The Man with No Time

The events of Batman: Arkham Asylum have had dramatic repercussions for Gotham City. With the asylum declared unfit for purpose, the city's slums have been segregated by giant walls and turned into a super-prison where criminals are free to roam. Various gangs have sprung up with allegiance to the main supervillains of the Batman mythos, and fight for control of Arkham City. Enter Bruce Wayne, who declares his opposition to the scheme only to be arrested and thrown into the mix. As Batman, he must try to find out what the prison's governor, Hugo Strange, is planning, discover what 'Protocol 10' entails, and thwart the plans of his arch-enemy, the Joker, who is fatally ill after his Titan formula overdose. Arkham City is the second entry in Rocksteady's Batman franchise, and builds on the hugely successful Arkham Asylum to create a larger, free-roaming, sandbox environment. All of the hallmarks of the first game are present and correct: the hard-hitting, viscera...

One of my goals for this year was to get more game reviews up on the blog. I very carefully didn't specify what type of games that would be though, and with my hobbies that leaves a lot of options! I've played a few new board games so far, but want to get in some more plays with them before I review them, so I'm going to start off with a video game review. Halo 4 is the most recent instalment in the Microsoft X-Box exclusive Halo franchise. Originally created by Bungie, the license was handed to 343 Industries after Bungie declared that they had reached the end of their plans for the series. The Halo games to date have mostly been first person shooters, and Halo 4 continues this trend, picking up the storyline of the games main character, the Master Chief, several years post-Halo 3. The box art for Halo 4. (Credit: en.wikipedia.com) I played through the original Halo on the PC, then played the second and third instalments co-operatively with my brother on t...

Computer and board games will be the subject for part 5 of the opening post series on this blog. Two posts in a day! Can you tell it's the weekend and I've got nothing to do? Computer games, once the hobby of only geeks such as myself, have become something of a mainstream pastime in recent years. A greater and greater percentage of the population are playing board games, as the generation that grew up with them continues to play on the new generation of consoles (PC gaming is another story). In my opinion this is a good thing. Board games, on the other hand, have almost gone in the other direction. The old scene of families sitting down to board games of an evening or at the weekend is, in my experience, in steady decline. Traditional boardgames, such as Monotony (sorry, Monopoly) and Scrabble are being usurped by 'German-style' games, and becoming more geeky in the process. Or possibly that's just the sense that I get from people I know, although recent game...

Welcome to my blog! Let me introduce myself. My name's David, I'm 24, and I'm a hobby-holic. I have far too many of them for the amount of time that I have. In fact I frequently hear the phrase "how do you find time to do all of that?" What's that old saying? If you want something done, give it to a busy person to do? That's me all over. I'm currently at the University of St Andrews, studying (hah!) for my PhD in astronomy; specifically, in the art of planet hunting. I'm a member of the WASP consortium, which is one of the biggest transiting planet searches around, and has members from universities around the UK. So far our tally of planets is up to 82, but it's increasing all of the time. I mostly enjoy my work. Life every job, and make no mistake, it is a full-time job (albeit one with a great deal more flexibility than most others), it has its ups and its downs. Around that job I have many, many hobbies, hence the name of the b...