A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME
Video Games, Victorian Style
Month: April 2015
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It’s a bloody pandemic. Turn back the boats, lock up your wives and daughters. They’re absolutely everywhere and they’re taking over. Of course I’m talking about remakes and remasters, the plague upon our houses, the trend that is moving the Doomsday clock’s minute hand closer and closer to midnight with every passing day. And I’ll…
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I love The Library. There, I said it. Every time I play through Halo: Combat Evolved it dawns on me that it is once Master Chief makes the acquaintance of 343 Guilty Spark that the game really picks up, and becomes justifiably one of the historical cornerstones of the medium. Being trapped in the tight…
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The Last Story was great, and so is Xenoblade Chronicles – although they’re not without their niggles. One quirk is that both games use British voice actors, which makes for a refreshing change from the usual American voices in video games. But having said that, the acting isn’t particularly, well, awe-inspiring, and in Xenoblade particularly…
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The number of games I want to play far outweighs the number of games I have the time to play (a subject I’ve touched on before). And with a baby soon to enter the Merriweather household, that gaming time is set to shrink even further. There are a few things I’m doing to make the…
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Good news everyone! With the arrival of Robin and Lucina, my set of Fire Emblem amiibos is complete! At least until they decide to release any more Fire Emblem-themed amiibos, that is. Lucina, of course, is one of the main characters in the recent Fire Emblem: Awakening for the 3DS, whereas Robin is the player’s…
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When i was a young university-aged adult i wanted desperately to be a cool dad when i grew up. By age 18 I’d met ‘the one’, which in my slightly over-studied and hormone fuelled mind, meant that I was on an accelerated path to parenthood. In the heady days that were the early 2000’s…
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There was something wonderfully magical about Viva Piñata. It was easy for tending to one’s garden to border on obsession, as building a sustainable ecosystem through both the comfort of nurture and the ruthlessness of nature, had me running home from work at lunchtime to briefly play god from the comfort of a beautifully manicured…
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I could write about Doom all day. And believe me I’ve tried. And tried again. For me it sits right next to Wipeout as one of the games that made me sit up and pay attention to games as more than just a thing that I did when the sun went down or the ball was…
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What ho, chums! Well, what a wonderful week I’ve had. I downloaded Affordable Space Adventures for the Wii U on Saturday, and it has proved to be an instant hit in the Merriweather household, with even the normally video-game-reticent Ms. D singing its praises. The game is one of those rare beasts – a Wii…
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Success! After the ups and downs of the past few days, I’ve finally managed to pre-order a Yarn Yoshi amiibo. I received a tip-off from this Reddit forum that GAME are taking in-store pre-orders for old yarn-face himself, even though you can’t currently pre-order through the website. So after confirming this was the case with…
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Playing through the original Halo again its hard to not be transported back to early in the new millenium. It was the sort of game that made jaws drop at the time, from the way light reflected off of the shiny surfaces in a way I at least hadn’t thought possible on a console, to…
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Regular readers will already be familiar with my current obsession of obtaining a Yarn Yoshi amiibo. Sadly, that dream seems further away than ever this afternoon – I just learned that preorders for Yoshi’s Woolly World – including a Yarn Yoshi amiibo – went up on Zavvi’s site on Saturday and sold out almost immediately.…
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In case you’re not aware, cricket is a pretty big deal down here. Over the Aussie summer it takes over this rather large island nation, with every advertisement sporting crickets past and present spruiking any and every company’s products, every news bulletin seemingly topped and tailed with news of Michael Clarke’s hamstring or the latest…
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OK, so I think I’m getting a bit obsessed with obtaining a Yarn Yoshi amiibo. Tantalisingly, GAME have uploaded pictures of said amiibo, and yet there’s no option to pre-order. Have they gone already? Am I too late? If not, when do the pre-orders start? Why am I so obsessed with a woolly plastic toy?…
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What-ho, chums! Since my last missive back in January, events have continued apace. The expected arrival of Merriweather Junior is now mere weeks away, after which I expect all gaming exploits will cease, at least for a time. So in the run up to the big day I’ve been luxuriating in my precious gaming time,…
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I’ve recently been playing through Xenoblade Chronicles for the first time, and I’ve been thoroughly enjoying it (well, apart from a few minor niggles, but more on that in a later post). After spending so much time in the company of Shulk and his mates, I began thinking how great it would be to have…
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Games that spend so much time encouraging the player to do so little are always walking that fine line between boredom and rewarding. If you can imagine being the guy(s) and girl(s) in the team charged with designing the levels, their only brief being to “make the player stop and think”, you’ll appreciate just how…
A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME 