The New Doom and an Uncomfortable Problem with PC's Gaming Elite

So I have a cool new computer. It's another laptop, it's built specially for gaming and it means I can actually play my video games instead of them lagging to crap. To be specific, it's a HP Pavilion Gaming laptop with an Intel i5 processor and an NVidia GeForce GTX 950M graphics card. In broad terms, this is a huge step up: my old laptop (and the one I'm writing this on, because it still has functionality and I'm not above keeping this old thing so my new laptop can be a dedicated gaming PC) had an i7 processor, but the graphics card was a much older GeForce GT 640M which meant I had trouble playing games like Bulletstorm or even Doom. The original Doom. That started lagging on my laptop, it got that bad. But that's why I upgraded.

Only now, I have a new problem.

The Choice Between Mind-Controlled Orcs and Riding Elephants is Surprisingly Difficult

Well I'm having no luck with motivating myself to write anything for uni, so I'm gonna write a couple of reviews instead. They're a little late - both games I'm talking about here came out late 2014, so why not ring in the new year with them? I wanna talk about two of my favourite games: Shadow of Mordor, and Far Cry 4.

Changing the World gets the High Score!

So I consider myself a bit of a gamer. Not a usual gamer - I don't tend to play first-person shooters, I have little interest in big-franchise games (except Watch Dogs, because that's awesome. Oh, and Titanfall) and I'm more interested in art, story and character than gameplay.

But here's the thing: I've been reading about games too. And it turns out, games have the power to change the world.

Hacked Off

I have to start this review by saying I'm not all that far through Watch Dogs. What I've heard of the storyline (and it's very little) is promising, but for my part I haven't really done much of it. I've had it for a few days now, and every time I play I get stuck on it, sucked in, unable to quit or leave. Many a night has been spent staying up 'til three in the morning trying to finish another side mission or just muck about and hack as many random NPC's as possible. Because here's the thing about Watch Dogs: there's so much of it, and it's all so much fun.

A Bundle of Reviews

So I've had an Xbox One for about a week now, and most of my time on it has been spent either grinding through ridiculously difficult side-scrolling platformers or expressing my disbelief that they actually bothered with a campaign mode in Titanfall. Anyway, I think I week is long enough to have bought all the good games (short of Watch Dogs with its extravagant £60 price tag or anything which involves a sport and is not affiliated with the Kinect) and to have time to review the console itself. So here are my thoughts on the Xbox One.

Beautiful Games

The past month or so I've been playing a lot of new video games, because it's amazing what you can find for free if you know where to look. I'll go into some detail down below, but before that I want to say: it's amazing how beautiful you can make games in a short amount of time.

First-person shooters reborn

I have a problem with first-person shooters. The market is saturated with them: Call of Duty, Battlefront, Halo; they're all variations on the same run-jump-shoot game which is fast becoming incredibly dull and predictable. They're worse than rail shooters in some respects: at least with House of the Dead 3 I still have that arcade-style feel which is fun and addictive. Even if I'm not controlling my character, it's still more fun than I have playing Nazi zombies.

So why am I talking about shooting games if I hate them so? If I so want to be rid of them, why mention them at all? Why not let them drift back into obscurity in their own time, and concentrate on other things? Well the answer to those questions is very simple:

I've found a couple of fps games I really, really like.

Never Sleeping again...

If you get the chance, play Alan Wake. Beat the game on easy or normal mode, then think "well that was pretty good. I wonder what I should play next..."

You should play Alan Wake next. Alan Wake on Nightmare difficulty. 

New Year, New Movies

So it's the start of another year, and one I've been looking forward to very much. Every year is a new start (because no other day can be, apparently) and right now I want to start watching some new films.

I wrote on my other blog last year about my problems with sequels, but 2013 looks to be pretty good. I liked the Hobbit (apart from a few problems with the whole 3D thing - looks like it's 2D for me this year!) and The Desolation of Smaug ought to be the best of the three; from what I remember of the book, Mirkwood will be one of the most terrifying and action-packed parts of the whole thing.