November 3rd

Welcome back readers.

Kaile beat me to the punch this afternoon with our monthly Patreon-exclusive newsletter. If you like what we do and can spare a fiver, you should subscribe!

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

Cross-Cuts

This week we’re opening with pieces on adaptation and filmic techniques.

• immortality makes you an editor | a weapon to surpass blaming yourself or god while knee-deep in the dead
  Chuck Sebian-Lander pieces together Immortality‘s abridged, curated presentation of and meditation on editorship.
• Amazon’s Yakuza TV adaptation loses the games’ humor. Does it need it? | Polygon
  Ashley Schofield sizes up this straight take on the streets of Kamurocho as a suitable adaptation for the medium.

“There’s levity, but nothing too intense that it’ll take you out of the story. Being taken out of the narrative flow is much more acceptable in a game, where you can pause the story and mess around in Kamurocho at any time, than in a show, where you should be immersed for its whole run time.”

Paradigm Shifts

Next up we’re looking at two older RPGs that have both earned a fair amount of critical re/evaluation lately. As for me, I’ve played both but haven’t actually finished either! Goals.

• A Thousand Words on Final Fantasy XIII | No Escape
  Kaile Hultner sets the table for unpacking Final Fantasy XIII and its long critical tail (Kaile works for CD).
• Dragon Age Origins Wasn’t Just Horny–It Was About Sex | GameSpot
  Grace Benfell looks back on the original Dragon Age‘s flawed but committed examination of sex and all of its contexts.

“The encounter with the pirate Isabella is most emblematic of both the game’s successes and shortcomings. If you pass a persuasion check, you can sleep with Isabella to earn a subclass (yes, it’s all transactional). Other party members can join you. It’s not as if there aren’t a few big games that feature group sex–you can have a foursome with drow twins in Baldur’s Gate 3 after all–but there are fewer where the exact configuration of the encounter depends not just on whether the player character and their partner are game, but on a chain reaction of character psychology and choices. For example, If Alistair and Leliana have been “hardened” by the outcomes of their personal quests, they’ll join in. If not, they won’t. Isabella will always ask Zevran to participate, regardless of his romantic status with the player. He’ll happily oblige… unless Alistair is there, like a bitter bisexual rejecting the advances of a couple at a bar. This moment is better conceptually than in practice, funnier and stranger to read about than to experience. But it also reflects a deeper thinking about each character’s sexual ethics and how it relates to every other character.”

New Angles

Our next two selections are a matter of perspective–literally, ideologically–when it comes to how we frame the universe and our place withn it.

• Dead Space’s Insanity Signal and the Fermi Paradox | Gamers with Glasses
  Spencer Johnson unspools the slippage between identity and existence at the core of the Dead Space series.
• Glimpsing the World’s True Scale | Unwinnable
  Rory Hoeschen muses on fleas, Cocoon, and micro and macrocosmos.

“In its own way, Cocoon is recreating the feeling Micrographia must have elicited nearly 400 years ago, the feeling of suddenly understanding that there is more within the universe than you will ever know, that your existence is nothing in the face of its infinite detail, that “some parts of it are too large to be comprehended, and some too little to be perceived.””

Sync in Progress

In six-plus years as senior curator, I’ve never had a reason to use the Copyright Law tag (which did in fact already exist in our backend) for a grouping until today! But that is indeed a vital thread that runs through these next two pieces.

• iPod fans evade Apple’s DRM to preserve 54 lost clickwheel-era games | Ars Technica
  Kyle Orland documents the effort to break down the walled garden.
• Jump-scared by Copyright in Spooky’s Jump Scare Mansion | Gamers with Glasses
  Samantha Trzinski explores a cute (?) indie horror title’s metatextual approach to both genre conventions and contemporaries.

“Spooky’s Jump Scare Mansion is similar to these fan games in that it pays homage to its predecessors while also creating something undeniably new. It is rife with clear references to previous horror games, and it builds upon their characters and tropes to bring them to a new light. The game shamelessly alludes to horror classics, including big names like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, and indie titles such as Five Nights at Freddy’s and IMSCARED. Had its copyright battle been with any of these games’ production studios, it would, perhaps, have made more sense. Questions surrounding the limits of fair use when it comes to adaptation and allusion persist, making fan games a murky territory in terms of legal protection for creators.”

TerrorGrafx-16

A few more horror-themed picks as we saunter our way out of Halloween.

• Alien Crush: Flipper-flicking fun | Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster
  Kimimi returns to one of the most sickos niche genres to ever do it–PC Engine pinball.
• Slitterhead review | PC Gamer
  Abbie Stone checks out an action horror game that isn’t very scary but is some relentlessly dumb fun.
• Unspoken | Resident Anna
  Anna C. Webster unpacks the appropriative implications of Until Dawn‘s use of Algonquin folklore in the creation of its primary villains.

“the issue arises that if the team themselves are not Native, but are utilizing a facet of Native folklore in order to develop (and most importantly: profit) a video game, at what point do developers play a role in the ongoing colonization of Native people? At what point do we as White video game developers need to consider if we are the Washingtons on that mountain?”

Critical Chaser

Really liked the piece we’re closing out the week with. I won’t spoil this one with a pullquote.

• Even When You’re Not Playing | Cleveland Review of Books
  Mason Hamberlin charts a four-dimensional topography of writing about games (content notification for brief mention of suicide).