If you own an Xbox One, I think you should just get an Xbox Series S. Plain and simple. It just such a low financial barrier. I was skeptical going into this console generation – I have just built a PC, I'm trying to budget, and honestly there isn’t a compelling case for either the Xbox Series S/X or the PS5. But then the Xbox Series S price got announced at $300 USD/$380 CAD (actually ~$20 les...
Adventure games are bad. I’ve played a few of the classics now – Monkey Island, Grim Fandango and I feel like they really haven’t aged well. They should be interactive movies. Fun writing, quirky jokes, games totally defined by their tone, humour, and imagery. The interactivity is where they fall apart for me. The solutions to the puzzles are just so obscure! A modern game like Resident Evil 7...
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Single player games serve two primary purposes to me. They provide a fun, relaxing experience that I consume for enjoyment. For example, something like Mario Odyssey distills this essence, a game that strives to achieve no more than to provide a joyous space to explore. Games also provide me with opportunities to learn, experience and challenge myself. This can come in many forms, such as the e...
It’s no secret that video games reward time in a way most hobbies do not – the more you play the more interesting content one gets to see, the more immersed one becomes in the setting of a game, the better one gets at it, and the mechanics become more intricate and interesting. But I find, especially during school/study, it becomes increasingly hard to both play games and to enjoy them. I go th...
If you read my blog from last Christmas , you’ll recall that I loved Assassin’s Creed Origins. I’ve always been a huge fan of Greek history, and I remember loving the setting in the old Sierra city builder Zeus: Master of Olympus. So of course, I am playing Odyssey. While I am enjoying the game, I tend to feel the game is too bloated. The mountain of relatively uninteresting systems layered ont...
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I was probably 8 years old when my friend John put Medal of Honor: Frontline into the GameCube in his basement with me. We had just “borrowed” it from his older sister and figured it would be a welcomed break from the Mario Kart we’d been playing all day. I still remember storming the beach at Normandy for the first time. My experience with FPS was basically relegated to my cousin’s house, or f...
Ubisoft is the McDonalds of developers. All of their games are good, but never exciting. Occasionally they have a very good offering (Assassins Creed: Origins), but at the end of the day most of their products are very similar. This is generally fine, but I want something more out of them. I did not get something more with this press conference. But I did get to see a ton of games that I’ll pro...
Both the publishing arm and developments studios of Bethesda have had sound track records in recent memory. Churning out plenty of critically acclaimed games, it is unsurprising that most of their press conferences stuck to their roots. Wait… What?! You’re telling me the new Fallout is an always online survival game? Pardon me, B.J. Blaskowitz isn’t the playable character in the new Wolfenstein...
I am a PC and Xbox gamer. When I first purchased by Xbox 2 years ago, the Masterchief Collection, Gears of War and the controller form were driving factors. Since my purchase, I’m not sure there has been any large exclusives aside from Halo Wars 2. As the platform has improved massively over the last year, going into this Microsoft show I was looking for one thing, and one thing alone – games....
Hey. I’m going to write about E3! EA kicked of the press conference lineup with a relatively sterile, unexciting, but acceptable show. Battlefield games make for great openers to a conference. The destruction, explosions and haven’t lost their ability to leave me impressed, and I must admit I drooled a tiny bit when I saw a pile of snow roll down the roof of a collapsing house. But there really...
I love eSports. I’ve been watching StarCraft since 2011, and have followed Counter Strike, Rocket League, Halo and various other eSports casually over the years. I feel like I have a well-rounded perspective what makes a good eSport. I watched 3 nights of Overwatch League in the last 2 weeks, and I have some thoughts about it as an eSport, and as a production. I think the most standout feature...
I’m a busy guy during school. Well, maybe it’s more correct to say that I have no patience during school. I find it hard to justify sitting down for dozens of hours to beat one game during the semester, instead opting to use games as a procrastination technique. This usually results in me playing a ton of multiplayer shooters, competitive games or MMOs, games that I can hop in an out of casuall...
I hadn’t examined how my relationship with the space I play games in had changed until this past semester. I noticed that I just wasn’t playing games this year: Even when I had free time and would try to boot something up, it was too easy to multitask on my PC, do work on the side, or watch TV (something that requires far less focus and attention than gaming). I hadn’t played, let alone complet...
As a student, I find that my needs as a gamer are often overlooked. So here we are – Welcome to Library Load Time, a blog (and future podcast) about gaming in school. Most gaming outlets miss something key when discussing games that ultimately makes them less useful to me as a consumer: they don’t consider how games fit into the busy and frenetic life of a student. Library Load Time will focus...
Control Freak Theatre and video games are surprisingly similar art forms. The most notable of their similarities being their defining flaws: they are both known to be artificial. Unlike most art forms, theatre can never be realistic by virtue of the fact that the things portrayed cannot ever be real, and likewise, even the most immersive of video games leave the user with the realization that t...
I am a long time StarCraft 2 player, with over 2000 games played and consistent placing in 1v1 Diamond. While this isn’t that impressive in the grand scheme of things, I do have a decent understanding of the game through this playtime and my involvement with StarCraft 2 eSports. Earlier this week I downloaded Clash Royale after the Bombcast and a young cousin coerced me. And I was struck by how...