T w e n t y S i d e d
The tenth Stolen Pixels is now up. It’s about Assassin’s Creed. Tell your friends.
Stolen Pixels #10:
Wishlist
I have created an Amazon Wishlist. If you’re one of the people who has offered to buy me a game recently because you want to see my review, then read on.
EDIT: Okay. You can stop now. I expected this is be some low-key thing. I thought I might get one or maybe two if someone was feeling generous. Maybe a game would show up every odd month or so. I just checked the page and I have six games on the way. Thanks so much to those who pitched in. I wasn’t expecting this kind of response.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Wishlist”
The REAL Rogues
The following is about the most incestuous link I’ve ever put up:
Fellow blogger Jay Barnson (who was one of the participants in my XFire Aftermath series) has a great article titled Going Rogue over at The Escapist (where I publish my Stolen Pixels comic) and in that article Jay interviews Steven Peeler, the guy behind Depths of Peril, which I reviewed back in June.
If you’re having trouble following all that, I might suggest making a flowchart. Another option is to simply give up on the previous train wreck of a paragraph and move onto the next one, which I promise will be far more lucid:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The REAL Rogues”
Videogames as Toasters
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.
The Survival of Survival Horror
Thanks so much to Double Helix Games for the changes they’re making to the Silent Hill franchise. I’m so glad that the main character in SH5 is going to be “a war veteran” and that “combat in the game will take into account Alex’s experience as a soldier”. Finally. I’m sure everyone agrees that the biggest problem with survival horror games is that the main characters didn’t kick enough ass. Perhaps next time around they can make him a space marine in power armor and give him the BFG 9000. Maybe put in a vehicle section where he can pilot a hovertank along with a wisecracking and flirtatious female sidekick. Oh! Oh! And Pyramid Head could be “re-imagined” as a 20 meter cyborg hunter-killer.
WARNING: The Surgeon General has determined that the preceding paragraph contains toxic levels of sarcasm. If exposed, flush eyes and go read something upbeat and heartwarming.
Actually, saying the main character is a soldier doesn’t have to be a deal-breaker, but in the case of Double Helix I suspect they’re just missing the zombie-stomping point. Their other major project was called Harker, which was a re-imagining of the vampire hunter Johnathan Harker, with a focus on making him “much more efficient and courageous”, which is another way of saying, “more like all the other videogame protagonists we’re trying to mimic”. We already have more than enough square-jawed ex-military heroes and brooding mystic ass-kickers in videogames, but it’s frustrating when the character concept is both cliché and it undermines the point of the game. (i.e. being frightened.)
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Survival of Survival Horror”
Mirror’s Edge
Everyone has been shrugging their shoulders at what is being hailed as a tepid and underwhelming E3. Partly because the press-only setting subdued the show, but also because there just isn’t much unexpected coming out of the sequel industry this year.
But one game has caught my eye. Now, I almost never bother with previews on this site unless doing so contributes to my ongoing thesis that the gaming industry is going to hell in a handbasket, most game journalists are shallow children, publishers are clueless giants, etc, etc, ad nauseam, and then some. So I want you to understand how amazing it is that a game has broken through the storm clouds of perpetual cynicism to warm my blackened heart. I haven’t been this intrigued since the first time I saw Portal, so I hope you’ll indulge me this moment of unbridled enthusiasm.
Mirror’s Edge is about the worst idea I’ve ever heard: A first person game of platform jumping. Even more amazing than the sheer lunacy of the concept is the fact that it looks like they’re making it work.
Understand that I find this footage to be almost hypnotic in nature. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mirror’s Edge”
Stolen Pixels #9:
A Server Is a Way of Life
The images used in today’s Stolen Pixels comic were originally supposed to be a completely different joke. I got together with my fellow guildmates and we shot an elaborate sequence where two players were talking, then a third joined them, then he left and a forth person came along.
As I tried to put the sequence together, I noticed that we forgot to take off our guild tabards. We were supposed to be strangers, and here we were, all dressed alike. I’m not sure how many people would have noticed, but I was worried it would just confuse the joke.
(The thrust of the joke was a surreal conversation designed to make fun of people with preposterous names on roleplaying servers. The idea was that they met a guy named (say) “Buttmaster”, but he was really roleplaying that name.)
The joke was also a bit long and crowded. (I was so spoiled by the limitless space in DMotR.) So I dumped the idea and used one of the screenshots to make today’s strip about different WoW servers.
That’s enough WoW strips for a bit. I have more, but I think we’ll take a break from them before the whole thing turns into a WoW comic.
From The Archives:
Pixel City Dev Blog
An attempt to make a good looking cityscape with nothing but simple tricks and a few rectangles of light.
Chainmail Bikini
A horrible, railroading, stupid, contrived, and painfully ill-conceived roleplaying campaign. All in good fun.
The Mistakes DOOM Didn't Make
How did this game avoid all the usual stupidity that ruins remakes of classic titles?
Trekrospective
A look back at Star Trek, from the Original Series to the Abrams Reboot.
Black Desert Online
This Korean title would be the greatest MMO ever made if not for the horrendous monetization system. And the embarrassing translation. And the terrible progression. And the developer's general apathy towards its western audience.
Are Lootboxes Gambling?
Obviously they are. Right? Actually, is this another one of those sneaky hard-to-define things?
Philosophy of Moderation
The comments on most sites are a sewer of hate, because we're moderating with the wrong goals in mind.
The Plot-Driven Door
You know how videogames sometimes do that thing where it's preposterously hard to go through a simple door? This one is really bad.
Trusting the System
How do you know the rules of the game are what the game claims? More importantly, how do the DEVELOPERS know?
This is Why We Can’t Have Short Criticism
Here's how this site grew from short essays to novel-length quasi-analytical retrospectives.