Last week on the 9th of February Adam Adamowicz passed away from cancer. I didn't know the mans name until I read his obituary on Joystiq which is utterly shameful as I'm a huge fan of his work. I spent most of the last few years completely lost in a world he designed and so far a great deal of this year lost in another world of his design. Adam was a conceptual artist for Bethesda games and the lead artist for Fallout 3 and Skyrim.

While Todd Howard is the name we automatically link as the creative force behind these titles it's clear from the art below that Adam did a lot of work to define the look and feel of the worlds he worked in. Cancer is an absolute bastard of a disease, no question. Adam and his contributions will no doubt be missed by millions of fans alongside his friends and family.

So we reach the end of the rope for both Ezio and Altair, the stars of the previous Assassin’s Creed Games, before a whole new world opens up with a new ancestor in the all ready announced Assassin’s Creed III. But is the game still as fresh and engaging as it was in Brotherhood, has the now silver haired Ezio still got the chops to keep us interested for one more game?

Well yes and no, Revelations is as good as you expect an Assassin’s Creed game to be. But with Assassin’s Creed you’re always expecting it to be better.

I’m pulling my finger out, giving it a thorough wash,  and getting back to the grind off providing short news bites from the world of gaming for your, something to read while you have a coffee, pleasure.

Read on and be amazed. Or at least interested, passingly interested even.

Prepared to be faced with a game that you wouldn't be able to finish in this lifetime. Prepare to venture through a land filled to the brim with mystical beasts, gorgeous landscapes and a vast array of quests that are seemingly endless. That's right, dive into The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and leave reality behind!

Yes, I know, there was no Tuesday Cap last week, and guess what, there isn’t one this week either, and before you get your hopes up there won’t be one next week.

Commence your pelting with rotten vegetables now.

The news roundup isn’t dead. I’ve just been too damn busy to do it. Grown up responsibilities and all that, a combination of work and family commitments that has me busy for almost every hour of the day. So, please accept my apologies and I promise to try gosh, darn hard to get back on schedule in February.

I have two reviews I'll post before the end of the week that will hopefully tide you over.

There has been a stack of excellent game demos appearing for download the last two weeks. Asura’s Wrath, Darkness 2, Final Fantasy XIII-2, a real smorgasbord of free game bites for people too cheap to spring for full games, and people like with no time but a bites worth.

The stand out for me was Kingdom of Amalur. This is a demo that sold me in a huge way putting the game firmly on my preorder list.

When I first read about Kingdom of Amalur I was excited, a few screenshot and gameplay videos didn’t enthuse me much. But after playing the demo I am psyched. For a start, it’s a timed demo, not some rough cut of the tutorial stage. You get to go out and explore some of the huge world, find your own quests and complete them, within forty five minutes. The gameplay is a very slick and pretty hack and slash style with charge moves, combinations, counters and violent finishing moves.

Immediately you think ah ha! This is one of those hack and slash games with middling level up bonuses that pretends to be an RPG. Not so, the game is massive, open world and has deep crafting elements that are easily the rival of Skyrim. The levelling system is complex with lots of options to customise your character in all sorts of directions, cross pollinating abilities between the three classes, rogue, warrior and mage. I’ve played through the demo four times so far using very different characters.

The world is far more cartoon like and animated than most RPG games, looking more like Warcraft than Oblivion, far more fantastical fantasy than mediaeval fantasy. The closest comparison would likely be Fable, only with a far smoother and action friendly control scheme and a bigger focus on fighting than farting.

Still not convinced? Well playing the demo unlocks a special item in Mass Effect 3, and playing to the end of your allotted play time earns you another special item. So there you go.

Sorry for the late Tuesday Cap but I have a really good excuse this time, that image above is cyclone Heidi which is about to hit where I live, so I spent last night sorting the house out for cyclone conditions. And now, well now things are a bit boring just waiting for it to happen. So I'm taking a moment to post the Cap. It’s week two of 2012 and between shooting down hokey apocalypse theories and generally annoying people, I’ve been combing the air waves for exciting game news.

And there isn’t any, nothing really exciting at any rate. So here’s some other news.