HybridLogic

To be honest, I should have finished this review a long time ago. I played this Half Life 1 mod back in October now and the only thing that's jogged my memory recently is the screenshots I put up on Flickr. And it isn't fair, because this is actually a pretty damn good mod with a lot going for it.

I've recently been playing an excellent total conversion mod for Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory aptly named True Combat: Elite. This is a game in its own right, and probably one of the best I've ever played, especially considering that it is 100% free. Playing True Combat however has brought some questions to my mind.

There aren't many games series that have consistently lived up to my expectations. Halo faltered on its second iteration, Splinter Cell, my favourite franchise, failed miserably on Double Agent (for Xbox) and even Half Life seemed to lose some of its vigour on its second incarnation, yet Hitman just seems to get better each time around. Read on for my review.

Frantic hands fly back and forth, buttons being mashed, nunchucks spinning and yet this damn spider just won't die. I never thought I'd play a Zelda game, yet the Wii has got me playing, swinging blades at wild monsters while trying to aim a ticking bomb strapped onto an arrow at a hanging stalactite before it blows up in my face. There's something to be said about the Wii; damn awesome!

Half Life. It's been out eight, nearly nine, years now. Still one of the best games ever, but seemingly eclipsed by Half Life 2. Recently I played Someplace Else, a mod for HL that's been around for a while, interest only kicked up because of the related mod series for Half Life 2, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Sure, the graphics might be a bit dated, the sound effects a tad tedious, but at the end of the day the plot and gameplay were better than most recent games I've gone out and bought! I thought that all the good mods for Half Life 1 had already been released, long gone stagnant in favour of its new, flashier brother. But I was wrong. Poke646 recently released their new mod for HL and it is killer.

WarGames, released six years before I was even born, yet I've occasionally caught it on TV on Sunday afternoons and instantly fall in love with the retro representation of large scale conflict. So when Introversion, developer of one of my all time favourite games Uplink, announced Defcon I instantly pre-ordered it and awaited the launch date. I've been playing it for a few weeks now and here are my thoughts.

I am really disappointed. No, more than that, I'm gutted. I feel betrayed, deserted, let down. I've been a big fan of Splinter Cell since the original. I've clocked at least 500 hours on the previous three games. Yes, over 500 hours. I play the levels so much I know every guards every habit, I know the dialogue by heart and cameras are nothing more than scenery to my learned fingers. So I scraped the proverbial barrel of my wallet to buy the latest incarnation, Double Agent. Admittedly it's only the Xbox version, but surely there shouldn't be too much difference between them. So I got the game, ripped off the packaging and I was away. One week later here's my review.

It seems we have a problem Mr Freeman

Half Life. First time I played it was many years ago now, but it was simply the best gaming experience I'd ever had or have had since. The levels, story, everything was just brilliant. Recently I've been going through my old back catalogue of steam games, replaying all the old classics like blue shift, opposing force etc etc. However, once that was done I was at a loss, I wanted another single player mod (very rare now, they all seem to be multiplayer). I wanted a new and fresh storyline, I wanted to have that feeling again I did when I played the original. Then I remembered Minerva, my current favourite single player mod for Half Life 2. However it wasn't this that sparked my memory, it was the fact that it had a predecessor for HL1 that I had never tried. So I downloaded Someplace Else and fired it up.

I was a major fan of Far Cry, following its development, buying it on release day and even dedicating my GCSE final design piece to it. The simply jaw dropping visuals, humongous levels and terrifying AI making it one of my favourite games. I can honestly say nothing has come close to matching it in terms of both looks and playability (this still is the hardest game ever with the biggest levels).

Read my review of its sequel on the Xbox console, Far Cry: Instincts.