As I’ve said before, one of the highlights of my first year of next-gen gaming was the Tomb Raider reboot, and that, coupled with the ever-so-brief go I had on this one prior to release, made Rise of the Tomb Raider one of my most eagerly anticipated releases of Silly Season. I had every reason to expect good things from this installment, and particularly because I’d very much gotten the impression that this one would feature more of the Tomb-ey/Puzzle-y stuff that I loved about the earlier Tomb Raider games, whilst still maintaining the strong narrative arc of the 2013 release. Continue reading “Rise of the Tomb Raider – First Impressions”
If my last two forays into the Fallout Universe are anything to go by, it’s likely that it’ll be another couple of hundred hours before I “finish” Fallout 4, so I figured it’d perhaps behoove me to do a series of ‘my journey so far’ type pieces in the meantime. This is the first, I guess, but it’s also a ‘First Impressions‘ piece, so I’ll limit this one to the immediately obvious stuff, but with a bit of the ‘sense of occasion’ thrown in for good measure. Think of me as a modern day Herodotus, if you will; not only being witness to history as it happens, but, like, writing that shit down too. Continue reading “Fallout 4 – First Impressions”
They say hindsight’s 20/20, and it’s a maxim I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, particularly because I’m an idiot who decided to start a gaming blog just as Silly Season touched down with all the force of a category bajillion tornado. Would I do the same again? Has it been worth it, especially given nobody’s reading any of my stuff? Is sleep actually overrated, or are my lack of it, and these hallucinations I seem to be frequently having related in some way? Indeed, why would a pink elephant want to hide my controller and headphones anyway? Continue reading “Silly Season: My Experience So Far!”
The review I just wrote for Halo 5: Guardians – Multiplayer ended up being considerably longer than I expected, indeed considerably longer than some academic textbooks, so some stuff got cut just to reduce the chances of anybody reading suddenly slipping into a boredom coma. In amongst this stuff was some general observations I’d made about the Halo Community – which weren’t necessarily integral to the review – but which I thought might be worth mentioning anyway, for various reasons. Continue reading “Halo 5: Guardians – The Online Community”
Having been a little disappointed with Halo 5’s Campaign, I think it’s fair to say I was really hoping for big things from its multiplayer offerings. Indeed, these days many games are often at least as geared towards the online, MP experience as they are the solo, SP stuff – and, if it’s all done well, a great multiplayer can redeem even the most average of games. I’m still relatively new to all the online stuff in general, but (initial humiliation aside, obviously) it’s an element that I’m increasingly becoming quite a fan of, so, armed with some high expectations – and a ridiculously huge pair of headphones – I threw myself into Guardians Multiplayer with gusto, very much hoping to be impressed. Continue reading “Halo 5: Guardians – Multiplayer Review”
OK, so right off the bat I feel I should probably declare that I’m not what you could reasonably call a massive Halo fan. And by that I mean that, even though I have played (and mostly enjoyed) the games, I’m not a huge follower of the franchise, and the ongoing story/themes/characters aren’t things I’ve paid a huge amount of attention to, or spent a lot of time thinking about. I played through the games quickly (and almost certainly in the wrong order), had my fun, and then moved on. I’ve recently acquired the Master Chief Collection, and am looking forward to perhaps changing all of this, but for now – and for the purposes of this review – you should definitely bear in mind that I’m coming at it from something of a n00b’s point-of-view. Continue reading “Halo 5: Guardians – Campaign Review”
As I explained the other day, during ‘Gaming’s Silly Season‘ I shall most likely be doing ‘First Impression‘ pieces for the majority of games, and in these I hope to cover my initial thoughts and/or experiences of playing a particular game, but stopping somewhere short of hitting ‘Full Campaign Review’ type detail. I’ve been playing AC: Syndicate for a total of about 20+ hours at this point, so I figure that puts me in a decent enough position to cover some of the more general points. Also, Halo 5’s just come out, and given I’m both rubbish at multi-tasking and easily confused, I should pro’ly get this out of the way before I begin conflating the two games and start going on about Locke casually chatting to Charles Dickens and suchlike. Continue reading “Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate – First Impressions”
In what shall henceforth be known as ‘VR Day – BOOM!’, I spent my last afternoon at Brasil Game Show strapping various contraptions to my big old head, spinning and bobbing around like a drunk pigeon, and just generally looking like a bit of a tool. Here’s the thing, though – I really didn’t care, and it was totally, totally worth it. I’ve been ridiculously excited about the coming of VR for ages now, and this was a great opportunity to have a crack at a few variations of it, and just generally see what our glorious VR future looks like. Continue reading “My First Experience with Virtual Reality”
I loved the Tomb Raider re-boot, and it was probably the highlight of my first year of next-gen gaming. It was great for many reasons, but not least because it got a stone-cold gaming classic back on the right track, and its more subtle (and ultimately more mature) approach genuinely marked it out as a title to be respected.
My one complaint, however, was that there weren’t really that many puzzles. Or tombs, for that matter. Continue reading “Rise of the Tomb Raider: Hands On First Look”
QTX 