Hello, my friends! Apologies for the late release of This Month in Let’s Plays. As it turns out, September was incredibly busy for me up until the last. Let’s jointly agree that my tardiness falls under the “good things comes to those who wait” category, shall we? Because I do have a great batch of Let’s Plays for you in this September edition of This Month in Let’s Plays.
This September, Castle Couch took a look at Beyond Eyes to point out that the game’s representation of blindness was infuriatingly limited, especially due to the game’s insistence on using traditional game puzzles, mechanics, and linear progression.
Chris Franklin of Errant Signal looked at Sim City this month to argue that the game never settles on what it’s big idea should be: it offers an online component in which players work side by side rather than collaboratively, but gives region specific goals that require collaborative effort. Additionally, the new customization options feel inconsequential and are actually more restricted than before.
Mark Brown, of the Game Maker’s Toolkit series, spends time with Super Mario Maker. Brown set out with the mission to create “good” levels that meshed with Nintendo’s design philosophy. To do this, Brown looks at a favorite level from each of the games incorporated into Super Mario Maker to address how it was built, how it challenges and surprises the player, and what ideas he could borrow for his own designs.
In a special edition of History Respawned, John Harney (a scholar of the Ming Dynasty) and Bob Whitaker LPed Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China on Twitch. Among other things, the two discuss the choice for a female protagonist. While one of the few ways for a woman of the Ming Dynasty to maintain agency would be to become a concubine, it was not a position one left, as we are told the protagonist in the game has.
Cameron Kunzelman and Danni started a LP series of Until Dawn early in September. The two intentionally avoided spoilers for the game adding that they didn’t even read the back of the box. The two quickly catch on to the game’s teen-horror genre before moving on to discuss it’s uncanny-valley graphics and terrible dialogue. More interesting though, are their discussions about the choices made while playing.
Continuing his analysis of Dead Space 2, Cee Marshall argues that while the game amplifies what worked in the first game, it’s a less effective and more disingenuous game as a result. Marshall goes on to argue that Dead Space 2 feels more like a game than did Dead Space and that comes down to the game’s partitioned levels and its “trainwreck” narrative, which turns Isaac into a contradiction.
Thanks for joining me for another month of quality Let’s Plays. Please send your submissions for October via Twitter using the hashtag #LetsPlayCD or via email!
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