A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME
Video Games, Victorian Style
Tag: Games
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In case you haven’t heard, there’s a new Nintendo console on the way. The NX, as it’s codenamed, will probably be available by the end of the year, and we’re likely to see some sort of big reveal at around the time of E3 in June – or even earlier. The word on the street…
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This time last year, I had a bit of a rant about Nintendo jumping onto the free-to-play bandwagon. I suggested that Pokémon Shuffle was an example of “the worst model of free to play, where the user is constantly nagged to spend money”, and I suggested that the upcoming Fable Legends “gives a good example…
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Does anyone have idea why they changed the name of this game in Europe and Australia? It was simply called Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam in the United States, which is a great little pun considering it features the characters from the Paper Mario universe causing chaos in the Mario & Luigi world. But Mario…
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Regular readers will already be familiar with our “gaming piles o’ shame” over there on The Mantelpiece. Sir Gaulian’s backlog is mightily more impressive than mine, but both are nothing to be sniffed at. Put simply, we have far more games than we have time to play them. This is a frustrating situation to be…
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Dontnod Entertainment is clearly a developer to watch. They scored a well-deserved hit with 2015’s Life is Strange, as noted in my end of year list, but it’s worth looking out 2013’s Remember Me to get a glimpse of the studio’s early brilliance. The game struggled to find a publisher at first – infamously, several…
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Here was the pitch I made for the Star Wars article I just wrote for Kotaku UK: Every Star Wars game ever, from worst to best Exactly what it says, complete with many, many snarky comments. Particularly about Star Wars Kinect. It seemed a simple enough pitch, an article that would involve a fun stroll…
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Better late than never. Following Sir Gaulian’s rundown in the middle of December, here’s my list of the creme de la creme of 2015 – a year in which I found myself playing my 3DS and Wii U more than anything else, despite all of the exciting goings on elsewhere. Indeed, 2015 felt like the…
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One morning just before Christmas I was in full-on pre-Xmas deadline panic. I had a seemingly never-ending article due in and no end to it in sight, plus the usual pre-Chrimbo anxiety about unbought presents and uncooked turkey. But despite being pressed right up against a deadline, I just had to take some time out…
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I miss the survival horror genre. Once upon a time, no console worth its salt would be seen dead without a clutch of survival horror titles to its name, but nowadays they’re as rare as praiseworthy tweets about Konami. I remember happily spending hours watching my housemate Ian complete Resident Evil 2 while I was…
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Have you bought your ticket for The Force Awakens yet? I’ve got mine, of course – I’ll be at the 00.01 showing on 17 December, lapping up the film that I hope will banish all memories of The Phantom Menace. And that possibly might reveal Jar Jar Binks to be a Sith Lord. I’m not…
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The last couple of times I’ve popped into GAME, I’ve been surprised at just how many amiibo are in stock. It seems that Nintendo have firmly delivered on their promise back in May to increase amiibo production. I saw all sorts of previously rare amiibo on my visits to GAME stores in Walthamstow and Edinburgh,…
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After spending a few incredibly creepy hours with Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water for Wii U, I can safely say that it’s thoroughly enjoyable and incredibly creepy. Especially when playing it on your own with the lights down. The game arrived on Friday, complete with lots of lovely gear, and I managed to get…
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So this turned up on my doorstep this morning. It’s quite strange to buy a Wii U game with ’18-rated’ emblazoned all over it. It almost feels naughty. I’m mega impressed by how much you get in the collectors’ edition, check it out: Look at all that: a poster, postcards, art book and steel case……
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What-ho, chums! It’s been an inordinate amount of time since our last tete-a-tete, but you can blame this dearth of communication on the heavy mantle of fatherhood, which I now carry proudly across my shoulders. As such, the lightweight blouson of gaming has been left hanging on the neglect peg, although of late I’ve had…
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I seem to always be way behind when it comes to the Pokémon franchise. The original games, Pokémon Red and Blue, passed me by on their European release in 1999 – I think at the time I dismissed them as being ‘for kids’ (I was at university at the time). But by the time Pokémon…
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I’ve been a big fan of the work of William Gibson for a long time, but it was only recently I found out that his first novel, Neuromancer, was turned into a video game back in 1988. I found this especially interesting because Neuromancer (and its short-story prequel of sorts, Burning Chrome) essentially predicted the…
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Back in the summer I found out that there’s a decommissioned nuclear bunker not far from where I live in Edinburgh, just at about the same time I heard the announcement of Fallout 4. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to write an article on what life in a real Fallout Vault would be like…
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My latest Kotaku UK article is up – this time it’s a look back at all the games that made Konami great, seeing as all the indications are that they might stop supporting consoles: RIP Konami Console Games 1983-2015 I should point out that the slightly melodramatic title was the doing of the Kotaku UK…
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My god that game was long. After something like 116 hours, I’ve finally put Xenoblade Chronicles to bed, and now I can move on with my life. That description makes it sound like I had an awful time, but that’s far from the truth. I mean, I wouldn’t have bothered playing the game for so…
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There’s a sale on! Use the code SAVENOW and get 15% off Most Agreeable T-shirts until 11th August! To order, simply click on one of the options below, according to the corner of the world in which you currently reside: CLICK TO VISIT THE MOST AGREEABLE EU SHOP CLICK TO VISIT THE MOST AGREEABLE US…
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What better way to proclaim your love for the WORLD’S GREATEST VICTORIAN-THEMED VIDEO GAMES BLOG than with some beautifully designed apparel? Thanks to our multi-talented resident designer Simon Bradbrook Esq., we’re proud to present our exclusive range of MOST AGREEABLE T-shirts, available in PREMIUM or PEASANT forms and in a RANGE OF EYE-GOUGING COLOURS to suit…
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I decided to treat myself. I bought the rather lovely book Commodore Amiga: A Visual Commpendium from Funstock, and it is awesome. At 30 quid it’s not cheap, but it’s worth the money – the book comes in at around 400 pages and has beautiful colour images throughout, in addition to some fascinating developer interviews. I…
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Like the rest of the gaming world, I was utterly shocked to hear this morning of the passing of Nintendo President Satoru Iwata, aged just 55. I knew he had been diagnosed with bile duct cancer last year, but recent reports suggested that the surgery had gone well and he had returned to work, seemingly…
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My article on Russian ZX Spectrum clones – ‘The Land Where the Spectrum Lived On‘ – has just been published on Kotaku UK. This was a fascinating article to research and write, but it took an absolute age – there’s not a huge amount of information on the Russian Spectrum scene in English, so piecing…
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I’ve set myself the goal of finishing all three ‘Operation Rainfall’ RPGs, but finishing the second game on the list, Xenoblade Chronicles, is proving to be something of a challenge. I’m already 91 hours in, and the game just keeps unfolding like a never-ending carpet of multi-coloured delights… and frustrations. I’ve already blithely ignored my…
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Following a spate of excited pre-orders a few months back, and the many trials and tribulations I went through in trying to order a Woolly Yoshi amiibo, all of my chickens have come home to roost, so to speak. That is, a tonne of amiibos descended on my house, much to the alarm of Ms.…
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What-ho, chums! You may well have noticed my conspicuous absence from this illustrious online tome over the past month or so – my endless thanks to Sir Gaulian for keeping things ticking over with a steady stream of fantastic articles. I have a good excuse for my blogging slackness, however – the birth of my…
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My article on the Xbox One Rare Replay collection just went up on Kotaku UK. And there’s one game I’m particularly looking forward to playing again: Solar Jetman. As I say in the Kotaku article, this NES game wasn’t hugely successful in terms of sales, but it garnered huge critical praise – and it had…
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The Last Story was great, and so is Xenoblade Chronicles – although they’re not without their niggles. One quirk is that both games use British voice actors, which makes for a refreshing change from the usual American voices in video games. But having said that, the acting isn’t particularly, well, awe-inspiring, and in Xenoblade particularly…
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The number of games I want to play far outweighs the number of games I have the time to play (a subject I’ve touched on before). And with a baby soon to enter the Merriweather household, that gaming time is set to shrink even further. There are a few things I’m doing to make the…
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Good news everyone! With the arrival of Robin and Lucina, my set of Fire Emblem amiibos is complete! At least until they decide to release any more Fire Emblem-themed amiibos, that is. Lucina, of course, is one of the main characters in the recent Fire Emblem: Awakening for the 3DS, whereas Robin is the player’s…
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What ho, chums! Well, what a wonderful week I’ve had. I downloaded Affordable Space Adventures for the Wii U on Saturday, and it has proved to be an instant hit in the Merriweather household, with even the normally video-game-reticent Ms. D singing its praises. The game is one of those rare beasts – a Wii…
A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME 