the background noise

It's that glorious time of year again where we all come together to be frightened, shocked, mortified, haunted or just plain disgusted. The spooky season is of course upon us and much like last year I've decided to embrace it by watching as many horror films as I can. I've just watched all the films in the Paranormal Activity series so that's the subject of today's entry with a more varied assortment of films planned for part two. It's all floating kitchen utensils, strange sounds and flying bodies in this series. Not to mention  the unwavering commitment of its main characters to  capturing all this madness on tape when they should perhaps be doing shots of holy water or relocating to sacred ground. Mild spoilers ahead...

Damn it Kojima! I was all ready to rubbish this game. I really was. I was not having a good time with it. Then what do you do but go all Hail Mary in the last third of it and somehow save the whole thing from a thoroughly average review rating? I probably shouldn't be surprised that you somehow accomplished this feat given your past record but there we are. From the mind of the man who brought us Metal Gear comes the ending that saves the whole thing. Anyway I think I'm getting ahead of myself here. As you may have gathered, I have now played and completed Death Stranding . A game that has provoked many thoughts from myself, thoughts I will now dish out in no particular order. Warning: possibility of minor spoilers below...

Well if it isn't the dying days of summer once again? That time of year where the blue skies and fine weather persist but you can detect that ever so subtle change in the air. Full beam heat is no more, the green is a little less greener than it was a few weeks ago and the stage is set for the inevitable arrival of the Autumnal hues. This is all a very fine way of saying: why look at the time? See how it's getting on? Why what better way to mark it than to showcase some of my favourite game music. Not just my favourite game music but music from what might just be one of the all time greats. A game series that may or may not be my favourite of all-time. That's right, behold some of my favourite music from Metal Gear Solid and its many sequels.

A few weeks ago I got the urge to play a Soulsborne . You know the ones, the merciless rock-hard hit videogames popularised by From Software . Your Demon's Souls , your Dark Souls , your singular Bloodborne and Sekiro and Elden Ring and so on. I blame the last one myself, the Elden Ring DLC came out recently and footage of it has been all over my Instagram Reels (I'm not nearly with it enough to use Tiktok ) and gosh darn it, it returned me to 2015 when I last tried my luck at one of these games. It is also entirely coincidental that 2015 was the year that saw the release of the game I'll be talking about today. All of which is a very long winded way of saying that I've finally gotten around to playing Dark Souls II this month . Prepare for incoming thoughts on the matter...

Howdy folks, it's hitting peak summer in this part of the world and yes I'm already tired of it. Not tired of good weather you understand but you can have too much of a good thing as it happens. So naturally I'm staying at arms length from the outside world whenever possible and playing more of those them there video games. In matter of fact I played Nier: Automata and boy do I have some thoughts on it. As with most games I play this came out a while back but nonetheless you get the mandatory warning for minimum spoilers below. Now lets get to the robots...

Dear lord are we nearly at June already? Doesn't the time just zip past when you're blasting away at folks within the digital ether? Loo king back at the first half of the year I feel like it's been a robust period for my ever present gaming habit. Today I reflect upon a certain category of games that have taken up a sizeable chunk of my time lately. A category of games that have been around for a while now but which I feel is only now really coming into its own. I am of course referring to free to play games. Games that want the fast track to your wallet just without the cover charge at the door. I seem to have gone all in on these games lately and boy am I going to tell you about it...