Trying to Get Lost in the City of Love, Part 2: Making Music

Rewind now; not far, just to the night before.

The scene: a restaurant not far from Notre Dame, Paris, owned by a friendly, if overenthusiastic Portuguese man. There is a row of tables set up outside, brought together to seat eight people, but for now all the seats are empty. Piano music emanates from inside - Simon sits at the little upright in the cramped quarters of the lower floor bar, while Molly sings "I got Rhythm" accompanied (partially) by me. We'd met Molly and her friends earlier that day, at breakfast in the hostel. It was their first day there, and our last full one, and it being the fourth of July it seemed like a good reason to get together for a drink. She was there with Waller and Chiara, all the way from Rome where they'd been studying.

First-person shooters reborn

I have a problem with first-person shooters. The market is saturated with them: Call of Duty, Battlefront, Halo; they're all variations on the same run-jump-shoot game which is fast becoming incredibly dull and predictable. They're worse than rail shooters in some respects: at least with House of the Dead 3 I still have that arcade-style feel which is fun and addictive. Even if I'm not controlling my character, it's still more fun than I have playing Nazi zombies.

So why am I talking about shooting games if I hate them so? If I so want to be rid of them, why mention them at all? Why not let them drift back into obscurity in their own time, and concentrate on other things? Well the answer to those questions is very simple:

I've found a couple of fps games I really, really like.