with an unpassword. Are you going to want to keep doing this? Heck no, you're not.

I'm sure high-end scammers would work their ways around these things, but the more they did, the more websites could pile crap on anyone that used an unpassword. After all, 100% of people trying to log in with it are doing it for negative reasons. It's not like the massively flawed thing you see on some sites where 3-5 incorrect logins place a quarter of an hour lock on the account itself.

That's my idea for the day anyway. If it's of any interest, my PayPal password is "saybyebyetopaypalaccess15".

Ripoffs

If there's one thing that irks me about gaming, it's the sheer number of ripoffs of other games that exist. I'm not talking about games that are similar to one another (eg any FPS and Doom/Wolfenstein 3D), games that take popular (or even unpopular) games, change a few things then slap it out to the public and smile.

The source of inspiration for this is an iOS game I bought out of intrigue a month or two ago and have only just gotten round to playing, the uncatchily titled Pirates vs Ninjas vs Zombies vs Pandas. Yeah. It was 59p and I was interested to see what sort of odd game that title could hold. To my deep disappointment, it's basically Angry Birds. The premise is that for each level set (near-identical to the sets you get in Angry Birds) you're one of the four different titular groups, taking on another one. Essentially, each one has its own little traits (like the different birds in AB), and the enemy sits stationary (like the pigs) in a physics-affected castle (guess), waiting for you to be slingshotted/slungshot/whatever at them. Every mechanic is the same, down to the bonuses for unused "ammo" characters and for the number of blocks you break/damage.

The worst thing about the game is that for quite a while it was sitting very, very high in the iOS charts - above Angry Birds itself at one point. These guys were profiting quite heavily off someone else's concept. This sickens me - it's not quite as bad as just selling the game with ripped sprites, but it's damn close.

I don't get the mentality behind it at all. I struggle to imagine the concept meetings the PvNvZvP team members had.

"Let's think of a great new game!"
"We could rip off Angry Birds to get lots of money!"
"Well gee whizz, you're fantastic!"

I guess from that perspective it pretty much worked. But that brings me onto ripping off within free, independent development. There's no monetary gain to be had from this, so anyone that's a part of it is in it for two things - the fun, and positive reception.

Now, where along the line of thinking is it even remotely plausible that stealing somebody's ideas for your own use will garner positive reception? 95% of the time, the person you stole from will be well-known in the development community. Within ten plays someone will have recognised what you've done, and you'll start eating the backlash. From there you can either apologise and either credit the original developer or take the game down, or you can deny it's a ripoff, shoot your reputation in the foot (which you'll have done anyway, but this makes it oh so much worse) and never get it back, or at least not for a long time and a lot of making up for it. Both the fun and the positive reception die during any of those routes.

Note that this doesn't include fangames, where you are showing your appreciation for the original game (though this is still pretty unimaginative when you could show your appreciation by referring people, then put your skills to better use), and instances where you take the idea, turn it into something of your own accord, then credit the original developer (much better, as it shows initiative and appreciation in one).

It's a mentality I will never understand, and thankfully have never had in the past myself, though I've definitely been inspired by people before - see Ne Touchez Pas and FKR, inspired by Mark Essen's "Flywrench" and Cactus' "xWUNG" respectively, but I've always given credit where credit is due and have had a reason to create both (simplification of a complicated concept, and a different take on a similar concept respectively).

Nintendo 3DS still rocks, by the way. But the games are currently a bit shit - mine serves as a Pokémon Black upscaler at the moment! If you also own a 3DS and would like my Mii gurning on it, then scan my current YYG avatar with Mii Maker's QR Code scanner. (Apologies to readers in the future that are interested in this after the next YYG avatar change, whenever that inevitably happens!)

Ideas for Life: Relative Rating Scale

It seems every piece of media in the world gets rated nowadays. Magazines, websites, all sorts of things exist to get reviewed and a number slapped onto them. I'm personally a big magazine fan - I get Official PlayStation Magazine and PC Gamer UK every month, and magazines like PSM3, Xbox 360 World and Official Xbox Magazine to fill the empty half of the month where I've read the two regulars.

But the rating systems irk me a bit. A great game will get the perfect rating, then a significantly better game will be stuck to get that same rating despite being better. An instance of this - Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty was given a 10/10, with 10 rewarded in each individual aspect too, in the old Official PlayStation 2 Magazine. This was, like, 17 issues in - the magazine ran for 100, covering the entirety of the PS2's popular lifespan. Sure, it's a very good game. But perfect? In comparison to some of the other stunning games PS2 got? No way.

Another annoying thing with current rating systems is they falter when non-significantly-different sequels to games come out. Dynasty Warriors is the perfect example - there's been, like, seven of the main games, and they differentiate so little it's almost embarrassing. But magazines, peeved by this, kept rating the sequels lower and lower. This is despite them being technically superior!

So my idea is this - a relative, uncapped rating system. There is no perfect score. It starts with 100 being as high as is expectable at the time, and 0-10 being god awful. So you could have given Metal Gear Solid 2 a 95-100, yeah. But by the time games like TimeSplitters 2 and GTA: Vice City come out, they could start nudging 105 or so. The stellar games late in the console's lifespan could be getting 150-200, with even the lesser games in the 100 region thanks to their ability to get more out of the system. Then, when the console's successor comes out, the games could continue to be compared to this system, with the likes of Metal Gear Solid 4 perhaps getting 250.

This would also be good for the repetitive sequels. Dynasty Warriors 193 could get the same score as Dynasty Warriors 192, which is fair - but all other, more original games would be constantly raising the average bar, leaving that game behind.

While it's true there's no "maximum" to aim for (and it'd mess with aggregation sites like Metacritic), the highest-rated game at the time could be the one to beat. Anyway, I just feel this would be a superior way of handling ratings to the current "GTA: San Andreas - 100%! GTAIV - wait, shit, 100% as well I guess!".

Karma Shmarma

Though it's been around for a long time, a recent popularity boost seems to have been administered to the "Karma" system - instead of ratings on things, a thumbs up/down system often not only on the primary content of a website, but also on its comments. And it's a load of crap. Why is this?

If you've been on YouTube at any point within the last several months you can probably answer that yourself. Karma clearly means very, very little, yet as a result of these arbitrary numbers and thumbs, videos get inundated with junk comments. The most annoying by far is the one from people that seem to need karma to be happy with themselves - "Thumbs up if _______". Since the Game Maker Community got a Karma (well, a +1) system, numerous people's signatures contain a little or large arrow trying to steer people to clicking it. Furthermore, you can tell there are people that are just commenting for the Karma, even though they don't mention it.

Another YouTube commonplace annoyance is "[number of people that dislike a video] people are [something bad mentioned in the video". This isn't just trying to vacuum thumbs ups, it's also a prime example of the internet trying and failing to be funny. Sure, it may have been mildly amusing at first, but on popular videos 20% of all posted comments could be people with their repetitive quips.

The ability to "thumbs down" just attracts attacks too. Take any video by the likes of John and Edward Grimes ("Jedward") or Justin Bieber. Though I can't hate Jedward - I find them far too hilarious - Bieber's music makes me want to go deaf (not that I hate him as a person, I'm sure he's a friendly little girly-voiced boy and if I could be in his position I'd be singing songs about how I'm considerably richer than you!). But because I don't like Justin Bieber, I don't watch his videos. As a result of this, I don't thumbs down his videos. The vast majority of people would be in the same situation - not rating down his stuff purely because what's the point? Yet, thanks to the "net-minded" - people that find it hilarious to try and ruin a successful 16 year old kid's life - the thumbs downs match or even beat the ups.

And it does genuinely steer what you say. The dicks will try to collect thumbs downs by going around dissing everything everyone else likes. The people worried about their reputation to any extent will change their opinions so people don't go against them. The sheep will just reiterate what other popular people say to get those same thumbs from them.

It just all seems so stupid to me. You're welcome to comment on this with your opinions on Karma systems, but keep your thumbs to yourselves.

A Love of Wrestling (and Everyone Else’s Hate)

Fairly quick post, as I shouldn’t really be up at this time! Dratted insomnia.

As some people may know I’m a big fan of wrestling. I’ve bought the WWE games since the first SmackDown! game on PlayStation 1 (and every instalment since by THQ for PlayStation 1/2/3), and have since February 2009, the day after that year’s No Way Out PPV, followed and loved the television shows. I’ve also been watching rival TNA iMPACT! for over a year now, though its obsession with the older guys and the reduction of inclusion of guys like the Motor City Machineguns have begun to wane a bit.

It was also the Royal Rumble on Sunday night, my favourite show of the year (just over WrestleMania), which had, to my glee, upped the wrestler count from 30 to 40, giving me an extra 20 minutes or so of main event that I soak up like a happy sponge.

But it occurs to me that some people just don’t “get” wrestling. When people find out I love it, there’s probably a 40% chance I’ll be met with a “you do know it’s fake, right?”. I am not an idiot (in this sense, anyway). To be honest, I should start replying to that question with “when you watch a film, do you think it’s all real?”

Because that’s what wrestling is. It isn’t trying to look 100% real. Sure, it doesn’t advertise that it’s staged, but then look at any soap opera, film or general visual media and let me know if you find a “Warning: this is not actually happening”. What it should be viewed as is a number of ongoing and everchanging storylines, tied together with some fantastic and sometimes downright brave athletic displays.

That’s one of the big points. It may be staged, but it goddamn hurts. You jump off a 15ft high ladder and land on your stomach on what is essentially hardboard on a set of weak springs, and tell me it doesn’t hurt. Have yourself thrown straight through a metal table, or have a folding chair smack you square in the back, or heck, just have someone slap you round the face. Or, for the less PG organisations, how about digging a razor into your forehead to make yourself bleed? Doesn’t hurt a bit, right?

But it’s just a general perception of professional wrestling that gets me. There’s no explaining to some people the enjoyment from watching it – seeing trained, multi-year-experienced professionals perform complicated acrobatics, tell stories and form likable (or indeed dislikable) personae. If you’re one of those people, then please, go back to your movies.

You do know they’re just faking it, right?

My Thoughts on Logo Redesign

Images in this post are used for critique.

As anyone with eyeballs will no doubt be aware, companies these days seem to love changing their logos - reinventing their brand or just making it look sleeker. Or outright worse. Anyone that's seen my Formspring page will know my main "one" has been Pepsi, whose new logo is... ugh. Just ugh. And while nowadays I've stopped noticing it, I still think it's terrible.

But as someone who quite likes graphic design (read - not art) and in particular typography, every time a familiar brand does this, I get thoughts about it. So I thought I'd share them.

new-google-logo

Google (top - old logo, bottom - new logo) would probably receive a hell of a lot of grief if they ever properly altered their logo. It's just so familiar, even though it's just a plain font with some seemingly randomly chosen colours. Luckily, their recent update was just a polishing of it, brightening the colours, downscaling the bevel and removing the drop shadow. Very nicely done.

ps3logo

PlayStation 3 (left old, right new)'s new logo, stand-alone, is better in my opinion. Simpler, more identifiable (as it's just an evolution on the PS2 and PSP logos), and doesn't immediately make you think of any Smashing Pumpkins LPs or Tobey Maguire superhero movies. However, it was an evolution brought about by the new matte-black, slimline PlayStation 3. Although I've warmed to it now I own one and have managed to gawp at one in the flesh, I still think the shiny original looked nicer. And the worst change brought about by the new logo, to me, is the box art for PS3 games, which has changed from a sleek, faux-shiny side-bar to a topbar with a black-grey gradient. Bleh.

starbucks

Starbucks just went simpler for their overhaul, shedding the green "Starbucks Coffee" and turning the black innards green. Can't say I like this change yet. The "central" circle of the new logo is completely offset and makes it look a tad odd (though this is also the case for the old logo, it's less apparent as it's not as in-your-face and it's out of the "main two circles"). Not the worst thing in the world though. Just waiting for them to shed the other outer circle now and just have a woman's face and some long hair as their logo!

thq

THQ went simple and bevel-free. Both logos are a bit fugly, to be frank, but I'd grown warm to the overly slanty older one. If the new logo's H hadn't had its shoulder amputated I think I'd like it a lot more. At the moment, it looks like the T is a table, the H is a chair sitting by it, and the Q is Yivo from Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs, waiting to ram its face into the neck of whoever dares to sit on the H.

gap

Gap hired a very strange person to redesign their logo. There is no way of elaborating on that.Wait, there is. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!

argos

Argos did the subtle modernisation thing, and it works rather beautifully. Infact, this is one of the few logo redesigns I preferred over its predecessor from the moment it was unveiled. Cleaner and less pointy while retaining its simplicity and colour scheme. To be honest, though, I'd personally go one step further and kill the cheesy underline-slash-fake-smile that's sitting on a ton of other logos these days (see Kraft's abomination of a new logo and Amazon, which I guess can be let off as it serves the other clever purpose of pointing from A to Z, the letters of the alphabet the website can cater for)

itunes

iTunes went bleck. I can see the thought process - CDs, while not dead and probably for the foreseeable future won't be, aren't particularly popular these days. Particularly for those that use iTunes often - the people Apple would want to be steering towards their own online music store. So fair enough, that can go. But the musical note, in a generic blue circle, with a generic white outer shell? With generic gradient and gloss effects? It's not awful, it's just bland. To make matters worse, it looks like the logo's blue was taken from iTunes' interface, which is now almost colourless.

quicktime

Quicktime / Quicktime X's overhaul fares better. I never got why a little segment was cut out of the Q in the old logo, and if Windows gets Quicktime X I'll never have to know. It's still a tad generic - shiny Q, with a shiny centre ball, and as a sister program to iTunes their logos bear next to no resemblance (not that they ever did), but all in all it looks superior.

wmp

Windows Media Player may as well get a mention while I'm at it. While iTunes ditched its CD references, WMP added them with their logo revamp (I believe a change that came with Vista-exclusive WMP 11), turning a very Simon-ish logo into a set of three CD cases and a big orange Play-button-wielding disc. My big problem with this is that it pretty much killed its identifiability. Windows things have the Windows colours on. That's just a bunch of clear bits of plastic that could quite happily be slapped onto WinAmp, the disgusting RealPlayer, you name it.

There are plenty of others worth noting, though I won't link to them (if you search on the internet for "logo redesigns", "logo revamps" or anything along those lines you'll find professional designers who have dissected the living daylights out of them).

KFC altered their colours more than anything, turning the red-beige-blue into more of a red-beige-brown. They look nigh on identical so it just seems to me like a waste of marketing money.

I've seen a new MasterCard logo circulating the Internet - if that thing takes over their current logo I think I'll have a bit of a cry.

Burger King and Walkers (US: Lays Potato Chips) have done revamps but nothing major over the years, which always look okay in exception for that hideous monstrosity Walkers had for a short while.

And of course, Pepsi. What the hell were you thinking, Pepsi?

Since I don't blog much, just thought I'd make a little addendum. Today, I spent £58 on sweets - enough to last a damn lifetime! I got me:

• 1,200 Rainbow Dust tubes

• 40 Rip & Tip Sherbet, little bags filled with sherbet of either raspberry or orange

• A bag of those Pink Pig things that are nice until you've had about four; sickly thereafter

• 500 flying saucers (the foamy UFO-shaped things filled with sherbet. I like sherbet.)

• 50 foamy bananas and 50 foamy shrimp, essentially a pick 'n' mix delicacy

• A kilogram of those E-number-packed letters that are kinda crunchy and sweet

• 150 double lollies

If I was able to experience a sugar rush (I never have and doubt I ever will), this would be it!

Anyway, that's all from me. This took an hour to write that could have been on LittleBigPlanet 2 (which owns heartily, by the way). No more time to lose!

"Sandbox Mode"

I've been playing Dead Rising 2 for around half an hour now. I always stick it in when I have a lust for creative, violent bloody mass deaths - baseball bats with nails through, fast slamming sledgehammer shots, or just throwing a chair at zombies' heads and watching them recoil angrily. But I currently can't do that. I have to wait until the in-game time hits between 10 and 11am so I can do a mission. If I don't do this mission, the game kicks me back to the Load Game menu. If I do anything else and lose track of time, I don't get to the mission in time - I have to start it by 11am in-game. One hour in-game is four minutes of real time (nowhere near enough to finish a sidequest or get from a further-away area of the mall to the trigger).

And you know what the worst bit of all is? The missions are frequently balls. One a while ago saw me riding a motorbike, chasing down and trying to jump on a train so I could fight my way across the carriages and to the game's main antagonist. It was executed awfully. The motorbike feels like a hoverbike - it floats around and isn't nice to ride. Enemies trying to bomb the bike look naff. Dodging the bombs is a matter of luck - there's no time to react, you're either hit or you're not (though a pipe bomb to the face is only worth one hit point of damage, apparently). The train is clearly in a loop, as the corpses of zombies you haphazardly kill are then passed again a minute later. And the carriage section is pathetic. At one point you have no choice but to walk into enemy fire for several seconds (which again does next to no damage) so you can somehow attack an enemy.

But while all this is happening it really makes me wonder why more people don't include a sandbox mode in their games. In some cases it's worse than others. Dead Rising 2 is a bad example - as far as I know there is no way, unlockable or otherwise, to just be able to go around and kill zombies. Whether it's a time limit, the game's constant need to push you in a direction you don't want to go for a mission you don't want to do, the killing of zombies is almost always limited to "en route" - when you have to walk from one destination to another. Grand Theft Auto is a lighter example, but still one nonetheless - you only have to do one or two introductory missions before you are actually free to wander, but then to unlock three quarters of the map and all the fun minigames, weapons, cars etc, you need to progress further through the story. This is hours of your time - unlocking the full map can take 10-20 hours, while actually finishing the game, getting rid of all the little mission blips and things, is more like 30-50.

You know what I'd like in GTA? A true sandbox mode. It doesn't have to be connected to the "main game" at all. I want something where I get the whole map instantly. I want a bunch of options that can do things like alter my health (normal health, infinite health, one hit and I'm dead, etc) and ammo (normal, infinite, normal but infinite clip, infinite clip and ammo). I'd love a load of modifiers resembling GTA: San Andreas' and Saints Row 2's cheat lists (if you own either game but haven't played with the cheats, look them up on the internet and go and play with them ASAP - they're amazing) - silly things like superpunch, crashing into other cars making them float away comically, having it rain pedestrians then having dead pedestrians immediately float up to the heavens. Useful/fun things like spawning any vehicle infront of you, or destroying them all, or turning them all bright pink, or turning them all into Smart cars. Stuff like that, for me and I'm sure countless others, would make the game incredibly more fun, while still keeping the normal game 100% intact.

Dead Rising 2 would benefit from modifiers I'm sure, but the lack of a mode in which you can just kill zombies is baffling to me. I can only imagine the meetings of the developers, in which nobody even suggested a freeform mode, or the one or two that did were scoffed at by the rest - a group of pretentious pricks deciding none of the game's fans knew what they wanted (I saw tons of requests for such a mode after the original Dead Rising was just as awkward to play).

The only way to have any kind of fun like this is to play on PC, but even then nothing official offers anything remotely similar to this. You have to rely on unofficial modifications to bring about sandbox modes (if you've ever played Gmod, aka "Garry's Mod", or seen videos of things made in it on YouTube, you'll know how remarkably fun it is).

You can pick any game with "sandbox" gameplay and immediately come up with ideas that could have been implemented was a "sandbox mode" included. A couple of other examples I can come up with spontaneously as I type this:

Burnout Paradise: "Invincible traffic checking" - in Revenge, if you rammed a car smaller than yours from behind, it would send them flying and your car would continue unhurt. Imagine how fun it'd be if you could play around, hitting ANY other vehicle, destroying it spectacularly but not throwing you into a multiple-second crash animation. Or what about a simple key press crashing YOU? When it's not part of a race, slow-motion detailed crashes can be fun to watch. You could also have sliders for damage levels, perhaps with a cheeky "Gran Turismo" mode in which no cars ever took any physical damage.

Skate 3: To some extent this actually does have a sandbox mode - there's a Free mode in which you can change the density of traffic and pedestrians (no pedestrians = gorgeous), and in any mode you can spawn skating equipment or mode existing equipment/other skatable items like benches and ramps. Could have the ability to spawn pedestrians/traffic wherever desired at will, play with your own physics to allow super-low gravity, slow motion etc (akin to the cheats/tweaks found in the likes of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 and 3 - 3 also had a badly executed but fascinating nonetheless "First Person" mode).

All my opinion though. I'll still go nuts when the next Grand Theft Auto comes out. It's just that a sandbox mode as suggested above would make me go Marmite Cashews, not regular, bog-standard nuts.