Tag: Video Games
#oneaday Day 764: Just games
There was yet another round of Tedious Discourse™ today over what the word "retro" really means, if anything, when it comes to video games. As always, there were lots of varying definitions, no agreement, and a bunch of people getting in a bit of a flap about it when their definitions of "retro" didn't line...
#oneaday Day 762: Some nice things
I started typing out a post about how shit everything was. I got to about 600 words, and I even found a really good stock image of some horseshit. Then I looked at what I had written and thought, "no, I should not give in to despair, even if it does seem like it has...
#oneaday Day 761: The depths of the id
I think one of the hardest things to watch during the latest of myriad sessions of layoffs over at XBOX, The Everything Console has been seeing id Software be gutted. Everyone has That One Company who always made stuff that they liked, which has been there since their childhood, and for me I think that...
Should Extractions Shooters Be Either Accessible or Difficult?
Adding to the Marathon talk, Bertii, yet another YouTuber, hits the nail on the head with his take. What is Marathon? Maybe it's an aspect of the genre to fit into accessible or hardcore. I certainly don't think that was considered for Halo or Destiny. They were just good games to jump into a play with people with room for hardcore players.
#oneaday Day 760: My own feelings on old games
First up, here's a good piece that I read earlier today, and which my resharing a clip of on Bluesky did Numbers to such a degree that I had to mute the thread. I stand by my comment of "fucking preach" about it, however, particularly the paragraph about today's games having their roots in older...
#oneaday Day 756: Video games like they used to be
Around the same time Sony is doing its best to completely murder the traditions and culture surrounding video games, and Xbox continues to implode, Nintendo has gone and put out multiple games that feel... almost out of their own time. And I mean that in a very complimentary way; both Star Fox (released on the...
#3 | Video Games - July Check In
Today is July 2nd, 2026 and that means the first half of the year is over and my anxiety about the 2nd half of it is officially here. Fortunately, there are video games and they still cost less than therapy and medication, despite Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and Steam's best efforts. I have somehow made time to complete 14 games so far this year so its time to run them down listicle-style. JANUARY
#oneaday Day 755: The lost art of going to buy a game
Yesterday, I talked generally about the impact PlayStation had on me and my friendship group thanks to stone-cold classics like Ridge Racer, Tekken and Final Fantasy VII. Today I want to talk about another aspect of that time which I have fond memories of -- but which hasn't been a thing for some years now,...
i guess it’s better than Nothing?
Microsoft will likely soon follow Sony and stop the production of physical discs for Xbox games. But instead of leaving physical discs behind entirely, sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell me the company has quietly been working on a disc-to-digital feature that will allow Xbox owners to digitize their existing physical game collections. Xbox employees...
#oneaday Day 754: Late '90s promise
As I absorb the news that Sony is giving up on physical releases of games -- something I have had a good rant about at much more length over on MoeGamer, so please go read that -- I can't help but think back to the time PlayStation hit the scene, and the incredible amount of...
benefits of optimizing games for lower-powered devices
so for the last few years we've had to listen to developers absolutely losing their minds over how the xbox series s is supposedly "holding back the generation" and honestly? it's getting kind of old like, i get it. you want to use the shiny new unreal engine 5 features to render the individual pores...
#oneaday Day 753: Finding the Fun Factor
As I often do on my regular trips in to the office (when I'm driving, anyway), I listened to a bunch of the Fun Factor podcast over the last couple of days. If you're unfamiliar, this is an excellent show hosted by sports writer Ty Schalter and video game critic Aidan Moher where the pair...
#oneaday Day 747: Grand Theft Auto VI can eat my ass
To no-one's surprise, it has been revealed that Rockstar's upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI will be $80 on release for its regular version, and $100 for the "Ultimate" version, because of course there's an Ultimate version. Hilariously and/or tragically, the "Ultimate" version even goes so far as to lock you out of specific shops in...
#oneaday Day 745: Cost-effective gaming in 2026
Valve apparently announced the price of their long-awaited Steam Machines today and, unsurprisingly, given the general price of tech right now, they ain't cheap. They're "starting at £879" not cheap, and that only gets you 512GB of storage; they break the £1,000 mark if you want the 2TB model, though both are expandable with microSD...
#oneaday Day 742: Crash and burn
There is increasing talk of the video games industry staring down an honest-to-goodness crash -- and this time around, unlike the notorious Great Global Video Game Crash of North America from 1983, it looks very much like it could be one that will happen across the world. All this said, I feel like, at this...
#oneaday Day 739: Occupying yourself while your life is on hold
If you're anything like me, when you encounter a period of great uncertainty or emotional turmoil in your life, it can feel like your brain has pressed a big old "pause" button, making it near-impossible to even contemplate going about your life as normal. Your job feels like the least important thing in the world,...
Dying Light 2, June 2026: What now?
I went to bed ridiculously early on February 3rd in 2022. Not because I was tired or anything, but I knew I wasn’t about get much sleep in the near future. And I had to be up early. Very early. 1 AM kinda early, because that was when the PLAY button on Dying Light 2...
Dying Light 2, June 2026: What now?
I went to bed ridiculously early on February 3rd in 2022. Not because I was tired or anything, but I knew I wasn’t about get much sleep in the near future. And I had to be up early. Very early. 1 AM kinda early, because that was when the PLAY button on Dying Light 2...
#2 | Video Games - Indie Game Fest
Today is June 9th, 2026 which means the passed weekend was Summer Game Fest. For those like me who keep an eye on video games announcements and releases, that means more showcases than one person could reasonably keep up with. Even though a lot of the shine of big game announcements has worn away by trailer sameness (is that word?), its still very exciting to see what devs in the indie scene are cooking. To that end, here are 18 games that piqued my interest. I assembled this list from the showc...
Game Publishers Move to Avoid GTA 6 (Rob Fahey)
Games Industry.biz (GIb) is a news website which covers the video game industry (surprise!). I have had GIb in my feed collection for a couple of years, and it has informed two NLJ articles in Provocative Out-Of-Context Headlines (GiB was responsible for the "context" rather than the headline) and AI Game Worlds and Humane Games....
Groundhog Day, Savescumming, and Our Endless Numbered Days
I love time loops in media—from Groundhog Day to Haruhi's Endless Eight. What do they reveal about mortality, memory, and the human desire to escape consequence through Nietzsche's eternal recurrence?
Video Games that Secretly Teach Mathematics
A love letter to the mathematics hiding inside video games, and a protest against the expression 'I'm just not a math person'. From parallel universes in Super Mario 64 to the technical exegetes mapping Animal Crossing, The Sims 2, Pokémon, and Paper Mario. Then Balatro and the IEEE 754 double-precision ceiling, tetration, Knuth's up-arrows, Conway chained arrows, Graham's number, TREE(3). A history of notation catching up to the infinite.
Memes, Metal Gear Solid, and You
A history of the word 'meme'—from Richard Dawkins coining it in *The Selfish Gene* in 1976 to Advice Dog and the death of shared internet monoculture—and what happens when you take memetics seriously as a theory of culture. Metal Gear Rising's Monsoon delivers the most honest account of how memes shape who we become. The lyric essay resists this process by design.
Xbox's downfall is most certainly my fault
Okay, maybe not, but still, it often feels like right when I start to get into something, it falls apart. In January of 2023, after years of considering myself a "PlayStation guy", I decided I needed a change. It was a transitional period in my life for a number of reasons, and one of the big shakeups I made was giving the Xbox ecosystem an honest shot. Truthfully, I'd always appreciated the hardware design of the recent consoles, the One S and Series X in particular, while despising the directi...
Xbox's downfall is most certainly my fault
Okay, maybe not, but still, it often feels like right when I start to get into something, it falls apart.
Role Played
Thoughts on getting back into modern-day gaming later in life after taking a very long break. (Warning: This is a very elder millennial post, leaning on geriatric.)
Breaking Bubsy News
Oh no, someone made a new Bubsy game. And that someone was Atari. How concerned should we be?
The Game Genie Generation
For an unlicensed game accessory, the Game Genie sure casts a long shadow. It reshaped the games we already owned—and had a profound effect on copyright law.