Obituary: Sir Patrick Stewart (1940 - 2026)

While I had seen the original Star Trek series when broadcast after school, I didn't regard it with the same fondness as Battlestar Galactica or Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. It wasn't until as a teenager that a good friend insisted I watch an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that I began to slowly embrace the franchise as a whole. This was made all the easier thanks to the standard of writing and quality of performance delivered by The Next Generation's lead, Patrick Stewart.

His voice demanded attention no matter what he was saying, a talent honed from years of work as a classically trained Shakespearean actor which stood to him in the role as master and commander of the worlds most famous starship. He delivered a performance with such grace and empathy that few who heard or watched him could not help but listen and accept the words written for him as a mantra, ideals to aspire to.

Later knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to drama, Sir Patrick brought his charm and wit to dozens of other memorable roles over the years such as Professor Charles Xavier of Marvel's X-Men franchise, Gurney Halleck in David Lynch's Dune and a cameo as King Richard in Robin Hood: Men in Tights. He also lent his voice to animation such as CIA Director Avery Bullock in American Dad! and video games where he portrayed Emperor Uriel Septim VII in Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Zobek in Capcom's Castlevenia: Lords of Shadow.

Sir Patrick held the belief that if only old white men are ever listened to, he would use this power he had for good. To this end he became a champion against domestic violence for Amnesty International, a patron of domestic violence charity Refuge, supported the arms forces charity Combat Stress and rescued several dogs in partnership with the ASPCA.

Sir Patrick sadly lost a short battle with Lewy body dementia and Alzheimer's on Oct 28th leaving behind a family, generations of fans and a body of such remarkable work that it will immortalise him for many years to come. May he rest in peace.

First Play Review - Assassin's Creed: Liberation Remastered (2019)

In 2012 Assassin's Creed III: Liberation was a PlayStation Vita title, later ported and remastered for PC and consoles in 2014 as Assassin's Creed: Liberation HD and finally in 2019 it was remastered (again) and bundled in with a the remastered release of Assassin’s Creed III. Now mainly because I didn't think the mainline Assassin’s Creed III: Remastered was too great, I wasn't too interested on playing this stand-alone DLC game; but as it just installed with Assassin's Creed III: Remastered, I kept it around until I got a chance. I also wanted to see why this game of all games got remastered twice and what made it worth this treatment.

Well after about 3 hours, I can't tell you really. This was a very different AC game in comparison to the others I've played because you don't get a significant 'origin' per se, you are already an Assassin and expected to know the lore, the main tools and move-set to a degree, albeit much both simpler and yet clunky. I chalk that down to whatever the controls were on it's original platform the PlayStation Vita that just don't translate well to KBM.

It wasn't just the controls though, the general game itself was fairly bland. Your character is Aveline de Grandpré, the first female protagonist of the series and sadly not a very auspicious start. While the game's setting is 1765 French Louisiana which is pretty unique for a videogame I'll grant you, the tale itself seemed pretty ho-hum and uninteresting as while your character is one of the noble elite, you've also elected to join the Brotherhood of Assassins and you've additionally committed yourself to freeing slaves which seems a very mixed bag.

The game is just far too derivative of the others with the only innovating feature - a method of changing your characters outfit from noblewoman, to slave to Assassin by the use of interacting with safe zones to do so, after unlocking them. The game restricts certain actions while in certain outfits like completely raiding your notoriety level to maximum while in the Assassin garb but restricting your movement while as a noblewoman which is more annoying than anything else to be honest.

It's not often it happens but after a couple of hours of this I was bored, but thought there might me some reprieve as I was sent to the bayou and had a nice time doing the usual AC gameplay of eliminating an entire camp of heavily armed enemies with a knife and a blowgun until I went downstream and got mauled by a crocodile. Getting attacked by wildlife wasn't new, as Conor in the previous game I had taken down several wolf packs, some mountain lions and even so
me grizzly bears. This fucking crocodile however had far too tight of a QTE window to master and I just said fuck it, after about a dozen attempts. In my canon, Aveline de Grandpré, the first female protagonist of the series, got eaten by a crocodile in the bayou of French Louisiana in 1765. 

Final Verdict: Not worth the install to be honest. Should have stayed on the PS Vita (whatever the fuck that is/was).

Technicals: 2 hrs playtime approx though Ubisoft Connect in 2560x1440 @ 60FPS (engine cap) on RTX5080 in Windows 11.

Availability: Assassin's Creed: Liberation Remastered comes with purchases of Assassin's Creed III: Remastered on Steam or the Ubisoft Store for €39.99. Review copy came as DLC included with a purchase of Assassin's Creed Odyssey - Gold Edition for €33.43 in November 2019. 

Series Timeline [PC]:

• Assassin's Creed [2007]
• Assassin's Creed II [2010]
• Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood [2011]
• Assassin's Creed: Revelations [2011]
• Assassin's Creed III [2012]
• Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag [2013] 
• - Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry [2014]
• - Assassin's Creed III: Liberation HD [2014]
• Assassin's Creed Unity [2014]
• Assassin's Creed Rogue [2015]
• Assassin's Creed Syndicate [2015]
• Assassin's Creed Origins [2017]
• Assassin's Creed Odyssey [2018]
• - Assassin's Creed III Remastered [2019] 
• - Assassin's Creed III Liberation Remastered [2019] 
• Assassin's Creed Valhalla [2020]
• Assassin's Creed Mirage [2023] 
• Assassin's Creed Shadows [2025]
• - Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced [2026]
• Assassin’s Creed Hexe [202?] 

 

First Play Review: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered [2020]

Note this review is for the 2020 release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered, a remastered version of the original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 campaign from 2009 and not to be confused with the 'reboot' Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II from 2022. 

I felt that such a good job was done on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered that it was worth checking out Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered and see if it was going to be a superior experience to the original which I reviewed in 2010.

From the beginning I knew it was given a serious upgrade. With all the bells and whistles turned up to the max I was getting <30FPS on my RTX5080! After some tweaking I passed the 100FPS mark and was able to enjoy the stunning visuals that the team at Beenox recreated from the original to deliver a sublime experience with significant visual updates. Among the advancements are improved models and art along with remade cutscenes with new motion capture, as well as a revamped post-process pipeline and HDR support using a modified version of Sledgehammer's engine from Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.

My thoughts on the gameplay and plot haven't changed much. Gameplay and shooting is still solid and it seems relatively untouched. I never felt I had a substandard weapon and some of the set-piece weapons like the Javlin missile were great to use. The plot is still a Micheal Bay wet dream that while Hollywood has outgrown it is still great to go back and remamber what the times were like. I will also say in the intervening 16 years since playing the original I do appreciate the value of a tighter and shorter gaming experience as I have less time available these days. 

The action set-pieces look even more incredible especially the battle to retake The White House, while the truly harrowing and ever-controversial "No Russian" level is even more disturbing than I remember. While I was critical of the amount of cinematic sequences (especially in light of a very short campaign), I have also since discovered the likes of cutscenes created by Hideo Kojima which make COD cutscenes seem like a minor QTEs by comparison.

Call of Duty has had some of the best sound in any videogame from explosions, vehicles, weapons and even the environment. I had forgotten about the A-grade voice talent recruited for this; among them Lance Henrickson, Keith David, Glenn Morshower,  Kevin McKidd, Craig Fairbrass, Barry Pepper and Will Arnett. Who I did not forget about however were the composers as the music score from Lorne Balfe was bookended by theme composer Hans Zimmer driving this project home as a truly cinematic action game. 

Final Verdict: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered is a short but enjoyable, highly curated cinematic-like experience that replaces the original only due to it's pixel-perfect art direction that brings 2020 visuals to a 2009 game.

Technicals: 6 hours playtime approx. using a Nvidia RTX5080 @ 3440x1440 with max settings on Windows 11 with upscaling.

Bugs: None

Availability: The pricing of the Call of Duty franchise suffers from a phenomenal level of greed from Activision, even following the Microsoft acquisition. A €24.99 pricetag placed on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered is on the more reasonable end but still difficult to justify for a roughly 6 hour campaign and no multiplayer. The game is strangely only available from Battle.net.

Call of Duty series (PC Only):

• Call of Duty [2003]
• Call of Duty: United Offensive [2004]
• Call of Duty 2 [2005]
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare [2007]
• Call of Duty: World at War [2008]
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 [2009]
• Call of Duty: Black Ops [2010]
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 [2011]
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II [2012]
• Call of Duty: Ghosts [2013]
• Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare [2014]
• Call of Duty: Black Ops III [2015]
• Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare [2016]
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered [2016]
• Call of Duty: WWII [2017]
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 [2018]
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare [2019]
• Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War [2020]
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered [2020]
• Call of Duty: Vanguard [2021]
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II [2022]
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III [2023]
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 [2024]
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 [2025]
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 [2026] 

Summer Gaming 2026 Part 3 - XIII (2003)

During periods of excessive temperatures I often play some games that don't cause the CPU or GPU to output excessive amounts of heat - and in turn are less of a danger to cause either component to overheat either. Rather than replays I do try to pick out a few from my huge backlog that I'd have likely picked up for free or for peanuts somewhere - this is Summer Gaming

Back in the late 1990's early 2000's when Ubisoft was a prolific and highly regarded developer they doubled down on producing some great games that became major franchises including Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell. One game stood out though because it wasn't under the Tom Clancy umbrella, instead a videogame adaptation of a popular Belgian graphic novel entitled XIII (Thirteen). It centred on an amnesiac special forces operator uncovering a deep conspiracy in the U.S. government all while trying to discover his identity and evade the authorities because he may have assassinated the President!

While not Tom Clancy, it certainly doesn’t seem too far from his genre but this FPS game had a uniqueness that distinguishes itself from most games - the characters and equipment are rendered with cel-shading in the Unreal 2 engine, resulting in a 2D animated and comic book style appearance. It was praised as it evoked the graphic novel source material and portrayals of violence were seen as innovative as blood splatters are shown in a cartoon manner with headshots often displaying three successive comic-book style panels to illustrate the bullet impact. This is probably one of the prime examples for the case that videogames are art. The art direction here is clearly a cut above with even some minute details catching the eye. 

XIII blends both action and stealth with an array of weapons and tools at your disposal from pistols, shotguns, automatic weapons, lock-pics and a grapnel. You could use other world objects like brooms and chairs as improvised weapons and even take hostages or as human shields. A nice touch was that you could 'hear' nearby enemies which made comic-book 'sounds' spelled out on screen.

Having an FPS shooter with a complex plot was relatively unheard of but this game kept the comic-book plot always at centre stage, comms, inner monologues, other characters talking, cutscenes all served to dive home the investigation, the revelations and the heart of the conspiracy. Big-name actors David Duchovny and the late Adam West provided exceptional characterisation to their roles. It's sadly a little bittersweet as the game only serves to recount the first five volumes of the graphic novel and while it has a natural end of sorts there's certainly a lot more but sequel plans didn't get made.

While the checkpoint save system which nullified the point of a manual save system, the didn't work incensed me personally, the true let-down of the game unfortunately accounts for far too a significant portion of the player base requirements was it's relatively bog-standard shooter gameplay. This did not reach the heights or innovation of other titles of the era and led to the game's lacklustre performance thus preventing sequels. Bizarrely though it had enough cult status to warrant a remake in 2020 but the less said about that disaster, the better.

Final Verdict: A piece of interactive art and gaming nostalgia for which there is little of it's like to be found today.

Technicals: 12 hours playtime through Steam using a Nvidia GTX980Ti @ 2550x1440 with max settings on Windows 11.

 

Bugs: The game would not initialise on my Ryzen 7 9800X3D/RTX5080 system, so I had to use my Intel Core i7-12700K/GTX980Ti PC. Additionally it required a number of fixes outlined in the PC Gaming Wiki page of the game to get working.

 

Availability: XIII (listed as XIII - Classic) is available for €12.99 on Steam or GOG. Do not get it mixed up with the remake XIII. Review copy purchased from from Fanatical for €2.39 in 2020.

Summer Gaming 2026 Part 2 - Loom (1990)

During periods of excessive temperatures I often play some games that don't cause the CPU or GPU to output excessive amounts of heat - and in turn are less of a danger to cause either component to overheat either. Rather than replays I do try to pick out a few from my huge backlog that I'd have likely picked up for free or for peanuts somewhere - this is Summer Gaming 

Loom is certainly one of the oldest games I never played in my backlog. Originally released by Lucasfilm Games (even before they became LucasArts) in 1990, it's is a more serious tale than the mostly humorous point & click adventure games the studio developed using the famous SCUMM engine.

The Game tells the story of Bobbin Threadbare a magical wizard known as a weaver who is is left alone on the small island of Loom. Possessed of his magical musical instrument he discovers his ability to weave arcane spells by playing notes and so sets out on his adventure.

Gameplay was exceedingly simple and actually took me a while to figure out due to some 36 years of game control evolution since release. The is seemingly one of the first games where you have an object, and when you select something in the environment you 'use' the object on it. In this case your object is your instrument and when you play it a certain way it activates the selected environment. You use the instrument to play a "draft" a 4-note tune which casts a spell such as "invisibility", "terror" or simply "open", other than walking or talking pretty much every other action is a spell. 

You learn new drafts and notes to play them as you progress and need to manually take note of the note sequence yourself. Interestingly the notes are randomised a little so they may be different on other playthroughs (this was also a form of copy protection for the game).

While the original game release on floppy disk, a 1992 version released on DC with a new music score featuring samples from the works of Tsiolkovsky and fully voiced dialog - naturally this is the version on digital platforms today.

Final Verdict: This is a short, non-violent and simple vintage game from a time where innovation was rampant. A must play for fans of adventure games, old DOS games, video-game historians, fans of LucasArts or just to play something different.

Technicals: 3 hours playtime approx through Amazon Luna (no changeable graphics settings)  on Windows 11.

 

Availability: Loom is available on its own for €5.89 on Steam or GOG. Review copy obtained free from Amazon Prime Gaming for the Amazon Luna platform.

Summer Gaming 2026 Part 1 - Rogue Warrior (2009)

During periods of excessive temperatures I often play some games that don't cause the CPU or GPU to output excessive amounts of heat - and in turn are less of a danger to cause either component to overheat either. Rather than replays I do try to pick out a few from my huge backlog that I'd have likely picked up for free or for peanuts somewhere - this is Summer Gaming

The first on the list is Rogue Warrior. This is actually lauded as one of the best "worst games of all time", a game adaptation of a series of fiction books written by the legendary Richard Marcinko, the US Navy commander who created S.E.A.L. Team Six and Red Cell.

Now with a Metacritic score below 30% and an average game publication rating of 1.5 out of 10 I knew it was going to be shit when I installed it. After spending a hour of downloading user-created fixes for the aged technology Rebellion used in 2009 and another hour actually playing the game I felt I couldn't put myself through the additional 3 hours it's suggested the game would need to play.

The graphics were not the worst of era to be fair and the gunplay was OK but the animations and the enemy AI were abysmal. The opening cutscene direction made Marcinko's highly trained ex-S.E.A.L.s look like extras from a 1970's comedy movie and then we had Mickey Rourke. 

Literally the only draw this game ever had was that you as Marcinko was voiced by Mickey Rourke, the year he won a Golden Globe and a BAFTA and was nominated for an Oscar! But here nearly every sentence in the limited script contained a variation of the word "fuck" to a point where it was hilariously out of place the first few times but would have prompted Quentin Tarantino to say it might have been to excessive.

Final Verdict: No. Just no. 

Technicals: 1 hours playtime through Steam using a Nvidia RTX5080 @ 3440x1440/175Hz with max settings on Windows 11.

 

Bugs: The vanilla installation is likely broken. The game requires several fixes and installed workarounds to emulate older DirectX components and frame syncing depending on your system hardware or experience within the game outlined on the PC Gaming Wiki page. Without these the game will stutter, randomly, show the desktop and/or not fit correctly to your screen be it 16:9 or 21:9.

 

Availability: Rogue Warrior is available for €4.99 on Steam which is a price I wholeheartedly do not recommend anyone pay for this unless like me you want to genuinely see how bad it is. Review copy purchased from from Fanatical for €1.24 in 2018.

First Play Review - BioShock 2 (2010)

 Note: This review is for the 2016 Remastered version of the game.

After reviewing the excellent original BioShock, the spiritual successor to System Shock marries Steampunk/Cyberpunk with biological elements creating a unique 'Biopunk' genre and that sets the tone and the overall design of the game's world - Rapture. In an interesting twist, in this sequel you play as Subject Delta, a Big Daddy, an armoured denizen of Rapture similar to those you fought in the original with the goal of escaping the underwater dystopia. As with the original you have an array of weapons and 'Plasmids' (powers) to aid you.

BioShock 2 had some pretty big shoes to fill considering the success of the original and it delivered in the gameplay. Your weapons are different to those in the original, more akin to being cobbled together from various bits of Rapture tech - and of course a mining drill! Rather than crafting your own ammo this time, you can buy it from vending machines using dollars you pick up along the way. Powers and abilities are drip fed to you over time but using 'Adam' - life force energy drained from Little Sisters or sea slugs, you interestingly you can purchase different powers of your choice as you progress and lightly customise your abilities as you see fit.

 

The biologically created powers Plasmids return, allowing you to burn, freeze or shock enemies or the environment. The pacing of the game with some quite vast levels however is certainly superior to the original. The difficulty of this game over BioShock was noted, or (I'm getting older). Overall while improvements such as those related to hacking Rapture's devices made the gameplay superior, there sadly was not any significant element which distinguishes itself from it's predecessor. You can still chose to harvest or free the Little Sisters after you eliminate their guardians which puts you on a sort of light or dark path just as Jack did in BioShock.

 

The original game's story is lauded as one of the best in gaming history in stark contrast to the fact that most FPS games aren't known for their story. Sadly BioShock 2 was always going to live in the shadow of the original in that regard. The story is still far superior than most FPS games, but when compared with it's progenitor it's sadly lacking.

 

The star of BioShock 2 I must say is still the series unique environment. There was no initial awe at discovering Rapture this time around, but more like going to somewhere familiar that is really as interesting as it was the first time. The lighting, texture detail, volumetric smoke and surface reflections of the 2016 remaster were not wasted on my top-of-the-line monitor 10 years later. Sound plays a very important part in the game from Garry Schyman's impeccable sore to the sounds made by Rapture's technology and denizens as well as a stellar voice cast including Juliet Landau (Buffy The Vampire Slayer), Armin Shimmerman and J.G. Hertzler (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) all returning from BioShock with some new additions in Michael Ensign (Ghostbusters & evey Berman-era Star Trek) and Yuri Lowenthal (Marvel's Spider-Man game ).

 

Final Verdict: BioShock 2 did not iterate very much over the original and provided nothing new, it was nonetheless a superior gameplay experience by far and well worth your time today.

 

Technicals: 14.3 hours playtime through Steam using a Nvidia RTX5080 @ 3440x1440/175Hz with max settings on Windows 11.

 

Bugs: The game requires an external mod called Luna to run on modern hardware in UltraWide resolution. Once this was installed I encountered no bugs/crashes but game saves were not synced to the cloud.

 

Availability: BioShock 2: Remastered is available on its own for €19.99 on Steam or GOG. Steam also offers BioShock: The Collection which has BioShock 1 & 2 Remastered and BioShock: Infinite and all DLC in one package.

 

Note that the 2010 edition of BioShock 2 is no longer available for sale, but a purchase of the 2016 remastered version (or collection) on Steam will have the original version also added to your game library.. Additionally if you own the original versions of BioShock or BioShock 2 on Steam, you have access to the remastered versions for free.

BioShock franchise

• BioShock (2007)
• BioShock: Challenge Rooms (2008)
• BioShock 2 (2010)
• BioShock 2: Minerva's Den (2010)
• BioShock: Industrial Revolution (2012)
•  BioShock Infinite (2013)
• Infinite: Clash in the Clouds (2013)
• Infinite: Burial at Sea Episode 1 (2013)
• Infinite: Burial at Sea Episode 2 (2014)
• BioShock Remastered (2016)
• BioShock 2 Remastered (2016)