the background noise

Absent-mindedly browsing the iPlayer on my PS4 I catch sight of what just might be the greatest movie ever made to go by its synopsis. When you describe your main character as a 'troubled cyborg cop' you've pretty much won the battle for my attention.

Not pictured: my limitless joy! Circa 12.11 last night I walked out of GAME with a bag packed to the brim with all forms of wholesome Sony goodness. Not having attended a launch before I wasn't sure what I expected beforehand but what I got was less the horror of midnight retail and more an orderly, sane process where I got my console in super quick time.

So there's this teaser site ticking away the day, hours and minutes to something almost very Fallout related. There is the collective hope that Fallout 4 is on the horizon. Will it? Can it? Be it? Having played this series since its first atmospheric outing into the future past I can say I am very happy at the prospect. Very few fictional worlds bring it together like this one does, a retro future 1950's America warped, twisted and annihilated by nuclear hellfire but still very much there when you wipe away the ashes. It's bleak, funny and demented and if there's more coming I will be very much doing my happy dance.

History was so much easier when there were captions everywhere. A few stiff drinks later and I think I now have the patience to finish this.Yes we're back and while you were gone things were all happening in this vague historical facsimile of the American Revolutionary War. Must admit it takes a lot of effort to make a Revolution a chore, tedious even. With grim determination the overlords at Ubisoft have made it so, so before I fall over, where did we leave off?

So I was going to blog some more about a certain Creed of Assassin -like parkour runners but to be honest I haven't got much to work with here. Uninspiring is the word. Adding to this is a quote unquote real life that sits at the periphery of my gaming and will ever so often make inroads on my available time. Today is just such a day when that happened, leaving me lacking a certain energy and bereft of thought and word when it comes to a game that feels like it is thoroughly going through the motions. Okay well not entirely bereft of words then, obviously I can write meandering monologues like this in my sleep. In fact I may be asleep, oh my god I am blogging in my sleep aren't I? Aren't I?

We interrupt my adventures in AssCreed to talk about something else entirely. My tolerance for quasi-dream state hijinx is diminished after recent play sessions and besides something caught my eye during an earlier foray around the Twitters earlier this evening. Much to my joy and his endless, endless well of misery, the human shaped sardonic mass that is Charlie Brooker is bringing games and television together once more in a documentary of sorts.

Straight from the frontlines of history and across the improbable threshold of genetic memory technology (yes that's a thing). I bring you the American Revolution as told by Ubisoft through Assassin's Creed 3 . Join me as I go sneaking around killing people in the face.

Well I'm still riding a giddy high after watching the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special so there won't be much coherence here today either. Utterly barmy and bonkers but the crazyness was kept to the usual high standard so that's alright by me. But wait where's the videogame content in this blog entry?

So you probably won't get too much coherence out of me today on account of a random purchase of two highly coveted games earlier this evening. Just minding my way on the drive back home when it occurred to me I hadn't acquired said games yet so in a fit of something or other I went out and bought them. Barely been able to contain my sheer joy since. Not really containing it now to be honest, not successfully at any rate because you see dear reader I now possess these. 

My brain is just not going to co-operate with me tonight, real life has intervened leaving me barely able to join the dots or string words together in sequence.

Brief update today as I'm still woozy from painkillers from my earlier visit to the dentist slash mouth mechanic. Can see the Xbox One reviews are well and truly in. An exceptionally functional black box full of media and voice activated shenanigans that isn't over-wowing people on the games front, at least not yet.

Not long to go now til I get my hands are on some shiny new next-gen gaming tech. Think I'm most looking forward to Battlefield 4 , mostly for the nuanced characterisation, the resonant plot and the many onion like layers of intrigue woven into the single player experience.

Hotline Miami , an ambiguous weird super-violent trip into the neon haze of the 1980's. Originally released last year it came to PS3 a few months back and it is glorious. Twitchy, super-fast arcade gameplay married to a plot and tone both surreal and sinister. Picture it in your head as the kind of ultraviolent NES game that never was because thats the aesthetic on offer and it fits the game like a glove rendered in 16 bits or less.

Been watching these for most of my week off, the prolific output of Youtuber slash video blogger slash game player Nerdcubed who plays games, a lot of games, a lot of the time and talks about them as he does so for the collective amusement of the internet. So yeah I'm enjoying these and even when I'm not there's plenty of others to enjoy. Here he plays one of the better games I've played this year, no-killing his way through a level of Dishonored .

Well that got serious for a moment there yesterday, not the intention I had when I started typing and to be honest conflating a product launch with real world tragedy seems dubious at best and wrong-headed at worst. Still think there's something in there worth taking away as you venture elsewhere into the internets, somewhere in there there's a moral of the story I am neither well-equipped or eloquent enough to make.

Happy Playstation 4 Day! Of course it is but the North American rendition of this glorious moment. The main event that is the European launch materialising a mere two weeks from now. Only the laws of time and space seperate me from my pre-ordered console now.

Next up in the list of games everyone else played ages ago but which I've only gotten around to recently is Borderlands 2 . An off-planet off-beat space Western redneck-a-rama with shades of Mad Max thrown in because quite frankly why not?

Short update two: the sequel! Also known as why won't this game bloody end? Seriously some games just nail the sweet art of pacing perfectly, others just pad it out to the gills. Sat down to complete Dead Space 2 last night only to find it is about two to three chapters longer than it needs to be.

Short update today in lieu of actual bloggage. Wait is that even a word? My spell-checker reckons not. Wordsmithery (?) aside its not just my to-play list that needs playing, I got a to-do list that needs doing. Curse you time, I need more of you. Got some back issues of Edge here with my name on them, apparently they're there to be read and not to gather dust as I always thought. So I'm going to make my merry way through them, headphones on listening to the soundtrack to Dredd because that's just how I roll. Laters. p.s. I'll be tinkering with the design and colour scheme on the blog shortly so if there are any bizarre shifts in the layout or the space-time continuum, it'll be my bad.

So I'm playing a space-based surgery slash murder simulator that goes by the deceptive name of Dead Space 2 . Deceptive because the spaces therein are hardly dead. Oh no the spaces in these places are positively thriving with all manner of razor fanged obscenities out to murder-kill your ass.

Wow I am so inconsistent. Say I'm going to write for this blog one moment then disappear for months on end the next. Go me and my infuriating inconsistency. So yeah life has been keeping me busy lately but it would have to be nightmarishly busy to leave no time for writing which is not the case.