BeefJack - Week one

... went quite well. I've done two news shifts so far (will be doing three a week from now on) and apart from a few teething issues regarding finding my way around the WordPress system I think I got a handle on how things work there pretty quickly.

The team is incredibly supportive and are happy to let me go at my own pace. They encourage questions and give constant feedback because, ultimately, helping me improve as a writer helps the site gain credibility.

All the staff writers are voluntary (for now) and are very talented and write for BeefJack because they love videogames, they love to write, and they love to write about videogames.

Yes, this is a plug. Yes, you should visit BeefJack daily. 

And you should follow them on Twitter. 

And me for that matter.

Tron: Evolution - PlayStation3 review

An edited version of this review can be found at gamepeople.co.uk.

Tron: Evolution - PlayStation3 review

Tron: Evolution by Propaganda Games is a brand extension of the hit 2010 Disney sequel, Tron Legacy. I specifically use the words ‘brand extension’ and not ‘film tie-in’ or ‘the game of the film’ because those phrases bring to mind games of years past, games better forgotten; Home Alone, Hudson Hawk, Avatar, Superman Returns and the industry crashing phenomenon that was E.T. for the Atari 2600 among many, many other examples of a product rushed to market to meet the release date of the movie the game is based on. As a veteran gamer of more than twenty five years I have come to view games based on film franchises with something beyond suspicion.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2011 - PlayStation3 review

An edited version of this review can be found at gamepeople.co.uk

Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf 2011

Electronic Arts really like their menus. In my mind’s eye I see EA employing a whole building of staff whose job it is to make it as inconvenient and complicated as possibly for the player to actually start playing the game.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 for the Playstation 3 is such an assault course of idiot filtering menu selections that I was half hoping for a Trophy announcement to pop onto the top of my screen when I had finally navigated my way to a golf course. One of the first obstacles, after a brief argument with my PS3 because, no I did not want to connect to the EA multiplayer servers just yet thankyouverymuch, was the character creation process that, although skippable, is positively encouraged by the game. Now, in a strange twist of fate, the default ‘Average Joe Golfer’ avatar was already a dead ringer for me so I could have saved myself a chunk of time by just ‘x’ing my way through the whole process. But I do like to tinker. So after twenty or so minutes of jaw squaring and sponsor choosing I was ready to take my, slightly broader shouldered self-representation out onto the fairway to ruin a good walk with a game of golf.

Twenty-five years of Batman video games - 1986 - 2011

"This would be a good death... But not good enough."

Exciting news

I will be neglecting this blog for the next few weeks due to the wonderful people at www.beefjack.com reading my stuff here and inviting me to be a regular part of their team. The standard there is high and the rate at which those guys get video game news out to people seems pretty intense and I'm going to have to work really hard to stay afloat.

I'm proud to be a part of the team who's job it is to keep the 150,000 monthly visitors returning for regular video game related news updates, previews, reviews and exclusive interviews.

Here at Fivehundredwords Towers, however, things are gonna slow down to a steady crawl for the time being. I will still be posting my works of fiction that have been submitted for my creative writing course and I would be made up if you returned occasionally to see how I may be improving in that respect.

But, in the meantime, get yourself to beefjack for up to the minute gaming news!

Don't forget to keep visiting gamepeople where I am still posting reviews of some of my favourite games; my review of Tron: Evolution for the PlayStation 3 is live NOW and we always appreciate your clicks. Clicks, after all, are the currency of the internets.