A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME
Video Games, Victorian Style
Category: Opinions
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Capcom just announced the characters it will be offering as additional downloads for Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite. The trouble is that the game isn’t even out until tomorrow. I get that DLC is a part of gaming life now. But as a consumer, it sticks in my craw that publishers are hyping up more things…
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I’ve just caught up on the iPhone X reveal, and I’m impressed. The chutzpah needed to get away with charging £999 for a phone ($999 in the US) is seriously impressive. I mean, it looks nice. It’s got a fancy screen. And the face recognition is a clever touch. It’s a bit faster, too. But…
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Back in 2014, I got all excited about the launch of Destiny, saying it was one of the games that finally convinced me to upgrade to the latest generation of consoles. It looked (and still looks) utterly stunning, and despite some early wobbles, Bungie seem to have done a good job of crafting and maintaining…
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Stay a while and listen while I break from my usual M.O. of reviewing hoards of games to recount an offbeat tale of railguns and romance. It was some time ago, so far back that I can’t quite recall the exact year, but I can narrow it down to near the end of the previous…
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I just watched the trailer for Iron Harvest, and oooooh it looks good. Take a look at the video below to see what I mean: I love all those little machine-gun robots scuttling about like metal crabs, steam pouring out of their tin heads. There’s something about the depiction of primitive versions of high technology…
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Do you have a favourite developer? I have quite a few – I’ll always be interested in new games by Intelligent Systems, Dontnod and PlatinumGames to name but a few. But I’ve been intrigued by Ninja Theory ever since I played the incredible Enslaved: Odyssey to the West back when this website was in short…
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I only just found out about JRPG July, and it turns out I’m already participating in it – quite by accident. The other week, after reading reviews of the just-released Valkyria Revolution, I decided to have a go on Valkyria Chronicles Remastered, the first game in the series. I got it for my birthday last…
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Lucius and I have joined forces to take stock of Fire Emblem Heroes, Nintendo’s smartphone game that for both of us has become an unexpected obsession. Both of us are long-time Fire Emblem fans and have written about this game before (here and here), but our detailed look back starts with the earliest announcements and days of anticipation…
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The upcoming SNES mini has a superb line-up of games built-in, not least the so-far-unreleased Star Fox 2, finally making its debut more than 20 years after it was finished. As a reminder, here’s the list of stone-cold classics it will ship with: Contra III: The Alien Wars Donkey Kong Country EarthBound Final Fantasy III…
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At the end of the DF Retro video about the upcoming SNES mini, they discuss some of the games that they would have liked to have seen on the final roster of pack-in titles. Most are worthy but obscure titles like the platformer DoReMi Fantasy – which incidentally I’d never heard of before today, but…
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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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Today I’m going to talk to you about The Witness again. I spoke very briefly about it once before, but this time I’d like to take that analysis a few steps further, as well as discussing what it all means about why and how we play games, why this game has attained the dreaded label…
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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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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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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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Cancelling my Nintendo Switch preorder felt like a turning point for me. It wasn’t just opting out of the newest handheld console from the same company that had me hunched over the monochromatic screen of a Game Boy for more than a decade, in my mind it was the moment I decided that it is…
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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 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…
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Eurogamer recently reported the rumour that the Nintendo Switch will have support for GameCube games on the Virtual Console. If true, this is fantastic news, as the GameCube has an enviable library of titles to draw from, many of which never reached the audience they deserved. Big hit titles like Super Mario Sunshine, Luigi’s Mansion…
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The Kotaku UK ed asked me to take a look at the best free-to-play games on console, as a way f0r people to quickly expand their game libraries if they received a new games machine for Christmas. Here’s the resulting article, which came out on Boxing Day: The Best Free Games For Your New Console…
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Short answer? I doubt it. Although it might just scrape through. Kotaku has reported that Final Fantasy XV sold 670,471 copies in Japan at retail in its first week. That might sound a lot, but it’s well down on the sales figures of previous entries. Final Fantasy XIII sold 1,516,532 copies in Japan in its…
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I’ve never been a particular fan of the Final Fantasy games. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried to be. I once collected pretty much all of the Final Fantasy games from I up to VIII with the intention of playing through them all. But I never did it. I played through about half of IV…
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After happily pottering around No Man’s Sky for weeks, I finally hit a plateau and decided to check out the end game. It turns out it’s utter balls. I whizzed through all of the Atlas stations, as I’d already hit all of the Journey Milestones to access them, and after visiting the tenth and final…
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I wrote yesterday about how as I’m getting older, I find myself craving games that are just a bit slower and relaxing. It turns out I’m not the only one. As an article on Eurogamer today reveals, Farming Simulator 17 has smashed sales records, selling double the amount of the previous game, and debuted at…
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What ho, chums! Friends, I’m growing old. As I near the end of my fourth decade on this planet, my listening predilections are veering from rock and roll towards radio plays, and my shoes are getting comfier and less fashionable with every passing year. I’m wholeheartedly embracing it – bring on the grey hairs, I…
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What ho, chums! I’ve finally reached what I suppose is the No Man’s Sky plateau: I’ve maxed out the slots in my exosuit and multitool, I’ve almost maxed out my spaceship, and I’m starting to notice a fair bit of repetition in the planets I’ve been visiting. After my initial fever of exploration, it feels…
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One game I forgot to mention in yesterday’s article on my rediscovery of mobile gaming was 999: The Novel – although it’s debatable whether it should be called a game at all. I’ve been interested in trying out the games in the Zero Escape series for a while. Zero Time Dilemma, the third game, came…
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One consequence of getting sucked in by Pokemon Go is that I’ve ‘rediscovered’ mobile gaming, to an extent – just as Eurogamer predicted. Bar the odd game of Threes, I’d pretty much given up on mobile games before this summer, but the Pokemania earlier this year prompted me to see what else the App Store…
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Australia’s car industry is dying. As the gradual removal of tariffs kicked off by Prime Minister Hawke began to bite, and in more recent times fiscal prudence forcing Governments to question financial support, the car industry was at a cross-roads. And by the end of 2017 our once great car manufacturing sub-sector will be in…
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I didn’t really like Bioshock a decade ago. In many ways it felt like a bloody cracking world in want of a game and story that did it justice. I got that it was trying to be cutting, but in most respects, it just felt incredibly forced. Andrew Ryan’s speeches sounded like the sort of…
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What ho, chums! This week I was excited to read about the new game Virginia – or rather to read a tiny bit about it and then completely avoid reading any more for fear of spoilers (it appears that the game relies heavily on keeping its surprises hidden). Yes, Virginia is yet another must-buy indie…
A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME 