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horror movie mini mania 2025

Halloween! Does any other single word bring with it such a feeling of joy and terror all at once? A celebration of the macabre and sinister with a smile on its face and a spring in its step? The nights begin to draw in, the pumpkins fly off the store shelves and everywhere there are sweets and candy to reward the colourful and the mischievous.  A fine time of year indeed so once more I endeavored to watch a bunch of horror movies and provide the usual brief review of same.  Alas this year October turned out to be more packed with regular everyday life activity than usual so I didn't get to do a huge marathon like I've pulled off in previous years. I did manage to squeeze some in at the last minute though so behold my thoughts on the following horrific delights... The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007) A faux documentary slash found footage horror film detailing the manhunt for a twisted serial killer. An assortment of talking heads from law enforcement and media discuss the...
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you got game (music) #7

Taking a brief break from the odyssey of my all-time favourite games this month with a brief return to the subject of my favourite game music. Mainly because I realized quite unexpectedly that I've missed out on a major one to date.  Think sci-fi, think epic story, think long elevator rides disguising loading screens. Think galaxy maps and Reapers! Think Commander Shepherd and Asari! Yes of course you are thinking of  Mass Effect , that epic sci-fi trilogy (sorry  Andromeda !) with the ending that most people hate. Personally I like it but then again me and the internet often disagree on these things.  Anyway where was I? Oh yes the music of  Mass Effect... Attributed to a number of parties across the first three games, the main parties responsible for this outstanding selection of game music are  Jack Wall ,  Sam Hulick  and for the third one  Clint Mansell . It's a sound that develops over the games. The first game in particular has a heavy...
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my top 100 games of all time part 1

It begins! You know what? I'm just going to do it. No more procrastination, no more delay, no more shifting the ranking around to accommodate the latest greatest game I've played. No it's time. Time to deliver on a mission I set for myself back in the first glorious age of this blog before everything went dark for a few years. It's happening folks, I am beginning the Top 100 ranking of my all-time favourite video games.  These will be games I've played so if any obvious contenders are not there it's because I never got around to playing them or I did and then forgot about them meaning they probably wouldn't have made the list anyway. It's all entirely my own personal opinion of the games that mean the most to me. It is the sum total of my best experiences in gaming over several decades of playing them. So where better to begin my Top 100 game ranking than by err... the honourable mentions?
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the art of the ending (or how Deadly Premonition sticks the landing)

Deadly Premonition was a funny old game, an earnestly idiosyncratic tribute to the sensibilities of its creators wrapped up in a Twin Peaks style murder mystery. Of course it's that last part that caused it to pop up somewhere on my radar in the early to mid part of the last decade, anything that even partly channels the weird sensibilities of Twin Peaks and David Lynch invariably gets my attention but back to the game. This is a murder mystery, a dream like odyssey through the unknown and a reckoning with oneself that I wasn't quite prepared for. Short form social media wasn't all the rage just yet when this game was released, yet  Deadly Premonition found a popular little online niche for itself that captured the imagination of much of the gaming public. A curiously beguiling mix of gaming oddity that shouldn't have worked as well as it should have. Indeed some would say it barely worked at all.  As to why it worked for me, well I think there is something to be sa...
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you got game (music) #6

Too warm, just too warm. I'm sweating like a bawdy metaphor in church and I'm just not cut out for this thing we call summer. It's a hostile environment is what I'm saying. It makes me want to pack up and relocate to a walk-in freezer. So naturally, what better time to revisit my love of videogame music than when my brain is slowly baking from the inside.  Today we shall showcase the music of a game we've highlighted around these here parts before. Indeed I recall this was the best game I played back in the bygone days of three years ago. Today we highlight the music of Oxenfree for no other reason than I haven't already done so. That and I recently got around to playing it's sequel, so the first game has been on my mind a lot lately.
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hot screenshot action #2

It's that time once again where I highlight notable examples of the art of the screenshot whilst going on a bit about the game they belong to. So re cently I played a pair of visual novels that caught my eye some time back. The Silver Case was the first game released by famed Japanese developer Grasshopper Manufacture and noted creative force Goichi Suda aka Suda51 . Originally releasing on the original PlayStation  in Japan back in the golden year that was 1999, it wouldn't see a Western release and localisation until it's HD re-release in 2016 on PC with other formats following soon after. This would be re-released alongside it's sequel The 25th Ward: The Silver Case and given my generally positive experience of Grasshopper games I tucked them away on my list for future attention. Well that moment has arrived and cometh the hour, cometh the baffling tale of intrigue, deception and inter-departmental warfare.
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blog simulator 2025: the hapless writers journey...

Just consider for a moment what a huge undertaking it is to actually make a game. Whether it's a AAA effort costing hundreds of thousands of dineros and many lifetimes of productive work hours or even your more humble independent efforts where the costs may not be so great but the penalties for failure are still pretty stark indeed. From concept to execution, it's a massive toil to see something through to completion on the hope and a prayer that it finds both the audience and the success that game makers hope for.  Now consider the games that are not like that at all. Consider if you will the concept of... shovelware!
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