Novelty is difficult to find in AAA videogames. The prevalence of a few major game engines has led to a standard toolbox of mechanics which are combined like building blocks and then given marketing-friendly art direction in order to ensure that production times are shortened and player expectations are never irritated. The moment I tried […]
This is just a tribute
Videogames are more than code on a disk; subject matter is a major ingredient in providing interpretive possibilities for gameplay. Themes and motifs uniquely mingle with art styles and music and then combine with systems and mechanics to create novel experiences inside games. The words we use to describe these elements have a historical, cultural, […]
FromSoftware occupies a unique position in their territory which reflects a consistently renewed legacy that has earned a footnote in the history of game design. The conventions discovered in the foundational Dark Souls series and their successful reorganization in Bloodborne cast the critical shadow which blankets the entire “soulsborne” genre and comprises the prism through which we decide if […]
Disclaimer: As of the publishing of this review, I’ve played Octopath Traveler for ~50 hours and have completed twenty of the thirty-two chapters it contains. The Japanese role-playing game constitutes a central building block in the evolution of videogame design: their cultural prime most influential when home gaming consoles were first finding their foothold in American homes. […]
Echoing through the corners of the videogame obsessed social media landscape is a familiar proclamation: “I’ll be waiting until it comes to Switch,” or the bygone equivalent, “I’m still holding out for a Vita version.” These expressions exhibit a strong preference within a community of gamers to withhold their experience with a particular title until […]
Our comprehension of a contemporary videogame’s impact is bound by the achievement of games which came before. This collective portfolio of past work is the center of our critical understanding, and every new release is judged against the previous in order to understand its individual content. The greatest of the form emerge in contrast to […]
My best friend and I share a hilariously terrifying feeling that spawned from the Disney documentary Oceans. Under the immense weight of miles of water above it was a shrimp whose entire life was darkness. Aimlessly eating across the ocean-floor, a bioluminescent squid identifies it as prey and approaches with a black and white strobe light […]