Colourful Stuff

The rape and assault charges materialised when he gave bloody noses to every western democracy. It comes as no surprise that Theresa May wants him to disappear, especially as the Home Office know Wikileaks probably have an awful lot of dirt on the police, including unpublished equality, corruption and brutality enquiries.

Fuck, I've been RoboRoll'd!

I love Chung's tight little games. Flotilla especially, but that may just be because of the bell sound. I feel like Pavlove's dog playing that game. I was also one of the handful of people who got it on the XBLIG and think it works really well with the controller. I enjoyed it so much I sent him an email like a creepy stalker, thanking him for making such an interesting game.

Anansi Boys is the funniest book I've read in a while. Neil Gaiman writes the best characters and the dialogue feels remarkable natural, even when talking about completely insane shit. There is a great paragraph in which he hypothesises that some spiders have necrotic venom because they think it's funny. Reading American Gods would be essential to get the most out of it, but reading American Gods is pretty essential anyway. Also if you have any affection for the Anansi stories it is interesting to see them told in a more honest and uncensored way than usual.

It's a very impressive art thing and a really interesting/magical place to be for a couple of hours. Loss is not a theme new to video games, but it is the most honest pretrial of it in anything I've played. Vertigo came to mind while playing, not in terms of execution or approach but in how believable I find their attitudes towards lost love. The only problem I have with it may be specific to botanists. The foliage detail is higher than most games, but isn't high enough to satiate my constant real world desire to identify every plant. The first couple and final chapters are beautiful renderings of environments similar to those I spend a lot of time. I suppose the level of detail doesn't quite match my memory of the real world parallels here in Wales. My experience of crazy caves are abstracted through other mediums so I didn't have the same feelings about the middle chapters.

I love making risotto. Working the starch out of the rice very satisfying. I like to add a little double cream with the parmesan just to make it extra unhealthy. Reducing some dry white wine with chanterelle or shimeji mushrooms and garlic in a separate pan makes for a slightly sharp contrast to the fatty risotto. I rarely cook anything into the risotto itself because a clean white white risotto looks so nice on the plate. Also the flavour of a good cheese is best presented with as few ingredients as possible. Some advice on good pre-pro stocks available in the UK would be helpful. Making a vegetable stock from scratch often isn't economical and I rarely cook meat so I don't get a lot of chicken carcases. I haven't found a good solution yet. OXO cubes are fine for lazy cooking but make everything taste the same and similar dehydrated stocks aren't much better. The food I eat to stave off death mostly consists of vegetable stews, bread and salads. My local Lidl and independent greengrocers provide seasonal vegetables at student friendly prices. I flavour most of it with herbs stolen/borrowed/liberated from my campus and people's front gardens. In the spring I added nettles to my diet, delicious when young (do not pick when flowering as they become a little toxic).

Don't say that Chris, every day you help push us closer to the cultural victory.

There is nothing sexier than a woman with confidence. A dominatrix succubus who could make it work in skinny jeans and a sweater would be pretty hot.

Unmechanical By: Talawa Games Available: Steam and other PCDL services. Synopsis: 2.5D physics puzzle adventure with an adorable robot.

'Puzzles you say? And physics? And adorable robots? Yes please!', that was the thought process that led to me buying Unmechanical. The only means of interacting with the environment is bumping or pulling. It feels great just playing with the physics and the way the robot's eyes dim when bumped is really charming. Unmechanical looks really polished with great lighting and art (reminiscent of a 3D Machinarium), however I was twice thwarted by objects becoming awkwardly jammed in geometry. Puzzles rarely outstay their welcome and are generally just difficult enough to make you feel clever for solving them. If you are thinking about buying it note that it is only about two hours long, not a problem for me but I know some people get hung up on that stuff. I would be interested in hearing another person's opinion of the ending. I personally didn't feel it was earned and somewhat soured my experience with the game.

I agree, lifting heavy shit feels excellent. The puzzles themselves aren't the best but the tactile feeling of solving them makes up the difference.

A giant nuclear robot on Mars? I hope it won't avenge its lost sky-crane buddy when we begin terraforming.

I saw the star just before going to sleep and wasn't sure if it was real. I'm glad it wasn't just my madness.

CLOP is a pretty good channel for frothing rage.

American Gods! It is like On The Road with Odin, a zombie wife and cat fucking.

I was thinking about achievements playing DayZ a few weeks ago. I have never murdered in that game, but I have had a few opportunities to do so. Imagine if killing a player was tied to an achievement. The decision to pull the trigger would be influence by an extraneous system, not the multitude of meaningful factors that actually influenced my decision to stay my hand. Am I starving? Am I thirsty? Will a zombie hear my shot? Will a player hear my shot? Can I even make the shot from this range or will the bullet drop impotently to the ground? Are they alone? Do they have anything I want? Do I want to ruin their day? 20 points?

The Rollcage soundtrack is strangely significant to me. It was my first exposure to music that wasn't my parent's. I felt an odd ownership towards the music and aesthetic.

The Machinarium soundtrack was my lady-wooing music in the first year of Uni. If you think about it, isn't love the greatest point and click adventure game of all? (No, Fate of Atlantis is.)

I completely agree. I defended achievements before I switched from 360 to PC because the achievement chime can occasionally evoke a slight tingle in the loins. Divorced from that console and a number that gradually increases it is easy for me to see how misplaced the system is in the majority of games. The current console generation is arguably characterised by the linear-narrative-corridor style of game, exactly the sort of game that is at odds with achievement. Every time I see an achievement pop up I can't help but imagine J Allard's head popping into the corner of the screen, toasty style, and tersely reminding me that I'm playing a video game.

Maybe the game we really want is Harvest Moon with guns.

Rampart's digital lord voice makes me very happy.

"Reloading!"

I wrote something silly and pretentious about my early impressions of the game a couple of weeks ago. The game has really dragged and not lived up to the amazing promise of the setting and premise. The conclusion of the murder desk (spoiler in white >) completely invalidates everything the player has done for the past ten hours by announcing that all of their conclusions were wrong. It made me feel angry at the developers for taking all of my simulated cleverness away from me. Wild jazz drifts half noticed into my thoughts from the radio of a passing car. For a moment I inhabit a filthy post-war America, built by a thousand writers. A point in time where artifice and history are indistinguishable. I expect to see a disheveled Sal Paradise standing with thumb outstretched. A handsome Jimmy Stewart drive by on his way to a cocktail party. Then my partner gets stuck on a door frame and I have to jostle him free. Playing L.A. Noire is like reading a book after seeing the film. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is that book for me, Johnny Depp's Thompson cipher will always creep into my head when I allow myself to believe in Duke's America. The intrusive thoughts I have when playing L.A. Noire however are not of people, but simply the medium itself. If you have ever been at the theatre and an actor has allowed their character to slip for a second you will know what I mean. A single mistake can shatter your belief in an entire production, an entire medium. L.A. Noire's mistakes are sometimes bugs (just walk through the door you idiot!) or issues of fidelity (the characters look like mannequins wearing bad wigs) but more often than not they are game design decisions. The payoff for busting an organised car theft ring should be the congratulations the head of the department gives you, not an arcade style score breakdown and a suggestion of how you can do better next time. Similarly earning pointless XP for successful police work is a bewildering mechanic. Worst of all is how Cole Phelps will go from Mike Hammer to Max Payne when guns are drawn. I know the LAPD have a reputation for police brutality but the morgue must overflowing with deadbeats. The reality that this is a video game is what makes it special, but the realities of being a video game are what hold it back. Hopefully in time I will be able to see past the missteps and once again find myself believing in an America that probably never existed...

Hello mysterious thumbs. My name is Leo, I'm a plant biology student at Aberystwyth University (UK), and I think video games are interesting/magical. Please be nice to me, I believe I can bring a new and very specific botanical perspective to video game discussion. For example, Far Cry 2 is great, but why instead of burning the grass can I not selectively cross different grass species to create a new wheat variety? The patent could then be handed over to a farmers' co-op, allowing for a production surplus which could be sold to neighboring states. This would increase stability in the region, encouraging foreign investment to come in the form of mineral prospecting, not angry mercenaries that hate me. This money could then be spent on infrastructure (reducing jeep careening incidents), health care (solving the malaria problem) and education (allowing from the gradual development of non-agrarian industries). The Jackal would move on to a less stable region stemming the flow of weapons and reducing the risk of future violence. That said, burning things is fun and what would roll down hills in place of grenades?

How is it possible to promote a game without the use of dubstep?