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Archive for the ‘PC’ Category

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Games That Rocked…Richard Campbell’s World – #27: Full Throttle

In Mac, PC on March 18, 2013 at 11:32 am

This week’s post by Late Night Gimp Fight’s Richard Campbell:

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Title: Full Throttle

Format: PC, Mac

Released: 30th April, 1995

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“Whenever I smell asphalt, I think of Maureen. That’s the last sensation I had, before I blacked out: the thick smell of asphalt. And the first thing I saw when I woke up was her face. She said she’d fix my bike. Free. No strings attached. I should have known then that things are never that simple. Yeah, when I think of Maureen I think of two things: asphalt… and trouble.”

– Ben Whatsisname Read the rest of this entry »

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Games That Rocked…Adam Blampied’s World – #26: Shadow Of Memories

In PC, PS2, PSP, Xbox on February 14, 2013 at 12:28 pm

Today’s post is by Adam Blampied. I have intervened only when etiquette insisted:

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Title: Shadow Of Memories

Format: PS2, PC, Xbox, PSP

Released: March 30th, 2001

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How many times has Mario died by my hand? Hundreds? Thousands? Over the course of countless games, Princess Peach must’ve seen more widow’s pensions than the Women’s Institute during a world war. And how about Link? Sonic the Hedgehog? Snake? Snake!! SNAAAAAAAAAAKE!! In games, death is mostly an inconvenience, mostly the fleeting error in ‘trial and error’, or mostly a gentle reminder not to jump off That Thing at That Height.

Mostly. Read the rest of this entry »

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Games That Rocked My World – #25: The Neverhood

In PC, PlayStation on January 30, 2013 at 5:10 pm

Today’s post is by…me! Jon Gracey. Finally pulling my finger out.

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Title: The Neverhood

Format: PC, PlayStation

Released: 31st October, 1996

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Or: Wallace and Gromit via biblical quantities of acid.

The Neverhood. Part claymation adventure game, part existential psychadelia-tinged nightmare, it’s not a game to be played by an eleven year old.

When I was eleven I played The Neverhood. My uncle Johnny worked in Hong Kong and occasionally he’d send games. Hong Kong had a prosperous piracy scene (sadly only in the illegal-copying-media-side, not rum and pieces o’ eight) and sometimes these thin, card CD slips would appear containing enticing, label-free discs within.

At eleven, any game with an animated bent was sure to catch my eye, and titles like Innocent Until Proven Guilty 2 introduced me to the “combine-poisoned-cheese-with-racist-mouse” logic of adventure games. Their slow methodical pace allowed my vaguely completist tendencies to blossom as I slowly scoured the static environments for clues, obessively clicking on each successive pixel like a young Howard Hughes but also a massive virgin. Read the rest of this entry »

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Games That Rocked…Fred Crawley’s World – #24: Dwarf Fortress

In Mac, PC on January 30, 2013 at 2:32 pm

Today’s post is by Fred Crawley:

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Title: Dwarf Fortress

Format: PC, Mac

Released: August, 2006 (Alpha version)

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A cyan full stop flickers clumsily across a field of green punctuation on a black screen, and I push my tongue out of my mouth in concentration as I search for the right key.

Open next to the game window is a browser tabbed to the gills with wiki pages, and a wordpad document of my own confused notes – by the time I have finished rustling through them for the information I need, however, the little bright dot has disappeared.

When it blinks up again, I triumphantly stab the pause button and rattle the arrow keys until the cursor is hovering over my adversary. With a newfound sense of confidence I press the ‘k’ key (k stands for ‘look’, of course) and watch as the word “dragonfly” appears in a sidepanel.

I have identified an insect, and feel the warm cortical spasm of a rat receiving a pellet after leaning on a lever. In any other game, this feat would be too minor to even feature in gameplay, but here it is my first triumph over a notoriously baroque interface, and I am genuinely excited. Read the rest of this entry »

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Games That Rocked…Paul Foxcroft’s World – #21: Day Of The Tentacle

In Mac, PC on January 14, 2013 at 8:00 pm

Title: Day Of The Tentacle

Format: PC, Mac

Released: June, 1993

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Hello Jon’s readers, I’m Paul Foxcroft. This guy:

PaulTrust me.

This will mean little to you, but I’m a human man, I live in London, I make my living by pretending; and like Jon, I like games. Here’s the quite simple request I’ve been putting off for a few days now…

“The brief is simple: 1,000 words or less, on a game that you love / has changed your perspective / made a big impact on you in some way.”

So has that eaten into the word count? Yes. But now, you and I swim in the sea of context. Brilliant.

A game that I love, has changed my perspective or has made a big impact on me. There’s so many, I mean really. THERE ARE SO VERY MANY. Read the rest of this entry »