Tuesday 19 August 2008

The Problem with Mass Effect



When i first made this, it was quite timely, and the idea was to launch this blog with a bunch of little youtube vids. My crippling laziness foiled that plan.

I couldn't find any cheap 70's SF footage of people going into a mine/bunker/freighter/green space caravan thing with exactly the same floorplan each time over and over again ad infinitum, otherwise that would be in there too.

Scattering some crates about in different places isn't enough to fool me Bioware!

Monday 18 August 2008

Starboard Fusion Chamber Online

Hello, welcome to Breach in Starboard fusion chamber, a science fiction gaming blog. There must be a gabazillion and one gaming blogs and news sites on the web these days, but the idea behind this one is the glorious symbiosis of science fiction and gaming, a scifi gaming blog then, driven by the apparent lack of such a beast already existing on the net. There may well be other blogs focusing on the same topic, and I’d love to hear about them if you know of such a thing, but I’ll be attempting to fill the apparent gap and will hopefully be creating the sort of blog I was looking for to start with.

Traditionally the computer games and science fiction markets have always overlapped somewhat. Things are changing, now games are moving ever further into the mainstream, there’s an IKEA expansion pack for the growingly de-spiriting Sims 2, there are Wii games about boiling eggs and we now live in an insane future-gone-mad world where a set of digital bathroom scales leads the gaming vanguard in the 21st century. Brunner and Gibson never warned us about this! In short, the world of the video game is no longer the oasis of Sci-Fi themes it once was. That is not to say there are less Sci-Fi games being made, it’s simply that there are more and more games about other things to wade through. In other mediums, film being the obvious example, this gives rise to the specialist Sci-Fi magazines such as SFX or Starburst. The idea here at starboard fusion is the same. Imagine an issue of SFX, but instead of games being allocated a pitiful half-a-page every issue; Sci-Fi games become the magazines primary focus.

So, what superheated gaming gases will the chamber be venting into your aghast face over the coming weeks? Well I have already had literally, some ideas. Perhaps most naturally, there is to be as exhaustive coverage of new science fiction games as I can manage. I suspect this will take the traditional format of news/rumours and slightly more informed previews.

There are also plans for slightly more formalised hands on reviews. I’ll be looking across all platforms, a policy hampered only slightly by my current lack of PS3 (Contributions are welcome, reviews or a free ps3 ;) ). A few words about the plans for these reviews, they aren’t going to be exactly like other reviews, with a far stronger focus on the science fiction aspects themselves. What all that means, I will leave to be elaborated upon later (when i’ve made it up)

Retrospectively, gaming already boasts an impressive canon of original science fiction material. In addition to that, games have always been tied to the larger world of Sci-Fi via the dark phenomenon known as the licensed tie in. And I doubt we’ll be able to totally avoid that pain. Beyond that, there are no hard and fast rules, but there are plans, plans within plans...

Thanks for sticking with this little introduction, dull as it is. The plan is to post regularly, and to gradually build up the site as I go. It’s a bit early to say much more, but hopefully things should start to become self-explanatory.

Have cataclysmic reactor failure free day

Reb.