News, Reviews, Other Stuff Probably

Let me just preface this by saying that if you're a Marvel fan, and you haven't yet gone to see Infinity War, then you need to change that. Straight after you finish reading this, that is. Alright, on to the professional stuff. 10 years after Iron Man hit the silver screen and introduced us to what has become the MCU, or the 'Marvel Cinematic Universe' if you hate initialisms, Avengers: Infinity War is here. It's t he first part of a two-part story (even if no longer in name), concluding in Avengers 4 next year. Truly the culmination of everything that's come before it, Infinity War takes everything the MCU has built, smashes it together, and the result is one of the best films in the franchise, and no doubt the most expensive. After 18 films, five Infinity Stones, and God-knows-how-many superheroes, Thanos (Josh Brolin) is here. One of the franchise's infamous flaws is with its villains, with the majority of the films failing to offer any that are ov...

If there's one vice I spend too much of my time consuming other than video games, it's music. Those who know me know I spend almost all of my waking hours "plugged in" (as my Gran puts it) to a pair of earphones. Something that's made me severely aware of this fact recently is Spotify's 'Year Wrapped' feature. If you're not familiar, it tells you how many minutes of music you've listened to on Spotify in the last year, as well as the artists you listened to most. Here's mine: I am unashamed of my affinity for a bit of Coldplay That adds up to 984 hours, or 41 days. Evidently, I will be deaf before I hit 30. You might notice the fifth of my 'Top Artists', Miracle of Sound, one of the musicians I listen to who represents a great combination of gaming and music. You're probably familiar with their type. After all, there's been loads of gaming-inspired musicians who've popped up on YouTube over the last decade or ...

[Uni assignment, scroll on if you're here for games. :)] I made a playlist recently. This playlist contained all the music I have on my phone that was released by, or artists represented by, the independent label Hurt Records . It comes up to 1,240 minutes, or just under 21 hours. That's no small amount of music. Hurt was founded in 2014, though the music you can find there stretches back to 2007. Amongst its archive, you can find nine albums, 11 EPs, and a wide variety of singles, from artists including Two Down, Quiet One, and Portraits. Again, no small amount, and even more impressive considering six of the seven acts represented by Hurt are bands/projects created or partially created by the same person who founded the label. That person is Ben Slack (more commonly known on the internet as Benn, or Benn Down). I recently e-mailed Benn and sent him a mass variety of questions relating to Hurt, his music, and his other ventures. The oldest project in Hurt’s r...

22 years after the much-loved Jumanji, its sequel, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle has released in theatres. Despite attracting controversy with its announcement, and many (myself included) doubting that the film would be much to behold, Welcome to the Jungle proves itself to be a worthy successor that lives up to the fun and excitement of the original. Welcome to the Jungle is also quite a different film to the original. Instead of exotic animals from another world invading ours, people from our world (unintentionally) journey into theirs, and instead of a Jumanji being a board game, it's now a video game. Things like this make up one of the film's greatest strengths; rather than a re-hash, Welcome to the Jungle is its own thing, in major ways a complete reversal. Yet, it still incorporates plot and style elements from the original in entertaining and touching ways. This time around, Jumanji's "adventurers" are four high-school kids. There's the ner...

Thanks to a Metal Gear marathon I embarked upon in 2015, I missed many of 2016's games as they came out. Even now, as 2017's just ended, I'm still playing catch-up. The fact of the matter is, there's just too many games to play, and not nearly enough time to play them (at least, not if I want to not fail Uni, and cling on to what little of a social life I have left). I've made good progress in the last few months. In my endeavour to play through everything I've missed, I've been buying and playing those I'm interested in, in release order. I just finished Titanfall 2 yesterday (great campaign, albeit short), and now I'm playing Dishonored 2, so I'm firmly in November of 2016. Massive shout-out to Wikipedia's ' in video gaming ' lists, by the way; big help. While I've made exceptions to my release order strategy for certain games I've been very excited for (e.g. Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, Zelda, and Mario Odyssey), most of...

Recently, I helped create and contribute to Mission Control, a campaign made to promote the games industry developments in Teesside (North-East England). The campaign focused largely on Launchpad , a games dev startup located in Middlesbrough, which houses/supports multiple developers, including Radical Forge , FoxByte Games , and Sock Monkey Studios . There, we interviewed Launchpad's founder, Steve Dougan.  We also met Olly Bennett (Radical Forge) and Bruce Slater ( Cardboard Sword ), both founders of Teesside games networking event Gamebridge , and talked to them all about their event.  Other video content we created for Mission Control included an inside look at Launchpad , and various promotional videos for the campaign. We also ran social media channels for Mission Control, which helped to promote our message. That message? Teesside is a great area for anyone who wants to work in the games industry. Thanks to the combined forces of Lau...

Today saw 2017's edition of The Game Awards take place, starting at the convenient time of 1:30am over here in the UK. If you were busy during the proceedings, want a refresher, or just like to sleep at night, then here's a run-down of everything that happened, and when. Also included are URLs to all the relevant trailers (and other highlights), should anything pique your interest. The Pre-Show 01:38 - Let the games begin! The show starts off with The Game Award's creator and lead organiser, Geoff Keighley, being interviewed about stuff including what's to come, what The Game Awards is all about, and how the soon-to-be winners are chosen. Pre-filmed promo stuff, basically. 01:45 - The actual live ceremony begins, live from The Microsoft Theatre in LA. Keighley's introducing the show, talking about all of the platforms the show is being hosted on. 01:47 - The first announcement, and world premiere, of the night is a World War Z game , developed by Saber. ...