Facial deformities on the tube

Right... I apologise sincerely in advance for any offence this may cause but I need to get it off my chest.

I was back at work today after a very enjoyable five days off from work and as if getting up in the freezing cold and having to leave the house to sit on the tube for an hour isn't bad enough I was greeted by a new poster at Marylebone station. Now this wasn't one of those nice adverts for holidays in the Ukraine or even some of that pretentious poetry on the underground that's been popping up recently. It was a five foot tall picture of a Joseph Merrick lookalike. Now I'm really sorry but facial deformities scare me. I mean really scare me. I didn't feel right all morning. It's a feeling not unlike the one you got as a child when you watched the climax of The Fly when Jeff Goldblum's head splits open to reveal the monster underneath or one of the Robocop goons meets his end by getting covered in toxic waste and partially melting.

I'm a bit scared now that I might run into this poster at other stations when I'm similarly unprepared... or even worse having it in front of me in a carriage when I have to travel from Balham to Edgeware... or opposite the platform blown up to about 20 feet high.

Everyone needs a phobia but I wish mine wasn't so horrible to people that already must have a really shit time.

Top Games List - Burnout Legends

I thought I better get going on the first game nn my list before I completely forgot about it and wrote about something else.

I was a bit of a late comer to the whole Burnout party. I never played the first three games on PS2 which is strange because Ridge Racer 4 is one of my favourite racing games and I'm a huge fan of the arcade style. I picked up Burnout Legends on the PSP fairly early after it came out as during that time there was a distinct lack of great games on the PSP. I played it to death and I truly believe that it's one of the contributing factors in me only getting a 2:2 at university. This was also during the period where I was travelling to Brighton, London or Milton Keynes to see Jordan every week so it helped me through a lot of long train and coach journeys.

My only gripe with the game was the rather horrendous load times. When you were playing crash mode and had to restart the level every 30 seconds or so the 15 second load times really got in the way.

Once Christmas is over and I have some free cash I'll definitely be picking up Burnout Paradise on the 360.

Favourite games

Today at work I was listening to the Final Fantasy VII Advent Children soundtrack. Advent Children is a CGI movie sequel to Final Fantasy VII - one of the most loved video games ever made. This got me thinking about FFVII and then about all of the other games that I have loved over the years which gave me the idea of doing a top 10. After thinking about what would make my top 10 I ended up with a mental list of about 15 or 20 and could not for the life of me decide what would make the list and what wouldn't.

So I decided it would be more fun to write a series of posts over the next few weeks in which I would name one game on the list and describe why it's there. The list will be in alphabetical order (or in no order at all) so as not to show any favouritism.

I must stress that this is just my own oppinion and I will inevitably leave off many amazing games due to me not playing them or just thinking they aren't very good. Over the years I have owned a fair few consoles and a pretty decent gaming PC so the list will cover most formats. For your information, this is what I've owned...

ZX Spectrum, NES, Master System, Mega Drive, MegaCD, 32X, SNES, Sega Saturn, N64, Playstation, Playstation 2, Game Boy, DS, PSP, Pocketstation (ahem) and XBox 360.

I have only recently acquired the XBox 360 so don't expect to see many new games on the list and I haven't really played the N64 since Jordan told me she had one a couple of years ago.

I hope you all enjoy my trip down memory lane and please give your oppinions on my choices!