A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME
Video Games, Victorian Style
Category: Reviews
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I’m waving goodbye to my 20’s and to celebrate I’m counting down 30 games from the last 30 years. Join me while I countdown 30 great years of game memories. Jumpman (1983) Jumpman is your typical 80’s arcade game experience. Developed by pioneering video game developer Epyx, and released on various personal computer platforms in…
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*This review contains a very minor spoiler of Bioshock Infinite. Spoiler sensitive readers be warned. There’s something about seeing something familiar in a totally new context. Take Bioshock Infinite for example. Seeing a very familiar Rapture out of context of how we know and love it was a special moment and one that simply punctuated…
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There was a sad piece of news last week as Nintendo announced that it was ceasing production of the Wii. It’s a console that’s divided many, but here at A Most Agreeable Pastime, it’s a gaming machine that we hold close to our hearts. The Wii has been criticised over the years for becoming a…
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I don’t think I have ever smiled and yelped with excitement as much as I did while playing Rayman Legends. Everything from the absolutely beautiful art and visuals of the game, to the inspired locations, the whimsical characters and the toe-tapping musical score is designed to make your smile span ear to ear. Michel Ancel is…
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It’s been years since I’ve played No More Heroes since which time I’ve held it up as one of the great flashes of inspiration in game design this generation. It was balls-to-the-wall nuts, it was funny and it was the closest thing to a graphic novel gaming had seen to that date. Suda’s modern classic doesn’t…
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Colarado is a beautiful place travelling at 300kmph. The varied locales, from sweeping highways to winding cliffside roads, are all breathtaking vistas that make for a picturesque backdrop to Forza Horizon’s open-world racing action. The cars are equally as pretty as they glisten in the light of the sun during the day and the street lights at night. That…
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I finished The Wonderful 101 at the weekend, and I’m still not sure whether I enjoyed it or not. The game has a nasty habit of being utterly opaque and confusing, yet it offers up moments of sheer delight along the way. For the first few hours of the game I was frankly lost. The…
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InFamous made developer Sucker Punch a household name. Its open-world superhero game mixed open world traversal, platforming and deep combat in a way that no other developer to that point had to great success. Sucker Punch was the new hotness and their games were absolutely on fire. For many of us though their talents weren’t totally…
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I really didn’t get on with Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D – so much so that I sold it when I was just halfway through the second world. I figured I’d prefer that my copy gave someone else some pleasure rather than simply causing me consternation. I had the original Donkey Kong Country on the…
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It’s fair to say the Wii U hasn’t gotten off to the best of starts. I met a gamer the other day and told him I owned a Wii U, and his look of surprise was palpable – he admitted that I was the first person he’d met who actually owned one. With just 10,000…
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Modern Warfare 3 shows that war really never does change. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’ve never been a huge fan of Call of Duty Multiplayer. I appreciate what it brings to the table, and why millions upon millions flock to it. But its not my cup of tea. The single player campaigns…
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I’m a big fan of the Phoenix Wright games, as regular readers will have gathered from my glowing reviews of games one, two and three in the series. But Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney – the fourth game – almost defeated me. I was keen to complete Apollo Justice ahead of the release of Ace Attorney…
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As the species at the top of the food chain, humans – particularly in the more affluent countries – don’t really know what it is to struggle to survive. We complain about the job we didn’t get, about the price of petrol and food, and about the girl or boy that got away. We even…
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I only finished ZombiU a few weeks ago, despite buying it when it came out in November 2012. This isn’t just because it’s hard to find time to play games these days (although I do struggle to fit them in), it’s because I couldn’t play it for more than an hour without wanting to rush…
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Far Cry 3 is brilliant at making you feel like whatever you want to be. While you play the role of rich-kid and kind-of-a-jerk Jason Brody it is easy to mistake yourself for the best hit and run warriors of the Viet Cong or Sam Fisher at the height of his stealthiness. The game gives…
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Hotline Miami (PS Vita, PS3) – Hotline Miami is like a drug-enduced high that will take you on a trip through the violence, white suits and craziness of a brutal 1980’s Miami that will leave your eyes blood-shot, your sense heightened and your mind warped and twisted. Bloody, bright and brutal, Hotline Miami is a loving homage to 80’s…
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NBA 2K13 has single-handedly defined Nintendo’s newest console’s place in my life. Sitting there playing through a basketball season with the Celtics on the gamepad made me realise just how awesome of a proposition the Wii U is for a subset of people. Being someone who spends a majority of my game time buried deep…
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When Capcom revamped Resident Evil: Revelations for console release recently, I was tempted to pick it up for the Wii U. After playing the demo though, it just didn’t quite feel right on the big screen – it was designed for the 3DS after all – so I ended up buying the original 3DS version…
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First person shooters, racing games, character action platformers, after a while they all blend into one another. An innovation one year is a stale convention the next; we all throw our arms up in the air; developers respond with a nice little token change; and the cycle repeats. Okay, okay I’m being overly dramatic to…
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I loved the original Luigi’s Mansion – I bought a GameCube at launch, and Luigi’s Mansion was one of the first games I got for it (along with Bloody Roar: Primal Fury, in case you’re interested). I can’t believe that was all the way back in 2002 – Nintendo sure took their sweet time in…
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Max Payne (Xbox) review – In an age where it is all about the cover and simply rushing head on to take the battle directly to the enemy is out of fashion, it blows my mind that Max Payne holds up so well. Both from a narrative standpoint and gameplay this decade-old game feels…
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Spec Ops: the Line (Xbox 360) – This is actually the first time that Lucius and I have written something on the same game and honestly I couldn’t think of a better game to have two separate pieces about so if you haven’t already check out his. excellent and comprehensive review of Spec Ops: The Line from…
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Seeing as a sequel to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was announced for the 3DS just the other day, it seems like a good time to write about that other great portable Zelda game, Phantom Hourglass. I only played it for the first time very recently, but I was immediately struck…
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Grand Theft Auto – The Ballad of Gay Tony – I never much liked Grand Theft Auto IV. I bought it at launch, the ‘special’ edition I might add, played it for a few hours, thought it was a bit average and then put it on the shelf. A year later I forced myself through it…
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It’s not often that a video game makes me laugh out loud, but Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon had me giggling like a schoolgirl. It’s ridiculous, it’s funny, it’s lewd, but most of all it’s bloody good fun. What I like most is that the game doesn’t take itself seriously for a moment, and it’s…
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Michigan: Report from Hell is the worst good game of all time. Wait you say, don’t you mean best worst game? No, I don’t and let me explain why. Michigan is full of far too many good ideas executed brilliantly for it to be a steaming pile of excrement. By the same token though, it…
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Need For Speed – The Run (PS3) – I think we as consumers of video games, in general, are getting greedy. We want more for less. We want perfection. And worst of all we want innovation with no concessions made in what we known and love. In short being a developer would suck because there is…
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I finished Bioshock Infinite last week and boy, what a ride it was. It’s not often there’s a video game that keeps me playing just to see what happens next, but for those few days I raced home to pick up the controller and find out where it would take me. It was like being…
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Bioshock 2 (Xbox 360) Review – I was not much of a fan of the original Bioshock. I thought that the story was interesting enough but I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that I wasn’t actually enjoying playing the game. Add to that that I was never invested in the plight of the characters…
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Tomb Raider (PS3) Review – Some of my favourite gaming memories were formed playing the original Tomb Raider. Everything about it resonated with me to a point where I could overlook its flaws and just focus in on what made it so special. It is fitting then that the origin story of Lara Croft in…
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Kayla Mitchell died late on Tuesday night. She’d just managed to fight her way out of the Nursery after facing and defeating the horror that lurked in the basement, but she died tragically just feet from safety. Low on ammo and on health, she attempted to open a locked door between her and a manhole…
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Darksiders 2 (Wii U) Review – Darksiders II is the best video game of the generation. It isn’t the best experience, the best story, the best graphics or the most revolutionary gameplay of the generation. But the now defunct (sadly) developer Vigil managed to craft an unbelievably well-rounded game that is far better than it ought…
A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME 