Welcome back readers.

We’re back at it with thirteen new selections this week for your reading pleasure, so tuck in and let’s get rolling!

This Week in Videogame Blogging is a roundup highlighting the most important critical writing on games from the past seven days.

RE-Makes

I haven’t read up on the latest Resident Evil 4 game in the much-beloved Resident Evil 4 series just yet, but its success does speak back to ongoing conversations about the industry’s current love affair with remakes in general, with three picks of varying perspectives brought together here to open the issue.

“These additions work well for the new era of Dead Space: The Prestige Game, and the inevitable glut of Dead Space sequel remakes that will follow in its footsteps. But they also forsake the original’s ambiguity—a quietness and desolation that lent this macabre tale a sense of creeping unease—in favour of cohesion and completeness.”

Now In Service

Next up we have two different perspectives on long running service games, united in some ways by an interest in the construction of player communities.

“Lightfall isn’t Destiny 2’s best expansion. I don’t know what caused its story problems, and I don’t know what it is that burns people out so hard in Destiny 2. But as of now, I’m willing to take Bungie at its word that the expansion was meant to be an entryway to a full year of interesting seasonal stories leading up to The Final Shape.”

History Lessons

Don’t mind me turning into a pile of dust over here at the thought of the Xbox 360 as an “historical” console.

“As we celebrate the 30th anniversary of Myst this year, Inverse presents an oral history of Cyan Worlds according to the visionaries who made Myst, Riven, Uru, and Obduction — as well as new glimpses at some of their forthcoming games.”

Genre Provocations

Lots of cool parallels between these next two selections–both are about retro (or retro-style) Japanese games–but the linkage I’m focusing on here is the ways in which both of them test the bounds of their respective genres in productive ways.

“Elemental Gearbolt’s an admirable game. It’s not interested in conforming to any rules, behaving itself, or making you feel comfortable—it only wants to see its imaginative idea through to completion. I’m still not convinced this was the best way to tell the complex web of tragedy that unfolds across the game’s six stages, but in many ways this “mismatched” approach only makes it feel even more like a wonderful half-remembered dream.”

Play Logs

Next up, a collection of firsthand play reflections bringing together different games and critical prerogatives.

“Pentiment is the kind of game that gets glowing reviews by English major journalists who adore the fact that they finally get to combine their passions. It is also a game that is quite annoying to play. But you should be assured its annoyances are shortcomings of design, not story.”

Critical Chaser

The “M” in E1M1 stands for Myst, actually.

“When the devs emailed me about their game, as devs, studios, and publishers often do, there was no long winded press release, no fake friendly PR speak, no fancy gifs. Just ‘we made Myst into an FPS because we thought it was funny’. And I mean, it is – Myst was designed around the idea that games could be more than arcadey killing simulators, so to go back and turn it into one after everyone has forgotten it is a good gag. But it’s also a fine piece of art.”


Subscribe

Critical Distance is community-supported. Our readers support us from as little as one dollar a month. Would you consider joining them?

Contribute

Have you read, seen, heard or otherwise experienced something new that made you think about games differently? Send it in!

Tags from the story
, , , , ,