Metal Gear Solid is a long-running action/adventure series which focuses on sneaking around and hiding rather than shooting lots of people. It is notorious for having a dense storyline, one which is mostly based on thrillers but has dashes of cyberpunk, science-fiction and fantasy (with some emphasis on fantasy given…
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August 17, 2014 at 12:00 pm | Game Guides for Non-Gamers, Video Games | No comment
Tags: Big Boss, Konami, Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Naked Snake, Solid Snake
Due to an immense cock-up, I somehow managed to record the entire hour’s discussion via my laptop’s craptacular on-board microphone, which is barely fit for webcam communication let alone podcasting. Still, I’ve done the best I can to clean up the audio! This week’s topic defaulted to “space operas that…
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August 13, 2014 at 8:28 pm | Podcasts, The PAYNEful podSPLOSION | No comment
Tags: anime, Cowboy Bebop, Ernest E. Ville, Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel, Outlaw Star, sci-fi, the Sims
Something dawned on me recently and I wanted to put it down on digital paper because although what I’m going to discuss should be obvious, it apparently isn’t. The Non-Existent “Idiot” User UX, a ghastly acronym that actually stands for “User eXperience”, was one of my favourite modules at university….
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July 19, 2014 at 11:35 am | Articles, Portfolio and Work | No comment
Tags: Building web applications, UX design, Web design theory
The third time’s the charm! This week’s theme is “Ian Fleming”, and we somehow manage to deviate heavily, driving drunkenly in a meandering fashion across an entire range of James Bond-based topics. The topics can be boiled down to the following: Murdered: Soul Suspect (video game) Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack…
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July 14, 2014 at 10:03 pm | James Bond, Podcasts, The PAYNEful podSPLOSION | No comment
Tags: Bechdel Test, Casino Royale (1967), Charlie's Angels, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Coyote Ugly, Deadly Premonition, Gert Frobe, Goldfinger, Ian Fleming, James Bond, Minecraft, Murdered: Soul Suspect, Roald Dahl, She's All That, Sherlock Holmes, Square-Enix, Tomorrow Never Dies
Against all advice, we’re back for another week of geeky banter. We’ve even tried to better ourselves by not playing a game while we talk, finding a quieter room and by recording the video footage with FRAPS. This week we tackle the thrilling subjects of: England going out of the…
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July 1, 2014 at 7:40 pm | Podcasts, The PAYNEful podSPLOSION | No comment
Tags: Archer, Discworld, Football (bah!), Grand Theft Auto, GTA Online, GTAV, scavenger hunts, Sir Terry Pratchett, Sports (ergh!)
Sam and I have wanted to try this whole “podcasting” thing for a while, so we bought a half-decent microphone and, just to completely break convention, we played Minecraft while we talked (nobody plays Minecraft on YouTube, right?). We “um” and “er” our way through such exciting topics as: Give…
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June 24, 2014 at 8:34 pm | Podcasts, The PAYNEful podSPLOSION | No comment
Tags: Daniel Craig, Give 'Em Hell Malone, James Bond, Liquid Snake, Metal Gear Solid, Minecraft, podcast, Sean's terrible Heath Ledger Joker impression, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eight Dimension, The Punisher, Tomb Raider, Uncharted, Wayne's World
Around this time last year I had a geekgasm over limited edition Back to the Future LEGO. At the end of that blog post, I linked to a user-submitted Ghostbusters LEGO design, featuring all four Ghostbusters and their unique vehicle the ECTO-1. That project sadly didn’t get approved by the…
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June 11, 2014 at 9:06 pm | LEGO, Manchild at Play (Toys) | No comment
Tags: geekgasm, Ghostbusters, LEGO
I’m a big admirer of Derren Brown. He’s managed to convince 99% of people that he’s simply a stage conjurer who uses a combination of psychology, hypnotism and good old-fashioned misdirection in order to give people a good time. This is in fact a lie, and I know this because…
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May 7, 2014 at 7:30 pm | James Bond, Villains | No comment
Tags: Derren Brown, James Bond, magnificent bastard, the Joker
So you don’t really “get” video games? Perhaps it’s a generational thing, or maybe you’ve never seen the appeal. That’s fine, I’m here to lend a helping hand. I know that sounds patronising but I’m being honest, there’s a lot of people out there who just hear about games whenever…
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February 8, 2014 at 11:00 am | Game Guides for Non-Gamers, Video Games | No comment
Tags: Agent 47, Hitman, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, Hitman: Absolution, Hitman: Blood Money, Hitman: Contracts, Square-Enix
Last year Bristol was overrun with a plague of Gromits, which sounds painful but it was actually a quite pleasant infestation as it turned the entire city into one massive playground, within which every adult mentally regressed to a child and started swapping pictures of the various dogs they found,…
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January 9, 2014 at 7:56 pm | Manchild at Play (Toys), Model Kits and Figurines | 4 comments
Tags: Gromit Unleashed, modelling, Peppa Pig, Wallace and Gromit