Late to the party is my new video series in which I review popular games a while after they’ve been released, mainly because I’ve only just gotten round to playing them.
The video can be found under this paragraph, but if you’re more of a reader I’ve provided a modified version of the script after the jump so you can enjoy my thoughts in the written word instead. I’m nice like that.
Continue reading “Late to the party – Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag”
Agent 47, the second movie based on the Hitman series of games, was released last week and currently has a score of 28 on Metacritic. Nonsensical, ill-thought-out and potentially financially devastating for people involved in it, Metacritic is a review aggregator that launched in 1999. Continue reading “The week in games: Kojima’s birthday, Jimmy Kimmel”
Today I’m going to tell you about a person who gets a lot of abuse and criticism on the internet: Games Journalism.
Games Hayden Journalism was born in Portland, Oregon in 1979. Its parents, Barbara and Michael Journalism, could tell that at a very young age Games was destined for big things.
Games played its first video game at an early age, and was so blown away by what it witnessed that it decided to dedicate its life to preaching the good word of gaming to others.
At the time, the best way to reach these audiences was through print. So, a young Games Journalism released numerous magazines, charging gamers a small fee to find out about the latest games. Continue reading “Games Journalism: That Prick”
Jamie Lee Curtis surprised gamers by revealing she’d gone to the Evo 2015 fighting game tournament dressed up as Vega. It turns out she was there with the rest of her family as a graduation treat for her son, who’s a massive fighting game fan, but she had decided to wear the Vega costume for anonymity. Apparently, her son didn’t want anyone to find out his mum was in Christmas With The Kranks. Continue reading “The week in games: Jamie Lee Curtis, Five Nights At Freddy’s 4”
As I write this it’s after 1am and news has just broken that Satoru Iwata has passed away, so please forgive me if this isn’t articulate or is a little more rambling than usual.
Satoru Iwata was a man who embodied everything Nintendo stood for. He was a man who put fun before finances, entertainment before enterprise, smiles before sales.
Before he became the first President of Nintendo who wasn’t part of the Yamauchi family, Iwata was a programmer. He was a developer first and a businessman second.
It was this inherent love for gaming, this passion that he took with him right to the tragically early end of his life, that made Iwata the perfect man to lead Nintendo.
It’s no secret that Nintendo’s finances haven’t been great of late. But it’s a testament to Iwata that despite this he continued to receive sterling approval ratings from the company’s many shareholders. Continue reading “Satoru Iwata (1959-2015)”
Apple Music launched a few days ago, offering unlimited streaming music for a monthly fee and in the process completely breaking boundaries by doing something nobody’s ever done before, certainly not Spotify or Pandora or any of those pricks.
In order to show their new service is the real deal, Apple is currently offering everyone with an iOS device or iTunes three months of Apple Music completely free.
So, in order to help game-loving folks get the most out of the trial period, I’ve put together a little playlist featuring my favourite video game music available on Apple Music. Continue reading “The Tired Old Hack Video Game Apple Music Playlist”
It’s fair to say that Nintendo’s offering this E3 didn’t exactly blow the world away.
Sony cleverly stole the show with three “ah but” games – Shenmue III (“ah but it’s crowd-funded”), the Final Fantasy VII remake (“ah but it isn’t exclusive”) and The Last Guardian (“ah but we’ve known about this for years”) – while Microsoft went down the “well, we’ve got loads of stuff actually coming out this year” route.
Nintendo, however, had what felt like one of its trademark ‘stop-gap E3s’, where it presented a bunch of seemingly less impressive games to tide fans over until next year’s big reveals of Zelda Wii U and the new NX console.
That said, some ‘gamers’ went a little overboard in terms of criticising Nintendo’s E3 wares. From some saying it was a disgrace to others outright petitioning to cancel the development of one announced game, I’m struggling to think of a time I’ve felt so ashamed to be associated with other so-called gamers.
I’ve been gaming long enough to remember when people were up in arms about Nintendo turning Metroid into a first-person shooter, or turning Zelda cel-shaded. Fast forward more than a decade and, surprise surprise, Metroid Prime and Zelda: The Wind Waker are heralded by Nintendo fans – many of whom whined at the time – as classics.
To be clear, my point is not that Metroid Prime Federation Force will be considered a classic a decade from now. All I’m saying is you should never judge a game until you actually get the chance to play it. Which is why I headed over to Nintendo’s top-secret post-E3 event in London yesterday to go hands-on with ten of the Wii U and 3DS games shown off in LA a couple of weeks ago.
Here are my full, honest impressions of everything I played, in the order I played them. Continue reading “Hands-on with Nintendo’s E3 2015 games”
Her Story is a plot-based game. As such, this review is completely free of spoilers. The only plot information revealed is what is revealed to the player right at the start of the game before any user-instigated interaction takes place.
There’s currently a thread on popular games forum NeoGAF called ‘Her Story | Spoiler Thread’. I won’t link to it in case you’re tempted to click it before playing the game.
In it are all manner of theories, questions and debates on the events of Her Story, the latest game from Sam Barlow, writer of the incredible Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.
While I have my own theory and I’m pretty happy with it, I’ve also seen some contradictory (and pretty convincing) ones from other people on the thread who have also enjoyed the game’s 3-4 hour duration. It’s making for some exciting discussion.
That there’s such animated chat surrounding the game is mainly down to the clever way in which Barlow presents Her Story to us, turning a series of linear video interviews into a fragmented mess we’re expected to gather and tidy up in our heads.
I’ve read other reviews of Her Story that have made some pretty bold (and in my eyes, wrong) decisions as to what’s considered spoiler material. For this review the only plot details I’ll reveal are those made available to you right when the game starts. Everything else should stay off-limits until you discover it for yourself. Continue reading “Her Story review (spoiler-free)”
Yoshi’s Woolly World is out in Europe on Friday (Americans will have to wait until October for it). Now the review embargo‘s passed I can tell you it’s one of the most beautiful, charming games you’ll play this generation.
One of my favourite features in in the game is the ability to unlock unique costumes (well, wool patterns) for Yoshi by scanning amiibo figures on the Wii U GamePad at any time.
When you scan one, Yoshi’s wool colour changes so he looks like the character you scanned. This costume is then unlocked for good and selectable at any point (meaning you can scan a friend’s amiibo, as with the Mario Kart 8 costumes).
As someone who’s a bit of an amiibo addict, I’ve scanned every single one released in Europe to date, except for the Inkling Boy and Inkling Girl from Splatoon. Turns out they all work, except for the Pokemon ones (which I’d imagine is down to The Pokemon Company not wanting its characters involved in that way). Continue reading “Yoshi’s Woolly World amiibo costume gallery”
If you aren’t familiar with the name Koichi Sugiyama, you should be by the time this article ends.
Sugiyama is a music composer, best known for composing pretty much all the music from the Dragon Quest games, starting way back in 1986 with the original.
Now aged 84 years young, he was recently seen in Japan celebrating the announcement of Theatrhythm Dragon Quest, Square Enix’s latest rhythm action title, which may as well have just been called Sugiyama: The Game.
Sadly, he’s also a bit of a dick: back in 2007 he helped start a campaign arguing that the Nanking Massacre and the Japanese army’s use of women as sexual slaves during World War II didn’t happen.
It’s neither Sugiyama’s music nor his offensive attempts at revising history that draw me to him, however. His face does.
For a while, Sugiyama ran a website called Sugimania (not a joke) in which he posted news about what he was up to. This also included a handful of photo galleries showing him out and about.
These photos are bloody marvellous. And to prove it, here are my 30 favourite ones, in reverse order (keep going, they get superb).
And if the idea of making fun of an old man’s tourist photos sounds cruel, remember: he’s an absolute arsehole. Continue reading “The 30 best photos of Koichi Sugiyama”
Tired Old Hack 