Category: Personal

Ha Ha, Whee: On The Relevance of Game Reviews in a Post Fuck-You Era

Game reviews are shit and I hate them.

Earlier this month I reviewed Thief for work and, in many ways, it epitomised why I hate doing reviews now. As editor I get to basically cherry-pick the reviews I want to do and everyone else can suck shit, which is good because it means that I only have to play games I’m interested in but bad because the way reviews currently work (for a given value of my perspective only, your mileage may vary, consult a doctor before reading to the end of this paragraph) means that I end up getting mad at them and often end up slightly resenting their very existence.

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12 Months You Won’t Believe: Why Everyone Is Talking About What These Two People Did In 2013

So 2013 was kind of a big deal for us, and we’re kind of a big deal as it is, so frankly the last twelve months have been kind of a big deal. As basically everyone who is reading this knows (hey, whatup) we moved from Perth to Sydney in February this year.

It turns out “moving to another state” isn’t just as simple as getting on a plane: we spent pretty much all of January packing and getting ready, throwing out boxes and boxes of crap, and moving the boxes of the crap we did want to keep into a gigantic shipping crate. It also turns out that gigantic metal shipping crates get quite hot in the heat of summer — on the final day it was an insane 52 degrees inside the crate, which made moving the last of our furniture in there and strapping down an almost literally hellish task.

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BioShock Infinite and the Culture of Games Criticism

Spoilers for BioShock Infinite and Mass Effect follow.

BioShock Infinite must be one of the first games in recent memory where its Metacritic user score isn’t a disgusting dark mirror of its critical score. Not only has it bucked the usual trend of being a AAA release with a user rating of 1/10, but gamers are coming out of the woodwork in droves to say positive things, and leave positive comments. Can you imagine that?

Yet I can’t seem to open my Twitter feed or check my RSS without hearing, again, that BioShock Infinite is… well, it’s kinda shit. Apparently. Oh, you know, it does one or two things good, I guess. But man, it’s so over-hyped.

Is it?

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2012: It Certainly Was A Year

For somebody who spends probably over 50 hours a week writing things, you might think that I would shy away from writing outside of work. And you’d be right! And yet here I am, as we crest the hill of the new year, wind whipping our hair back in a most heroic fashion, fingers tapping away at the keyboard in a vague attempt to scribe the year’s main events. Let’s get stuck in, before I change my mind.

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