For regular visitors to this site, you might well have noticed that there hasn’t been any content posted. Well, other than apologies about lack of content. In fact, right now this post may not even be read by anyone. So the following announcement is not going to come as much of a surprise:

As of 28th June 2012 the Surreal FM site will close down and be deleted.

This is the date when my hosting account comes up for renewal, so it’s a fine time to end it there. The whole reason it’s been up so long is that I stupidly took out a two year long deal.

As the person who founded the site, I feel I should give some parting words before that happens.

First up, yes there was no real plan to the site. The words, “Do some reviews, make some jokey articles and something, something, something… a bit like UK:Resistance,” were in my mind at the time. But I wanted to make a website, so I went ahead with it without consulting anyone. Originally it started out as a meeting post for members of the Surreal FM online gaming group. I’d post dull admin stuff to organise games and we’d vote on stuff. However, I soon got into the swing of posting the odd comedy story or repost something from UK:Resistance. Then came the reviews and the opinion pieces and others started doing the same.

Then I ruined it by taking a joke too far on Tetchy’s only opinion piece. Things still kept going ever increasing gaps between content until about 2009. By then I don’t think everyone else liked it that I was not making the same effort that they were. Most people left, del went on to Gamerdork and then it was Steve and I posting the odd thing here and there. Sometime later even Steve moved on to Gamerdork and I was left to look after the dying corpse. I don’t blame them, Gamerdork’s a far better organised and established place to go to.

The fact is since 2009 I’ve been having problems with depression, which has it’s ups and downs along the way but still takes hold today. It’s seriously affected my motivation to post anything though. I have an unfinished review of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow that I just cannot complete now. I may well have been playing other games since, but I really struggle to put anything cohesive together for a review at the moment and have since around 2009. I cannot put any funny comments on the gaming news as I just cannot be bothered to read through it any more. The other problem is that I have never been confident with promoting this place, as I myself never knew how to pitch it to people. To me, I’ve always seen my running of the place as haphazard and half-arsed. If I see it that way, what would others see it as? Who brought new people to the site? Why that would be Paula and Steve again putting in more effort than I ever did.

So yes, the writing’s been on the wall since 2009 (maybe even longer) and yet I’ve kept it going in the hope that I may well change and suddenly start writing again. That hasn’t happened and I now realise it’s time to put the old girl to rest, or as I called it in a previous post, “the forgotten bastard lovechild I had with what’s-her-face, who I only see occasionally to try and reassure myself I have a conscience.”

She’ll still be up as an archive until the closing date.

I'd like to thank Paula, Steve, Nicky, Derrick, Mark, Jon and Craig for their contributions to the site over the years. Your input was, despite what it may appear by some of my comments, much appreciated.

Goodbye, and thank you for your support over the years.

David “Dalvado” Holdsworth.

Researchers at Cornell University have rigged up two chatbot systems together so that they can talk to each other. This is always a good idea and in no way threatens human civilisation by allowing them to do so. It’s for science and all that.

Well, it had to happen one day, but a member of Surreal FM flock has moved on to pastures new.

Steve “Monkeyboyx” Robinson has started writing elsewhere; namely writing pieces on Gamerdork, The Little Metal Dog Show and his own One-a-Day blog. Sick and tired of doing all the work here, he probably decided to move on to a more positive place. I’d like to thank Steve for his contributions and wish him the best.

So, as I said in my previous post about UK:Resistance, that site was a kind of inspiration for me setting up Surreal FM. What follows next is the rambling I got side-tracked into and then decided to put in another post instead.

It is with great sorrow that I have to post this blog entry. For one of the inspirations for setting up this site has decided to call it a day. Yes, Gary “Commander Zorg” Cutlack has announced that UK:Resistance is closing down.

It’s been a while since I wrote anything, and sitting on the beanbag in the front room (while playing Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit which is very good, but I’ll get to that another time)I was struck with the notion of trying to write my review of Mass Effect 1 and 2 about oooooooh 11 months after playing them both. This should be interesting, seeing as my memory is horrendous and I’m prone to exaggeration. And I've had wine. ONWARD!

Every so often I go into a spiralling freefall of apathy and loathing towards my so called hobby. I get so crushingly bored with absolutely everything that it frustrates me to the point of grinding my teeth down to bloody stumps and just selling the whole bloody lot and living a practically technology free life seems like a damn fine idea. Of course I can’t do that because I’d be strung up if I got rid of the only means of playing Singstar and Rock Band when people come round, and that my Pc would have to go due to the obscene amount of games I have on Steam and that means losing the internet and I’d probably die if I did that. So I won’t.

I’m just going to come out and say it right now at the beginning of the review. Bayonetta is quite simply, bat shit crazy. It also happens to be one of my games of the year, although really with having only played three games released this year – the rest of which will be reviewed here soon - that could just mean my pickiness in the face of poverty has paid off.

Well, once again I find myself not updating my blog for a very very long time, mainly due to crippling apathy and my inability to articulate anything without using swear words, shit similes and mnemonics, and words I don't actually know the meaning of.

I've played quite a bit but I'm back in my midlife gaming crisis. I guess I'll write something soon. It is just a guess an all.