Star Wars: Squadrons is a dream game. It plays like a modern X-Wing vs Tie Fighter and that’s exactly what I wanted. In VR the sense of sitting in a space fighter cockpit is arresting. Being able to track targets naturally as you dogfight is a huge improvement to the “chase the targeting arrow” gameplay that playing a space sim on a monitor usually ends up with.

I came across the GC-Loader while browsing the Gamecube subreddit for some cheap nostalgia thrills. It’s a little daughter board for the Gamecube that replaces the disk drive and allows you to boot directly from an SD card. This makes running homebrew incredibly easy and unlike modchips the PNP version doesn’t even require any soldering. I was actually up for a bit of soldering but given this is my first time modding a console the easier the setup the better.

A few months ago I noticed that Destiny 2 had gone free to play and boy have I fallen for that trap. It is sublime, Bungie really knows how to make an engaging video game and Destiny 2 absolutely nails much of what made the Halo series so engaging.

Superuser on the Geek News Radio discord (which should already be in your podcatcher) got Megaslippers to post one of these lists and it sounded like fun. I tried to stick to games I played in the year they were released but there are a few exceptions like the years where I didn't know what a Nintendo was.

I can’t think of a better year for video game releases this decade and these are my favourite 5 of the year. I’m not being super strict on release dates. I tend to buy games a few months after release to take advantage of sales, so there are a couple of games here that are from the last half of 2016 and one which is a re-release. They are however all games I played this year.

It's the end of the year and I thought I would do the traditional blog series running through the culture I've enjoyed and the technology I've used. So over the next few weeks I'll be writing up my thoughts on the this years games, films and music.

Transistor is a stunning video game, the music is perfect, the combat is engaging and the art direction is magical. Supergiant have now made two of my favourite video games. Bastion is 'A New Hope' and Transistor is The Empire Strikes Back. Although that doesn't bode well for their third game Pyre. It starts with a murder and deals with love, loss and sacrifice. I have tried to avoid talking about the plot in the post but forewarning there may be spoilers.

A common assertion about Eve is that it is a game about spreadsheets. That isn't strictly true as Eve, like most games, is database with a fancy graphics engine. But there is a way to turn Eve into a spreadsheet simulator and that's to try margin trading.