After a brief chat on Twitter with The Gaming Ground I was reminded of the existence of Oni. A few minutes of reminiscing and nostalgia later and the inevitable happened – I decided to give it a go and see how it held up 13 years on.
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My little Oni
London is the new Atlantis: Sunless Sea
I had a brief fling with Fallen London a while back but didn’t have the time to invest, which was a shame because the world, the style and the art all outstanding and gripping. Now Failbetter Games are back with a sequel, the dark and sinister Sunless Sea, which sees you exploring an underworld sea in your steamship. Lovecraftian monstrosities, dark secrets, madness, mistrust and fear. It’s an excuse to use the phrase “Chthonic horrors”, not something you get to say every day.
Thirty years ago, London was stolen, dragged underground. Now it rests on the shore of the Unterzee, that old dark ocean under the world. Steamships ply the wild black zee, between the Iron Republic and the Elder Continent, between Khan’s Heart and the Dawn Machine…
Wallpapers for you Sir
The talented and presumably human Christian Anderson has created a series of wallpapers for Big Robot’s Sir, You Are Being Hunted. Despite the frailties of his mortal, organic frame Master Anderson’s works are both sinister and delightful. Just like the game.
Game music: Child of Light
How did this happen? As an XBox One owner I expected any interruption in the dearth of games to be heralded by, if not Titanfall levels of fanfare, at least something. But no, it was only when I went looking through the game store I came across Ubisoft’s Child of Light. Yes it’s had reviews, and no it didn’t slink onto the scene like a ninja, but at the same time when something as interesting, as pretty and as unique as Child of Light gets released I’d expect to hear a little more.
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The rise and aversion of a Nintendo PR distaster
Poor Nintendo. After the runaway success of the DS and the Wii it was almost inevitable that the Wii U would be a bit of a disappointment, and verily it came to pass that profits fell, forecasts were missed and expectations lowered. Then came the clamouring for them to get out of the hardware business, focus on software and jump into the mobile market, because we know how well that worked for Sony.
All in all, they could really have done without the internet shitstorm they created when they announced no same-sex relationships in Tomodachi Life.
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Game music: Tetris
It’s been a year now since I started this series with Bastion so let’s celebrate with the greatest piece of video game music ever written. If the whacking great big banner up there didn’t give you a clue and you skipped the title completely, I am of course talking about Tetris.
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Game music: The Secret of Monkey Island
In my history of video game music series I sung the praises of LucasArts games in general and Monkey Island 2 in particular. I steered clear of the original Monkey Island, partly because I never played it, partly because I wanted to give it an entry all of its own.
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For your Kickstarting consideration: Universim
Since Kickstarter kicked off I’ve only backed a few projects – Sparki, Sui Generis and the Heroes of Video Game Music album – and now I’m about to add another one to the list, and you should too.
Universim. Kickstart Universim.
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King’s Bounty – The Direworm Has Turned
Time has come to join the dark side. Take a trip to the other side of Teana, to the part of the world that has yet remained unseen to the royal bounty hunters.
One day we’ll get a sequel to King’s Bounty, but until then we can content ourselves with an endless stream of expandalones. To be fair, these do add significant new content and let me pour even more of my precious life-seconds into the game, but they aren’t sequels damnit.
Still… the latest not-a-sequel looks interesting. Due this summer King’s Bounty: Dark Side has you taking the part of the ‘bad guys’. Yes, in previous games you could load up your army with Orcs and lead a ravaging horde of greenskins leaving nothing but death in your wake, but now you can do it as a demon, orc or vampire.
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Half-Life done quicker
If you charted the current best time for speedruns of popular games over time I’m not sure you’d get an exponential decay but certainly there’d be something analogous to a half-life. In this case, the time for Half-Life has just decayed to 20 minutes and 41 seconds thanks to a monstrously feat of research, planning and bunny-hopping by a team of players. 317 segments, two-thirds of which are fewer than 5 seconds long.
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