Tag Archives: video games

Baldur’s Gate 3 – Video Game Review

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TL;DR – A stunningly beautiful game full of wonder and bugs

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for this game.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Review –

Well, 2023 is the year that Dungeons and Dragons [or D&D] continues to build on its growing success brought on by the Critical Role/Stranger Things pandemic boost. After seeing the genuinely remarkable Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves that gets better on each re-watch, I was musing that there is one pop-culture realm it seems to be absent in: video games. Back in my day, before my beard went grey, there were classics like Neverwinter and Baldur’s Gate, but it has been 23 years since the last game. Has it been worth the wait?

So to set the scene, [insert your character here] was going about their day in the grand city of Baldur’s Gate along the Sword Coast of Faerun when an enormous nautiloid ship appears overhead. It dives across the city, snapping up citizens as they run, teleporting them and you inside into the lair of the Illithids. These tentacle-bearded creatures reproduce by putting one of their parasites behind a victim’s eye and waiting a week or so for them to transform the victim into another Illithid. This is your fate, or at least this is what should have happened. But destiny had different plans as your ship gets attacked by Githyanki flying on the back of dragons. Your ship crashes, and you survive, escaping a painful death. However, your fate may now be linked to the survival of the entire Sword Coast.

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Gran Turismo (Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story) – Movie Review

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TL;DR – It takes what could have been a boilerplate story and brings it into overdrive with the roar of an engine that rumbles through the cinema.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

Disclosure – I paid to see this film

Jann in his racing helmet.

Gran Turismo Review –

There have been a lot of adaptations of video games from Sony at the cinema recently, some good, some bad, and occasionally they can be fantastic. But what we are looking at today is a little bit different. Sure, it is based on and named after a video game, Gran Turismo. However, its full release title here in Australia, Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story, should give you a hint that something else is going on here. Something quite interesting.

So to set the scene, Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom) is a marketing manager from Nissan’s England division, and he has found a problem. Young people don’t care about cars anymore. They are the generation of Uber and such. He flies to Tokyo to Nissan head office to suggest a contest to fix that issue. Because game designer Kazunori Yamauchi (Takehiro Hira) from Polyphony Digital has recreated car racing down to the minutest details in his game/simulation Gran Turismo, if they create a competition where the best drivers in the sim get a chance to be a ready race car driver, they could ignite the passions of an entire player base in driving again. Well, one of those players is Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe), a kid from Cardiff, who is trying to forward his passion in life when everyone else just sees it as a game, and well he is here to prove them all wrong.

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Twisted Metal: Season 1– TV Review

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TL;DR – It could have been more intense, but it becomes a surprisingly interesting car chase when it gets going.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the Stan service that viewed this series.

Warning – Contains scenes that may cause .

St Louis behind a wall.

Twisted Metal Review –

It is a very odd time for video game adaptations, where we are oscillating wildly from adaptations that still feel embarrassed about their source material to those that are perfect recreations. In this shifting dichotomy, we get Twisted Metal, a game that I think few have considered since its PS2 days, bar that image of the clown. But the question is: can you turn that into a compelling narrative? Well maybe.

So to set the scene, 20 years ago, the world fell apart as a virus destroyed the world’s computers. This apocalyptic event split the world in two. Some walled themselves up inside cities, and those who got booted outside. It is a lawless void, but people must still take supplies between the cities. Insert the milkmen, of which there is no better than John Doe (Anthony Mackie). But it might be worth driving into the unknown when he is allowed to find a home. Now from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead. 

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Twisted Metal: WLUDRV – TV Review

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TL;DR – This episode works very well as a vibe check because you probably will have a fair assumption about whether this is your bag for the rest of the season by the time the credits roll.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the Stan service that viewed this series.

A vulture on the roof.

Twisted Metal Review –

There are some video games that you know from the iconography alone. One of those is Twisted Metal. I never played the game myself, but some aspects are instantly recognisable. But can the show take those elements and turn them into a story? Well, that is what we are finding out today.   

So to set the scene, 20 years ago, the world fell apart as a virus destroyed the world’s computers. This apocalyptic event split the world in two. Some walled themselves up inside cities, and those who got booted outside. It is a lawless void, but people must still take supplies between the cities. Insert the milkmen, of which there is no better than John Doe (Anthony Mackie). But it might be worth driving into the unknown when he is given an opportunity to find a home. Now from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead.  

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PAX Australia 2022 & Melbourne Day 4 & 5 – Explore-It

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TL;DR – We dive into PAX properly and discover all the new indies out there.

Disclosure – I paid for all products featured or mentioned here.

Set Phasers to 'Fun'

PAX Australia & Melbourne Day 4 & 5 –

The Yara River
The Yara River.

Well, it may be almost a year late, but we are finally getting to the end of our PAX 2022 series with a look at the final days. It was the last day of PAX Aus, and for the first time, I actually took the time to stop and have a decent breakfast down by the river as the morning Sun warmed off the previous night’s rain. It was a beautiful day by any standards, but apparently quite good for Melbourne’s sometimes temperamental weather.  

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Civilization VI: Leader Pass – Features Thread

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In this thread we will be documenting all the new additions for Civilization VI in their new Leader Pass.

Civilization VI Leader Pass. Image Credit: Firaxis Games.
Civilization VI Leader Pass. Image Credit: Firaxis Games.

This Features Thread is being complied for Civfanatics, head on over to the forums for all your Civilization discussions both for Civ 6 and also for Civ games of the past and upcoming 4X titles.

You can also see all our Civilization coverage HERE.

Throughout this thread, I will put links to Wikipedia articles about the different features, if you would like to know more. If you see anything in ITALICS, this means that the information is implied enough that we feel it is safe to add it to the Features Thread, but it is not officially confirmed yet.

Leaders Pass Overview

There will be 13 new leaders and 6 updates to existing leaders released between November 21 2022 and March 2023.

For Windows PC, if you purchase Civilization VI Anthology (or purchase all of the content that’s included in it separately at any time), you’ll be eligible to receive the Leader Pass for no additional charge. For Mac App Store and iOS, the Civilization VI: Leader Pass is available for individual purchase only.

Now Available on PlayStation®4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch

Jump to Pack Information

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PAX Australia & Melbourne Day 1 – Explore-It

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TL;DR – We dip our toes into what Melbourne has to offer.

Disclosure – I paid for all products featured or mentioned here.

The Melbourne Convention Exhibition Centre

PAX Australia & Melbourne Day 1 –

When you work in the games and pop culture space, you hear of the joy that is PAX, but I have never experienced it myself. I had set my sights on visiting it back in 2020, but you know what happened in 2021. But there was hope that 2022 was the year for me. So I booked my tickets back in March and hoped that the world would hold itself together till then and it kind of did. So in today’s and the next couple of Explore-It’s, we will take a look at our time down past the daylight savings divide to a city that has an entirely different seagull-to-pigeon ratio than I have ever seen.

Dune Messiah

However, before you can explore Melbourne, you need to get there, and since we still do not have any high-speed rail in Australia, it is time to board a plane. Given the time stuck waiting, I thought I would catch up on some reading, and when in doubt, it is Dune time.

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The Wandering Village – Video Game Review

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TL;DR – We have a remarkable base with an adorable presentation. It is just missing a hook to make it excel. 

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for this game; the game was in Early Access when reviewed  

The Onbu

The Wandering Village Review –

There is a growing joke in my friend circle that if you want to get me involved in a game, then it better have some kind of farming mode. This stems from my early years growing up on city builders, and to this day, I am always ready to dive into a video game that presents a new twist on the city-building formula. The last one to do so was Surviving Mars, where you built a colony in space, and today we look at a game where you build a city on, checks notes, the back of a giant tortoise.

So to set the scene, you were part of a people that had lived their lives in peace in a small fertile valley full of wonder, but eventually, the same toxic spore that had collapsed the rest of the society found you and you were forced to flee. It was a perilous journey, and just when all seemed lost, you stumbled across a miracle, the last of its kind, a giant Onbu, woken by those same spores. Now you have to build a village on its back, and hopefully, together, you can survive the calamity.

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Humankind Cartographic Educational Database –

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TL;DR – Links to every geographical feature mentioned in Humankind so you can explore them if interested

The Mediterranean Map

Database –

Back we I was working on my Civilization VI map, I started to document all the locations I was using as a basis for the maps, and on the whole, I got some great feedback for that Cartographic Educational Database. With hat in mind, when I was starting my Humankind map, I did the smart thing and put all this data together at the same time, rather than going back over it at a later date doubling up my work. It also is part of my sharing that fun that I got as I learned more about the world we live in.

Below you will find links to Cultures and their Cities, Independent People, Cultural Wonders, Natural Wonders, and Landmarks.

Most of these links will be to the relevant Wikipedia page, just because that is probably the most practical option for most people, but there are some links to other sites where it was the best fit. Also, while I have tried to find easily accessible links to every feature, some of them don’t have that access. There is the odd one here and there, which you can see below. Before we start, I have to thank the Humankind Wiki for collating all the cities for me so I did not have to dive into the code. it is up to date to the Cultures of Oceania Pack DLC.

You can see the Full Humankind Map HERE. So let’s dive into the geographical world of Humankind.  

To assist with searching, you can jump to

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Humankind – Map-It

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TL;DR – We map all of the eras of Humankind all in one map … okay many maps.

The Mediterranean Map

Mapping Humankind

One of the joys I get is mapping out universes, while I have charted out movie universes like the MCU and Grand Designs. However, one of my favourite things has been charting how 4X video games explore the world and its history. Today we are looking at the next entry in this series, charting all of Humankind from Amplitude Studios and Sega.

I had started making this map several times before running into roadblocks, like how do you make a map that shows Russia/Soviet Union or England/Great Britain? The way I previously fixed this issue with my Civilization map didn’t work here, and I started to wonder if I was Wile E. Coyote hitting my head against every ACME invention. However, one day it all clicked together, so I started down this road.

I worked it out by having a separate map for each era, all the cities, cultures, independent peoples, and wonders. Then we smashed it all together at the end in a wild kaleidoscope of overlapping entries. While putting this all together, I was still concerned it would not work. However, it kind of does. Before we start, I have to thank the Humankind Wiki for collating all the cities for me so I did not have to dive into the code. With that in mind, let us dive into the world of Humankind, which includes all the information from the base game and the Cultures of Africa Pack and Cultures of Latin America Pack DLCs. You can also see links to all the information in the map in our Humankind Cartographic Educational Database.

While all attempts have been made to ensure that everything is accurately placed, putting this together meant working from multiple sources, map projections, and sometimes not firm locations. As such, no matter how much you try, there might be slight discrepancies. With that in mind, let us dive into the maps.

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