First 5 Minutes: Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

I played Brothers just after my son was born, as I recall. Everything is a bit of a blur around that time. Without wanting to play the father card too heavily, that timing definitely informed my experience with the game (just as playing The Walking Dead just before he was born helped me examine my fears of becoming a father). (more…)

First 5 Minutes: Proteus

I’ve wanted to try my hand at recording some in-game commentary for a while, with the above video being the first actual result. The idea is to play through the first five minutes of a variety of games, examining what they do well/not so well and generally discussing the importance Read more…

If Twitter hate mobs are Ultron, where is the internet’s Vision?

For the last ten years-or-so I’ve been convinced that governments would be responsible for the death of the Internet As We Know It: ever-encroaching censorship and surveillance transforming the promise of the open internet into something darker, more capitalist, more consumerist and, essentially, more 20th century. Here’s me on the Digital Economy Bill, and then on the good ol’ Twitter Joke Trial. That’s a lotta words.

Then so-called GamerGate happened, late last year. An amorphous bunch of apparent activists rose up, ostensibly to decry ethics in games journalism but in reality taking every opportunity to harass female game devs, game journalists and gamers, and anybody who supported them. Rape threats. Death threats. It was the abuse unleashed upon Anita Sarkeesian writ large, with a broad brush. The aggressors wielded the term ‘Social Justice Warrior’ as if it were something to be ashamed of. And all the while they claimed the moral high ground, even while forcing planes to land and issuing genuine terrorist threats to universities. The actions of GamerGate spoke far louder than its words. (more…)

DIY gaming part 6: The GPU

Turns out I forgot to blog about the final part of my computer upgrade: the GPU. Bit silly of me, given how important it is. I purchased the other components over the course of last year and built the rig in September, but only purchased the GPU right at the end of November.

This was all about waiting for the new ‘sweet spot’, which seemed to be on the verge of changing throughout 2014. NVIDIA had already teased some new tech and were clearly building up to something – that turned out to be the 970, a card which offers phenomenal power-to-price value. (more…)

Making Far Cry 3 better with self-imposed limitations

Far Cry 3 took me a long while to get into. I bought it long after release and even then it didn’t entirely click, with its ludicrous, mad playground of bizarre wildlife, open tropical island territory and huge arsenal being amusing but not terribly engaging.

It was a little too loose and lacking in focus, and its story too daft to be engaging. I’ve never been one to enjoy games which provide vast options, tending to prefer a game which specialises in a few key areas and gets them just right (Shadow of Mordor being a good recent example). (more…)

Molyneux, Kickstarter & why fixed funding is good

Gosh, John Walker’s interview with Peter Molyneux makes for hard reading. It’s resulted in the usual outraged reaction from those gamers who get terrified of reading anything which isn’t a simple graphics/gameplay/replayability review with a percentage score. And, yes, Walker’s interview pulls no punches and its opening gambit is especially on the nose – but it’s also an astonishing, fascinating interview which gets to the heart of an issue that everybody else has danced around for about 10 years. (more…)

DIY gaming part 5: Building the new rig

Last week I revealed the three components that would form the core of my new gaming rig. DABS delivered them promptly on the following Monday and that evening I set about putting it all together.

For a bit of context, the first time I built a computer, 10 years-or-so ago, I completely, utterly cocked it. I actually managed to screw the motherboard directly into the chassis, rather than onto the mounting thingies, promptly shorting the entire thing when I tried to turn it on. Not an auspicious start. (more…)

DIY gaming part 4: Motherboard, processor & memory

It’s been a while since the last DIY article, which was back in May. I have, however, at last committed to the next major stage of my new system build. In fact, this is the most major stage, being that it forms the skeleton, brain and memory of the new machine.

Given that I’m chasing a fairly impossible power/value sweet spot, it took a while to pinpoint exactly what to go for. While researching I stumbled across this excellent hardware guide by CynicalCyanide over on the Star Citizen forums. It’s an excellent primer for buying computer tech in 2014 and it clarified a lot of my decisions – and also saved me a bit of money here and there with its pragmatic approach. (more…)