The Games Ingredients - This is 2.0...

31 October 202326 November 2023

Getting angry with the bird…

Eclair…

Without getting my fruit bashed and bruised, this is the part when I confess that I have never been interested in being hip or fashionable. In fact, I never owned a pair of Adidas trainers until I was fifty years old, and when I hit that milestone of doing stupid shit since 1972 the wife bought me two pairs, as I was undecided between a pair of blue Samba and a pair of grey Court 2.0 which are primarily dog walking trainers, and yes I’ve never been interested in owing an iPhone of which Angry Birds first flew to the heights of 12 million downloads within a year of release, and sets the tone for this trip down memory lane. Continue reading “Getting angry with the bird…”

26 October 20237 November 2023

Far Cry – Jack the lad.

A Far Cry from paradise…

OK, down to the willy waving of PC gaming, the PC arms race (my Pentium 4 was better than your Athlon 64), the master race of not playing games on a controller and swearing by mouse and keyboard. Who out there, back in 2004 managed to max out Far Cry and not bring their PC to a fiery blue standstill?

Before Crysis and that overly used quote, German developers Crytek had created the CryEngine with an accompanying tech demo (X-Isle: Dinosaur Island) aimed specially towards Nvidia graphic processors, which showcased at the 1999 E3 expo. Continue reading “Far Cry – Jack the lad.”

14 October 202329 October 2023

From Computer Arts Incorporated to Active Television which became.

Anybody can do a cartridge…

Everyone has had one of these days, a day that sees you totally hacked of with the way the higher echelons of management treat you. No recognition for the work that you’ve completed, a poor salary compared to the revenue your skill set generates – this was one of those a days David Crane, Larry Kaplan, Alan Miller and Bob Whitehead had back it the late seventies. The gang of four deprecated by their boss Ray Kasser and labelled “towel designers” used this derogatory, demeaning, devalued tone as a catalyst and the Atari men soon left the company to begin a business venture of their own. Continue reading “From Computer Arts Incorporated to Active Television which became.”

28 September 202312 October 2023

Couch gaming and food… The camaraderie in a crammed room!

Welcome to the Fantasy Zone…

I need some of you to use your imagination on this one, and the rest to really think back to a time before gaming was about watching some dopey blonde titty twitching Call of Duty or some crisp munching dude thinking he is some kind of Fortnite martial arts specialist – a time when the internet was in it’s infancy and gaming together was either lugging your bulky Pentium PC to the local youth club for a Quake showdown or piling around to your mates house/pub. Yes, two of my mates lived in a pub and breaking the speed limit with Lotus Turbo Esprit Challenge on an aging Atari ST with its wired joysticks was a regular pastime, some millennial just read wired joystick and has closed this page to search Atari ST and wired joysticks. Continue reading “Couch gaming and food… The camaraderie in a crammed room!”

20 September 202327 October 2023

Single player games you go back to when you CBA with MP…

A man chooses, a slave obeys…

Over the years there has been some truly epic single player games, and to be honest I have not played a lot of what I wanted to play simply because of two things, money and time. Money firstly – because when new games first come out, as we all know there is day one price – yes I know I should wait and pick up secondhand a few months down the road, but then my memory fails me and I forget about the game I was interested in, it never helps walking into the local video game store and being confronted with so many choices, especially from the PS4/PS3 and Xbox 360 era. Continue reading “Single player games you go back to when you CBA with MP…”