Beers of the Month - November 2009

Time has really flown this year and we're now into the cold months, so it is time for heavier, stronger brews. Notable beer outings in November were my annual Bonfire pilgrimage to Lewes, a cider and perry tasting at the office, a Brewdog tasting at the Rake (which included their limited edition "Shark") and the White Horse Old Ale festival at the end of the month.

This latter event boasted a truly excellent line-up of winter beers, including some UK greats on draught in the form of Thornbridge St. Petersburg, Bass P2 Imperial Stout, Gales Prize Old, Dark Star Imperial Stout and Thomas Hardy's Ale. However, my favourite beers of the festival, and thus my recommended beers for November are both Italian brews. Italy is not a country that many people would associate with fine beer. It is rather more well known for cars, shoes, wine and women but it is actually very much a rising star of the craft brewing world, with a number of artisinal brewers producing beers of superb quality.

Baladin Noel is a dark brown beer bursting with Christmas spices and rich fruit flavours. There's a peppery hint of alcohol at the finish, but if you would never guess it was 9% abv from drinking it. It's a sublime Christmas beer and my beer of the month for November.


Birra del Borgo Re Ale Extra provides a contrasting but equally excellent experience, as it is a robust IPA. A sublime nose of perfumy, floral and citrus hop notes leads into a wonderfully balanced sip. In the mouth it is lively and fresh with lots of peach and lycee flavours. I'm happy to highly recommend it!

Been there, done that, got the glass

GBBF is done and dusted for another year. It hasn't really all settled in my mind yet, but as always, it was an immense pleasure to hang out and share beers with my fellow Ratebeerians. I've got about 70 rates to type up, including the ones from Chris's pre-GBBF tasting and the evening I spent at the Rake's Stone tasting. What makes this hobby so good? Mark Dredge has just put up a post on his blog that sums up the essence of why we drink superbly.

Beers of the Month - July 2009

Drinking highlights in July included an afternoon of Hophead consumption in the Evening Star in Brighton, but the best moment of the month was getting to try some of the new 13th Anniversary Ale from Stone. It is my beer of the month for July. Greg Koch, CEO of Stone Brewing, was over in London and was given an understandably warm welcome by the London Ratebeer crowd when he came to the Rake.


If you know the brewery, you won't be surprised to hear than the beer is a monster with tons of resinous hop flavours and aromas, great malts that manage to hold their own and a sublime finish.

My highly commended beer for July is Brewdog 77 Lager. This is their new lager, that supercedes Cult and Hop Rocker. It lives up to its billing as "a lager that actually tastes of something". An uncomplicated, but extremely drinkable beer, it will be my quaffing beer of choice from now on.

I love it when a prediction comes true

Especially if it's one of mine :-D Microsoft quietly announced at E3 that they will be beginning downloads of full retail Xbox 360 titles in the Autumn and it has now been announced that the Games on Demand functionality will be introduced with the next dashboard update, due on August 11th (though you'll need to ferret around in that press release to spot it!) Now the question is how long before we start seeing larger hard disks for the 360 hitting the streets?

You like to shoot, so don't deny it

In recent weeks I've been playing a new Xbox Live Arcade title straight out of Rotterdam, namely Rocket Riot from my friends at Codeglue. This is a title I was pitched back in 2006, when it was called So Square (it was also Jetpack Junkies before settling on the final title). It's a fun little pixel-based arena blaster with a very distinctive style and a lot of wackiness, in-jokes and humour. How often do you watch an opening cutscene that has to explain why noone has any legs? How many games these days have a theme song?


With a jetpack strapped to your backside and a rocket launcher in hand, you face off against wave after wave of pirates, zombies, ninjas, commandos, aliens (you get the picture) in a free-for-all blaster characterised by utterly destructible pixel scenery and few opportunities for breathing or blinking.

It is generally harder to gauge the likely success of multiplayer focused titles than singleplayer ones as they need a decent sized fanbase to succeed. When the game launches, it either captures gamers' imagination and quickly builds a fanbase or it is passed over and the multiplayer never really gets off the ground. The very nature of the beast makes it tough to predict whether you have a hit on your hands until the game is out in the wild and this is the main reason I didn't go out to bag the game back in 2006.

Rocket Riot offers a frenetic blasting experience but with its real-time, manic nature, I feel it doesn't offer a change of pace from most full-price boxed shooters. The side-on perspective brings Worms to mind but that game has carved itself a niche over the last decade and a half by, in my opinion, offering a singular experience of pressurised turn-based play cycle and artillery gameplay, boosted by a great weapon set and bags of charm.

However, Rocket Riot gives itself the best chance possible, with its distinctive art style and its quirky presentation. Only time, and sales figures, will tell if I made the right call or not. Help make me look like a fool by checking out the demo - and thank your lucky stars that Pete and the guys removed the GDC test level that was made out of my company mugshot!

Things I learned from videogames #8

If you hear a phone ringing, even if it is just a payphone you happen to be walking past on the street, answer it. It will be something pretty important, such as a job offer. It will never be someone trying to sell you double-glazing or insurance.

Beers of the Month - June 2009

My beer of the month is Brewdog's How to Disappear Completely which I sampled from the cask at the Rake. It's a completely bonkers beer: 3.5% ABV but packing an obscene 198 IBUs of bitterness, due to the brewers hopping it every which way they could with Columbus and Centennial hops.

Named after their favourite Radiohead track, Brewdog are dubbing it an "imperial mild". You have to love hops to enjoy this beer. The aroma is likely sticking your head in a sack of fresh hops and inhaling. On the tongue it is scorchingly bitter. You feel like you're either getting tongue cancer or being cured of it, and to be frank, you don't care which. In an earlier age, this would have been sold as a patent medicine. If you're down with the hops though, it is a delight as the sessionable strength means you can drink it for hours. Just don't expect to be able to properly taste what ever you drink directly after it.


It was a reasonably quiet month for drinking and no beer stands out to be highly commended, so instead I'll tip my hat to the wonderful samples of Harvey's beers provided on their superb brewery tour. Guinness may waffle on about waiting for two minutes for the perfect pint, but the waiting list for the Harvey's tour is over two years - and it is worth the wait. Ian Burgess was a superb host and incredibly generous to the Ratebeer crew, allowing us samples of some special brews, both old and new, and it was a great evening. The engraved souvenir tasting glass says it all: "Many a soul hath found good cheer in harmony with Harveys beer."

Tweet like you mean it

Twitter is all the rage these days but you may be surprised to learn that I've started using it (as I'm usually a late-adopter or a never-adopter for most internet crazes.) However, I think I've hit on a sensible use for it; a lot of people ask me what trends I see among the game submissions I review, so I'm going to be tweeting what I assess each day (anonymised of course.) I hope that is something that people will be interested in.

You can either follow me via my username or just keep an eye on the Twitter box on the right hand side of this page. There will be some tweets about general game-related matters and replies to other people, but you can be assured that you won't have to read about the minutae of my daily life at any point.

If you decide to sign up for it yourself, I recommend this beginner's guide. If you want see something a bit left field being done with the service, one of my favourite webcomics writers (Jeph Jacques of Questionable Content) has set up twitter accounts for his characters, creating a form of SMS soap opera around the main comic.

It's good to think

This blog has been rather neglected of late but I hope to change that in the weeks to come. I'm just back from a week in West Zealand, Denmark, where I was attending a "creative summit" with some of the top creatives in my company to thrash out some recommendations for our future strategy. The venue was excellent and it was wonderful to have no distractions and indulge in some impassioned debate about where we need to be headed. I feel really relaxed, inspired and yes, more creative for the experience. Hopefully this will benefit the blog!

Apart from the main discussions, I also won some money at poker and got to see some great demos of future titles (and no, I can't talk about them!) On the journey home I discovered a superb combination of confectionery and the undead - liquorice in the middle, fruit gummi on the outside - delectable.

True to the source material

This morning I played the excellent Don't Look Back on Kongregate. It's a retelling of a well-known Greek myth and well worth playing to completion . You'll need some polished old-school platforming skills but the difficulty is manageable and the lack of loading times keeps frustration to a minimum.

Being charitable

If you're not keen on swelling the coffers of the major US games retailers by trading used games for store credit at miserly rates of exchange, you should check out a new charity, Donate Games, that has just launched. You send them your unwanted games and receive a tax credit in return (since it is a charitable donation). They then sell the games to raise money. It is currently US only I'm afraid. Thanks to Game Politics for bringing them to my attention.

Closer to home, the UK games industry's main charity is now GamesAid, which superceded the more boringly titled (but highly effective) Entertainment Software Charity. They've got off to a good start and can hopefully weather the recession.

The best known gaming-related charity is Child's Play, founded by Gabe & Tycho of Penny Arcade fame, initially to show that gamers didn't conform to the media stereotype of being selfish and homicidal. I try and donate each year, sometimes by inflicting gaming torture on hapless Canadians.

Child's Play cunningly uses the Amazon Wishlist functionality to allow you to buy toys for specific children's hospitals in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Egypt, cutting out middlemen and ensuring that children who really need the distraction that gaming can provide get the chance to enjoy it, whatever their family's circumstances. In addition to their numerous fund-raising events, you can also donate money directly online via PayPal, allowing you to get your compassion on, even on Sundays.

Things I learned from videogames #7

If you work in a hazardous environment, such as an isolated research station, an underwater city, a deep space freighter or a secret military base, it is vital that you keep an detailed diary for posterity.

Trends in Gaming: 2009 will see downloads of full-sized retail X360 games via marketplace

In my last post, I mentioned that the Blu-Ray drive has hobbled the PS3 in terms of price competitiveness. I believe that it has also led Sony down what could very well be a dead-end path in the form of game sizes. When the PS3 was announced, Sony emphasised the advantage that the 50Gb of storage on each Blu-Ray disc gave to developers. They exhorted them to fill that space with extra content for their games and pushed a ‘more data is better’ line. Their ‘hardware company’ mentality led them to set great store by their new storage medium.

However, this looks increasing short-sighted. There is a strong consensus in the games industry and in the wider media industries that we are moving towards full digital distribution of media products and that the question is not whether physical media will die off, but just how soon? Like many things predicted to revolutionise the industry, it will probably not happen as quickly as some people claim, but it is very definitely coming.

Viewed through this lens, Microsoft’s decision to stick to the 7Gb DVD format for the Xbox 360 looks quite sensible. Microsoft released an external HD-DVD drive, mainly to act as a spoiler against Sony’s Blu-Ray format rather than through any meaningful belief that HD-DVD would become a leading format. With hindsight, it is apparent that the company felt that it could get by with a DVD drive for now and that the next generation of consoles would not sport disc drives at all.

Furthermore, it is a lot quicker to download 7Gb than 50Gb. MS began laying the foundation for the move to digital distribution in December 2007 by selling Xbox 1 games via the Xbox Live Marketplace under the heading of 'Xbox Originals', releasing a title or two a month through 2008. I predict that we will see full Xbox 360 retail titles sold in a similar manner in the second half of this year. I think that the games will be early titles from the Xbox Classics range, possibly ones where the sequel will be releasing at retail in Q4 2009.

I expect that Microsoft will provide extensive reassurance to traditional retail outlets, emphasising that releasing old titles in this manner will drum up interest for new releases, promising that only games over a certain age will be considered for the service and possibly providing more marketing support to retailers as a sweetener. However, this will be the velvet glove around the iron fist, the decorative sash tied around the handle of the katana. The real agenda will be getting the consumer used to buying full titles by direct download. I expect to see significant price cuts on Xbox 360 hard disks during the year and possibly even a larger size than the current 120Gb drive to support this move.

This year’s move to allow gamers to install games to the hard disc (but still requiring the disc in the drive to play them) can also be considered to further this agenda, in addition to being a good feature in its own right.

So there you go - an easily testable prediction. See if I'm right come 31st December and mock/praise accordingly!

Trends in Gaming: Spring 2009 is a critical period for the PS3

This post is less of a prediction and more of a summary of where things stand for Sony and the PS3 as 2009 rolls on. Sony are on the verge of posting a loss of over $1billion for their current financial year (to the end of March 2009) with the games division deep in the red.

Sony decided to not cut the price of the PS3 before Christmas 2008, choosing fewer sales at a higher price point over a sales boost at the expense of per-unit revenue. Unfortunately for them, with consumers becoming increasingly price-sensitive and the large price differential between the Xbox 360 & Wii and the pricier PS3 certainly hurt them when it came to sales. These numbers in particular look pretty nasty for the big black box.

Unfortunately for Sony, they don’t have much scope to cut the PS3 price, as the other divisions of the company, such as consumer electronics, movies and music are all being impacted by the recession. The price will certainly be cut in the spring, but how much? How consumers react will determine with 2009 is a good or bad year for the company. If sales pick up strongly, helped by the release of key first-party title Killzone 2 (due for release next week), then Sony should be able to make more headway at closing Microsoft’s installed base lead. However, if sales don’t show a significant uptick, Sony faces a tough year ahead. Microsoft has extremely deep coffers and its core Windows business is relatively recession-proof due to the ubiquity of the PC platform.

Microsoft can force the pricing of the Xbox 360 lower in response to Sony’s price-cut. As the economic downturn continues to bite, consumers are likely to be even more price conscious and Sony finds itself caught out by events, whereas Microsoft’s hand looks to be coming good. The Blu-Ray drive, which is mainly responsible for the high price of the console, now looks more of a burden that an advantage, for more than one reason (more of that in my next post!)

So are we looking at a 'high noon' moment for Sony? I certainly feel that if sales don't pick up over the spring, they may have to finally concede that they are not going to end up in #1 place this console generation. The global recession certainly provides them with some cover to admit to less than stellar performance. I wouldn't be surprised to see some Scooby Doo-esque statements around E3 time - "we would have gotten away with it as well, if it wasn't for that pesky recession!" It can certainly be argued that this would be healthy for Sony compared to the astronomical levels of hubris displayed in previous years.

Killzone 2 is also an interesting game to examine. It is getting good reviews and will undoubtedly help sales, but I don't feel that Killzone as a brand has become strongly linked to the core Playstation brand in the way that Halo and now Gears of War have becomed entwined with the Xbox brand (of course, that very closeness is a big factor in the difficulties Microsoft has had in expanding the Xbox 360 demographic away from core gamers!) Perhaps this is because the original game launched late in the PS2 lifecycle whereas it is usually games released at the console's launch or soon after that get associated with a platform in the collective consciousness. I don't think there is a big rump of people who are holding off buying a PS3 until Killzone 2 ships, whereas I'm fairly certain there were significant numbers of people who waited for the likes of Metal Gear Solid 4 (and may be waiting for Gran Turismo 5). The series just doesn't have that sort of fanatical following.

More "Trends in Gaming" later this week.

Trends in Gaming: 2009 will be the year DLC gets done right

In the coming weeks, I’ll be posting a number of articles making predictions about the industry for the rest of the year.

As the year begins, I find myself looking forward to extra downloadable content (DLC) for many of the games I bought in 2008. The new Knothole Island area and items for Fable 2 (already out), the new maps (including the Dawn of the Dead Mall) and modes for Left 4 Dead, the Lost & the Damned expansion for GTAIV (out today), the Beneath the Ashes and Lara’s Shadow levels for Tomb Raider: Underworld - not to mention three separate sets of DLC for Fallout 3 (though I need to play the main game first in that instance).

We’ve come a long way from the "Horse Armor" debacle of 2006 and Bethesda, after that initial mis-step, are leading the way. The Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine expansions are widely considered some of the very best pieces of DLC to date and people have high hopes for the Fallout 3 expansions.

All the content I’ve listed is premium content (PDLC) – you have to pay for it. Getting the pricing and message for DLC right is of vital importance to publishers as gamers are liable to react badly if they feel (whether rightly or wrongly) that content was cut from the main game so that it could be sold to them for further money at a later date. PDLC that is exclusive to one format is an explosive mixture, as format holders’ non-disclosure agreements will almost certainly prevent the publisher and developer adequately explaining the situation to the consumer. The furore over the TRU content that still rages on the Tomb Raider messageboards is a very good example of this.

Despite these potential pitfalls, in 2009 DLC will become a key part of the console gaming landscape. Publishers are beginning to get a feel for what is the right price and understanding the kind of backlash that poor pricing choices can lead to. DLC keeps your consumer coming back to your game and makes them think twice about trading it in, helping to combat the pressure that used game sales are putting on new sales. Publishers have to give a cut of PDLC sales to the format holders but this is preferable to retail, where they are giving a cut to the retailer and the wholesale distributor on top of paying the format holder's licence fee and manufacturing costs. This is a huge incentive to publishers to maximise revenues and customer retention via prudent releases of DLC .

Perhaps even more importantly, there is fast becoming an assumption among consumers that all A-grade titles will be supported after release with DLC and once this is fully embedded in the consumer mindset, titles that don’t conform will be increasingly seen as second rate. Looking at the Christmas just gone, it is already hard to cite major titles that don't have at least some form of DLC in the pipeline. The Lost and The Damned is getting good reviews and is a major chunk of content, with hefty in-store promotion in the form of a branded points card. It is likely to set the trend for major expansions to the original game, set in the same city, as opposed to the Liberty City, Vice City, San Andreas progression of full-game releases in the PS2 era.

It should also be noted that the extensive catalogues of songs being released for the competing Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises are also doing a great deal to break down barriers to people buying additional content for their games by direct download.

Personally, I'm pleased to have an excuse to go back to games for a second blast and it gives people who missed a game the first time round a chance to jump in, safe in the knowledge that other people will be playing the game (I'll be trying to get MuppetThumper to try Left 4 Dead when the DLC hits).

Stay tuned for more predictions!

No more missing pieces

Continuing my "games with Puzzle in the title" start to the year, the second XBLA game that I completed in January was Puzzle Arcade. This is a jigsaw puzzle game (the reason that "jigsaw" doesn't appear in the title is that it is not used to describe this sort of puzzle outside of the English-speaking world) that I signed for Eidos in 2006. The original design (then called "Fractal Jigsaw") came from Say Design in California and the 'heavy lifting' was done by CTXM in Latvia.


The thinking behind the project was to find a universally understood casual gaming concept that could support multiplayer play and hopefully emulate the huge success of Uno on the platform. Jigsaws are enjoyed all around the world and an electronic version offers big advantages over the traditional form - you don't have to worry about losing pieces, it doesn't take up your dining table for days at a time, you can work on many puzzles at once, you can get assistance if you are stuck and you can attempt puzzles that would be too large to complete in your house. The original design envisaged a massively mutliplayer element to the game; hundreds of players would be able to collaborate to complete enormous puzzles, much bigger than the largest real-world puzzles, of perhaps even millions of pieces. These larger puzzles would be split down with each piece being made up of smaller pieces, and those smaller pieces being likewise divided, hence the 'fractal' part of the title.

Unfortunately, the server backend requirements for this feature stopped it being cost-effective and the massively multiplayer feature was cut (the fractal puzzles remain). However, the finished game is still a fun collection of jigsaws with a good variety of single and multiplayer modes and while it is not going to review highly due to the type of game it is, it is good to see that many people who have played it really enjoyed it. As for me, I've beaten the challenge mode but I'm going to need to put a lot of time aside to get the 'Kilopiece Colossus' achievement for completing a 1000-piece puzzle.


If you own an Xbox 360 connected to the internet and you've not played Puzzle Arcade yet, I have got five unlock codes for the full game that I am giving away to the first five random internet denizens who read this and drop me an email. Email blog at unfriendlyghost.com with the subject line "Puzzle Arcade competition".

Beers of the Month - January 2009

My Beer of the Month is Bracia from Thornbridge Hall, which I tried at the Thornbridge tasting at the Rake. This is very special stuff from a brewery that is beginning to really make waves on the back of some superb beers. Their St. Petersburg Imperial Stout wowed me before Christmas, their Jaipur IPA is quickly becoming a UK classic and the selection of beers at the tasting didn’t disappoint. Bracia has a complex taste with hazelnut, chocolate, coffee and truffle flavours from the malts balance by a dazzling array of hops and the sublime signature ingredient, chestnut honey. There’s more information about the beer on their website and Bracia can be bought direct from the brewery at £5 per 500ml bottle. It’s worth it.


My Highly Commended beer for January, comes most gratifyingly, from a new micro-brewery in my local area. Sambrook’s Brewery is located very near to my old office in Battersea. They only started brewing in November 2008, but their first beer, Wandle Ale, a 3.8% session bitter, is extremely drinkable. The choice of Fuggles and Golding hops and Maris Otter malt is quintessentially English and I feel that you could slot the resultant beer into the range of say, Harvey’s, and nobody would be any the wiser. It’s great to have a new craft brewery opening up on my doorstep and with the news that Young’s may open a microbrewery as part of their planned museum on the Ram Brewery site, the year has started on a positive note in the SW postcodes. Wandle Ale is available in free houses across South West London (with Dave’s help, I tracked it down in the Magpie & Crown) so do your bit to support a fledging brewery by sampling it.

A puzzling start to the year

Late last year, I had a bet with my friend the MuppetThumper that I could finish all the Xbox 360 retail games that I owned on the last day 2008 by the last day of 2009. This means that I need to complete over 20 X360 titles in the year, on top of whatever new games I decide to play (and I have nine systems to choose from!) Of course, as a zen master of displacement activity, I immediately set to playing XBLA games rather than retail ones. Thus the first game I completed in 2009 was the excellent Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords from Infinite Interactive.

If you're a regular gamer, Puzzle Quest probably doesn't need much of an introduction. Its marriage of the addictive match-3 gameplay of Bejeweled with a traditional fantasy setting, evolved from Infinite's long-running Warlords series of games, made it one of the cult hits of 2007, particularly on DS. I was actually shown the game in prototype form at GDC 2005, their agents demoing on a laptop in the coffee area. It was clear that the basic gameplay was fun and easy to grasp, but the game faced big hurdles. Infinite were (and still are) a small developer, located in Australia (a long way from most publishing head offices) with a track record of fantasy RPG games (not a sexy genre for videogame execs) and 'casual gaming' had not yet penetrated into the industry consciousness to the point where CEOs were chasing a non-core gamer demographic or developers churning out clones. The game would have been laughed out of our boardroom at the time and so I didn't push hard to sign it. Thankfully for all of us, D3 Publisher had the vision to sign the game and thus reaped the rewards - the game is currently available on DS, PSP, PC, PS2, PS3, Wii and IPhone.

If you've not played the game, be warned that it is exceedingly addictive - true "digital crack". In the process of completing it, I played past 3am, to the point where I could barely focus my eyes. Genre-combining games often fail because one part of the game is neglected or simply more poorly executed than the rest, but in this case, the game away from actual combat is lovingly crafted. There's depth to the RPG elements (the different classes play very differently for one thing) and the writing stops the storyline descending to high camp melodrama through the injection of some good humourous touches such as Khalkus, a dwarf who just won't shut up and Drong, a troll with an insatiable appetite. This article on Gamasutra puts forward a theory on why the RPG genre was the perfect fit for this sort of game design mash-up but Penny Arcade's take sums up many people's initial reactions to the game.

Shortly, we'll need to begin calling it by its full name, as the hex-based sci-fi themed sequel, Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, is almost upon us - you can try a demo at their website.