In defence of scripting in football games
Spend any length of time reading online forums for football games and you’ll come across complaints about “scripting” - the alleged way games like FIFA and PES artificially infuence games to create drama. This quirk of games’ design and programming is always portrayed in a negative light, and often rightly...
FIFA is my new year's resolution (kind of)
There’s an episode of South Park that first aired about a decade ago where Stan wakes up one day and everything is shit. The food he eats is shit. The chatter on the radio is shit. The new films at the cinema are shit. Everything he used to like is...
Classic Splinter Cell is back after a 15-year hiatus!
Ubisoft has announced that it’s working on a Splinter Cell remake! This Christmas miracle landed on my desk just in time for the last article of the year, so join me one last time in 2021 as we run through what we know (and what we don’t) about this long-awaited...
You're in the zone until you're not
Flow is a weird thing, all inconsistent and unpredictable. When I go to play a video game, one of two things can happen - either I will bounce straight off it almost immediately, or I’ll become completely immersed and play for hours and hours over a period of weeks before...
Things missing from The Sims 4
I wrote last week about my first impressions of The Sims 4 (spoiler alert: they weren’t great). At the time I had a general feeling that the game lacked the quirkiness of previous titles in the series, but couldn’t quite put my finger on what exactly was missing from the...
Breaking The Sims 4 in ten hours
Having played a lot of The Sims as a child, I was interested to see The Sims 4 on offer for just a few pounds in the recent Steam sale. It was obvious that this was a way to get players hooked and sell more expansions, but I thought it...
Easy retro gaming with Retropie
Anyone who reads this blog will know that I like to play some emulated games from time to time - normally revisiting PlayStation 2 classics like PES 5 and Gran Turismo 3. But retro gaming on a PC has its downsides. You need to install an emulator for each console,...
PC Building Simulator review
This week I decided it was time to start tackling my backlog - all those games sitting on the virtual shelf waiting to be enjoyed. One of the most recent additions to the pile was PC Building Simulator, a 2018 release from The Irregular Corporation that promises edutainment as you...
Sid Meier's Memoir! review
A book I preordered six months ago finally landed on my doormat in October. Sid Meier’s Memoir!, the autobiography by the genuis game designer behind groundbreaking and much-loved strategy games like Civilization, turned out not only to have the title that fans of his games hoped it would, but also...
Brands Hatch has the best views in UK motorsport
I went to Brands Hatch this weekend to see some of the action at the 50th Formula Ford Festival. I stopped by the same event back in 2018, but after a few more years visiting more circuits, I can safely say that Brands Hatch is the absolute best when it...
