Dark, atmospheric, arty, 2D indie puzzle platformer. These are words that tickle some of the most sensitive and excitable games-enjoying parts of my brain, so LIMBO, with its distinctive stylings and rave reviews, was an experience I had been eagerly looking forward to. Unfortunately, dull, irritating and over-hyped are not, and those are the adjectives that come unpleasantly to mind after ploughing doggedly through LIMBO's short, disappointing adventure.
Sunday, 11 March 2012
Monday, 27 February 2012
On Stuff 27/02/2012
The Crushing and Inevitable Weight of Reality Bearing Grimly Down
In my not-a-new-year's-resolution I wrote that I hoped to make a decent length blog post every couple of weeks. If you count something that I'd already written most of, a follow up to a post from September 2011, something I originally wrote for a site other than this blog and an incoherent jumble of thoughts, I'm doing pretty well on this (on average). If you don't then I've written a pathetic one proper piece in two months. Take your pick!
In my not-a-new-year's-resolution I wrote that I hoped to make a decent length blog post every couple of weeks. If you count something that I'd already written most of, a follow up to a post from September 2011, something I originally wrote for a site other than this blog and an incoherent jumble of thoughts, I'm doing pretty well on this (on average). If you don't then I've written a pathetic one proper piece in two months. Take your pick!
On Defense Grid: The Awakening
I thought I knew tower defence: that gooey little sub-genre that flows perfectly into the mould of short-term-addictive, long-term-disposable browser games. That guilty pleasure that I can dip into when I want something nerdy and satisfying, but that I'd never write something about. Something fun, but never deep or amazing. That's what I knew about tower defence.
67 hours and counting in Defense Grid: The Awakening says that I didn't know tower defence.
It wasn't meant to be this way. This was a little foray in between "proper" games. Something that I picked up in the Potato Sack (I think), that I could put a few hours into and then move on and forget. Even if it did get addictive I certainly wouldn't be raving about its inventiveness and - am I really writing this - story and character.
67 hours and counting in Defense Grid: The Awakening says that I didn't know tower defence.
It wasn't meant to be this way. This was a little foray in between "proper" games. Something that I picked up in the Potato Sack (I think), that I could put a few hours into and then move on and forget. Even if it did get addictive I certainly wouldn't be raving about its inventiveness and - am I really writing this - story and character.
Wednesday, 1 February 2012
On Stuff 01/02/2012
Dream Games
It shouldn't be news to anyone that being ill is unpleasant. While thankfully only afflicted by an irritating cold/flu/headache thing, I've been reminded yet again how useless being under the weather makes you feel, something I always forget until the cloud is actually over my head. In my case, the silver lining of that mixed metaphorical cloud is that having a cold often gives me very vivid dreams, whereas normally I remember dreams only occasionally and abstractly. This morning's one started excellently, with me as some kind of parkour film star, before going downhill when my friend's Mum attempted to deliberately run me over in what I believe was a Renault Clio.
It shouldn't be news to anyone that being ill is unpleasant. While thankfully only afflicted by an irritating cold/flu/headache thing, I've been reminded yet again how useless being under the weather makes you feel, something I always forget until the cloud is actually over my head. In my case, the silver lining of that mixed metaphorical cloud is that having a cold often gives me very vivid dreams, whereas normally I remember dreams only occasionally and abstractly. This morning's one started excellently, with me as some kind of parkour film star, before going downhill when my friend's Mum attempted to deliberately run me over in what I believe was a Renault Clio.
On a Roguelike: Diaries of Dredmor
Back in murky yesteryear of 2011 a little game called Dungeons of Dredmor, one of a gradual new wave of accessible and mainstream - or at least widely talked about - roguelikes and roguelike influenced games (roguelikelikes if you will), was released to moderate acclaim. The hallmark of the genre is the procedurally generated environments in which your adventures take place and the unpredictable and often amusing consequences that the player's freedom of interaction with these varied environments results in. Dredmor manages the near heroic feat of presenting a friendly, funny and familiar gaming experience, while compromising little of the distinctive, emergent experience that all good roguelikes have at their core. Let no grumpy, nerdy, I-played-nethack-before-you-were-born forum dweller convince you that Dredmor is dumbed down or has little to offer beyond a role as some "my first roguelike" gateway drug.
Sunday, 22 January 2012
On Eve, Part Two
Over Christmas I finally confronted a minor personal demon of mine and read Jim Rossignol's The Five Year Spree. It, along with my original blog about why it was a personal demon, are required reading for this blog, which I should warn you is little more than a jumbled collection of my thoughts about and reactions to the RPS piece.
It's bloody great, of course, but I didn't ever doubt that it would be a good piece of writing. What was greatest was how much Jim's account resonated and intertwined with my own memories of the game: on a very simple level, this was because our paths crossed a couple of times, but it was also because what he wrote about and the way in which he talked about the Eve experience felt a lot like the sort of account I would (try to) write if the time for doing so wasn't long past.
It's bloody great, of course, but I didn't ever doubt that it would be a good piece of writing. What was greatest was how much Jim's account resonated and intertwined with my own memories of the game: on a very simple level, this was because our paths crossed a couple of times, but it was also because what he wrote about and the way in which he talked about the Eve experience felt a lot like the sort of account I would (try to) write if the time for doing so wasn't long past.
Wednesday, 4 January 2012
On Games for Non-Gamers
As many of us realise every Christmas, parents can be very tough to buy presents for, especially the inconsiderate ones with few hobbies and no burning passion for those scented candles/boring chocolates/dodgy shaving sets that we've resorted to in previous years. It was at this familiar impass that my girlfriend and I found ourselves when trying to think up a Christmas present for her Dad.
Remembering a few conversations about computer upgrades and how at one point the family PC used to be used primarily for Quake sessions, as well as the occasions when we've walked in to find her Dad engrossed in a game of Spider Solitaire, I tentatively suggested "why not a game?" and was surprised not be laughed out of the room.
Remembering a few conversations about computer upgrades and how at one point the family PC used to be used primarily for Quake sessions, as well as the occasions when we've walked in to find her Dad engrossed in a game of Spider Solitaire, I tentatively suggested "why not a game?" and was surprised not be laughed out of the room.
Monday, 2 January 2012
On Blogging
I know I'm with the majority of people on this one, but I've never been able to keep even the few, feeble new year's resolutions I've made in the past, so what I say below is strictly Not One of Those. That said, the start of a fresh year does seem like the time to try and affect positive changes, so here goes.
Wednesday, 7 September 2011
On Eve
It's now been four years since I last played Eve Online. The time since has involved three TF2 obsessions (one ongoing), time in three other MMOs, the completion of an entire Medieval II grand campaign and a full completion of Super Meat Boy, not to mention two serious relationships, graduation, starting work and moving between three houses in two cities. I no longer know much about what's going on in the game, save for those stories significant enough to be reported in the wider pc gaming press, and I'm sure Eve has changed so much in the interim I wouldn't even know how to undock my ship were I to log in again. Despite all of this I am as I write losing sleep over, and seemingly unable to stop thinking about, the gaming experience that defined two years of my life.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)