Games I miss playing

Battlefield 3 (and Bad Company 2) - I used to enjoy playing in a squad with my brothers and friends of mine. Battlefield 4 was too buggy, big and crazy and never drew our attention and as time's moved on Battlefield 3 fell by the wayside. It was a game that worked best when you had a close team of 4 people working together.

Iron Brigade - This game died out for me and my friends because we played it to death. But a year on and I'm craving it again. The gameplay was so satisfying and the need for cooperative play to survive made it very rewarding and a great social game.

Minecraft - now, technically, I have played this recently. But I miss playing it with a bigger group of friends. I think I may have to invest in the PC version to achieve this, but then so will my mate who I have been playing with. Multiplayer on xbox is easy and makes things more casual, but everyone seems to be moving away from it and into PC gaming.

Fifa - To be more specific, it's playing in the pro team with my mates. It required serious teamwork, but we'd always have such a laugh doing it. Newer fifas have left this feature behind and consequently I've not bought fifa for a couple of years now. I really miss playing it though.

Wargaming - This goes back to gaming I used to do over a decade ago! Warhammer Fantasy; I'd love to play some small, characterful games, like we used to play with our 500 and 1000 point armies. Necromunda; I hardly played this, but what I did play I really enjoyed. I think there is a possibility of doing a campaign with my current friends, using Deadzone terrain and hashing gangs together with other companies models. Warhammer 40k; like with fantasy, I miss playing the smaller games, when I didn't own everything I wanted and had to put up with what I had - this would make for another topic to write about, force composition.

On the whole, from reading through again, I just miss playing good social games with people who enjoy playing the games too.

Elite is a constant surprise

I backed Elite in beta, back in September(-ish) time. I have never experienced a game like it.

Every release seems to come on time and is solid. The game released without any game breaking crashes (disclaimer - for the vast majority of people). Any smaller bugs are swept up in weekly, sometimes daily, patches.

Each month so far they've released larger chunks of content. In every case, so far, this has been on time and never game breaking. The big update last month brought in the MUCH desired "wings" play, which allowed me and some friends to form an in-game squadron (or, "wing") and share bounties, receive benefits for being together and better in-game communication!! finally! The in-game voice comms were pretty rubbish before, now they work and with the nice crackely effect they put on your voices, it adds to the immersion so much. It's so much nicer and more immersive than using skype!

The next big update is coming later this month or beginning of May. It's the first update that they haven't put a specific date on and they haven't told us anything about, but they're saying it's the biggest yet and with what I've seen up until now, I am sure it will be.

Generally speaking, most things in life (read as: everything in life...) are disappointing. Elite felt a little thin when it first came out, but every patch has surpassed my expectations. And, when I think back to when I did think it was a little thin, I now realise they were building something solid and making sure it was on time, as promised, because there was enough in it to play a meaningful game and if you understood the political systems and the way factions worked you could really enjoy yourself. For a simpleton like me I found that a little tricky and am just getting a handle on it.

If you like space sandbox games and have a computer capable of running Elite, then you are cutting off your nose to spite your face, if you do not buy this. I read some hate and mockery from Star Citizen fans and I can't understand it?! I'm really excited about Star Citizen, but it doesn't exist yet. So while we wait for that amazing game to arrive, you might as well play Elite and see how a really well designed, well managed, exciting space sand-box game is like.