Trailer Park: Pixels and Piracy

I like weeks like this one, where there's a strange mix of all different types of film trailers. There's fantasy and sci-fi and horror and comedy and even a biopic, of all things. Some of it looks great - some of it looks bloody terrible. There's something for everyone!

Click on the giant glowing Pac-Man to take a look at our eclectic picks.

Hex Picks: Game Villains

With Mondays on this blog now occupied by the new Trailer Park feature, I'm shunting our weekly Hex Picks back into the Tuesday slot they were in last year. They're still a Monday thing over on Hex Dimension, of course - they'll just be appearing here on NerdTech a day later.

This week's picks continue villain month, as we choose our favourite villains in gaming. David and I - as seems to have become our tradition - unknowingly wrote about the exact same game again. Because of course we did. Luckily we both managed to pick different characters so, to find out which single game has two equally great villains, click the pic below.

Hex Picks: Games we want for Christmas

I've really been hitting the indie-games on Steam this year. I mentioned one of them last month, but this month's Christmas recommendations gave me the chance to talk about my favourite discovery of this year - a gem of a series that I really hope people will check out.

To see which retro adventure series it is that I'm talking about, and to find out which (slightly less indie) choices the others made, point-and-click the link below!

Hex Picks: Most Recent Game

I'm really enjoying this themeless month of recommendations, because it's forcing us to write about things that would normally get overlooked. Case in point: a small-scale Steam game snatched up in a weekly sale. There's no way any of us would have singled this out for our pick in a normal week, but today it gets a chance to shine!

To find out which game in particular (hint: it's the only one in the pic that you've never heard of) click the link below!

Hex Picks: Horror Games

I was pleasently surprised by the team's choices this week. So often computer games just stick horrible-looking monsters in front of you and call it horror - but it's the uniquely immersive nature of games that actually makes them scary. That's what all of us seemed drawn to write about, so there's some great picks in here. I particularly love David's game, which isn't usually classed as horror but has exactly that kind of atmosphere to it.

As well as this week's decidedly creepy recommendations (which you can read by clicking the image below) there's also Hex's Hallowe'en givaway, the deadline for which continues to approach with the slow inevitability of a zombie hoard...

Pile of Shame: DotA 2

Hopefully you're aware of Pile of Shame - it's one of the regular weekly features over at Hex Dimension, and it's a really great idea. Basically it's a look at the games you've owned for ages but never got around to playing. It's been running for a while, but I've never played any games that qualify... until now.

DotA2 (it stands for Defense of the Ancients) is probably the world's biggest electronic-sport - a game where two teams battle it out for supremacy on a fixed playing field. But, more to the point, it's free, which means I've had it for ages but never actually risked the humiliation of playing it. That changed last week, as I finally dipped my toes into the world of online multiplayer.

You can read about all my n00bish DotA adventures right here, and you can enter Hex's current competition to win a free novel here! It's a busy week!

Hex Picks: Crime Games

When you think of games that fit the theme "Crime and Punishment" you think of stuff like GTA or Driver, right? What you don't think of is point-and-click adventure games. Yet here we are, with a list mostly made up of exactly that!

Click here to find out which adventure games in particular made our list. Why not sign up for our weekly newsletter too, so you never miss out.

Hex Picks: Romantic Games

Yesterday on Hex, as well as launching our new weekly Doctor Who feature, we continued with this month's theme of romantic recommendations. We've covered books and movies, so this week was games, and we ended up with a collection of games both obvious and unexpected - there's one super-obvious choice in there, but not for the obvious reason. Also, I love what they did with the title.

It's good, is what I'm saying, so get over there and take a look!

Hex Picks: Sci-Fi Month

It's recommendation time again! This month, Hex Dimension tried something new and had a constant theme running through all our picks. The theme for July was science-fiction (we are a geek website, after all) and it resulted in a bunch of great suggestions, ranging from hardcore cyberpunk to whacky space-fantasy.

As always, we started with books, moved on to films, then games, and wrapped up this week with comics. Hopefully you'll check them all out and discover some hidden sci-fi gems! Unfortunately, I missed the deadline for that final post (by a mere half-hour, I swear) and my recommended comic didn't make the cut. I do still want to share it with you, though, so I've decided to post it here on NerdTech instead:


Girl Genius - Phil and Kaja Foglio

All this month, for our sci-fi recommendations, I've been trying to pick examples of real, hard sci-fi rather than that namby-pamby soft stuff. But I've been racking my brains for a similarly hardcore comic and, shamefully, I don't think I've read any! So today I'm going completely the other way.

Kaja and Phil Foglio's ongoing webcomic Girl Genius is about as soft and unrealistic as it's possible for sci-fi to be. Because this is not a comic about science; it's a comic about MAD science. Girl Genius takes the age-old idea of the mad scientist and spins it in a unique direction: what if all scientists were mad? What if the use and understanding of science required (and also caused) a certain level of insanity? What would that world be like?

The answer, of course, is "very very silly". This is a world of giant clockwork men, steampunk spider-tanks, airship cities, unstable time-machines, frankinsteinian abominations, and an alarming number of death-rays. But that's all just texture - this sci-fi nonsense is fun, but the substance lies in some great characters and relationships, and there's some pretty complex political intrigue too.

The art can be a little messy and confusing at times, and the story often throws things rapidly and haphazardly together, possibly just to see what works - but the chaos actually suits Girl Genius perfectly. It's a mad experiment performed by crazy people, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But hey, that's SCIENCE!

Hex Picks: RPGs

No, I've not finished my Edge of Tomorrow review. Not very professional, I know, but I'm currently living at my aunt's house as I scout for a flat and get ready to start a new job. It's fun and exciting - but not ideal for writing.

Still time for a quick recommendation, though! This week Hex Dimension focused on what's probably my favourite gaming genre: the mighty RPG. I wrote about my all-time favourite, but somehow managed to write almost nothing about the game itself. It got personal and weird. Still worth a read, though, 'cos there's some fantastic games on the list.

Don't forget - you can sign up for Hex's weekly newsletter if you don't want to miss out on some great, nerdy stuff!

Hex Picks: Movie tie-in Games

I promised that I'd start updating this blog more regularly with Hex Dimension stuff and, just to prove it, here's one now.

This week's recommendations were for our favourite movie tie-in games. Unfortunately I couldn't think of any so, with the deadline looming, I just wrote something about how I couldn't think of any.

Yes, I'm a fraud and a cheat! And you can read all about it right here.

Hex Demented

So, it finally happened. After managing to write a couple of normal, reasoned pieces for the Hex Dimension, I've slipped back into my old ways and written a couple of preposterous rambling essays too. It barely took a month!

The first of these is a review of Sanctum 2 - but it's also a comment on the Wii-U and asymmetric gaming - but it's also a treatise on gaming as an aspect of marriage! It sounds pretty stupid and it probably is, but it's still less rediculous than my second piece, which is a review of a film that doesn't even exist. It's basically Spider-Man fan-fiction. You should read it!

In slightly less demented news, we're continuing our weekly recommendations. Here's some of our favourite comics and books and, if you want to see me completely embarass myself, you can also read my defense of Michael Bay in this week's action movie picks.

Thats it I'm afraid. Just realised this is the first post in a month. I'll try to be more thorough from now on and link to every Hex piece when it goes up, rather than three weeks later. Next up is a piece on Agents of SHIELD and, as always, you can subscribe for more.

A Few Minor Updates

Hello everyone, I'm back!
Just wanted to throw a quick update out there before I get properly back into things. Hex Dimension have got a lot of cool stuff going on at the moment, and I wanted to highlight some of it.

First up is our new recommendation features. Every week the team get together and each write something about the stuff we've been watching, reading or playing. For me, with my notoriously low writing-speed and tendancy to go on a bit, these bitesized recommendations are a godsend, and I'm having a lot of fun with them.
You can check out the first three posts here: dealing with books, films and games respectively. I've written stuff for two of those, but I'm not gonna tell you which.

The other thing I wanted to talk about is the new Hex Dimension newsletter. Now you can keep up-to-date with all the site's best content in one handy weekly email! There really is some awesome stuff on this site, and I hope you'll check it out.
For your regular helping of deep-fried geek, you can sign up right here.

That's it for Hex-related stuff, but I'm sure there's something else I wanted to mention. What was it? Hmm. I think it was something pretty major...

Oh well, I'm sure it'll come back to me.