Teaching and Gaming - a short reflection at the start of 2016

It has been two years since I have written about gaming. Domestic life and professional considerations are serious demands. However, I have been nourishing my imaginative life again recently, through films, books and games. As an English teacher, I believe that (at its best) language learning is about experiencing how perception can be created, both consciously and otherwise. Students can experience life that exists beyond that immediately in front of their face, and games can do this. Of course, I no longer have time to read and watch and game for many hours. Often this time is a little snatched. The hours free at the weekends and evenings are filled with family and friends, and gaming takes its rightful place as an enhancement of my imaginative life. Fortunately, we will in a time where...

Read more »

Tomb Raider

With the end of the year looming in earnest I find myself happily distracted by many things. The purpose of these things is to: a) Saying goodbye to my current school.b) Ensure that all feel that they should improve in the weeks we have left.My gaming has become more focussed. I have for a long while wanted to game for 15-30 minutes at a time. An article on this should be written soon, but I thought that something on my completion of the latest Tomb Raider game last night is worthy of some thoughts. The first Tomb Raider is a classic game that was constructed with ambition. Its latest in carnation is bred from such rich heritage, and it does not disappoint. Beginning with as decent a story as a platform game allows (trapped on an island), the game unwinds its gentle rhythms to ease you...

Read more »

Does making a game 'hard' make it better?

An excellent question OP. I have become more of a content tourist with my time, and certainly appreciate the ease of games like Max Payne 3 and the latest Tomb Raider. I don't really have time for games that require an absolute dedication to discovering their mechanics before I can actually being to 'play' them. Even then, I appreciate a space for making mistakes and being naive. Therefore, some games that I love (Sins of a Solar Empire; Dawn of War franchise) tend to be underplayed because they rely upon discovering build-orders and requiring an intense focus for the entirety of the game. Saying all this, there are some games during which inevitable progress ruins the experience. Space Marine, for example, had very few sections that were 'difficult' in the sense that it was a necessarily...

Read more »

How to install mods onto Medieval Total War 2

After many hours of installing mods to Medieval Total War 2, I have managed to give a short list of instructions of how to do so. I repeat it below for those who search for it via google. Good luck! The mods are definitely worth it... The Quill Guy: Firstly, download this The Quill Guy: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/downloads.php?do=file&id=2824 The Quill Guy: Then, with the third age mod in its own folder (not pasted like other mods into other folders) The Quill Guy: start the app The Quill Guy: Find the Third Age folder The Quill Guy: Select The Quill Guy: It'll select the config file that acts like the .exe The Quill Guy: Choose kingdoms as the 'launcher' option The Quill Guy: (All this is clear when you do it) The Quill Guy: Then... The Quill Guy: Replace the normal launcher with...

Read more »

Max Payne 3

It's been a while since I've committed myself to a review, even though I've been playing through a few games. Max Payne 3 is a game a decade in the making, and a true AA(A) title. It has its flaws, and it has its strengths, and it is still one of the best action games to be purchased. Currently on regular sale on steam for under a tenner, Max Payne 3 happily fills the linear action shooter niche, complete with laughable dialogue and well-paced action. The story is predictably hammy throughout, yet pleasingly self-referential. Cover-glitch issues and unskippable cut-scenes sadly pull this down into an 8/10, but there isn't any to match what Max can bring. Taking the story into a variety of scenes, we join on Max on some ridiculous quest-or-another...

Read more »

Playing multiplayer Shogun 2

I am playing an extensive amount of multiplayer in Shogun 2 at the moment. This is something I have wanted to do for a far time, and something that has been challenging. As I said already in this blog, I played the original Shogun extensively, clocking the campaign on the hardest difficulty. While at the time I thought this an achievement, the truth is that I merely knew the game mechanics. I could beat the AI with any army as I know how to exploit it. It was to my sadness that I was uanble to play anyone online, as my success against the AI made me feel that I was expert. The first thing about mutliplayer in any game, let alone an RTS game, is that the difficulty is more than that of the AI. AI difficult often increases by making the game mechanics unfair (that is, making their troops...

Read more »

Total War and Day Z - some thoughts

Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; ...

Read more »