Gaming, Meaningless Ramble, Retro Gaming, Review

Home Strike: I Played all the Ten-Pin Bowling Games on PS2

… around about the time I was unwrapping the fourth packet from eBay to reveal yet another ten-pin bowling game, my wife rolled her eyes proclaiming that sometimes I was pretty weird... I object to the ‘sometimes’…

The problem is that I can get an idea in my head and can’t let it go without seeing it through; the latest idea was ten-pin bowling. Fun Hundstrasse fact, many years ago I played regularly in a bowling league. It was in a strange period of my life where I found myself in a town that I didn’t want to be in with lots of free evenings on my hands. A casual conversation later and I was turning up weekly to a company league night having been recruited by a short-handed family team who… despite not remembering any of their names… I’m always kind of grateful for adopting me into their loosely related ranks of brothers, uncles, cousins and nieces. For those of you reading in the U.S. this may not seem out of the ordinary, but here in the UK bowling tends to be the domain of families with kids and bored teenagers on a Saturday afternoon with actual leagues and competitive play being more obscure. The point is, whilst not being anything special at actually playing it, I’ve always enjoyed bowling and the strange specific vibe of a bowling alley.

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Gaming, Meaningless Ramble, Retro Gaming, Review

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories – Speed Dial

Spoiler Warning: I’ve avoided big plot spoilers, but does contain some minor spoilers for Silent Hill Shattered Memories

Urgh! I’ve been staring at a half finished version of this post on and off for weeks now. And that was after a fair number of restarts. I want to write about Silent Hill Shattered Memories. I want to give it the ol’ “How does this fit in to the Silent Hill Family” treatment following my exploration of Silent Hill 3. I’d like to talk about how it’s an unorthodox take on the original outing and enriches the universe.

But I can’t. The amount of caveats, conditions, “buts”, “howevers”, and “Hmmmms” made the entire thing an unreadable mess that I ultimately got lost in time and time again. So I’m going to start fresh and say exactly what I want.

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Gaming, Meaningless Ramble, Nintendo Switch, Retro Gaming

Top 5 Gaming Experiences: 2022 Edition

For reals this time… It’s good to be blogging again. Sorry, but it’s tough to write a look back over the year without reflecting a little. The best bit is not feeling guilty about not keeping a schedule; posts happen when they happen and sometimes blogging needs to step aside for other stuff to take its place. I’ve also really committed to drawing terrible webcomics … Continue reading Top 5 Gaming Experiences: 2022 Edition

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Gaming, Indie Gaming, Meaningless Ramble, Nintendo Switch, Resident Evil, Retro Gaming

Hundstrasse Top 5 Gaming Experiences… 2021?

Two things might strike you as strange about the title. The first is that I’ve gone with ‘Gaming Experiences‘. Not ‘Top 5 of the Year‘, not ‘Best Releases of the Year’, but my own personal best experiences. In recent years I’ve really leant in to my pre-existing predilection to retro gaming and with that comes both old games and crucially revisits of old games. The list I keep of all the games that I’ve played during the year (for this exact blog post) contains more and more asterix’ed entries indicating that I’ve technically played the game before. So this year I decided to say that anything from the list of games I’ve played during the year can make the cut: new title, old title, first playthrough, revisit, or just a comfy run through of a much loved classic.

The second curiosity probably had you rolling your eyes at another classic patented Hundstrasse typo, but no, that’s correct, this is my 2021 list because I never actually got around to posting my top 5 last year and posting the top 5 from this year felt somehow dishonest before I’d even had the decency to wash my hands of my 2021 blogging obligations. So I dug out last years list and decided to finally compile the top 5 gaming experiences I had back when … heck, I can’t think of anything particularly memorable about 2021. Let’s face it, it just felt like the director’s cut version of 2020. Whatever, here is the official ‘Top 5 Hundstrasse Gaming Experiences of 2021’:

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Gaming, Retro Gaming, Review

Silent Hill 3: Shopping Maul

Spoiler Warning: This article contains plot spoilers for Silent Hill 3 and the original Silent Hill

Some weeks ago I made the long train journey to London to check out the London Gaming Market. It’s something that I originally wanted to do waaay back in 2020, but we all know what scuppered those particular plans, so I finally decided to face my crowd-apprehension and check it out.

… luckily for me I didn’t have to face the crowds alone as I’d arranged to meet up with Kim, Pete, and Co. from LaterLevels at the gaming market. I had a fantastic day picking through the stalls and boxes at all the different sellers and enjoying some great catching up and long overdue gamerery chat. Really hoping that we’ll be able to do it again soon.

Despite pawing over many many titles, I finally decided to splash out and pick up a copy of Silent Hill 3 (PS2). The second in the series is one of my favourite games on the system, but I haven’t really explored the other outings to that small town too much. Weirdly enough I recently replayed the PS1 original (Heck, maybe that’s what finally convinced me to pick up no. 3), but despite owning it for many years, I think I may have only played that game fully twice. I also used to own Silent Hill 4 back when it was a ‘current’ game, but sadly I traded it in due to gameplay frustrations before ever making it to the finish line. My investment in 3 goes way above the normal amount that I’d outlay for a retrogame, but it’s also one that I’ve lost many eBay auctions for, so seeing a good looking copy right there was too much of a temptation.

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