Gaelic Gamers Episode 2

https://archive.org/details/GaelicGamerEp2

Ambient Dark Film Series 1 by Fullscore provided by freesoundtrackmusic.com

Gaelic Gamers Podcast 1

https://archive.org/details/Pod1Gaelicgamers

Love Star Wars Battlefront/Hate Star Wars

My gaming life has become an inescapable contradiction. A dichotomy has arisen, and from this conflict of the mind the battle lines have spawned. On one side, flying the flag for peace and rational thought, we have my love for the Star Wars Battlefront series, and arming itself menacingly across the trenches, we have my hatred for the Star Wars film franchise. And to top off these paradoxical feelings someone recently told me I have a penchant for the melodramatic.
Growing amidst the fledgling seeds of discord we have a mixture of sheer excitement and marginal fear (the kind of fear that wonders if this game is being rushed out to capitalise on the film and thusly ending up as a complete mess) at the latest iteration of the Star Wars Battlefront series. The series last incarnation came out what feels like an aeon ago in 2005 and, the trailers for its descendant have me salivating at the impressive scope of the battle arenas, as well as the graphical splendor on show. Though in truth the game won’t look as good as it does in the trailers but if it can achieve a semblance of the quality on display it will be a testament to the power of the next gen consoles.
The stage is set or the movie set is em…set or whatever for the most gargantuan game of 2015. However my enthusiasm for the games trailer and my apathy towards the movie trailer got me thinking. How is it that I can love these games, based upon the wildly successful film franchise, so very much and yet grant they grant me absolutely no emotive connection to the films which I find banal.
After much soul searching and a half arsed attempt to watch a couple of the films it dawned on me that the films are fairly woeful and full of irksome characters who just plain annoy me. Except Darth Vader, now there is a character I respect and admire. It’s just a shame he didn’t win or did he. There’s a moral discussion to be had there but I’m on a self centered ramble here so I’ll have to leave it till another time.
So anyway I now realise why I love the games so damn much. It’s because I get to pilot giant bombastic robots with huge canons on their heads. I get to climb inside the exhilarating X-Wing and just crash it into people, of course bailing out at the last minute to save my own backside. If I so choose I can lob grenades majestically through the air at Wookiees. I can play the covert artist and paint walls with the splatterings of brain matter with a sniper rifle or just go crazy Rambo style with a machine laser gun thing and If I find of one those characters (I won’t name names here that’s just petty) that I truly despise I can release my visceral self and beat them to death with the butt of my gun or if I’m feeling particularly malicious I can just use my plain old fists. Die small furry Ewok people ahhhh!!!!

Back to the Sideburns

I would like to preface this blog by conceding ,and apologising in equal measure, that I am very late to the party having only picked up a copy of The Order: 1886 a couple of days ago. However something profound occurred to me whilst I played this “action shooter” that I just had to get it off my chest.

Now bare with me because at first this might seem like a bit of a stretch but maybe this game, which in the words of the developers “Introduces players to a unique vision of Victorian-Era London where man uses advanced technology to battle a powerful and ancient foe”, is in fact a loving and cunningly disguised tribute to video games most iconic sideburns, yep you guessed it (or at least I hope you guessed it) those of that 8 bit wonder Alex The Kidd.

During one of the multitude of cut scenes in this game it dawned on me that the sideburns of the games protagonist, Sir Galahad, were a bushy, tender love letter which evoked wondrous memories of my first gaming love. So maybe The Order: 1886 isn’t the greatest game of all time, and yeah its short as shit, but if you play it whilst fairly inebriated you too may experience vivid recollections of your gaming past. God Speed Sir Galahad!