Author: Philippa W

  • Five things you might find yourself saying in DotA 2

    The voice of experience.

  • Bored? Game! – Ticket to Ride

    As a collective of passionate gamers, we at Ready Up have decided it’s time to come clean: we’ve been cheating on our string of gorgeous digital love interests with a succession of cardboard floozies and it’s been going on for YEARS. Yep, Borderlands 2, XCOM, Guild Wars 2 – we let ourselves be seduced away…

  • Faster Than Light: A Tale Of Space, Courage And Replicants

    Stardate: 20 September “New crewmate Geryk died almost instantly. He hadn’t made any friends yet.” That was the latest news bulletin from fellow Faster Than Light commander, Captain Duncan of the SS Olofshjöld over our Gchat comms channel. We had both been tasked by the game to attempt a journey to the far reaches of…

  • 10 Lies I Have Told Because Of Games

    Gaming makes liars of us all. Especially me. And probably you. Here are some of the biggest gaming lies I have told – you can either empathise or use them to make yourself look better by comparison – I don’t mind which… 1.  “I can play and listen at the same time – you have…

  • Five Excellent Home Improvements For Minecraft

    Given that everyone in the whole world has downloaded some form of Minecraft in the last few years, I’m going to share my top five real estate development tips so you can make your cubed abode super cool. The criteria for selection in this list was simple: it must increase the theoretical resale value of…

  • Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition

    A close friend has been trying to get me into Minecraft since it debuted (in beta form) on the PC back in 2009. Sadly, I am cursed with the dexterity of a drunken walnut and so the mouse and keyboard interface meant I gave up relatively early on, unable to immerse myself in the cubed…

  • Questions about Mass Effect 3 (or “Why did Garrus stop calling?”)

    Dear BioWare *pause to allow anyone who isn’t a couple of hours into Mass Effect 3 to close their browser* I have a few questions. 1. Why is Commander Philbert Shepard no longer allowed to sport a disfiguring facial scar? It gave her character an air of danger and a whiff of backstory. According to…

  • Why I Killed That Judgemental Mudcrab In Skyrim

    I killed a mudcrab in Skyrim. You probably worked that out from the title. I killed some four legged creature – I think it was a deer – in Oblivion a few years ago too. And what do these apparently unconnected acts of animal cruelty have in common? I firmly believe that in both cases…

  • Lord of Souls and I

    My wait for Skyrim’s release just a few weeks back was made even longer by an unexpected trip abroad. While preparing my suitcase for the windy winter weather of November in Russia, I chucked Lord of Souls into my suitcase for a spot of light reading on the plane. For those of you not in…

  • The three types of gaming malaise

    I am suffering from gaming malaise. In my experience there are three types of gaming malaise. The first is particularly common in the summer period; the gaming doldrums while the studios play down the clock until the release dates for their big Christmas hitters. Pretty straightforward — it’s a case of nothing substantial to play and nothing on the…