This Year In Videogame Blogging: 2016
…need @GamerX? | I Need Diverse Games – David Gaider David Gaider didn’t realize how much he needed a place like GamerX until he found himself walking around without his customary filter and he could just be.
…need @GamerX? | I Need Diverse Games – David Gaider David Gaider didn’t realize how much he needed a place like GamerX until he found himself walking around without his customary filter and he could just be.
…focus in on a single game, isolating or creating connections between its most interesting design elements.
Mark Wonnacott explores types and visual sources of weapon and monster designs from Final Fantasy VII in WEAPONS and monsters. Before Violence is a montage of the gritty shooting violence of Kane & Lynch 2 with its comparatively serene menu screens. Nier and Existentialism exposes well-spotted connections between Nier and other Japanese media that share visual and narrative existential themes, and Infinite Jam uncovers the historical sources of Bioshock Infinite’s patriotic and religious imagery. Beegentle digs into The Vanishing of Ethan Carter to
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…with simulations, experimentation and simple step-by-step explanations of even the more complex ideas.”
“You might still decide not killing your enemies is the right choice, but if you’re locked into that decision because you want…
…2 and find the exact same statements, almost verbatim, that I find in today’s criticism? These statements aren’t wrong, but they’re shamefully insufficient.
Peter Kirn at CDM runs down the new music based game ‘Chime’ that I’ve been hearing good things about. The game is also part of a charity based collective that aims to raise funds for children in need.
After a negative gamer piece early in the week explaining how difficult the Bioshock 2 hacking mini-game is for people with colourblindness, Dan Griliopoulos (who is colourblind himself) writes about the issue for Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
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…Company 2 [dead link, no mirror exists] and explains its view of globalization.
Daniel Bullard Bates from Press Pause to Reflect writes on what type of foundation the inevitable Bioshock 3 will have to stand on based on the efforts of the first two.
Gunthera1 looks at ‘Game difficulty settings.’ [mirror] This is a post where the discussion in the comments really shines, so check them out.
Grayson Davis looks at Tropico 3 and other management games effect his emotions via the ‘humanizing power of numbers.’ [dead link, no mirror exists]
At Vector Poem they look
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…to challenge problematic ideas. But it’s not the purpose of these posts to defend the game, so I’m promoting these pieces in the spirit of embracing well-reasoned criticism – especially criticism that challenges.
Jorge Albor’s two part discussion of Far Cry 2’s depiction of politics is framed as ‘not a criticism.’ I think this was a common tactic in early games criticism (between about 2006 and 2009). I similarly committed the sin of disclaiming my criticism when I first wrote about Ludonarrative Dissonance in Bioshock. I was wrong when I…
…with so much interesting criticism and boundary-pushing are going noisily, but inevitably, into the dark.
Not on their own, of course–I don’t want to encourage complacency. They need to be pushed. So by all means, readers, stay vigilant and keep pushing them.
Oh, and if you haven’t done so already, be sure to check out Dante Douglas’ comprehensively kickass Critical Compilation on Bioshock Infinite.
This Week in Videogame Blogging is a roundup highlighting the most important critical writing on games from the past seven days.
How can we make more games accessible for…
…the binary days of BioWare and BioShock, games have continued to iterate and evolve in how they think about the juxtaposition of choice and moral consequence. Three articles this week look at some fresh developments, as well as a long-building culmination.
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…of new Critical Compilations, including:
We also brought aboard Connor Weightman to bulk up our coverage of video criticism. Keep an eye out for his new This Month in Videogame Vlogging feature!
There’s more to come, as we kick off 2020…
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Mark Brown explains the pyramid of Environmental Storytelling, Level Design and World Building, and how these are used to assist narrative cues, using examples from games including Bioshock, God of War, Portal, Celeste and Journey. (Manual captions) [Content note: mentions of child abuse]
Writing on Games analyses two of the missions in Hitman 2 for world building, level design and the use of environmental detail. (Manual captions) [Note: contains embedded advertising]
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