Strategy Informer: Ethan: Meteor Hunter preview

The last two updates I've had here are just links to elsewhere. Well, rather nicely, I've been getting a lot of work, but also over last week I went to Rezzed and had a bloody great time. Not only did that take me away from my (self promised) Friday updates I try and do, but it gave me plenty to write about for the games industry. So this blog might not be much more than "Hey! Go read this!" for awhile.

Anyway, here is the first.

Ethan: Meteor Hunter preview

A nice little platformer that didn't seem to live up to its potential.

Strategy Informer: Marvel Heroes

I wanted to like Marvel Heroes. I really did. I've spent countless hours with Drew and some others playing through the Marvel ARPG games all the way from X-Men Legends to Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. They were our games. Now I'm living 300 odd miles away Marvel Heroes looked like a way of recapturing that magic.

It doesn't. What's more, Gazillion and Marvel try to rob you at the same time of giving you a poor gameplay experience.

Marvel Heroes Review

BeefJack: Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness 4 review

I've been a fan of Penny Arcade for quite a while now, even with all their Kickstarter shenanigans. When On the Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness started way back in 2008 I jumped on it, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Now it has come to an end. And I reviewed it. Just like I did the third one.

Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness 4 review

Gather around the Captain's Table

The jumping of the time frames is a constant of the Captain's Table series, but it's taken to a new level here as Kirk tells a story set during the 60s series, Sulu (and later Kirk) during the movies, all while the framing story takes place post-movies. For the most part it works well, but I get the feeling L.A. Graf shoe-horned the framing story in. Considering this is meant to be Kirk and Sulu tell their stories to a captive audience, there are times when you'd expect the other to throw in a sly comment, obviously not all the time, but at the end of a chapters when the storyteller shifts. At the end, as their tales finish and we switch back to the framing, nobody seems to care any more everyone having drifted off as the two Starfleet captains finish their story. Jerry Oltion (the only other one I've read so far) handled it much better with a bit of bar-type camaraderie going on throughout.

E3 2013: Picking sides in the next-gen

For somebody who writes about videogames for a living, I've not written a great deal about the next generation consoles, partly because I say a lot on the BeefJack podcast. Now we're at E3, now seems like the perfect time to address that.

When Sony revealed the PlayStation 4 I was there laughing at how bad of a job they did. It's hard to remember why now, but it felt lacklustre. When Microsoft announced the Xbox One, suddenly Sony didn't look like they'd done that bad of a job after all. Microsoft completely flunked it, a stupid name that someone in marketing was probably extremely pleased with themselves with, one hour of talking about TV and barely anything on games themselves. The few they did mention are the ones that will come to everything anyway, Fifa and Call of Duty. So meh. Except Quantum Break, but that was so vague it was hard to get excited.

My return to the PC

When I was a kid I always wanted a console. A Mega Drive or a SNES, I wasn't particularly fussy. However, my dad insisted on something I could use educationally as well, so instead I got an Amstrad, closely followed by an Amiga (which thanks to rampant piracy at the time probably made me more of a gamer than Sega or Nintendo ever could). Then of course it evolved into a PC, and my status as a computer gamer was cemented.

That was me for my teenage years. I was PC through and through, all the way to University. There, sharing a flat with a bunch of other gamers - especially Andrew Smith who was die-hard console gamer - I started investigating just how much consoles had to offer. The final nail in the coffin was winning my first Xbox. Yes, I won it. My first console was totally free. I know, I'm a dick.