TOM FRANCIS
REGRETS THIS ALREADY

I Like That You Can Slow Down

Great new music is being released rapidly and randomly. Let me review some of it and give you some tracks.

Continued

Advice

This section of preaching is directed at me rather than you, but I want to write it publicly to force myself to make sense. I’ll probably include some irrelevant music or photos with each post to distract you in case you get bored – this one’s the first big win of 2011’s adventure into the music other people discovered in 2010. Continued

2010: The Year In Forty Photos

You probably don’t want to hear about my year, particularly since it was good. So I’ll do what I did in 2009 and just pick some shots from it, and a track to listen to while you browse. Continued

A Minecraft Diary And My Black Ops Review

The first entry of a Minecraft diary I’m starting just went up on PC Gamer – it’s just a short one to start with, but this might turn into a long-running thing. It’s about playing with a sort of permanent death rule: if I die, I have to delete the whole world and everything in it, then start again from scratch in a new one. It’s also starting from when I first played the game, so I know virtually nothing about how it works. The next entry will go up first thing tomorrow, and it’ll probably be every other day from then on. Continued

Month In Links: December

This is a thing I do now. Most of this stuff I mentioned on Twitter, but it’s not an ideal channel and I don’t like that I never link stuff here anymore. Continued

Trust Me With Your Ears: Volume Seven

A regular feature in which I attempt to share the mystifying, alarming process of digging through my unhelpfully named MP3s by uploading one of the files I found that way and not telling you what it is.

In this case, while you can tell pretty quickly what it is, I still have no idea where I got it, who it’s by, or why I would have such a thing. I think I’ll try moving the logo to beneath the text to impair eye-drift to potential spoilers in the comments.

I’ve Got Confessions To Make

The silence here lately has been down to a dangerous daily routine of falling asleep in front of Star Trek: The Next Generation, waking up at 5am and playing Prototype until work. Dangerous, but not unpleasant.

Prototype has caused me to break a mouse, and Star Trek has my brain quietly working on a master formula to generate Star Trek plots for Star Trek Online quests, and ways they could interact with a player-chosen crew. Continued

PC Gamer Podcast: PCs Vs Ponsoles

Haven’t had this much fun doing one of these in a while, so I hope the result is of amusement. I can finally talk about two exciting games I’ve been gagged about until now: Plants Vs Zombies and BioShock 2. We also try a new thing where we read out and answer questions from anyone on Twitter who cares to throw them at us, and we got a highly entertaining selection. And I do two impressions, one of which only Battleforge players will know is rubbish.

Our new issue on sale in the UK is our 200th special edition, which has, among its many items of note:

• My Star Trek Online preview – I’m suddenly hugely excited about this after seeing it played: they’re fulfilling my all-time geekiest fantasies, and that’s really saying something.
• Jim explaining how the massive Band of Brothers betrayal happened in EVE Online, and what it’s meant for the galaxy.
• My eight-page BioShock 2 preview, with an entire boxout about the ways in which your drill fist is like a penis. Some great quotes from two hours of interviews with the devs, all of whom took one dig or another at the original game.
• Kieron’s breakdown of the last 200 years of PC gaming, which features a picture of me as Adolf Hitler.
• My reviews of Plants Vs Zombies and Red Alert 3: Uprising. One is unbelievably good and the other is barely fun.

Lord I Just Don’t Care

I’ve been wondering when and how best to post something of Florence and the Machine‘s for a while, pretty much since I first heard them on Adam & Joe. I didn’t doubt it would be Dog Days, the exhaustingly energetic rollercoaster of a song I heard first, I was just waiting till they had something out for it to promote. I forgot that what they released could theoretically be better. They still don’t have an album, but this is Dog’s B-side: You’ve Got The Love. Continued

Trust Me With Your Ears: Volume Five

A regular feature in which I ask you to listen to a sound file with no idea what it’s going to be. It’s an attempt to share the strange experience of rummaging through my old download folders, listening to forgotten MP3s with uninformative filenames. All I know about them is that I must have liked them at some point.

Volume Four was the shortest I’ve ever posted, this one is the longest – don’t click play if you’re in a hurry.

Trust Me With Your Ears: Volume Four

A regular feature in which I ask you to listen to a sound file with no idea what it’s going to be. A very, very short one this time, and hopefully mysterious. I’ll reveal its identity and why it’s interesting in the comments tomorrow, but beat me to it if you can.

PC Gamer Podcast 24: Admiral Failure & General Vague

Discussers: Tim Edwards, Tom Francis, Craig Pearson and Steve Williams.

Discussees: Crayon Physics Deluxe, Saints Row 2, Mirror’s Edge, Dawn of War 2, Red Alert 3, real-time strategy’s problems, Penguins Arena, Pipe Mania, our picks for the best developer comma ever full stop, Railroads and Sins of a Solar Empire.

Subscribe: here.

Listen:

PC Gamer Podcast: The Future’s Dim

Ross is still away, so the start is kind of a shambles again. In his absence, myself, Tim Edwards, Craig Pearson and special guest Steve Williams discuss why Prince of Persia sucks so profoundly, why GTA IV’s video editor wins so profoundly, what got cut from World of Goo, and what Valve could call a Left 4 Dead sequel. Stream or download below, or Really Simply Syndicate that bad boy here.

New PC Gamer Podcast: Eau De Toilette Radioactifs

This month, Ross Atherton, John Walker, Craig Pearson and myself discuss what Ross will do for a drink, how much John hates Fallout 3, and what’s wrong with my radar. Find out what the lead designer of Deus Ex 3 said to make me equate the original to the Mona Lisa, why a fifteen year-old reader is having a mid-life crisis, and WHAT GOES INTO A MAGAZINE.

Sign up here, download here, or listen here:

This, by the way, is the Zombuster creation to which I refer towards the end:

Trust Me With Your Ears: Volume Three

A regular feature in which I ask you to listen to a sound file with absolutely no idea what it’s going to be. This one should be interesting – for some people one part of it is going to be very obvious, for some the other part is going to be very obvious, a few will immediately recognise both, and a few will have no idea about either.

As ever, listen before reading any comments if you don’t want it spoiled, and speculate away if you have an idea.