Tom Fotherby
Enter the Matrix
XBox,TPS,9/10 – June 2003 This game taught me the lesson that one shouldn’t take magazine reviews as gospel. My most respected mags, namely Edge and Games rated this game 3/10 and 4/10 respectively but I loved it. The great thing about is that the story line fits perfectly between “The final flight of the osiris” […]
Baldur’s Gate : Dark Alliance
XBox,RPG,5/10 – June 2003 I got this because it was the first 2-player co-operative RPG for the XBOX that I’d seen. It’s not a deep game, it’s a simple hack and slash with very little inventory management or character progression and a shallow dis-joined storyline. The graphics are state-of-the-art with vegetation blowing in the wind, […]
Advance Wars
GBA,Turn-based strategy,9/10 – June 2003 Nintendo does chess. This is a game of tactics and like chess things aren’t left to chance, you can get to know the exact outcome of a clash between 2 units. Unfortunately it seems to be geared towards kids but you wont be able to win by force-in-numbers rather than […]
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (J. K. Rowling)
Fantasy, 8/10 – June 2003 Voldemort is gaining strength and building an army but no one believes Harry about it except Dumbledore. The Ministry of Magic has made it their job to discredit them both, using the wizarding newspaper The Daily Prophet for slander. Dumbledore is avoiding Harry because Harry’s mind is linked in some […]
Case Mod (May 2003)
Chloe and I went to Maplins and bought a window kit (£10). Combined with a cold cathod tube (a crimbo present from martin) I think your’ll agree it is a good way to make the computer a more interesting feature of the house. This wasn’t easy to do. A jigsaw was used to cut the […]
Sony Digital Camera (DSC-S70) (was dads but mum doesn’t know how to use it)
Digital photo albums cannot compete with the magic of a normal album in your bookshelf but they can save money and are good if you want to put photos on a website. This is a 3.3 Megapixel camera but the big problem with it is that there’s a massive delay between pressing the button and […]
Polar Heart Rate monitor – 20th March 2003, birthday present from Mum
Normally shows the time but can show my heart rate if I wear the special belt. I use it to exercise in a zone that is not too high or low (120-140). It’s really helpful.
Microsoft XBox – 20th March 2003, birthday present from Kix
This big fat American beast is my first ever console and DVD player. The higher hardware spec, internal hard disk and promise of XBox live is why I chose to get this instead of the competition from Nintendo and Sony.
Broadband Internet – March 2003
We got ADSL broadband at 512k and at the same time we got a proper computer network. Broadband not only allows us to surf on two computers at the same time but because it’s “always on”, it allowed me to run this website from home for free!
Pen-Fu (aka Pen-spinning)
As a computer programmer, with my hands at a keyboard for up-to 12 hours a day, I practice Pen-Fu to exercise my fingers and prevent RSI. Pen-Fu is like Kung-Fu but with pens rather than combat :-). Think of Boris, the computer hacker in 007 Goldeneye… He was a novice pen ninja. Check out www.pentrix.com […]
Flairing bottle and video – December 2002, Christmas present from Kix
Kix got me this flaring starting kit. I broke lots of things practising, except the bottle – which is unbreakable. I got quite good at it without water in the bottle but can’t do it for real.
Pub Optics – December 2002, Christmas present from Kix
Kix got me four pub optics that dispense 25ml of anything. I’m not actually a big drinker but I like to make cocktails and these help me to keep track of appropriate measures.
Sony car miniDisk player – December 2002 Christmas present from mum and Grandpa
My travelling buddy with a friendly multi colour display which flashes and pulses with the music. MiniDisk might not be a hot technology any more but I’ve got lots of disks and it’s better than CD (much better).
Halo
XBOX,FPS,9/10 – August 2002 There’s so many good things about Halo but if I was to name the best I would say it was the vehicles. When you get in a vehicle the view moves from 1st person to 3rd person and the feel of the game totally changes increasing variety and pace. Other AI […]
Tony Hawks 4
XBOX,sport,9/10 – August 2002 When you break these games down it is really just a exercise to memorize sequences of buttons. But with todays zillion-buttoned controllers, this is made difficult. There’s something about Tony Hawks games that gets you addicted so that you feel you have to complete all the tasks (but your’ll never be […]
