This happily brings me to announcing my return to the world of gaming and blogging.  Truth be told, I feel a bit like Superman after his return from the ruins of Krypton: your woman’s left you for another man, and the world has moved on.  But here I am anyway, at it again.  It may take me a while to settle back into my groove, but I’m sure It’ll be worth it.  All’s that’s left for me to do now is cook up a pretty sweet blog post for your enjoyment.

Regards,

Los “there’s a snake in my boots” Havros

In the meantime, I’ll probably still be rambling on about exactly what I’m eating, how many brews I’ve managed to get through in a day, debating whether it’s worth going to the gym, and trying to articulate why for the love of God the neighbours are playing music so loud at 4am, all on Twitter.

Missing you already,

Los Havros
xoxo
(EDIT: does that mean hugs and kisses?!)

This is where you come in, dear reader.  If you’ve got any ideas or things you’d want to see (within reason!) then I’m perfectly willing to go in whichever direction the community wants with this.

Your partner in crime,

Los Havros

I’d like to share with you some memories of gaming days gone by, when times were simpler, and true 3D gaming was a novelty…

Schoolboy shenanigans

In the mid 90s, I’ll always remember finishing school on a Friday, and spending it with my mate.  First, I’d go out with him and help him do his paper round, munching on some sweets we’d got at the newsagents.  Later on we’d fire up the PlayStation (original) and play Gran Turismo- with a difference.

We weren’t gamblers by any stretch of the imagination, but we’d place ‘penny bets’ on each race which made things interesting.  Every so often we would up the stakes by placing all or nothing bets on one race.  In times like those, it felt like the world was on my shoulders- if I lost, I could end up losing as much as 50 pence!  But I digress…

Ready, steady, go

For a young lad then, Gran Turismo was a slice of gaming heaven.  You had gorgeous 3D graphics, with hundreds of cars rendered beautifully.  And they were fast.  That’s what mattered.  But the Gran Turismo series heralded more than just racing, it brought out the whole ‘driving experience’.  The music was perfect; it varied between being fast and satisfying, to having some haunting melodies.  Just thinking about it is sending shivers down my spine.

They say the car’s the star, but the racing tracks were equally impressive.  Each track became a thing of legend; Trial Mountain, Grand Valley Speedway, and Deep Forest Raceway to name a few.  Sure, the AI was a bit unforgiving as they never made mistakes, just following their own perfect racing line flawlessly.  Quite a strong constrast to AI behaviour in the games of today such as Race Rriver: GRID in which yes, your competitors can and do make mistakes.

Everyone will remember saving up and buying their first car.  The patience required to hold off on any rash purchases, holding out for the high-end model that you really wanted.  I would be doing Gran Turismo a disservice if I didn’t mention the detailed customisations you could make to your car: fitting turbos, racing chips, choosing the right tires and tweaking the suspension.  This was to many people, including myself, a level of detailed never seen before in a racing game.  But Gran Turismo was never just another racing game, was it?  It was the real driving simulator.

A vintage

So, do I think that Gran Turismo has aged well?  Of course it has.  It is a classic game that showed everyone just what a driving game could be.  The series has gone from strength to strength, gathering new fans with each successive game.  Whilst I do admit to prefering to sample the delights of Collin McRae: DiRT, and Race Driver: GRID for my driving fix these days, I will always look back on my gaming memories with Gran Turismo fondly.

Do you have any retro gaming memories that you’d like to share?  I’d love to hear your stories!

Secondly, what should be interesting is that I’ll be attending various events over the next few months, like the Liverpool Twestival for instance.  Hopefully it’ll go some way to proving that I am in fact a real person, and not just a disembodied voice flowing down the digital river of cyberspace

This post will be updated as and when everything’s alright again.

Finished!

Who knows what to expect from this blog in the next few weeks?  There’ll possibly be a few more posts than usual, and I’ll be finishing some features that I’ve wanted to write about for quite some time now.  I’ll also be cleaning up some of my old posts: removing links, fixing any typos, and giving them a general polish.

Apart from that, I’ll be catching up on some quality gaming, getting my uni work done, and relaxing by the fire with some mulled wine otherwise.  Fantastic.

All the best,

Los Havros

I thought I’d just take a few moments to look back on the past few months of my blog. Whilst the blog is only a few months old itself, I feel that in a short amount of time is has established itself as a niche blog about a UK PS3 gamer, interspersed with the varied and sometimes random thoughts of the author.

The output of the entire gaming provision of City In The Clouds and its blog was effectively switched to the ‘Los Havros’ blog at the beginning of 2008. Whilst the City In The Clouds blog carried on limping around for the next few months, I had always intended for the Los Havros blog to take over completely.

Integrating most of the old posts into Los Havros suffered from a few teething problems, but almost doubled the amount of content available. The end result is that Los Havros now has a rich collection of material and has mostly continued to focus on PS3 gaming.

My aim for 2009, is to diversify the content on the blog by covering a host of other topics that I find interesting, whilst still retaining a strong games focus. At the end of the day, I want to write about whatever interests me, and I hope you find it interesting too. I’m not really bothered about blog stats and chasing traffic; I just want to let my voice be heard.

Furthermore to this, I hope to write far more longer-length articles and opinion pieces to offset all the asides I constantly publish! For those of you who love music, I have a special project that’s been brewing for several months. Stay tuned!

Los Havros.