I have created an Amazon Wishlist. If you’re one of the people who has offered to buy me a game recently because you want to see my review, then read on.
If you’re having trouble following all that, I might suggest making a flowchart. Another option is to simply give up on the previous train wreck of a paragraph and move onto the next one, which I promise will be far more lucid:
While writing my earlier post on survival horror, I found Chris’s Survival Horror Quest, which has reviews of a lot of survival horror games, most of which I’ve never even heard of. (It also reminded me of ObsCure, which I had meant to pick up ages ago, but then forgot. I haven’t seen it in stores since. Hopefully I can still find it online.)
Anyway, that site has a great pair of articles on videogames-As-Products. The first talks about the overly clinical method of reviewing games that most sites and magazines use, as if they were reviewing a purely mechanical product. Reviews seem to talk about the technical aspects of a game and never get around to the more subjective parts of the experience.
The second article goes into more detail and compares the reviews of the various forms of Resident Evil (Movies, games, soundtrack.) It also talks about how the high price of videogames makes them more of an investment, as opposed to “disposable entertainment”. (And this isn’t even taking into account the outrageous prices in Australia. $100 for a game? I get angry just thinking about it.) He also mentions the heedless pursuit of graphics spectacle, which is of course one of my favorite hobby horses.
Both are excellent and worth a read. The sort of thing that makes me say, “I wish I’d written that.”
Also worth noting is the article on the “Otherworld” version of Silent Hill. And also…
Ah crap. This is going to be one of those websites that just eats time until I’ve finished reading the whole thing.
Thanks so much to Double Helix Games for the changes they’re making to the Silent Hill franchise. I’m so glad that the main character in SH5 is going to be “a war veteran” and that “combat in the game will take into account Alex’s experience as a soldier”. Finally. I’m sure everyone agrees that the biggest problem with survival horror games is that the main characters didn’t kick enough ass. Perhaps next time around they can make him a space marine in power armor and give him the BFG 9000. Maybe put in a vehicle section where he can pilot a hovertank along with a wisecracking and flirtatious female sidekick. Oh! Oh! And Pyramid Head could be “re-imagined” as a 20 meter cyborg hunter-killer.
WARNING: The Surgeon General has determined that the preceding paragraph contains toxic levels of sarcasm. If exposed, flush eyes and go read something upbeat and heartwarming.
Everyone has been shrugging their shoulders at what is being hailed as a tepid and underwhelming E3. Partly because the press-only setting subdued the show, but also because there just isn’t much unexpected coming out of the sequel industry this year.
But one game has caught my eye. Now, I almost never bother with previews on this site unless doing so contributes to my ongoing thesis that the gaming industry is going to hell in a handbasket, most game journalists are shallow children, publishers are clueless giants, etc, etc, ad nauseam, and then some. So I want you to understand how amazing it is that a game has broken through the storm clouds of perpetual cynicism to warm my blackened heart. I haven’t been this intrigued since the first time I saw Portal, so I hope you’ll indulge me this moment of unbridled enthusiasm.
Mirror’s Edge is about the worst idea I’ve ever heard: A first person game of platform jumping. Even more amazing than the sheer lunacy of the concept is the fact that it looks like they’re making it work.
Understand that I find this footage to be almost hypnotic in nature. (more…)
The images used in today’s Stolen Pixels comic were originally supposed to be a completely different joke. I got together with my fellow guildmates and we shot an elaborate sequence where two players were talking, then a third joined them, then he left and a forth person came along.
As I tried to put the sequence together, I noticed that we forgot to take off our guild tabards. We were supposed to be strangers, and here we were, all dressed alike. I’m not sure how many people would have noticed, but I was worried it would just confuse the joke.
(The thrust of the joke was a surreal conversation designed to make fun of people with preposterous names on roleplaying servers. The idea was that they met a guy named (say) “Buttmaster”, but he was really roleplaying that name.)
The joke was also a bit long and crowded. (I was so spoiled by the limitless space in DMotR.) So I dumped the idea and used one of the screenshots to make today’s strip about different WoW servers.
That’s enough WoW strips for a bit. I have more, but I think we’ll take a break from them before the whole thing turns into a WoW comic.
When Oblivion came out, my poor little computer couldn’t handle it. With the help of Oldblivion I eventually managed to stagger through to the end of the game. I later upgraded, and went through the game again with acceptable framerates, although only if I had the visuals turned down to “eye-gouging ugly”. Now here I am with a brand new graphics card that can handle Oblivion with a nice framerate and all the fancy visuals turned up. But of course I’m done with Oblivion. Time to find another RPG.
Brace yourself, because I’m about to be very mean to the game everyone seems to love so much. Mellow out, listen to some new age music. Do whatever you have to do to keep from freaking out. If you just can’t bear seeing The Witcher take a few roundhouse kicks to its pasty wrinkled face then you’d best look away. Maybe go read my comic instead. It’s about World of Warcraft, and nobody cares when I abuse that thing.
46 comments? This post wasn't even all that interesting.
45 comments? This post wasn't even all that interesting.
There are 70 comments here. I really hope you like reading.
34 comments. It's getting crowded in here.
159. There are now n+1 comments, where n is a ridiculous number.