A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME
Video Games, Victorian Style
Category: Features
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The Thargoids popped up recently in Elite: Dangerous, and I talked to a group that’s working out what they want and where they came from. It involves everything from barnacles to genocide, with a bit of torture thrown in for good measure.
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I have to confess that I’m a useless statistics junkie, and keep records of everything from the number of video games I have to the number of movies I’ve seen this year. The 3DS comes with a super handy tool for geeky people like me called the Activity Log that for each game records a…
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The members of The Manor recount the scariest games they’ve ever played. And there are a few surprises…
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This week: Activision patents controversial bots, sublime Zelda propaganda posters, the games that should be on the Game Boy Mini, and a stunning JRPG from Indonesia.
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EA has closed Visceral Games and declared that it will ‘pivot’ the single-player Star Wars game it was developing into something with more longevity. But are single-player games really dead?
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This week on Spiffing Reads, we kick off with a fevered discussion on what games should be featured on the N64 Mini, should Nintendo deign to make one… A Massive Argument About Which Games Should Be on the N64 Mini (Kotaku UK) This is an awesome discussion of what games should be on the N64…
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Fire Emblem Warriors is out on 3DS and Switch today, and the Tiki and Chrom amiibos have been launched along side it. I’m still not quite sure what I think about them – they are… odd. Let’s take a closer look. Here’s Tiki, in all her eighties anime glory. Her look seems to be based…
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Our story begins with Lucius P. Merriweather making a most bizarre discovery in The Manor.
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This week on Spiffing Reads we start off by looking back on a wonderful video-game version of Blade Runner that’s all but impossible to play nowadays, and sadly is unlikely to be rereleased. Westwood’s Blade Runner is an all-time classic in danger of being forgotten (Eurogamer) The more I read about the 1997 Blade Runner…
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The Breath of the Wild Zelda amiibo is here! How does she look?
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Unfortunately, this request to show off my game collection has caught me in the middle of a move, but that won’t stop me from showing you the part of my collection that isn’t yet boxed up and in storage. In any case, this part of my collection accurately represents my taste in games. From this…
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This week, we start Spiffing Reads with yet another crazy tale from the fascinating space world of EVE Online, followed by something much more wholesome and heartwarming… ‘You will lose both hands’ – How the biggest theft in EVE Online history ended in death threats (Rock Paper Shotgun) Ah, EVE Online. The game I am…
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It’s with a mixture of pride and shame that I take my turn and present the third installment of our Show us your game collection series. Pride because looking at these pictures reminds me of all the good times I’ve had playing these games and of the effort that went into tracking down some of the…
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There she is, what a beauty. I love that they’ve faithfully recreated the original SNES packaging. Anyway, let’s get this baby open. Very neat and tidy. Right, let’s delve inside. Look at it! So tiny! It’s not much bigger than the controllers. Ah, bless the little wee thing… Anyway, one thing I didn’t realise is…
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All hail the return of Spiffing Reads! Every Friday we’ll round up the best writing on video games from the past week – and this week we start with an excellent article from a rat’s point of view. How Dishonored: Death of the Outsider makes rats of us all (Eurogamer) Oooh, some proper writing, with…
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Symphony of the Night is not just hands-down the greatest Castlevania game of all time, but I also consider it one of the top 5 greatest video games of all time. It is not just the original Metroidvania, but it’s the pinnacle of subgenre. Great looking backgrounds and enemies, incredible level design, a large array of…
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They’re finally here! And a day early in fact – I found Samus Aran and Squishy Metroid on my doorstep a whole day ahead of the street date, which was a lovely surprise. Let’s tear these things open! But first, what do they actually do? Here’s the back of the box to tell us: So…
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Well this is a lovely thing. Bundled with the latest issue of Retro Gamer is a 52-page, one-off issue of Super Play the nineties UK magazine dedicated to the Super NES. It’s a wonderful recreation, and you can tell it’s been a labour of love for its creators. A number of the original staff got…
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I’m not one to start bragging about my toys unsolicited, but Sir Lucius was kind enough to ask, perhaps not realizing that like some nerdy vampire, once invited, I will be all up in your business. Today’s tour begins with the living room. Here we have the PS4 Pro, PSVR, Xbone, and disgustingly excessive 4K HDR…
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I’ve been playing through XCOM: Enemy Within recently, and I’ve been struck by just how closely it resembles the sense of anxiety that pervades gaming in the modern era. I’m not talking about the turn-based combat – although perhaps that’s a good analogy for facing off against Twitter trolls. No, I’m talking about the incredibly…
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We thought it might be interesting if the Most Agreeable writers gave guided tours of our game collections. It’s always interesting to have a peek inside someone else’s collection, and we’re all quite different in terms of what games we like to collect, and what things are important to us. The other members of The…
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We’ve already waxed poetic on this site about our love of Fire Emblem Heroes, the surprisingly fun and super addictive smartphone addition to one of our favourite series. As Fire Emblem Heroes celebrates its six-month anniversary (well, technically its six-month mensiversary if you want to get pedantic), we thought it would be a good time to look back on…
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Free-to-play (aka F2P) gaming has been around for almost 20 years, and it’s clear that it’s here to stay. By now many categories of monetization have been firmly established. There was a time when free-to-play games were synonymous with shallow games with super sleazy money-making tactics, and the various app stores are still littered with…
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Hooray! Oh happy day! Two more amiibo have plopped through my door! This time it’s some double Corrin action – the Fire Emblem Fates protagonist in both male and female forms. Which one do you like best? I think I prefer Lady Corrin. That pose just shrieks carefree cool. It’s like she’s doing an interpretive…
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Super Castlevania IV finally brought Castlevania to the 16-bit world and did quite a fine job of it. Konami really went all out with this one, taking advantage of every bit of the Super Nintendo’s new technology. The backgrounds are highly detailed, animated, and often multi-layered. The vaunted parallax scrolling is also applied to the level in some interesting ways, making…
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The announcement at E3 this year that OG Xbox games would be made backwards compatible with Xbox One got me thinking. What original Xbox games are still worth playing in this future year of 2017? Well, I came up with a list of ten, which went up on Kotaku UK today: 10 of the Best…
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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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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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As Lucius mentioned, I sort of already went over the games I was happiest to see at this year’s E3, so I thought instead for my end of E3 post I would put together a short list of my favorite E3 bits instead. In no particular order: Dr. Mario, I need my pills! Too much…
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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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Well, the first day of Nintendo Christmas has come and gone, and as usual there were some disappointments, but overall this has been a solid E3 for Nintendo fans so far. First off, the cheers: There have been two big 180s for me in the past two days. The first was Super Mario Odyssey, which…
A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME 