Welcome to your Sunday reservoir of interesting writing about video games. Grab your reading jacket, a cup of coffee and get ready to exercise the brain.
EDGE: Brütal Legend: A Love Story Chris Dahlen examines Double Fine’s deft characterisation of Ophelia as the emotional fulcrum of Brütal Legend.
Fidgit: Tim Schafer on the finer points of nudity, heavy metal, and Brütal Legend Tom Chick chats in-depth with Tim Schafer. ‘Nuff said.
Flash of Steel: Decade Feature: 2000 – Sacrifice Troy Goodfellow revisits the strange and uncomfortable strategy of Shiny’s excellent Sacrifice.
GameCritics: Sans ethics and damn fun? Sega’s Madworld and House of the Dead Overkill Matthew Kaplan debates whether the “stupefying satisfaction” of a dumb action game can be as valuable as one that is worthy and enlightens.
Vorpal Bunny Ranch: Raydians: Persons of Color Denis Farr reveals a parable of race relations at the heart of bright and breezy de Blob.
Was GLaDOS, the artificial intelligence in 2007′s critically acclaimed Portal, in fact a game designer? And if so, what does our relationship to the computer, and its abuse of our trust, say about the other games we play?
Welcome to your Sunday reservoir of interesting writing about video games. Grab your reading jacket, a cup of coffee and get ready to exercise the brain.
Above 49: Instancing Emotion Nels Anderson acknowleges the emotional pull that fosters camaraderie in Left 4 Dead and ensures its co-operative play works.
Gamasutra: Kill Polygon, Kill: Violence, Psychology, and Video Games Michael Thomsen examines why we enjoy video game violence and the abstraction of war.
Groping The Elephant: The fallacy of choice Justin Keverne asserts that the lack of player choice in Uncharted 2 is one of its chief strengths.
Magical Wasteland: The Way to a Man’s Heart Matthew Burns chews upon the many ways in which food appears in games, as mechanic, metaphor and collectible.
RedKingsDream: IKEA, and the logic of videogame design Daniel Golding discovers the link between furniture showroom layout and level design flow.
Welcome to your Sunday reservoir of interesting writing about video games. Grab your reading jacket, a cup of coffee and get ready to exercise the brain.
Critical Distance: Critical Compilation: Grand Theft Auto IV Michael Clarkson finds the common threads running through the wealth of – yes – critical writing about Rockstar’s return to Liberty City.
Experience Points: Dead Ends Jorge Albor reasons why we ought to pay attention when a game permanently kills off a playable character. Part two of the series can be found here.
Gamer Limit: In Defence of Grand Theft Auto IV James O’Connor examines the way Niko makes you feel guilt in this very personal response to GTA IV.
PopMatters: Asserting Femininity in Super Metroid LB Jeffries highlights how Super Metroid resonates with maternal metaphors and banishes any idea of Samus’ androgyny.
Red Kings Dream: Arkham Asylum and the space of traumatic memory Daniel Golding suggests there’s a moment in Arkham Asylum where Batman’s trauma becomes our own.
Welcome to your Sunday reservoir of interesting writing about video games. Grab your reading jacket, a cup of coffee and get ready to exercise the brain.
Battle Klaxon: The People Power Of Valkyria Chronicles Quintin Smith celebrates the humanity at the heart of SEGA’s wonderful game of tactical combat.
Big Apple, 3AM: Introducing a Little Anarchy Michel McBride-Charpentier raises a great point about the stealth in Batman in terms of improvisation and intentionality.
Discount Thoughts: Touch the void Michael Clarkson scales the heights of Cursed Mountain in this terrific critical reading of the Wii-exclusive survival horror.
EDGE: Death Of The Author Clint Hocking, Chet Faliszek and Ragnar Tørnquist get together to chat about the future of narrative and story-telling in games.
Eurogamer: Off the Map Quintin Smith (again!) tours some of gaming’s finest anti-levels, each designed to be as confusing, confronting and confounding as possible.
Welcome to your Sunday reservoir of interesting writing about video games. Grab your reading jacket, a cup of coffee and get ready to exercise the brain.
GameSetWatch: Challenge and Storytelling The always excellent Emily Short examines the ways in which gameplay challenge can inform the way in which a game’s narrative is told and lending it greater meaning.
Game Career Guide: The Lost Art of Conversation in Games Oluf Pedersen asks the fascinating question “Do developers of computer games overlook the single most important method of communication in human history?”
Magical Wasteland: Braid: Forever is Composed of Nows I hope you’re not sick of reading about Braid. And I’m glad Matthew Burns isn’t sick of writing about Braid.
EDGE: The Making of Deus Ex Years old EDGE retrospective finally makes the journey from print to online. Still just as relevant though, in part because Warren Spector and Harvey Smith offer great insight but mainly because no one has made a game like Deus Ex since.
Rock, Paper, Shotgun: The Five-Year Spree Epic retelling of Jim Rossignol’s half-decade spent inside EVE Online. Parts two and three are now up, too.
Who reads instruction manuals any more? These days even the most complex console game arrives with just a 16-page booklet. Increasingly, we rely on in-game tutorials, and the two modes of learning they promote both have their benefits — and drawbacks.
Welcome to your Sunday reservoir of interesting writing about video games. Grab your reading jacket, a cup of coffee and get ready to exercise the brain.
BLDGBLOG: Procedural Destruction and the Algorithmic Fiction of the City Jim Rossignol ponders the art and implication of procedurally generated virtual cityscapes.
Eurogamer: Retrospective: Planescape Torment Dan Griliopoulos remembers a previous life where he played through the greatest PC RPG of all time.
Experience Points: The Sound of Horror Jorge Albor digests how games like Dead Space and Silent Hill infect your imagination through their aural atmosphere.
NOWGamer: The Seeds Of Romance gamesTM feature republished online examines the design challenges of portraying believable and interactive relationships.
The Quixotic Engineer: Mechanics, Dynamics & Aesthetics Matthew Gallant gets deep in design theory to outline the inverse perspective between player and designer.
Mass Effect is a sophisticated, acclaimed video game. It took uninformed flak for its sex scene, which gamers defended as a mature portrayal of the act. But it’s really no better than the depiction of sex in any other game.
