T w e n t y S i d e d
Here is a nice surprise:
Arthur Humphrey, author of Virtual Villagers, stopped by and left a comment here. I wrote about the game here, here and here way back in early November.
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It was neat to know that my comments made it back to the author, and even better to get comments in return. It’s nice to know when game authors and designers read and respond to feedback. I know it isn’t always possible, but it is always appreciated.
One more thing to note is that Virtual Villagers is up for ‘Best Casual Sim' at Gamezebo. Cute Knight is also up for Best Strategy Game”, which is cool. Virtual Villagers and Cute Knight are both indie games, and it was nice to see them in the list. I’m going to reveal my elitist nature here and say that the other games have a certain… assembly-line feel to them. Many of them are clones of existing game types, or of each other. Some of them are sequels of clones of each other. This is not a bad thing, and many people play and love those games, but I really admire games like Virtual Villagers and Cute Knight, because they attempt to do something totally different. Those games are both more work and higher risk, so it’s good to see them doing well. I hope both of them grab some awards.
Side note: This is yet another poll that will allow games from different platforms to compete against one another. This still makes no sense to me, because the audience size is going to be different. I think Lumines is a fine game, but to my knowledge it’s a PSP-only title. This means it is at a great disadvantage in this poll and on this site, which looks to be aimed firmly at casual PC gamers.
Another note on the goofy poll: You must vote in each category? Hello? What if I didn’t play any of the listed games? Man, I’m beginning to suspect that these polls of fixed options which are voted on by random strangers on the internet might not be accurate or fair! I must be getting cynical.
The Dumbest Cutscene
This is it. This is the dumbest cutscene ever created for a AAA game. It's so bad it's simultaneously hilarious and painful. This is "The Room" of video game cutscenes.
The Witch Watch
My first REAL published book, about a guy who comes back from the dead due to a misunderstanding.
A Lack of Vision and Leadership
People fault EA for being greedy, but their real sin is just how terrible they are at it.
Fixing Match 3
For one of the most popular casual games in existence, Match 3 is actually really broken. Until one developer fixed it.
Joker's Last Laugh
Did you anticipate the big plot twist of Batman: Arkham City? Here's all the ways the game hid that secret from you while also rubbing your nose in it.
Lumines is also available for the Xbox 360.
I also don’t agree with the mandatory category votes, but I’d bet the poll designers think that uninformed votes would be random and therefore cancel each other out (when in fact there’s a bias to the top of the list as well as the most interesting names).
I tried the game out and liked it, so I decided to buy it to support the developers. Thanks Shamus!
Your first link should be to “726” instead of “723”. I was confused when I read it :-)
Noah: Whoops. Fixed.
Thanks.