Boomtown X

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.

Hi folks. You may have noticed a lack of updates in the last week or so. Don't worry, we're not disappearing, just reorganizing slightly. At the moment I'm busy with other work which makes it difficult to cover the news appropriately.

However we still intend to focus our efforts on bringing you honest reviews of the latest games along with other features. For example LA Noire review code arrived this morning and so we should have a review by release day.

Now what we need is someone to look after the day to day news. Alas this idea voluntary position right now, but if you would like to make your start in the world of games journalism then drop me a mail to Harry@boomtownx.net.

I'm going to offer a controversial opinion here - especially given the release of Codemasters Dirt 3 isn't too far away - that Test Drive Unlimited 2 is the best rally game you'll play this year.

What madness is this, I hear you cry? Well yes I know TDU2 has lots of problems; initially the handling is crap, there are loads of bugs and most of the multiplayer functionality is disabled while Eden Games fixes the game.

But once you've played the game a few hours, you've tweaked the controls and bought some better cars the handling models seems a heck of a lot better. Interestingly the offroad handling is actually rather good - as good as any arcade-style rally game you'll play.