Matty Writes About Games!

Recently bought Gris & oh my, it is beautiful. These are my favourite screenshots from the first hour or so 🎮📷

For this post I wanted to try something a little different & show a little love to one of my other favourite things: books! I’ve loved books, reading & playing video games from a young age all thanks to my parents. Over the summer we were very lucky in the UK & had some extremely hot weather, so my days off work were spent in the garden burning through books at an alarming rate. With this in mind, I was looking to expand my tastes a little & move into reading more non-fiction, & what better subject than video games? 

The following three are the ones I’ve read, thoroughly enjoyed & would recommend to any gaming with even a passing interest in reading.

Blood, Sweat And Pixels 

Blood, Sweat And Pixels is all about the trials & tribulations of how some of the world’s biggest and best games (and some indie gems) came to be. This was a genuinely fascinating read, touching on a few personal favourites of mine (Shovel Knight/Stardew Valley) and good to learn about others I’ve never played like The Witcher & Dragon Age.

Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave The World Another Life

Power-Up was another interesting read, giving a condensed history of Japanese influence in the video game industry and how that influence spread into wider, every day culture. It's worth saying there was one issue I had with Power-Up though: it's a little outdated, the first edition coming out in 2004 & a slightly expanded re-issue released in 2011. But regardless of this, I would still recommend it.

Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation

The name of this book can be a tad deceiving, Console Wars is more about the marketing war of the late 80′s/early 90′s than the consoles themselves. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable book, and best to be taken with a pinch of salt - it’s written with a somewhat dramatic embellishment. Go in with that knowledge though and there’s an entertaining, funny and engaging read to be found.

So, to wrap up, these are all great books in their own right. They all share a theme, but tell their stories in different ways. I also wanted to give a shout-out to Blood Of Elves (Book one of The Witcher series) and Metro 2033, both fantastic books that spawned critically acclaimed game adaptations. Those are both series I’ve actually ended up buying the rest of the series, I enjoyed them that much and would recommend them to fans of fantasy/dystopian novels. 

OK so I have some things to say about this game. I haven't yet finished Dead Cells, but I've put in enough hours & got far enough to feel confident writing a little something about it.  It’s worth saying this isn't a first impressions piece nor is it a full-on review, just opinions and thoughts whilst playing.

I want to begin with a bold statement - Dead Cells might be one of my favourite games now? I’ve never really been one for rogue-like games, (aside of dropping in & out of Enter The Gungeon) they’re just not my thing usually, but there was something different about Dead Cells that immediately caught my attention. It looks absolutely incredible, the level of detail in the pixel art is frankly just ridiculous and it looks just as good in motion. Although I do have to say there are a few frame rate issues on the Switch version but a recent patch has fixed it, aside of a few hiccups still. 

But it’s when you get a little deeper into Dead Cells that it really comes into it’s own. It’s definitely one of those games that rewards you the more you put into it, the more cells/gold/blueprints you collect along with the six (current) runes all expand, enhance and genuinely change the game. It’s simple enough: cells unlock the weapons from the blueprints you collect and gold upgrades them. And there are a lot of weapons in Dead Cells, there’s something for everyone and a huge number of weird & wonderful combinations, it’s great to find one that works for you - throw in elemental buffs and it takes that to the nth degree. There’s a wide range of different stages/biomes to hack and slash through, packed with secrets and varying enemies, and they actually all feel different too.

I don’t want to go into too much detail about the mechanics/story and spoil anything but honestly, one of the best things to say about Dead Cells is that it just feels so good to play. You start with no runes, a basic sword/bow/shield and you’re thrown into the deep end, but after a couple hours there is a heightened sense of strength when you’ve powered up your weapons and are just mowing down enemies with ease.