Jon Gracey's

Posts Tagged ‘PC’

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Games That Rocked My World – #30: Hotline Miami

In Mac, PC, PS Vita, PS3, PSN on April 6, 2013 at 5:00 pm

Written by me. Shit yeah.

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Title: Hotline Miami

Format: PC, Mac, PS3, PSN, PS Vita

Released: 23rd October, 2012

Hotline_miami_poster

Do you like McDonald’s? I do. I bloody love McDonald’s. It’s a massive, cheap, sugar-drenched guilty pleasure that goes down real easy, induces a massive high, and leaves you feeling empty and disgusted with yourself afterwards.

Hotline Miami is gaming McDonald’s. Gaming McDonald’s that explodes into your face and overloads your senses in a smearing blaze of hot-pink neon and 80s synth. Its retro pixelart and filthy techno soundtrack grab you by the genitalia of your choice and refuse to let go until you’ve smashed through its 2-3 hour runtime in a kinetic, dopamine-fuelled sugar-rush. And the guilt? It makes you feel like a dirty great serial killer. Read the rest of this entry »

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Games That Rocked…Viv Egan’s World – #29: Age Of Empires II: The Age Of Kings

In Mac, PC, PS2 on March 26, 2013 at 1:16 am

Today’s post is by Viv Egan.

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Title: Age Of Empires II: The Age Of Kings

Format: PC, Mac, PS2

Released: 30th September, 1999

Age_ii_boxart

Hello nerds. My name is Vivienne. I’m not a comedian and I am a girl, both of which make me – so far – unique to this blog. What an honour. Since all the other guest bloggers on this site have pictures up, here’s me:

Viv

I’m also not a gamer… sorry about that. Read the rest of this entry »

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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

Full-throttle_box_front_6552x8244

“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 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

Neverhood_box_art

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)

Df_logo

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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