Uhh, so this is your big day, huh? (24 Hour Gamer is 1!)

It's hard to believe, but today marks a whole year since my first post as a fledgling blogger, a three-paragraph effort with very very brief looks at 24: The Game, Assassin's Creed and The Punisher: No Mercy, which, quite understandably, nobody read. With a combination of no paragraph spacing, a lack of the html skills to add pictures (before Blogger improved the user interface) and nothing particularly interesting to say, things didn't exactly look rosey for 24HG, but I didn't mind.

See that right there? That's paragraph spacing. The extent of what I've learned is astonishing. So anyway, with the blog slowly picking up momentum, and readers of course, over the last year, I'm going to go over the good and bad times, some of which will be new to you guys.

Firstly, the most mentioned game over the whole year. I checked a few months ago, and the clear winner was Epic's erm... epic, Gears of War, obviously down to every game that involves a gun chiefly taking place mostly behind a waist high wall. But it has since fallen behind games like The Elder Scrolls, Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect, the latter of which I had actually assumed would be the most mentioned, as I've actually played both ME and ME2 twice each over the last year. But the actual most blogged about game, deservedly so, is Uncharted, with the series' second iteration taking the game world by storm just before Christmas. If I'd have known how terrified I would become of Dragon Age back then, U2 would have most definitely been my Game of the Year.

 Uncharted: Officially the most popular game on 24HG.

E-mails. I've taken the e-mail button from the site now, since 24HG is no longer a one-man operation, but for a while it was there and I had a few pretty funny messages. Firstly, an offer was extended to me, following my use of lyrics from 'Borderline' in the title to my Borderlands-centric post, to join a Madonna fan club. I quickly declined, as the version of Borderline that I had in my head throughout the whole 35 hours of play that Borderlands offered was in fact a cover by pop-punk stalwarts Showoff. But the offer was nice. I had an overwhelming amount of e-mails (like, three of them!) asking me to review Final Fantasy XIII, and I still haven't. And let's just say my treatment of Modern Warfare 2 didn't go down well. And finally, I had a very politely worded e-mail asking me to give up the name '24 Hour Gamer' and my login details for my Twitter account. Needless to say, I didn't.

 I'll review it one day. Probably. Possibly.

Speaking of Twitter, I set up my account (@Pete_24HG, or follow Trev @TjStan if he ever tweets again) alongside the blog to whore my posts out to anyone who'd listen. It's seen me post about everything from Blockbuster pricing the first Fallout 3 Expansion disk at £40 to awesome fictional metal bands in Alan Wake, but perhaps most noteworthy was my 1000th tweet, which read like a Shakespearean sonnet: "@MarkySharky Kiss my ass :p".

So onwards and upwards then. Hopefully, with Trev on board, 24HG should continue to expand over the next year, potentially with Podcasts, video reviews and joint pieces, maybe even a forum or something, who knows? We're open to suggestions too, anything YOU'D like to see, just pop it in the comments box, tweet at us, or e-mail one of us at the24hourgamer@googlemail.com or thetrevstan@googlemail.com and let us know.

Finally, a big thanks to everyone who's helped out: To Trev 24HG for extending his hand in aid, like Elika catching the 2008 Prince of Persia as he plummets into a chasm for the 4000th time (one day I'll compare you to a male character). To Susie, my wife, who not only actively encourages me to game, but also soundly kicked my ass on Guitar Hero Arcade on our actual honeymoon. To MarkySharky and CtrlAltKill of Twitter, for drilling into me the need to space paragraphs and add images respectively. To Paul and Raz7el, for always offering good videogame chat. To 30-Something Gamer for being my first follower and providing a great blog for me to read. Imagine Publishing's Dan Howdle for inadvertently mentioning the site in his Podcast a few times. The guys at the NowGamer forums. Paul_LFC at VideoGame Space. And everyone who's read and/or commented here at 24HG. It's been a good year.

Buster bowl me over with your bogus dance, shuffle me off my feet, even though I'll keep on runnin', I'll never get to Orange Street...

Thought I'd have a bit of a catch-up on what I've been playing recently, as with all of the changes and what have you I've barely had time to post about the awesome, average and absolutely arse games I've been playing. So, for old time's sake, here goes.

Firstly, for the sole benefit of Paul, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles. A sequel to last year's Umbrella Chronicles, TDC is an on-rails shooter that follows the events of Resident Evil 2, Code: Veronica, and the mission that was alluded to in RE4, the first meeting between Leon and Krauser. Firstly, it seems that Leon has a very selective memory, as the story is told through Leon's flashbacks, and everything seems to revolve around him. Even the bits of RE2 where he wasn't even canonically there, are retold with him as some sort of action hero. And he does it all in his husky Batman voice, not the pre-pubescent whinge that he actually had back then. And while I'm on it, he had nothing to do with Code: Veronica at all, yet still recalls it.

Surely there are better ways to pierce your naval, Claire.

Okay then, good news first. The game is a far, far better play than it's predecessor. It's a lot more intense, and the fact that you can actually see your allies around you makes it feel far more cinematic. As a nostalgia trip it's unequaled. The graphics are absolutely astounding for a Wii game, and the Havok engine powering the physics makes the environment come alive in a way that the console isn't used to. But the visuals do have their faults: Both Leon and C:V sidekick Steve Burnside look identical (a lot like the tranny from Hollyoaks now you come to mention it), and probably shouldn't have been in the same game. But I suppose that's more down to poor character design than anything else.

But every silver-lined cloud is pissing on somebody somewhere, and none more than I. While the graphics are great, they push the Wii a bit too far, and as a result the shadows look awful. The dialogue is terrible, with characters repeatedly stating the obvious, spouting lines like 'I hate this' (no shit) and 'They won't let us through!'. They're Zombies, Leon, not fucking bouncers. The 'shakey cam' makes aiming a nightmare at times too, and the awful treatment of Robert Kendo, one of my series favourites, sent me into a rage. Lastly, for an on-rails shooter, the game is too long, a far cry from the throwaway 10-minute fun fests like House of the Dead and Ghost Squad.

Errrrrr... ModNation Racers! The PS3's premier kart racer is average at it's core, but saved thanks to it's user-friendly creation tools and fantastically creative and talented fanbase. I find myself spending more time downloading characters and karts than actually playing it, exactly how I was with M.U.G.E.N. on the PC. The create mode is easy and accessible too, which is great, because I never got to grips with LittleBigPlanet's tools at all. MNR had me creating like a pro within minutes.

That's right, creator, you stick it to the man!

So the game tries to be a perfect marriage of LittleBigPlanet and Mario Kart, yet fails to encompass the charm of either. It's relentless attempts at being 'street' alienate those who don't buy into that crap, and Mario's game engine is far simpler and accessible to a younger audience, with MNR confusing matters with drifting, stacking powerups and an accumulative boost meter. So for these reasons it stalls at the finishing line. Good, but not great.

Alpha Protocol then. Basically a merging of two of my favourite things, the gameplay of Mass Effect and the theme of 24, it stands apart from other games of the RPG genre by being set in a contemporary real-world setting, packed with espionage and action. Strapping on the shoes of Mike Thorton, you are the newest recruit of the titular government agency thrust into a world of combat and subterfuge when you are forced to go rogue.

Keep your gun on him, he's definitely a terrorist!

Below average graphics and stereotypical characters and dialogue are the only tarnishes on an otherwise brilliant western RPG, with a twisting plot that genuinely does revolve around your every action. The developer, Obsidian, has constantly bragged about the game's ability to channel the 'Three JBs'; James Bond, Jason Bourne and Jack Bauer, but truth be told, mine was more like a very Torchwood-esque John Barrowman: morally ambiguous and shagging anything he can get his hands on.

I'll not go much further with this one, because my colleague Trev and I are planning a joint review, but I'll just say, I was greatly saddened when I read that Sega have ruled out a sequel thanks to poor sales. The Man wins again. Sigh.

Finally, I've been hopping, skipping and wall-running through the Wii version of Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. Far from a port, the Wii version is a completely different animal to it's HD cousins, with a whole new, unrelated storyline and different powers and a more strategic combat system more akin to that in The Sands of Time. And while it takes cues from the main TFS release and TSOT, it also has a few throwbacks to the 2008 PoP too, with the power plates helping you to traverse the environment, and a 'never die' mechanic replacing the time powers once more (although you can only be rescued a few times before being sent back to a checkpoint). It's great for fans of the genre like yours truly, but a lack of classic controller support harms it in a big way once your arm starts to ache.

And while I'm on the subject, I saw the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time movie to last week. It's enjoyable, but not particularly close to the source material in any way, save for three scenes which are nearly identical to key moments in the game. Jake Gyllenhaal is truly awful, with his sad puppy looks and dialect-hopping English accent, but fantastic turns from Alfred Molina, Ben Kingsley and a surprise appearance from Richard Coyle (voice of Keats, the protagonist from PS3 RPG Folklore, and the infamous Jeff Murdoc in BBC sitcom Coupling) who absolutely steals the show, all is forgiven. And if it does anything right, it's the boy/girl chemistry thing that I loved about the TSOT game and the 2008 PoP. Good, disposable fun.

He may look like a dejected Labrador, but he's still more attractive than Maggie.

Right, back to my cave then. This Saturday 24HG hits it's first anniversary, so I'll see you then. Ta!

I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of graveyard, and it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

Another month, another candidate for Game of 2010. After Mass Effect 2 a month ago, I recall expressing concern and doubt about playing a game that I would consider it's equal in the preceding eleven months. Yet here I am, four mere weeks later with a game in my clammy paws that I possibly like even more.

The game in question is Quantic Dream's PS3 exclusive epic Heavy Rain, spiritual successor to the fantastic (if a little flawed narratively) Fahrenheit (known as Indigo Prophecy stateside thanks to the combined efforts of Micheal Moore and Osama Bin Laden). When I first played Fahrenheit, it was completely new to me. The only games I could even begin to compare it to were Shenmue, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey and Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon, but even then the comparisons were vague and incomplete.

Heavy Rain goes down the same path in terms of delivery, but throws away the fantasy elements of Dreamfall and (to a lesser extent) Broken Sword and, taking the spiritual guidance of Shenmue, throws you into a very serious, very mature murder mystery. The story begins with a ridiculously perfect family living a ridiculously perfect life together, until one family day outing spells disaster for the father, Ethan Mars, when his eldest son of two, Jason, wanders off. Ethan eventually finds him, but their reunion is cut dramatically short when they are both struck by an oncoming car, sending Ethan into a coma and Jason into an early grave.

Two years later we rejoin Ethan a bit worse for wear. His marriage has ended and he's just picking up his remaining son Shaun from his ex wife's house. Instead of moving to Malibu with Charlie Sheen as some people do in these situations, he's got himself a shitty little house in the most depressing part of town. Shaun is quite understandably a bit pissed off at Ethan, obviously he never knows when he's going to get led into traffic by his dear old dad, and to make it up to him Ethan takes Shaun to a playground. Right about now seems a good place to mention that Ethan's coma rendered him a bit of a Schizo with a penchant for blacking out, and after placing Shaun on a merry-go-round (don't all playgrounds have them?), he promptly does just that. He wakes up later on to find his son missing, and a small origami figure in his hand, the calling card of a mass child murderer known as (wait for it) 'The Origami Killer'. So Ethan goes on a quest to find his son, along with FBI agent Fox M... sorry, Norman Jayden, lovable private dick Scott Shelby, his prostitute sidekick Lauren Winter and Madison Paige, a journalist who's clothes keep falling off.

Heavy Rain places itself in a very unique position in that it's not only one of my favourite games (I will go that far, I absolutely loved it), but also one of my favourite films too. A lot of the time I almost forgot I was playing at all, robotically hammering the quick time events in without even really noticing them even appearing onscreen. Another fairly unique thing about the game is that when a character dies, the game carries on without them instead of ending and letting you continue. Ironically, I can only think of one other game that does this and that's ObsCure, a game I only played a couple of weeks earlier.

Heavy Rain, like most PS3 exclusives, really excels in the graphical department. To say it looks beautiful is a criminal understatement. Even the graphical might of Uncharted 2 and Killzone 2 doesn't seem to hold up against Heavy Rain. The only thing I don't like about it really is the creepy facial expressions from Fahrenheit occasionally crop up, as if the motion capture artists didn't smile when they should have and one was thrown in at the last minute, a shining example of this is during the nightclub scene where Madison dances on the podium. I am just nitpicking for the sake of it though.

Before Heavy Rain I returned to the macho, closely shaven world of Richard B. Riddick once more, with The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. Not so much a sequel to Butcher Bay, Dark Athena is more of an expansion pack. It plays exactly the same, which was quite disappointing to be honest. Even the main story seems completely plagiarised, with the prison planet that Riddick must escape from in Butcher Bay replaced with a mercenary ship filled with prisoners, that Riddick must escape from. It's considerably longer than Butcher Bay, but that's the only thing I can really say about it. If it wasn't for the first game being included on Dark Athena's disk, it really wouldn't be worth buying.

Thursday's PSN Store update saw the releases of demos for Darksiders and God of War III, both of which are bloody fantastic hack-and-slash kill-em-ups and like the earlier Dante's Inferno are both based on religious mythology, and have thus been locked in a friendly battle. There's no contest really, Kratos has made sure of that, but so far Darksiders seems to be superior to Dante's by a gnat's wing, mainly helped along by the bold imagery, great voice work (thanks Mark Hamill) and the fact that it's not shamelessly ripping off God of War in every way. But God of War III seems to be shaping up very nicely, losing none of what made it's three prequels brilliant. And it's just about the most violent game I've ever played: the demo sees you disemboweling a Centaur (raising questions about how their innards are arranged), yanking the eye from the head of a Cyclops (the stalk doesn't snap immediately like the previous games, it has to be pulled to it's elastic limit and then snapped off) and ripping the head from sun god Helios' shoulders with your bare hands, seeing the flesh tear bit by bit before it gives. Absolutely brutal, yet I would expect nothing less.

Finally, I finished my second play through of Mass Effect 2 this week. I didn't mention it so as not to give anything away, but the ending of my first attempt saw three of my crew in their graves: The Salarian scientist Mordin, Asari law enforcer Samara and Human/Llama hybrid Miranda. This time I was 100% successful, seeing all of my crew through the mission. I also went down the renegade route this time, essentially becoming a space Jack Bauer, and it made the game a lot more entertaining. Yes, there was a scene where I punched a woman news reporter completely without provocation, and I will admit I laughed out loud when it happened. It was her own fault, she was making disingenuous assertions, and Shepard had had enough of them. And for lack of anything to play on my 360 last night, I fired up Saint's Row. Big mistake. It hasn't stood the test of time well, with it's awful graphics and awkward humour. Don't think I'll play much more of that one. Anyway, I'm off to play Oblivion now, buh-bye.

By my balls, Girl, I thought you were dead!

I know I said I'd have a look at Golden Axe: Beast Rider, and I did. And it was OK at first, I really wanted to like it, just to voice the silent minority or something. Imagine playing God of War, and it's awesome. Somebody takes it away and gives you Conan, and it's still good but not as good. Same thing happens, you get Heavenly Sword, a bit poo really. Then there's Golden Axe.
The graphics are like a mid-range original XBox game, it has the same washed-out look as Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, and the blood effect is lifted straight from Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, for those who haven't played it it looks like whole tomatoes are falling out of your enemies. The music is great, proper epic, Conan-style score, but with absolutely unforgivable voice acting it doesn't really help the overall sound much. And the difficulty curve is so steep you need climbing gear - the game doesn't believe in checkpoints. Enemies do this thing where if their weopon glows orange, the blow in unblockable and you need to dodge buy hitting L1, and if it glows blue it's undodgeable and you need to block with R1. Or is it the other way round? You forget because the colours have no significance to the buttons at all. And when 15 enemies are attacking, half doing one, half doing the other, what do you do?
Sega have been destroying a lot of their beloved franchises lately, this and House of the Dead springing to mind. I loved Golden Axe when I was younger, and while I do get nostalgic when *that* music comes on and the gnomes appear, and I have to deck some potions out of them, it still upsets me that a childhood friend has lost it's way so much. It'd be like seeing Carrie Fisher do a low budget Porno.
Aside from that, and I'll keep things brief, I tried Little Big Planet, and I can't do it. Although someone has recreated the whole of Resident Evil 4 on there, which was awesome. I've been back on Mass Effect again, and that will always be great, especially as this time I've talked Wrex down on 'the' bit, which greatly upset me the first time around.
And, after finishing 24: The Game last week I started watching season 3, and there's a bit where Jack says that he moved Kim (his daughter) into CTU (his office) because he wants her to be safe. Now Kim was taken hostage in series 1, had a run-in with a Cougar and kidnapped by a crazy guy in the woods in series 2 and taken hostage again in the game. CTU on the other hand, was compromised twice in series 1, blown up in series 2, and invaded by terrorists in the game. Putting the most unsafe person in America in the most unsafe place in America, where she is now working hand in hand with Sylar from Heroes. Good Going, Jack.

Dammit Tony, they've got Kim!

I've just spent the last week playing 24: The Game on the PS2. Damn Good.
Not only did I get to be Jack Bauer, The game is so far ahead of it's time it's untrue, and I'm kicking myself for not playing it back in the day. It even has physics! It runs on the Havok engine! And not to mention the much coveted cover system, from a time when every game wasn't centered around hiding behind a wall.
Also I've been messing around with Assassin's Creed (forcing myself to replay it because I played it on release and hated it) and Punisher: No Mercy, both on PS3. I've actually really enjoyed Ass Creed this time, although why a slightly-tanned American would be running around in the middle east killing people is beyond me. Maybe they have oil.
No Mercy is, well, it's Unreal Tournament III really. Fair enough, I can play as The Punisher, which would have sold it to me if I couldn't already play as Solid Snake and Cole Train in UTIII. I could argue that it's only £6.29, but you can pick up UTIII for around that now anyway. It's good, don't get me wrong. I still say buy it, but but the PS2/XBox Punisher game first. That's Brilliant.
I actually bought a bunch of games this week too. Killzone 2 is a mere £19.99 at Morissons right now, and Little Big Planet was on Deal of the Week at Blockbuster for a Tenner, so I snapped them both up, and I raided the dreaded '4 for £20' bin and came away with Beowulf, Golden Axe Beast Rider, Dark Sector and a friend got Kane and Lynch. Expect a look at Beast Rider next week.