It's funny really, I call myself a gamer and most of the people I interact with on a regular basis know me as such. Yet here we are trying to agree on what should be game of the year and I'm of no use what so ever because I've only played one of them, and I don't even think that should be in the List!

Who? Me?

So let's get the game I have played out the way first;

Ridge Racer 6 (360) - So it's an Arcade Racer, nothing new there really, sure it looks quite nice in HD but this is the 6th outing of the franchise so no matter how good those cars look they're still made up and come in lurid colour schemes that only Hip Japanese Dudes seem to like. Plus there's the fact you can win millions of the same model over and over again, why do I need the same car in different colours, or show each one of them being delivered to you on a dingy looking quayside, why?

The guys over at Namco have obviously played some of the Burnout series though, how else can they justify the need to press the A button a billion times to actually start racing. I'll admit I only got about 30% into the game, but by that point I'd lost my hearing due to the 360s need to spin the game DVD at a trillion RPM even when I was just trying to add up just how many of those Hexagons I still had left to do.

Next up 2 Games I haven't played for one very simple reason, I don't own the Hardware.

In 1998 I didn't even own a games Console preferring the heady delights of a PC for my little hobby. But by the beginning of 2006 I had bought 9 of the things. That's over one a year for gawds sake. Thing is I need to eat, get to work and that so when I'd stumped up the best part of 300quid for that noisy XB360 I didn't really want (or need) to buy another one. So I have neither a DS Lite (the fist DS was just too darn ugly to even think of buying), nor a Wii (Car needed a Service and I never buy consoles on Launch day). This means the delights of Zelda and NSMB passed me by.

Zelda (Wii) - To be fair I've never got on with RPGs so it's unlikely I'd like this Zelda one more than any other. The controls may help I guess, but there's still the fact that it's a little guy in a Christmas Panto outfit whose mother clearly should be shouting for him to come in for his Turkey Twizzlers by now as it's getting a tad dark out. And what's with the Swords? Get yerself a Big Gun and you'd save an awful lot of time mucking about with all that slashing.

NSMB (DS) - What, not another Mario game, does the World need one more? When does the Plumbers Apprentice get a game that's what I want to know? Just imagine it, sixteen year old Kevin the lackey, fresh from school doing his best to learn the world of pipes and ubends. It's got more potential surely.

Right then 3 to go and I have no excuses for not buying them, I just chose not to, here's why;

Black (XBox) - I don't like First Person Shooters much, I think it's because I'm crap at them so this was never going to float my boat was it.

Loco Roco (PSP) - For long periods of the year my PSP lives in my rucksack unused. The simple fact is that it only ever gets used when I go on Holiday - Football Manager was this years game of choice and nothing else even got a look in. And the HMV at the airport didn't have Loco Roco anyway. Oh, and I did buy F1 2006, but that was a mistake - oh what could have been?

Guitar Hero (PS2) - Don't really like Rock Music, and I am about as musical as a wet dog. I like music but I never inherited the tune making genes from my Dad, he'd probably love this and he never plays games.

So there you have it, as I said at the start none of that is of any use to the top brass here at Rodent when deciding on the winner.

Rock, Paper, Scissors anyone?

February 2007

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