Dear Future Gamer,

I'm not sure whether Matt's final comment (FG57) was meant to suggest that, "You don't get crap like that now", but I have to tell you, the bad-old-days are still here.

Let me take you through just the opening of a current best-selling game.

You start on a train to a place that you have apparently worked at for some time. You get off the train and people speak to you, you don't know them from Adam. You search the corridors and listen into conversations, would you do this everyday? You search the toilets, wouldn't people be finding your behaviour a bit strange by now? You search for your locker, when you find it, there's a thing in it. You can't move the thing. You'd think you'd have known that, it's in your locker. You find a suit and try to put it on, you can't because you haven't pushed the button on the panel you've just walked past. Why doesn't the old duffer at the panel push it for you? You eventually find the room where you work. "Turn on the fans", says a voice. How? You must have done this job a thousand times in your earlier life, why can't you do it now? You finally figure that perhaps you need the thing in your locker so you try to get out to get it. How do you get out? Have you never tried to get out before?..

So it goes... Graphics have improved but nothing else has.

Deke Roberts

FG: Games are just daft aren't they? They're not like real life at all...