Gaming

Videogames have been a major hobby of mine since a very early age, and I’ve owned a system from most of the big names at some point in time. I’m currently gaming on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and PC, and you can find me on a number of stat-tracking services. Occasionally, I stream gameplay to YouTube.

What do I play?

I consider myself to have a fairly wide-ranging taste in games. My favourite genre is probably Action/Adventure (the Uncharted series, Days Gone, inFAMOUS, Tomb Raider etc.), followed by Survival Horror (Resident Evil, Dead Space), and then FPS games (Killzone, Resistance, Battlefield, Medal of Honor). Racing games also tend to be quite high on my list, with Gran Turismo, DriveClub, and Project Cars among my favourites. And I mustn’t forget others like Ratchet & Clank or Jak & Daxter, either. Other than that, I also enjoy some of the more ‘unusual’ games like EyePet, Heavy Rain and so on.

Gaming Style Profile
Quantic Foundry Gamer Type Profile
“Bounty Hunter / Slayer”
Click for details

I’m not generally a fan of sports games, other than football – I used to buy FIFA or Pro Evo every year, depending on which I considered to be the best at the time; these days I only tend to play it with a friend, using his copy. I’m also not keen on most strategy games, and developed a strong dislike of RPG games after playing Final Fantasy VII on the original PlayStation. Having said that, I loved Fallout 3, and Horizon: Zero Dawn is one of my favourite games… so perhaps it’s better to say I dislike Japanese RPGs – they’re just a little too bizarre for me.

Although I have a lot of great memories of the 8/16-bit era, I’m not a big fan of the current trend of ‘retro-style’ games. I put this down to having grown up during a time when that ‘style’ was all we had as it was imposed by hardware limitations, and longing for a time when they’d be ‘better’… and now that they are, I find it difficult to go back. I’m not a “graphics whore” by any stretch of the imagination (I don’t care about having the highest frame-rates and resolutions), but I just find the style too ugly to enjoy these days. I have emulators for my two favourite retro systems (Commodore 64 and Amiga), but I rarely use them, as the games never live up to my rose-tinted memories.

What I really love these days are games with a good story, and I generally prefer a lengthy single-player campaign to online multi-player. If I’m going to play online, I much prefer co-operative play to competitive.

Fan or Fanboy?

You’ll have noticed a lot of PlayStation exclusive titles listed above, and I will readily admit that I do have a strong preference for Sony’s consoles. That’s not out of any particular loyalty to Sony (though I do like their stuff), but more due to the fact that – for my tastes – they have always provided the better exclusive games.

That said, have a look at my gaming history, and you’ll see that I’ve not been averse to buying other consoles. It all depends on whether I think they’ll get enough use to justify the cost. After all, gaming isn’t a cheap hobby.

So, fan or fanboy? You’ll have to decide for yourself. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a preference, nothing more. As I always say: A fanboy likes a system because he owns it; a fan owns a system because he likes it.