With a new year comes the obligatory deep breath and sense of a fresh start. The promise of a clean slate, freshly dusted chalk board, or whiteboard when you’ve used that special spray to really… really… clean it. … setting aside the reality that the 3.154 x 107 seconds starting on 1st January isn’t different to any other arbitrarily assigned similar period of time… As … Continue reading Hundstrasse 2020: The Future is the Same
The ‘Secret Blogger Santa Community Event’ is an entire batch of mince pies fresh from the oven brought to you by Livid Lightning & Later Levels!
… and well a ho-ho-ho Happy Christmasness to all of you out there! I think this is the first time that I’ve published something on Dectember 25th itself. This post comes as part of a superb community event organised by those aforementioned blogger-nandos over at Livid Lightning and Later Levels (or Quadruple-L as I like to call them) in the guise of that richest of office traditions: The Secret Santa. Each blogger is assigned a counterpart to which they have to gift a virtual gaming item, all wrapped up in the form of a blog post.
The recipient of my own blogging gift if non-other than Nerdy Bookahs; those masters of all things MMO and indie related.
… of course it didn’t help that at the time of receiving my nomination I didn’t follow Nerdy Bookahs. Unlike a real office secret santa however, drawing a name out of the hat that you don’t recognise is actually a chance to get to know them through their work, so I scuttled off to find out a bit more about this blogging powerhouse. Almost immediately I discovered that their blogging exploits largely revolve around MMO’s “Oh no!” I thought to myself (I’m not sure why this has turned in to a narritive tale, bear with me, I may be going somewhere with this) I don’t know anything abut MMO’s, how am I supposed to come up with a suitable gift?? Continue reading “Happy Christmas Nerdy Bookahs From Your Secret Blogger Santa”
With the 18th of December upon us it’s time to sit back and take stock of the games I’ve played this year to pick a top 5. Long time followers will know that my own ‘Top 5 of the Year‘ is picked from a list of games that I’ve played for the first time this year rather than necessarily being released in 2019. This self-imposed rule set has thinned out my choices this year because, if nothing else, 2019 was characterised for me by retro-revisitings, or specifically the original Resident Evil 2.
My desire to revisit the original before taking on the remake led to an interest in the obscure unreleased games in the series, the different versions of the 2nd game, an overdue exploration of the director’s cut of the original and Code: Veronica, along with that self-designed marathon to really fully explore and rediscover the game that is responsible for such a big part of my gaming enthusiasm today. Couple this with the rediscovery of my PS2 games collection that involved replaying games such as TimeSplitters2, SSX3, and Silent Hill 2, and maybe it’s clear why my ‘New’ games played this year list is so small. It only totals 20 games compared to the 44 of 2018.
… and that’s not even considering personal events that have reduced my gameplay time somewhat…. Continue reading “The Official Hundstrasse Top 5 of 2019: It’s Been a Weird Year”
It seems that despite my best efforts, I have indeed started collecting various editions of the game of games, Resident Evil 2… something that I desperately tried to avoid, despite writing about it. That recent marathon of a challenge, entitled “I’m Having Tofu Tonight!” started the ball rolling as I wanted to sample a few of the extra toppings available in the GameCube version which turned out to be a superb release of the title, and with my appetite wet I decided to embark upon playing the bizarre N64 port of the game…
… which I plan to write about on another occasion…
To do this authentically however I needed an N64 and a copy of the game which, whilst not the most expensive collectable out there, didn’t come that cheap. My natural thrift nudged me in the direction of doing this all with as least expense as possible, so the cart I’ve ended up with is unboxed and worn; like wise I picked up an N64 without controller or screen cable, but luckily I happened to have a controller from a previous escapade and a cheap video cable was only a few pounds of British monies. So now I have a fully functional N64…
… and no idea what to do with it. Continue reading “I Have an N64 and I Don’t Know What to Do With It”
No Blog Posts, No Tweets, No Random Sonic the Hedgehog Doodles… I bet you’re all wondering what’s going on over here at Hundstrasse.com?? Well, the good news is that I’m writing this now so there’s no need to keep fiddling with the rabbit ears on top of your set; not that analogue TV has been a ‘thing’ for years now, nor do I have a … Continue reading Editorial: September – An Announcement
…AAAAAAAAAAND AUGUST! So here it is, the month that I turn a year older and as such get incrementally worse at online FPS games. No that I’ve played much Apex Legends recently, but age certainly is a factor… that and never being quite sure if I want to tweak my mouse accuracy up or down. Our vague midweek conglomeration has actually returned to World War … Continue reading Editorial: August – Brief Update Despite the Humidity…
Hey! How’s it going you July people? All good out there in Someplaceville? If you’re a sunshine-type person then I hope you’re out there enjoying the good weather, or if you’re like me then I hope you’re safely locked indoors away from all that pollen and we can collectively hope to get a few good storms out of the humidity. Either way it’s July already, … Continue reading Editorial: July – Wait?! What Happened to June?
On top of the games that I’ve blogged about this month, my wife and I have been playing Yoshi’s Crafted World. We’re always on the look out for some co-op action and I decided to buy if for my Wife’s birthday on the whim of it looking cute and being met with positive reviews. It’s a game that highlights a big problem with blogging about Nintendo games; namely they’re so remarkably well put together it’s pretty difficult to say much about them at all. In this respect Yoshi’s crafted world doesn’t disappoint; it’s a solid platformer with a balanced array of puzzle mechanics that’s brimming with charm. As a co-op experience it’ll have you smiling & laughing as you both bumble around the levels landing continually on each other’s backs and more often then not eating and then firing your teammate back out at some foe. I’m not saying that it’s going to be to everyone’s tastes or that it’s the greatest game int he world ever… it’s just exactly what you expect it to be and the highly polished product of a company that … let’s face it… know what they’re good at. Continue reading “Editorial: May – Oh? No Thank-You!”
April is upon us and I seem to have continued my run from last month of being a little inconsistent with blogging. I think at least some of this is because I’ve been a little all over the place with gaming recently. I started to month off by revisiting Resident Evil Code Veronica but that playthrough is currently sat at about 50% complete and I would like to settle back in to it before the end of April. My wife and I have also played through (most of) Nine Parchments; a kind of fantasy erm.. isometric shooter? It’s one part Torchlight and another part Magika and, despite being nice to look at and light entertainment, it’s nowhere near as absorbing as I would have liked; essentially it’s walk forward, shoot enemies, repeat. Most of my gaming time has been spent in Apex Legends, it’s meeting that desire for a satisfying play cycle and, despite not being very good at this latest entry in to the battle royale arena, I’m at least not terrible.
Having spent a fair slice of that time on the character select screen, and being faced with the occasional player who kick up a real fuss if you select their favourite class, I began to think about statistics & probability. Anyone who’s been reading for a while will know that I’ve been known to over-analyse games and the numbers involved in battle royale games make them a particularity good target for this as I demonstrated some time ago when I tried to work out the minimum number of players needed to keep Fortnite:BR afloat. The topic of my meandering thoughts this time are that character select screen. Continue reading “Editorial: April – Apex Probability”
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”
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