Toomanywires

As you know, it's nearly 2020. Which means it's time to start agonising over which games were the best of the last ten years.

Initially, I was going to re-pick my favourite games of the decade. However, I've been writing "Best and Worst" of the year posts since 2010, and will be writing another before the end of this month. So let's not do that again. Let's do something a little different.

I'm going to write around some of the games of the last ten years, instead of writing about them directly. I'll use them as inspiration and share memories to which they are intrinsically linked.

So without further ado, let me tell you about the time I got rat-arsed on mead.

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It's December 2011 and my wife and I are on our way to Manchester. We've got a lovely weekend planned. We'll meet some friends and hit the Christmas Market in the city centre. The next day, we'll do some exploring and Christmas shopping, before getting the train b…

I remember gawping at the preview images in the Official PlayStation Magazine. The Bouncer was the poster boy for the next-gen jump. This is what games would look like on the PS2, and things would never be the same again.

The Bouncer, Squaresoft's first PS2 game, arrived at the very tail end of the console's launch-window, and it did so with a whimper. It received mixed reviews and was soon forgotten, replaced by equally beautiful but far more substantial games. The graphics-likers found new things to lust after, and the Square faithful put all their energy into pining for Final Fantasy X. When I finally bought a PS2 in the summer of 2001, I'd forgotten all about the game that had once made my favourite PS1 titles seem like pixel puke in comparison.

Fast forward almost twenty years, and I'm finally playing The Bouncer. In a last-gasp attempt to recapture my youth, and spurred on by a ¥55 ($0.50 / 38p) price point, I bought a copy. I hadn't thought about The Bounce…

Death Stranding is a game about delivering packages. The glorious monotony is interrupted be the occasional flourish of extreme weirdness, but mostly it's about getting a box from A to B, under duress.

Death Stranding has no business being as entertaining as it is. I'm consumed by post-apocalyptic logistics. Weighing speed against volume, planning out optimal routes, deciding whether to travel on foot or by vehicle; considering where the dead might lurk and fuck with my schedule.

I'm twenty hours in and I love it. But like any good Kojima game, Death Stranding is full of plot points and features that make zero sense. We've long wondered why the massive eagles didn't fly the hobbits to Mordor, and why the survivors continued to follow TV's Rick Grimes for several years. Likewise, we must now contemplate why Death Stranding's inhabitants didn't just dissolve corpses in acid instead of cremating them and attracting floaty, oil corpses.

I have many questio…

I have exquisite taste in video games.

When Hideo Kojima bemoaned the unrefined habits of American gamers earlier this week, I couldn't help but agree. Much like my French and Italian fellow intellectuals, I can appreciate even the most mentally challenging and innovative experiences and have nothing but disdain for the basic gamer.

As far as I'm concerned, Madden can fucking do one.

I have played all the good games and have insightful takes on each of them. I transcend the critic-hobbyist divide with my exceptional think-skills. I can smell a bad game from a mile off, and won't waste my time with anything but the best.

That being said, I spent most of the last month playing Anthem and Left Alive. Because I am a complicated boy.

In my defence, they were both heavily discounted. Rewind to earlier this year, and I was fascinated with the speed at which the price of Left Alive tanked. It was under ¥1000 within a month of release - a decrease the likes of which I had never se…

NBA Live 2020 just got deaded.

It was unceremoniously un-lived yesterday, at the outset of a run-of-the-mill earnings call. It's off the table for this financial year, but EA are teasing a new direction come next spring.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that EA's once-mighty basketball franchise expired many years ago. As dead as NBA basketball in Seattle, Markelle Fultz' jumper, or Delonte West's friendship with LeBron. It has been on and off again over the last decade more times than I care to remember, and I like remembering things.

NBA Live relinquished pole position to the 2K series a generation ago. I'm assured the latest two installments were decent, but that wasn't enough to save Live '20. The series has suffered countless embarrassments, including failed soft-relaunches and a disastrous demo for what would have been Live 2011. Riddled with glitches, the trial sunk what was supposed to be a triumphant return. The cancellation was so last-minute t…

I haven't done one of these Musings posts for three years. In the last edition, I was opining the end of my Witcher 3 DLC journey, saying farewell to the Wii U and discussing the newly revealed Switch and the possibility of it running Skyrim.

As we now know, Skyrim runs on everything. A future far greater than I could have ever imagined.

Video games, then.

1. Sayonara Wild Hearts

Yes it has a very silly name, but Sayonara Wild Hearts is a wonderful little game about pop music and moving very fast through purples and pinks. It's Rez-like in places, which I love, though the marriage between music and gameplay is not as tight. It's short, which I also love, stylish - love - and it always makes you feel like you are doing something awesome, even if you are essentially just guiding your character down a tube.

The pop-electronica score is decadent and perfectly fits the visuals - or perhaps it's the other way round? My interest never wavered, in part thanks to an ever shifti…

I originally posted this at Critical Gamer
Project Resistance was a surprise. Announced just a few days in advance of Tokyo Game Show, it was a welcome addition to what was shaping up to be a very limited selection of demos at Capcom.

The initial announcement offered only the basic details. I understood the premise, but everything else was a mystery to me. It made for a nice change, going into a demo unsure of what to expect.

As we waited for our turn at the kiosk, we were given tablets that ran instructional videos. Only then did I start to understand what exactly Project Resistance is.

Project Resistance is a 1 vs. 4 asymmetric online survival horror. The group of four are the survivors, trying desperately to escape a trap-laden and zombie infested series of rooms. The team consists of one each of the following: a healer, a hacker, a tank, and a guy who's tasty with his fists. His name is Samuel. At the start of each stage, players race to pick their favourite; during my demo, I…

I've already posted impressions from Day One and Day Two, as well as previews for Final Fantasy VII Remake, PC Engine Mini and Yakuza 7, with Project Resistance to follow in the next day or two. I've used up nearly all my words, but there's still a handful of games left to discuss.

Nioh 2 was the main draw at Koei Tecmo. I haven't played the first game, so I was at somewhat of a disadvantage here. However, by the end of the demo I had definitely gotten the hang of it. Death came early and often, but each failure revealed a little more about how to approach each enemy and progress further.

Death is not overly punitive, thankfully, and the restarts are quick and painless. Our protagonist's repertoire of moves includes heavy and light sword attacks, which you can alter by switching stance, and a comparatively weak bow. You can also unleash the beast, transforming momentarily into a Yokai to deal heavy damage. This came in handy during the end of stage boss, an over-si…

I originally posted this at Critical Gamer
Yakuza 7 is a departure from what came before.

Series lead Kazuma Kiryu is out, to be replaced by another hard-man with a big heart, Ichiban Kasuga, and the main location has switched from the familiar Tokyo setting to Yokohama. However, the biggest change is to be found in the combat. The series has long been known for it's free-wheeling action, but Yakuza 7 will feature turn-based encounters.

While Yakuza has never hidden its RPG elements, it has been known first and foremost as an action series. Well, that is about to change. Yakuza 7 looks to be an RPG through and through and, from what I played, it's looking very promising indeed.

The TGS demo focused on Kasuga and two of his associates, an ex-cop by the name of Adachi and a drifter called Nanba. Following some lively discussion the trio decide to head out for the day and make their way to Hello-Work, an employment agency. As you'd expect, their journey is quickly derailed an…