With all the current excitement out and about in the southern city which no-one inside the UK really likes and the only city anyone outside the UK has heard of, you may be wondering:

“Paul, you hideously erotic creature from the 6th dimension, you’re not leaving us out in the cold without giving any details of your gaming prowess and skills?”

Well fear not gentle and slightly aroused readers, for I have half-heartedly stumbled like a drunken man onto a slightly bizarre yet comical adventure / RPG / Bugger knows game known as “On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One” and yes, the title is long-winded.

It’s been rather bizarre that this has taken up some of the Lord’s time rather than EA’s all singing all dancing space sex “shootorama” with a story, “Mass Effect”, which arrived on British shores a couple of weeks ago now or indeed the excellent looking but proof will be in the pudding, “GRID” created by Codemasters, who has taken it upon themselves to create a console style level racing game for all platforms and it rather works well on the PC by all accounts.

Let me explain.

Adventure games with a story have always peaked my interest. You may have gathered that from the man love which gushed over the Sam and Max revived games created by Telltale Games a few months ago, and frankly the story if presented in a right way and also if it is compelling enough for you to forgive a fair number of the gameplay issues that may crop up during play.

“Mass Effect”, of course has been billed as having such a compelling story that people forgave slightly the hideous inventory screen or team mates who about a dangerous in a gun fight as a tin of spam.
But there is a subtle difference.

“On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One” or OTRSPODEO for short was a tenner. “Mass Effect” is £30. Pure economics win. And so far it’s not been an overly bad choice.

The story started off with your character following a giant robot after he squashes your house and then you catch up to the other main characters who are the people who are drawn regularly over at Penny Arcade (it’s their baby, you see) and then you go through some clicking combat things, occasionally using a cat who licks himself and then runs away after apparently hurting the little sexually active juicing machine who you fight a lot.

That’s truly all I can say at the moment, because I have only just ventured into a woman’s bedroom who knows about things. Not the first time I’ve said that sentence but just like in real life, I don’t what happens afterwards. That’s the fun to be had afterwards! I guess that when I’ve played through more of OTRSPODEO, I can give a fully scathing, ridiculous and purely made-up idea of what the game is to you, the drug-crazed, pregnant public.

Another game which was purchased a long time ago but only played once and then confined to the digital dungeon of the Hard Drive is “Sins of a Solar Empire”, the independent strategy game which gave a lot of people pleasure over the fact a typical game lasts about 78 years and has lots of buttons which do things.

Considering the fact I’ve rarely been at home long enough recently to actually play a game like that for a long time at once, it appears this purchase has been a bit of a disaster. However, never to let people down, it will be the next game up for review on Gamers’ Corner on the podcast, if only to make sure that the lingering feeling that I’ve wasted my money for nothing will go away.

It’s important to make time for things that waste time, don’t you agree?

You may have noticed I used “” quite a lot. Never mind…. 🙂