A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME
Video Games, Victorian Style
Category: Uncategorized
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Our story begins with Lucius P. Merriweather making a most bizarre discovery in The Manor.
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What ho, chums! Well, I’ve had a bit of disappointment this week. I’ve got a press pass for EGX 2017, but due to work/childcare committments, I’m not going to be able to get down there to see all those lovely shiny new games. Sometimes, being an adult – to use the American phrase – ‘sucks’.…
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I find that the start of any Civilization game is always the most exciting. It’s the excitement of anticipation, of mystery, knowing that there’s a whole world out there to explore. There is still a palpable giddiness that comes with your first military unit, your first settlers unit, your first granary, and of course your…
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Video game designers have taught us, through intricately designed HUDs throwing all manner of information at the player every second, to pay attention to our surroundings. Visual cues are more often than not integral to success, and much research and effort has gone into cramming as much vital information on screen in the most efficient…
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It doesn’t take long to get me ranting and raving about how bloody fantastic the film Moon is. In addition to being a thoughtful science fiction film, spearheaded by an amazing performance by the always excellent Sam Rockwell, it is also a beautifully shot film with a colour palette that does a shitload with very…
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The following may contain mild spoilers of Far Cry 4’s plot. For the hypersensitive, consider yourself warned. I grew up in a very unreligious household. There was no anti-religious sentiment – after all I was only a generation removed from the anglo-christian upbringing of my grandparents in Europe – but there was certainly a dearth…
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Crimson Shroud snuck out for release on the Nintendo eShop around Christmas 2012, and it quickly became one of my favourite 3DS games. It was created by Yasumi Matsuno, director of Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy Tactics among others, and it’s easily the highlight of the Guild01 series developed by Level-5. In modern RPGs there’s…
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Trine 2: Director’s Cut was an impulse purchase on the weekend I received my Wii U, and it quickly turned into a surprise hit with my two sisters. Since then I’ve been playing through the game with my friend Mark at intervals of a few months, and last week we finally finished it, over a…
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When we created our rundown of the best games of the generation a couple of months back, I took Sir Gaulian’s word for it that The Last of Us should come in at number two, having not played the game myself. Now that I’ve had some time to hang out with Joel and Ellie in…
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Hotel Dusk: Room 215 is a brilliant example of that most niche of genres, the visual novel. It’s difficult to classify Hotel Dusk as a game, if by ‘game’ you mean having some sense of autonomy in a virtual world – here it’s a mostly passive experience in which you talk to different characters, scroll…
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Last week we said farewell to the Wii with a list of our top ten games on the console, and right there in seventh place was this little gem: The Last Story. It snuck out for release in Europe in August 2012, right before the launch of the Wii U, but it turned out to…
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Killer 7 (Gamecube) – “At the very least you will appreciate the game’s style”. That’s what I told people way back in 2004 when they asked about Killer 7. A collaboration between Capcom heavyweights Shinji Mikami and Hirokyuki Kobayashi, and the enigmatic Goichi Suda (Suda 51) Killer 7 promised a hyper-violent and hyper-stylised video game…
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So Sim City wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I feel so sorry for all those budding town planners and socialites hoping to get to know their citizens and build the utopian dream. Where will they go now to fullfil their dreams? Well dreamers, you’re in luck because the PS2 has just what…
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For me Lemmings is video games. Put a picture of a little man with flowing green hair and a blue body suit in front of anyone on the street that doesn’t remember the end of World War II and in all likelihood they’ll know what it is. That’s not just because it’s wonderful. It is,…
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I caught up with the rest of the gaming world this week by finally, finally finishing Mass Effect. Loads of people, not to mention my co-blogger Sir Gaulian, have recommended that I play it, and it’s not hard to see why: the story is up there with the best I’ve seen in a video game.…
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Dragon’s Lair is kind of retarded. Not retarded as in ‘that Downton Abbey show is retarded how good it is’ type, but the ‘i can’t even talk to you anymore you’re speaking like a retard’ type. I know I shouldn’t use that term, and apologies in advance, but it is seriously the only way I…
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I have always thought that Australia is a net importer of culture. We get what I feel like almost everything, from television to music to videogames, from our english-speaking allies. Sh!tty gangster rap? Most definitely. Garbage English royal tabloids? Need I ask. Terrible child-focused television show featuring anthropomorphic animals and some random young people that…
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Sim City never gets old. Prior to the disastrous launch of the latest entry in the city-building simulator Maxis were on a ‘can do no wrong streak’. Which is probably why we saw Sim City games make their way onto almost every platform known to man. Including the Game Boy Advance. That’s right the evergreen franchise made…
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Zack and Wiki is a wonderful, funny, charming and compelling video game that’s hamstrung by a couple of flaws so enormous that eventually they ruin it completely. Seriously, I loved this game, but it really didn’t love me back. In fact, it took delight in slapping me round the face a couple of times before…
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There really is very little to the Phoenix Wright games, but I can’t get enough of them. In essence the gameplay basically boils down to tapping through screen after screen of dialogue for about 25 hours, occasionally interspersed with the odd section where you’re required to make some leap of logic, but really it’s more…
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I’ve finally given up on The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D. I’m 11 hours in and just about to face the dreaded Water Temple, but I just can’t ever see myself finishing this otherwise excellent remake, and I’ll tell you for why. It’s impossible to play this game on the bus. More to…
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It’s January, the weather’s horrible outside and no-one has any money – in other words it’s the perfect time to stay in and rattle through a few games from my epic games backlog. No doubt my Australian blogging companion Sir Gaulian is currently sunning himself in the 42 degree heat of the land down under,…
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…ported Vigilante 8 to the Gameboy Color That’s right. The rather excellent car combat game (that is secretly better than Twisted Metal) was ported from its native home on the Nintendo 64 and PS1, where it was incredibly accomplished technically, to the absolutely incapable Gameboy Color. Of course in the hands of the wonderful over-achievers at…
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Dead Space 2 is easily one of the scariest games I’ve ever played, possibly only surpassed by the original and perhaps more recently by ZombiU. I really did have to turn all of the lights on when playing it one night – it creeped the hell out of me. I think it’s the sound effects…
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I’m not a big fan of first person shooters set in real-world conflicts. I played through the first Modern Warfare game a while back, and I found the whole thing just a little bit… distasteful. Like I said in my review, I’m not quite sure why you’d want to recreate that great war feeling in…
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Here’s a revelation for you: I actually bought XCOM: Enemy Unknown on the day it came out. I can’t remember the last time I paid full whack for a game on its actual release date, but I suspect it was sometime back in the dim and distant days of the Dreamcast, so this should indicate…
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I finished Vanquish at the weekend – boy what a game. It’s the kind of game that’s so intense you need to take a break every half hour to imbibe a soothing cup of tea and have a lie down in order to rest your shattered senses. Never is there a pause in the action…
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I watched The Dark Knight Rises recently and came away with a vague feeling of disappointment. It just wasn’t quite what I wanted it to be – too much ‘realism’, far too much daytime Dark Knight (he just doesn’t work in the sunlight, does he?) and not enough fancy detective work. Considering Batman is meant…
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It’s been just over a year since my inaugural review on A Most Agreeable Pastime, in which I heaped praise upon the doorstep of Assassin’s Creed II. It seems fitting then that this week’s review is of its sequel, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, which I’ve just finished playing and very much enjoyed. Look out for a…
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True to form, I’ve arrived at this particular gaming party long after the other guests have left. Five years after it was first released, and four (count ’em!) sequels down the line, I’ve finally, FINALLY, got round to playing a Professor Layton game. And it was … well … all right. If, like me until…
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I found myself a little apathetic towards Super Mario 3D Land when I first heard about it. Let’s face it, there have been PLENTY of Mario games down the years, and the central concept has changed little since the 1980s, leading me to start thinking the whole platform genre is getting a bit long in…
A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME 