the background noise

Happy New Year all! Once more unto the breach and all that. It's the last leg through the odyssey of eclectic game picks that comprise my 2024 in video gaming. Please believe me when I say that I don't select these games by randomly throwing a dart at a board full of random sticky notes.  There is perhaps a method and a madness to this seemingly bizarre selection of games I promise you. Yes we've had rolllerskating with guns, we've had text based adventures in space, we've had a lot of live service shooting and even a full fat RPG in there somewhere. I'm sure there is a line that connects all these dots but you might have to get back to me on that one. To the games...

More thoughts! More games! More thoughts on games as I continue the survey of my 2024 in video gaming. On reflection I really feel like the majority of these games are getting suspiciously modern and 'current' like they might hold a degree of relevance to the present moment in which we live. I feel like I should be playing an obscure green screen graphical adventure from 1988 just to restore the balance somehow. I won't actually do that as I do go a bit retro in this entry towards the end. That said let's crack on with the hot takes, the medium heat takes and the 'why the heck would anyone play that?' takes.

Merry belated Christmas all! It's that time again, the time to look upon my last twelve months in gaming. Reflect upon the dizzying highs, the deep lows and the indeterminate set of feelings we find in the middle. Obviously it was a quiet year in literally every other respect . Nothing significant happened in the political, cultural or social spheres, honestly it was a pretty unremarkable year. I'm almost entirely sure that what the world needs right now is more red hot blog content about my year in video gaming. Yeah that sounds about right, nothing else to see here. So without further ado, what did I play this year and what did I think about it in brief?

There are those pivotal moments in one's gaming habit that come around every once in a while. Critical junctures or vital forks in the road where things could have been very different had the other choice been taken at the time. Usually you don't see them for what they are in the moment, they are very much things you only recognize retrospectively. Such is the case for the subject of today's post where I am going to ramble on at length on the subject of what might be my favourite game demo of all time. This would be the time-limited taster of everything the original Grand Theft Auto had to offer. Yes the first one that most GTA players at this point probably haven't played, an historical artifact developed by DMA Design out of Dundee and published by BMG Interactive back in 1997.

Easy riding. Short version: What a great game! I feel the need to just make that darn tootin' clear right now in case any of what follows obscures this verdict in any way. Long version: At the beating pulse of pop culture as always, behold my thoughts on Red Dead Redemption II , a game purchased at launch in 2018 but which I've only just recently gotten around to playing and indeed completing. All views are my own. No real horses were accidentally punched in the making of this blog entry. Hot air balloon drive-by's were kept to an absolute minimum where at all possible. Disclaimers disclaimed, let's go!

Incidentally, Happy Birthday to me! Now on with the show... I don't know when it happened exactly. 2015 or 2016 maybe? The exact point of origin is unclear. At some point around this time the rate at which I was playing and completing games was overtaken by the rate of new releases that I simply had to play. Free time was at a premium, the games industry itself was shifting into the live service online-only time sink model we see everywhere now and indie development was producing some soon to be big-names. Between reviews, articles, tweets and streams, the intrigue for established titles and new names swiftly took shape. All channeled through online sales and price-cuts which combined to form a hulking hybrid hell bent on eating up my free time.

So we arrive in 2014 after the bumpy ride that was 2013, that year long conclusion to the transition that was 2012 and no that's enough of that you get the idea I'm sure. Its that time of year where everyone and their gay cousins roommate are eulogising the year past and prophesying the year ahead. Everyone's getting their respective inner mystic on except me.

Well I was going to do a recap of 2013 as channelled through my own peculiar mind but given work, play and a recent spike in alcohol intake that is unlikely to occur at this hour. Something for the new year perhaps when my brain is less addled and my typing fingers are more capable.