… And another great big “Haloooo” to everyone out there, it’s time for the Hundstrasse monthly editorial…

*Plays Theme Music*

I hope everyone had a great Halloween whatever you got up to? As I mentioned last month, Halloween hasn’t ever really been a big deal for me growing up, but one tradition has manifested itself over the years and that is the Halloween evening family trip to the Birmingham Town Hall to see their annual spooky silent movie with live improvised organ accompaniment. I can’t say that I could watch silent movies every day of the year, but once a year it is a novelty and if nothing else it’s normally a great showcase of silent actors’ silly, wide-eyed, horrified expressions. Wednesday evening saw that landmark in prosthetic fingers “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (1920) starring John Barrymore.

Early November however is when the UK attempts to deplete its firework stockpile through arson in an act of remembrance for the poor souls who failed to blow up the houses of parliament, or in condemnation of them, or in celebration of them, or as tribute to them, or as a celebration of the triumph of parliament. To be honest the actual message is a little confused; we burn effigies of Guy Fawkes, but then we also set off explosives. I guess it’s just a way of keeping everyone happy whilst also getting to make things go bang with sparkles and colourful flashes.

Other Blogs Blog Blogging of Note: October

This is a new feature and I promise I’ll try and get better at it, but I thought it might be be nice to point everyone in the direction of some work from other great games bloggers just in case you’ve reached this point in my editorial and gotten so bored that you want to leave already. So here are a handful of the great offerings from other bloggers that specifically caught my eye this month:

PC Users Plaguing P.U.B.G Mobile, Reaper Interactive: Insight into some bizarre practice where PC gamers feel the need to prove superiority by hijacking rounds of mobile PU:BG. I didn’t even know such a thing existed!

End Of An Era: Reflecting On The Sudden Shutdown Of Telltale Games, Simpleek: A nice, if slightly mournful, look back at Telltale Games in light of their sudden and dramatic closure. I know I’ll miss them being in the market.

Non-Horror Games for Halloween, A Geek Girl’s Guide: Do you like horror? do you like Halloween? If the answers there are No and Yes… in that order… then check out this great list of non-horror spooky games!

5 FREAKY FAVES: HORROR GAMES, A Geeky Gal: How could I not include this list of great horror games considering the month. A couple of my own favourites on the list!

Now Playing: Bulb Boy (Switch), Virtuanaut: A great review of Bulb Boy put together by Virtuanaut. Sounds like an intriguing puzzle platformer that I’ll have to look out for.

World Mental Health Day 2018, The Gaming Diaries: An insightful article from The Gaming Diaries with some personal insights about their mental health truths. Thanks for sharing.

The Evil Within!, The Maximum Utmost: The Evil Within is a game that kind of passed me by, but this well put together review from The Maximum Utmost makes me think that there was something there that I missed out on.

Video game items that need to exist in real life, Later Levels: Ok, so I did contribute on this one, so it’s not a full escape route for you, but this list of the ‘what and why’ of various people’s chosen gaming item is a good read and great fun to be a part of!

October Wrap-Up

October was a slightly disjointed month of gaming for me. I spent a chunk of time playing the original Unreal Tournament (which still has quite a few populated servers if anyone is interested). UT was one of the first games that I ever played online, I guess it must have been released around the time that our home migrated from dialup to broadband which meant it was possible to just about hold a coherent game. Like a fine wine… with the cork left out… my skills in this arena have not aged well, but that fast paced 90’s FPS action has been fun to revisit if only to be reminded of the blistering pace of FPS titles in that era.

I kicked the blogging month off with an informal look at a piece of often included architecture in games: The Lighthouse. Along with things like windmills, crates, barrels, and villagers looking for specific numbers of specific items, lighthouses occupy that space of ‘things seen in games much more often than real life’ (queue a string of comments from people living next to/in lighthouses). Turns out quite a few commentors also have favourite ingame lighthouses and I’m still toying with the idea of this becoming a breakout page on the blog.

Next up it all went a bit retro after a spontaneous weekend streaming session of everyone’ favourite slow motion diving enthusiast, Max Payne, so I took a look back at that first game in the cold light of now. Sadly it fell in to the pile of revolutionary games at the time that just haven’t aged well; best left to the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia-vision.

October also saw me return to the great arena of “Question of the Month” battle. After my first choice answer was nabbed by the ultimate, and much deserved, winner ‘That Green Dude‘, I decided to go way … waaaaay … back to recount for you a story about fear and rising panic that took place in the caverns beneath the surface of an alien world. Vector graphics can be scary, it all depends on your imagination.

The final post this month saw me take a shot at unpicking the Rockstar crunch controversy of recent weeks. Unable to add any meaningful or informed insight I hopefully managed to get people to think a little about what, as gamers and consumers, we can do to support the hard working creators that pour so much talent and time into the games we love… also there were stock photos of fist bumping…

Looking Ahead at November

I guess the big blogging event of November is a huge collaboration that’s being released over at Normal Happenings. Thirty-something different bloggers have each written about a personally defining game and that hard working blogsmith, Matt, has been putting them all together in to one huge month long event with a different piece being posted each day. It’s a huge collaboration that I’m already proud to be a part of (look out for my own entry on the 13th) so make sure you head over there to check it out.

On a gaming side of things I have deviated from Jurassic Park to the super-cute Parkasaurus. It’s a colourful, and surprisingly indepth, dinosaur park creator that I’ve been having some fun with so hopefully I’ll get around to writing my thoughts on that. I’ve also picked up ‘The Invisible Hours’ in the latest Steam sale as the combination of VR, an Agatha Christie style plot, and Tesla all seem exactly the kinds of things I’d enjoy.

Happy November Everyone!