custard doughnuts

Overdue Reviews is an occasional series in which I appease my younger self's brief desire to be a videogame journalist by ranting or raving about part of or all of a game I've played in the past. This week: Dawn of War 2 on PC.

Dawn of War 2 is a very serious game. It's full of serious sounding men, with serious names like Cyrus and Thaddeus. I was given the option at the start of naming my character, so to lighten the mood a little I named him Billy.

It did not make the game any less serious.

Sunday 15th of July 2018

In which I mostly complain about printers.

Is it just me, or is all printer software terrible? I've only owned a few printers, but I've used dozens more, and I can't remember ever encountering one bit of printer software that was easy to use. It feels like one of those things that no one can be bothered to do right, like DVD drives that should open when you press the eject button and not ten seconds later.

Thursday 5th of July 2018

I've written a blog post! No, wait, I've done this joke already. Let's move on.

I've written another article for the GDS blog, about the use of sticky elements on GOV.UK. Have a read, then read on for some detail I left out.

Friday 29th of June 2018

I just saw Solo: A Star Wars story and enjoyed it. Like Rogue One, it managed to take a relatively obscure part of the background to the original movies and make a pretty interesting story out of it. However, having now watched both of these films, I think I've figured out Disney's formula for making them.

Potentially spoiler-y stuff follows.

Sunday 24th of June 2018

Overdue Reviews is an occasional series in which I appease my younger self's brief desire to be a videogame journalist by ranting or raving about part of or all of a game I've played in the past. This week: Aliens vs Predator 2 on PC.

There's a rule in horror movies. The less you show of the monster, the more scary it is. As soon as the audience sees what they're supposed to be afraid of, they stop being afraid. The fear of the unknown is far worse than a man in a rubber suit.

Aliens vs Predator 2 uses this technique to great effect in the first level of the marine campaign. It was almost terrifying.

Wednesday 20th of June 2018