June 23rd

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

Releases in Review

Let’s start things off this time around with some recent reviews on new, cool, gratifying, provocative things.

• Times & Galaxy: The Kotaku Review | Kotaku
  Willa Rowe plays a satirical journalism sim hot off the presses.
• Review: Destiny 2: The Final Shape | No Escape
  Kaile Hultner celebrates Bungie closing out the current arc of Destiny on a high note (curator’s note: Kaile works for CD).
• Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree DLC review | Eurogamer
  Alexis Ong has a (mostly) good time in an expansion that trusts the player a little less and hurts them a little more.

“I become fascinated with a lone helmet dangling off a stick beneath a waterfall as a bit of environmental storytelling, and I return repeatedly to the Cerulean Coast just because I think it’s pretty. I’m seriously thinking about re-speccing my Tarnished to a faith-focused build so I can play around with some of the new dragon incantations, which look genuinely cool. I do not think about going back to the final boss, but remain wary of narrative payoff one might expect after conquering that particular obstacle. I know in my heart that finishing Shadow of the Erdtree will be a very different, more joyful experience when I can play with functioning multiplayer, because navigating an open-world Souls game without that key component is the most pleasureless kind of masochism, which is extremely not for me. If you go back to that iconic anecdote about Miyazaki getting his car stuck in snow and having strangers help him, this is what Souls is all about – shared suffering, the community that rises up around it, and not having to freeze to death alone. I suspect that I may enjoy the DLC more when I reapproach it on my own terms, but it won’t change the underlying problems I feel in its bones.”

The Hot Goss

Now let’s move to a pair of short, topical selections that caught our attention.

• Why clicker game Banana — the ‘legal infinite money glitch’ — is going viral on Steam | Polygon
  Nicole Carpenter looks into a peculiar game (grift?) going viral on Steam.
• ‘The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom’ Makes A Playable Zelda More Than Just Another Link | Inverse
  Robin Bea is very much fine with seeing Princess Zelda take another path to protagonism.

“There are plenty of things in video games more interesting than hitting monsters with a sword. And even if Echoes of Wisdom is somehow using puzzles in an attempt to be more feminine — fine! Femininity is not, in fact, a lesser trait, nor are puzzle games inferior to action games.”

Design and Practice

Our next two picks explore how the design insights of yesteryear inform or could inform promising works tomorrow.

• LucasArts’ Loom is a family-friendly classic with lessons for today’s games | Eurogamer
  Ceridwen Millington looks back at the influence of LucasArts’ increasingly appreciated, under-appreciated adventure game.
• Some thoughts about Large and “Large” Games | cohost
  Kastel hearkens back to a design philosophy that doesn’t play its full hand, holds back a little mystery, and sometimes does more with less.

“I think Physically Large Games and the companies that make them today are forgetting that games can be towering in size, but it doesn’t matter if the “size” isn’t felt by the player. Just because a game takes up so much of my free space doesn’t mean it feels like a place I want to explore.”

What a Thrill

Here are a set of focused and rewarding critiques which use their games as starting points for cool new ideas.

• Persona 3: Reload and the Death of Anxiety | Gamequest
  Steve Dixon charts a path forward to living life.
• How Random Access Mayhem Reinvents the Killer Robot Trope | Videodame
  Xyla Adamantine Storm reflects on AI, agency, and accountability in an introspective action game.
• The Sex of Snake Eater’s CURE System | VGBees
  Moira Hicks offers a subversive approach to sexuality in MGS.

“Do men know this is sexy? Do men know that the the Survival Viewer is a JOI fantasy in which you force Snake to examine and handle the delicate opening of his situational cunt? Do they realize Snake is a girl, cautiously and fearfully self-penetrating? It’s obvious to me.”

Hindsight Insights

For our concluding section this issue, here is a collection of longer-form historical retrospectives centering key genres.

• Power Fantasies and the End of Arkane Austin | Remap
  Duncan Fyfe tells a story partly of a genre, partly of a studio, and of the underlying theme that guides both,
• Ode to Blue Skies: The Importance of the Flight Simulator | The History of How We Play
  Ethan Johnson documents the intertwined histories of flight sims and the cornerstone technologies and design philosophes of the games industry.
• From Infocom to 80 Days: An oral history of text games and interactive fiction | Ars Technica
  Anna Washenko chronicles the enduring power of words and choices on a screen through conversations with their pioneers and proponents.

“Interactive fiction no longer lurks in the shadows as a retro-gaming relic. It’s everywhere. I’ve highlighted just some of the work done by dedicated individuals who have helped the art form to reach this stage. But as with the best stories, the truth is more than the sum of its parts.”