Tag: blogging

Editorial, Gaming, Meaningless Ramble

Editorial: March – Late

My vacation of the week before last rolled in to a pretty intense work week with two days of travelling to meetings before I could even begin to work out what had been happening whilst I’d been away. Couple that with a few other bits and pieces that have been going on and … well… what I’m trying to say is that I missed both last week’s regular post and the Friday slot for this editorial…

… and yeah, I’m not going to beat myself up about it. This whole blogging malarkey is a hobby so having an off week doesn’t really bother anyone but me from a content creator point of view. From a personal point of view however it’s a little frustrating that I couldn’t find an appropriate time for a hobby, and that’s nobody’s fault; it’s just the way that things fall sometimes.

On top of this I’m also down on community engagement; I know loads of great posts have been going up in the past few weeks but I’ve been out of the rhythm of reading them. Continue reading “Editorial: March – Late”

Hundstrasse2 Comments
Gaming, Meaningless Ramble, QotM

QotM*: The Protagonist

*Question of the Month is a stack of pancakes whipped up by Later Levels and drizzled in Maple Syrup by OverThinker Y!

2019’s ‘Question of the Month’ format has been shaken up. Instead of individual gaming conundrums the dream-weavers in charge of this community chaos are focused on a much bigger goal: Coming up with the Ultimate Video Game over the course of this rotation around the sun. Each month they’re asking for entries to add to the growing structure of this fantastical game covering different aspects. For February the community have been charged with adding the main protagonist to the existing setting.

… still not entirely clear? Head here to see details of February’s challenge and read more about the overall concept…

I was thrilled to be picked as the winning entry in January’s challenge to define the setting of this game and, as I’m now part of the team, I’m no longer eligible to win in future months. This doesn’t mean however that I can’t just join in for fun and as I came up with the setting I thought I’d have a crack at trying to put a suitable protagonist in to it.

If you haven’t read my description of the Setting then click here to read that piece as it will give what follows much more context!

Of course regular readers might have noticed that I’m not one for just answering the question and I often take liberties with what actually constitutes an answer so the following is my own meandering extension of the piece I wrote covering the setting; I’m sure that many of you out there are much better at defining characters and I look forward to reading what everyone comes up with… but for now here’s my own take on who the protagonist could be…    Continue reading “QotM*: The Protagonist”

Hundstrasse5 Comments
Editorial, Gaming, Meaningless Ramble

Editorial: February 2019 – Downstream

Wow! I’ve really hit the ground running this year with a crazy busy time blogging; I managed to fit in two bonus blog posts (but more about those later) along with following through on my promise last month to do some streaming.

The original idea was that I wanted to have one more revisit of Resident Evil 2 (PS1) before the remake landed last week and as it’s a game I know *ahem* pretty well I thought it would be nice to invite people along for the ride by streaming the event. Now, I have streamed in the past, most notably my dive in to Jurassic Park: Trespasser, but this felt a little different as I wanted to actually add some value with my narration rather than just laughing at the weird-legged dinosaurs. The goal was to share why I love this game so much and hopefully provide a few interesting crumbs of trivia along the way. I also managed to stream from the original hardware; yes, the stream featured my original copy of the game, original PS1, original controller, and even the original memory card that I dedicated to this game. Technically it was a little bit fiddly to set up and I discovered in a test (luckily) that you couldn’t stream the piracy warning stream without the whole thing falling over (I never worked out if this was OBS or the cheap USB capture device I picked up). Continue reading “Editorial: February 2019 – Downstream”

Hundstrasse17 Comments
Meaningless Ramble, OffTopic, QotM

QotM*: The Ultimate Video Game Setting

*QotM is a solitary waffle hand cooked by William Shatner himself and thrown at you from across the restaurant by Later Levels

I know what you’re thinking “What are you doing? This isn’t a regular posting time!”. Indeed, this is a bonus post to provide an answer to this year’s first Question of the Month. The puppet-masters have mixed it up for 2019 giving an overall gameplan to the QotM formula. Over the next 12 months they’re hoping to compile all the elements of “The Ultimate Video Game” by tasking bloggers to come up with a new element each month and then selecting the one that is ..erm… the most ultimate… does that make sense? No? Well there are plenty more details here!  Continue reading “QotM*: The Ultimate Video Game Setting”

Hundstrasse15 Comments
Editorial, Gaming, Meaningless Ramble

Editorial: January 2019 – An Upcoming Event

… and a Happy New One to all of you Yearlings out there!

2018 was a good year for blogging given that I was pretty consistent and had lots of fun doing it. I also managed to write some pieces that I’m pretty happy with, although it’s tricky to tell if I’m just getting better, my standards are dropping, or I’m more content to verge on the nonsensical than I was when I started doing this a few years ago… Walrus…

From a community point-of-view I’ve enjoyed the conversation and friendship of fellow bloggers, been involved with a few collaborations, and even managed to meet the LaterLevels team at Rezzed. Hopefully 2019 will hold more of the same and I’ll actually manage to be a consistent reader; I try to read post of everyone I follow, but sometimes it’s difficult to find to the time.

Ultimately I try to find a balance between being consistent, trying new things, and having a fun!

Continue reading “Editorial: January 2019 – An Upcoming Event”

Hundstrasse11 Comments
Gaming, Meaningless Ramble

Hundstrasse Top 5 Games of 2018: Are You Excited?

Forget all the other ‘Game of the Year’ titles, all eyes in the gaming world are on my own Top 5 of the year, what is going to make the list and of course which title is going to land that illusive top spot!… I assume… 

It has undoubtedly been an exciting year in for gamers with Bethesda controversy, Red Dead Redemption 2, and the new Smash game, but strangely these are not things that I’ve been involved in. Looking back on the list of new games that I’ve played this year there are no signs of a big AAA release; I usually tackle at least one of the major releases in the year so in that way 2018 is an anomaly. It’s also surprising that I’ve relatively few multiplayer games in the list this year; Wednesday evening online gaming has been a little sporadic and when we have played it’s generally been to revisit old favourites rather than sampling anything new.

So what has characterised my 2018 gaming year? Two things: Retro & VR. Much of my gaming time has been revisiting, or playing for the first time, some classics of yesteryear. I’ve covered a good amount of PS1 ground and, in recent months, PS2 going back to my favourite ‘Resident Evil‘s, scratching an itch by completing ‘Men in Black‘, and finally getting around to that revisit of ‘Silent Hill 2’. On the PC I tackled the DOS version of Jurassic Park (to add to my meandering trip through all the JP games I can get my mitts on!), Theme Hospital, Max Payne, and even discovered that populated Unreal Tournament servers are still a thing!

Since entering the world of VR back in August I’ve also been sampling as many flavours of that particular ice-cream as I can stomach and, as many of these games are short experiences, it has undoubtedly ‘artificially’ inflated the number of new titles that I’ve checked out compared to previous years.

… but enough retrospective rambling, you’re all here to read the Top 5!  Continue reading “Hundstrasse Top 5 Games of 2018: Are You Excited?”

Hundstrasse13 Comments
Editorial, Gaming, Meaningless Ramble

Editorial: December 2018 – Urgh, I Have to Remember to Write ‘9’ After This…

Merry Happy Winter to you all! … except anyone reading in the southern hemisphere… in which case… Merry Happy Summer to you all! 

How’s everyone’s gaming going out there? Are any of you embroiled in the Fallout 76 fiasco? I was pretty curious about the game; sure, Fallout 4 was nowhere near my favourite entry in to the series, but I did at least play it to “completion” … well, the end of the main story. 76 seems to be ricocheting from problem to problem from severe technical issues at every turn, the canvas bag caper, leaked player account details, and roaming homophobic gangs… overall it would be an understatement to describe its first few weeks as shaky. The problem is that so many games are now “released” in a state less than finished that it’s tricky to know if the concept is flawed or these are just release jitters.

Whatever the explanation I don’t think I’ll be exiting vault 76 anytime soon…  Continue reading “Editorial: December 2018 – Urgh, I Have to Remember to Write ‘9’ After This…”

Hundstrasse5 Comments