July 2010
1 post
2 tags
Paul Goes To the National Gallery
I happened to be in London at the same time the National Gallery was running its ‘Close Examinations: Fakes, Mistakes and Discoveries’ exhibition. Thinking this beyond mere coincidence, I made a B-line straight for it.
As the name suggests, it’s a display of fakes, forgeries and otherwise doctored multichrome-paintillographic images, or ‘paintings’ for short; all...
March 2010
2 posts
The Chaplin Moustache
I saw Richard Herring’s Hitler Moustache last night at the Komedia, Brighton. It only served to strengthen my opinion that he is one of the best, most hard working and most underrated of Britain’s comedians. He hasn’t quite achieved the cult status of Stuart Lee, his erstwhile comedy partner, but in my humble op - he’s probably a little more important.
Now, I love...
Eve Offcuts
Behold! A couple of disembodied narratives I couldn’t find a place for in a recent piece about Eve Online. Cringe at these unworthy morsels:
My mining lasers punctured the silence of the empty asteroid field with their periodic clanging resonance, boring away at lumps of azure scordite. Not the most exciting past-time, slowly filling my cargo hold with minerals to process and sell on,...
February 2010
2 posts
Goodness!
The Gentleman’s Reticule is currently undergoing something of a change, the exciting extent of which is the doctored TGR Grouse photo above and what I am about to tell you.
As I now write for the lovely computer game related website Gaming Daily, I will be turning over TGR to more general musings.
From here on in, this blogamijig will include all kinds of creative offcuts and thinkings...
The Stalker Diaries
Within my review of Call of Pripyat for Gaming Daily I intended to sprinkle a few fictionalised diary entries of my stalkerly escapades. In the end I decided to play it straight and not include them; the poor deputy ed. was still baffled enough after my previous piece. Instead, I’ll dump them here and hope I won’t be too lazy to add more later on.
August 3rd 2012
Day 1
A few hours...
December 2009
2 posts
TGR has only just got around to: Mirror's Edge
Here’s a review of Mirror’s Edge, in the incredible off-chance that you haven’t yet played it or read a better review on Eurogamer or something.
Mirror’s Edge - somehow it effectively advertises toothpaste.
Mirror’s Edge, EA’s first-person, free-running FPS cum 3D platformer, can be a simple joy yet DICE do their merry best to overcomplicate it. On the...
OFP2:DR Mission Making Comp
OFP2’s island, Skira.
At the beginning of November Codemasters and Intel launched a mission-making competition for Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising in an apparent attempt to kick some life into the moribund and underwhelmed community while shamelessly pimping Intel’s I7 chips. OFP2:DR was a bit of a curious disappointment; it looked great and had loads of impressive little...
November 2009
5 posts
Gaming with the Braindead Masses - A L4D2 Grump
That coy little game I play with myself has just ended in what could best be described as a draw. It begins every time I want something I can’t really afford. I spend a few days with a sweaty resolve to be good and save my pennies while jigging like a squash-filled infant; then with a whimper I give in and guiltily splurge. It’s a merry dance, designed to pre-emptively punish my...
Zombie Snacks
Due to some unfortunate financial mismanagement (specifically, me getting a bit giddy and buying Modern Warfare 2 - I can’t even give the damn thing away as a Christmas present, thank you very much Steam), I am sorry to announce that The Gentleman’s Reticule has a deficit in its November games budget. The tragic consequence is that I haven’t been able to buy Left For Dead 2...
TGR has only just got around to: Sanitarium
While suffering side-effects of the fashionable swine-flu vaccine, I force my fevered brain to think up some words on a game from 1998 called Sanitarium.
Sanitarium is like those dreams you get when you’re coming down with the flu; it kind makes sense but is also peculiar and operating on some bizarre logic all of its own. For example, to complete an early section I had to save a town full...
Holding the Fort - thoughts on two lesser...
As the reverberations of Modern Warfare 2’s recent kersplosion gradually ebb away and we all warily get back on our feet, coloured grey from head to foot in commentarial debris but happy to be alive and heartened by the realisation that we are all, despite our many forms and colours, human and fundamentally the same like what happens at the end of Volcano; it is obvious that computer gaming...
Hello! And hearty welcomes indeed to The Gentleman’s Reticule, the Internet’s first ‘computerised gaming’ themed website. It’s certainly about time, isn’t it?
Not wishing to overshadow the release of Modern Warfare 2, I have kindly waited a week to begin filling these pages with delicious words like a literary patissier, cheerfully piping the contents of his...