This Week in Videogame Blogging

February 9th

by

Welcome back readers.

Apologies for my absense last week. I caught a nasty strain of flu, and I think having it right after a bout of COVID made it a nastier experience still. Owing to that, this week’s issue is extra-long–29 picks, to be precise!

These longer issues are quite a bit more work to put together, so I make no apologies for inviting you to kick a few bucks our way, if you support our mission and have the resources to do so. If you haven’t already, you can check Zach’s update on our finances.

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

Civilization VII

Our first few sections on this catch-up week each focus on recent noteworthy games, with a pair of articles to account for each. We’re leading with Civ 7.

“It’s hard not to resign myself to powerlessness in the face of severe catastrophes that seem to appear out of nowhere. But persevering in the face of disaster usually means making it out to the other side, eventually. Remember that the potential for change can work both ways. The civilization that makes it out of a crisis often won’t look anything like the one that went in.”

Metaphor: ReFantazio

Next up, let’s talk about the Atlus RPG that made waves late last year.

“If you enjoy playing RPGs, Studio Zero’s Metaphor is a highly competent title. This essay was a mere critical exercise examining some of the racial dynamics that feel flat. They are far from highly offensive, without depth and lacking real-world understanding.”

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Our next section concerns BioWare’s latest foray into Thedas.

“Before The Veilguard, I often felt Dragon Age didn’t actually believe in anything. Its characters did, but as a text, Dragon Age often felt so preoccupied with empowering the player’s decisions that it felt like Thedas would never actually get better, no matter how much you fought for it. While it may lack the same prickly dynamics and the grey morality that became synonymous with the series, The Veilguard’s doesn’t just believe that the world is full of greys and let you pick which shade you’re more comfortable with. It’s the most wholeheartedly the Dragon Age universe has declared that the world of Thedas can be better than it was before.”

Car Games

Next up, here are thoughts on two very different car games–a retro-styled RPG, and a retro-playing PS2 revival.

“Here we are in 2025, then, and Genki, the Japanese developer best known for the Tokyo Xtreme Racer series (also known variously as Shutokou Battle and Tokyo Highway Challenge over the years in various regions) has just put out a new entry in the long-dormant franchise. Not only that, it’s been getting near-universal praise from press and public alike, despite launching on Steam in an unfinished “Early Access” state, albeit with a substantial chunk of game to enjoy already. And the thing at the forefront of my mind is, “why didn’t this happen sooner?””

Sleeper Hit

This next section of mostly-but-not-all-reviews covers games that were primarily featured in one selected article this week.

“I stop to battle, and I stop to fight, and I stop to die. Sometimes the world drops more mobs on me then I can handle with my equipment and reflexes. The world stops, I regenerate at the bus stop at the end of the world – a hole-in-the-wall shopping gallery that exists for me to mindlessly hold the joystick forward through. There’s nothing to see here, not for me: just recycled art assets and palettes from Hyper Light Drifter feeling like I wouldn’t notice. I’m insulted it’s a rogue-lite – the idea of playing this forever fills me with a deep-set horror. The same sword combos, the same guns, the same world broken up into incremental upgrades and played for the sake of it: doesn’t this look neat?”

Blueprints

Here are our design-focused picks this week, with some interesting conversations on interactivity, stillness, and balancing.

“What I see in Freedom Fighters is a game that encourages and allows for enormous player agency. But that sense of agency is enabled by a streamlining of mechanics and features rather than allowing the player to operate and participate in a successively large number of mechanics and features.”

Ball Is Life

It is! So let’s talk a bit about sports games.

“Sports, at every level, is about losing. Even fans of serial winners craft situations where they are the underdogs. They beef with sporting laws, they beef regular laws, or they just plainly lie that ‘everyone’ doubted them. To be a sports fan, and especially a fan of a bad team, is to embrace vulnerability. It is loving knowing you will be hurt. To paraphrase Ryan Hunn, founder and co-host of the Stadio podcast, watching football is trusting your happiness to eleven strangers who do not know you exist. You lose so when you win it’s that much sweeter. It’s the promise of a better life to come. It’s religion.”

Cave Stories

Our next three selections unpack different interactions and intersections between the virtual and material.

“Today when I see somebody shouting threats because a diversely-coded reviewer awarded their favourite puppet show less than 9 out of 10, I cannot help but think of the people in Plato’s original allegory with their heads chained to a motherfucking wall. A stream of ‘new releases’ goes continuously by, to which they cheer & boo & hiss. In between the releases go streams of product reviews: 9 (cheer), 9 (cheer), 9 (cheer), 9 (cheer), 8 (boos & death threats). Everything & everyone they see around them now has become a part of the show—shadows upon shadows, scrolling past them on the wall. These people aren’t here to consider the wild possibilities; they’re only here to expect things (and the things they expect are atrocious).”

Copy that Floppy

Legacy media–and the discovery practices they entail–feature in this next pairing.

“So, how do we bring back the feeling of discovery in an era dominated by algorithms and homogenization? It starts by changing the way you think about media. By completely rejecting the idea that everything needs to be smooth and seamless, with embracing friction, randomness, and experimentation. It starts with taking risks. As players, we can seek out games that aren’t algorithmically optimized. We can support indie developers and niche projects.”

Queer Matters

Two pieces this week explore queer themes large and small in games and structures.

“A list can be surveillance, power, control. A list can be categorisation, record. A list can be poetry, written into the soil over thousands of years. A list is confirmation.”

Critical Inquiries

Art, affect, and autonomy are the guiding themes of this section.

“I recognize now, well over eight years into writing about games, that I simply didn’t know where to look. Outlets like Critical Distance were not yet on my radar, whereas GameSpot and its kin were. Mistakenly reducing games discourse to these market-driven outlets, I concluded that no one had felt the same way I did with The Last Guardian, so I started trauma-dumping to everyone I knew who cared about games – including Ben Vollmer. Because Ben and I worked together, I soon tapped into his idea for a website-community hybrid, where games and the lasting impact they left were celebrated in the way that a museum celebrates artworks that make a lasting cultural impact. Several conversations later, Epilogue Gaming was born.”

Communal Effort

Different ideas of community–in and out of the game world–guide these next two selections.

“The water ritual fundamentally alters your relationship with the world around you. You will be adored by those who love your water-sib and despised by those that feel negatively about them. Since water is such a precious commodity, the water ritual transforms a simple act of kindness into a praxis with deep societal consequences. It is a sacred act, spiritual in a way, with its forming and strengthening of bonds across cultures and species.”

Critical Chaser

Still the coolest battle theme out of the SNES games, too.

  • Ode to Benjamin | Unwinnable
    Alexander B. Joy raises his glass to an underappreciated Final Fantasy protagonist who trucks through cosmic adversity with an easy shrug.

“He’s not special – he’s available. Less a hero of destiny than a hero of convenience, Benjamin represents the latest in a line of disposable warriors. Is he the Chosen One? Who cares? He’ll do.”

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