There are some optional plane courses of the fly-through-the-rings variety here, but I basically ignored them after testing them out because they're only good for unlocking mods for your planes, which I didn't really need because I wasn't flying planes that often. For what it's worth, actually flying in a plane isn't…

Never played JC2, but the jets were basically unflyable here too. Or rather, they were good for travelling, but useless for combat.

Happy to help. For completion's sake, Capaldi's black brogue boots, widely reported to be Doc Martens when the costume was first revelaed (which would have truly cemented the mod/skinhead connections) are actually a now-discontinued model by Loake, one of the great Northampton shoe dynasties. That has nothing to do…

I'm relatively sure 12's navy and burgundy velvet coats are both Crombies, and I believe they're custom made by that company for the show. If memory serves, the white shirts and navy cardigans the character sometimes wears are both by Crombie as well.

Oooooooooh, tough choice. Go with a complicated, emotionally turbulent ending, like The Walking Dead? Something shamelessly sappy, like Final Fantasy IX? Something rollicking, like Katamari Damacy's roll-up-the-whole-world bonus level?

To MGSV's credit, the main ops (story missions and the like) are great. Rather than the story spreading out over one giant location, it's broken up into little chunks set in self-contained parts of the map that, once you know what you're doing, you can power through in a tiny amount of time. Your first time through…

So help me God, I'm still playing Assassin's Creed Syndicate. I like to think that in my review I came down hard on the series but was forgiving of this specific entry, which I really am enjoying, maybe more than I let on. Still, that's criticism for you.

I suppose given Mass Effect's dialogue system, a Neutral Shepard will be more of an "I have no strong feelings one way or the other" kind of neutral, rather than a "maintaining the balance between good and evil" kind of neutral. I'm sure in some of the smaller and more personal decisions you could opt to elevate the…

Gathering beers is one of the most fun collect-a-thons in the game because a) there aren't that many of them, b) they're all in pretty obvious, easy-to-find places, and c) Shaun's Tasting Notes are always funny.

The Jack The Ripper stuff is a DLC pack that isn't available until December, I believe. I might actually pick it up, though, since I enjoyed the base game enough and would like to spend a little more time chillin' with the Fryes.

It's the Alhambra.

Oh God I did the exact same thing. That mission was hideous.

A recent choice, but a potent one: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. The game has a very horrific tone overall, especially compared to the melodramatics, comedy, and camp of the rest of the series. MGS has dabbled in horror before (I'm looking at you, The Sorrow) but it's never attempted the sustained,…

Condolences.

Yeah, to my knowledge the image of Heather without her turtleneck is from the back of the Silent Hill 3 OST case. As far as I know, Heather wore her sweater in both the Japanese and North American versions of the game, and the OST case image was just a piece of promotional art. I've always considered it a weirdly…

"They look like monsters to you" is one of my favourite lines in the series, but I never took it to mean that the protagonists of the games were killing people. If you put any stock in "Word of God" proclamations as being canonical, Jeremy Blaustein, one of the original Silent Hill developers, says as much in VoidBurge…

The tragedy of 4, in my mind, is that its best elements are the best in the series—maybe even better than 2. 4 has the best sound design, although 2 still has the best music. 4 is the outright scariest where 2 is the most disturbing. The degrading weapons, limited inventory, and invincible enemies, while annoying in…

Good question. It was actually that flavour text about quitting smoking that gave me the idea for the header, as it's another great example of Heather having more history and character than the other Silent Hill stars. I depicted her smoking because I've always liked the idea of Heather having a cigarette after…

What struck me most about this when I saw it at TIFF a couple years back is how unevenly its budget was spread. Something like 75% of the film takes place on obvious warehouse sets badly disguised as streets and alleyways, and at one point a ludicrously fake looking CGI tank rampages through what appeared to be stock…

Gonna cast my vote for Silent Hill here. It's not, in its systems, a game about raising children, but its story is all about parents and how they shape and affect their children, either for better or worse, with Harry's single-minded determination to rescue his adopted daughter Cheryl contrasted with Dahlia using her…