A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME
Video Games, Victorian Style
Tag: Games
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I… I don’t even have the words… First there was this little bombshell, dropped in Nintendo’s Spotlight presentation: No release date, no gameplay footage, just a title. IT’S HAPPENING. METROID PRIME 4 IS HAPPENING. And if that wasn’t exciting enough, this stunning news was revealed shortly after the Spotlight ended: Yep, there’s a new 2D…
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There were surprisingly few new games revealed at Sony’s conference, with the majority of trailers being new footage of games that were already revealed at last year’s E3, and very little revealed about the few new VR games they displayed, but even so, there were some pretty nice things to see here. Part of me is…
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So, apparently the director of Beyond Good & Evil 2 was…not entirely truthful when he claimed that the game would not be present at E3 2017, as a cinematic trailer was revealed today: Wow. That…is certainly some amazing CGI, but is it just me or is this one of the cringiest videos ever? I suppose…
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Project Scorpio has a new name: Xbox One X, aka Kiss Hug Kiss (XOX). The new machine is the tiniest Xbox ever, and although many have been praising the updated design as “sleek“, it just looks like a boring black box to me. Sure, it will nestle in nicely among the other various black boxes…
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Oh geez. I didn’t even realize Bethesda was doing their show ahead of the actual start of E3 too! Guess I’ll be staying up late just to show you fine readers another 5 exciting upcoming new titles! (Just kidding, I’m always up this late) #5: Dishonored 2: Death of the Outsider (Xbox, PlayStation, PC) I’m a…
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Wow. Well, E3 hasn’t even actually started yet and there have already been some pretty impressive reveals. There are already far too many for me to even keep track of alone, so for now I’ll just stick to some personal highlights of today’s Microsoft Briefing. #5: State of Decay 2 (Xbox and PC) 2013’s State of Decay put…
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I tried watching EA’s presentation last night. Two times. The first time I tuned in, it happened to be at a point when some slick, corporate, man facsimile was beaming scarily down the camera and unblinkingly informing me how wonderful something was. I couldn’t even stay watching long enough to find out what that thing…
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Farpoint is finally here! After being teased as a possible Playstation VR release title last year, Farpoint and the much coveted Aim Controller were delayed for more fine tuning. Luckily, all that extra polish seems to have paid off, as this is one hell of an experience. Farpoint quickly strands you on a mysterious alien world and slowly reveals its…
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EA will kick off E3 2017 with their pre-show presentation tomorrow, so we thought we’d put our heads together and come up with a list of the announcements we’d like to see over the next week or so. Maybe this is finally the year of Half-Life 3… Hey, what do you mean it will never…
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Recently I wrote that Doshin the Giant is one of ten GameCube games that I’d love to see on Nintendo Switch. All these years later, it’s still a unique and special experience – there’s nothing else quite like it. Its closest influence is probably the old Bullfrog games Populous, Magic Carpet and Black & White,…
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For some reason I never got around to Blood 2 back in the day, or any day since. Perhaps its bad reputation had been subconsciously swaying my opinion about it? Who can say? Whatever the cause, I figured it was time to finally give it a shot and see if what they say about the game…
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My amiibo obsession remains as strong as ever, and the biggest chunk of that obsession is reserved for Fire Emblem amiibo. Move over Mario, I will always hold a candle for Roy, Lucina and their quasi-medieval chums. Speaking of which, Alm arrived today. Alm is one of the two main protagonists in the recently released…
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Ed’s note: We’re proud to welcome Professor GreilMercs to The Manor, one of several new regular contributors. Check out his stuff at http://ivgacademy.com/index.php/blog. Late last year, almost exactly four years after its launch, the last Wii U rolled off the production line. During its short lifetime, the Wii U was often misunderstood, not helped by…
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Speaking of nineties shooters, how about Blood? Published by 3D Realms and developed by gaming legends Monolith Productions, Blood answers the question that no one asked; ‘What if Duke Nukem 3D was a comically violent horror game’? Created with the Build Engine not long after Duke Nukem 3D, it’s impossible to not see the strong similarities between the two on the surface.…
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Welcome to You like Castlevania, don’t you?, my sort-of-answer-to The Year of Zelda. I’ll be playing every game in the series that I can get my grubby little hands on for fun and profit (they pay me in VHS tapes full of 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown episodes). Naturally, it all begins with the…
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Ed’s note: We’re proud to welcome Richenbaum Fotchenstein to The Manor, the first of several new regular contributors. Check out his stuff at https://virtuanaut.net/. Before I begin, let me take a moment to thank our esteemed host, Lucius Merriweather, for welcoming me into this fine Manor, and thank you in advance to you poor readers…
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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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Let’s get this out of the way first: Xenoblade Chronicles X is big. Really big. Xenoblade Chronicles on the Wii was a pretty damn massive 100+ hour adventure, but its sequel (of sorts) knocks its predecessor into a cocked hat in terms of scale. At around 50 hours in, there was still an entire continent…
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For The Year of Zelda, I’m aiming to finish all of the Zelda games I’ve yet to complete before treating myself to Breath of the Wild at the year’s end. It’s going pretty slowly so far – I’ve only managed to complete Oracle of Seasons from the list – but that’s mostly down to putting…
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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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A while back, I set myself the goal of finishing all of the Zelda games I’ve yet to play before I start the latest game in the series, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Oracle of Seasons is the first one I can tick off that list. Originally released for the Game Boy…
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This week on Spiffing Reads, we kick off with a couple of interesting opinion pieces on the Nintendo Switch… Don’t Judge Switch by the Stagnant Competition (Kotaku UK) This article struck a chord with me, particularly in how it accuses many in the games industry of not being able to look past technical specs. “There…
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Like pretty much everyone else in the gaming world, I’m very excited for the release of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. After the slightly lacklustre reveal of the Nintendo Switch, I’ve decided to get the game on the Wii U and hold off on purchasing a Switch until there are a few…
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This week on Spiffing Reads, we start off with a worrying look at what madness Twitch hath wrought. How Twitch is turning ‘always be streaming’ into a career with zero balance (Polygon) Once I got past the slightly baffling headline, this turned out to be a fascinating and slightly scary article about how much time…
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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 was going to post this on Friday, but then the whole Nintendo Switch reveal got me all hot under the collar and I had to write a lengthy diatribe about it. I’m sure further thoughts will be forthcoming… Anyway, we’ve had some cracking gaming articles over the past couple of weeks, now that the…
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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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As ever, my gaming time was at a premium this year, but even so I managed to plough through a fair portion of my gaming backlog, finally finding time to play games like Journey and Uncharted 2. Despite buying a PS4 in September, I still didn’t play that many games released in 2016, yet the…
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Nintendo’s Virtual Console policy continues to frustrate me. Certain titles are exclusive to the Wii U or 3DS, which makes sense up to a certain point – Wii games wouldn’t really work on a handheld, for example. But why make Game Boy Advance games exclusive to Wii U? Surely the only reason is to drive…
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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…
A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME 