A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME
Video Games, Victorian Style
Tag: Video Games
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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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Eurogamer recently reported the rumour that the Nintendo Switch will have support for GameCube games on the Virtual Console. If true, this is fantastic news, as the GameCube has an enviable library of titles to draw from, many of which never reached the audience they deserved. Big hit titles like Super Mario Sunshine, Luigi’s Mansion…
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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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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…
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Not a huge amount has caught my Spiffing Reads eye over the past couple of weeks, hence the thin selection below. We’re well into the season of end-of-year lists, gift guides and reviews of AAA games, none of which makes for particularly thrilling reading – unless a hugely anticipated game gets a critical mauling, of…
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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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I didn’t have time to post Spiffing Reads last week, so this week we have a bumper double issue of the spiffingist reads from the past two weeks, starting off with an insight into how a game idea can end up going nowhere. The Ant Man: my year in development hell (Eurogamer) It must be…
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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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What ho, chums! Friends, I’m growing old. As I near the end of my fourth decade on this planet, my listening predilections are veering from rock and roll towards radio plays, and my shoes are getting comfier and less fashionable with every passing year. I’m wholeheartedly embracing it – bring on the grey hairs, I…
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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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I ran out of time on Friday, so Spiffing Reads is a bit late this week. But just as packed full of goodness as ever. Why I Play (Kotaku UK) “Playing video games is, for me, part of a lifelong rejection of boredom.” Keza MacDonald, the chief ed of Kotaku UK, went on maternity leave…
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I pitched an article on board games based on video games months and months ago, but it’s only just been published on Eurogamer. It turned out to be a much bigger undertaking than I thought. My initial idea was to do a round up of all of the video-game-themed board games on the market,…
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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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It’s been a quiet week on the blog thanks to some crazy work schedules, but as always we’ve got a few Spiffing Reads for you. Of course, the big news this week was a certain console announcement… Nintendo Switch Reveal – ALL EASTER EGGS, Analysis & Things Missed (IGN) Everyone everywhere has been writing about…
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This week on Spiffing Reads, we look into a spooky AI future – and a forgotten past of suicidal game disks. The Video Game Horror Of Westworld (Kotaku UK) The new HBO version of Westworld looks rather excellent. I was a big fan of the original film, and it seems like they’ve done a great…
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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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This week on Spiffing Reads, it’s all sex and VR. So a bit like the Brosnan-starring The Lawnmower Man, then. The best – and very worst – sex scenes in video game history (The Guardian) When it comes to sex scenes in video games, it seems that Bioware is one of the only developers that has…
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A short one this week, kicking off with some retro-gaming nostalgia. Game Genie declassified: That summer I played 230 Game Boy games (Eurogamer) Do you remember the Game Genie? It emerged after Codemasters worked out a way to get around Nintendo’s restrictions on who could produce NES software by bypassing the infamous 10NES lockout chip.…
A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME 