Stacey Knowles

Writer of video game news and reviews.

Scotland, UK

If now Stacey could speak to fourteen-year-old Stacey, do you know what wisdom would be imparted? "Don't waste your life exploring video games. Go and find out how to become a billionaire." Fourteen-year-old Stacey would have ignored now Stacey, obviously, and gone back to playing Elite on the Commodore 64. This is a true story.

Stacey Knowles

Writer of video game news and reviews.

Scotland, UK

Elgato Stream Deck – Hardware Review
If you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years, or just aren’t that plugged into video game culture beyond the games themselves, streaming might be new to you. On the face of it, watching someone else play a video game seems close to pointless, but if that were the case, eSports wouldn’t be the rapidly-expanding multi-million-dollar industry that it is.
LucidSound LS-30 Universal Gaming Headset Review
LucidSound are a brand new company with a mission statement that includes the line ‘providing gamers with the ultimate experience in sound by creating high-end audio products.’. The ultimate experience. Sounds pretty uppity from a new company until you understand the pedigree of the people behind the name.
FRU Review
We write this review with more than a little wistfulness in our words, for FRU is an example of what could have been, should have been… Much has been written about Kinect, its mandatory status (quickly reversed) blamed for the high launch price and weak sales. The peripheral itself is now almost an embarrassment to the Xbox brand, and the new Xbox One S doesn’t even have a dedicated Kinect port.
Inside Review
There is something inescapably creepy going on in Inside‘s world. It’s a largely monochrome landscape, save for a splash of red here and there and, once, a golden sunset, but for all the aesthetic similarities this is a different beast from Playdead’s Limbo. That might not be immediately apparent.
Deep Dive: Xbox Play Anywhere
In this series of semi-regular features we take a closer look at new and upcoming features for Xbox, and speculate on what they might mean for the console and the brand. At their E3 2016 briefing, Microsoft announced a handful of new features coming to Xbox, but in the glitz and glamour of the City of Angels detail was, predictably, light.
Videogame Nation not renewed
In a disappointing announcement, Ginx TV has confirmed that next week’s episode of Videogame Nation (#VGN) will be the last, as the Saturday morning TV show has not been renewed. Born in part from the ashes of Thank You For Playing – a brilliant concept to bring TV and other mediums together to explore video games – Videogame Nation was the TV programme that so many of us had dreamed of for years.
Modern Warfare Trilogy could be the last straw
Every now and then there’s an announcement by a major publisher that catches us by surprise – and not in a good way. We try all sorts of mental gymnastics to justify that publisher’s actions as a positive for the gamer but sometimes we’re just left with a vague sense of bafflement and a perplexed, “Huh?”.
You Died: The Dark Souls Companion Review
Dark Souls is part of gaming’s collective consciousness. A creation of the old school; tough, unforgiving, and enigmatic. It was described, by journalist Keza MacDonald, as “a brutal and demanding third-person action-RPG set in a world full of monstrous, disturbing things that are trying their hardest to end your life as quickly as possible” in the first ever internet review back in 2011.
A day in the life of Phil Spencer
It’s five a.m. and a visibly nervous Claptrap rumbles towards a slumbering Phil Spencer. Claptrap flashes his single, large-lensed eye, slowly. He hates waking Phil. But that’s his job. He pulls himself together and charges his speaker. “Directive one: Protect humanity! Directive two: Obey Jack at all costs.
Top Five turn-based games on Xbox One
We all need to slow down a little. Take time out of our hectic schedules to ponder our decisions, rather than plunging headlong without pause for thought. Turn based games allow us to sit back and take a breath, consider all the options before making a decision. There might be a timer to keep things from stalling completely, but even so they still offer a different gaming experience.
Why we all need to grow up and embrace the future
Today’s Xbox One is a far cry from the always-online Xbox One of the disastrous launch event – an event orchestrated by financiers and business people rather than games people, it seemed. In an effort to win back the fans the pendulum swung back and rapid changes were made. Many of these were for the best.
The Videogame Comparison
Every now and then someone outside our hobby compares video games to some other art form – usually to indicate that the piece they are critiquing has fallen short in some way. For example, Aussie teen-fiction author Garth Nix took to Twitter to express his disappointment in The Hobbit movie using that very same comparison.

About

Stacey Knowles

Amazingly, prone to intermittent fits of unexplained optimism. Lived alone and liked it so much he bought the company. Wouldn't mind being a little less clever and a little more handsome.

Arranges words into painstakingly grammatically correct order for a living.

Likes: Sunshine, TV, couch, cats, games.

Dislikes: Rain, people, arranging words into painstakingly grammatically correct order.

Is old enough and ugly enough to have no truck with the sexism, racism, transphobia and homophobia of the vocal minority within our hobby.

Make love, not console war.

#ILHIMH