A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME
Video Games, Victorian Style
Tag: Review
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We return to the wild world of Castlevania with The Castlevania Adventure and its sequel Belmont’s Revenge, both for the Game Boy. The Castlevania Adventure is a fun little game for what it is, but I don’t know how much anyone that didn’t already have a nostalgic itch for it would enjoy it. Being a Game Boy game naturally…
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Disclaimer: zero spoilers ahead. If you’ve played and enjoyed the previous two seasons of Telltale’s The Walking Dead, then you’ll be happy to hear that A New Frontier hasn’t altered the successful formula at all. If you haven’t, then you’re also in luck, as this makes a great new jumping on point, with the focus being on…
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I don’t play very many mobile games (nothing against them, I just have so many other platforms I’ve already got too many games for), but every once in a while an impressive one suddenly leaps out of the shadows and bites me. Nightgate is one such unexpected nibbler. I had never heard of the game,…
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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I still distinctly remember the hours that followed walking out of the cinema after seeing “Moon”. Still struggling to come to terms with the notion of ‘created memories’, while walking along the iconic Chapel Street the friend I caught the film with started to entertain the notion of teleportation, referring to an article he’d read…
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As I said a while back, I’ve been getting back into Batman recently. I’ve read a few more Batbooks since that last post, and they’ve reflected the general trend for Batman stories veering wildly between genius and utter rubbish, with the tales being told in the main ‘canon’ Batman storyline generally being overstuffed and hamstrung…
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I find it comforting just how quickly I fell back into old habits playing id Software’s rebooted and somewhat reimagined Doom. Innovation to video game mechanics – the nuts and bolts that make the things tick – move at such a rate of knots that it’s easy to forget to often simple joys of what…
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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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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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2014’s Shadow Warrior and Wolfenstein reboots left me feeling a teensy bit nostalgic. As someone who doesn’t have any particular affinity for the copious amounts of pixel-fuelled indie platformers that have had the blood flowing to people’s nether-regions, it was nice to finally have that warm and fuzzy feeling that thinking about the good ol’…
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I’m going to come right off the bat and say I don’t like DriveClub. I’d refrain from calling it a bad game, but it is a confused one that gets very little right. Everything from the handling to the tracks to driver AI feels slightly off kilter to the point where nothing in the game…
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Just hold R2. That’s how the instructions to Techland’s arcade offroad racer, Nail’d, should have read. Jumping over canyons, flying through wind turbines, and riding your ATV or MXB through ancient greek romans are all done at an exceptional, almost unmatched, speed. You’ll rely on almost inhuman reflexes to dodge incoming obstacles as the scenery…
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There is no series I have spent more time with over the years than Castlevania. Irrespective of whether I’m running through Wygol Village, Climbing Dracula’s castle, or the trudging through the contents of Portraits of Ruin’s paintings, Castlevania games have always had this unmatched ability to draw me in and keep me fixated on the (usually…
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inFamous 2 is the best superhero game ever made. It’s the best anti-hero game ever made. And its one of the best open world games ever made. I played the first inFamous close to launch and loved it to bits but years later just couldn’t get the enthusiasm up to take the plunge and play…
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How many times do you think the average video game enthusiast says “this is the game I dreamt of playing when I was a kid”. I’d hazard a guess it is a hell of a lot. But regardless of how many times I’ve thought it or written it (I did a search of the blog…
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It took me five years to finish Prototype and while I don’t necessarily want to review it the game did provoke me to think about what games have become, where they’re going, and why Prototype is perhaps one of the more important games for me of last generation. I am almost certain that Prototype is the…
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I really loved the Saints Row franchise. It may have followed (closely) in the footsteps of the Grand Theft Auto but the first Saints Row on the Xbox 360 was an admirable attempt at bringing that style of game into the next generation. Many people criticised it for that and for that reason it perhaps…
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Its sad that the end of Bizarre Creations happened the way it did. Once at the top of the pile leading both of Microsoft’s first two consoles out of the gate with the excellent Project Gotham Racing series, a shift to Activision in 2007 saw it release a number of games to little commercial success before…
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Dead Rising 3 is a deeper, more complex, more rewarding and more open game than its predecessors and Capcom Vancouver have set the bar for what to expect in the next generation of open world game design. And it’s not blind faith and fanaticism for the Dead Rising series that made me love Dead Rising…
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Forza 5 is an excellent racing simulation. On the surface you’ve got probably the best racing simulation currently available on consoles with excellent controls giving you the means to race at blistering speeds around some breathtakingly picturesque tracks. Racing around Bathurst’s Mount Panorama, new to the series, is a pure joy and highlights the game’s real…
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*This review contains a very minor spoiler of Bioshock Infinite. Spoiler sensitive readers be warned. There’s something about seeing something familiar in a totally new context. Take Bioshock Infinite for example. Seeing a very familiar Rapture out of context of how we know and love it was a special moment and one that simply punctuated…
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I don’t think I have ever smiled and yelped with excitement as much as I did while playing Rayman Legends. Everything from the absolutely beautiful art and visuals of the game, to the inspired locations, the whimsical characters and the toe-tapping musical score is designed to make your smile span ear to ear. Michel Ancel is…
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It’s been years since I’ve played No More Heroes since which time I’ve held it up as one of the great flashes of inspiration in game design this generation. It was balls-to-the-wall nuts, it was funny and it was the closest thing to a graphic novel gaming had seen to that date. Suda’s modern classic doesn’t…
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Modern Warfare 3 shows that war really never does change. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’ve never been a huge fan of Call of Duty Multiplayer. I appreciate what it brings to the table, and why millions upon millions flock to it. But its not my cup of tea. The single player campaigns…
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As the species at the top of the food chain, humans – particularly in the more affluent countries – don’t really know what it is to struggle to survive. We complain about the job we didn’t get, about the price of petrol and food, and about the girl or boy that got away. We even…
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Far Cry 3 is brilliant at making you feel like whatever you want to be. While you play the role of rich-kid and kind-of-a-jerk Jason Brody it is easy to mistake yourself for the best hit and run warriors of the Viet Cong or Sam Fisher at the height of his stealthiness. The game gives…
A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME 