A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME

Video Games, Victorian Style

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Tag: Video Games

  • Prototype spoke to me (amongst the bloodshed)

    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…

  • Human Devolution: Deus Ex Already Dated

    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…

  • Crimson Shroud is Veil-ey Good

    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…

  • Welcome to PS3 Land

    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…

  • Trine 2: Calamitous Cooperation

    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…

  • Hanging out in the apocalypse with Joel and Ellie

    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…

  • Lucius Merriweather’s Most Agreeable Games of 2013

    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…

  • Haring around Hotel Dusk

    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…

  • Side-stepping the next generation

    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…

  • Xbox One launch: highs and lows

    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…

  • The Gentlemen decide: the most agreeable games of the generation (Xbox 360, PS3)

    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…

  • 30 Years of Video Games – War of the Monsters (2003)

    I’m waving goodbye to my 20′s and to celebrate I’m counting down 30 games from the last 30 years.  Join me while I countdown 30 great years of game memories. War of the Monsters I honestly don’t know anyone who doesn’t love big monsters.  Giant praying Mantises fighting oversized lizards or sentient laser toting robots…

  • 30 Years of Video Games – Prisoner of War (2002)

    I’m waving goodbye to my 20′s and to celebrate I’m counting down 30 games from the last 30 years.  Join me while I countdown 30 great years of game memories. Prisoner of War In the early 00’s I was a bit of a sucker for the ol’ stealth genre.  I found an inordinate and perhaps…

  • 30 Years of Video Games – Kessen (2000)

    I’m waving goodbye to my 20′s and to celebrate I’m counting down 30 games from the last 30 years.  Join me while I countdown 30 great years of game memories. Kessen The Playstation 4 is on our doorstep but it seems like only yesterday we were wowed by what the Playstation 2 was capable of.…

  • 30 Years of Video Games – Rollcage (1999)

    I’m waving goodbye to my 20′s and to celebrate I’m counting down 30 games from the last 30 years.  Join me while I countdown 30 great years of game memories. Rollcage There was probably no worse year for developer Attention to Detail and publisher Psygnosis to release its high speed gravity-defying racer Rollcage.  Released in the same year…

  • Snap Goes The Xbox

    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,…

  • 30 Years of Video Games – Vigilante 8 (1998)

    I’m waving goodbye to my 20′s and to celebrate I’m counting down 30 games from the last 30 years.  Join me while I countdown 30 great years of game memories. Vigilante 8 It seems almost hard to believe that there was ever a time whereby multiple car combat games were being released in any one year. …

  • 30 Years of Video Games – Alien Trilogy (1996)

    I’m waving goodbye to my 20′s and to celebrate I’m counting down 30 games from the last 30 years.  Join me while I countdown 30 great years of game memories. Alien Trilogy It was hard going for first person shooters in the early years of the Playstation with many controlling poorly and others just lacking…

  • 30 Years of Video Games – Destruction Derby (1995)

    I’m waving goodbye to my 20′s and to celebrate I’m counting down 30 games from the last 30 years.  Join me while I countdown 30 great years of game memories. Destruction Derby You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t have an innate attraction to destruction and enjoying watching things crumble, break, explode, implode, collide or tear…

  • 30 Years of Video Games – Donkey Kong (1994)

    I’m waving goodbye to my 20′s and to celebrate I’m counting down 30 games from the last 30 years.  Join me while I countdown 30 great years of game memories. Donkey Kong “Lateral Thinking of Withered Technology”, Gunpei Yokoi (1941-1997). It sometimes amazes me the things that developers pulled off with the original Game Boy.…

  • 30 Years of Video Games – Dr Franken (1992)

    I’m waving goodbye to my 20′s and to celebrate I’m counting down 30 games from the last 30 years.  Join me while I countdown 30 great years of game memories. Dr Franken I have a ridiculous soft spot for Nintendo’s handheld brick.  It was what I spent more of my childhood gaming years with under…

  • The Launch Games That Time Forgot

    With the launches of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 just around the corner, much talk is being devoted to the various merits of the competing systems, and not least their line-ups of launch games. It’s worth being reminded here that for the most part, launch games tend to be generic, undercooked and quickly forgotten…

  • 30 Years of Video Games – Xenon 2: Megablast (1989)

    I’m waving goodbye to my 20′s and to celebrate I’m counting down 30 games from the last 30 years.  Join me while I countdown 30 great years of game memories. Xenon 2: Megablast Almost no developer says “Amiga 500” like the Bitmap Brothers.  Responsible for some of the most well known games released over the…

  • 30 Years of Video Games – Gradius (1986)

    30 Years of Video Games – Gradius (1986)

    I’m waving goodbye to my 20′s and to celebrate I’m counting down 30 games from the last 30 years.  Join me while I countdown 30 great years of game memories. Gradius I have a level of respect and fascination of Cave shooters that goes beyond just enjoying the act of playing them.  That admittedly waning fascination…

  • 30 years of video games – Jumpman (1983)

    I’m waving goodbye to my 20’s and to celebrate I’m counting down 30 games from the last 30 years.  Join me while I countdown 30 great years of game memories. Jumpman (1983) Jumpman is your typical 80’s arcade game experience. Developed by pioneering video game developer Epyx, and released on various personal computer platforms in…

  • Sonic All-Star Racing Transformed: taking the lead, again

    *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…

  • The unpredictability of sport is lost in translation

    I watch a lot of sport.  I’ve played a lot of sport.  And I’ve played a lot of sporting based video games.  In short I know my sport.  If you know anything about sport you’ll know that it is often won on split second decisions by players, or player error on the part of the…

  • The Last Story: A Fitting Swansong for the Wii

    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…

  • Too many games, too little time

    I had some time to kill the other day, so I took a wander through the Foyles bookshop in St Pancras station. As I idled through the new-books section I was astonished by the sheer number of titles that had been published in the run-up to Christmas. Most were the usual shelf-filler, but half a…

  • The Gentlemen Deliberate: Our Ten Most Agreeable Wii Games

    There was a sad piece of news last week as Nintendo announced that it was ceasing production of the Wii. It’s a console that’s divided many, but here at A Most Agreeable Pastime, it’s a gaming machine that we hold close to our hearts. The Wii has been criticised over the years for becoming a…

  • Calling ‘time’ on GTA V

    I really REALLY don’t like GTA V.  Before you go bananas and scream abuse, let me just get this straight: GTA V is a great game.  Everything about the production is absolutely top-notch.  The little details that the internet has collectively circle-jerked over are, admittedly, nothing short of jaw-dropping.  The voice acting for the most…

  • So, What’s A Steam Box?

    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…