Category Archives: gaming

Aug 12 2013
4 Comments
gaming

Thoughts: Papers, Please.

documets

Papers Please is a game where you play a border official in a small totalitarian country, checking passports and identity documents against a small handbook to try and spot any discrepancies or forgeries. As a concept it’s basically one step removed from those sodding hidden object games that plague Steam like a bad case of athlete’s foot, but Papers Please excels so well in its setting and execution that it’s ended up being one of the most engrossing puzzle games I’ve played in the last couple of years.

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Jul 29 2013
9 Comments
gaming

Thoughts: Shadowrun Returns.

It’s Space School over the next two weekends, so next Monday’s (05/08/13) blog post is probably going to end up being next Wednesday’s blog post.

fight

To be honest I’m faintly amazed that this game exists at all.

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Jul 22 2013
27 Comments
gaming

Thoughts: Brave New World.

jeans

I’m not convinced.

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Jul 15 2013
9 Comments
gaming

Thoughts: Dota 2.

hero

Back in October I wrote a little piece about my first impressions of the Dota 2 beta. This was based on around a dozen hours of play – the equivalent of dipping my toe into an ocean that went all the way down to the abyssal deeps – and at the time none of the teaching functionality such as “tutorials” and “actually telling people how they’re supposed to play the game” had been introduced, and so the only way to learn how to play it was through repeated failure and/or the painstaking help of others. Most people, when they are put in a situation where e.g. a burly man repeatedly punches them in the face, are going to naturally have a reaction along the lines of “I don’t like being punched in the face” and remove themselves from that situation, which is why those first impressions were broadly negative. However, if you’re crazy enough to stick around, eventually you are going to become really good at not being punched in the face.

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Jul 08 2013
16 Comments
gaming

Thoughts: Company of Heroes 2.

what

Company of Heroes 2 is a game that vexes me mightily. It is almost totally devoid of surprises, a game made to order to satisfy a set of increasingly tired RTS clichés that doesn’t do anywhere near enough to iterate and improve upon its predecessor. It seems that Relic were right to depart from the formula they’d established with the original Dawn of War and CoH and experiment with a smaller, squad-focused setup in Dawn of War 2 – judging from their return to their old WW2 stomping grounds here, it seems very much like they’ve run out of ideas on how to innovate when they don’t have space aliens and laser guns to fall back on.

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Jul 01 2013
23 Comments
gaming

Thoughts: Sins Of A Solar Empire — Rebellion.

starbase

Rebellion is a bit of an anomaly. It’s a real-time space-based 4X game where you gradually spread the tendrils of your empire out from your home planet into the galaxy at large. It features battles with first dozens and then hundreds of ships all blasting the titanium out of each other with mass drivers and lasers, while swarms of fighters and bombers flit in and out of the fray. It has a staggeringly comprehensive research tree, with no chance that a player will be able to complete all of it in a single game. It even has vestigial trade, diplomacy and culture elements. It should be right up my alley.

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Jun 24 2013
9 Comments
gaming

Thoughts: Syndicate.

BOSS

If you’re a long-time reader of this blog you’re probably aware that I quite like Syndicate. The two Bullfrog games are classics, and while it’s a shame Bullfrog never really made a successful transition to full 3D environments it did mean that that it was impossible for the series to be diluted with a series of creatively braindead me-too sequels hoping to cash in on the Syndicate “franchise”, which I have no doubt would have happened if they’d continued to make games under the thumb of EA before their eventual assimilation into the collective. Still, the words “creatively bankrupt” do not even begin to describe the modern entertainment industry, which will never take a chance on a new IP when it can jam an older, popular one on top of whatever new thing they’re working on, no matter how badly it fits. Last year it was Syndicate’s turn to be disinterred from its peaceful and dignified place of last repose and resurrected as an FPS. This year I finally got around to playing it.

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