Just when you thought you'd never get to use those keyboard adventuring skills learnt in The Phantom Mansion Series ever again, a ship of hope appeared over the horizon in the form of PM2: Black Sea, which would appear to be part one of a whole new series. Ahoy m'hearties... [subbed by Cyberjar88 & Mantari].

NOTE: Fans of the series will know this already, but for everyone else note that this is a top down, old skool graphics, adventure and that my screen shot is from the opening sequence, not 'in game', and is for illustrative, 'ship of hope', purposes only.

In Vent Escape you must crawl around in a dark, monotonously uniform, maze like, ventilation system looking for a way to escape. Which doesn't sound too exciting, so I invented my own back story...

*ahem*

In Vent Escape you play the role of Bruce Willis locked, by space terrorists, in a room full of fire breathing scorpions at the top of a 37 story tower block due for demolition today. Fortunately, by stripping down to your dirty white undershirt, you have been able to squeeze into the ventilation system, thus avoiding a grizzly burny stingy death at the hands of the scorpions, but now you must escape the vents before the building collapses, dropping you 37 floors to your doom... Yippee-ki-yay muddy funster [subbed by Dom].

Samantha Swift And The Hidden Roses Of Athena is not a terrificly difficult, but is a nicely presented, 'find the hidden object' style point'n'click game. Unusually for this type of game not everything you need to find is in plain, albeit cunningly obscured, sight, with some items requiring the use of 'tools' to uncover them. It's a nice idea, that I haven't seen in this genre of game before, not that I play too many of them, but it doesn't add much difficulty. I'd say the game is great for younger players, people whose brains never woke up today (guilty) and high brow intellectuals who can't resist a bit of fun once in a while and can angle their computer screens so that no one else can see what they are doing [subbed by f00].

There would seem to be either a language barrier to successfully playing Phoenix Gate or my brain just never woke up today, and to be honest with you either, or indeed both, explanation is likely. However, since I'm a glass half full kind of guy, I'm happy to report that the door in the game makes a wicked whooshy noise which is keeping me entertained. And also, of course, phoenixes rock [subbed by myles].

Unless you've been lucky enough (sorry Jen) to hear my very own special rendition of "Beautiful Day" by U2 you'll be surprised to hear that up until now I've been a stranger to the recording studio. Hopefully Charisma can right this wrong... because my tone deaf singing ability certainly won't... [subbed by Cyberjar88 & easydiesel].

I might have missed posting Gatuno In Halloween on Friday, but I'll be damned if I'm going to wait until next Halloween to play it, so today I'll have a Halloween retrospective and play it anyway. As if Monday weren't scary enough (*) already... [subbed by Mimi & Marco].

(*): There's some artistic license in that statement because the game is actually pretty cute, and not very scary at all.

Friday treat time! The Great Basement Escape features a funky soundtrack, a basement and Steve McQueen on a motorcycle... well maybe not that the last one, but it still manges to be excellent, almost certainly because of the involvement of Mr Murtaugh. Enjoy.

You might have thought you could start slacking off a little as it's Friday, but no you can't. You have work to do down at the ball factory in Factory Balls 2. Step to it now, or I'll dock your pay (I have to raise funds somehow you know) [subbed by Bart, Cyberjar88, Jazelock, JhInG & evoLverR].

Enter the 'ghost world' in Haunted Mansion to try out your point'n'click haunting skills upon the unsuspecting couple in the 'real world'. You'll need to spook them quickly though, as this haunting is against the clock - there's no rest for the wicked don't you know... [subbed by f00].