Category: PC

Load up Age of Empires II, and I promise you won’t beheading towards defeat

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Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings (1999)

Alright, hands up who’s a sore loser? Today I’m too brow-beaten by life and accepting of mediocrity to really care anymore, but I used to be a right screaming shit back in the day. I distinctly remember playing a relaxing game of chess with my brother, no pressure or tension at all, except for my self-professed young grandmaster status getting in the way and letting my ego get the better of me. It looked like I had the game won, until – wouldn’t you know it – I fell right into the trap.

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Using your SNES as a learning tool? I must be missing the point

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Mario is Missing! (1993)

If you’re anything like me, then you’ll have been living your life dodging as much responsibility as humanly possible. After all, what good can possibly come out of having responsibility? Talk about putting an enormous target on your back, and inviting mouthbreathers to come up and take their best shot at you. Putting yourself in the hot seat may confer you with riches, adulation and fame – but it won’t be long before someone tries to knock you off your perch, or worse, they all come to you looking for a clue. And who needs that kind of pressure?

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A parting nuclear blast from the man who trolled the world

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Metal_Gear_Solid_V_-_The_Phantom_Pain.svg

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015)

Witnessing the barbarism of March 2020, with people suplexing one another to secure toilet roll for themselves, a steadfast refusal to wear a facemask and a whole load of misinformation spreading even faster than the Coronavirus itself, it really brings home to me the chilling thought that mankind isn’t quite as adept at combating world-ending threats as American disaster movies have always told us.

Now let’s imagine for a moment that the circumstances were far more immediate and severe – it’s the US president’s last day in office, and his legacy hasn’t yet been cemented in his own mind. So he presses the nuclear button against, oh, let’s say Russia for old time’s sake. Putin, who’s seen it all before in his 50 year stint as President, dismounts from his trusty bear at once and immediately retaliates. That’s USA and USSR, ah, the Russian Federation, out of the picture already.

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This is the next generation, Mega, so get your arse in gear

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Mega Man 11 (2018)

Never mind your Top Gears or your Fifth Wheels or your Grand Hoors, I’ve got the only bit of car advice you need – make your next car purchase an automatic. You’ll probably want to make it an electric or hybrid motor too, or at least something that doesn’t completely cackle at the polar ice caps like an evil vaudeville villain tying the dainty demure dame down to the train tracks. If your car doesn’t run on tofu then somewhere, somehow, there’ll be a Green Party policy there to thwart you. I’m all for environmental concern, but I’d rather the holes go in the ozone layer than in my pocket, know what I mean?

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Last one to play Minecraft is a square!

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Minecraft (2011)

Well, I’ve finally done it. It took almost 30 years, and when you multiply that by 365 it equals an awful lot of Mammy dinners, but I’ve finally moved out. I must now survive on my own, do things on my own, and accept the consequences of things I’ve done. These consequences which generally extends to me getting fatter from the snacks I’ve bought all by myself and the portion sizes I give myself. I can’t blame anyone else for anything that goes wrong. Well, strictly speaking that’s not true – it ain’t my fault when the Wi-Fi goes south.

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How to know your audience, and sell them a game they could well do without

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newbattletoads

Battletoads (TBD)

It mightn’t exactly be best practice to analyse a product before it comes out, but that doesn’t stop the legions of fans out there writing things off, way before they ever come to pass. We all knew the Ricky Gervais episode of The Simpsons would be a disaster, for example. But we couldn’t know that before we watched it, right? Actually, we could, because it really isn’t that hard to read your audience and give them something they want – and not something you think they want. And this is where I, if I happened to run some godawful consultancy firm, would propose millions of job redundancies worldwide.

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It doesn’t matter if I fire blanks, I’ll still miss

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doom

Doom (1993)

Up until now, I’ve always felt somewhat unqualified to talk about shooter games. Yes, I was able to write about Perfect Dark, but that was moreso because the protagonist is a lady. And I know quite a bit about ladies, having tipped my fedora towards many in my time. I’ve also gotten up to some other pretty manly pursuits, like flying planes and bombing it around in go-karts and doing arts and crafts. What I had never done before, however, was fire a gun.

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Meeting Go Live with the fastest thing alive

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Sonic 3 & Knuckles (1994)

Now that I’ve nestled my career within the vast cargo pants of Information Technology, I find myself tasked with leading projects and deployments and integrations various. But I’m not a project manager, in the same way that when asked, Amsterdam’s finest say they’re not prostitutes – they’re “sex workers”. It’s all about avoiding a potentially dirty title.

Here’s how it all goes down. Somewhere, sometime, a salesperson has beaten a potential client’s door down and persisted at it long enough to finally push the client’s decision-makers into a heartbreaking decision to buy the software. “OK, we’ll take your product,” they whimper, knowing that they had no choice – their fate would be either death by CEO or death by a thousand sales emails.

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Do you think James Bond ever had to walk to Gate 999?

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007 nightfire

James Bond 007: Nightfire (2002)

I was once told that a big advantage of working in the corporate retail environment is that “you get to meet new and interesting people every day”. I’m sorry, but to me, that is hell on earth. It was bad enough speaking to them over the phone. I couldn’t imagine having hateful negotiations with suppliers and wholesalers in my office, while they pretend to enjoy being in my company, alls so I can cut 2 cent off the price of a box of tablespoons so my department would save a hundred quid extra that month.

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“And it’s lights out, and they’re at a standstill since 2019…”

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F1 2019 Proper

F1 2019 (2019)

You’d have thought I left this one a little too late, but as it turns out, the 2019 F1 season is the last selection of top-class racing we’re gonna see for quite some time. Mind you, I wouldn’t have been all that gutted about it, if the second half of the 2019 season had mirrored the first half. Five Mercedes one-twos, an unprecedented run. And I’m telling you, it was getting as tiresome as the bad old days of 19 other lads turning up on the weekend to follow Michael Schumacher around – the only times I’d ever turn a Grand Prix off.

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