A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME
Video Games, Victorian Style
Author: Lewis Packwood
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What a lovely looking game. It’s just so, so… lovely. BEAUTIFUL in fact. Not since I reviewed Child of Light have I been so entranced by a game’s visuals – the hand-drawn animation here has to be seen to be believed. I’ve come away from it wishing that more games could adopt the same style…
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When Nintendo announced the SNES mini last week – or to give it its full, hellishly cumbersome name, the Nintendo Classic Mini: Super Nintendo Entertainment System – I think I actually did a little whoop of excitement. How very un-British of me – I hope noone else in The Manor heard it. I wasn’t too…
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I wrote a feature called ‘Why does everyone hate GAME?’ for Kotaku UK the other day, and it’s already garnered a healthy thread of comments. Seems I’m not the only one who has an opinion on the UK retailer. It’s sad really – judging by the venom directed at the company, no one has much love…
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Zone of the Enders is embarrassingly short, repetitive, packed with piss-poor weapons and has a plot that makes no sense. Yet somehow I found myself quite enjoying it. I think I’m right in saying that it was one of the launch titles for the PlayStation 2, and at the time reviewers were wowed by its…
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What ho, chums! I’ve been thinking of giving my Xbox 360 the old heave ho for a while now. But before I let the old girl go, I wanted to sample some of the handful of games I’ve procured for it that I’ve yet to cast my critical eye over. I blew the dust out…
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Well, my Celica amiibo actually arrived about a week ago, but what with all the hoo-ha about E3, I’ve not thought to mention it until now. Take a look, she’s a beaut: In fact, I think this is the best looking Fire Emblem amiibo yet. Even better, she doesn’t have creepy eyes. I’m aiming to…
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E3 is finally over, after a seemingly endless stream of barely watchable conferences, Earth-shattering game announcements, utterly desirable plastic figurines, tepidly received hardware, surprisingly sweary trailers, zombies, androids, gods and superheroes, visions of the post-apocalypse (and zombies), more visions of the post-apocalypse (and Nazis), and visions of Mario *being* a dinosaur (no Nazis or zombies).…
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Well, Nintendo certainly went all out on the amiibo announcements at this year’s E3. Here’s a look at what delightful plastic figures we can expect over the next few months, starting off with the ones that everyone’s getting most excited about… Metroid amiibo Oh yeah, now we’re talking. Nintendo announced two amiibos to tie in…
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At a svelte 30 minutes, Nintendo’s E3 presentation was far shorter than its rivals – but it packed a few truly stunning reveals into its relatively slim running time. The low points were undoubtedly Reggie Fils-Aime’s interminable ramblings, where he stirred in metaphor after metaphor and ended up producing a truly inedible word soup. “The…
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I… I don’t even have the words… First there was this little bombshell, dropped in Nintendo’s Spotlight presentation: No release date, no gameplay footage, just a title. IT’S HAPPENING. METROID PRIME 4 IS HAPPENING. And if that wasn’t exciting enough, this stunning news was revealed shortly after the Spotlight ended: Yep, there’s a new 2D…
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Project Scorpio has a new name: Xbox One X, aka Kiss Hug Kiss (XOX). The new machine is the tiniest Xbox ever, and although many have been praising the updated design as “sleek“, it just looks like a boring black box to me. Sure, it will nestle in nicely among the other various black boxes…
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I tried watching EA’s presentation last night. Two times. The first time I tuned in, it happened to be at a point when some slick, corporate, man facsimile was beaming scarily down the camera and unblinkingly informing me how wonderful something was. I couldn’t even stay watching long enough to find out what that thing…
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EA will kick off E3 2017 with their pre-show presentation tomorrow, so we thought we’d put our heads together and come up with a list of the announcements we’d like to see over the next week or so. Maybe this is finally the year of Half-Life 3… Hey, what do you mean it will never…
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Recently I wrote that Doshin the Giant is one of ten GameCube games that I’d love to see on Nintendo Switch. All these years later, it’s still a unique and special experience – there’s nothing else quite like it. Its closest influence is probably the old Bullfrog games Populous, Magic Carpet and Black & White,…
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My amiibo obsession remains as strong as ever, and the biggest chunk of that obsession is reserved for Fire Emblem amiibo. Move over Mario, I will always hold a candle for Roy, Lucina and their quasi-medieval chums. Speaking of which, Alm arrived today. Alm is one of the two main protagonists in the recently released…
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Look what just arrived in the post! Sir Gaulian has been banging on about how good Darksiders is for years, so I finally decided to try it for myself. I initially dismissed the game as a bit emo for my tastes – the ‘LOOK AT ME I’M SAD AND ANGRY’ stylings of try-hard sequel Prince…
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Let’s get this out of the way first: Xenoblade Chronicles X is big. Really big. Xenoblade Chronicles on the Wii was a pretty damn massive 100+ hour adventure, but its sequel (of sorts) knocks its predecessor into a cocked hat in terms of scale. At around 50 hours in, there was still an entire continent…
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For The Year of Zelda, I’m aiming to finish all of the Zelda games I’ve yet to complete before treating myself to Breath of the Wild at the year’s end. It’s going pretty slowly so far – I’ve only managed to complete Oracle of Seasons from the list – but that’s mostly down to putting…
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What ho, chums! First of all, a big thanks to everyone who has contacted me about writing for A Most Agreeable Pastime, it’s great to hear from you. Sorry for my lack of replies so far – I’ve been hugely busy over the past couple of weeks, but I will get back you all eventually.…
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A while back, I set myself the goal of finishing all of the Zelda games I’ve yet to play before I start the latest game in the series, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Oracle of Seasons is the first one I can tick off that list. Originally released for the Game Boy…
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Just look at the wee little fella! He’s brightened up my desk with his cheeky little face – surely Chibi-Robo easily takes the prize as the cutest amiibo so far. I bought the cheeky scamp as part of the above package with the game Chibi-Robo Zip Lash – I spotted the bundle for the absolutely…
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You may have noticed it’s been a bit quiet in The Manor lately. Sir Gaulian announced his retirement in February (although he’s promised to pop back in to say hello when the fancy takes him), and I’ve been riotously busy with work, to the point where all blogging duties have ceased. However, things are a…
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This week on Spiffing Reads, we kick off with a couple of interesting opinion pieces on the Nintendo Switch… Don’t Judge Switch by the Stagnant Competition (Kotaku UK) This article struck a chord with me, particularly in how it accuses many in the games industry of not being able to look past technical specs. “There…
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Like pretty much everyone else in the gaming world, I’m very excited for the release of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. After the slightly lacklustre reveal of the Nintendo Switch, I’ve decided to get the game on the Wii U and hold off on purchasing a Switch until there are a few…
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This week on Spiffing Reads, we start off with a worrying look at what madness Twitch hath wrought. How Twitch is turning ‘always be streaming’ into a career with zero balance (Polygon) Once I got past the slightly baffling headline, this turned out to be a fascinating and slightly scary article about how much time…
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I started watching yesterday’s Fire Emblem Direct expecting news about Fire Emblem Warriors and the new mobile Fire Emblem game. So imagine my delight when we got news of no less than FOUR upcoming Fire Emblem games – and some sweet, sweet new Amiibo to boot. Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia is a remake…
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I was going to post this on Friday, but then the whole Nintendo Switch reveal got me all hot under the collar and I had to write a lengthy diatribe about it. I’m sure further thoughts will be forthcoming… Anyway, we’ve had some cracking gaming articles over the past couple of weeks, now that the…
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I didn’t get up at 4am this morning to watch the Nintendo Switch Presentation – I’m not a masochist. But I logged on first thing to devour all the juicy information that Nintendo revealed about their new console. And it left somewhat of a dry taste in my mouth. The main thing I was hoping…
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We’re only days away from the Nintendo Switch press conference, and I’m very excited to find out more about Nintendo’s next console. In an ideal world, these are the things I’d like to hear. Battery life of at least 8 hours The Nintendo 3DS was hobbled at launch by weak batteries – the most you…
A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME 