From That Angle

I recently started playing Pine, which the developers describe as an “open-world action adventure game set in a simulated world that does not belong to humans”. What they don't describe it is a “third-person adventure game with a lot of platform jumping puzzles”. Which stoked my pondering of what people choose to prioritise, both when …

Pause to Reload

The gaming community (both roleplaying and otherwise) are divided on what makes a good or bad game. Having started playing Wolfenstein: The New Order a couple of days ago, I was reminded that perhaps the most important criteria for me is a subjective rather than objective one: context. Wolfenstein is first-person-shooter franchise set in a …

What a Way to Make a Hobby

Last Friday, Athena Scalzi bravely stated that some computer games are too difficult for her to enjoy. As someone who gets more from the story than from collecting achievements and trophies (does that come as a surprise to anyone in the audience?) I too dislike games that require nigh perfect skill to proceed at all. …

Almost Ex-Com

I have a momentous announcement: I have almost completed X-COM: Enemy Unknown. I installed the game at the start of January 2013, so it's taken me nearly six years, including some agonising over how to replay missions if one of my mistakes was accidentally reversed by benevolent techno-goblins. Of course, the figure of six years …

The Cost of Being Seen

While the web might have started out as excited amateurs building their little corner then sharing it with others, it's now also home to large companies and content professionals. Which has made recouping the cost of running sites and creating the pages on them a major driver of "normal" website structure. The usual models are …

Oranges to Applications

What was it like during the Transition? When the Sorn told us we belonged to their Empire, we fought back. Throw that orange at the wall as hard as you can. Imagine the wall’s a Sorn Integrator and the orange is our best weapon. Now imagine the wall sucks up that mess and spits out …

Time Server

Sentence 99%. Approximately 13 minutes remaining. A few more wrinkles and a lot less hair, but I’m almost free. Liberals say the timers are inhumane. I like it though: last thing at night and first thing in the morning I see how long I’ve got. And if you fuck up, seeing it go up drives …

Bat(ttered)man

I've recently started playing Batman: Arkham Asylum. Overall, it's a great fun game but there's one niggle: saved games - or rather the lack thereof. When playing computer games with character options, I always gravitate toward stealth and cunning over charging around and brute force. However, I play for relaxation not to hone my keyboard …

Keep Your Hands on My Stack

An interesting overview of how cryptocurrencies might change the economy and other areas of life: I definitely agree that money is a convenient fiction, and can see plenty of fun ideas for science-fiction futures in this - from the utopian to the dystopian. However, I see the real issue not as obstacles to use of …

He Knows… But He’s Got Problems

DiVinci-esque savants aside, humans tend not to be great at the total of all tasks. Which makes being good or bad at something a poor indicator of whether a person is competent as a whole. For the last few weeks my computer has been freezing while watching videos or broadcasting podcasts. Which could be many …