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Mouse: P.I. For Hire Could Have Bent the Rules More.
You don’t have to look hard to find Mouse: P.I. For Hire’s inspirations. Detective Jack Pepper’s weapons bend and sway in the breeze, sometimes reloaded with a sharp slap to the side of the barrel. The 1930’s Disney pioneered ‘rubber hose’ animation makes for a wonderful showcase of creativity, especially when pressed against the grunge,…
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Edge of Fate: Review
I can still remember my excitement, on the 9th of September 2014, when I queued up to log in to Destiny for the very first time. I sat impatiently, listening to the iconic loading screen music. Looking back now, the state of Destiny 1 at launch was dire, but the prospect of its sci-fi fantasy…
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Doom: The Dark Ages: Review
Amongst the wreckage and labyrinthine halls of a burning medieval city, there is a small metal drop pod housing a powerful weapon: the power gauntlet. A weapon that id Software has designed to display the unbridled power of the Doomslayer. At the click of a button, you can turn demons to nothing but blood and…
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Late to the Party: A Short Hike
The past month has been packed. A heavy workload, train journey after train journey travelling to the farthest reaches of the country, and to top it all off, a frightening abundance of family health crises to attend to. Nothing life threatening (thankfully), but significant enough that my precious time has been spread very thin. Keeping…
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Blue Prince: Imperfectly Perfect
What was the last video game that frustrated you? From Soft games tend to frustrate me, although this is by design and likely the reason why I love them so much. The difficulty feels tuned just enough that its frustrating to perish in combat, but victory is always just within grasp. It creates a powerful…
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The Split Fiction Experience
What Hazelight Studios set out to achieve with the 2021 game of the year It Takes Two was beyond ambitious. It effortlessly jumped between innovative puzzle designs and game mechanics without missing a beat. The only fault being the games awkward narrative. This was a forgivable flaw given the otherwise delightful package. Having rolled credits…
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A Genuinely Humorous Game
What makes jokes funny? For me, it’s a combination of different criteria: the absurdity of a situation, the subversion of expectations, and expert delivery- both verbally and through body language. With most psychologists believing that body language makes up 70-80% of human communication, this becomes an essential part of the package. Video games often struggle…
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Gaming Puzzle Boxes
Introduction: There are a couple of things that I always have sitting on my desk: a notebook, a photo of my wife, and a puzzle. The puzzle is Titan, made by Felix Ure here in the UK. It is a 50mm solid brass sphere with one visible join across its circumference. It is a beautifully…
Gaming Acuity 