Boomtown X

The FIFA franchise may be better than it's even been, but can this re-working of the Street brand live up to quality set by its big brother?

Joe Bennett tells all.

Today it was announced that Codemasters had signed another multi-year deal to be the official publisher of Formula 1 games. And that's a shitty thing.

We've had two F1 games from the publisher and neither was in a finished state upon release. Both releases saw important aspects of the sport either missing or broken. The first game couldn't even do lap times properly - oh well it's not as if lap times matter in F1. Oh they do? Dammit.

I used to wave the flag for Codemasters, the company that brought us Colin McRae Rally, TOCA Touring Cars and Micro Machines, but I've had enough of the company's products thanks very much.

We didn't disappear off the net but we've hardly been prolific recently. Over the last few months I've been mulling over whether to retire the site or keep going. There was a date in my diary that held special interest in making that decision. This date was the expiration of the original boomtown dot net domain name.

My old bosses at AATech held the domain until last week. I didn't know if the company was planning to keep the domain so I set a diary entry to remind me to take a look when it expired. My plan was to buy the domain if possible and so this site would actually become that which we once were.

However AATech renewed the domain. Perhaps it was on automatic. Perhaps the company plans to continue with a videogames site. I wish to hell it would at least continue to pay me the money it owes me. Anyway, that event passed by and I decided that no, this would not be the end of Boomtown.

So we will carry on. And so expect to see more frequent updates in the near future. I'm going to have my hands full with other work from next month but I do intend for BTX to have regular updates. Obviously that means we can't cover up to date news, but we will continue as a reviews and editorial site.

Thanks to EA kindly sending over SSX we'll have a review of that this week. And I've got reviews of Wargame: European Escalation and Microsoft Flight on the go. So BTX is back. Sure it's not a full time return, but we're not going away just yet. We fight on.

We've found the one man who thought Need for Speed: The Run isn't rubbish. James checks out the PlayStation 3 version of the EA racer.

Joe returns to two of his favourite PlayStation 2 games. But does Ico & Shadow of the Colussus HD Collection on PlayStation 3 retain the magic of the original releases?

In our first review for a while, James checks out the latest God of War collection for PlayStation 3.

Dear friends I’m sorry to say that I come here this morning to bury BoomtownX rather than to praise it. We’ve reached the end of the run - which for me began all the way back in 2004. The truth is that that BTX hasn’t managed to support my family and so I have to put my and energy elsewhere. There’s a limit to how much time and effort we can put into a site that doesn’t pay its way. And so today BoomtownX closes as an ongoing daily concern.

That’s not to say we’re going to suddenly disappear. Oh dear me no. The site will be here tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and so on. But it’s unfair for publishers and developers to send us games we can’t promise to get reviewed in a timely manner due to a lack of time and resources. And so while we’re likely to still post some of the usual nonsense, we’re not going to be a commercial site anymore, nor are we going to expect to receive review code that will just pile up waiting for someone to tackle it. So dear friends in the trade, thank you so much for your support, it has meant an awful lot to us. But please delete us from your mailing list to receive your games, we just can’t promise to review them.

Let me take you back in time a little. Back in late 2004 I had been working as a professional online writer/editor for several years. At INC I’d worked on such concerns as IGN, Gamespot, Daily Radar, FGN Online, BW Vault and Racing Gamer. I then moved on to edit sites for Telefragged - including PS2Faction which was hugely successful. I then moved out of mainstream games coverage for a while editing channels for the ISP Supanet and then developing a new website for Firesoft Technologies.

In November 2004 I became the UK editor for Boomtown.net. This was one of the greatest career moves I’ve ever made. Not in terms of riches, but in terms of job satisfaction and the wonderful friends I have made over the years. Of course many of you will think that getting paid to write about games is as good as jobs get but that isn’t true. But working for Boomtown was as good as you might imagine it could be thanks to wonderful colleagues such as Jakob Paulsen, Christian Johansen, Michael Ronde and James Hamer-Morton all of whom I’ve known since the very beginning. And there are many more names I could mention who have joined the writing team since 2004 and become good friends.

During most of the time I worked for Boomtown we were owned by TDC (Danish Telecom). We were a very small cog in a very big machine and didn’t really receive the resources to do our excellent team of writers justice. But while we didn’t have a flashy Web2.0 site what we did have was integrity, honesty and a team of writers striving to put the reader first. Our aim was honesty - which often didn’t sit well with fanboys or publishers - but meant we actually reviewed games between one and ten out of ten, rather than the current tabloid site norm of nine for good games, eight for poor ones.

After the break, the trailer for the latest LA Noire DLC - Reefer Madness.

Maybe Rockstar could be nice and use some of the income from this to reward overworked staffers screwed by Team Bondi.

Unnamed sources from Team Bondi have claimed that staff are victims of a brutal working regime with employees subjected to harsh dismissals, walk outs and impossible targets. These claims have not been taken lightly as now it has emerged that the IGDA is going to look into the matter.

Former Sky pundit and long-time FIFA colour commentator Andy Gray will not feature in EA Sports' FIFA 12.

The former Scotland international player will be replaced by Alan Smith, who joins Martin Tyler, Clive Tyldesley and Andy Townsend in the game.

So Andy Gray gets the boot from Sky Sports and now EA Sports for being a sexist pig, but Tiger Woods doesn't get the push for being a lying, philandering dirtbag? Great double standards.

Any road up, full press release after the jump.

Dragon Age II has both its plaudits and critics. While most reviewers found a lacklustre, but solid sequel, many fans were left seething with a game they felt was rushed and a step in the wrong direction.

In a surprising move EA exec Frank Gibeau says he understand why some fans have criticised the sequel and that the publisher is listening to these comments.