Simply put, with unlimited time and money, below is the games I'd buy ( Read more... )

* - up until March 2013, some twenty-two years' worth of reading! In no particular order:

1. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley;
2. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald;
3. The Secret History by Donna Tartt;
4. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster;
5. Atonement by Ian McEwan**;

Having just played through the first episode of Alan Wake (herein AW) on the Xbox 360, and comparing it to the first four (or so) hours of Silent Hill: Homecoming (herein SH:H), it is really starting to hit me that Silent Hill as a franchise is clinging on to its past at the expense of growing as a game series.  Alan Wake, I believe, has been ( Read more... )

I cannot pretend to know the two people featured in this post on a personal level, but I do enjoy what I have seen on their respective television shows; humour and hard work being two values I am assuming are part of Seth Macfarlane and Gordon Ramsay's lives.  Honestly though, The Guardian has frankly irritated me beyond belief over two articles ( Read more... )

(N.B. Originally written: 12th March 2012 - submitted to a games website but was not published).

As of late, there have been increasing numbers of past games being collected into new editions, with entries from the Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill series’ being high-profile examples from 2011-12.  Sony in particular has created a “ ( Read more... )

I felt I should bookmark my first entry into a short story competition with an LJ post, rather than something so showy as a Facebook post.  It is a strange (now accepted) annoyance that you have to pay a fee to enter any competitions of merit but I suppose it makes one make the final product the best it can be.  If it gets nowhere I shall have to ( Read more... )

What a fascinating programme, particularly one man that struck me: David.  I am no psychologist (someone who engages in the scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behaviour in a given context) or psychiatrist (a medical practitioner specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness), but I did ( Read more... )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcMRkyoHKeA

I cannot quite bring myself to believe that the recent debut of Ubisoft's Watch Dogs is an example of a "next-generation" game.  There are wildly speculative reports from places including Eurogamer.net that it will be a cross-console ( Read more... )

A fairly pleasant surprise, and particularly the scene featuring Stallone, Schwartzenegger and Willis, which I think can be classified within the top three scenes of the film.  The script made some good self-referential jokes and ensured it didn't take itself too seriously, which struck the correct kind of note and hearkened back to the classic ( Read more... )

Once upon a time I played a few levels of Rainbow Six 3 on the original Xbox and was swiftly taken aback by the integration of the microphone headset in order to command your fellow squad-mates.  I couldn't quite believe that you could tell them where to move on the level, or that you could issue commands to breach rooms ahead to truly work as a ( Read more... )