Now and anon I like to fire up a game when I’m feeling a dash unmotivated to do pretty much anything. Most often I simply don’t have time to play, so when I do play I want the game to be something fascinatingly epic but in such a way as can be enjoyed ten minutes here, twenty minutes there, an hour over yonder. NOT something you have to play for three hours straight before you get in the groove.

Two nights ago I discovered Machinarium through a hapless link in a msn chat.

I was instantly hooked, the art is simply amazing, the level of detail beyond all comparison. The gameplay itself. Oh! Don’t get me started, I could *gasm all over at the mere thought of the brilliance therein.

Basically you play a robot that goes through a few adventures and solves many a puzzle in a beautifully designed world to, well I dont’ know what yet, haven’t gotten that far. It would seem though that it’s got something to do with love because whenever his memories are shown they’re about a lady robot.

It is also one of the hardest puzzle games I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing. Shivers, Monkey Island, Abe’s Oddysee/Exoddus? Don’t get me started, weaksauce in comparison to Machinarium! Downright bloody weaksauce! Often you will encounter a proper logic game, one as can be bought in stores sometimes, you’ve got to solve just to open a door.

Other times you are left solving five puzzles just to get to an item that solves a previous puzzle.

The best thing though? It’s absolutely DRM and any and all copy protection free. Buy the game, get the downloads for all OS’s and a soundtrack! Yay! How could I resist? So I didn’t, I shelved out the few euro it takes and it was possibly one of the best moneys ever spent.

Big game publisher, if you are reading this, yes, yes I do only buy games if they come without DRM. Sometimes I consider buying a big-name game, but usually get disappointed by the process half-way through and bail.

Once upon a time there was a magnificent first person shooter – Duke Nukem. Many of us were a little bit young when this game was popular and were only involved with it as some sort of retro gamers and … what was I saying? Someone just shouted balls of steel in my head. Stupid bastard.

Anyhow, to be honest I don’t exactly know jus twhat it was about Duke Nukem that made him such an epitome of ultimate coolness in gaming. Maybe it was that in one of the versions you could kick with your foot. And the other foot. And both feet at the same time … hilarity ensued. Oh and there were aliens! Aliens that went splat and killed you because let’s face it, you’re not Duke Nukem, you’re just pretending to be him, but will never be as cool as he was, even as cool as he was when he became nothing more than vaporware!

The first time Duke Nukem Forever – greatest game the world has ever seen, was announced it was still the year 1997 and I was around 10 years old. Of course at that time I’d never even heard of Duke Nukem because I only came in contact with him, in a completely platonic way of course, around the age of 14. So yes, when I started playing the greatest and the baddest was already a few years “old” and I played something oooold.

This old thing was extremely awesome even then. And that’s saying something, how many old games do you know that several years after their release still captivate a fresh audience already used to the improvements made since? None? Thought so. It is because of this unadulterated level of awesome that we kept waiting and waiting for Duke Nukem Forever.

But alas, today news broke that Duke Nukem Forever is in effect Duke Nukem For Never (title blatantly stolen from slashdot). Of course there are very few idiots left out there who were still actually waiting for this thing to be done. But I happened to be one of them, deep down somewhere, I hoped some day, some moon in t he future, some happy morning, I would get to play DNF. It is not to be, because 3D Realms is shutting down and with its demise all hope for a new Duke Nukem goes down the drain with them even though there were valid rumours last year of a playable demo finally having been produced.

Duke Nukem where aaaareeee youuuuuu?