Posted on in 2016, Current Writing, Essays, Gaming

28 Games You Should Play on PC (and a Dozen You Might Want to Give a Look)

[Authors Note: All information provided is, to my knowledge, factual as of time of writing]

So I play most of my games on the PC these days. I used to predominantly play consoles before this current generation of hardware. I do have some current Nintendo consoles but just because they complement my PC, which gets most major releases. Anyway, my time on the PC has been spent finding whatever I can and grabbing it at a cheap price point.

Now my Steam library has a collection of 441 games (accurate at the time of writing). Recently, I’ve helped some people build their first beefy PC. Some I’ve given advice on parts to build your PC from (the best ever advice I got on building a PC came from PC Gamer’s budget build guide and their mid-range PC build guide).

There’s a lot of fearmongering about PC gaming. Some PC gamers have given us all the reputation of snootiness. The idea that building a $1000 box for gaming makes us superior to people who play on console. If you set up your PC up it can emulate rather well the Pick Up and Play nature of consoles past.

My list has been split into two sections, with an honourable mentions section at the end. The two sections are Can Be Played on Most Any PC and You’ll Need At Least a Decent Graphics Card. They’re pretty self-explanatory but just for clarity, Most Any PC means there’s no need for the game to render high-end graphics. These games are more likely Indie games with a pixel graphic or visually drawn style that don’t require anything but basic graphics and a rig that was built in the last 10 years. Can even be played on an older laptop.

At Least a Decent Graphics Card games are games that require at least some graphical power to run. None of them are too intensive and can be run on low settings with the lower end of graphics cards. I run a Nvidia GTX 750 Ti and that serves me well for pretty much everything on this list.

One last thing, you can always put these games on your wishlist and wait for them to go on sale if you’re strapped for cash. If the game is older than six months, it’s likely to go on sale in the next Steam sale. Steam sales periodically appear around the holidays. Maybe get someone to get you a Steam gift card for Christmas.

Now, on with the list!

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Posted on in 2016, Current Writing, Essays, TV

Alright, Time to Talk About Game of Thrones

[Author’s Note: Beware of SPOILERS! Post discusses all currently released books of A Song of Ice and Fire up to A Dance with Dragons, and Game of Thrones up to Season 6, Episode 9: Battle of the Bastards]

(Edit Note: 6/11/2016 14:55 – This post previously stated that a particularly egregious line was uttered mid-season to Ramsay Bolton. It has now been edited to note that the line appeared in an Emmy award for Writing winning episode and uttered to Bronn in the clusterfuck Dorne plotline. This has been amended.)

Sigh. I don’t like Game of Thrones. I used to. This fact rears its ugly head whenever the show appears for ten horrible weeks of the year or when someone spots one of the countless pieces of merch that I have of the series. Whenever someone brings up Game of Thrones I tend to get irrationally angry. Nothing makes me sigh louder, except maybe Doctor Who but that’s a similar issue for another day. So finally, I will sort out my beef with the series right here and now in this post.

 

Before the show I never read the books, I’ll begin with that. I watched the first two seasons enraptured and completely on their own merit. Between seasons two and three I had a lot of transit time. I was commuting to Melbourne for uni back then. During that time, I read all the books in the series released at that point. Going into season three I was armed with knowledge from the books. I must confess that I was rather haughty about having read the books.

I’ve never read a book series faster. I watched seasons three and four having my bugbears with the adaptation but overall content that they were getting where they needed to be in those two seasons. There is one scene in season four that strikes me as one of the worst written scenes in the history of quality television but I’ll get to that. As I watch season five the series began to offend me with not only it’s terrible writing, but also its completely nonsensical storylines (I have some very specific words about how they messed with the Dorne plotline, mostly fuck and you). After finishing season five, episode five I resigned myself to quitting the show following the end of season five. The rest of the season just hardened my resolve. I loved this show for two great seasons and two mostly good seasons but the show took a sharp nosedive in season five.

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Posted on in 2015, Earlier Writing, Fantasy, Scripts

You Can’t Get Ye Flask – Audio Play

[Author’s Note: Originally written October 2015]

Scene: 1

(THE NARRATOR SOUNDS LIKE A GPS AS VOICED BY A WOMAN OR PERHAPS SIRI, HER VOICE SOUNDS DISTANT, AS IF COMING FROM A PA SYSTEM.)

SOUND: THE SOUND OF WATER DRIPPING ONTO STONE, ECHOING SLIGHTLY

NARRATOR

You awake in a room. You hear the sound of dripping water, though it’s not clear which direction the water is coming from. There are three clear directions NORTH, EAST, and WEST.

LEXI

Go NORTH.

NARRATOR

You go NORTH. You drown. As you drown you think that the dropping water must’ve come from this room.

(COMPLETE SILENCE FOR A BEAT)

SOUND: THE SOUND OF WATER DRIPPING ONTO STONE, ECHOING SLIGHTLY CAN BE HEARD AGAIN

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Posted on in 2015, Earlier Writing, Scripts

White Wedding – Together At Last

[Author’s Note: Originally written August 2015]

INT. FUNCTION HALL – COAT ROOM. DAY

A woman in a bridal dress, TEGAN, is sitting in the coat room. The walls are lined with immaculate black suit jackets. A man, TREVOR, dressed in a black suit saunters by the open door of the coat room, a bottle of champagne in his hand. He pokes his head inside the coat room and spots Tegan.

TREVOR

(to Tegan) Hey, I found you.

He pops his head out of the coat room.

TREVOR

(shouting)

Hey guys, I found…

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Posted on in 2015, Earlier Writing, Scripts

White Wedding – Tegan’s Preamble

[Author’s Note: Originally written August 2015]

INT. CHURCH – SIDE ROOM. DAY

A bride, TEGAN, stands in front of a full-length mirror looking herself over in her bridal gown. She lets out an exasperated sigh.

TEGAN

This is it. The big day that everybody dreams of.

She walks to a chair in the room and sits.

TEGAN (CONT.)

That’s what people say anyway. Do I really want this? God, I sound like such a fucking cliché. A bride having doubts on her wedding day.

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Posted on in 2015, Earlier Writing, Scripts

White Wedding – Trevor’s Speech

[Author’s Note: Originally written August 2015]

INT. TREVOR’S APARTMENT. NIGHT

We see a dingy apartment filled with all the marks of single-dom: empty pizza boxes, couple beer empties. We are positioned behind a armchair positioned directly in front of a massive TV. The blue light of the screen illuminates the apartment. We can see a figure, TREVOR, sitting in the chair, his head poking just above the chair. We then focus on Trevor’s from the perspective of the TV. Trevor is sitting, numbed out his mind watching trashy TV. His phone next to him lights up and starts ringing. His ringtone is ’The Sound of Silence’ by Simon and Garfunkel. He looks at the phone screen. We see the contact: MUM. It is accompanied by a candid photo of a woman in her mid-50s. He answers.

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Posted on in 2015, Earlier Writing, Literary, Sci-Fi, Short Stories

Monolith

[Author’s Note: Originally written October 2015]

As the sluggish train carried him into his work the skyline cast a dark shadow over the dreary landscape molded by the winter. It was an inescapable aspect of the city that was well known and oft parodied by its residents. The mood of the city became exactly like people outside it imagined it did in the winter months. Those travelling to work were covered in black, scurrying about in such a rat race that from above they must’ve looked like ants, ants tracking the same path every day. As he thought the train arrived painfully slowly into the city.

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Posted on in 2014, Earlier Writing, Literary, Short Stories

Mantis

[Author’s Note: Originally written August 2014]

He caught sight of her at the bar. She stood there, flame red hair and tall. Bright green eyes alight with excitement. She smiled at laughed with every man around her. Her teeth smiling bone white against the deep red of her lipstick. He looked at her, too beautiful for him but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try. She whipped her head around the bar and caught his eyes. He felt that as he looked into her eyes the two shared a moment. With just her eyes and a tilt of her head she made a movement that he knew meant ‘come hither’. He moved to the bar. She watched him as he moved, carefully and resolutely. She silenced the man next to her with a move of her hand. She smiled sweetly at him as he approached. He took his place at the bar next to her.

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Posted on in 2015, Earlier Writing, Literary, Short Stories

Art is for Wankers

[Author’s Note: Originally written June 2015]

Leaning against the rail, his eyes wandered casually to an ANZ billboard above him. The slogan sat there. Live life the way you want it. One of those advertising statements that meant nothing because they can’t say what they want, Give us your money. It was good to know that three years of university had given him the ability to detect bullshit. He could’ve saved himself the money if he’d known that that would’ve been the only thing he’d retained from his course. Well, that and that small A4 piece of paper that hung in his apartment stating that he, Michael Alan Smith, had earned his Bachelor of Arts. In his head he responded with his major instantly. It was a reflex, sharpened for years when people at parties asked the same questions. He could quote the questions from memory.

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Posted on in 2014, Earlier Writing, Literary, Short Stories

The Girl at the Station

[Author’s Note: Originally written May 2014]

“Why here?” he asked the girl.

She was seventeen or eighteen by the looks of it. He was an age older compared to her. Sixty-five, not yet old but not so young either. The girl had applied a makeup that made her appear pale. Her blonde curls hung down, stopping around her chest. She wore a black hoodie and jeans to keep the cold out. It didn’t seem to help. The place she had elected to meet him was the grungy train station in the town he had grown up. A city close to the state capital and of decent size, but still not notable enough to be known to international visitors. The station looked as if it didn’t have enough cleaning staff to maintain a pristine setting. The ground of the platform was clean enough, rubbish that had been dropped in the last hour hadn’t been picked up but it was part of the regular mess of public spaces. The rusted corrugated iron roof, with what was probably a storied history, hung with cobwebs clinging to its darkest and driest corners of the inner roof. They stood on the bridge that hung over the main tracks leading to the nearby major city. The bridge was only crossed by people trying to get to the far platform, to board trains that planned to take a more rural trip. The nineteenth century looking clock hung over the station telling those who still bothered to read analogue time that it was about twelve past twelve. The station was almost empty except for people who had arrived early for the quarter to one train. The morning commute had subsided and the evening return was still hours off.

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