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.
Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.
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