So recently I've been getting into a bit of old-school gaming and replaying some games I really haven't thought about much since I was about ten. As a kid I was pretty big into strategy games, FPSs and action games, but we never really had ...

Hey you! Ever played a videogame before...? huh...? HUH...?! HUH....!?! Oh yeah, I bet you have. And I bet there were boobies and men with big muscles and everybody was white and you fapped yourself into a frothy mess over how muc...

When we think about Horror games, what do we think of? Maybe the first thing that comes to mind are examples of old-school survival horror – games like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Forbidden Siren; possibly co-op survival games like Left 4 D...

Hello there, Do you like nerds? Hot, sweaty, nerds? Well! If you said yes then you're in for a treat with this week's episode of Scary Granules (wait, what happened to last week?!) as it's all about the source of all things neckbea...

What's the measure of value that we aspire to when it comes to a game's setting, backdrop or visual style? Do we think a game that is more grounded in reality makes for a 'better' game, if so, why? Admittedly when I write 'better' I'm usi...

Lately I've been feeling as though my attitude towards gaming has changed. Not so much that I feel as though I want to stop playing games in general but enough to make me feel as though my gaming tastes may be changing, if only ever so slig...

Picture the scene - flowing fields of green, green, grass sweep before you, trees rustle in a light wind, a single blackbird perches on an old stone wall pecking at the moss as the ground disappears behind you, then you see it, in the mi...

I find it immeasurably hard to write about Sweet Home, though I love the game and feel it's largely been overlooked by gaming culture I also know that in the past it has had a lot of attention from horror enthusiasts – anytime there's a Hor...

And the original (much larger) Mario always sounds so goddamn chipper all the time in his games, for no apparent reason. It bugs me, nobody's that happy - atleast not without medication. The only way I could really think of to break som...

The Following is an In-depth Study into the History of Exploding Barrels in the Games Industry ...or just some words on a page that vaguely make sense! ;o So why do we still have exploding barrels in videogames? Anybody? Anybody know ...

What makes good TV, films or games? Is it just about fantasy fulfillment, or is there more to it? Do we just look for the perfect or do we also look for the complicated, the difficult, the realistic in our fiction? In horror, it's often th...

And the original (much larger) A rare glimpse behind the scenes of where bosses come to learn their trade - I mean they must all learn it from somewhere, right? Somebody obviously must be teaching them all these conventions and contrived...

So lately I've been thinking a lot about the Fourth Wall in games and more specifically how that relates to how seriously games take themselves, after a desire to replay MGS4 caused me to think about the Metal Gear Solid series and its rela...

It's not often games buck the trend, there's a lot of money out there in being able to copycat or toe-the-line when it comes to the industry standards for a genre, and it's often easier to do that than try and stand out. In the strategy g...

A couple of days back I had some trouble with my internet: it suddenly cut out inexplicably. It turned out in the middle of switching providers our previous provider had shut us off before we'd even had a chance to switch over, and thus no ...

There aren't many franchises I keep tabs on, in fact I can probably name them on a hand or two (mine or yours, doesn't really matter), there are fewer still series that I approach with anything less than pure scepticism at announcement an...

So I picked up a copy of  Michigan: Report from Hell not too long back and started playing it at a fairly piecemeal rate and having completed it I wanted to put down a few thoughts on paper (ok, on screen). Granted, it's not the sort of g...

Horror games don't always do well, it's a hard genre to make work just right; unlike, say, racing games or action games where aesthetics and atmosphere are secondary to the mechanics horror is all about atmosphere; a game can be great horro...

That is the question. Whether it tis... ok screw that, I won't bore you with a bad Shakespeare joke! XD But I thought I'd ask the question which seems to be getting more and more pertinent in gaming today: Do we really need to shoot stuf...

I typically tend to write about big issues in gaming, long-running trends or themes about gaming as a whole but from time to time it's interesting to take a step back from modern gaming and examine some forgotten gems of classic videogaming...

In the last generation or so of consoles character design has become increasingly important in games, not just in the sense that characters need to be well-designed to be appeal to players but also in the sense that player choice in the mat...

Where do stories come from? How much about the games we play is made up of our sense of cultural identity and how much is driven by creative urges? I wondered this the other day when I saw a piece about Iranian videogames; the report it...

With a new Syndicate game on the horizon and an X-COM reboot in the pipeline you might be forgiven for thinking we'd fallen into some sort of time-warp and been whisked back to the giddy heights of the early 90's - where mobile phones are t...

I've had Skyrim about a week now, and though there's undoubtedly a ton of blogs, articles and reviews out there already that probably go into a lot more depth than I ever could about Skyrim I thought I'd write down a few of my impressions o...