So, on Digi yesterday I done this: a review of Injustice 2, in which I admitted that I've never really liked beat 'em ups. I also made the grave error of once again saying that I didn't get Dark Souls. Predictably, there was the usual dismay in the comments. 

If it would help you to stoke that dismay, may I offer that it's not just Dark Souls that I don't like, but Bloodborne too. They just don't click with me, and it is time that we all accepted this. 

Believe me: nobody is more dismayed than I that I don't really like these games which so many people insist are among the greatest games of all time. I mean, it's not even just the gameplay; even on an aesthetic level I find them off-putting. It's like having a late-80s/early-90s thrash metal album cover thrust repeatedly into my face, while somebody keeps kicking my legs out from underneath me.

On an entirely objective intellectual level, I fully understand the argument that Dark Souls is one of the greatest video game series of all time. Clearly, there's something very pure about it, that it's very addictive, and all that. The important thing is this: me not liking a thing you like doesn't discount your own experience of that thing. 

Gaming is a broad church, encompassing all manner of genres, and settings. What I want from games isn't necessarily what you want, and - seriously, now - you've got to stop trying to force your tastes upon other people, because it hardly ever works.

And now I'm going to do this: tell you precisely why that is. Or, more likely, set out with the intention to do that, and go off at some other tangent.

Uhhh... unh... UNHHH-hhhh. This isn't going to be like all the other Injustice 2 reviews, I'm afraid.

For one thing, it's going to conclude thusly: I don't like Injustice 2. However, rather than lay all fault with the game, I'm going to place at least a degree of the responsibility at my own catflap. 

Because here's a thing: I can't remember a beat 'em up that I loved. No, wait: that's not entirely true. I like scrolling beat 'em ups, like Streets of Rage and Final Fight. I also like boxing games, for some reason. The second I went head-on, and had to remember multiple button combinations, it started to feel like a chore.

For me, that doesn't feel like fighting; it feels more like revision. The more controls you put between me and the on-screen action, the less I engage with it. It's precisely the reason I can't get along with the Dark Souls games; just like exams, they feel as if they favour those of us who are simply really good at memorising stuff, and those who don't get bored or distracted easily. 

Yes, yes... I know you're going to tell me that it all becomes second-nature, but - again - I don't want to have to put in the work. In fact, I'm simply not equipped to put in the work. Good for you if you can do it, but I'm wired in a way that is not conducive to beat 'em ups. I've spent at least 25 years trying to master combos, and they still feel more like trial-and-error.

I prefer entertainment which gives me everything I need to enjoy it, so that I can switch off. I don't watch arty foreign language films, because I don't want to have to learn French beforehand. Similarly, I don't want to embark on a rigorous training regime in order to enjoy a video game. I don't want to spend a week gitting gud before the gameplay becomes second-nature.

I'd put that down to not having the time in my life these days, but it was forever thus. Going right back to games such as Barbarian and Way of the Exploding Fist on my Speccy.

Do you remember the original Prey? Get this: I don't.

Or didn't until yesterday anyway.

In fact, after spending some time with this game called Prey - supposedly a reworking of the 2007 game called Prey - I remained pretty sure I'd never played the original. I thought that was weird, because I'm a sucker for a first-person romp, and it seemed like the sort of puddle into which I'd have furiously mashed my frond.

In the interests of due diligence, I went onto YouTube to double-check... and then it came flooding back: I had played the previous Prey, and it isn't much like this new version at all. I've no idea why I'd forgotten it, but maybe it has something to do with this: unknown reasons.

In fact, aside from both being first-person games, and both being set on alien-infested space stations, they've virtually nothing in common.

Why bother remaking a game that nobody remembers, and then changing more or less everything about it? It's not like alien-infested space station is a massively original and unique pitch. It's like remaking Pac-Man into a game where you play a tax inspector, and have to audit a small, family-run, bakery called 'Yeast Region'.

Anyway. This is the sort of game that Prey is: one of those ones where it's not quite a first-person shooter, not quite an RPG. You know: like Deus Ex, or the classic System Shock. You spend as much time upgrading your abilities - you're one of these cybernetic people they have nowadays, see - and reading the personal diaries and emails of the station's former inhabitants, as you do shooting at things.

​Which is just as well, because shooting at things in Prey is Not So Great.

Guest post by Super Bad Advice

​So this past week I’ve finally got round to playing Horizon: Zero Dawn. As pretty much every review has said, it looks lovely and is very interesting etc... but this isn’t a review (attention: this is a review).
 
No, this is an opinion piece that’s ruptured its way out of my frontal lobes after playing Horizon for a bit now (and to be fair, quite a few other recent games). And my opinion is as follows: currently, video game stealth in most titles is like cheap 1980s-style strawberry ice cream.
                                                                            
You know the stuff – the pink stripe in the tub of Neapolitan that everyone except deviants leaves in preference for chocolate or vanilla. The stuff that has a specific sweet, vaguely fruity taste that isn’t really a very good approximation of the taste of a strawberry. That stuff.
 
This bogus strawberry flavour is now so established, people barely think about it. I’d bet most people would know it and say it was ‘strawberry’ if you gave it to them to identify blindfold, even though they also know it tastes about as much like an actual strawberry as an orange does.

They say that the past is a different country, but they are wrong; it isn't a different country. It's just the past - a different time, yeah? You see, a country is a region that is identified as a distinct national entity in political geography, whereas the past is a term used to indicate the totality of events that occurred before a given point in time.

Why can't people understand this?!?

And because time moves depressingly ever forwards, each moment being one we shall never return to, the past unravels behind us as the days ahead grow smaller.

And so on, and so forth. Here are 10 old consoles that were well shit, brah.

I tried several times this morning to move on from the Manchester attack, and write something light-hearted, but I'm not there yet. What happened at the Ariana Grande concert knocked me sideways. I can always feel the despair at terrorist attacks, but this one hit me differently.

Given the target, and as a father of slightly-too-many daughters, this one was far too close to home. It's just too overwhelmingly sad.

So, sorry... but I'm just going to start writing and see where it takes me - and I doubt, once again, that it's going to be about video games. It'll pass though. It always does. Normal service will be resumed.

These days, if I ever get down I don't get down for very long. I'm fortunate in that I don't think I'm genetically predisposed towards depression. A bit of shitty work-related news, or money worries, and I can be fed up for a day or so, but it feels like a normal human response. I'm lucky, I guess. I've too many friends who suffer from mental health issues, and I feel powerless to help them.

There has been no real history of depression in my family, aside from some distant great-uncle who threw himself under a train. When I have been depressed, or when everything in my life has felt helpless or off-kilter, I can - with the benefit of hindsight - see that it's not without some root cause. Whenever I've been low in my life - even really low - I can see that it hasn't come from nowhere. 

For a family that has managed to weather a number of real tragedies over the years, I think we have a noble capacity for picking ourselves up and moving forwards. At least, until the point that we can't.

I wanted to write about this subject during the recent Mental Health Awareness Week, but when it came to it... I just felt too exposed. I sort of resented myself for that - that there were so many people bravely discussing their own mental health history, including good friends of mine, and here I was... far too embarrassed or ashamed to do so. 

It's that classic "Boys don't cry" thing that has been drummed into too many of us. Speaking as someone who was bullied as a kid, not making myself appear vulnerable is a coping strategy.

Well... I do cry, and yesterday - seeing the reports from Manchester - I fought those tears quite a bit. So, y'know... let's give this a go. Let's see if I can talk about this without bottling it.

So, here's a thing. Digitiser2000 has, I've realised, become a bit more sensible in the last few months.  I think I'm getting all my stupid funnies itch scratched over on Found Footage, and when I come back here I mostly want a break from relentless nonsense.

That was going to change today. I was going to do a rather tongue-in-cheek feature... and then I woke up this morning to the news of the Manchester terrorist attack, and - suddenly - being funny felt like the wrong approach.

Don't worry. I know, I know, that if we change our behaviour we're letting the terrorists win, and all that. Normal service will be resumed shortly.

Nevertheless, this has affected me - like I'm sure it has you. It happened here, at home, to ordinary people on a night out. This wasn't soldiers or policemen being targeted. It was normal kids at a concert.

I'm not going to do that thing where I try to tangentially act as if I've some massive personal stake in this - "Oh, my cousin knows someone who sort of thinks he knows somebody who might've once been to Manchester" - but nevertheless, this particular incident has hit me more than most. 

​It's the fact that the intended targets seemed to be teenage girls - the same ages as my step-daughters (indeed, one of their best friends was meant to be seeing Ariana Grande later this week) - means that this time it really feels as if it could've been us. I remember taking my eldest daughter to a Steps concert years ago, and waiting for her in the atrium, like many of the parents who were no doubt doing the same last night. This one feels very real to me.

Apologies if this ends up being a stream-of-consciousness ramble. It'll have nothing to with video games... but I'm processing what it means to me, what it means to all of us in the grand scheme of things. I just want to write something.

I was meant to be at the 2016 Retro Revival, but you may recall that some days beforehand I got punched in the face by a random lunatic, and went blind in one eye for a month or so. When I was asked to attend the 2017 Revival, I was determined not to let the punching happen again. Mainly because it really, really hurt, and it was a massive inconvenience, and that.

Until I was invited to give a talk at Manchester's Play Expo a couple of years ago, I hadn't been to a games expo in decades. Working for Digi, I'd been to a bunch of European Computer Trade Shows, a few arcade industry conventions, but nothing as a bona-fide punter.

The last one I'd attended was held at Wembley Conference Centre in the early 90s. I remember that I bought a converter which allowed me to play NTSC games on my PAL Super NES, along with a copy of Smash TV (and then bent the pins in my SNES cartridge slot putting it in - and had to send it off for repair...).

What's weird, is that I probably could've done the same this past Saturday. As well as buy a Vectrex, a Neo Geo, an Amstrad CPC... But what was really odd for me, was picking up games packaging that - in some cases - I hadn't held in my hands for almost 30 years. It was weird because it wasn't weird; when it came to something like Revenge of Shinobi, I could've been plucking it off a shelf in my bedroom, having just played it the night before.

Well, I could've done had I ever actually put my games away on a shelf, rather than just scatter them across the floor like I always did...

​As well as the dealer stalls, Retro Revival, like other retro games events, was full of games that were free to play; arcade games (including a bunch I'd never seen before - hello, Fire Truck!?) and pinball machines (I can confirm that a Johnny Mnemonic pinball table exists), as well mouldering classic consoles and computers. Alas, despite some of my best lingering near one on Saturday, I've still never had a go on a Virtual Boy.

Arriving at Revival, almost the first face I saw was Dave Perry's... somebody I never thought I'd meet again...

For those of my generation, Atari had once been the dominant force in gaming. Though I was young when the Atari 2600 had been released, we - like so many families - had one at home. 

It was the only gaming system which really mattered at the time. Though the games may be crude by today's standards, the sheer weight of software support meant that the 2600 was the only real option for early-80s gamers. Well, until 1983, when it all went dreadfully wrong, and the entire industry collapsed in on itself like an imploding cow.

While I was a ZX Spectrum owner for much of the 80s, I think it was some latent loyalty to the brand which led me to choose an Atari ST over the Amiga.

That loyalty wasn't to last, even as Atari turned away from home computing and attempted a triumphant return to console gaming. Albeit, seemingly, without an invite.

"I'm a mate of Dave's... no, not Dave - Phil. I mean John. Big John. Johnny-oh! I brought a bottle."

Like many, I'd chosen Nintendo over Atari when it had come to handhelds. I was impressed with a friend's Lynx, but the cost of it, the short battery life, its sheer size, had led me to favour the Game Boy. As history records, it was the right call; the Lynx was woefully supported by third-party publishers over the course of its life, and its design meant that it was scarcely portable. For a handheld system, that was death.

By the time Atari would next release a console - its last - I was working as a games journalist. As a byproduct of this, I would witness Atari's demise first-hand... and it was not to be pretty. 

Indeed, Atari's stumble from grace may be the single most apocalyptic demonstration of self-sabotage the games industry has ever seen.

"Sega... Sega... Sega... Sega CATS! Sega Cats are on the move! Sega Cats are loose! Hear the magic, hear the roar! Sega Cats are loose! Da-doo-doo-da-dooo!"

Did you like that? It was a sweet little song that I just wrote about Sega. I didn't even copy it from the theme to the popular cartoon name of Thundercats; it's just a weird coincidence that they're almost identical. The important thing is that it made ya wanna smiiiile!

​If you've not heard the rumours, Sega is apparently planning to bring back some of its biggest franchises, in a bid to restore its flaccid fortunes. We know that Sonic is due to reprise his greatest hits  imminently, but to hear that some of Sega's other greats could return... well... this is a sensible move.

Sega has an extensive back catalogue, but in recent years it has treated its own heritage in much the same way most of us react at having to siphon dog dirt off a flip-flop.

We can guess at some of the bigger Sega brands which might be making a return. I mean, we can all hope for a new Outrun, Crazy Taxi, or Golden Axe - maybe even a triumphant comeback for Shinobi - but what of the obscurities? What other potential franchises does Sega have shoved away at the back of its "brown chiffonier"?

​Here are but ten excellent suggestions. And!

I was a nerd, alright? Albeit a nerd who never possessed the academic qualities most often associated with nerds. I loved so many of the nerdy things, but my nerd credentials fell apart when it came to stuff like science and numbers. It's for this reason that I loved the storytelling aspect of role-playing games, but mostly ignored the roll of the dice. Or die.

See? I don't even know which is right. Worst. Nerd. Ever.

RPGs were a huge part of my life for a good ten years. From the age of 14 we'd spend entire days playing through another chapter of months-long campaigns. As I got older, I found a new gang to play with - through which I met Mr Cheese, who later came to work at Digitiser. We'd meet every Tuesday night, but the group broke up eventually, as everyone drifted back towards their real lives.

For me, I always preferred being the GM - the Games Master - to being a player. I'd spend the entire week dreaming up the story for the following week's session, drawing pictures of monsters, creating maps of locations... It scratched that itchy part of my brain which still has a need to tell stories, to create worlds, and characters. Role-playing fuelled and satisfied my imagination.

I still miss it terribly. Video game RPGs don't quite do it for me in the same way that the old tabletop ones did. They're too restrictive, too many rules - which my group would always be prepared to ignore in service of the story.

Tabletop role-playing isn't the phenomenon that it used to be, but it's still around; my step-daughter is an avid Dungeons & Dragons player, a fact I take great comfort in .

Also: I take great comfort in doing this - listing my favourite tabletop role-playing games ever. Here they come now!

So, it was the BAFTA awards last night. Congrats to Charlie Brooker's 2016 Wipe for deservedly winning Comedy Entertainment Programme. His mantlepiece must be bowing by now.

In light of this, I thought it might be of interest to some of you to talk about my own experience of being an awards nominee.

I'll try to make this as non-show-off-y as possible. I mean it sincerely when I say that getting an award, or being nominated for an award, mean very little to me in the grand scheme of things. I mean... it's nice and all, but I suppose I don't feel defined by my work, so that when I'm rewarded for it by the promise of a little statue, my reaction is "That's nice," rather than "I've made it! I am complete and whole at last!" 

I enjoy my job immensely, but I'd rather get an award for, I dunno, being a decent person. Please believe me when I say that's no false modesty. I'm more proud of the fact I've managed to sustain a career in an industry that's horrifically hard to get into, and even tougher to stay in - least of all to reach the top of (albeit with the caveat that kids' TV is a sort of microcosm of its own that is mostly ignored by the rest of the industry, and that I constantly worry about the work drying up, and going broke, and that).

Even then, I accept that the prolific work-rate which allowed me to collaborate with an enormous number of people, and produce a huge amount of writing - never missing a deadline - was, at least in the early days, driven by a need to distract myself, and by a pathological desire to get paid. The by-product of this is that I got a reputation in the industry of being fast and reliable, and managed to improve quite quickly. Put enough hours into anything and you git gud.

Plus, my natural instincts are more at the Found Footage/Digi-end of things, but this only gets you so far in TV. Suppressing those instincts, to write more commercially viable stuff that'll get me paid and lead to more work, is something I can do only up to a point - but it has, I suspect, resulted in a hybrid style that is just weird enough at times to be distinct. 

See? When you overthink stuff like that it's hard to really feel that anything is an achievement.