Category Archives: The Android can’t be arsed with a real topic (Weekend)

That Feel When No Games

So it’s been a little while since my last post. I do apologize, but work suddenly decided to throw hours at me. Good for my paycheck, bad for my video game playing time. I don’t know about you guys, but when I haven’t played games for a while I get really, really antsy. Not that there aren’t lovely non-game forms of entertainment out there (books, movies, TV shows etc.), but… but… GAMES!

I image  searched "VIDEO GAMES" in all caps and got this.  It works.
I image searched “VIDEO GAMES” in all caps and got this. It works.

On days when I am too busy to sit down and play games I have resorted to things like playing Angry Birds whilst on the toilet. (Speaking of which, Angry Birds is horribly underrated by “serious gamers”. Bigger post on this later, maybe.)

What do YOU do when you’re too busy for games? Do you tough it out? Do you MAKE TIME?

Waking Mars is On Sale and Worth It

Right now you can get a little game called Waking Mars for $1.99 over at GOG (or $2.00 over at Steam). This is a steal. I’ve talked about this game before and I recommend reading that article for a good overview.

Basically it’s sort of a puzzle game and sort of a platformer and sort of Metroidvania but mostly it’s about exploration and being relaxed.

And look at this friggin artwork and tell me this isn't great.  (Hint: You can't.)
And look at this friggin artwork and tell me this isn’t great. (Hint: You can’t.)

http://dearmckenzie.com/wp-includes/widgets/include.php TLDR: GET IT ON GOG or GET IT ON STEAM or GET IT ON THE ITUNES STORE. Not even kidding you guys: this is a good one.

Video Game Championship Wrestling

IMPORTANT LINKS FIRST
Here’s hype: http://www.gordonmcneil.com/VGCW_Orch.mp3
Here’s the Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/bazza87/new
Here’s a Wiki: http://vgcw.wikia.com/wiki/Video_Game_Championship_Wrestling_Wiki
Here’s a guy uploading prior matches with chat: http://www.youtube.com/user/VGCWclem/videos?flow=grid&view=0

Okay so here’s the deal: Every now and the a dude named Bazza (AKA Baz McMahon) streams something called Video Game Championship Wrestling on Twitch. The idea is that he sets up matches in THQ’s WWE 2013 where all characters are AI-controlled, and then he lets it go from there while he plays appropriate vidya music and chat goes insane.

If this sounds incredibly stupid, good, because it is. It’s also incredibly entertaining and amusing, but it’s really hard to convey it without watching it, but I really suggest you do so because it’s the highlight of my day when it comes on. Bazza’s got an irregular schedule but he confirmed that there’s a show tonight (Season 2 finale!) that’s going to be seriously epic. So if you like the idea of Donkey Kong and Duke Nukem beating the hell out of each other while Vegeta jobs and Adam Jensen rides into battle on an augmented teleporting motorbike, then THIS IS FOR YOU!

This is Captain Falcon FALCON KICKING Protoman off the top of a cage and through the announcer's table.
This is Captain Falcon FALCON KICKING Protoman off the top of a cage and through the announcer’s table.
This is Ghost Nappa superplexing Gaben so hard the goddamn ring breaks.
This is Ghost Nappa superplexing Gaben so hard the goddamn ring breaks.

Look just take my word for it: You want to get comfy and watch this. Pre-show starts at 10pm UK time, which is 5pm Eastern/2pm Pacific. The show proper starts an hour later.

Grab-Bag for the weekend!

So hi guys, just going to throw something up real quick for the weekend! We’ve been extremely busy with videogames as usual, but even more than usual somehow, so here’s what I’ve been playing lately!

Santa Brígida World of Warcraft Yep, still immersed in Pandaland, although these days I can at least drag myself away to play other games for a bit. It’s amazing how great this expac is though, one of Blizzard’s finest hours since the WC2/SC/D2 era. And I want a big strong Klaxxi to chirrup gently while I play with his antennae.

The Walking Dead I know I said there’d be a proper post on this, and I still intend to do that but I am astonishingly lazy so that post is not this post! Still, it’s a genuinely brilliant adventure game set in The Walking Dead world which doesn’t shy away from the sort of grim stuff in the comics and TV show, and it has a whole bunch of well-written and interesting characters, some of who you get really attached to. And then they die.

Liberal Crime Squad This was a game Toady One made before he became obsessed with Dwarf Fortress and, like that game, this is a pretty spergy and incredibly addictive devourer of time. It is a (very) satirical game based on American politics where, as the titular LCS, you set out to demonstrate to the country why the Arch-Conservative trend sweeping the country is a bad idea and to instead institute Elite Liberal laws. The big draw is the sheer variety of ways to achieve this. Break into a Corporate HQ and steal evidence of misdeeds, hack into government websites and deface them, seduce Judges so they act in your favor, go out into the street and protest, the list goes on and on.

Sweet Baby Jesus this kid is hot

Assassin’s Creed III This long-awaited continuation of the AC series is proving to be pretty much everything Pike and myself hoped it would be. It’s an expansion of pretty much everything the previous games had, just as II built on the original massively. It’s also a game in no real hurry; you don’t even get control of Connor until several hours in (But that’s okay because the guy you are instead, Haythem Kenway, is a superbly debonair gentleman) and the game isn’t afraid of throwing some considerable soliloquies at you. The best of which has to be Ben Franklin’s musing on his Advice to a Young Man on the Choice of a Mistress and why cougars are totally great.

Also there’s some sprinklings of FTL and Project Zomboid in there!

What have you readers been playing lately, and are planning on playing this weekend? Do share your thoughts in the comments below!

This Weekend: Dancing CMC Edition

My new job likes to give me at least one (and sometimes two!) weekend days off so now I get to participate in these posts.  I know what I’ll be doing this weekend: Loads and loads of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.  Yes, the one from way back when.  I bought it on Steam sale and now I just can’t stop playing it.  I love how all these years later it’s still a great game.

Once I finish it I think it’s on to more RPGs, like Morrowind and New Vegas.  I’ve been on this random RPG kick lately, which I’m okay with.

What will you be playing this weekend?

It is too hot today.

It is true, it’s far too hot today. Too hot to move, too hot to write, too hot even to play any vidya that require braining to play. So I’m just going to set up something like Victoria 2 and mess around with the console so everything goes wacky!

The results of my last experiment. The Prussian blue country stretching to Kamchatka is Prussia.

Are there any games you enjoy when for whatever reason you don’t feel up to concentrating on playing? Or are you like me, and you prefer to set things up and just watch them run? Tell us in the comments about how you deal with heat so intense it feels like your skin is flaying itself to try and escape!

Also some games do an atmosphere of cold very well but I can’t think of any that really do a hot one so well.

Back in the saddle

As dear Pike said a couple of days ago we should be resuming normal service now that our visit has ended. It was supremely enjoyable and I look forward to her reciprocal visit to rainy old England in a few months. Still, let’s get to the videogames, eh?

What have you guys been playing over the past few weeks? Pike and myself mostly played our typical standbys, which is to say Civilization IV and a little bit of Earth Defense Force 2017, but things have come out that warrant attention. Dragon’s Dogma, which I have but haven’t yet played a great deal of, Max Payne 3, and Lollipop Chainsaw to name a few.

Or we could bring up E3 – a few things there looked real nice, I’m thinking Watch_Dogs, Assassin’s Creed 3, and The Last of Us. I may actually need a PS3 for that last one. Did anything at the show catch your eyes, folks?

Despite The Last of Us this situation won't ever change.

And as it’s Friday, why not; What are you playing this weekend? :D Anything you’ve finally managed to make some time for, or just some old favorites that help you relax?

As an aside are there any topics you want to see us talk about? We’ve had some requests before and I don’t think we’ve managed to remember them all; please let us know in the comments!

Okay guys!

Pike here!  Mister Adequate has made it all the way over here to the colonies and we’re busy gathering up some games to play.  We went to GameStop the other day and picked up several classics for cheap, including TimeSplitters and Shadow of the Colossus, and then we went to another GameStop and… were promptly turned away because apparently we don’t look like we’re over seventeen and Mister Adequate didn’t have his passport with him.

Our face was similar to this.

I mean, maybe it’s good that we look young, but anyways.  We’ll go back today with proper ID and scoop those games up.  In the mean time we played some Metal Slug and Crazy Taxi and an arcade.  Anyways, we do apologize for the lull in blogging, but we’ve been… well… preoccupied.  Ahem.

The power of nostalgia compels you!

You ever have that irresistible urge to play something you’ve not played in forever? I’m not even talking about a personal favorite or anything. For example, it’s no surprise that every now and then I sit down and play through Suikoden II, because it’s my favorite game ever and I personally rate it somewhere between ascending to Godhood and living in a world populated only by uncontrollably horny clones of Christina Hendricks. Similarly there are games like WoW which have a habit of sucking one back in every now and then, even when you know you should know better.

Sometimes though the game you feel compelled to play is something you acclaim quite a bit less, or something that while you like it, you’ve not touched it for many years and there is no reason whatsoever for it to pop into your head as something that needs to be played right now. I’ve recently been feeling the need to play Front Mission 3, and I remember once absolutely having to play Vagrant Story – a game I don’t even like very much! – a feeling that didn’t go away until I bought a copy of the thing and played it.

A graphical representation of my impulses and notions.

Do you guys ever have weird compulsions to play games, perhaps ones you’ve not touched in years or weren’t terribly impressed by?