Search Results for “mass effect” – Page 10

March 4th

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When I saw one of Luck‘s jockeys push a horse to its limits I was reminded of the way we play games, constantly pushing our virtual puppets to fight, win and frequently die. Recently, I experienced a moment in a videogame where I felt like a jockey, whipping the flanks of my horse. […] I suddenly felt bad for pushing so hard, for wanting to progress so badly that I paid no concern to the little life that was in my hands.

On Gamasutra, Rowan Kaiser writes about how Mass Effect defies some of the classical conventions…

March 11th

…yours truly has been at home chained to a day job–and a certain game about effecting masses. Let’s get right to it.

Dan Cox leads the way this week with an interesting podcast featuring two of the Critical Distance team, Eric Swain and David Carlton, as well as several other stars in a conversation on the nature of play.

As for the past week’s biggest AAA release, Mass Effect 3, we’re already seeing a host of interesting commentary, but this analysis of the ideological dissonance of the game’s single- and multiplayer takes top billing. From author Taekwan Kim:…

July 29th

…“Boycott Atlus” protesting the company’s representation of transgender characters and suggests we need to take a second look at player interpretation.

MoonJulip has a long and necessary open letter to RPG developers, and specifically Bioware, on race representation and the politics of hair:

You could argue for some games, like Mass Effect, that it’s because a setting thing. “Shepard is a military woman so it doesn’t make sense for her to have an afro.” Ashley and numerous other human females can walk around with a full head of hair longer than most other women in the game

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August 5th

…that gamers need to discuss their hobby with each other, too. If you’ve ever been told to “relax, it’s just a game”, you’ll know where Williamson is coming from. Over at Nightmare Mode, he says:

Games are evil. Games rot your brain. (I say: let’s rot!) Games are toys. Games are ‘only entertainment’, with the lofty aim of being taken as seriously as whatever trash Hollywood is promoting this week. No matter how many Journeys we make or how many people are pissed off with Mass Effect 3‘s ending, it seems we’ve barely scratched the surface of games

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August 12th

…chaotic and dangerous, and they derogate play, especially that among children.

[…]

According to Fajans, the Baining eschew everything that they see as “natural” and value activities and products that come from “work,” which they view as the opposite of play. Work, to them, is effort expended to overcome or resist the natural. To behave naturally is to them tantamount to behaving as an animal. The Baining say, “We are human because we work.”

C is for CAPSLOCK, of the FILM CRIT HULK style. He has reviewed Mass Effect 3 and has found, not the game, but…

September 23rd

…– but now there is a whole branch of popular culture devoted to the end times. Mad Max, In the Mouth of Madness, Fallout, Mass Effect, I Am Legend, Dawn of the Dead; all our genre stories seem increasingly concerned with Armageddon.

[After the apocalypse] it will be quiet. A man, his dog and his shotgun, living off the land. It may not be safe and it may not be easy, but at least I saw you all burn first, right? I survived. The math of everyday living is easier without you. Now it’s my world to mess up or…

September 30th

…Revolution fails to deliver on its themes of modification in part because we’re already cyborgs.

PopMatters’ Nick Dinicola has a new column up on how Asura’s Wrath disrupts (and then, I would argue, reasserts) Judeo-Christian theological assumptions. And Bomb the Stacks’ Daniel Korn draws some interesting parallels between Mass Effect 3 and Botanicula— including a provocative claim about which one is darker than the other.

I have a couple more for you here on the subject of writing and, especially, the eye of the beholder. Firstly, writing for Unwinnable, Brendan Keogh discusses the strength of subjectivity in Spec…

December 9th

…“hits” on their friends, Leigh Alexander writes on Gamasutra criticizing a persistent disconnect between game marketers and developers.

Writing for a more general audience on The Mary Sue, Becky Chambers discusses playing the recent Omega DLC for Mass Effect 3 and relates how while gender “shouldn’t matter,” as long as there are representational inequalities, it does.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s John Walker squints disapprovingly at Far Cry 3‘s racist tropes and rape subplot:

Because Far Cry 3, well, it’s a bit racist, isn’t it?

I said, rather flippantly, that the people of this island are the

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January Roundup

…challenge can also rely on the affective state of the player, such as in horror games or the ‘psychological shooter’ Spec Ops: The Line. Some of the difficulty in Mass Effect comes from the torture of choice (or “die Qual der Wahl” as I heard it in high school), even when the consequences of choice are obvious.

Mark Filipowich sees difficulty as a glue that holds narratives together, whether it’s Luke piloting an X-Wing down the Death Star trench or Link snagging Ganon in the groin with a hookshot. Winning does feel good, and beating a hard challenge feels…

April 7th

…the improv precept of “if this is so, then what else is so?”

QUANTUM GAMING

This is pretty dire. Richard Morgan suggests the new SimCity actually collapses the quantum wave-form of multiple realities. Eat your heart out, Rosalind Lutece.

In some other place and in some other time, Jordan Rivas presents us with a touching, if rather unserious, interpretation of Mass Effect 3’s “Citadel” DLC as taking place in the afterlife.

And somewhere in there Kambyero’s Mix Villalon managed to sneak in a well-designed three-part series in defense of bad endings.

FAITH

Two excellent…