Oblivion: a reflection more than a review

For a sandbox game to have such a profound influence on my life is something to laud. In writing this review, while sitting in a seafront cafe on the evening prior to a race, I wonder to exactly whom am I writing? I do not intend my reviews to be thorough things when PC Gamer (for one) provides that for us. I do not even intend for them to be raucously funny - James Rolfe at www.cinemassacre.com and Yatzhee at Zero Punctuation do that brilliantly. Instead I intend to write my reviews from the perspective of a professional who has a limited amount of time to dedicate to hobbies (which are hugely necessary to live a life of moderation.) A Teacher Gamer, I think, should be anyone who: a) Reflects on things in how they impact on daily life (not...

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Amnesia: The Dark Descent Review

Amnesia is not a game you play to win; it is a game to win to stay alive. The tutorial screen says this is the attitude with which you should approach this game. It’s not wrong. The horror genre of gaming is rather narrow. Penumbra seem to have the market niche with several titles. Horror gaming has been something of a delight for me ever since Waxworks back in the early 1990s. It was a terrifying puzzle game, although moreso for the implication then the fiddly level design and problem-solving. The gameplay of Amnesia, however, is a little more sophisticated. Essential you are working your way towards the inner chambers of a gothic castle to discover the answers to a murder in which you are involved. The puzzles between the levels are generically...

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Left 4 Dead Review

Left 4 Dead offers the greatest multiplayer experience with strangers so far. Even if you do not like FPS games, or western zombie culture with its pretentious assertion that it all represents something else a little bit deeper, I warrant you’d like this. Both its gameplay and soundtrack are procedurally perfect; it might even be mentioned in the same breath after/as Mario cart. The four distinct characters fill the spectrum of your preferred styles of playing at surviving an apocolypse. You have Bill, the irate Vietnam Veteran who acts as a sullen father figure to the survivors. On the other end you haven the other end you have Zoe, the eager student. In between you have Francis, the permanently angry biker who seems a bit too skilful with...

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What is a TeacherGamer?

I am a teacher. One of my favoured hobbies is gaming: hence the considered creation of the monika of TeacherGamer. What might this mean? Who is the audience of a TeacherGamer? It is a particular demographic that I imagine comprises of a fair number of gamers. It comprises of those between their 20s and 40s who work a professional job. They cannot dedicate more than 1-3 hours a night to gaming, and no more than 3-8 hours a weekend day to their hobby. Oh, and they don't believe that playing ends when you hit 18, or only when you're drunk. What kind of vocation will they have? If they aren't a teacher, they will have a career job. And/or will be a parent. That is, they are unable (and unwilling) to drop out of society to dedicate themselves to...

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PES 2009 Review

The challenge of designing a football game is to achieve the balance between the theatre of realism and arcade controls. Actual football can be very cagey. Not to mention that it ebbs and flows over 90 minutes - not the 10 minutes expected of a gamer. Therefore, every football incarnation since 1996 has found its place along this spectrum of realism vs arcade controllability. An example of a game that offered arcade controls to near-perfection is Sensible World of Soccer. The fluid passing game essentially consisted of a series of attacker vs defender situations. While shots could be somewhat controlled, whether they went in relied upon a seemingly random factor. From this, the game varied the skill levels of the players to simulate the variance...

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Darksiders Review

PC gamers often complain about the issues of porting console (action) games. To be truth, I find many of the arguments elitist and a little empty (take the issue of Portal 2 showing a ‘don’t turn off your console screen’ leading to a plethora of low star ratings on amazon.co.uk). Darksiders, though, is a terrible port. Terrible enough to warrant it as some of the worst games I have played. The graphics comprise a huge aspect of the game. Based upon a comic strip, the game (like Braid) should be a glorious visual experience. The graphics, though, offer no options other than resolution. No anti-aliasing. No level of detail. Just resolution. Repetitive is one word to describe the gameplay. Repetitive without the sense of skill required by, say,...

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is experiencing a great film. And great films - like great some games - never appear linear; their finite stories belie the seemingly expansive possibilities of their genre. The reality is, of course, that the action of an FPS offers only a limited number of scenarios. However, done well, these scenarios offer both the serious and the casual gamer well-crafted slices of unreal action. Not least because the army down-plays the getting-shot-aspect of real life. As I stopped gaming between 2003 and 2008, I didn’t play the original Call of Duty games, so this was my entry into the series. To be honest, as an RTS fan, I didn’t fancy playing FPS. However, I had read so many wonderful reviews for this game, that...

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Blood Bowl Review

For those who enjoyed the smashing board game, this bloody realisation is a faithful recreation. Those who don’t understand, or haven’t played, the classic game, this game in unlikely to feel like theatre, and more like extra time. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if you haven’t already played the board game, then you’ll find playing this akin to watching two nondescript German division 3 teams scrapping out a midtable draw. The game is an ultraviolent take on American Football. With Orcs. It works on the basis of two halves of eight turnovers. Any failed action causes an immediate turnover. A 1 (on a D6) is an automatic fail, while a 6 is an automatic success. Immediate tactics involve trying to maximise the actions your side can do before...

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Mount and Blade Warband Review

As I write this review I am readying myself to embark on yet another adventurer into the realm of Calradia. But in terms of ‘completing’ this game, I have yet to leave my figurative front-garden. This ambitious sandbox RPG had left my last ambitious warlord at odds with every nation in the land; I literally didn’t have a single town that allowed me to sell the plethora of goods I had looted from the bodies of my errant enemies. It says everything, though, that I’m (reasonably) happy to start a new game (albeit with my imported character) to try to be (a bit more) diplomatic. As a precursor, I could probably make peace with some of these nations in my original game. But, truth be told, I have yet to scratch the higher-level diplomatic mechanics...

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Batman Arkham Asylum

Batman Arkham Asylum opens with several minutes of a glorious cut scene. It can't be skipped. And I've seen it three times and still not been bored. In fact, this reminds me of what makes this game so good; you never have to see the same scene more than three times in a row. As an action adventure, it is so well balanced, I never died more than three times in a scene.It is the balance that makes this an outstanding game. One aspect of balance in the game is in its Gothic humour. It is dark, but it knows the inherent silliness of a man in black pants. Another balance is with its judicious map directions. Unlike action games of the past, you aren't forced to artificially extend the life of the game by ambling around directionless; you always...

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Eye of the Beholder Review

Vanquishing the mighty (and eponymous) Beholder at the end of the game is one of the most satisfying RPG experiences to be had. I have killed the Archdemon of Dragon Age - and survived (!) - I have saved defeated more than one Daedric Prince of Oblivion, and I have even killed the Dragon at the end of this game's sequel. But none of those is an achievement like beating the floating monster.You might think the satisfaction comes from the variety of ways you can kill the beholder: a) Fire magic and missiles from afar. b) Nimbly hack it to bits. c) Use a magic wand to drive it into a spike trap that gruesomely bursts it openYou might also think the kudos comes from its level of difficulty. As with all good old-RPGs, the beholder has several 'instant-kill'...

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Supreme Commander 2 Review

Engaging enormous engines of war in battle should be more difficult than this. It certainly was in the original - and much loved - supreme commander. The difficulty, for some, is that while the game looks the same, the economy itself is inherently different. For starters, unlike the original it is difficult to run short of mass and energy - the two resources needed to power the production of units. This is coupled with the emphasis on upgrading a few core units, rather than producing, and memorising, a plethora of the-same-but-a-bit-different tanks. I still remember now an old friend telling me, during a mutliplayer of medieval total war, that he intended to build his army from as many different, and obscure, troop types as possible, thus as...

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Shogun Total War Review

Shogun Total War is one of those games that allows you dream of how to gloriously command thousands (or, at least, dozens) of screaming samurai. By allowing devious flanking tactics, or encouraging heroic frontal assaults, STW was the first game to depict the frantic action of real time strategy with mainstream success.Which, when you consider that the game was originally intended as a 2D strategy game, makes this game a definitive milestone of the RTS genre. The strength of game is its simplified unit interaction: like paper (spears), scissors (cavalry) and stone (archers) every unit counters another unit. Unlike the expansive RTS units of SupComm or SCII, mastery of unit types should be expected in hours rather than weeks. There's no...

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Max Payne Review

Nearly ten years ago the snowy rain fell on Hull like all the angels in heaven had decided to colloquially urinate at the same time. And so opened this innovative action adventure for me: I had a weekend to kill, it was snowing outside, and I had no heating. I didn't want the intellectually intensity of a strategy game, nor did I want to frenetic multitasking of an RTS. With a blanket on my legs, I sat down and completed this game in 10 hours without even a toilet break. And the first thing I did? Began again. After a toilet break.Max Payne pitches its progressive difficulty perfectly. Action games shouldn't - in my busy world - kill you more than three times at the same point (well, at least not more than three times in a gaming session.)...

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