So yeah, I’m sure you’ve heard. Portal 2 has begun making its slow glorious trek into existence, speaking kind, enticing words and releasing ambrosia from its very pores. You may have noticed that a lot of people are clamouring wildly over its new concepts, its cooperative play, its FANCY NEW JUNGLE. And yeah, I’m one of those people, quite shamelessly, with only one glaring reservation. Continue reading
Regrettably I wasn’t around last weekend, so I didn’t have time for my usual malarkey. In lieu of this, I have devised a plan, one so cunning that I couldn’t have even thought of it myself. Ladies and gentlemen, it is time for SHAMELESS PODCAST PLUG #1. Sounds like my bangin’ Portal 2 pun will have to wait a bit. Continue reading
In that mysterious epiphanous, hour of the morning in which logic stays in bed, and sensibility takes the midnight train going anywhere, I was struck by a second thought, or more so an illusion. See, somewhere in the deep folds of the night, my mind was convinced that it heard the distant, haunting sound of a horn somewhat reminiscent of Half Life 2, and in a single, bizarre tangential leap, my mind instantly crossed into the territory of the emotional impact of sound. Continue reading
In Shadow of the Colossus you know nothing. Tabula Rasa, blank slate. You enter a mysterious , foreboding yet familiar world tasked blindly with only bringing about the end of the 16 Colossi in vain hope that the princess may awaken from her eternal slumber. What do the colossi represent? They’re merely there – innocuous contours in the landscape, their actions determinate of yours. The world, there for your interpretation and contemplation – the fate of the colossi, completely unknown. So what if we do so slay the colossi? What if we exert our unsubstantiated prejudices upon these megalithic testaments to our misunderstandings? Continue reading
I’ve been thinking recently about the kind of games that I think I would make well, and the thought of genre specificity continued to float to the top. I don’t play as many RPGs as a lot of my friends, although I have had some exposure to some of them, more notably RPGs set in the first person, and this got me thinking. What would happen if a designer approached a game they intended to make with no prior knowledge of the genre or subject matter? Continue reading
Okay, so I promised myself that I would wait until next week to write about this, but I’m in a writing mood. Take advantage of that.
Twas a dark and stormy night, last moon and I was awakened from my slumber. My eyes opened wide, my mind on the moon, the night as dark as umbra.
That moment I, rose up on my might and abscond my domain. In a fit of grief, the monster grew and weaved through the rain. Continue reading
Why hello there dear Droogs.
It is apparent that I am now in year 12, and writing a massive analysis every week is somewhat draining when it comes to writing a massive analysis for everything else, so this is what I’ve devised. In all of my audacity, I’m going to attempt condensing my ideas into a couple of paragraphs whilst maintaining a familiar air of entertainment and intrigue, ALRIGHT? Who knows, this might even prove a more effective formula for sharing my crazy ideas with you smart and sassy folk. So without any further deliberation or digression let’s get this show on the road.
This thought has been rattling around in my infernal brain machine for some time, and surprisingly not just as a side effect of playing far too many games that have arbitrary moral choices that end as you become an ethereal spirit of light, or Satan with a hangover. However, since this is a games blog-type-thing, it does deserve some exploration.
Quality bad endings have been something that have never really caught on, at least not in the majority of mainstream cinema. It’s something that, whenever brought up, people will react with distaste and argue that they would be disappointed if a movie didn’t end in a rainshower of roses and sunshine, and this pisses me off. It’s really a matter of institutionalisation through passive influence – a sequence of expectations and results that have been ingrained into our being through extensive exposure to the Hollywood Machine. See, Hollywood in itself has become the definition of high production value and satisfaction, so it comes as no surprise that when they tell you to bark like a chicken, you goddamn well better. Continue reading
As dedicated gamers, we’ve always cherished the experiences that we know the developers not only made for our enjoyment, but made because they had a deep connection to their work. There have always been bad games, but it seems that with the emergence of the popularity of games, there were a lot fewer developers working on titles that meant a lot more to them. Even publishers as such as EA were keen to allow developers to put their own flavour into commissioned games, allowing the experience of the developers to flow into their projects. But times have changed, and somewhere along the line, the unrelenting maw of the publisher has grown hungrier for profit than ever, driving an odd trend through the industry. Games have now become disposable items. Continue reading
I was trying to think of something ubiquitous to related this experience to in order to establish understanding. First I thought of learning to ride a bike, but that’s too straightforward; a very point and shoot learning process, then I thought about it like learning to play the guitar. For all of you out there who have done so, you know that it’s a very modular, very procedural process. You learn to play a chord, then you learn to put it all together into a song. Chances are that song will sound rubbish because you’ve learnt barely anything, however there is still much to learn which will enable you to reach greater heights. Continue reading
