Yeah, cheers.

Good evening.

So, an introduction is order I suppose. I’m 25 years old, mostly unemployed and currently occupying a beard. Not much else is really relevant I guess. My gaming history (the relevance of this will become apparent) has gone something like this: Mega Drive II > Playstation > Playstation 2 > Dreamcast > Playstation 3 > PC. I’ve also always had games for whatever Apple computers have been around at the time. So with that out of the way, I’ll explain what this blog is about.

First of all, the name. The ‘Gabe’ I refer to is none other than Gabriel Newell, otherwise known as ‘Gaben’. If you know who he is then you’ll understand and probably sympathise with the purpose of this blog. If you don’t know who he is then all you need to know is that his company, Valve, started up a service called Steam, which is basically the iTunes of games; you pick, you pay, you download and then you play. Or, in my case, you pick, you play, you download, then you do something else until you accumulate a massive backlog of games so daunting that you’d rather just play what you know.

And that is the point of this blog. I intend to review all of the games in my Steam library, aka ‘the huge backlog I’ve still got to play through’, and probably my gaming backlog in general (yes, the Steam effect spreads), PC or otherwise. This means playing each game for at least long enough to gain a decent understanding of what it’s really about so that I can deliver a nice, balanced review of each game to help inform and inspire some decisions, hopefully the kind of decisions that make you go ‘holy crap, this guy’s got a lot of games, I prefer money’ and thus make you decide that no, you don’t need to buy Gunman VII: The Gunnening just because it’s 90% off on that particular day.

At this point I suppose I should point out what to expect and what not to expect.

What to expect

Honest opinions. This simply means that I’m human, just like you (presumably), I will have preferences and un-preferences and I’m not immune to bias and fanboyism. However, I will try my best to maintain objectivity and I will never praise or slate a game without good reason.

Made up words, such as ‘un-preferences’.

The English English spellings of certain words, for I am indeed, English. Possibly some mild bad language too but I’ll endeavour to keep it down.

Racing sims and, to an extent, flight sims. I do enjoy both of those, even if I’m not particularly good at them.

I will probably focus more on the offline modes of most games for several reasons (the main one being a poor internet connection), but if the multiplayer is more than a token effort I will try them out and report on those too.

DLC reviews. I will mention DLC that I already own if I own it at the time of writing (and if it’s worth mentioning), otherwise I may do small posts after the fact or edit the original review if I buy the DLC shortly after posting.

Graphs, charts and diagrams; I have a degree in graphic communication where I specialised in this sort of stuff. I have none planned but you never know when I might pop one out.

Playstation and Playstation 3 games, because I still play those from time to time and actually have some I haven’t touched yet.

What not to expect

Strategy, tower defence, fantasy RPG, MMORPG, or Free to Play games. Can’t stand them, but one or two may pop up.

Punctuality. I’m not intending to post every day, but I might, it depends on what I’m playing. If a few hours is enough to get a decent idea of a game then so be it, but it may take more time than that.

Completion. I’m not planning on completing every game, I’ll play until I’m too bored to continue, until I feel I’ve had my money’s worth from a certain game or just until I feel like moving on. I generally tend to be a completionist for games I love or that I spent a lot of money on, however.

Videos. The reason I’ve not started a YouTube channel is because I don’t like talking to a computer. I may post gameplay videos and screenshots, I may not, I’ll see how I feel as time goes on.

Spoilers. I will avoid spoiling a game as best I can, if I do post anything spoilerous then I will provide adequate warning. By ‘spoiler’ I mean: anything plot related, anything that’s supposed to be a surprise, anything that I personally loved that I don’t want to ruin for anyone else.

Review scores. I don’t agree with scores for many reasons, the most important one being that they imply Game A is objectively better than/worse than/the same as Game B, regardless of genre, budget, age, features and so on. I will include a TL, DR (too long, didn’t read) version when I remember to, though, so you can still skip to the end and enjoy a brief summary. Please note: If you do at any point see anything resembling a score, it’s probably sarcastic. If not, it definitely won’t be serious.

That’ll do for now. I should probably mention that I will post reviews of games I’ve already played, just because I want to.

TL, DR: This blog consists of me reviewing the huge amount of games I’ve bought but never played. JOIN ME.