An alternative take on skating to contrast with the arcadey Tony Hawk series, Thrasher was a game I ended up enjoying for brief moments. There's one thing that really makes this game stand out compared to THPS - fleeing. I grew up in a city that didn't have skate-friendly architecture or parks at all. Skating wasn't really a subculture here, really. Bikes were the big hitter. Thrasher and THPS allowed me to pretend I was part of a world I'd see on television a lot which was nice enough, but unlike THPS, Thrasher showed the risk of it. The allure of being where you shouldn't be, doing what you shouldn't do? That was interesting, and it was even more interesting that there were consequences for it.

Unfortunately the rest of the game isn't quite as good. The feel of it is comparable to GTA3, oddly enough, but the actual gameplay is quite sluggish and hard to get a grip of.

I saw the most recent review by largebagofrocks, where they wrote "It gets closer to imitating the experience of IRL street skating by putting you into a similar frame of mind that figuring to how to skate a spot asks of you" and that got me thinking of a glorious cross between Mirror's Edge and Tony Hawk.

Somebody, make that a reality. I'd buy it.

GTA London has been outdone by two games since, The Italian Job and The Getaway - but these are both 3D adventures so I guess it doesn't really count.

The novelty of it, however, pushes it above GTA1 immensely for me because DMA's love of classic Brit crime capers is on full display here. The characters and setting are borderline Guy Ritchie and the whole Mod aesthetic the box art has is great. This was released during the waning years of Cool Britannia and by God I wish it would come back.

Plus; pulling off an expansion pack on the PS1? Very cool.

Grand Theft Auto is a top-down... thing. It's a driving game. A shooter. An early open world title. It sparked the beginning of a global phenomenon and helped raise what was once considered one of the greatest development studios in the world to prominence.

It's also crap. It's crap now and I can almost guarantee it was probably considered crap in '97, but I was but a wee lad in 1997 and was more concerned with trivial matters like being fed from a bottle and having my bottom cleaned - which is how I intend to go out in 2097, by the way.

GTA takes place across three cities: Liberty City, Vice City, and San Andreas. If all of these sound familiar it's because they were done extremely well in 3D and do not work in a 2D environment. Repetitive missions, nightmarish cutscenes and an often confusing map layout lead to not a whole lot of fun. GTA is a curiosity. DMA Design used the British press so well to generate controversy and sales for a game that, to a modern audience, seems remarkably tame. The gore is cartoonish, the existence of a dedicated fart button is wild, and the driving... the driving is dogshit. The gameplay itself is actually insufferable.

Get me outta here. How about they do a game set in London in 1969 next?