Gaming

Blog 816: RoX

I’ve been meaning to write properly about Safrosoft RoX because I’ve mentioned it obliquely a few times since I built my Windows XP machine — it’s one of the straws that broke the camel’s back, which, along with the inability to play Age of Empires II and Atrox on my real PC, made me take the olde worlde plunge.

I mean, this will be a mostly academic discussion, because you can’t play RoX anymore — it’s a hoary old piece of 32-bit Visual Basic shareware, and while it might be possible to rig it up on a modern OS with some decidedly unseemly DLL registry shenanigans, nobody’s realistically going to take that risk. Which is a shame because RoX is a fantastically compelling little game.

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Gaming

Blog 592: Mass Effect the Third

Mass Effect 3 might have introduced even more truckloads of plot-holes than its meandering predecessor managed to do (and it did that without even telling a story), but by ‘eck, its mechanics are spot on.

Having said that, I still loaded up on DLC for this run, so I might even have something new to report once I’ve put the vanilla game through the wringer.

Come on then, let’s pop the heat sink on combat and mechanics one last time…

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Gaming

Blog 591: Mass Effect 2: Shep ‘arder

Mass Effect 2‘s biggest problem is its plot. I’ve been through that a million times and it gives me no pleasure (except perhaps in the reinforcement of my own belief that I’ll be Doing It RightTM when it’s my turn).

So let’s harp on about combat and mechanics again.

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Film

Blog 496: Forever Accompanied at the Cinema

I think I have now been to the cinema more times in the last couple of months than I have in as many years.

But while I went to see John Carter and Wrath of the Titans alone because I was the only person on holiday, I went to see Battleship and The Raid with other people due to these being weekend and evening ventures respectively.

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Gaming

Blog 482: Dungeon Lords

I paid 99 pence for Dungeon Lords, at the same time that I bought Fire Warrior.

I find it hard to believe that you can sell games that cheap and still make a profit… Then again, it’s an original box from 2005, so I suppose 99 pence is better than 0 pence and taking up space in a warehouse. Plus the shop unit that has the bargain basement had been empty for ages, so the overheads can’t be that bad.

I also picked up the Human League’s Octopus, an album I had never glimpsed in the shops before (and isn’t even on Spotify) and had wanted for some time (Tell Me When is their best tune). It was even in perfect condition, considering some of the other battered barrel bottom remnants on sale nearby. (This is the real reason why I tend to go there; the low low prices are a bonus but the obscure rarities are priceless.)

Unfortunately, while Octopus turned out to be brilliant, Dungeon Lords did not live up to the promise of its blurb.

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