Category: Games & Gaming

I played my first computer games in 1974. I’ve been playing computer games regularly since i bought my first microcomputer in 1977. My reviews, thoughts, and criticisms of computer games and players.

Back on the Open (World) Range

Culture / Games & Gaming / Musings2 Comments

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This week, after 300 hours of play, I came to the end of the Ubisoft game Assassin’s Creed Valhalla game. During those hours, I spent my time as a Viking, pillaging and looting, building my settlement, raiding enemy camps, and exploring across a massive map of England, with side trips to Norway, the Isle of Skye, Francia (France), Ireland, Asgard, and Vinland (North America). I hunted game, fished, upgraded gear, went on quests, sailed a longship; boxed opponents; trades insults in flyting contests, assassinated enemies (hence the name…), solved puzzles, delved into underground labyrinths and dungeons, battled monsters, went into … click below for more ↓

Home on the Open World Range

Culture / Games & Gaming / Musings2 Comments

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A recent article in the Journal of Internet Research described a study that came to the conclusion that open-world games (OWGs) “may offer unique cognitive escapism opportunities, potentially leading to relaxation and enhanced well-being.” Well, duh! Pretty much everyone playing OWGs has known that for the past three decades since those games were published. After all, isn’t escapism the whole point of gaming? People have played games for millennia: to gamble, for intellectual challenges, for entertainment, learning, competition, and often for simple solo pleasure. But open-world games are a recent invention, and while not unique to the computer era, have … click below for more ↓

Toying With Townscaper

Computers & Programming / Games & Gaming / Personal Reminiscences / Software reviews4 Comments

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As a longtime gamer, I am always looking for new forms of computer and online entertainment for my PC. This week I discovered Townscaper and picked it up while it was on sale on Steam for about $6 (tax included, albeit a little more post-sale; also available for Android, Xbox, and iOS platforms). It’s money well spent, methinks, as a fan of city-builder and simulation games. You can try a somewhat limited online version of it to see how it works by clicking the link in this paragraph. Townscaper is not actually a game, but rather a virtual toy or … click below for more ↓

Musings on Computer Gaming, Storytelling, and Seniors

Computers & Programming / Daily life / Games & Gaming / Personal Reminiscences3 Comments

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Every day, for an hour or two, I kill demons. Or I build houses and shopping malls. Sometimes I command armies in battle. Or fly an airplane into a foreign airport. I might manage a hospital, build a settlement on Mars, lead a band of survivors after a nuclear holocaust, hunt Nazis as a sniper in WWII, drive a tank onto the sands at Omaha Beach, move Roman legions around the Mediterranean, build an empire, sail with a fleet of starships into the vastness of space, trade for equipment with aliens on a far distant planet, craft my own Jurassic … click below for more ↓

Synecdoche, Universe

Computers & Programming / Games & Gaming / Software reviews / Theme & CodingLeave a comment

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In the delightfully quirky, postmodern film, Synecdoche, New York, the late Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a movie director obsessed with creating a set that realistically represents New York City for an upcoming movie. But as he tries to incorporate more and more people and bits that represent the city, the set grows and grows into a micro-city itself. As Wikipedia describes it: The plot follows an ailing theater director (Hoffman) as he works on an increasingly elaborate stage production whose extreme commitment to realism begins to blur the boundaries between fiction and reality. The film’s title is a play on … click below for more ↓

Of mice and men, and trackballs, too

Computers & Programming / E-books & E-readers / Games & Gaming / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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Late last year, I purchased another laptop to separate my work and recreational uses. After a long search in stores, and a lot of online reading and comparing models, I decided to get an MSI gaming rig (an entry level in their pantheon, admittedly). That process got me thinking again about how we buy and sell computers.* Computers are, for the most part, sold like muscle cars: what’s under the hood gets the attention. The processor, ram, speed, drive capacity all get writ large in ads and promoted in stores. But it’s all a bit misleading. For most uses – … click below for more ↓

Microsoft killed solitaire for me

Computers & Programming / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Games & Gaming / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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Solitaire – also known as Klondike and Patience – is a very popular game on computers. So popular, in fact that a version of this 200-year-old card game has been included by Microsoft in every version of Windows since 3.0 (1990), aside from a brief hiatus with Win 8 (which gap was filled in by third-party versions). Microsoft has even launched a version for iOS, playable on the Mac, iPhone and iPad. And according to some reports, it is the most widely used program by Windows users by a long shot. More than Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint and Explorer. Writer … click below for more ↓

Digging and dying

Computers & Programming / Games & Gaming / Personal Reminiscences2 Comments

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About an hour after I started playing Minecraft for the very first time, I died. As game experiences goes, that sucked. Not exactly a “thanks for your purchase” ingame welcoming message from Mojang Not that I’m unaccustomed to dying. In most computer games I’ve died: Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, World of Tanks, World of Warcraft, Ghost Recon, Diablo, Borderlands, Left 4 Dead, even in Civilization. Dying is part of gaming.* But most of the time, I know why. Sure, I may not have seen the sniper who nailed me from a distance, or the elite dragon that snuck up on … click below for more ↓

The WOW Factor

Games & Gaming / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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After two years away from the game, I was recently convinced by a friend to return to World of Warcraft again and play in the fantasy universe of WOW. At 10 years old, WOW remains the biggest, most-subscribed, most popular MMORPG, with around 10 million subscribers. By technology’s rapid-aging standards, WOW is a grandfather game; maybe even a great-grandfather. It has certainly spawned a lot of offspring, although not all are legitimate. I started playing WOW back in 2005. although I didn’t play it seriously and attentively until a little later, after the first expansion. Then I got heavily into the … click below for more ↓

Banished: Sandbox Gaming at Its Best

Computers & Programming / Games & GamingOne Comment

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Banished is a medieval-style city building game, along the lines of SimCity, but with several significant differences. While not as slick or comprehensive as SimCity, it still provides a compelling, addictive gameplay.* It’s slow and cerebral, true, not your basic action-filled RPG or FPS, but it’s one of those games that demand ‘just another fifteen minutes’ that easily stretch into the wee hours. And with infinitely variable maps and a wide range of community-made mods that enhance and change the dynamics, it promises a lot of repeat play for fans of the genre. First difference between the two city-building sims … click below for more ↓

World of Tanks

Computers & Programming / Games & Gaming / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

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Tanks are a long distance weapon, you know. They are best used in concert with one another to provide cover and overwatch fire, and are best placed in a covered or hull-down position where their profile is reduced to the minimum. Tanks should never travel alone; they should always advance with supporting vehicles on their flanks. That’s pretty much what I said to my teammates that Saturday morning. However, I may have typed it a little more tersely. Something like, “%#$&@ idiots. Y R U in the open w/o support?” I watched as the majority of them rushed across the field … click below for more ↓

BL2: Resistance is futile

Games & Gaming / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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I tried to resist. I really did. I avoided it for more than a year, skillfully averting my eyes from the store shelves where it sat, ignoring the emails with invitations, sales offers that dangled newly-released DLC packages before me. I looked the other way when ads popped on on websites. I have more serious things to do, I’d tell myself. Getting too old for games, I’d mutter under my breath. I have better things to do with my time. Like reading. Studying. Developing website material. Learning music. Besides, I’m running out of hard disc space. But then I saw … click below for more ↓

Looking back on 2013

Blog & Blogging / Bread & Baking / Games & Gaming / Municipal Politics / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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It’s been quite a year, both personally and politically. The best of times, the worst of times, to paraphrase Dickens. Looking back on 2103, it was a busy, eventful, successful, and yet often challenging year. I accomplished many things on different levels – personal and professional – and, I believe, overcame some of the challenges I faced. A lot happened locally, too, much of which development I take pride in having been a party to. Collingwood Council has been very productive, pro-active and progressive this term; more so than any council I’ve ever participated in or reported on when in the … click below for more ↓

Digital Attachments

Games & Gaming / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

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It’s tough to lose a solider. Especially one like Dimitri. A fine sniper, with a good kill record. I had trained him for so long, raised him from a lowly private to sergeant, then to lieutenant. He was equipped with the best gear. His accuracy had improved to a deadly asset. He was a cornerstone to my tactical approach. He was also an investment in time and materiel. And as such, he was headed for greatness. Captain, maybe major. Until the aliens got him. That was nasty. Three of them swarmed his position, flanking his protection and taking him down … click below for more ↓

Losing the world, and some sleep, but enjoying it

Games & Gaming / History & Biography / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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  Brave New World – not the novel of a dystopian future by Aldous Huxley – is the name of the latest add-on for Civilization V, following after Gods & Kings, released in 2012. BNW was released last Tuesday, and I was at the local EB Games store to get one on launch day. Over the weekend, I took a look at it, playing for several hours in learning mode. Civilization, if you don’t already know, is a turn-based 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) computer game/simulation created by Sid Meier, originally in 1991. It has gone through numerous releases … click below for more ↓

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