Even though it’s Carnaval here in Brazil (so I’m not even halfway through my 5 day weekend), I’m going to – out of the goodness of my heart, because that’s the kind of guy I am, etc, etc – provide you with a little bug-out bag of gaming essentials to help you survive the drudgery of the dreaded Monday. Rather than containing, say, bottled water, those silver blanket things, or a crossbow, this particular bug-out bag contains, like, words. Lots and lots of words. What I’m going to do – basically – is give you a little collection of Gaming-related stuff for you to surreptitiously read at work, in class, on your commute; essentially anywhere you choose where you feel it might alleviate the grimness that is Monday. Continue reading “Monday Morning Procrastination Pack”
If you’re reading this, welcome to the very first Weekend Gaming Doodah. This being some bona fide history-in-the-making shizzle, please feel obliged to conduct yourself with a degree of decorum suitably befitting of such a momentous occasion. Or, like, don’t – I’m not the boss of you! Anyways, what is this Weekend Gaming Doodah, and why such a formal title I hear you ask?! They’re fair questions young padawan, and – let the record show – it’s absolutely not something I just thought of because I’ve got fuck-all in the way of actual posts to publish, and it’s not an idea I shamelessly nicked from the Game section of the AV Club (or, indeed, every other Gaming site ever). Continue reading “Weekend Gaming Doodah!”
Ahead of the (eagerly anticipated) release of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, I’ve been quickly “working” my way through Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection. Yesterday, this came as something of a blessed relief after all the trauma of Ori and The Blind Forest, and it was nice to both have fun, and (if I’m being honest) to not to feel like I was an utterly incompetent and hilariously unskilled shitdribble. That’s great in and of itself, obviously, but it also got me thinking about the idea of Ongoing Narrative in Games, and just quite how it all works. Continue reading “Reasons Why Games Are Awesome No. 23, 456: Ongoing Gaming Narratives”
Part of my gaming New Year’s Resolution this year was to “mix shit up a bit” and I’d decided to make a conscious effort to play a broader spectrum of games. In doing so, I’m hoping to avoid just playing the same type of game, and particularly if it’s at the cost of other types. I mention this because, having just finished Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, I moved onto Ori and The Blind Forest and, to be honest, I’m not sure if there could be a greater degree of contrast between two games. Where the former is an uber-violent FPS with an oppressive palette of browns, blacks and greys, the latter is a colourful, vivid platformer, with glowing balls of light and magic. Essentially, one’s a direct descendant of the evolutionary line that began with first person shooters back in the 80s/90s, and the other is the direct descendant of the gaming line that began with the side-scrolling platformers of the same era, and all the cumulative adaptations in that time mean the games couldn’t really look, or be, more different.
QTX 