A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME
Video Games, Victorian Style
Tag: gaming
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Short answer? I doubt it. Although it might just scrape through. Kotaku has reported that Final Fantasy XV sold 670,471 copies in Japan at retail in its first week. That might sound a lot, but it’s well down on the sales figures of previous entries. Final Fantasy XIII sold 1,516,532 copies in Japan in its…
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It turns out quite a few people do, judging by the comments on the story I wrote for Kotaku UK: Silent Bomber: A Forgotten PlayStation Classic I’m surprised so many people remember it, to be honest. It sold less than 75,000 copies worldwide, and I’ve hardly heard anything about it since its release back in…
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I’ve never been a particular fan of the Final Fantasy games. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried to be. I once collected pretty much all of the Final Fantasy games from I up to VIII with the intention of playing through them all. But I never did it. I played through about half of IV…
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After happily pottering around No Man’s Sky for weeks, I finally hit a plateau and decided to check out the end game. It turns out it’s utter balls. I whizzed through all of the Atlas stations, as I’d already hit all of the Journey Milestones to access them, and after visiting the tenth and final…
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I wrote yesterday about how as I’m getting older, I find myself craving games that are just a bit slower and relaxing. It turns out I’m not the only one. As an article on Eurogamer today reveals, Farming Simulator 17 has smashed sales records, selling double the amount of the previous game, and debuted at…
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My uncle has been a fan of Elite since the first game came out in the 1980s, and the other day he dropped me a line to tell me about a group called the Fuel Rats. Perhaps I’d be interested in writing a story on them? I took a look at their website, and I…
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This week on Spiffing Reads, it’s (almost) all about the Wii U, long may it rest in peace. The ups, downs and future of Tomonobu Itagaki’s Devil’s Third (Polygon) Devil’s Third came out on the Wii U last year to less than glowing reviews. It’s torturous development history over 8 years and across numerous publishers…
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This week on Spiffing Reads, we start start off with how the games industry has finally woken up and listened to some of my amazing ideas. Why VR arcades could be virtual reality’s salvation (Polygon) Back in 2012, I visited an arcade for the first time in years, and found it to be a thoroughly…
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What ho, chums! I’ve finally reached what I suppose is the No Man’s Sky plateau: I’ve maxed out the slots in my exosuit and multitool, I’ve almost maxed out my spaceship, and I’m starting to notice a fair bit of repetition in the planets I’ve been visiting. After my initial fever of exploration, it feels…
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One game I forgot to mention in yesterday’s article on my rediscovery of mobile gaming was 999: The Novel – although it’s debatable whether it should be called a game at all. I’ve been interested in trying out the games in the Zero Escape series for a while. Zero Time Dilemma, the third game, came…
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One consequence of getting sucked in by Pokemon Go is that I’ve ‘rediscovered’ mobile gaming, to an extent – just as Eurogamer predicted. Bar the odd game of Threes, I’d pretty much given up on mobile games before this summer, but the Pokemania earlier this year prompted me to see what else the App Store…
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Like probably everyone reading this blog, I struggle to keep up with all of the new game releases. And in recent years, I’ve found it harder and harder to keep on top of even a fraction of the great games that are coming out. It made me wonder whether this was simply because I have…
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Seriously. I just can’t put the damn thing down. There’s always just one more ridge to look over, just one more animal to scan, just one more planet to explore. It’s one of the most addictive games I’ve played in a long while. I’ll start out with a plan in mind: say, I want to…
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It’s a great name, isn’t it? I can’t think of many video-game heroes with the name Clive, although there should definitely be more. In fact, the only famous Clives I can think of are Clive Anderson and Clive James. But where are all the young Clives? ARE there any young Clives? And now I’m thinking…
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My first impressions of Child of Light weren’t that great. I’d realised that week that I just don’t particularly get on with 2D platformers any more, and after half an hour of jumping around I was ready to give up after “the same old platforms and puzzles reared their ugly heads”. But I’m glad I…
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Finally, more than two years after its launch, I’ve bought a PS4. Hurrah! After blitzing my way through my backlog and selling a ton of games, I had the cash to hand. I spotted a sweet deal – a 500GB PS4 with No Man’s Sky, Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens, The Force Awakens Blu-ray and…
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A while back, I was curious as to which games have sold the most overall, so I found myself browsing through a list of the best-selling titles of all time. It included the usual suspects – Super Mario, Call of Duty, etc. – but one name jumped out at me: J.B. Harold. I’d never heard…
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The traditional ‘summer games drought’ comes as something of a relief for those, like I, who are imbued with a phenomenal gaming backlog. It’s a chance to dust off some unplayed titles and finally give them some time in the gaming spotlight before the inevitable deluge of games arrives in time for Christmas. Then again,…
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I’ve played Flow and Flower before – two of Thatgamecompany’s earlier games, both imbued with an ethereal feel and gameplay unlike anything I’d seen. More a meditative experience than traditional titles, they teeter on the fine line between art project and bona fide video game. Both were compelling in their own ways, but I didn’t…
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A few minutes into Uncharted 2, and it’s already apparent that it’s leagues ahead of the previous game, both in storytelling and finesse. After a meeting in a beach bar with some old associates, Nathan Drake finds himself persuaded to join a museum heist in Istanbul – an opener that immediately draws attention to the…
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Welcome to Spiffing Reads, our weekly round up of the best games writing, which this week kicks off with an alternative take on Sonic. Sonic boom: Ellie Gibson on nostalgia, novelty, and that 9/10 (Eurogamer) The ever-brilliant Ellie Gibson penned this meandering article on her expectations for Sonic Mania, interspersed with parenting metaphors, and ex-boyfriends…
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This week on our weekly roundup of the best games writing, we start with a look at the crazy time that Nintendo’s been having lately… Nintendo’s roller-coaster week (GamesIndustry.biz) A look back at an important week for Nintendo, with their share price peaking and then diving in relation to Pokemon Go, and leaked reports revealing…
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We’ve known for a long time that gaming is no longer the preserve of sweaty, bedroom-bound teenage males (if indeed it ever was). But I was intrigued to read this article on Kotaku UK about just how much the gaming demographic has changed over the years. This was probably the most interesting part for me:…
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What ho, chums. I’ve recently returned from the mayhem that is the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, and three days on I’m still not fully recovered from the madness, a stubborn cold being the legacy of my dalliance with chaos. Needless to say, video games have been my salve in times of snot-filled hopelessness,…
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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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It fascinates me how gaming has gone from being a niche hobby to something that’s firmly ensconced in mainstream culture (even if there’s still some way to go before it gains widespread acceptance), and for evidence of this you need look no further than the burgeoning fan art community. The current generation of artists is…
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I remember the moment when I reached the waterfall cave in the original Tomb Raider on the PlayStation and an involuntary “wow” fell from my lips. That “wow” moment has happened many times before and since in many different games: encountering my first Colossus in Shadow of the Colossus, fighting Mother Brain in Super Metroid…
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It’s very rare that I’ll buy a game on the strength of the box art alone. Usually a game purchase will be the end result of a meticulous information-gathering process: hours spent sifting through reviews and hearing friends’ recommendations before deciding on a game to buy, usually followed by a wait of a few months…
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I finished Far Cry 2 (buy on Amazon) the other day, and I have to say I was pretty disappointed. The designers took on some controversial subject matter by setting the game in an African civil war, and they really don’t do it the justice it deserves. But before I get onto that, let’s look…
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I finally finished Bayonetta last week, just days before the announcement that the sequel is not only in development but that it’s exclusive to Wii U. Who’d have thunk it? Glad to see Nintendo have rightly but their might behind Bayonetta, although it still seems odd: a bit like finding out that Disney are producing…
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Midnight in Paris is a great film if only because it’s an accurate commentary on an aspect of the human condition – the nostalgic and often skewed view of the past. Owen Wilson plays an aspiring novellist who romanticises a 1920’s Paris and everything surrounding it, from the writers to the artists and philanthropists, all…
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When was the last time a film made you cry? Even this embittered blogger can admit to a few tear-inducing moments in his film-watching past, the ending to Casablanca being one. Now when was the last time a video game made you cry? I’m guessing quite a few of you will answer ‘never’, and I…
A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME 