Japanese RPGs used to be a lot more controversial. Or maybe it was just because I was a teenager during the genre’s heyday — you know, when Final Fantasy games flew off shelves, when hours of CG cutscenes featuring teary-eyed androgynes were considered breathtaking rather than tiresome — and teenagers like to argue about things on the internet a lot more than people my age can stomach.
I think I know part of the reason Chrono Cross is less acknowledged than its predecessor, Chrono Trigger. It’s because it’s a sequel in spirit only, keeping some conceptual commonalities and a sparse few plot ones.
Nathan Drake has recently purchased a new MacBook, after talking to several of his friends about it for several weeks. He has done more discussing the MacBook than he has actually using it, and secretly he enjoys causing the icons to sort of ‘pop’ along the bar at the bottom of the screen more than he enjoys operating the various applications that have come with his new Apple experience.
Kotaku columnist Leigh Alexander has put together a funny collection of “Stuff Gamers Say” over at the mumbling/entertaining/frustrating online magazine Thought Catalog. Top points for “Time to Crate” reference.
2011 was yet another good year for video games, but on its face it was a little predictable.
For a relaxing time, sit back and watch this terrific PBS short documentary on the artistic merits of video games. The video runs only about seven minutes, and features NYU’s Eric Zimmerman, game designer and researcher Jesper Juul, Kotaku contributor and secret nerdcore superstar Leigh Alexander, and Babycastles curator and designer Syed Salahuddin.
