the background noise

Played The King of Fighters Collection: The Orochi Saga  recently, a collection of the first five games in the venerated fighting series. Having not had the 'pleasure' before now of playing these games I was perhaps ill-prepared for the difficulty level I was about to encounter. A difficulty level best described as somewhere between 'crushing' and 'soul destroying' but that's not what's important here.

It occurred to me that I never got around to posting my thoughts on the final part of the Blue Ant trilogy so here it is despite me finishing the damn thing several months ago. I'd like to say this is the shocking conclusion that upends your expectations, pulls them inside out and launches them into the stratosphere of critical re-evaluation but that would be an awful, awful lie...

Playing some Mercenary Kings  currently, a run-and-gun Metal Slug -a-like from 2014 that like so many others comes straight out of my 'games to play that will honest-to-goodness get played someday' list. It's been something of a disjointed experience to say the least, a game that's provoked some thoughts about one of the pre-eminent qualities of modern gaming: the time it takes to complete, to finish and to call it a day.

Howdy ho! Presenting the second part of my all-singing all-dancing gaming retrospective of this distant time we refer to as earlier this year. The games I've played and a paragraph or so of my thoughts on each presented for your deliberation. All opinions are my own, mint-condition, I accept no substitutes and tell no lies. Except that last one obviously... to the list!

Yes it's more videogame content on this, an ostensibly videogame based blog.  For no other specific reason whatsoever here's a list of all the games I've completed thus far this year accompanied by brief thoughts respectively. As you can see it's been quite the year, one in which almost nothing of interest has happened outside of videogaming let me assure you. Don't look into it, just trust me on this one, this has been the exact opposite of a fascinating year.  Anyhow, to the games...

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!

Some thoughts about William Gibson's Spook Country. Minor spoilers ahead. Now it's probably fair to say I had some misgivings about Pattern Recognition, the first book in what is referred to as the Blue Ant trilogy. Indeed upon finishing this follow up I pondered if I could get away with just copying and pasting the same thoughts into this review as much of it still applied. One bout of careful consideration later I was just about to CTRL+V that content over when I paused for thought and realised that it wouldn't be entirely fair or accurate.