Grand Theft Auto IV - Micro Review

There’s plenty of GTA IV reviews out there,some with spoilers (!) and some without - obviously the latter are preferable. Therefore this is not an in-depth review, just how I came to own it and my experience so far.

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Penguin Powered Gaming: Wormux

Today I finally stopped putting off upgrading the schwuklet’s computers to Feisty, and actually did it. Sort of. The story actually started yesterday when I started looking at schwuklet #1’s computer which it transpired never completed an upgrade to Edgy several months ago and whilst it would still work, it would not under any circumstances talk to my network. After numerous attempts and much head scratching I gave up, loaned it a working CD drive and did a fresh install of Feisty. Schwuklet #2’s computer was still on Dapper, and although I got it upgraded to Edgy it ended up being much quicker (on a slow machine) to also do a fresh install.

So two clean machines, almost ready for grubby little fingers. Of course I needed to install their games which are the usual suspects like GCompris, Childsplay, Tuxpaint et al. Whilst selecting the packages to install I scanned past all the other games available and realised that a) I’d never heard of most of them and b) if I hadn’t, then it was likely others hadn’t either.

This leads us to Penguin Powered Gaming. My collection of (brief) reviews of games that meet the following strict criteria:

I do not intend to cover every game, in fact I’ll be avoiding the better known ones (e.g. BZFlag, Armagetron). I want to explore new titles and hopefully share them with others who have overlooked or remained ignorant of them.

Here ends a lengthy introduction to our first title: Wormux.

No prizes for guessing this is a clone of the 2D variants of the Worms games – which should need no introduction – with the usual Free/Open Source slant. Worms has been a firm favourite of mine since the original on the Amiga, although I’ve tended to generally play it on various consoles – in fact Worms is my most played title on Xbox Live Arcade.

Gameplay remains almost identical, although weapons do differ slightly. Graphics and sound are both well done. Most importantly, it is fun. If you liked any of the 2D Worms titles, you’ll like this.

Overall Rating: Worth installing

I know I hinted these might be brief, but this was briefer than I intended. Wormux builds on such a well known game style that there is little to judge apart from how well the developers have done implementing it and I’m happy to say that they have succeeded in making a fun and enjoyable game.

Wii Day

Today marks the official UK (and European) launch of the Nintendo Wii. It will also mark the delivery of my pre-ordered Wii.

Posts may be even more intermittent than usual (if that is possible) whilst I look like a prat playing Wii Sports.

Wii Wii Wii, all the way home…

I had intended to let the new game consoles pass me by. I resisted the initial “got to have one” when the Xbox 360 came out – a decision I am very happy with after trying it at friends houses. Although I was a dedicated PlayStation fan, the Playstation 3 holds no attraction to me. The Wii did appeal, mainly because it eschews the now common “graphics are king” theme and actually tries to innovate. The price was also attractive, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to get one at launch and so would wait to see what they were like after they had launched.

That was the plan, anyway.

Since a Nintendo DS Lite is the gift of choice in my house this year, a bit of surfing was in order. During such a outing I stumbled across Amazon’s pre-order information for the Wii, and the fact that they would be taking them today – long after other outlets have (over)sold their allocation. Pre-orders opened this morning and closed five minutes later, but not before I’d got my order in for a console and a copy of Zelda.

Now I just need to convince schwukette that it doesn’t really need to go under the tree…