About Me

This is the third time I've written one of these about me pages so you'd think I might be getting better at it. I'm not.

I've always loved video games. I grew up playing whatever I could get my hands on, but my genre of choice for a long time was shooters which, in the late 00's/early 10's, means I played all of the golden era Call of Duty and Halo games. My love of sci-fi stemmed from my love of this franchise, particularly Halo: Reach, but I loved how cinematic and immersive this genre can be. My interests changed a bit when a friend introduced me to Oblivion and, from the moment I walked my first Argonian out of the sewers of the Imperial City, I was obsessed. It was the first game I played where I could freely explore a huge world that had a history that I could uncover and a living present that I could be part of. I put a lot of time into Oblivion back in late 2011, and I would have put even more in, if it wasn't for Skyrim being released right after and taking over my life for all the same reasons.

The things I love about these games are the kind of things I want to make games about, the kind of things that only games can really do. Exploring a world that exists, and has existed, beyond you as a player. Immersing yourself into a game where how you play and what you do have an effect on a world that functions beyond the player. Taking part in setpiece moments that feel like special moments in these worlds. Ultimately, all of these have to be in the service of storytelling, because the end goal is finding a way to tell a story. The thing that makes video games special is that once the developers have written something and put it out there, the players get to write something with them.

Some other games I've enjoyed but couldn't figure out how to write about earlier:

• Fallout 3, New Vegas and 4: I played Fallout 3 not long after playing Oblivion and really loved the setting and story. I played New Vegas not long after and found it to be an improvement over 3 in basically every way. 4 lost some of the stronger RPG elements, but the new additions like the settlement building and the weapon/armour customisation were all exactly to my taste.
• 007: Nightfire: This is the first game I remember playing back on the original Xbox. I loved that you could explore to find hidden paths with secret weapons and different bits of the environment that you could interact with in different ways to give you an advantage. I don't think I've ever met anyone else who played this game, I don't know if it's well remembered and I don't know if it holds up but I like it.
• Outer Wilds: If you've played Outer Wilds, you know why I love it so much and if you haven't, I won't spoil anything. Outer Wilds is not like any other game I've played, a really special experience that will stay with you for years after you finish it.
• Any Resident Evil from 7 onwards: I'm a little baby when it comes to horror. I will hide behind the covers when watching a scary movie and I will play a horror game without looking at the screen if I think there's going to be a jump scare. That being said, the real charm of a Resident Evil game is that if you stick with it through the horror early on, the game will go completely off the rails in the third act and be some of the most ridiculous fun. The first one I properly played was the remake of 2, followed by 3, Village, 4 and Requiem. One thing I like about these is that completing challenges in game get you points that you can use to unlock more weapons and equipment to use to complete harder challenges in future playthroughs. I like these incremental improvements that you earn by replaying a game in different ways.
• Mercenaries 2 World In Flames: Ok, of all the games I've mentioned here, this is the most 6/10. I played this on the PS3 and I had to make sure I wasn't signed into PSN, because if I was online when the game started, it would try to connect to the servers, fail because they'd been shut down and crash my console every single time. The game was only a few years old at this point too. In spite of all this, and biblical amounts of jank in the rest of the game, I had a lot of fun being able to drive around the open world in a tank, calling in artillery and blowing up buildings.

Outside of making, and playing, games, I watch a lot of films. I enjoy classics all the way through to new stuff but my niche is late 90's/early 00's sci-fi, because it's all just a little bit crap in it's own special way. I also GM a Fallout TTRPG group for a few friends, writing those stories and putting those sessions together is a lot of fun, and watching those guys tear all my plans to pieces is a good time.