I've let this place get a bit dusty, haven't I. Sorry about that.
Life got a little crazy over the last couple of months - well, crazier than usual, it's been a crazy year - and I just haven't felt much like writing about games. I've still played a few, and managed to knock out a couple of podcast episodes over at Immortal Machines, including an interview with the writer of Bastion that I'm really proud of. (Bastion is utterly fantastic, by the way, and if you haven't played it, you should. It will undoubtedly end up in my list of the year's favorite games.) More of that's on the way, I hope - I'm working my way through the last part of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and want to record an episode all about that; also, there's been a weird surge of indie tower defense variants that I want to do an IndieCast about.
But there hasn't been much writing, and I do feel bad about that. Like exercise, it's a habit that can be hard to restart once you've let it lapse, and it seems to get harder the longer you let it go.
There's a lot of big AAA titles right around the corner, of course - Battlefield 3, Skyrim, the PC version of Arkham City, the PC version of LA Noire - and I may wind up having something to say about those. Torchlight II continues to torture us with its lack of a release date, but they seem pretty adamant that it'll be out this year, so by definition it must be coming soon. It's been a very good year to love games, both small- and large-scale.
You know what I've actually been playing this week, though? Mage Gauntlet on my iPhone.
I don't talk much about iPhone games on here, maybe because I feel like they get covered pretty well by the internet at large already; between TouchArcade, SlideToPlay and following the right folks on Twitter it's hard to miss a good release (and there are so many that I could never keep up). In fact, even with Mage Gauntlet, rather than try to review it I'll just point you to the review over on STP, because it says pretty much everything I would. It's a game that'll hit a really sweet spot for anyone with fond memories of 16-bit action RPG's, but I think it's worth checking out for anyone with an iDevice. I will leave this trailer here for you to check out, because everybody loves trailers.
So if you've got an iPhone, iPad or other iThing, I can't recommend that enough. Check it out; it's on sale through Sunday. The other games by Rocketcat - Hook Champ, Super QuickHook and Hook Worlds - are also great fun, though in a totally different vein.
I could write a huge post about all the iPhone games I think are genuinely great, and how as a platform I think the iPhone really is leaving Nintendo and Sony both in the dust, much as I love my 3DS and its predecessors. At some point perhaps I'll do that. For tonight I just wanted to get the site out of mothballs and post something. Hopefully I'll have more offbeat freeware and indie stuff to talk about soon. Have a good weekend, everyone.