the background noise

Playing through Resident Evil: Revelations 2 at the moment and came across this special moment. Oh on the surface it's nothing at all really. Just Claire Redfield and Moira Burton making their way through a dimly lot decrepit relic of post-Soviet infrastructure. Very dark, very grimy, very Resident Evil as you might expect. However it's rare that a game gives you such a perfect one line summary of itself. Almost like the writer is simultaneously winking and nodding at us as the characters speak about something else entirely. Or are they? For the most part Resident Evil doesn't do self aware humour too often. Oh there's the memes and the Jill sandwiches and the master of unlocking yes but within the games it's usually a more sincere, earnest affair where no-one really questions the absurdity of the setup, at least not often. For instance, the design of the Spencer Mansion and the Raccoon City Police Department are on the face of it utterly implausibl...

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...

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...

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?

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...