A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME
Video Games, Victorian Style
Author: Lewis Packwood
-
At Play Expo Blackpool I met up with Simon Marston, who’s something of a Virtuality megafan. His garage is stuffed full of 199os VR kit, and he’s become an expert at keeping these fragile machines running. He brought along his two Virtuality 1000 series VR pods to the show, and he reckons that these are…
-
The other day, I took Merriweather Jr down to the local library for ‘Bookbugs’, a sort of pre-school jamboree involving singing, hollering and general high-jinks. Afterwards, we tarried a while, and he selected a few cardboard books to borrow that he especially liked the taste of. I decided to get in on the borrowing action,…
-
As promised, I thought I’d write up a few thoughts on my visit to the wonderful Play Expo Blackpool just over a week ago. It was a crazily hectic day in the end, as I rushed around trying to interview people and type up my notes, but I did manage to find some time to…
-
I read Ready Player One for the first time a couple of months ago, and I loved it. It’s unashamedly packed with references to 1980s games, films and TV shows, and it even feels like a good old-fashioned eighties hero fantasy movie in the way it’s structured. The fact that Steven Spielberg has signed on…
-
I’m off to Play Expo Blackpool on Saturday, for what promises to be a hectic but fun-packed day of gaming – of both the retro and future flavours. I have a few potential articles lined up based on some of the people and games being shown at the expo, so it’s going to be a…
-
When I heard that there are around 18 quintillion planets in the upcoming No Man’s Sky for PS4, it got me thinking – how does that number compare with the number of planets in the actual Universe? Then I started wondering whether the various procedurally generated creatures in the game would actually be likely to…
-
There’s a sale on! Use the code HAPPYAPRIL and get 15% off Most Agreeable T-shirts until 12th April! To order, simply click on one of the options below, according to the corner of the world in which you currently reside: CLICK TO VISIT THE MOST AGREEABLE EU SHOP CLICK TO VISIT THE MOST AGREEABLE US…
-
I thoroughly enjoyed TellTale’s take on The Walking Dead. The second season lost its way towards the end, with a final episode that dragged on forever towards a tepid conclusion, but overall I loved the characterization and tense atmosphere. But for my money, The Wolf Among Us is even better. For a start, the film-noir-style…
-
My Roy amiibo finally arrived this morning – and only three days late. Ooooh, GAME UK whyIoughta… [shakes fist]. To be fair, they sent it out on Thursday morning, so it’s probably more Royal Mail to blame. But everyone loves to take a pop at GAME sometimes, don’t they? *mumble mumble preowned prices mumble mumble…
-
Things have been quiet on the amiibo front of late. The last one I bought was R.O.B. back in November, although before that there was a relative flood of them through my front door in summer. And now another one is due to arrive. Tomorrow, Roy will join my other four Fire Emblem amiibo –…
-
In case you haven’t heard, there’s a new Nintendo console on the way. The NX, as it’s codenamed, will probably be available by the end of the year, and we’re likely to see some sort of big reveal at around the time of E3 in June – or even earlier. The word on the street…
-
This time last year, I had a bit of a rant about Nintendo jumping onto the free-to-play bandwagon. I suggested that Pokémon Shuffle was an example of “the worst model of free to play, where the user is constantly nagged to spend money”, and I suggested that the upcoming Fable Legends “gives a good example…
-
Does anyone have idea why they changed the name of this game in Europe and Australia? It was simply called Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam in the United States, which is a great little pun considering it features the characters from the Paper Mario universe causing chaos in the Mario & Luigi world. But Mario…
-
Regular readers will already be familiar with our “gaming piles o’ shame” over there on The Mantelpiece. Sir Gaulian’s backlog is mightily more impressive than mine, but both are nothing to be sniffed at. Put simply, we have far more games than we have time to play them. This is a frustrating situation to be…
-
Dontnod Entertainment is clearly a developer to watch. They scored a well-deserved hit with 2015’s Life is Strange, as noted in my end of year list, but it’s worth looking out 2013’s Remember Me to get a glimpse of the studio’s early brilliance. The game struggled to find a publisher at first – infamously, several…
-
Here was the pitch I made for the Star Wars article I just wrote for Kotaku UK: Every Star Wars game ever, from worst to best Exactly what it says, complete with many, many snarky comments. Particularly about Star Wars Kinect. It seemed a simple enough pitch, an article that would involve a fun stroll…
-
Better late than never. Following Sir Gaulian’s rundown in the middle of December, here’s my list of the creme de la creme of 2015 – a year in which I found myself playing my 3DS and Wii U more than anything else, despite all of the exciting goings on elsewhere. Indeed, 2015 felt like the…
-
One morning just before Christmas I was in full-on pre-Xmas deadline panic. I had a seemingly never-ending article due in and no end to it in sight, plus the usual pre-Chrimbo anxiety about unbought presents and uncooked turkey. But despite being pressed right up against a deadline, I just had to take some time out…
-
I miss the survival horror genre. Once upon a time, no console worth its salt would be seen dead without a clutch of survival horror titles to its name, but nowadays they’re as rare as praiseworthy tweets about Konami. I remember happily spending hours watching my housemate Ian complete Resident Evil 2 while I was…
-
Have you bought your ticket for The Force Awakens yet? I’ve got mine, of course – I’ll be at the 00.01 showing on 17 December, lapping up the film that I hope will banish all memories of The Phantom Menace. And that possibly might reveal Jar Jar Binks to be a Sith Lord. I’m not…
-
The last couple of times I’ve popped into GAME, I’ve been surprised at just how many amiibo are in stock. It seems that Nintendo have firmly delivered on their promise back in May to increase amiibo production. I saw all sorts of previously rare amiibo on my visits to GAME stores in Walthamstow and Edinburgh,…
-
After spending a few incredibly creepy hours with Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water for Wii U, I can safely say that it’s thoroughly enjoyable and incredibly creepy. Especially when playing it on your own with the lights down. The game arrived on Friday, complete with lots of lovely gear, and I managed to get…
-
So this turned up on my doorstep this morning. It’s quite strange to buy a Wii U game with ’18-rated’ emblazoned all over it. It almost feels naughty. I’m mega impressed by how much you get in the collectors’ edition, check it out: Look at all that: a poster, postcards, art book and steel case……
-
What-ho, chums! It’s been an inordinate amount of time since our last tete-a-tete, but you can blame this dearth of communication on the heavy mantle of fatherhood, which I now carry proudly across my shoulders. As such, the lightweight blouson of gaming has been left hanging on the neglect peg, although of late I’ve had…
-
I seem to always be way behind when it comes to the Pokémon franchise. The original games, Pokémon Red and Blue, passed me by on their European release in 1999 – I think at the time I dismissed them as being ‘for kids’ (I was at university at the time). But by the time Pokémon…
-
I’ve been a big fan of the work of William Gibson for a long time, but it was only recently I found out that his first novel, Neuromancer, was turned into a video game back in 1988. I found this especially interesting because Neuromancer (and its short-story prequel of sorts, Burning Chrome) essentially predicted the…
-
Back in the summer I found out that there’s a decommissioned nuclear bunker not far from where I live in Edinburgh, just at about the same time I heard the announcement of Fallout 4. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to write an article on what life in a real Fallout Vault would be like…
-
My latest Kotaku UK article is up – this time it’s a look back at all the games that made Konami great, seeing as all the indications are that they might stop supporting consoles: RIP Konami Console Games 1983-2015 I should point out that the slightly melodramatic title was the doing of the Kotaku UK…
-
My god that game was long. After something like 116 hours, I’ve finally put Xenoblade Chronicles to bed, and now I can move on with my life. That description makes it sound like I had an awful time, but that’s far from the truth. I mean, I wouldn’t have bothered playing the game for so…
-
There’s a sale on! Use the code SAVENOW and get 15% off Most Agreeable T-shirts until 11th August! To order, simply click on one of the options below, according to the corner of the world in which you currently reside: CLICK TO VISIT THE MOST AGREEABLE EU SHOP CLICK TO VISIT THE MOST AGREEABLE US…
-
What better way to proclaim your love for the WORLD’S GREATEST VICTORIAN-THEMED VIDEO GAMES BLOG than with some beautifully designed apparel? Thanks to our multi-talented resident designer Simon Bradbrook Esq., we’re proud to present our exclusive range of MOST AGREEABLE T-shirts, available in PREMIUM or PEASANT forms and in a RANGE OF EYE-GOUGING COLOURS to suit…
A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME 