Search Results for “metroid” – Page 2

August 22nd

…what-not-to-do lessons offered by Metroid: Other M or the complicated, messy, frustrating, but gradually positive-trending relationship between Mass Effect and queer representation.

‘Metroid Dread’ owes a massive debt to a game Nintendo wants you to forget | Inverse Chris Compendio considers the design lessons Metroid has inadvertently learned from the legacy of its least-loved installment.
Intimate Space: The State of Queerness in Mass Effect | Fanbyte Kenneth Shepard embarks upon a longform historical overview of the role and state of queerness in Mass Effect, the influence of its fandom, and its lasting legacy on the wider industry.

…

August 21st

…born into this coveted feeling of being safe and supported. Now I see I had a home all along; it was her.”

Design Traditions

For this week’s design section, we’ve got two featured authors highlighting breaks with tradition and roads not travelled.

Roam Paradise Killer If You Want To | Unwinnable Caroline Delbert continues her spatial meditation on Paradise Killer, with input from Oli Clarke Smith, this time focusing on motivation, rewards, and verbs.
Metroid Established A Framework The Franchise Has Never Properly Explored | GameSpot Grace Benfell asks what Metroid left behind after…

March 12th

…

Metroid Fusion is a must-play for Metroid Dread fans | Polygon Maddy Myers looks back at Metroid Fusion as a more cerebral and subversive entry in the series.

The Protracted Pacing of ‘A Plague Tale: Requiem’ | Epilogue Gaming Flora Merigold finds that bigger isn’t particularly better in Asobo’s follow-up to Innocence.

“Requiem cannot bear to cut anything off its bloated runtime, and the story feels less cohesive for it. No single part of this game is broken in a way that strikes me as objectively bad, there’s just a glaring issue with this game’s

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September 19th

…the diminution of Samus Aran that, Lange argues, has been an ongoing process for the past twenty years:

Has Samus actually physically shrunk? Hm, hard to say; the portrayal of her height could just be chalked up as inconsistent. She looks pretty short in Other M, but then again she’s also standing next to other space marine types in big power suits. Has she metaphorically shrunk? Yes, definitely.

Also discussing the latest Metroid, Matthew Weise at the Outside Your Heaven blog writes about ‘What Metroid Other M Can Teach Us About 3D Game Design’, namely how…

…part of her ability to accept herself and her identity as a woman”, and in ‘Game Therapy’ “Greg Kaperski credits Final Fantasy 8 as the only thing that helped him come to terms with the death of his first love.” This is brilliant, moving stuff.

Joel Jordon at Game Manifesto writes an extensive essay on ‘The Anticapitalism Allegory of No More Heroes’.

Steven O’Dell is celebrating 25 years of Metroid by discussing games in the series in some detail, and this week he looks at some of Metroid Prime’s Magic Moments:

These moments are small in

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May-June 2013 Roundup

…been warned! As a Twine game (cf. ‘real game’), Howling Dogs is much closer in its world building to a novel than the other games discussed in this roundup. It is imagination fuel. Hopefully it is never adapted to another form, since graphics never seem to live up to the possibilities of the imagination.

Finally, Sebastian Atay takes a deep look at the Ruined Fountain in Metroid Prime, which is great because I love Metroid Prime. It’s not just the visual detail of bugs scrabbling around the rocks and slime oozing from walls that separates Prime from its…

August 3rd

…take another look at Metroid and Alien if they intend to make Metroidvanias. It’s not enough, she argues, to borrow mechanical tropes and conventions, or even to feature a playable woman protagonist in your winding space platformers without also acknowledging the “aesthetic and tonal success” of Metroid’s and Alien‘s universes respectively. (Content warning: discussion of rape.)

Show, Don’t Tell

Katherine Cross challenges the hostile anxiety surrounding criticism in videogames, calling it a cultural “terror dream” that games are going to be censored or taken away by nagging parents and moralistic lobbyists. Or just as well, perverted so…

September 26th

…be driving a mob story like this.

The Game Overthinker posts Episode 40: ‘Heavens to Metroid’.

Denis Farr writing for The Border House blog wrote a piece called “Metroid: Othering Samus” [mirror].

Kirk Hamilton goes to PAX for Paste Magazine.

Luke Rhodes of the Mad Architect blog is considering ‘Videogames and the doors of perception’ [dead link, no mirror available], which talks about Aldous Huxley’s ‘the doors of perception’ and some of the writing of Tom Bissell on games.

At No Added Suggar, James Dilks writes about the widely praised conclusion to Red Dead Redemption…

December 2nd

…display this week!

Of course, that’s far from everything happening in the discourse right now. I’m always on the lookout for work reaching beyond the chart-toppers of the moment, and there’s an excellent piece this week on 2014’s Sunset Overdrive, which in a total coincidence I played for the very time this week. With whispers of Metroid making some kind of appearance at The Game Awards, now’s also a great opportunity to remind readers that the series absolutely supports a trans reading of Samus.

So dive in, readers! This Week in Videogame Blogging is a roundup highlighting the…

July 12th

…bodies later.”

Track 01

Now this is a topic I love reading about. Two authors this week study the affective musical design of popular games and genres.

The Best Metroid Soundtracks | Paste Dia Lacina embarks upon an acoustic tour of the Metroid series.
JRPG Openings and the Call to Adventure | Into The Spine Latonya Penningston studies the musical intros in JRPGs that get us hype for grand adventures.

“I believe that the best JRPG openings are emotionally stirring and give the player a sense of wonder. There is a…