Around about now, you’ll be sitting, feet up on the couch, round bellied and satisfied in your new jumper with the sleeves that are too long thinking about what you’re going to do with the money you got in your card from Auntie Maureen and your obligatory voucher for Game that you parentage got after wondering about the shop looking confusedly at Hello Kitty: Roller Rescue and Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge*. I’d like to put forth some suggestions as to what to do with this bounty. BUY GAMES! You might think there are other things worth owning in this life. YOU’RE WRONG.

First up Peter Jackson’s King Kong. Go see the film then play the game. It’s big, there’s shooting stuff and you get to play a big ape. You get to play a big angry ape on the streets of New York. It’s fun, it’s well made and it’s made by Michael Ancel, so you just know there’s gonna be more to it than meets the eye. Also having sobbed your way through the end of the movie the game will give you the chance to make yourself feel better with an alternative ending! I was down the pub with Peter Jackson the other night, or Pete as I call him** and he had this to say about it “I wanted the game to be able to take the audience a bit further than what the film could, and the final climax of the game gave us an opportunity to do something that the film could not do, which was to have an alternate ending – obviously everybody pretty much knows how King Kong ends.” Go back after completing the game and earn yourself 250,000 points to see the other ending.

Next I have a recommendation for those of you who didn’t get any dosh this Christmas. Get yourself a Second Life! Second Life is an MMO that’s been running for 2 years. It’s free, you can download it from www.secondlife.com and it’s intensely fun. Some of you may have been playing this for a while but I’ve only just discovered Second Life and have become absolutely obsessed by it. It’s hard to do justice to a description of what it is but I’ll try. It’s a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. You can do almost anything you can think of in this game. The other night I went motorcycling under the sea with a scary clown. I’ve been wrestling the ring with a guy in a Mexican wrestling mask. I’ve been shopping in a virtual mall for clothes, a new hairdo and even a new face for my character. If you haven’t experienced Second Life now’s the time. Don’t forget to put my name in the referral box when you sign up. I’m Kitt Lobo.

Lastly my big tip for 2006 is Dragon Quest VIII. If you’re into RPG’s it’s time to get very excited because this game is fantastic. Check out our FDTV broadcast to hear all about it.

Click here to play video (29mb, WMV format, 11:04)

** This is totally untrue