A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME
Video Games, Victorian Style
Tag: Games
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What ho, chums! Egad, it’s been a fair old while since I last penned a post, nearly three weeks by my reckoning. Still, I have plenty of excuses to hand, one of which is that I spent most of last week cycling around the D-Day beaches of Normandy, which left little time for writing about…
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The other day I took a quick peak at my playing stats on the 3DS, and I was surprised to discover that the StreetPass Mii Plaza was right up there in second place in terms of hours played. It turns out I’ve spent and inordinate amount of time gathering Miis via StreetPass and then *ahem*…
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What ho, chums! There has been a fair old gap since my last communique, but of course this is only to be expected as we approach the zenith of the summer season, and thoughts turn from computer screens to outdoor recreational activities (I speak of course for myself and not for my winter-locked, Antipodean co-author…
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After nearly 55 hours of shooting, exploring and chatting up aliens, I’ve finally finished Mass Effect 2. I could have finished it a lot quicker, but I was having so much damn fun that I dawdled to discover everything it had to offer. What a game. With a few rare exceptions, such as Minerva’s Den…
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So, E3 is over for another year, and I can finally stop checking gaming websites for E3 updates every five minutes. Undoubtedly the biggest controversy of the show was Ubisoft’s terrible gaffe about Assassin’s Creed: Unity, but in terms of sheer headline grabbing, there was nothing to compare to last year’s PR war between Microsoft…
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As you may have read already, Ubisoft creative director Alex Amancio caused a bit of controversy at the E3 gaming conference by saying that there are no female assassins in the upcoming Assassin’s Creed: Unity because it would have been too much work to put them in. His exact words were: “It’s double the animations,…
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What-ho, chums! I’ve just returned from five glorious days in sun-kissed Sicily, and the shock of returning to the griminess of The Big Smoke has yet to soften, although some rare outbreaks of London sunshine are helping to alleviate the transition. As Ms. D and I were waiting for our flight home, I had a…
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I was browsing through a book shop the other day when I came across a volume that got my nostalgia glands throbbing from just one look at its cover. The Fantasy Art of Oliver Frey is a celebration of the artwork of one of the most famous individuals in the eighties computing scene, and I…
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What ho, chums! It’s been fairly quiet in the gaming world over the past couple of weeks, no doubt because everyone is holding back announcements for the upcoming annual mayhem of E3 on 10th June. Add in the fact that I’ve been journeying around the untamed wilds of Scotland for the past few days, and…
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What ho, chums. Well, what an exciting week it’s been in the world o’ gaming. For a start it’s been an absolute rollercoaster ride for Nintendo: first they announced another loss on the back of dismal Wii U sales, then everyone got excited about the reveal of Skylanders-style figurines based on Mario and his ilk,…
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What ho, chums. Last week I found myself in the unusual position of having nothing to play on my Nintendo 3DS. Considering the tottering (although diminishing) pile of unplayed games on The Mantelpiece, this was an almost unprecedented situation. But yet there I was, Saturday morning stretching ahead of me like a great shoe with…
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What ho, chums. I must admit, I can’t help but be drawn in whenever a new Nintendo Direct video pops up on my 3DS. These tiny saccharine video bonbons never fail to bring a smile to my embittered lips. Seeing Satoru Iwata and chums enthusiastically teasing their latest gaming treat with undisguised glee reminds me…
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What-ho, chums. Of all the gaming news that I’ve browsed through this week, the one piece of information that made me sit forward in my armchair with a quizzically raised eyebrow was this: China has revealed its censorship rules for console games. I would encourage you to take a look at the long and sometimes…
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What-ho, chums. It seems that barely moments after out last little chat about VR, Facebook caused the gaming community to fall off their bar stools in astonishment by buying Oculus Rift for a whacking great sum – $2 billion to be exact. Not exactly small change, but ’tis but a drop in the ocean for…
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Good morrow to you all, and welcome to ‘From The Armchair’, the first in a series of regular posts in which I, Lucius P. Merriweather, spout forth on any old subject that’s been picking at my addled brain, as well as giving you the odd salacious titbit about what’s been happening behind the hallowed doors…
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As usual I’m a little late to the party, but isn’t The Walking Dead brilliant? Despite hearing nothing but good things about it, I’ve only just got around to playing Telltale’s 2012 games series over the past few weeks. I read the first couple of Walking Dead comic books several years ago, and although I…
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I played Deus Ex: Human Revolution – Director’s Cut immediately after finishing The Last of Us, and I have to say the comparisons are unkind to the former. Then again, seeing as we voted The Last of Us as the second best game of this generation, anything that I played immediately afterwards was probably going…
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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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Seven years after its launch in the UK, I can finally give you my first impressions of the PS3. Here on A Most Agreeable Pastime, we’ve never been ones to hurry. We can often be found dawdling around The Manor, idling flicking through The Times and absent-mindedly wondering how long it will be until Mrs…
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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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Well, 2013 has certainly been an eventful year for gaming. The Xbox One and PS4 arrived with chest-beating bombast but a fairly shoddy line-up of games, and instead the real action was to be had on those soon-to-be-relegated ‘legacy’ consoles. The PS3 received what many are saying is its best game with The Last of…
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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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The PS4 and Xbox One have now both launched in the UK, so the question is, which one am I going to get for Christmas? Well, the answer is neither: I’m getting a PS3 instead. Both the PS4 and Xbox One look like impressive pieces of kit, but I’ve yet to see a single stand-out…
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Sir Gaulian’s experience of the Xbox One launch was underwhelming to say the least: only a handful of people turned up for what sounds like a mostly joyless and slightly militaristic midnight launch in Canberra. Having said that, it sounds like the launch went off with more of a bang in Sydney, and London was…
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It’s crazy to think that it’s been eight years since the dawn of this generation. Kicked off by the launch of the Xbox 360 in 2005 in North America (early 2006 in other territories) and slowly followed by the PlayStation 3 in early 2007, the current generation of hardware ushered in the HD generation and fuelled an…
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I was intrigued to read an update on the Snap feature of the Xbox One today. The feature was announced at the Xbox One’s fateful unveiling, but it was somewhat lost beneath the tidal wave of outrage at the console’s ‘always-on’ internet requirement and the fact that Microsoft might be spying on our bedrooms. Now,…
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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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There have been a few announcements over the past couple of weeks about Valve’s upcoming Steam Box, but I’m still utterly clueless as to what it is or why it’s important. I’m not sure whether this is intentional on Valve’s part as a sort of intrigue-generating PR strategy or whether it’s just the result of…
A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME 