Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle

All of our children are over 18 now so in a sense we don't have children any more. We have adult offspring. One of the small implications of this is that they have let us know they no longer want to use the childish terms "Mammy" and "Daddy" when referring to my wife and I.To be honest I think they are most uncomfortable at the way my wife and I have gotten into the habit of referring to each other as Mammy and Daddy at home and in public as many parents do after years of using those names with their kids. There is tremendous joy (and not a little relief) in watching your children mature into capable functioning adults. Nevertheless I am a little saddened to no longer be a Daddy. Daddys are magical mysterious  creatures, Dads are more humdrum every day folk. A Daddy can fix anything using his mystical  toolbox and his magic kisses. A Dad is more likely to break something. Daddys tell the best stories and can always make you laugh. Dads make you groan with tire...

Inspired by a video from Bombchu on Youtube I decided to review the games I have enjoyed from the last decade and pick my favourite game from every year. Nerd that I am this involved a lot of data crunching and heavy use of Excel but here are the main ground rules: 1. My sources of games are Wikipedia's "20xx in video games" pages . These pages give an unbiased and fairly comprehensive list for every year in a fairly standard format. I did spot a few omissions but none that would change my ranking. Example page for 2010  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_in_video_games 2. Windows games only and games are listed in the year that they were released. I believe Wikipedia uses the US release date.  3. I only consider games that I have played myself for a substantial time, long enough for me to form my own opinion.  4. I consider DLC and expansions to be the part of the original game.  I take them into account when ranking the main game.  4. Pleas...

It has been on the cards for some time but Xbox game pass was the tipping point for me. We are now most definitely in a post scarcity environment when it comes to gaming. I have a huge backlog of unplayed games on Steam, Humble bundle, GoG, Origin and other services. I have new games coming in all the time via Humble Choice and Xbox Game pass not to mention Epic and other give aways. I   am struggling to come to terms with this abundance and I find it increasingly difficult to decide what game to play next and how long to play a given game for. One approach that has been useful for me is "gaming projects" where I immerse myself in a particular game or game family for a few weeks. I did a complete play through of the Halo games last year (I bought a second hand Xbox 360 for the purpose). Since Christmas I have done the same with Gears of war (playing older games on my Xbox and newer ones on PC game pass). I didn't love all the games in the series equally but playin...

A recent  post on Tobold's Blog got me thinking about the number of games I play and whether I like to flit between games or spend a lot of time in one game. The truth is I get far more satisfaction from investing a lot of time in one game than from flitting between games and never the less I still do flit. Sometimes flitting is an inevitable consequence of a game not appealing to me as much as I thought it would. If I move on from a game because I am no longer enjoying it then I don't feel particularly bad about it. Sometimes however I just get distracted by something else and temporarily take a break from a game I fully intend to come back to. Unfortunately these days there is such an overwhelming choice of games to play (often at very little cost)  that such temporary breaks almost inevitably become permanent. This ever growing list of  unfinished titles that I intend to get back to some day is a source of frustration for me. To illustrate the above with examples ...

I am finally taking a break from Total War after almost a 2 year period of total immersion in the Warhammer series. I will certainly return for Total War Warhammer 3 but for now I am enjoying other games.  Harebrained scheme's excellent Battlemech has kept me entertained for the last few weeks. This turn based strategy with big stompy robots is fantastic but now that I have a stable of fully trained pilots and well equipped mechs much of the original challenge of the game has diminished. There are lots of ways to increase the difficulty but I am happy to play out the main campaign and move on.  Halo Master Chief collection has finally come to PC. I celebrated by replaying Reach, the only episode released so far. Still brilliant even though I played it as recently as last year on Xbox 360 during my Halo binge .  Gears of War: Pretty brainless and unoriginal third person cover shooter but a lot of fun none the less.  The Outer Worlds. This game is the re...

I am playing The Outer Planets thanks to the Xbox game pass (pc) €1 trial month. This is a great deal from Microsoft and a lot of gamers are signing up to it but I wouldn't be surprised if I and many others stay subbed after the trial period ends. Even though others like EA Origin Access have tried to push gaming as a service with a monthly sub for some years now I feel like this could just be beginning of a seismic shift in the way most people get games. I wouldn't be surprised if in five years time the majority of my games come this way. Twenty years ago I bought games in physical boxes that I proudly kept on display. I still have a bunch of them on the shelf in my office. Having a physical copy gives a real sense of ownership  and occasionally  I go back and play some old time favourites. But ... even when I do go back to play an older game I am more likely to play a Steam, GoG or Origin version than to physically insert a disk. It is just much more convenient so I have pic...

The October Humble Monthly bundle included the 2018 mech combat game Battletech . I have always loved big stompy robot games and I have very fond memories of playing  Battletech: Mechwarrior games from a quarter of a century ago when they vied with Metaltech: Earthseiege for the mech gaming crown. This latest Battletech game ticks a lot of boxes for me. It has a story based campaign set in the very rich lore of the Battletech  universe . Combat is turn based so no twitch shooting is required. The player controls a squad of mechs which are simulated down to the sub module level giving lots of of variables to play around with and control. All of this is right up my alley. Unfortunately my first couple of hours in the game tarnished this shiny picture some what. The game feels buggy and unoptimised. At times the action is jerky and have I experienced sound dropouts and a crash to desktop during combat. The crash happened as I was attempting the surprisingly challenging first ...