What more can I say, Top Billin! – My top 3 games of 2013

Well, the end of the year approaches. Xbox One & PS4 have debuted and now all that is left is to clean up the streamers and tents and try my best to ignore the console vs console fights that have sprung up all over the place.

This is not a review of consoles, what they can do what they have, how fast they do it and to whom and when. The fact remains is that there is currently no game that I want to buy that makes me need to buy either console. Besides I am having too much of a ball with what’s already out there.

I said in the beginning of this blog that I would discuss any and everything that I am passionate about and this year, which has been pretty rotten, I have to say that one of my anchors has been Gaming. I love it and make absolutely no apologies for it. I have been doing this since the days of Atari and it’s a strange thing to see your child and realise that her experience of gaming began with the Xbox 360….how much of a headscrew is that?

There have been times when I have face palmed in shame about elements of the Gaming community, but every community has the equivalent of the nutty cousin that we don’t like talking about at dinner, due to ‘that unfortunate business’. It comes with anything that you proudly support and any cause that you fight for.

2013 was the year that I conquered my prejudice of Tabletop games and when all was essentially blowing up around me, gaming helped to me to conquer all of those demons. So hats off to a fantastic year that often had my heart beating and jaw slacked. To all the developers and all those companies, Rockstar, RockSteady, 2K and all in between, thank you very much.

In that spirit, I present to you my personal top 3 of 2013.

My top 3 are games that I have played, actually committed time to and got to grips with. I despair that I often read these kinds of roundups and about midway through, you get the distinct impression that the writer not only hasn’t really given the games in question much time but probably has just combined a load of stuff from other places and then formulated an opinion.
So they’ll be none of that malarkey, instead I start with Number 3 which is…..

Saints Row 4
The crowning achievement of this game is that it reminded us that it’s just a Game! I know it sounds daft but hear me out.

Of late there have been a huge surge of games that ultimately want the world to know that gaming can be a very serious business. There is a lot of time and energy in the development, production and marketing of a game before release and gaming commands very serious numbers.

However it could be argued that along the way, we lost some of the fun. Saints Row knew from its 2nd iteration that it was in no way any rival to Grand Theft Auto so it didn’t try to be. It stopped the race and focused primarily on the fact that you can have a story and a pretty look but most of all have some fun. The fact that the game begins with the head of the 3rd Street Saints becoming the President of the US, tells you where its tongue resides. By God, if its in your cheek, you got off lightly. The gameplay is simple enough and yes there are a few twitches here and there, but this game is a montage of fun. You can fly and kill people with the power of Dubstep, you bitchslap an alien and that isn’t even half the fun.
I cannot go on without spoiling the experience by blowing major plot but what I can say is that on a day when I thought laughter was impossible, the 3rd Street Saints had me cackling in no time. It is that reason why it’s my number 3.

This brings me of course to Number 2 which is…controversially

Grand Theft Auto V

Number 2! I know that some folks may think I have lost the plot but please hear me out. My favourite Grand Theft Auto is Vice City. I was engaged and probably more so because I am a child of the 80’s. I joined the ranks of those who were dubious about the promises RockStar was making in terms of this game and then it hit and it was a wonder.

This game did what games should do. Make no mistake, if I am buying an 18 game, I want adult themes and I want to be questioned and GTAV did all of those things. The RAGE system is a dream, the controls are lovely but they are nothing absolutely nothing compared to how beautiful the game looks. It is a marvel, luscious to the point of being edible; it soaks you up and therein lies the power. You see the sun rise over the city and you are hooked. And then there’s Michael, Franklin & Trevor.

They all make you uncomfortable in their own distinct way. They are not here to massage your ego and hold your hand, their function is to get in your face and show you the world through their eye. And the horror is that this is our world and they are the products. Michael, washed up, flushed with cash and empty, pining for a life seen through a lens of 80’s movies that he believes he was promised, practically owed and finding that it’s a lie, a vacuous existence that dulls the sense. He is only alive when doing the thing he is good at…robbing. Franklin, seeing the hood for what it is and is not, with intelligence and sometimes a little common sense. He is the epitome of “the hood made me” but more so he demonstrates that you have to stay where the hood thinks you belong.

The environment and its inhabitants primarily drive to keep you in your place or not be ‘real’ and it is a knife to listen to because they don’t see the cycle that they perpetuate again and again. Improve yourself but only to a point and within your territory. And then there is Trevor. I have rarely played a character so anarchic, so seemingly moulded in Hell, I would genuinely cringe when I had to go to him for fear of what I would see but….there is depth to his sociopathy and intelligence. This is not a Man on Fire, this is a man with the petrol, matches and Napalm quite happy to burn the whole thing down and watch the flames and maybe dowse himself in the process. a man with loyalties, albeit twisted.

This is the 2nd layer that brings the game to life and combined with the system of switching between characters which to my mind is a game changer, this game was astonishing and as jaw dropping as promised.


So why 2nd place…..I have to say…it’s the women.

God does it irk. Strippers, crackheads, general nutjobs, deluded PA’s & Lawyers, Sporty nutters, moaning cheating wives and slutty daughters it is list after list of the same old same old. I know it’s a deliberate pastiche of the current day designed to make you feel very uncomfortable but still really after all this time, I think this was a squandered opportunity for Rockstar to really stand out and that for me was enough to bring it down a place.

A hard task and not popular but that’s just because in my view, in consideration of all of that, there could really be only one winner….the Number 1 which for me was..




Bioshock Infinite
Let me start from the get go and say that my husband was more excited by the arrival of this game than I was. Bioshock made me feel like I wanted out from the world. It was claustrophobic and scared the hell out of me.

Then I watched the trailer, I was intrigued but not blown away…yet. That would come later. It is the only game that I have clocked before my husband and his mate. You have no idea at the significance of that statement. I watched my husband play the first bit and I had to play. I fired up the Xbox and it seemed I played this game with held breath at each level. Just like GTAV it is a wonder for the eye, but there was something of the gobsmacked when I ascended the clouds and passed into Columbia. Maybe after what I had left behind, anything was a wonder.

But a floating city, I knew about it but to see it for the first time and take it in...what a sight to behold. I wished that Occulus was available now so I could plug in and touch it all and that is the trick. One of the amazing things was that when you saw it for yourself, you could scarce take it in and the legacy of Bioshock pushed you further into it because, you felt free. You were not enclosed under the sea and the machinations of Ryan but free to breathe the air.

A pastiche LA is one thing as we have a reference, but a floating city? This is what makes the fall even harder, to see that quite quickly this wonder harbours a rotten core, a carpet unceremoniously pulled from beneath us and you realize very quickly what horrors lie beneath. The beauty that made you visibly sigh, now disgusts you. I think that it would have been easier to really decay the world as you discover more of it but this gift keeps giving. Booker De Witt is a complex character, there are times when he is difficult to stomach but he compels you to keep going which brings me to Elizabeth.

When I saw Elizabeth in preview, I worried that she would be an npc that I would have to look out for and take a bucket for, drag from place to place and generally just get in the way. How wrong was I. The AI is intuitive so Elizabeth ducks and hides, finds supplies and generally is a guide. A guide who will still follow and challenge you. When she is taken away, you feel lost in Columbia, even overwhelmed as this anchor has taken you away and the hits come, revealing itself slowly until the enormity of the story is laid bare and you sit there, taking all of this in.
Bioshock Infinite cemented the legacy that its predecessor did before it; it placed the importance of telling an intelligent story designed to make you think about what had led you there in the first place. My jaw hit the floor when I realized what I had been a part of and there I was thinking that “Would you kindly?” was a hard act to follow. If you haven’t played it, please I urge you to go get it and commit the time to it. Sometimes, you may want to look away from the screen, I urge you not to. What you are seeing before you is a masterstroke of storytelling and the future and glory of all that is truly wonderful about gaming.

Well…that’s about it for me. 2013 has had quite a few tricks up her sleeve and not all of them nice but one of the definite highlights was getting to express the things that I love to a wider audience, essentially while sitting in a corner, drink in hand and looking at my world.
In time honoured tradition, I couldn’t just skidaddle without one last drink….cheers to 2014!

Devils Kiss - Bioshock Infinite cocktail – Courtesy of The Drunken Moogle
Ingredients:
25ml Spiced Rum
25ml Chambord
10ml Grenadine
1 Lime
50ml Ginger Beer
50ml Cloudy Lemonade (carbonated)
2 Dashes Angostura Bitters
Cinnamon
15ml Overproof Rum

Directions: Fill a high ball glass with ice, pour in grenadine, Chambord and dashes of bitters to begin. Carefully pour in cloudy lemonade and ginger beer down the side of the glass leaving the grenadine sitting in the bottom, add juice of a lime and finish the drink with a shot of Spiced Rum to the top.

To serve place drink on a saucer and place the measure of overproof rum around the base, light with a match and allow guest to flick cinnamon onto the drink/flame, extinguish, add straw and serve. Anyone looking to get drunk can drink the rum left in the saucer when cool.

“A civilized man has power over fire. A refined man handles fire with finesse: DEVIL’S KISS.” -Fink Manufacturing advertisement

I Swear By My Pretty Floral Bonnet, I Will End You..

When I revamped and started writing this blog, I promised myself that this time I would not be overly concerned with sticking to one subject. I did myself a complete disservice by trying to keep my last blog strictly craft and food. Now that hasn’t disappeared and I have a few ideas on some craft and food ideas that I want to share, but I found the scope was just too limited. I feel better in writing from wherever and whatever feels best, so from Gaming to Geekdom, comics, food, craft, movies and all stops in between, I endeavour to put write about what feels good and maybe sometimes what doesn’t. That can only be a good thing.

So San Diego Comic Con has come to a close this week….and once again I feel wretched for not being there but at least this time as the doors close, I feel a glimmer of hope that I could actually get there in years to come. This initially started life as a way to vent the frustrations of being a woman who geeks, my annoyances and a list on all the things that suck and really get on my last nerve. But I have to say that maybe it’s the strange London heatwave mixed with some of the instagrams I have seen from #SDCC.

Maybe it’s Seth Green and Nathan Fillion and a brilliant Venture Brothers cosplay that I saw. Whatever it is, I just don’t have that vitriol in me right now…at least not this time.

Instead I find myself feeling hopeful and I am fully prepared to admit that this is purely down to seeing a poster of the upcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past movie, but I want to take the time to say a word of thanks.

Being a geek in whatever form that may take is a freedom. If you spent a lot of time in childhood and adolescence feeling like everything around you resembles a shoe that is 2 sizes too small, then climbing the mountain, getting to the cave and seeing someone huddled by the fire who just happens to hum the Firefly theme fills you up.

It still happens to me. I am 35 and when I meet someone who likes a selection of the things that I love, from the on-again-off-again of Katchoo and Francine to the mayhem of Preacher, it still feels like hot tea on a freezing cold day. In a world of folks going on about North West Kardash, it feels good to roll your eyes and look to see someone else thinking, “Wouldn’t you just kill for a Firefly rerun right now?”

We know that there are people out there who just don’t like women identifying themselves as Geeks. They think we are playing at it or just have seen Big Bang Theory too often. When you get to the professional level, there are still those that think we do not have enough to say or that for some reason, as eloquently pointed out by Joss Whedon a few months back when I saw him, Men are not interested in what women have to put on screen or in a comic, but then expect the same women to be interested in what men have to say and do. We know this. But sometimes I feel that in focussing on this, we miss the opportunity to say Thank you.

Thank you to those comic shop owners and workers who do what they can to make sure that a raft of people don’t feel even more awkward and ostracized. I know that I can cynically say that, of course it’s in that person’s interest to engage me as I have greasy pounds in my pocket that they want. However, I have walked into shops where the dipshit behind the counter couldn’t give a rat’s arse if I had £1,000 to spend, as far as he was concerned, “What do you want? We don’t sell Look-in!” or “The Archie comics are over there” without as much as a look up from the greasy pages of Fangoria. Luckily I found another shop that was more than happy to let me know what happened when Hardcase and the Harriers met the X-Men and in a twist of fate the other shop went out of business. Unfortunately, a few years later so did the nice one. So thank you, for every dumb bloody question you have to endure and every really ridiculous request, thank you…..you guys deserve a medal and a ceremony, a bit like the end of A New Hope would suffice.

 

A big thanks to the people who didn’t assume that on the way to finding the shoe shop, I just happened to walk into a comic shop and proceeded to while away the hours getting into a very heated discussion as to the wonders of Top 10 and Fables.

How clichéd is it to wheel out the old ‘With great power comes yadda yadda” but the clichés have this annoying thing of being true a lot of the time and I am aware of that more and more with younger folks around me. When I see them in shops, I do my best not to write them off as a collection of Lumpy Space Princesses. I do what I can, if the opportunity presents itself to show them to something different….try a little Authority perhaps, maybe in a few years you’ll be ready for Preacher and then there’s My Monkey’s Name is Jennifer…..

It is an odd and liberating thing to give yourself the geek title. It means so many different things to so many different corners of the world. Embrace and disdain go hand in hand because from that point on, the world and your place in it is changed. I guess that’s my two pence, a word of thanks to all of those out there combined with a word to visit a comic shop when you can. Ok it can be a bit strange and I cannot guarantee things won’t get a little odd before you leave, but I promise you, by my pretty floral bonnet, it really is worth a look see.

 

Now for that drink

Rampancy Cocktail – Courtesy of Clint Slowik

Ingredients

1 part Chambord
½ part Grenadine
2 parts Alize Wild Passion or Gold Passion
2 parts UV Pink Lemonade Vodka
1 splash Aftershock
Raspberry Ginger Ale (UK: methinks here add some fresh raspberries and ginger ale)
2       drops of red food colouring

Directions:

‒       Pour Chambord followed by Grenadine over ice in a hi-ball glass.

‒       Float the Alize then the UV pink vodka and lightly pour the Ginger Ale to fill the glass (adding the raspberries for the UK folks)

‒       Finally add the Aftershock and the drops of food colour

‒       Proceed to lapse into Rampancy

 

What The Fluxx! - Inconceivable

I realise that with each word I type, how much I have missed writing.  Far too many things and people were allowed to get in the way of the things that I wanted to do but mainly, sorry to go all Yoda, I was afraid, so afraid of completely sucking that stopped me from taking the plunge.

Eventually I began to face these fears and then, one day I watched the most excellent Adventure Time with my daughter and Jake said:

So inspired by Jake the Dog and Finn the Human and buoyed by my recent promise to myself to do more all the time, here I am. And here is Tabletop…

My brother is an awesome dude, when he was a kid he was a pustule on my right buttock but as he has matured in age he has become not only a great brother but a best friend. Usually when he introduces something new to the mix, I tend to listen. He knows me enough to know what I would like and hate and so when he wanted me to try some ‘Tabletop’ I paid attention as he showed me the Will Wheaton’s series.

He did the best thing as he knows I have a little geeky love for the Wil not- only-formerly-known-as-Wil-Crusher but for his work on Stand by me and The Big Bang aka my real life but not half as funny and I am not Penny or Amy. As much as I am a huge geek, I had my own ideas about Dungeons and Dragons and the whole Tabletop thing. I’ll be absolutely honest, a part of me was like, “Seriously…..errr D&D….really” Tabletop to me meant D&D, and for me was a game that some folks took waaaayyy too seriously. It tended to end up with someone killing some other players parents whilst rolling for Initiative or whatever, combined with strange dice and the inevitable harassed neighbour who says that they were very quiet kids until that unfortunate business and, oh look movie of the week etc. So a little bit of media induced baggage then?

Bruv did the best thing…he ensured that I watched the Gloom episode of Tabletop which just happened to feature Amber Benson (Tara from Buffy…..how is this woman not aging?) and I watched as the game unfolded. He allowed me no time to dismiss anything. Any preconceived ideas I had, pretty much evaporated in a few minutes of watching.

Gloom is a tabletop game where each player has a family of 5 and the aim of the game is to spin a tale to degrade their self-worth, aided by cards in the deck and then shuffle them off the mortal coil. Opposing players will do their best to boost your families’ self-worth and fend off the despair that you keep piling on. That’s essentially it. It struck me because, I love a good yarn and this was an opportunity to work out those muscles and tell a twisted tale driving a character to a Carrie White like demise.  I was initially a bit nervous about it but eventually we mastered Gloom, Fluxx & Pandemic.

In the heady euphoria, he decided to expand and take this out to a wider audience and with a little help from myself, we had our first Tabletop event on 30^th June in a pub in the heart of London. Dare I say that mighty fun was had by all, 11 of us all together, including the wonderfully talented GreatEscapist  who can really spin a debauched tale or 2. There were times when I am sure that the pub in question regretted allowing us to play with shouts of “NerfHeader!!”,”Is that the Zombie Syphilis strain taking out Chicago?” “I f*&kin knew it was HIM!” and of course, “We’re all dead!” The best thing was the way that after some initial reluctance, everyone had a damn good time and no-one was harmed…much…a few came very close to having cards shoved where the sun shineth not but the outcome was a hunger for more.

So here we are, planning more events like this and thoroughly enjoying ourselves in the meantime. If anything, I wonder why the hell I didn’t give this a go a long time ago. In honour of Tabletop, today’s recipe is a dedication to the 30^th June, courtesy of the awesome folks at the The Drunken Moogle. I have no affiliation with them but by God if I did….well this would probably be a blog about my descent into drunken debauchery…hmmmm I wonder???

Jace, the Mind Sculptor - Magic: The Gathering cocktail - Courtesy of The Drunken Moogle

Ingredients:

½ oz. Hpnotiq

1 oz. Blue Curacao

½ oz. Bacardi 151 (or any overproof rum)

1 oz. Sweet & Sour

Orange peel

Directions: Add ice and water to a Martini glass to chill the glass. Add all ingredients to a mixer glass with ice and stir well. Dump the ice out of the Martini glass and strain the drink into it and garnish with an orange peel.

Note: This is the 2^nd blog of mine that features booze….but then again this blog is called Lock in at The Bronze!