Bold and Dashing

Gaming in style

  • DRAFTS FROM THE PAST: Revisiting the middle managers of evil in smelly underpants

    DRAFTS FROM THE PAST: Revisiting the middle managers of evil in smelly underpants

    I had a lot of old drafts that I for various reasons never actually published. Some of them probably because they were shit. Some of them just cause I never got round to editing them. I’ve picked a few that I thought had some merit. They are hopelessly out-of-date but they still made chuckle/think. Enjoy.

    Should have been published: 2021

    A lot of people are familiar with – at least the concept of – rage quitting and uninstalling. But I suspect a fair few also know about disgust quitting and uninstalling. Not disgust with the game but with oneself.

    A game has sunk it’s teeth into you and made you sideline all other aspects of life: friends, family, exercise, personal hygiene, changes of clothes. It’s all about the game. And then, at some point, you wake up and smell yourself, get up, shower, find the last cleanish pair of underwear and leave the game, never to look back.

    There is nothing wrong with the game – it’s not (necessarily) an addictive game by design – but it’s tainted by association with how you played it and related to it. And so, you quit.

    For me, the original Baldur’s Gate was that game. I don’t remember much about the week or two I spent locked in my apartment, but what I do recall is a very warm August, wearing nothing but underwear, eating junk food and being hunched over a hunky turn-of-the-century laptop with a struggling fan and a tiny screen. It wasn’t pretty.

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  • DRAFTS FROM THE PAST: Slowrunner

    DRAFTS FROM THE PAST: Slowrunner

    I had a lot of old drafts that I for various reasons never actually published. Some of them probably because they were shit. Some of them just cause I never got round to editing them. I’ve picked a few that I thought had some merit. They are hopelessly out-of-date but they still made chuckle/think. Enjoy.

    Should have been published: 2021

    Snowrunner has taught me three big capital-t Truths

    • The solution to a problem is never to get angry.
    • The solution to a problem is rarely to put on blinders and double down on what has proven not to work.
    • The solution to a problem is often to accept that the way forward is to double back and try another way. Even when the end goal seems within easy reach.

    [2026 note: I wish. I absolutely haven’t learned any of those things yet.]

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  • DRAFTS FROM THE PAST: Can you sit down?

    DRAFTS FROM THE PAST: Can you sit down?

    I had a lot of old drafts that I for various reasons never actually published. Some of them probably because they were shit. Some of them just cause I never got round to editing them. I’ve picked a few that I thought had some merit. They are hopelessly out-of-date but they still made chuckle/think. Enjoy.

    Should have been published: 2019

    Can you pet the dog? a recent Twitter account started asking games and games developers. In a similar vein I want to ask: Can you sit down?

    Doom (2016): Nope. No, you cannot sit down.

    Games are about doing. Unless you are sitting in a cockpit or a driver’s seat, doing tends to require standing and moving. The originator of “Can you pet the dog?” asks for a broader range of gameplay verbs, ways to interact with the world, things to do. Actions that are not means to an end – shooting in order to kill, driving to get to the goal, talking to get answers – but just pleasing in and of themselves. Sitting down is similar but also different. It’s not really about gameplay verbs in a traditional sense.

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  • DRAFTS FROM THE PAST: Catalysis

    DRAFTS FROM THE PAST: Catalysis

    I had a lot of old drafts that I for various reasons never actually published. Some of them probably because they were shit. Some of them just cause I never got round to editing them. I’ve picked a few that I thought had some merit. They are hopelessly out-of-date but they still made chuckle/think. Enjoy.

    Should have been published: 2021

    Things are kicking off off screen. I see flashes of light and hear gunfire and punches being thrown. I do the universal sign for ‘nothing to do with me’ – whistling softly, drumming fingers against each other, staring intently at the bookshelf in front of me – and grin to myself as the Mission Accomplished sign flashes on the screen.

    Streets of Rogue is an immersive sim and it allows for a role which too often gets too little love, that of the catalyst. Chemical reactions mostly involve reagents, substances that are consumed in the reaction to form new substances. Like oxygen and carbon forming carbon dioxide in a combustion reaction. Catalysts are different in that they are needed for a reaction to start but not consumed themselves. Wikipedia says “Catalysts are not consumed in the catalyzed reaction hence they are unchanged after the reaction”.

    Most games are about changing things and put you at the center as a or the agent of change. Most stealth-centric games allow you use subterfuge of various kinds – costumes, misdirection, etc – to put the blame (because there’s always blame) on others. But they still require you to push the button yourself. Hitman is the classic example: Pretend to be someone else, misuse that position, then go back to being ‘yourself’. Someone else gets the blame for the mess, but you had to enact it yourself.

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  • DRAFTS FROM THE PAST: To finish

    DRAFTS FROM THE PAST: To finish

    I had a lot of old drafts that I for various reasons never actually published. Some of them probably because they were shit. Some of them just cause I never got round to editing them. I’ve picked a few that I thought had some merit. They are hopelessly out-of-date but they still made chuckle/think. Enjoy.

    Should have been published: 2020

    “Is the right rear flat?”

    It’s an innocent seeming question but inside our little Ford Escort Mk II, making it’s way through Finnish forests, it feels loaded beyond carrying capacity. My DiRT Rally NPC co-driver has asked the question once already. He knows the answer because the game has fed him the information, no asking required, 100% guaranteed. And if he needed any clues: my erratic, swerving driving has gone markedly up in erraticity and swervingness since I hit that ditch at full speed.

    So why phrase it like a question? Hell, why do I even phrase it as a question; I know why he is asking, rather than telling. It’s the oldest passive-agressive relationship trick in the book: You want the other guy to say it himself. Admit the fuck-up. Swallow the turd. This awful situation we are in, together, right now, yeah? It’s your fault, and I want to hear you say it out loud. We’ve been in this car together for a couple of hours all told. It feels like years.

    “YES!!! Yes, it’s f***king flat, you f**king p***k!”, I shout into my living room, immediately hoping the nice, elderly couple upstairs are still at church.

    For the sake of my sanity, I stop the car and accept the 1½ minute penalty for fixing the rear right. As I slowly gain speed, the game informs me drily that I’m now 4+ minutes behind the lead time.

    My co-driver calls out a crest ahead, maybe.

    Whenever Carly Rae Jepsen ends a sentence with a maybe, it’s an invitation to imagine a future stretching out ahead. This feels like a perverted version. Yes, we have just met, yes the other boys are chasing me and yes, we’re in each other’s way. Stare holding, check. Hard to look right at you, check.

    “To finish”, he says. The tone is leaden. Is it an invitation or a statement?

  • DRAFTS FROM THE PAST: Hades is the Supergiant game for people who don’t like Supergiant games

    DRAFTS FROM THE PAST: Hades is the Supergiant game for people who don’t like Supergiant games

    I had a lot of old drafts that I for various reasons never actually published. Some of them probably because they were shit. Some of them just cause I never got round to editing them. I’ve picked a few that I thought had some merit. They are hopelessly out-of-date but they still made chuckle/think. Enjoy.

    Should have been published: 2021

    In my last a previous post I objected to the phrasing “Hades is the rogueli(k/t)e for people who don’t like rogueli(t/k)es” . So what could be more appropriate today than introducing another equally odious dictum, only slightly less cliché:

    “Hades is the Supergiant game for people who don’t like Supergiant games,” says Bold and Dashing. I am pretty sure that hasn’t been done by anyone else and to boot, I think it’s actually more informative and relevant than RFPWDLR. and I will try to earn my stupid dictum a little better than the RFPWDLR crowd.

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  • Not now, not ever

    Not now, not ever

    You know that nag that so many godawful services employ nowadays? Would you like enable [insert upselling scam]? Be it Siri, OneDrive, or some other form of data sharing with big tech. The thing that bugs me the most is how somebody somewhere – may their soul burn in Hell forever and ever – found out that you get more sales by not allowing the user to say ‘No’.

    Instead you can just evade the proposition temporarily. ‘Not now’. ‘Maybe later’. ‘Let me think about it’. It’s the slow wearing down of resistance. It’s the refusal to take no for an answer. It’s incredibly disrespectful. It’s f***ing evil.

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