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.
Being a Yorkshireman, I’m quite the fan of bargains and at under £8, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood certainly qualified as one. Indeed, for considerably less than the amount I’d just spent on two drinks and a snack at Costa (fucking fortune) Coffee [I’m here all week, folks…], I figured it’d be both rude and daft not to pick up a copy – particularly given I’d really enjoyed Wolfenstein: The New Order. Sure, it’s not a “full” game per se, but the promise of more dual-wielding, Nazi-shooting fun seemed too good an opportunity to miss out on, so, to paraphrase Shakespeare, I snapped that shit up like a boss. Continue reading “Wolfenstein: The Old Blood – Review”
So, after 6000 miles, some pretty dodgy airline (quote-unquote) “food”, and watching a surprising number of my fellow travellers being hilariously stumped by the apparent complexities of airplane toilet doors, I’m back home – and that means I can now get on with the task of rebuilding my Gaming life. Having schlepped my replacement PS4 across the equator (along with some re-bought games, headphones etc) and with my replacement Xbox One eagerly awaiting me here, I’m just about back where I was – hardware-ily speaking anyways. I spent yesterday reconnecting everything, waiting an inordinate amount of time for updates and shit to download, and now, having checked my USB stick on the off-chance I had saved my Fallout 4 stuff but finding I hadn’t, I’ve finally accepted that a) I am definitely an idiot, and b) I’m back to square one in terms of Next-Gen Gaming. Continue reading “And It’s Hi Ho Silver Lining! (Or Some such…)”
Having read a post over at The Aimless Gamer (a place you should totally check out, by the way), I gotz to thinking about this whole blogging malarkey, and more specifically, what I find so compelling about bloggers and blogs. The Internet is vast, and the number of places in it reserved for gaming-related things is mahoosive, yet I find myself increasingly eschewing the more well-known of these sites in favour of smaller, blog-ey type ones. Why is that, I wondered? What is it about – for want of a better word – these amateur sites that I’m drawn to; why do I prefer to spend my time reading personal, largely unfunded sites rather than the massive, bells-and-whistles ones instead? Continue reading “Why Should You Read Gaming Blogs? The Answers Will Shock You…..”
In some ways, the first year of Next-Gen felt like the gaming equivalent of being stuck in an airport for me. By that I mean that it was often characterised by large periods of waiting; periods in which I’d be sort-of half-heartedly doing bits and pieces just to pass the time/fend off boredom until the next significant event happened. Games seemed to trickle into stores at a fairly leisurely pace (at the time it felt like a positively fucking glacial pace), and with various delays and such being a factor too, the first few months of being a PS4 owner were never what you could reasonably call a time of plenty and abundance. Continue reading “How The Hell Do I Choose Which Games to Buy Again?”
So….. I’m a fucking idiot, me! For loads of reasons, admittedly, but most recently because, despite being obsessed with Fallout 4, and despite having sunk many, many hours into the game – slowly, painstakingly conquering the wasteland, leveling up, and building settlements – I didn’t even bother to take the 10 seconds necessary to back up my save file; cloudularly or hard-driveularly. Continue reading “Learning from my Mistakes: Use the Cloud”
Undoubtedly, one of the coolest things about having a Gaming blog is that it adds a veneer of legitimacy to what is, essentially, me being sat on my arse doing very little. It really is pretty freakin’ awesome that whenever somebody approaches me with some mundane task they want performing, I can raise an authoritative hand and offer up a ‘Sorry Sweetie/Mum/Person clearly in need of medical attention, I’d honestly love to help, really I would – but you see, I’m working‘, and – here’s the really cool bit – it actually being successful. Continue reading “Death by Video Game – Review”
As a general rule, I’m quite a cynical bastard, and there’s not much in this big, wide world of ours that I can’t find fault with. I even think dolphins are a bunch of dicks – and all the cutesy clicking and shit’s just to distract us while they plot our downfall. Games are mostly an exception to this (mostly – pay to win can get fucked, for example) but actually, in a rare moment of genuine positivity, I’ve found the Gaming Blogging Community to be a rich, rewarding place full of surprises and joy.
In that spirit, and because it’s New Year, I thought I’d do a little New Year’s Honours list-ey thing, Continue reading “The QTX New Year’s Honours List, 2016”
QTX 