Search Results for:

fallout

November 24th

…only forced to accept the horrific truth that not everyone can be saved, but also must come to terms with their own emotional turmoil when faced with their limits as humans contending against magic and monsters.”

Story Branches

A pair of articles this week examine narrative design in recent releases, as well as some of the influences and predecessors which have contributed to more recent successes and shortcomings.

  • Fallout 3, The Outer Worlds, and the Megaton Problem | Unwinnable Jeremy Signor examines the limitations of binary choice design in contemporary games through the old “nuke…

January 12th

…And Video Game Apocalypses | Kotaku Gita Jackson writes about gaming in a world perpetually on the knife’s edge.

“All of the games I’ve played that showed me the end of the world also showed me life continuing after. Sam Porter Bridges does connect America, the citizens of your town in Frostpunk can survive, and although the United States of Fallout is irradiated, it’s still populous and mostly functional. Even in Horizon Zero Dawn, the one game out of all of these that makes me feel any fear, the story depicts what is ultimately a successful attempt…

New Call for Critical Compilations!

…Death Stranding

  • Deus Ex series
  • Disco Elysium
  • Earthbound/Mother series
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
  • Fallout series
  • Far Cry series
  • Final Fantasy X and X-2
  • Final Fantasy XIII
  • Fire Emblem series
  • Gone Home
  • Grand Theft Auto series
  • Heavy Rain
  • Journey
  • Kentucky Route Zero
  • L.A. Noire
  • The Last of Us
  • The Legend of Zelda series
  • Mario series
  • Metal Gear series
  • Metro series
  • Minecraft
  • Nier series
  • No Man’s Sky
  • Papers, Please
  • Portal and Portal 2
  • P.T.
  • …

    • August 2nd

    …spent highlighting examples of studios and creators who, you know, don’t enshrine a corporate culture of abuse. So here we have two authors working through the fallout of the Ubisoft revelations as well as two authors looking alternately at cool and good things studios are doing now, as well as hopeful decolonized practices for the future.

    • Everything Wrong with the Ubisoft Forward Press Event | Paste Waverly highlights the failure of mainstream games press to take meaningful action against Ubisoft’s PR juggernaut.
    • Opinions: My very conflicted thoughts on Beyond Good & Evil’s future | LVLS+ WildcatJF situates

    …

    August 23rd

    …Corner: Hashihime of the Old Book Town | Unwinnable Gingy Gibson considers the contemporary experience of a horror Visual Novel in the context of working life as a front-line healthcare worker.

  • CoD of Duty – DEEP HELL Skeleton examines the latest Call of Duty‘s ahistorical revisionism in the context of the series’ long-established banal jingoism.
  • The Storm-Cloud of Death Stranding – Uppercut Matteo Lupetti investigates the climate science and symbolism behind representation of clouds in art, and relates this context to Death Stranding‘s imagery and ideology.
  • My Life as a Fallout 4 NPC | Sidequest Sara Davis…

    • December 13th

    …of 2020.

  • Creating Player Guilt in The Last of Us 2 and Spec Ops: The Line | Kat (Pixel a Day) Kat discusses why player guilt in popular games seems to be such a highly selecteive experience.
  • Crowded Apocalypse | Unwinnable Yussef Cole finds Fallout 76 to be crowded, convoluted, and loud–a step away from the games that preceded it, but not necessarily all for the worse.
  • Let’s Place: Narratives of Rebuilding – Haywire Magazine Daria Kalugina finds that even in dystopias as disparate as Death Stranding and The Last of Us Part II, a common survivor…

    • June 2021

    …

    • Scott Cawthon Supported Trump, Now What? – Pim Is Online (17:34)

      Pim ponders the fallout of revelations that Scott Cawthon – creator of horror series Five Nights at Freddy’s, games which Pim has previously lauded – supported Donald Trump. (Autocaptions)

    • Subscribe
    • Contribute

    Subscribe

    Critical Distance is community-supported. Our readers support us from as little as one dollar a month. Would you consider joining them?

    LEARN MORE

    Contribute

    Have you read, seen, heard or otherwise experienced something new that made you think about games differently? Send it in!

    CONTACT US

    …

    April 25th

    …pieces here, loosely tied by an emphasis on bodies and embodiment. Timss’ work this week riffs of a theory of embodied play as explored in Keogh’s book, while Diaz chronicles the experiential fallout of Wii Fit with regard to body image and the narrative of thinness-as-fitness.

    • Trace Then Describe – No Escape Braden Timss keeps the good book review times rolling at No Escape with a look at Brendan Keogh’s A Play of Bodies: How We Perceive Videogames.
    • Here’s the lasting impact of Nintedo’s Wii Fit | Polygon Ana Diaz discusses the legacy of Wii Fit‘s weight-and-BMI-focused

    …

    September 5th

    …sports and ideology, either told straight or with a side of snark.

    • Golf Club Wasteland Review | The Indie Game Website Ruth Cassidy spends time cruising Golf Club Wasteland‘s cynical, satirical airwaves.
    • Sports and Politics: How Final Fantasy X Resonates With the 9/11 Attacks and their Fallout – Uppercut Theo Yurevitch considers the duality of sports as both refuge and ideological institution–both in the explicit theocracy of Spira and the implicit theocracy of post-9/11 America.

    “FFX shows a world constantly under duress. In the face of the fear and destruction that Sin brings are

    …

    September 12th

    …that Tyler Cowen is asking some worthwhile questions about the relationships between videogames, culture, and economies, but is far from the first to ask those questions and far from the most satisfactory in his largely unsourced answers.

  • Take-Two Interactive Bullying GTA Modders Hampers Creativity And Innovation | TheGamer Stacey Henley weighs the fallout when billion-dollar corporations exercise their legal right to stifle creativity and punish modding communities.
  • IMMATERIAL VALUE – DEEP HELL David Teraoka contemplates the inflated, overspeculated, and ultimately rigged market for nostalgia in games–be it at auction, digitital distribution, or contemporary collector’s editions.

    • …