The end is the beginning

Posted in navel-gazing on August 31st, 2011 by RevStu

It's been a bit of a bumper month for WoSland, chums. Records have been tumbling left, right and centre – August saw the site break 100,000 page views (by some distance) in a single month for the first time, get over 50,000 unique visitors for the first time, and (not unrelatedly) have a single post notch up over 50,000 hits for the first time.

(And all this despite my idiot web hosts actually taking the site down for over 24 hours at its peak for being too popular. "Unlimited bandwith" my cock.)

Which seems as timely a moment as any to move on.

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Why I hate the iPhone being the new Amiga

Posted in games, haylp!, import, iOS, stupidity on August 30th, 2011 by RevStu

I haven't played Flashback in almost 20 years. The iOS port is burdened with a control system so faffy and unintuitive that I had to sit through the entire intro sequence three times in the first 15 minutes (including one full shutdown and reboot due to a particularly cretinous oversight on the developer's part*). Now I'm here, which experienced Flashback players will recognise as being roughly six seconds from the start:

HOW IN THE HOLY NAME OF THE POPE'S TINY WITHERED COCK DO YOU GET BACK OUT OF THIS SCREEN?

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Pilotwings Resort reviewed in a hurry

Posted in games, nintendo on August 30th, 2011 by RevStu

I'm flying a rocket pack! (And a jet plane and a hang-glider.) Over a beautiful tropical island packed with features that are just begging to have stunts pulled in, through and around them! There's a volcano! And it's all in 3D!

I shouldn't be this bored, should I?

Excellent game ported to unfashionable format

Posted in awesomeness, free stuff, PC gaming on August 29th, 2011 by RevStu

Alert viewers won't (or possibly will) need reminding of Forget-Me-Not, a superb neo-retro iOS game we reported on way back in March that crosses Gauntlet with Pac-Man and Robotron and Crossroads. Well, now it's back with a whole bunch of new enhancements, but not on iOS.

The game's author has ported it to the PC and Mac, where you can have it entirely for free. You should do this immediately, unless you're an idiot.

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Public service announcement

Posted in games, nintendo, public service on August 28th, 2011 by RevStu

There are two groups of videogamers in the UK (and perhaps the world) whose Venn diagram has a surprisingly small intersection. In Group A we have "People who own a Nintendo DS", and in Group B there's "People interested in buying a Nintendo 3DS".

In fairness, this may be because Group B is so small it'd be a tiny intersection even if it was entirely contained within Group B, but that's neither here nor there. In any event, because WoSland loves Nintendo so much, we're going to try to help increase it a bit.

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This frequency’s my universe

Posted in analysis, games, WoS retro on August 27th, 2011 by RevStu

We need a new word for videogames. The term was coined back in the 1970s to describe something that at the time was a completely new and revolutionary artform (it must be barely conceivable to today's gamers that there was a time in living memory when such things as games played on a TV screen simply didn't exist), and the image it conjured up was a straightforward one of Asteroids, Pac-Man and Space Invaders – that is, an abstract, magical, ultra-modern type of entertainment, born in technology and totally unrelated to any kind of leisure pursuit that had ever gone before it.

The very word "videogame" inherently depicted something that was exciting, glamorous and – because most games were located in arcades, places where under-18s weren't allowed – slightly forbidden and dangerous too.

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3(DS) + 1 (week) + 1 (game) = 5(/10)

Posted in analysis, games, nintendo on August 25th, 2011 by RevStu

Well, it's all been happening in the world of the 3DS since WoSland decreed it relevant by deciding to get one last week. Nintendo are talking about stick-on second analogue pads, brand-new models with the 3D effect toned down, and trailing mysterious big announcements for the Tokyo Game Show that sent the beleaguered company's stock soaring.

Obviously WoSland is flattered that its Seal Of Grudging Sort-Of Approval has generated such dramatic activity, but much more important than that is the fact that my 3DS now has a game to play. So how's that gone?

Since it's apparently Namco Week here at WoSland, let's find out.

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Namco Week Update

Posted in awesomeness, free stuff, games on August 24th, 2011 by RevStu

In keeping with their general levels of inept bumbling irritancy, Namco have ungraciously just rendered much of last Saturday's enthusiastic piece about Pac-Man S inaccurate and redundant, by wiping the leaderboards and releasing a new and substantially different version of the game.

Luckily for them the new version is even better, and therefore few will die.

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25 minutes at the poker tables with Rev. Stu

Posted in idiots, poker on August 24th, 2011 by RevStu

I've been running like this for a while now. Yesterday I finished reading the poker book I bought in Swindon last week (it tails off a little after the first few chapters, but it's still pretty good and well worth the quid it cost me), and it gave me the itch for a bit of poker, as I haven't played live for a month.

So I fired up an online poker room, slung a bit of cash in, hit the STT tables and quickly remembered why it was that I was taking a break.

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What is this, Namco Week or something?

Posted in games, ps3, x360 on August 23rd, 2011 by RevStu

I know. I don't even like Namco very much. But in the world of videogames, all too often if you want a job doing properly you have to do it yourself.

I had to fork out eight quid to buy Galaga Legions DX and find out if it was any good or not, because not one of the dozens of useless "reviews" published on the internet told me anything I needed to know about it. Hopefully you, at least, won't have the same problem.

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When Google+ does this, I’ll be interested

Posted in awesomeness, free stuff, games on August 22nd, 2011 by RevStu

Actually, I probably still won't. Google is one of the most sinister multiglobal corporations on Earth, and it still astonishes me that people will entrust them with their main email accounts. But more importantly, they don't have this.

(It's not that I have a lot of faith in Facebook either, you understand. I'm extremely selective about what apps I let it install and what personal data I keep there, and I pretty much only accept people I actually know in real life as friends, with few exceptions. But games this good are welcome to know my fictitious school history if they want to.)

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WoSland Game Of The Saturday

Posted in awesomeness, free stuff, games on August 20th, 2011 by RevStu

Is, of all things, a Facebook game. I know! Specifically, it's Pac-Man S.

Namco are on a great run of doing excellent stuff with their old IP these days, and we might easily have been recommending New Rally-X S instead, which is also pretty darn good. But Pac-Man S, which borrows several elements from the Pac-Man Championship games, is arguably even spiffier.

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I hate Nintendo THIS much

Posted in games, nintendo, stupidity on August 18th, 2011 by RevStu

So I've got a 3DS now. For someone who's still just about a functional videogames journalist, the professional obligation and the economics finally more or less converged, and I'm now the owner of a rather handsome Cosmos Black machine. (No games yet, but I'll pick some up at some point.)

But don't worry, viewers – WoSland's principles remain firmly intact.

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Awesome game gets awesomer and cheaper

Posted in free stuff, games, iOS, iPad on August 16th, 2011 by RevStu

Phoenix HD is a high-def remake of the original Phoenix (69p), which is itself one of the App Store's finest shmups, adding Retina graphics, Universal support and an array of very pretty additional background scenery.

Obviously, now that it's a substantially better game, it's gone free forever.

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Principles have a price

Posted in games, stupidity, unbargains on August 15th, 2011 by RevStu

Alert viewers will already be aware of WoSland's determination never to give Nintendo any more of its money until the end of time. Yet I have to admit I'm mildly tempted by the 3DS now that it's going for as little as £115 new (and I have some stuff I can flog to CEX to offset the outlay). So I thought I might see if I could pick one up preowned, saving a couple of quid and more importantly keeping my cash out of Nintendo's pockets.

I'm thinking probably not from Gamestation, though.