43. Life is Strange (Dontnod/Square-Enix, 2015)

Life is Strange is the first (also only) computer game that has made me cry. It's definitely art, and this one I do get. Unfortunately, to provide the critical evaluation it arguably deserves I would have to also discuss a large number of things which would be considered spoilers by the standard ( Read more... )

41. Stellaris (Paradox, 2016)
42. The Stanley Parable (Galactic Cafe, 2013)

( Games as Entertainment... )

Because I used to write reviews for books I'd read and games I'd played, but haven't been doing so for ages so this is a catchup.

Computer Games:
35. X-Com: Enemy Within (Firaxis/2K, 2012-3)
36. Mass Effect 3 (Bioware/EA, 2012)
37. Long Live the Queen (Hanako Games, 2012)
38. Science Girls (Hanako Games, 2009)
39. Fire Emblem: Awakening ( ( Read more... )

So due to the combination of not having spent very much of my "discretionary" or "having fun" budget for that month, and having a business trip to Germany in which I suspected I would be doing a lot of waiting around and sitting in hotel rooms without very much to do, I bought a Nintendo 3DS back in Feburary. Since I don't play with it that much ( Read more... )

So, at the end of the last update Midgard's troops had expanded across a moderate swathe of the map, merrily slaughtering the independent forces which stood in their way and taking relatively light casualties as they did so. That has largely been the order of the day for the vast majority of turns 7-11, and you don't really need to see all of the ( Read more... )

33. Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension (Illwinter, 2013)

Dominions 3: The Ascension Wars had a modestly-sized but close-to-obsessive fanbase who maintained that a one-and-a-half man developement team in Sweden had produced the best game ever. So when they junked their distribution agreement with publisher Shrapnel Games and went for online-only ( Read more... )

So this is half a post I've been meaning to make for ages and half something I was reminded of by a (rather extended) conversation with chess at emperor and atreic's housewarming. Some time ago now (almost two years, in fact), I wrote a post about using computers in schools and at home as part of education, this being something that several of my friends were doing ( Read more... )

32. Wing Commander Saga (Wing Commander Saga team, 2012)

Wing Commander Saga (: The Darkest Dawn, to give it its subtitle, the meaning of which only becomes apparent right at the end of the game) is sort of the companion piece to Wing Commander: Standoff (link goes to my review of that game). While Standoff's team set out to update and modify the ( Read more... )

31. Sid Meier's Civilization V (Firaxis/2K, 2010)

Hadn't really intended to buy this instalment of the Civilization series, but then it was free for a weekend on Steam so I gave it a shot, and it turned out to be worth the 75% discount they were selling it at at the time, so I bought the game as well. I've played it through once and won a science ( Read more... )

Right, let's see if I can get my reviews written before I finish playing anything else (this should be quite easy, unless I decide to buy something and play it through obsessively as I occasionally do).

29. Mass Effect 2 (Bioware/EA, 2010)
30. Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars (EA, 2007 ( Read more... )