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Relationships, Catherine, and Feeling Bad

Filed under: Ramblings, Videogames — Leave a comment
May 31, 2012

As a preface to this piece, around two weeks ago I came out of the tail end of a three year relationship; an experience which, to put things lightly, sucks. Considering I’m hardly quick to update at the best of times, I decided I should probably explain away the impending lack of activity and roam for a while, to take a bit of time away from the blog in order to sort my head out.

As it turns out, ‘time away’ is an odd thing indeed. Alongside the regular mixture of tears and badness, I predominantly found myself thinking, of all things, about a game I picked up earlier this year called Catherine, and the extent to which that game had foreshadowed my recent experiences.

As a quick background, Catherine, released last year in View full article »

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A Quick Update

Filed under: Ramblings — 2 Comments
May 13, 2012

Hey folks, you may have noticed a lack of activity here lately. Again.

While this isn’t anything new to those fortunate few who have stuck with me for a while, this time I’m actively taking a break from the site. I’ll probably throw a few belated posts up when I decide to grab images, but aside from that, things might get a bit barren around here.

I won’t bore you with excessive reasoning. Quite simply, a bit of a rough patch has hit me lately, and I’ve decided to take a break from the blog and sort out a few things. Hopefully it shouldn’t be more than a week or two. So stick around, and until that point, just know that Fez is great, The Cabin in the Woods is better, and if you haven’t tried either yet, you and your relatives should feel bad.

Hey, while I’m gone, why not fuel my ego and take a trip back through the archives to right? I can guarantee that you’ll find words, and maybe the occasional goofy picture. In the end, isn’t that what the Internet is all about?

All the best,

CJ

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Flogging a Dead Horse: Gender in Gaming

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April 20, 2012

Anyone familiar with Matthew Inman’s webcomic The Oatmeal should be aware that there was a bit of a ruckus surrounding its creator earlier this week.

One of its latest strips, based around Inman’s experience in Left 4 Dead, comically attempts to point out the difference between men and women playing online games, ultimately suggesting that women are treated like royalty when introduced to the otherwise-volatile online demographic, while men are subjected to the full wrath of the teenage horde. The strip is a funny little dig at one of the more immature facets of our hobby, and sadly isn’t too far removed from a lot of real-life cases (My week-long stint with a female avatar in World of Warcraft brought me more civility than my main had probably ever received in his 5 months of existence, practically mirroring The Oatmeal’s comic).

The comic in question. Click the image to find the whole thing.

The crew over at the popular blog Fat, Ugly or Slutty, however, felt that Inman was a bit off-mark in his portrayal of gender in gaming- and that his experiences were almost certainly standing in stark contrast with some of the nastier examples of abuse exhibited over on View full article »

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Molydeux Game Jam: The Best of the Worst

Filed under: Videogames — 3 Comments
April 8, 2012

Just in case you’re struggling to comprehend exactly who, or what, a ‘Molydeux Game Jam’ is, allow me to fill you in.

For the last year or so, the twitter account @PeterMolydeux has been picking up considerable steam as a parody of Peter Molyneux, the acclaimed game designer best known for his work at the helm of the Fable and Black & White franchises (although if there was any sort of justice, he’d go down in history as the man who created Dungeon Keeper). Molyneux has developed a reputation for perhaps being a bit too enthusiastic about his work (best highlighted in the run-up to 2004’s Fable, in which Molyneux promised that you could plant an acorn and it would grow into a tree), a fact that the Molydeux account lampoons to the best possible effect; regularly updating with ridiculous, emotion-centric faux-game ideas.

As far as joke accounts go, Molydeux is unique in that, no matter how outlandish it gets, you can always imagine that these tweets could very well have crossed the real Molyneux’s mind already. After all, we are talking about a man who once sincerely tweeted, ‘Is it possible to make a green square feel alive?’ (now immortalised in the image shown above). In light of years of ridiculous hype, Molydeux is a refreshing, light-hearted stab at one of the most beloved figures in our industry, regularly churning out gems like, ‘you play a babysitter, you turn up and the baby is made of cardboard. Would you stay?’ and, ‘Game where you control View full article »

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Snacked Up is One Year Old!

Filed under: Ramblings — 1 Comment
April 3, 2012

Well, it may surprise some of you to learn that, as of today, Snacked Up is one year old. Accept this stock image of a birthday cake as shorthand for my excitement:

Pictured: A donut. Needless to say, I slipped up on the image research.

365 days after my initial foray into the wonders of putting words on a screen, and things couldn’t be looking healthier. I might even be inclined to declare my blog as the best thing ever to have existed. Ever. I won’t, though, if purely out of humility.

All in all, if I have just one regret, it’s that I decided to write that pesky ‘bi-weekly’ line in the header. Good lord, talk about false promises. As an actual calculation, things have worked out closer to one post every fortnight. You can’t win ‘em all, I suppose.

Regardless, if there’s one thing I don’t want to do, it’s get too sentimental towards my fledgling little blog here. However, I would like to mirror my New Year post and sincerely thank everyone who has taken the time to comment, email, subscribe, like and share; because ultimately, you’re validating my worth as a human being.

(Just kidding, although you are giving my inbox a much-needed dose of View full article »

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Dear Esther

Filed under: Videogames — Leave a comment
March 31, 2012

As much as I’d love to throw on a pair of thick-framed glasses and patronise you under the assumption that no-one will have ever heard of this, like, totally underground game that’s all deep and shit, the fact stands that Dear Esther has made quite an impression on the gaming community at large over the past month. Developed by UK upstart thechineseroom, Dear Esther has become a surprise indie darling; a game that strips away the very notion of what we’ve come to expect from an interactive experience in order to hook you, line and sinker, into its world.

Vital to this quality is the fact that Dear Esther makes a point of keeping you in the dark. The opening throws you straight into control, washed up on the shores of an unknown island, accompanied by a vague, distant narration, and with little idea of where to go, or why. As if to accompany this, the controls are decidedly bare – even a quick look at the key bindings will inform you that there’s little to do but walk, a fact made all the more troublesome by the excruciatingly slow pace at which you navigate the immediate surroundings. It’s a harsh, unwelcoming beginning to an experience that, in many ways, shares the exact same qualities.

Worse View full article »

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The Hepler Fiasco

Filed under: Ramblings, Videogames — 4 Comments
February 22, 2012

[So I’m going to go straight ahead and warn you that this post will be somewhat of a rant, or, for purposes of giving my argument more credit, an ‘opinion piece’. Continue at your own peril.]

If you’re unfamiliar with the above image, allow me to fill you in. ‘This women [sic] is the cancer that is killing bioware’ is a post that’s been gaining quite a bit of steam on Reddit and the internet at large over the past week, to the dismay of most parties involved. The ‘women’ in question is Jennifer Hepler, a writer at Bioware who’s worked on titles like Dragon Age and The Old Republic, and, up until this point, had remained fairly unknown in her work behind the scenes.

So what’s so cancerous about Hepler? Well, proving that you can never be too late to a party, someone recently dredged up a statement Hepler gave in a 2006 interview with the now-defunct Killerbetties.com, in which she unwittingly offended every ‘hardcore’ gamer across the world. When asked what feature videogames should include in order to appeal to a broader audience, Hepler replied, ‘a fast-forward button. Games almost always include a way to “button-through” dialogue…yet they persist in practically coming into your living room and forcing you to play through the combats even if you’re a player who only enjoys the dialogue’.

Needless to say, it’s a fairly inoffensive statement, especially coming from a game writer (that being someone who’s paid to concern themselves with little else but narrative), yet in the immediate wake of its discovery, digital vitriol was spewing forth from every available outlet as people jumped into the discussion to agree with the poster’s labelling of Hepler as ‘vermin’, and as ‘the cancer that is killing the industry’, some were even kind enough to throw their own vocabulary into the mix (‘whore’ seems a particular favourite towards anyone lacking the Y chromosome). This only got worse as Hepler, amongst other members of Bioware, decided to retaliate, inflaming the situation through a series of knee-jerk reactions, the highlight of which View full article »

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Videodrome

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February 7, 2012

I suppose it’s worth prefacing this review with an admission that this film is weird; something which fans of its director – David Cronenberg – will no doubt be accustomed to by now.  Since its release in 1983, Videodrome has gained a strong cult following, and taken pride of place as one of the kings of the ‘body-horror’ sub-genre, alongside View full article »

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The Gauntlet

Filed under: Films — Leave a comment
January 20, 2012

You know, it’s a special type of film that comes to be defined by its closing moments, doubly so when the man helming said film just happens to be the crowning king of machismo himself, Clint Eastwood. Fresh from reinventing the Western, and only shortly before resorting to trading fighting techniques and relationship advice with a chimp, it only makes sense that 1977 was the year during which Clint found himself best-equipped to approach View full article »

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Happy New Year

Filed under: Ramblings — 3 Comments
December 31, 2011

So you may have noticed a lack of ‘best of’ lists and articles here on Snacked Up over the last two weeks.

Don’t worry, I’m not one of those bloggers, I love to debate GOTY as much as the next person, and in my opinion, top ten lists have always been a good way to raise forgotten gems from the dead. As a matter of fact, I’m astoundingly bitter at the lack of lists in general here, let alone the lack of ‘Xest X of 20XX’ lists.

Yet it seems it was not to be, as my laptop conveniently broke down in the run-up to Christmas, leaving all of my end-of-year write-ups in limbo.

So I sit here, jabbing at a touch screen in a desperate attempt to get the last word in on 2011 before the world inevitably blows up at midnight. The best I can say is that I tried, and I apologise to anyone who wanted to know what Snacked Up’s 10 Best Nipple Slips of 2011 were before they headed out into the apocalypse.

In all seriousness, though, Drive, Super 8, The Binding of Isaac and L.A. Noire (if anything survives of my end of year drafts, it’ll be my justification of this game) would have ended up as my main picks, and all my other View full article »

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