Welcome to Rapture. An underwater city designed to bring together the world’s best and brightest to create a utopia deep below the sea. Scientific progress has flourished to the point where humans can improve their own bodies by ‘splicing’ up with ADAM, a type of sea slug that allows people to rewrite their own genome.

This can be used to make people stronger, faster, smarter and more and is mass-produced in the stomachs of young girls. But it’s also addictive – and the majority of Rapture has fallen under its influence. The people of this underwater dystopia will stop at nothing to get their fix – and you’re in their way.

And this Ayn Rand-esque world forms the setting for the coolest, edgiest first-person shooter I’ve ever played on the Xbox 360. A game so good that I’ve just completed it for the fifth time and rushed out to buy the original at the first opportunity.

You play Subject Delta, a Big Daddy forced to commit suicide by Sofia Lamb, but brought back to life by her daughter and your ‘Little Sister’ to save her from the cult of the Rapture Family – which Lamb is manipulating to spread her ideals and control the city. Genetically attached as you are, you can’t survive without your Little Sister – and in this world of spliced up maniacs, she can’t survive without you.

Within this engaging storyline, you are forced to choose between good and evil – do you save those who wronged you or let them live? You must use the little sisters you find to get ADAM for yourself to improve your own chances of survival, but do you set them free and take less benefit for yourself or harvest their bodies for your own selfish ends? I’ve always saved them – largely because the process of harvesting these small girls is too disturbing to want to watch it more than once.

Gaining this ADAM allows you to ‘splice up’ yourself. You can add cool new powers such as ‘incinerate’ – a plasmid that allows you to shoot flames from your hand, ‘hypnotise’ which allows you to turn splicers against each other amongst others and the many gene tonics that can be used to improve your strength, speed and ability to fight off enemies.

But the storyline elements are just part of the brilliance of Bioshock 2. Because not only can you become sucked into the world of Rapture, the gameplay is just brilliant. Running around this atmospheric world, you’ve got a wide range of weapons to deal with a wide range of enemies. And the ability to combine weapons with plasmids is inspired.

Because there are a great deal of possible combinations with which to deal with the splicers. You can set them on fire and then finish them off with your machine gun. Or freeze them with a bolt of electricty and then use your drill to deal a deadly blow. You can turn their own security guns against them or set traps for them to run into. You can shoot them in the chest with your shotgun or just hit them round the head with it. Or you can pin them against the wall with your speargun.

There are so many ways to kill your enemies in Bioshock 2 that you’ll never get bored of doing so. And when you’ve got normal enemies with guns, ones that can teleport themselves around the room, ‘brutes’ that are super-strong, fellow Big Daddies and the undeniably scary ‘Big Sisters’ that screech before they attack, it’s a good job too.

All of these reasons are why, despite the fact that Bioshock 2 is no new release, I’m still moved to blog about it now. The storyline is both engaging and moving and the gameplay is just awesome. And what’s more – you can pick it up on Amazon now for less than a tenner.

If you haven’t played Bioshock 2 or it’s predecessor before – buy it now. You won’t regret it.

• Bioshock logo by Dekuwa/Flickr
• Bioshock screenshot by Loimere/Flickr
• Eleanor Lamb image by Filipao 28/Flickr

More reading

• Bioshock 2 on Wikipedia
• Bioshock 2 on Amazon
• Bioshock 2 on IGN

In fact, my life pretty much used to consist of merely trying to get through the day without doing anything to completely humiliate myself or, at least, to try and stop anyone finding out about the stupid things I’d done.

I was reminded of the moment that is most brought up at family get-togethers, was shared with my entire football team thanks to my dad, who found it hilarious, and is possibly the most idiotic of the lot.

Before you read it, you need to realise that I didn’t have a lot of common sense back then (I still don’t) – it’s the only explanation for how it happened.

I was 14 years old, an intelligent young man, but fairly awkward and with a propensity for doing stupid things.

I wasn’t a geek or anything, but best fit into the category of inbetweener. I played football, but not particularly well, I was smart, but never found in the library and I liked getting drunk, but looked too young to ever be served.

My income came from a morning paper round. I would be up at 6am, out by quarter past and back by half seven to get ready for school.

I didn’t even get a respite on Saturdays and Sundays – if anything, it got worse because of the weekend papers so I had to do two or three trips.

These days, getting out of a bed is a massive struggle, so it amazes me that I managed to get out of bed every day. But I was used to it and could jump out of bed as soon as my alarm went off.

So when my alarm went off on that fateful day, I just jumped straight out of bed as usual and got dressed.

I headed downstairs, made myself some breakfast, wolfed it down and got on my bike with my bright orange paper bad and left.

I remember thinking that it seemed a bit darker than usual, but I attributed that to the winter months closing in. There were more people around than usual and they all seemed a bit drunk – maybe it had been a student night and people were on their way home.

When I got to the newsagent, it was closed. This confused me – my boss wasn’t the tardy type. If anything, he’d be the one going mad if you were late.

I didn’t have a watch with me and, although I had my first mobile phone, I hadn’t brought it with me. I only really used it try and flirt with girls and they didn’t really appreciate that at six in the morning.

Confused and still only half-awake, I cycled back to the nearest open place I could find to ask them the time. It turned out to be the kebab man. This didn’t seem strange to me.

The kebab man confirmed that it was half past midnight. As he said this, a drunk couple staggered up, took one look at me, burst into uncontrollable laughter and ordered a large doner.

I cycled home, planning to sneak back in quietly so that my family wouldn’t wake up and realise what an idiot I’d been.

Unfortunately, I quickly realised that I hadn’t brought my keys with me. They were always awake by the time I got back, so I’d never needed to.

Fortunately, our brand new extension extended beneath my own bedroom windows. Unfortunately, after climbing on top of it I realised that all of my windows were locked.

So I’d have to wake the house, which, for some reason, I chose to do by opening the letter box and wailing ‘mmmuuuuuummmm, can you open the doooooooor’ until she came down in her dressing gown and did just that.

I’d hoped that my mum, being the lightest sleeper, might sneak downstairs, let me in, laugh at me but agree not to tell anyone.

Unfortunately, she clearly didn’t recognise my voice and was flanked by my dad, who had come down just in case it was a burglar that he needed to knock out. Because burglars always enter houses by wailing through letterboxes.

As it happened, my dad told everyone he knew and probably more. It wouldn’t surprise me if he told everyone he saw that day – I’m sure there is a cashier at the supermarket who probably had a good laugh about it the next day.

He told all of my friends when they came over, all of my teammates on my football team and still laughs about the fact that I had my breakfast at midnight to this day.

I don’t know what it was that woke me up at midnight – it wasn’t my alarm as that went off at 6am as usual – but there must have been a noise that I’d just assumed was my alarm and hadn’t checked.

This was one of many such incidents that used to punctuate my life. These days, I’m better at stopping myself getting that far.

I remembered this story and decided to share it after getting a text from a friend at midnight, which woke me up.

Having got up and grabbed my towel to go in the shower, I did the thing that I’ve learnt from bitter experience to do and checked the time.

I got back into bed, remembered this story, laughed to myself and went back to sleep. At least I didn’t try to go to work with only the kebab man for company.

• Paper boy image by Stephen Zacharias on Flickr
• Kebab man images by Luke Robinson on Flickr

My current Barcelona team on Championship Manager 03/04

Of all the hours wasted on all of the Championship Manager/Football manager installments, I look back most fondly on those spent dominating world football for over a decade with Barcelona.

And winning the Premiership with Reading. And taking Boston United into the Championship (before being sacked for finishing in the bottom half…)

All on Championship Manager 03/04.

For me, this was the golden age of football management sims. Everything before was just not quite realistic or detailed enough. Everything afterwards was just too realistic or detailed.

The last game of this type that I bought was Football Manager 2009. Far too detailed, far too many options and far too much to do. It would take a serious amount of hours just to finish a season. I still enjoyed it, but it was too much.

So the arrival of this in the post for the princely sum of £1.99 made me very happy indeed.

But when I booted the game up and began to try and play it, I was absolutely gutted.

It would seem that I’d actually played my original version of the game (which I’d given away so that I could actually concentrate on my dissertation) on the very same laptop I now own – this must have been a few years after the game came out.

And worse, I’d messed around with the editor to try and cheat a bit – adding players like David Beckham to Reading and so on.

So whenever I started a new game, it was doomed to be a cheat. I’d ruined the game for myself. All I could do was boot up the one save game that remained available from before, titled ‘barcelona’

Well I can tell you now that I’m now a further four years ahead of where I had been all those years ago when I’d started playing ‘barcelona’ and consider that £1.99 to very well spent indeed.

I picked up the game immediately, remembered all of the old players I’d amassed and am just as hopelessly addicted as I was back then. It doesn’t matter that the editor is out-of-date. I don’t mind that I’ll never get to give Messi a run-out in my Barcelona team. It’s more fun to make superstars out of total unheardofs – players that will never exist in fact.

If I put in a CM session then I can actually complete a good portion of the season, even though I play as two managers (Barcelona and, currently, Fulham) In Football Manager 2009 I could play for a few hours and only play a handful of games.

Sure it’s now 2019 in my game and Wayne Rooney is about to retire – one of the few ‘real’ players left as he was 16 when the game started. Sure about half of the clubs in Spain have gone bankrupt and the chances of selling a player are remote. And sure, winning the league fourteen years in a row does suggest that the challenge has gone a little.

But I still absolutely love it.

The only negative I can really pull this game up on is the saving style. I can’t remember if it used to do this, but now when it auto saves every month it creates a new file. Which doesn’t half use a lot of disk space – it completely filled my laptop’s allocation before I realised what was happening.

But that is an option you can turn off, so it’s hard to mark it down.

In short, I absolutely love this game and I would recommend it to anyone over the current versions of the popular football management sim anyday. The only reason not to is that it is out-of-date.

But then the ability to see into the future is quite useful in football management. Word to the wise – a couple of kids called Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo get quite good.

It took me a while to figure out the dimensions that I needed, but it seems as though a good size for the main picture is 180×540 – that’s what mine keeps coming out at anyway.

The five smaller pictures are all 97px x 68px so by taking chunks out of the original image you used for your profile picture you can, in theory, create a cool effect.

Here’s what I’ve managed so far. I’m aware that it’s not there yet, but hopefully you can see what I’m trying to do.

Now check out this video of one of the coolest hacks of a facebook profile that I’ve ever seen. Well done sir!

Further inspiration:

• New Facebook Profile Hack: 15 Stunning Examples
• HowTo: Hack the New Facebook Profile Page With Your Face
• Awesome Facebook Profile Photos Header Hack

Express & Star Facebook page

On researching ideas for using Facebook for local news organisations, I found that there was no easy to find a local newspaper on Facebook. Why hasn’t anybody made a list of all of them before I wondered?

Because it’s time-consuming seems to be the answer. And having got through all the A’s and the B’s, I thought it time to ask for help.

So if you’ve some time to spare and fancy collecting some data so that I can put a useful list together and play with some of the data surrounding the regional press and their Facebook presences, read on.

Using this list of newspaper websites, I’d like people to commit to a letter of the alphabet (no, not X or Z…) and search for each name in the list on Facebook. I’d like to know:

a) Are they on Facebook?

b) If so, do they have a group, profile or page?

c) How many members/friends/likes does their principle persona have? – Please add the date you looked

d) Is the page used by the organisation? (Is it updated?)

e) If so, is it updated manually or automatically? If you can tell that is – give away automatic signs are things like RSS Graffiti and twitterfeed.

If you’d like to take part in this, please claim your letter in the comments section below and email me the results to todd.nash@hotmail.co.uk.

Being a cyncial guy, I fully expect that nobody will take me up on this offer – I realise I’m not offering much in return – but I will credit you in any blog posts that result from the data being collected.

A and B have already been done. Claim your letter below.

• Disclaimer: I work for MNA Digital and look after the Facebook pages for expressandstar.com and shropshirestar.com. Although I may use the data to inform my own work, this is a purely personal project.
  

Yesterday, in a wholly uncharacteristic move, I decided to join a gym. Now having seen the video that I’ve embedded and read that first line, you’ve probably put two and two together. Well, guess what. You’ve made five.

Because it wasn’t actually until today that I first saw this video and, like the majority of the hundreds of thousands of people that watched it before me, I felt inspired.

It’s a powerful, yet simple story. For those of you too lazy to watch the video (I don’t blame you, I probably wouldn’t either in your position) it’s about an American guy who used to be fat. Then he started running, lost weight and started to feel better about himself. Seriously, watch it – my description does it absolutely no justice whatsoever.

Now I’m not a portly chap. Far from it really – I’ve been a skinny little rake for the majority of my life and at 5’9 and 11 stone with a bmi of roughly 22.5, I’m pretty healthy on the face of it. Except that I don’t really feel that healthy.

I rarely have much energy, I don’t play anywhere near enough sport as I used to and, frankly, I’m just not in as good shape as I would like to be. I feel like my metabolism is slowing down more with every day and I don’t much like the idea of a beer belly.

And that’s where the overall message of this video comes in. And not just in a fitness sense – the message transpires to numerous elements of my life.

if you want to do it, all you have to do is do it

It’s simple, but it’s bloody true. My laziness tends to prevent me from doing things that I actually want to do. Combine that with the magnitude of starting something new and it’s a wonder I ever get anything done.

Whenever I’ve actually gone for a run, I’ve really enjoyed it. Whenever I’ve decided to go to football even though I really can’t be bothered, I’m really pleased that I did. And yes, whenever I’ve decided to write a blog post instead of having a couple of games of FIFA, I find it far more rewarding.

So I’m going to try my best to keep that message in mind. There are plenty of things that I want to do – get back to a good level of fitness, buy a car and start driving, write a book.

Miraculously, I’ve actually managed to do one of those (the car) but how that came about I’m still not quite sure. And I’ve made a start on another by joining a gym. Where I’m getting all this inspiration from, I’ve no idea.

But I’ll be keeping that little message in mind, because it’s so true.

if you want to do it, all you have to do is do it

Shuffling past the endless row of bicycle frames, the distant glow of the underground guiding him along the murky back streets of East London like the Star of Bethlehem, the weathered pensioner pulled at his solid gold watch. An arctic wind bit at his exposed ears like a snarling wolf as he wrenched away forty years of fidelity, catching a half-formed tear in the crevices beneath his eyes. He clutched at his hood, covering his balding crown with woolly warmth, slipping his new treasure into his pocket as he did so. His jewellery, instead of being the proud companion of his left wrist, would now sit with the lint and dirty tissues that soiled his winter coat.

Prized possessions filled the bag over his shoulder, weighing him down as he walked into the light. Each item told its own story, a satchel of memories cutting into his shoulder like a blunt knife into an overcooked slab of tough steak. In his arms sat a box, brimming with books accumulated over many long years, aching his muscles so. How representative of the entire situation, he reasoned to himself. Once again it was the source of his love that caused so much pain.

It was not just a piece of the man’s life that was lost, but his whole reason for living. An incentive to get out of bed in the morning and the distraction that kept him awake in it at night. It would, of course, be the little things that he missed the most. The friendship, the conversations, the way that they both knew each other inside out and the way that he always knew just what to say, always knew the right time. Two souls destined to float through eternity together, forever. Perhaps, in the end, it was not meant to be. His first love, no more.

Walking over the bridge, he stared towards the Thames. Gazing at nothing in particular, he placed the box by his weary feet and leaned on the brick wall, cold as his mood. He ran his palm over the icy pebbled surface and watched the moon in the sky, full as the hope in his heart on the day that they met.

A sense of guilt flashed over him as he stopped to stare at the dark December skyline. His thoughts drifted towards missed opportunities, the things that he wished he had done, what he should have said, how he would have acted differently. Those weekends he spent in the arms of another, lying about his location in order to avoid the consequences. The business trip to Prague where he liaised with the locals, missing his morning conference along the way. The pursuit of short-term pleasure over his long-term partner. Stupid, reckless mistakes that should have been consigned to his youth.

A vagrant shivered by his feet and craned his neck upwards to try and catch eyes, but the once-proud man was lost in his thoughts, choking up as his life followed the puddles into London’s sewer system. A tug at his trouser leg shook him from this other dimension.

“Sorry young man, I didn’t see you down there.”

“S’ok sir, just you’re in my bed n’all. Don’t spose you’ve got any change you can lend me?”

The man reservedly fumbled for his wallet. He had never given money to a begger before. He had never given money to anyone that he didn’t need to. “Of course, you need it more than I do” he replied as he separated the Queen’s head from her contemporaries. “Here you go” he said as he thought to himself. Possessions meant nothing without a purpose, what use had he for the belongings he treasured? They only weighed him down.

Picking up his satchel, he paused for a moment before removing a beautiful grey cashmere scarf and running it through his fingers. A gift for thirty years of faithful companionship, it had accompanied his person for over ten years, but was barely worn. Saved for special occasions only, it had adorned his neck on barely a dozen occasions. He passed it to the down and out, sat on the bridge in his sleeping bag.

“Take it” he said. “Are you sure?” replied the man through chattering lips. “Take it. It’s bitter out here. You need it more than I do.”

The satchel swapped shoulders. The box returned to the arms of its owner and the three stepped tentatively into the night. The cashmere scarf draped surprisingly around the neck of its new landlord. The glow from the tube station loomed in the distance and his tired feet shuffled towards it. It was getting late, around eight o’clock in the evening, and he longed for comfort…warmth…strength.

His wrinkled brow frowned as he considered the reasons for the peril of the evening. Had he made the most of their time together?  He loved that time. The best years of his long life, he considered them. At least he could look back with fond memories, he reassured himself. It hadn’t ended on a sour note, as amicably as can reasonably be expected. Maybe he would visit occasionally. Maybe not.

His arms ached from the weight of the books. A lifetimes worth of knowledge condensed into a selection of novels, guidebooks, textbooks and, of course, a solid dictionary and thesaurus set. Each page well worn, each corner had tasted the saliva on his finger as he flicked through the chapters. Unlike him, they had aged well. He had prided himself in keeping them in good condition. Not one tear amongst the set. Nor a single stain. Not even so much as a mug ring on a back cover. He loved them.

His scuffed shoes passed a school on his left hand side. His eyes recognised the crumbling building, it had been the feature shot in an article in the local newspaper two weeks ago. The story told how the students were failing badly, which had resulted in less funding for an institution that desperately needed it. The chalkboards hung from their screws, the damp attacked the walls and shoes stuck to the floor. It was a dire place. A great story. He should know, he wrote it.

He recalled the library books. Pages torn from their spines, doodles obscuring the words and covers bent backwards, doubled over in pain. A sharp contrast to his own belongings. He strode towards the double doors, once proud solid specimens, now graffiti-laden and miserable, and brushed the stones from the entrance mat. The sound of creaking knees barely broke the silence as he obscured the ‘welcome’ sign with his box.

He took his umbrella, a Christmas present two years ago from his Secret Santa. He was sure it was Becky, the receptionist at work, as he recalled running into work as fast as his still half-asleep legs would allow, rain-sodden and shivering. “Don’t you have an umbrella?” she had enquired. He had ignored her, preferring to shake himself like a wet German Shepherd, coating the front of her desk with second-hand rain water. The present made him feel bad for his rudeness. He told himself that he would give her an all-knowing wink and a smile the next time he came into work from the rain, but he never did. Forgetfulness is easy when you’re busy. Opening it up, he placed it gently over the uncovered box. The books had stayed pristine all their life; he wasn’t about to let that change now.

With a renewed spring in his step, he headed back towards the warm glow. Just around the corner sat the tube station sign, a beacon of hope and glory to a world-weary man. He trod carefully on the frozen steps, a broken hip being towards the bottom of his to-do list, and disappeared into the underworld. Again he fumbled in his pocket, his arthritic digits struggling to grip hold of his oyster card in the leather holder he had bought for the very purpose of carrying it.

As he placed it on the reader, he checked the balance of his card. £12.40 it read. No need to top up now he thought. Would he need to top up again, he wondered? The heavily advertised barriers opened automatically and he walked through, carrying the satchel in his palms, slightly sweaty from the exertion of the trip.

Going down the escalator, the smell of alcohol filled his nostrils and he felt a push in his back. Two young girls, goose pimples bubbling on their exposed skin shoved their way past, knocking him as they went. He felt the handles slip through his fingers as the revellers made their way down the metal steps, heels clicking as they ran for the tube. It what felt like a thousand long seconds, the bag made its steep descent towards the metal step and BANG, the sound of smashed ceramics filled the air. The girls turned around sharply, silently and looked at each other with a mischievous look of horror etched onto their faces, before muttering an apology and quickening their step.

He knew immediately the source of the piercing ceramic scream. His vase, an antique that he had picked up at a car boot sale twenty years ago for a fistful of pennies that belied its true value, had perished in battle. It had experienced a good life, reasoned the man. He had lovingly filled it with fresh flowers from the local market twice a week since the first day he clapped eyes on it. Daffodils, lilies, roses and posies…all had adorned this work of art. Thousands of flowers had grown, lived and died within this now shattered ceramic guardian.

Without hesitating he picked up the satchel and peered inside. Look on the bright side he considered; only the vase had broken. Not that there was much more left in his rapidly disappearing life. He picked up the shattered crockery and shovelled it into a carrier bag. Little use for it now, he reasoned. Like him, it had outlived its usefulness.

Arriving at the bottom of the escalators with a bump, he noticed the girls sitting on a cold, metal bench towards the end of the platform. Must have missed their train, he reasoned. One sat with her head between her legs, the other rubbing her back rhythmically. The poisonous alcohols latest victim struck down. There was no drinking allowed on the tube, just drunks. As he considered offering to help, the train pulled in.

The lights fizzed on and off in the carriage like the lights in a cheap horror flick. Eight seats, eight half-cut, half-feral, youths filling them. No changes there, thought the man as he leant his frail body against the doors. No use reasoning with them, he decided. Only two stops to go and better for them to feel guilty about it when time has hit them too and I was nothing but a cold, stiff corpse in the ground. The lights went out again.

BLEURGH

Great. These kids today can’t hold their liquor, the old man reasoned, considering launching into a ‘in my day’ tirade against the youths. The smell filled his nostrils, overpowering all other smells and forcing his body to recoil. He bit his lip and scrunched up his nose, condensing his face into a ball of sagging features. As he felt an unfamiliar sensation creeping over his shoes, the lights shone on.

The satchel was covered.

Blood boiled through swollen arteries, pumping fury into an overworked brain. Weakened chest muscles contracted around asthmatic lungs. Words of apology flew past unwelcoming ears and teeth grinded against their downstairs neighbours. Fingers clenched and toes curled. Stressful rage attacked every limb, every organ and every sense.

Count to ten, count to TEN, COUNT TO TEN, COUNT TO FUCKING TEN, his brain screamed at him.

Kill them all, KILL them all, KILL THEM ALL, KILL THEM FUCKING ALL, his heart fumed at him.

He caught the terrified looks in the youngster’s eyes. He saw the green look in the offenders face. She looked terrible. She probably felt terrible. Her friend looked horrified. Horrified and apologetic. The man considered his options.

BING. The doors opened. “This is Stepney Green.” said the soothing, female tones of the automated announcer. “Change here for the Hammersmith and City line.”

The creaking of 65-year-old knees broke the deathly silence of the District line. Arthritic fingers opened the satchel pocket and quickly searched through for a most-cherished item. The youths grimaced as he rumbled through the second-hand alcohol and picked out his beloved. Wiping it on his jacket and waving at the open-mouthed teens with a vomit-covered mitt, he picked up his carrier bag of shattered memories and departed the train. He removed his sick-stained jacket and put it on the cold, metal bench. As the doors closed, he wiped his brow and counted to ten. Slowly. He counted twice more, before heading towards his friends, the barriers.

Having successfully negotiated the barriers, no mean feat on a day such as this, he shuffled home, free of the baggage that had weighed him down. Walking down the street towards number 57, he tried to put the events behind him. Tomorrow would be a better day. He could make plans, sort himself out, pick himself up and start again.

He stopped at the front garden of the house and kneeled down. His knees, having being oiled with the toils they had faced, no longer filled the silence with their creaks. He cleared a space in the flowerbed and dug down with his hands, digging deep until a sizeable hole had formed. The carrier bag of crockery fitted the hole like a glove as the heavens began to open and the man felt a freezing drop of water attack his head. He filled the hole and left the vase with the flowers that had earned it its living for all those years. The broken beauty had found peace.

He approached the door and scrabbled around for his keys. They were in the jacket, on the bench, at the train station. He knocked the door and it opened cautiously, the warmth cuddling his shivering body as it escaped from the hallway. “Are you OK?” asked the silver haired lady at the door. She too had not aged well, but looked like a typical grandmother, a kindly sort of woman. The man didn’t care what she looked like, he would always think her the most beautiful woman in the world.

Forgetting that his shoes still boasted a thin varnish of vomit, he pulled them off and placed them on the rack. He looked at his most beloved possession that he had rescued from the satchel and wiped the glass display with a tissue before placing it on the mantelpiece. He studied it for a moment, trying to remember when the photograph inside was taken. She looked so happy in it, he thought to himself. So did he.

“Come to bed, John” his wife said under hushed tones. “It will all be alright in the morning. It’s just the start of a new adventure.” He shuffled up the stairs, holding her hand as they entered the bed that they had shared for forty-four years together. Barbara and her esteemed husband John, a proud journalist for forty of those. “I love you” said John. “I love you too” replied Barbara. “And from tomorrow we can start enjoying your retirement.”

Every year I do the exact same thing when it comes to buying the latest football game. I run out on the day that it is released, hand over my hard-earned money and then fire up the Xbox with excitement.

And every year I’m left disappointed.

I’m a fairly hardcore football gamer, you see. Manager mode is my sanctuary and, more often than not, I’ll have spent hours and hours turning Reading into a real force in English football – turning unheard of players into big names and playing every game along the way.

So when I upgrade to the new version of FIFA, I’m always left slightly disappointed by what I’ve left behind. It’s not just a game, it’s a team. I could still tell you most of the players I had in my FIFA ’09 manager mode team, so it’s something of an attachment.

This year was no different, except that the little touches of class that FIFA 11 offer have helped to soften the blow enormously.

Where FIFA 10 rubbed salt into the wounds by coming equipped with glitches that made my new signings disappear and my console freeze every third game, the latest version just feels altogether more polished.

I’ll concentrate on manager mode because it’s where my vice lies and it’s a real improvement over the previous version.

On FIFA 11, you’re not just tied down to match days for example – a feature that made transfer windows an absolute nightmare of few real opportunities.

Instead, you can work on a day-to-day basis – more like the Championship Manager games of old.

The method of signing players is much more intuitive and, dare I say, realistic than before, without being off-putting.

The data that you’re given post-match is also beautifully detailed and for a geeky stats man such as myself, it’s truly immersive. And the opportunity to watch highlights of the game – brilliant!

There are a couple of disadvantages – the talksport.net product placement is about as subtle as a fart in a lift and a little off-putting in my opinion.

And there doesn’t appear to be a way to improve your coaching staff and stadium as in previous versions, which was something that I always enjoyed.

But overall, manager mode feels more polished.

Gameplay

Such is my addiction to manager mode that I’ve got this far with barely a mention of the gameplay. And that’s a good thing.

Another big thing that I’ve found with upgrading football games is that it always takes you time to get used to the new style of gameplay. Everything always feels a bit different, largely because it is.

Yet I didn’t find this much of a problem with FIFA 11. The first game that I played seemed to pass a little slower than I was used to, but after that I didn’t really notice it at all.

All I noticed was the little improvements that they’ve made.

The headers – oh joy, the headers!

It was only when I scored with a bullet header from around the penalty area that I realised that this was something I could never do on previous FIFA games. If you didn’t head it from the six-yard line or closer, it wasn’t going anywhere other than straight at the goalkeeper more often than not.

But this just feels a bit more, well, realistic.

The tackling too feels as though you have just that little bit more control over it and the referees reactions to them feel a bit more human too.

They let you play on more, but realise when there is actually and advantage and when there isn’t. The days of being able to foul someone, leave the ball for a couple of seconds and then run off triumphantly could well be numbered.

In general, FIFA 11 just seems that little bit more polished than previous versions. It’s not a complete overhaul by an means, but this is a good thing.

If it isn’t broken don’t fix it.

But if there is one thing that EA Sports need to take note of, it’s the commentating. Update it please!

Andy Gray’s monologues are great, but when you’ve heard them hundreds of times already, the last thing that you want to do when you boot up your brand new game is to hear them again.

So for FIFA 12, please give me something different to listen to!

So this is less of a blog post and more of a statement of intent – that I won’t allow this site to fall so far behind again. And once I get the Internet in my beautiful new flat (I’m writing this from the online sanctity of Starbucks) I’ll have absolutely no excuse not to.

I’ve been half-heartedly looking into coding over the past few weeks and I’ve decided that I’m going to either teach myself or use alcohol to bribe one of our lovely, dashing team of developers *waves* into showing me the ropes. Then I’ll look at making this website look half-decent (although I might keep the hot-pink links.)

In the meantime, if you’re at all interested in what I’ve been upto – just check out expressandstar.com and shropshirestar.com where you’ll, hopefully, find plenty of evidence.

I’ll go into more detail about some of the social media and editorial work that I’ve done in the near future, but check out the Property, Motors and the recently created Careers sites which I look after.

Or if social media is your bag then cast your eye over our Twitter profile or Facebook page.

All the relevent links for shropshirestar.com are below. Looking forward to rediscovering my blogging mojo.

• Property
• Motors
• Careers
• Twitter
• Facebook

Speaking of which, my increasingly near future lies in Wolverhampton, where I’ve landed a job as an Online Journalist for MNA Digital, the webby arm of the Wolverhampton Express and Star and the Shropshire Star. Specifically, I’ll be taking over the commercial sections of the websites, namely Jobs, Property and Motoring, and will be responsible for the social media presence of both publications. It’s a big challenge and that’s why the role was so appealing to me.

I’ve got a lot of ideas to take with me into my new job and I’m chomping at the bit just to get going really. I felt as though I’d learnt all I could do in my current position with The Guardian and needed something new to get my teeth into to progress as a Journalist, a professional and an all-round person. It’s a fantastic opportunity and one that I know I’ll enjoy every minute of. Expect more updates as they come…