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Okami

“Oh, our Merciful Mother, Okami Amaterasu…”

In early 2006 Clover Studio released Okami for the Playstation 2 in Japan. Several months later it crossed the oceans to Western audiences in North America and Europe, and eventually found new-found life when re-released for the Wii in 2008. Okami, meaning both ‘Great God’ and ‘Wolf’, was immediately recognized and appreciated by Western critics for its distinct Sumi-e and Ukiyo-e visual style and unique take on the Zelda genre of action-adventure. I believe it can be safely assumed that most people who have played the game — who have seen it

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Gears of War

As two of the most successful Xbox 360 exclusive titles to date (with a Metacritic average 93.5%), millions of people have played the Gears of War games, and even those who haven’t know what to expect: muscle bound soldiers in enough body armour to make a tank jealous shouting macho insults while chain-sawing aliens into bloody chunks. But there must be more to it than that?

Now, several months after the release of the second game in the series, it seems like an apt time to ask the obvious, but often over looked question: What is Gears of

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BioShock

BioShock is the rare game that really does change the way we think about video games, if for no other reason than that it has turned up as an example in almost every discussion of game style, mechanics, story, or design that has been written since its initial release in 2007. BioShock has received excessive adulation, a much-discussed backlash, and even a backlash to its backlash. Discussions of the game spawned the most popular jargon in games writing. So much has been written about it that I could only put my hands on a fraction of the material without

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June 7th

Links updated July 1st 2017

Is it really that time of the week again already? I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the whole “passage of time” thing – surely it’s some sort of crazy conspiracy…

Much like this week’s announcement of Left 4 Dead 2 by Valve – which is apparently a crazy conspiracy to charge money for a videogame! No way! While this announcement wouldn’t be noteworthy on its own (Critical Distance ain’t about the previews and hype, y’all), it’s noteworthy because of the hyperbolic indignation brought out in some people who were expecting more

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June 14th

Links updated July 4th 2017

Time to play catch-up – what posts did I inevitably miss reading last week? First, this piece on Left 4 Dead (the first) from Gregory Weir’s Game, Set, Watch column ‘The Interactive Palette‘. He says that “by creating enemies that can combine their abilities to become even more powerful, Valve significantly increased the complexity of L4D gameplay.” What I find interesting about this observation is that practically everything Weir mentions is the basic information that every player will pick up by playing for as little as 30 minutes before internalizing it and expressing it

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June 21st

Links updated July 4th 2017

Welcome to This Week In Videogame Blogging, where I try to round up the best blog posts from the critical gaming blogosphere.

This week, Rob Lefevre’s reflective post about why he runs a gaming website caught my eye. Because of the decision by his managing partner to leave the Games Are Evil website, Lefevre has been left holding the fort on his own. He says,

So I’m rushing around, spending far more of my time off from being an education technologist on the internet instead of outside in

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An Open Invitation to Contribute

Critical Distance is a community driven blog and as such we rely on contributors for our posts. Until now we have solicited contributions by invitation only; however we would now like to open it up and invite anyone with an interest in videogame criticism to contribute to Critical Distance.

Critical Distance exists to serve the emerging field of games criticism primarily by highlighting the excellent writing being produced by videogame bloggers, writers and journalists. We hope that Critical Distance can be part of making sure that this new and important aspect of gaming discourse doesn’t get lost amongst

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June 28th

Links updated July 4th 2017

This Week In Videogame Blogging is going to have to tend ever-so-slightly towards brevity I’m afraid, as I’ve got exactly two hours to bash this out before I go to a charity event organised by a friend called ‘Drawtism’. I’ll let your ample collective imaginations fill in that one.

First thing I spotted this week was Jim Rossignol’s ‘Fuel: Around the World in Eight Hours‘, which is exactly what it sounds like. Rossignol drove around the post-apocalyptic world of Fuel, taking him pretty much all day. I’m a sucker for open worlds and

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July 5th

Links updated July 4th 2017

As if to make up for the slightly lighter post last week, the videogame blogosphere seems to have redoubled its efforts and produced an absolute ton of great reads This Week in Videogame Blogging.

The first thing I spotted was David Wildgoose’s editorial about a Leigh Alexander & Daniel Floyd co-authored video about Girl Gamers. Specifically, it’s about why girls aren’t interested in Videogames. I’m glad David took the time to comment on it because the whole time I spent watching it I was feeling… well… uncomfortable. The presenter’s tone is far from

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July 12th

Links updated July 4th 2017

First up for This Week In Videogame Blogging, ask yourself whether a fully destructible city whose every door leads to a fully furnished room sounds exciting. Create Digital Motion does a bit of a look-see at some up and coming games tech that could do just that in ‘Ever Woke Up In A Procedurally Generated City?‘ I found that entry via an equally interesting post about locked door syndrome and how it applies to the game Prototype in the post ‘Prototype: Open World, Locked City‘ at the Serial Consign blog (via).

Trent Polack

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