Category: Gaming

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LAN Yarns : Black and White; or How To Raise A Psychopath

The geek generation is getting older.  More and more game protagonists aren’t saving their  true-loves but instead are saving their kids.  As we’ve gotten older in the real world, more of us are having a hand in raising little nerds in the One True Way, whatever that may be (Wars vs Trek, UT vs Quake, Linux vs Windows etc.).  This, of course, is awesome.

But a gamer might not always be the best influence on a child, as we saw when we played Black and White….. Continue reading “LAN Yarns : Black and White; or How To Raise A Psychopath”

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LAN Yarns : How not to bluff, or “I’m The Phantom!”

We play a lot of Starcraft 2 at LAN parties especially the free mods in the arcade.  There are some great games on here, many of which with totally different gameplay to vanilla Starcraft 2.  One of our favourites is Phantom, a game less about Starcraft 2 and more about deception, bluffing and intricate plots to back-stab your friends.

Of course you can always be too clever for your own good…. Continue reading “LAN Yarns : How not to bluff, or “I’m The Phantom!””

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LAN Yarns : Fear Of The Dark

Back in a time that my children referred to as ‘ago’ we used to like staying up at LAN parties late into the night.  Games stretched into the small hours with the only light coming from the glow of our monitors and the odd peripheral.  The silence was infectious so the normal shouting was replaced with long bouts of silence; quiet occasionally broken by the frenzied mashing of keyboards or the odd sigh of dismay.   Pure gaming atmosphere.

Of course this kind of immersion had its downsides if someone was feeling unscrupulous… Continue reading “LAN Yarns : Fear Of The Dark”

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XenoShyft Onslaught Review

Xenoshyft OnslaughtI played my first game of XenoShyft Onslaught a few weeks ago.  The full release of the game was May 1st but I got a copy a bit early as I backed it on Kickstarter.  It’s a co-op, card-building base-defense game;  heroic / mercenary corporate troopers hold off waves
of ravening mutated aliens in desperate, heroic battle.

Or they all get mangled, killed and eaten.  And not necessarily in that order, either.

If you’ve read a few of the other bits of writing on here, you can guess how my friends and I did….

Continue reading “XenoShyft Onslaught Review”

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PowerShell : Record Process Time Script (Updated)

I’ve had the script I wrote to keep a record of certain processes run time running for  a while (I’m using it to keep a log of the games I play and when).  One thing I noticed though is that there are plenty of processes matching the path I’m interested in (anything with “games” in the file path) that I’m not interested in.  Launchers, background tasks, updaters or services for example.

What I need to do is set a list of exclusions and then make sure any process that matches the other criteria isn’t listed in the exclusions.  The changes are below;

Continue reading “PowerShell : Record Process Time Script (Updated)”

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LAN Yarns : Warcraft 3 Maginot Line

Or;  Those Who Don’t Learn From History are Doomed to Repeat It : RTS Edition
WC3 A LAN party-staple for a number of years was Warcraft 3 : The Frozen Throne.  Apparently, there were some very popular mods for it but as that whole WWW-thing was in its nascency we just stuck with FFA.  Out multi-tasking and micro-managing skills were a bit sub-par (read:non-existent) so most games followed a similar pattern.  But occasionally, a cunning plan was able to get into the mix.

Continue reading “LAN Yarns : Warcraft 3 Maginot Line”

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Journey to the Centre of the Galaxy : Elite Dangerous

Elite:Dangerous is a great game.  It’s pretty much “Here’s the entire galaxy.  Here’s a spaceship.  Off you go!” so you can do whatever you want.

I’d given bounty-hunting, trading and mining a go so I was keen to try exploration.  And what better place to go than the super-massive black hole at the centre of our galaxy, Sagittarius A*?  Widescreen pics below!

Continue reading “Journey to the Centre of the Galaxy : Elite Dangerous”