This Week in Videogame Blogging

June 21st

by

Welcome back readers.

Lots of good stuff to share this week–21 reads in all. A critical blackjack? No, no, not my best work. To support our best work–compiling and organizing a living timeline of critical games writing every week–please consider our Patreon. Patreon support has no bearing on the amount of awful puns and jokes I make, and less bearing still on their hit rate.

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

Extended Play

We’ll start things off this week with some notes on industry and culture.

“i said 13 years ago on this blog that pop music was what i really wanted to try and pursue, not videogames. it can be painful to read back over stuff from that era for me. a lot has changed in the world since then, and i certainly have a different understanding of myself now than i used to. but has that feeling ever really changed for me? not really. i mean, it’s kind of been a funny joke to me to be some videogames person when in my head i should have had some kind of music career: if having a music career wasn’t an equally, if not even more embarrassing, thing to have at this point. i think i’m mostly okay with my current state of being now, maybe not financially. but my point is that music never was some kind of dalliance or side thing for me even if i was never able to really put it together in a way that didn’t feel compromised.”

SCART Cables

These next four picks focus on older games, examining a few mysteries along the way.

“Omega Boost is a symbol of PlayStation’s ’90s success… and excess. It does things no other console at the time could, and frequently makes expensive choices just because it can. It’s a fantastic way to show off the system’s technical strengths. But as a game it has little to offer that isn’t definitively outdone by a large number of similar titles—many of them created for older, weaker hardware—I’ve already mentioned.”

Forward-Thinking

These next few situate their games in the context of their developers, legacies, and popular reputations.

“This game is a creator’s panic attack, a multi-hour-long reckoning with the intersection of money and art where the enemies we face are mostly Frankenstein-monster creatures assembled out of the leftover bits of the franchise. Of any game ever made, Guns of the Patriots is perhaps the clearest, most evocative exploration of what happens when a franchise goes on longer than planned.”

Homework

Two picks on learning and teaching games and play.

“Recently I’ve thought more about the practical purposes that manuals can serve. It’s useful to have a document in which game information is contained, especially for a lengthy game like an RPG. I’m not one to complain too much about tutorials, as much as they can grate a little on replays, but I’ve really started to like the idea of figuring out a videogame. A little purpose-built reference book can be a great distraction-free way of doing so.”

Design and Designer

Two picks on design decisions and decisive designers.

“When I play Roksim’s games, I feel like I’m being handed a new way of looking at something. Too often am I, as an artist, paralyzed by my own sense of taste. Too often am I, as a dominant woman, paralyzed by my sense of responsibility. Too often am I, as an autistic transgender woman, paralyzed by worrying about how I’m perceived. The Lizzy games are a reassurance that this sort of art can work! Some people might not see the significance, but Roksim’s works have been truly inspiring to me. A non-zero degree of influence on my efforts to become a creepier, more off-putting person, which has genuinely only had positive effects on my social and artistic pursuits!”

Spect-Actors

This next section brings together sustained critical inquiries and reflections across a spread of topics: anticolonialism, family history, and theatre.

“XCOM 2 stages itself to create sympathy for revolutionary bodies in the real world, and to challenge the player to question the narratives of terrorism and violent resistance against conquering bodies. It provides an accessible angle to understand the label of “terrorist” as a strictly political term, rather than an academic one. An old adage suggests that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, and XCOM 2 allows the player to inhabit the duality of this role. If attacking armed authorities who are free to inflict violence upon civilians is terrorism, what does that make the gunning down of the innocent to maintain state control? Suggesting the two are equivalent only masks the moral rot of the latter, and robs the former of context and cause.”

Tomodachi Living

Two interesting reads this week on Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream.

“I started to play Tomodachi Life as a way to clear my headspace early in the morning before starting my day. As I checked in on my Mii and the others, I would give them food, clothing, hobbies, and relationships to raise their happiness level. It was then I started to ask what my real self needed and wanted to be happy and healthy.”

Critical Chaser

Sorry : )

“I initially wanted to say “if you can look past these things, there’s a well put-together game here”, but no. You need to think this brainrot is hilarious or don’t bother. I can only recommend this to people who love YouTube Poop and similar things. This is a consistently rewarding game for people who know what a Dinner Blaster is. I’m kinda surprised it’s not in this game, to be frank.”

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