A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME
Video Games, Victorian Style
Category: Opinions
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Well, this is a bit of a turn-up for the books – I got home from work to discover that my Wii U has arrived A DAY EARLY. Thanks ShopTo.net! I’m not quite sure how this has happened, but I’m glad I didn’t bother queuing up at HMV on Oxford Street tonight… Sir Gaulian should…
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It turns out that the Wii U is actually powered by tiny little Pikmin running around in the machine. This confirms my long-held theory that processors are a myth and that all computers actually work by a combination of magic and tiny little beings running back and forth. Here’s the charming animation you get when…
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I have never, ever liked wrestling. That is something I have worn on my sleeve as somewhat of a badge of honour as long as I can remember. The theatrical garbage, ‘the so bad it’s funny and yet somehow still bad’ acting, the stupid uniforms, the cliched wrestlers, they all scream ridiculous and bad taste.…
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It fascinates me how gaming has gone from being a niche hobby to something that’s firmly ensconced in mainstream culture (even if there’s still some way to go before it gains widespread acceptance), and for evidence of this you need look no further than the burgeoning fan art community. The current generation of artists is…
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Time blows my mind. One minute I’m a strapping young lad with my whole life ahead of me, and the next minute I’m a disillusioned nearly-thirty young man looking forward to my next cup of tea. So if that’s how I handle time imagine how I handle time travel. Rather not well. Which sucks because…
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I’ve done it. No going back now: the Wii U has been preordered. Maybe it was Adam Buxton’s voiceover on the new Wii U TV ad that finally pushed me to commit – I mean, if Adam likes it, surely it must be great? Right? Seriously though, I’m pretty excited about finally getting my hands…
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Lucius here, just wanted to trumpet the wonderful new wallpaper I found while chugging along the information supermotorway. I’ve put up in the Manor – it’s rather dashing don’t you think? Toodle-pip, have a smashing weekend!
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I remember the moment when I reached the waterfall cave in the original Tomb Raider on the PlayStation and an involuntary “wow” fell from my lips. That “wow” moment has happened many times before and since in many different games: encountering my first Colossus in Shadow of the Colossus, fighting Mother Brain in Super Metroid…
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Midnight in Paris is a great film if only because it’s an accurate commentary on an aspect of the human condition – the nostalgic and often skewed view of the past. Owen Wilson plays an aspiring novellist who romanticises a 1920’s Paris and everything surrounding it, from the writers to the artists and philanthropists, all…
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When was the last time a film made you cry? Even this embittered blogger can admit to a few tear-inducing moments in his film-watching past, the ending to Casablanca being one. Now when was the last time a video game made you cry? I’m guessing quite a few of you will answer ‘never’, and I…
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I remember when the Playstation 1 was first released. It was a different age – retailers were successful, the Australian Cricket team were on top, and video games up to that point were largely simple affairs without the inherent complexities associated with the third dimension (I actually know someone who refuses to play anything that…
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My finger is hovering over the pre-order button for Wii U. For the first time since the GameCube, I’m actually considering buying a console on the day it comes out. I think what clinched it was the announcement of Bayonetta 2 as a Wii U exclusive: where Platinum Games goes I will follow. As you’re…
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“Just beat BioShock, still processing it all” That was the title of a blog post on Grinding Down I stumbled across not too long ago. It still sounds odd to me when people say they’ve ‘beaten’ a video game, and it’s not something I’ve ever said myself: I’ve ‘completed’ games, but never ‘beaten’ them. As…
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The chances are that if you’re reading this blog, you regard games as something more than just a teenage hobby. Most of us will have played video games to varying degrees as we grew up, and the number of gamers is growing ever larger thanks to the recent foray into the casual gaming market by…
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Today was a sad day. It marked the first time I had ever met someone who simply had never heard of Mega Man. Not ‘hadn’t ever played a Mega Man game’ or ‘had only played Mega Man ZX games’, but someone who if a picture of a Mega Man game was showed to him, couldn’t…
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Today I was walking down the street and I spotted, in the distance, a shiny, gold two dollar coin. Fearing I would look like a total cheapskate if I frantically ran over to the coin and picked it up, I casually sauntered over to the coin, hoping that no one else had spotted it, and…
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Transformers: War for Cybertron was a decent, if not derivative shooter that lived and died by its licence. And that’s okay, really. The Transformers licence is a good one with a lot of potential and a hell of a lot of good lore from which to lift interesting and novel game mechanics from. Being…
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If Wonderbook is anything to go by Sony is all for getting kids to read, and that’s cool. I’m not going to be harsh on a partnership that encourages the imagination of the next generation of authors, artists, mathematicians, astronauts and economists, because at face value I absolutely agree, kids definitely don’t read enough. Actually…
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I am a big fan of Star Wars and despite all of the killing and talk of the ‘dark side’ I still find the original trilogy a bit of tongue-in-cheek fun that can be taken as seriously, or not seriously as you like. I am a few years too young to remember the original films…
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In high school I had a crush on a girl named Alicia. I thought she was pretty awesome, at the time, and as a result about 70 per cent of my teenage energy and efforts went toward trying, in vain, to impress her. But my efforts weren’t necessary embarrassing insomuch as they were misguided. There was no…
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I watched the new Muppet Movie on Sunday night and found it to be a delightful and nostalgic trip that didn’t miss a beat for the duration of the film. The musical numbers were spot on and the Muppets themselves were as sharp as ever, in that puppet humour kind of way. There were even…
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This generation particularly has been plagued by the frequent drawing of comparisons between film as a medium, and video games as a medium trying to replicate film. This isn’t a problem in and of itself – for example literature and film are often compared as a way to tease out the differences in the devices…
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My good friend Tom was visiting London at the weekend, and after we’d finished looking round the excellent but nausea-inducing Brains exhibition at the Wellcome Trust, Tom piped up with an absolutely capital idea: “Why don’t we go to the arcade? I haven’t been for years!” Nice one Tom! So off we trooped to Namco…
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Is Mean Machines Magazine returning in some form? If a tweet from video game publication luminary, Julian “Jaz” Rignall is to be believed, it may be in the works. Mean Machines magazine was a video game magazine published in the United Kingdom and distributed globally as far stretching as Australia. The magazine was a lynchpin of…
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So, has GAME learned anything since its recent brush with annihilation? For various reasons I happened to be in Ilford on Saturday, and whilst looking round the soul-sapping Exchange Shopping Centre I noticed that the Ilford GAME had managed to survive the cull of 277 GAME stores last month. Curious to see what lessons had…
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Sometimes the reach of video games surprises me. The fact that you could pretty much take any small cultural or sporting phenomenon and there is probably a game based on it somewhere in the world is pretty amazing. So I really shouldn’t have been surprised when I was casually browsing in a nearby second…
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One of the most painful memories of my youth was staring in concern as my Spectrum’s tape player wheezed and clattered along while I crossed my fingers and hoped against hope that this time -THIS time – Rambo would load. Come on Mr. Spectrum, please, do it for me! It’s the third time I’ve tried…
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So, looks like GAME are in deep do-dos. Just a few days ago, GAME Group made the dramatic announcement that it’s up for sale, and their share price plunged to 0.83p (it was 296.75p in May 2008). I knew that GAME was in trouble, but it was shocking to read just how dire their financial…
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Back at the start of 2011 I wrote what can only be described as a love letter to Mass Effect 2. And what better way to celebrate the launch of Mass Effect 3 by republishing an abbreviated form of that original piece. Originally Published March 1 2011. As a game, Mass Effect 2 just did…
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The Vita is the kind of system you’ll want to grab out on the bus or train ride into work or university to show off how great it is, and by virtue of that fact, how great you are for owning it. You want to be turning heads of the granny next to you that…
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I love portable gaming. The sheer audacity for Capcom to claim that the graphics are ‘So Real You’ll Forget It’s Only A Game‘ is nothing short of hilarious. Of course back in 1990, Gargoyle’s Quest probably was the best looking game to grace a handheld, and to put it in context, it was a fantastically…
A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME 