deKay's Lofi Gaming

Grim Fandango Remastered (PS4/Vita): COMPLETED!

Interest started to wane the closer to the end I got. Puzzles continued to make less and less sense, and even the interest with following the plot was becoming difficult as it was taking longer and longer to solve the puzzles so the story was frequently put into stasis for long periods. By the end it had become so drawn out I’d forgotten half the characters and the secretary, Meche and the woman from the hipster club all blurred into …

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture (PS4): COMPLETED!

I find the term “walking around simulator”, which games like this have often been categorised as, somewhat derogatory.  It’s as if there’s nothing to the game at all, bar walking around, and it should be derided because of this. Which is missing the point.  The aim of these games is not to “win”, not to solve puzzles and leap gaps and shoot Nazis, but to discover the story. Yes, you do this by walking around, but there’s more to it …

Tearaway (Vita): COMPLETED!

When Little Big Planet was announced, there was a lot of excitement over how innovative and clever and creative it was. And it was all those things, and it looked fantastic and everything. Then we all realised that it was just a platformer with horrible physics and a rubbish, game breaking and unnecessary third dimension. The fact that virtually all of the user made levels don’t bother with any level depth speaks volumes. Despite the lovely narration by Stephen Fry, …

Who’s looking at my SQL server?

Putting this here mainly for my own benefit, but it may help others. If you want to find out which NT users are connected to your MS SQL (2005 or 2008) server, and which computer they’re using – simply use this query (which you could run in SQL Server Management Studio): select hostname,nt_username from sys.sysprocesses For added excitement, if you do use Management Studio, you can display the result as text or a grid to take into Excel and filter …

The First Wii U Post

My Wii U arrived! So I spent most of the weekend playing it and the games I got with it. Nintendo Land It’s not a minigame collection. No matter who tells you it is, it isn’t. It’s a collection, sure, but some of the games are full, proper games. Take the Pikmin Adventure game. It’s Pikmin. Sure, it’s not got all the item collecting and night-time save-all-the-pikmin bits, but it’s a complete and reasonably long “campaign”. Single player only game …

Portal 2 (360)

Hmm. This “sticking to a few games and just playing those” thing is working well, I see. Portal 2 arrived last week, so I had to play it. I was going to wait until after Skyrim, but you know how these things are. It is, as expected, awesome. Particularly Wheatley, who is just Stephen Merchant in robot form. Not just his voice (obviously, since it’s him doing it), but the “character” Stephen generally plays too. GlaDOS is great too, as …

2011: The Games

It’s a little later in the year than usual, but, as is traditional, here’s my list of the best games of 2011. Also as previously noted, this is a list of the best five games I played in 2011, not necessarily those that came out then. As is becoming more common, I’m buying games well after release when they’re cheap. 5. escapeVektor (Wii) Criminally overlooked, this WiiWare gem is a fantastic Painter-type arcade game. I played it from start to finish …