A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME
Video Games, Victorian Style
Category: Opinions
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I’ve made no secret of my completely out-of-control love for 2014’s Watch Dogs. I think it’s tops. The art, the social commentary, the meta-ness of it all – just thinking about it makes me want to invade virtual Chicago’s privacy all over again. And you know what? I even quite liked Aiden Pearce. He was brooding,…
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Seriously. I just can’t put the damn thing down. There’s always just one more ridge to look over, just one more animal to scan, just one more planet to explore. It’s one of the most addictive games I’ve played in a long while. I’ll start out with a plan in mind: say, I want to…
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I wasn’t really sure what to expect from today’s Nintendo Direct, seeing as Nintendo have said they won’t be revealing the NX just yet, even though it’s supposedly imminent. So what would they be showing then? Surely the pipes for the 3DS and Wii U must be a little dry right now as development swaps…
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I’ve always found the notion that there’s a natural split between people that like Call of Duty and Battlefield and people that don’t more than a little bit rubbish. I’ve written before about how manufactured gaming culture is; and nothing demonstrates the arbitrary split between the self-proclaimed intelligentsia and the rest more than the vitriol from…
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A while back I wrote about my worries that the new version of Prey from Arkane Studios and Bethesda might be lacking the anarchic sense of humour that made the original so memorable. Well, maybe I shouldn’t have worried after all. As revealed in a new Gamescom trailer, the new game lets you turn into…
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The traditional ‘summer games drought’ comes as something of a relief for those, like I, who are imbued with a phenomenal gaming backlog. It’s a chance to dust off some unplayed titles and finally give them some time in the gaming spotlight before the inevitable deluge of games arrives in time for Christmas. Then again,…
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I knew something was wrong when my wife didn’t want to explore the galaxy in No Man’s Sky when I offered. “No thanks” she said, “let’s watch Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure“. And after two days with the game I was about ready to watch its bogus sequel. Planet one was a boring mess of…
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When I first watched Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous – ashamedly more recently than I care to admit – I was instantly jealous of the people the characters in the film were based on. When I sit down and listen to Led Zeppelin II I am instantly transported to a time where teenagers grew up with their…
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At E3 in June, Bethesda revealed footage of a long-awaited sequel to Prey. The teaser trailer arrived ten years after the release of the original, a game that itself was in development for nearly ten years. But the game previewed by Bethesda isn’t actually Prey 2 at all. In fact, in a follow-up video released…
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I’ve been playing Pokémon Go for more than a week now, and I’ve yet to earn any Pokécoins whatsoever. I’m level 10, I’ve filled up a good chunk of the Pokédex, and I’ve fought in my fair share of gym battles, but I’ve yet to receive any sort of Pokécash for my troubles. It’s getting…
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I’ve played Pro Evolution Soccer every year since I was a teenager who was just about to start studying at uni. To put that into some context I am now in my early thirties and have been working in my (perhaps poorly) chosen career for more than a decade. That’s a lot of life stages…
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Metroid Prime: Federation Force has come in for a bit of a kicking from Nintendo fans, which seems to have taken the company somewhat by surprise. In hindsight, perhaps it shouldn’t have come as such a shock. By all accounts it looks like quite a fun game – a cooperative 3DS shooter with added cosmic…
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I love old advertisements and marketing material. They in many ways embody a time and place better than anything else around; mainly because they’re specifically designed to capture and appeal to society’s psyche en masse. In the 1990’s video games were at the cutting edge of consumer trends and so are cracking little depictions of…
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I think the PS Vita is a speccy piece of kit. And being a bit partial to the odd handheld system since the days of the Game Boy I’ve amassed quite the game collection. Problem is my Vita never fulfils its life purpose to be, well, portable. It all started off okay, and at a…
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For pretty much the entirety of yesterday afternoon I was locked out of Pokémon Go thanks to server problems. Every time I tried to log in, I was hit with the ‘Unable to authenticate’ error message, and it didn’t resolve itself until the evening. It’s pretty frustrating, and the lack of updates from the developer…
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I was struck by just how many people I saw playing Pokémon Go on my cycle into work – I spotted at least ten people walking around, glued to their phones, occasionally pausing to do a telltale swipe towards an imaginary monster. Then again, this is nothing compared to the huge mobs filmed in New…
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I’m off to see the new Ghostbusters film tonight. I’m cautiously optimistic that it will be good after reading a four-star review in The Guardian, in which the reviewer was at pains to point out that the movie is a damn sight better than the bafflingly mediocre trailer. Seems this could be one instance where…
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This quote from a Eurogamer article published today really leapt out at me: “And you could even argue – justifiably, I think – that Pokémon Go is in the process of rehabilitating mobile gaming itself with a whole sector of gamers that had grown disenchanted with it, and who form a natural constituency for Nintendo’s…
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When I’m not writing video game articles, I’m probably doing scientific copy editing, and it was in just such a capacity that I found myself subbing news articles for New Scientist earlier this week. One of the articles was on Pokémon Go, because of course it was – that’s pretty much the only thing anyone…
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“You get what you’re given” was a pretty common parental phrase in my household growing up. Living with two siblings – both of whom had white-hot tempers – ensuring fights over that extra serve of custard or that extra lamb chop were prevented rather than contained. Because of this I’m a pretty easy-going chap who…
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The Forza Motorsport series has ballooned in terms of content over the last couple of iterations to include the likes of Formula E and NASCAR racing. Both of which I’ve ignored. This is generally because I find the idea of driving around ’round and ’round an oblong shaped track not particularly enticing. I’m sure there’s…
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A couple of days ago I wrote about how it’s Resident Evil’s characters that make it so damned special; and how Resident Evil 6 is just one fantastical way to pack in as many of them from the game’s history as possible. It’s no secret that Leon and Chris have their own rather lengthy seperate…
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After realising the other week that actually I don’t really like 2D platformers very much, no matter their illustrious provenance, I decided it would be a good time to have a bit of a clear out of the games cupboard… ahem, I mean The Mantelpiece. First for the eBay pile was New Super Mario Bros.…
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I have an inkling that Resident Evil 2 may have been the first game I ever preordered. Sure I’d looked forward to games before – even pored over every detail in catalogues before release – but Resident Evil was my first foray into the sort of bona fide fandom where I cared about the characters on the…
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I spent most of yesterday in shock after discovering that the UK had voted to leave the European Union. In the weeks leading up to the election, it seemed clear that the Remain camp was in the lead, and despite a late surge in support for the Leave campaign, I went to bed on Thursday…
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For many years Sensible Soccer was the long-dormant football game I dreamt about in a haze of nostalgia. That was until ten years ago in 2006 – along with two other blokes at work – I was eagerly awaiting the revival of the series via a new entry from developer Kuju. I still remember the days…
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I was playing through Yoshi’s Woolly World the other day, and about halfway through the second world I put the controller down and decided I’d probably never come back to it. There’s nothing wrong with the game per se – and I love the way everything has been lovingly reworked in wool – but I…
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Whereas Sir Gaulian has been revelling in the resurrection of some of his old favourite games at this year’s E3, I’ve been struggling to find much to get excited about, with the exception of the surprisingly different take on Zelda that Nintendo has been showcasing. However, one thing that everyone seems to be talking about…
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I am a creature of habit. I like routine so much in fact that if I don’t walk the same way around the Parliamentary triangle at lunch, or eat the same thing at the same time each day, I feel like it puts my entire day into disarray. It’s a strange little character trait to…
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I still distinctly remember the hours that followed walking out of the cinema after seeing “Moon”. Still struggling to come to terms with the notion of ‘created memories’, while walking along the iconic Chapel Street the friend I caught the film with started to entertain the notion of teleportation, referring to an article he’d read…
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As I said a while back, I’ve been getting back into Batman recently. I’ve read a few more Batbooks since that last post, and they’ve reflected the general trend for Batman stories veering wildly between genius and utter rubbish, with the tales being told in the main ‘canon’ Batman storyline generally being overstuffed and hamstrung…
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I find it comforting just how quickly I fell back into old habits playing id Software’s rebooted and somewhat reimagined Doom. Innovation to video game mechanics – the nuts and bolts that make the things tick – move at such a rate of knots that it’s easy to forget to often simple joys of what…
A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME 