A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME
Video Games, Victorian Style
Category: Features
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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’ve been aware of Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite for some time now, but have never really given it much consideration. Marvel vs. Capcom 3 was pretty enough, but the almost complete absence of single player content resulted in me losing interest pretty quickly. Even seeing the latest E3 footage, I thought “that looks nice” and then just…
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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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There were surprisingly few new games revealed at Sony’s conference, with the majority of trailers being new footage of games that were already revealed at last year’s E3, and very little revealed about the few new VR games they displayed, but even so, there were some pretty nice things to see here. Part of me is…
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So, apparently the director of Beyond Good & Evil 2 was…not entirely truthful when he claimed that the game would not be present at E3 2017, as a cinematic trailer was revealed today: Wow. That…is certainly some amazing CGI, but is it just me or is this one of the cringiest videos ever? I suppose…
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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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Oh geez. I didn’t even realize Bethesda was doing their show ahead of the actual start of E3 too! Guess I’ll be staying up late just to show you fine readers another 5 exciting upcoming new titles! (Just kidding, I’m always up this late) #5: Dishonored 2: Death of the Outsider (Xbox, PlayStation, PC) I’m a…
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Wow. Well, E3 hasn’t even actually started yet and there have already been some pretty impressive reveals. There are already far too many for me to even keep track of alone, so for now I’ll just stick to some personal highlights of today’s Microsoft Briefing. #5: State of Decay 2 (Xbox and PC) 2013’s State of Decay put…
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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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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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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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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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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 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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Not a huge amount has caught my Spiffing Reads eye over the past couple of weeks, hence the thin selection below. We’re well into the season of end-of-year lists, gift guides and reviews of AAA games, none of which makes for particularly thrilling reading – unless a hugely anticipated game gets a critical mauling, of…
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I didn’t have time to post Spiffing Reads last week, so this week we have a bumper double issue of the spiffingist reads from the past two weeks, starting off with an insight into how a game idea can end up going nowhere. The Ant Man: my year in development hell (Eurogamer) It must be…
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It turns out quite a few people do, judging by the comments on the story I wrote for Kotaku UK: Silent Bomber: A Forgotten PlayStation Classic I’m surprised so many people remember it, to be honest. It sold less than 75,000 copies worldwide, and I’ve hardly heard anything about it since its release back in…
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My uncle has been a fan of Elite since the first game came out in the 1980s, and the other day he dropped me a line to tell me about a group called the Fuel Rats. Perhaps I’d be interested in writing a story on them? I took a look at their website, and I…
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This week on Spiffing Reads, it’s (almost) all about the Wii U, long may it rest in peace. The ups, downs and future of Tomonobu Itagaki’s Devil’s Third (Polygon) Devil’s Third came out on the Wii U last year to less than glowing reviews. It’s torturous development history over 8 years and across numerous publishers…
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This week on Spiffing Reads, we start start off with how the games industry has finally woken up and listened to some of my amazing ideas. Why VR arcades could be virtual reality’s salvation (Polygon) Back in 2012, I visited an arcade for the first time in years, and found it to be a thoroughly…
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I ran out of time on Friday, so Spiffing Reads is a bit late this week. But just as packed full of goodness as ever. Why I Play (Kotaku UK) “Playing video games is, for me, part of a lifelong rejection of boredom.” Keza MacDonald, the chief ed of Kotaku UK, went on maternity leave…
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I pitched an article on board games based on video games months and months ago, but it’s only just been published on Eurogamer. It turned out to be a much bigger undertaking than I thought. My initial idea was to do a round up of all of the video-game-themed board games on the market,…
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It’s been a quiet week on the blog thanks to some crazy work schedules, but as always we’ve got a few Spiffing Reads for you. Of course, the big news this week was a certain console announcement… Nintendo Switch Reveal – ALL EASTER EGGS, Analysis & Things Missed (IGN) Everyone everywhere has been writing about…
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This week on Spiffing Reads, we look into a spooky AI future – and a forgotten past of suicidal game disks. The Video Game Horror Of Westworld (Kotaku UK) The new HBO version of Westworld looks rather excellent. I was a big fan of the original film, and it seems like they’ve done a great…
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Like probably everyone reading this blog, I struggle to keep up with all of the new game releases. And in recent years, I’ve found it harder and harder to keep on top of even a fraction of the great games that are coming out. It made me wonder whether this was simply because I have…
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This week on Spiffing Reads, it’s all sex and VR. So a bit like the Brosnan-starring The Lawnmower Man, then. The best – and very worst – sex scenes in video game history (The Guardian) When it comes to sex scenes in video games, it seems that Bioware is one of the only developers that has…
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A short one this week, kicking off with some retro-gaming nostalgia. Game Genie declassified: That summer I played 230 Game Boy games (Eurogamer) Do you remember the Game Genie? It emerged after Codemasters worked out a way to get around Nintendo’s restrictions on who could produce NES software by bypassing the infamous 10NES lockout chip.…
A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME 