the background noise

Haven't done a book review for the blog in a while, not since the dark days of 2022 and that William Gibson trilogy I endured. Instead here's some assorted thoughts on a book I just finished, 1987's On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers. Expanded and revised from the review I posted recently on Amazon and Goodreads, all ill-judged opinions are my own. The short version: It's a rollicking yarn full of pirates, ghouls, dark magic and bloodshed, I really enjoyed it, thanks for coming! Oh you want the longer one do you?

Picture the scene if you will... It's the early 90's, precise year unclear but possibly 1992? A young boy comes home from school to find that most special of surprises awaits him but not all is as it seems. For you see said boy was indeed myself, and the gift in question was a machine that could play video games but there was a catch... Was it the Nintendo Entertainment System I hear you ask? A Game Boy perhaps? A Sega Mega Drive ? A Jaguar even? No my friends it was none of those, for you see I grew up in a family that was not flush with cash so I had to make do with what I got. What I got was a hand-me-down Amstrad CPC 464 . 

As alluded to in my last post I have some thoughts about the game I have spent most of the last week playing, that game being Paradise Killer , those thoughts being well... these ones.  First up it seems like a minor miracle that I am playing a game like this in 2023 on my PS5 and not on my PS2 in the hallowed year of our lord 2001. it's a game that's quite simple and straightforward in some ways and in others it has a lot going on just beneath the surface. It feels about as removed from the generic high budget videogame as it gets these days without going into the realm of indie low-budget. There's some weird throwback energy going on here is what I am saying and over the next few hundred words I will attempt to put said thoughts in some kind of coherent order. To the commentary...

This week I have been mostly playing Paradise Killer . I have many thoughts about this game but those will comes later. Suffice to say there's an embarrassment of riches here for zany out of context screenshots, such as this snippet from a conversation between my player character and a possessed vending machine that just might be out to end the world as we know it.  No shortage of such moments in this game and I applaud its developers for going out on something of a limb here. As I say, more thoughts later but for now enjoy these visions of inter-dimensional madness from the repeatedly rebooted island of the gods, more after the break...

'I'd say we're looking up a dead horse's rectum Norm!' Presenting the first of an infrequently updated series where I pay tribute to the very best finds found upon the DVD shelves of charity shops wherever I happen to find them. Films loaded up to the gills with pure cut-price testosterone. Films where men are men and production values are low to middling at best. The great value quality aisle of the action movie world. Those humble titles that just don't get no respect or enough appreciation for their distinctive DVD box art.  Not saying this will be a showcase of quality action cinema mind you but let's see what we have here...

A moment of appreciation if you will for the humble giant robot, mecha or walking tank. Playing a lot of MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries lately, a 'war-em-up' set in your standard grim future of near total conflict across, between and beyond the stars. Why it's been a good long while since last I played one of these. In fact there was no less than a nineteen year gap between this game and MechWarrior 4 . not entirely certain that was the game I played then or whether it was perhaps a budget release of MechWarrior 3. Regardless that's o ne nine years  I tell you! Sure there's been mobile and online games in that time but by and large this is a series with some serious underexposure in my humble opinion. Shame really, because when it's firing on all laser cannons, it satisfies that ever eternal need to pilot a giant bipedal tank through a future battlefield whilst wrecking all what you see. I'm having a lot of fun with this game is what I'm saying...

I've been playing Metal Wolf Chaos XD , a special kind of crazy. A game in which the US President wages war on an attempted coup d'etat against America by taking on the villainous forces of his Vice President armed in a ridiculously, implausible mech suit. He may be wearing a war machine but his true power is the love of his country.