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April 11th

Hello, readers! If you’re anything like me, you’re choking down a boatload of antihistamines to survive a brutal allergy season. And so, bleary-eyed, exhausted, and sniffling… I bid you welcome to another installment of This Week in Videogame Blogging.

Worldbuilding

If you’ve been playing Bloodborne recently, why not take a break and read about it instead? Or watch a video? George Weidman at Super Bunny Hop covers Bloodborne’s relationship to H.P. Lovecraft as expressed through the mechanics and lore of the game. Aevee Bee discusses Bloodborne’s worldbuilding, and Tim Rogers goes full Tim Rogers on the design

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Deadly Premonition

Critical Distance is proud to present this Critical Compilation of cult classic Deadly Premonition by Robert Hughes, which represents the first in our new series of commissioned features.

Since its staggered transcontinental release in 2010, Deadly Premonition has been a source of continuing bafflement for the gaming press. It is a game so confounding and aberrant that it poses almost existential questions to critics’ reviewing methodologies. How could this game – with its dated waxen graphics, its jarring musical cues, its Resident Evil 4-lite dungeon slogs – be considered ‘good’?

And yet, Deadly Premonition is hypnotising. It

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Episode 25 – The History of Everyday Games

This month we are joined by game historian, University of Lancaster PhD candidate and editor-in-chief of Silverstring Media’s Critical Publishing arm, Zoya Street. Zoya has written two seminal books on games, Dreamcast Worlds and Delay, and is the founder of the wonderful free e-zine, Memory Insufficient. Here, we talk about his background in design history and what that lens means for videogames as artifacts as well as what isn’t said by the artifact itself, but rather is left to the community surrounding to interpret and define. Have a listen.

http://www.critical-distance.com/podcast/Critical-Distance-Confab-episode-25.mp3

Direct Download

SHOW NOTES

Dreamcast Worlds

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Minisode 02 – Interactive Fiction and Object Toys

Welcome to a new minisode of the Critical Distance Confab.

In case you are just joining us or need a refresher, we here at Critical Distance are trying something new with a series of podcast minisodes. Here, each month, myself and a guest, will list off a number of games, aiming for a minimum of three each, that have not gotten the spotlight we feel they deserve. These are games that haven’t gotten any criticism or otherwise aren’t part of the conversation for whatever reason and we think they should be, even if just a little. These can

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April 19th

Welcome to This Week in Videogame Blogging! There’s a lot of writing this week, let’s go through them.

First, Erik Bigras explores the epistemological boundaries around our concept of a “good” videogame, and Andy Astruc writes of their experience playing Skyrim’s “Live Another Life” mod with their own roleplaying rules.

Gita Jackson looks at the tough and practical attire of Resident Evil’s Claire Redfield, and gives tips on how you can emulate her look. Sarah Nixon takes a closer look at the Romance options in Harvest Moon: Story of Seasons. And novelist Moira Katson documents their experience

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Dragon Age II

Critical Distance is proud to present this Critical Compilation of BioWare’s critically polarizing Dragon Age II by Rollin Bishop, as part of our new series of commissioned features.

Dragon Age II is a divisive video game, but not so much within critical circles. There are essentially two kinds of discussions people have about the current middle child of the franchise: they either talk about the poor enemy mechanics and reused maps, or they gush about the incredible characterization and setting. Even then, the latter tends to outweigh the former in terms of sheer amount of words put to

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April 26th

Hello again, readers! The weather’s been unpredictable where I am, and the question “Do I need a coat?” has become the subject of intense philosophical debate and meteorological scrutiny. But you know what’s always stylish, flattering, and appropriate for whatever life throws at you? This Week in Videogame Blogging!

Arts and Letters

The excitement about Bloodborne is still in full force, as well as interest in its lineage of devilishly hard games about souls. This week, Brad Gallaway writes about Bloodborne‘s storytelling, as does Reid McCarter. Meanwhile, Corey Milne departs from the newest entry to discuss place

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01: Subjectivity

Every so often, a topic comes along which invites a higher level of discussion from the many bloggers, vloggers, critics, scholars and thinkers surrounding games. In our newest feature, Critical Discourse, we tackle one of these enduring topics and invite several writers into direct conversation with each other, to tease out even further insights and perspectives.

With that in mind, our inaugural topic for Critical Discourse is subjectivity. Stephanie Jennings starts the conversation with her essay, “Why We Need More Subjective Games Criticism,” Iris Bull chimes in with a short poem about games and subjectivity called “you” and

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April Roundup: ‘Palette Swaps’

Welcome, welcome. Thank you for another mind-opening edition of Blogs of the Round Table. This past month we encouraged you to think about the small but important difference a character palette can bring to your attention. We wanted to know about ‘palette swaps’ and the personality found in copies.

Sub-Zero and Scorpion, Billy and Jimmy Lee, the weird technicolor nightmare relationship of Mario, Luigi, Wario and Waluigi. Palette swapping a character was an easy way to differentiate characters with the same model that was cheap, efficient and, let’s face it, effective. But what does palette swapping do?

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May 3rd

Hello, dearest games literati, and welcome to another edition of This Week in Videogame Blogging! This week’s theme is that there is no theme; instead, enjoy a mixed bag of thoughtful bites on everything from international politics to level design in Dark Souls to Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Around the World in 80 Frames

Let’s begin with a short video report by Al Jazeera on Saudi Arabia’s Prince Fahad al Saud, whose initiative, New Arab Media, aims to support the development and distribution of games for a growing, billion-dollar Saudi audience. In particular, al Saud seeks to encourage

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