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bioshock

August-September Roundup: Oceans

…Douglas

Ten Years in Rapture: The Legacy of Bioshock

Douglas returns to paste just a few weeks later for another oceanic piece exploring the ripples left by the first Bioshock, a game and a legacy that continues to attract heated criticism. Douglas describes what the game and its city on the ocean floor continue to mean to him after so many years.

Read it now

 

Michael Hancock

Arrrrrunthrough of some thoughts on oceans and videogames

Michael Hancock applies his talent for eye-catching titles to this piece on writing and creating criticism more generally

This Year In Videogame Blogging: 2017

…the difficulty in properly resisting.

  • Choosing the impossible: Did BioShock define the last 10 years of video games? | AV/Gameological – Matt Geradi, Sam Darsanti, William Hughes, and Clayton Purdom A group of writers look back on the 10-year-old BioShock and the influence it has had on the gaming landscape over that time.
  • Spec Ops: The Line…5 Years Later | YouTube – Raycevick – Lucas Raycevick Raycevick looks back on Spec Ops: The Line and finds that it holds up superbly well, in his in-depth examination of the details of its mechanics and narrative. Mutliplayer not so much.
  • March 29th

    …the theory of Le Guin.

  • Dave talks Video Games: Bioshock 2: A Lamb in sheep’s clothing (game critique) | Dave talks Video Games Dave evaluates the mechanical successes and narrative failures of BioShock 2 as an extension of and iteration upon the original.
  • Londons: Cultist Simulator and the Unknown | Into The Spine Violet Adele Bloch contemplates the intersections between ley lines, stock market microwave datalinks, and the glimmer of gender euphoria in a deep dive on Cultist Simulator.
  • “The fourth eye is Glimmering. Like Passion, it’s closed. Passion and Glimmering are both the inverse…

    Kotaku UK archive

    …Is Go 8 Bit The Great Video Game Tv Panel Show Youve Always Wanted 2016/09/08 Lets Compare The Xbox One S Xbox One Scorpio Ps4 Slim And Ps4 Pro 2016/09/11 The Story Behind Hues Brilliant Soundtrack 2016/09/13 Two Developers Are Bringing Wonder Boy Back With Two Entirely Different Games 2016/09/14 Six Years Later Minervas Den Remains The Best Bioshock Thing 2016/09/15 Meet The Anonymous Watchdog Who Broke The Csgo Betting Scandal 2016/09/15 The Forgotten Parts Of Gta Online 2016/09/15 The Unbearable Lightness Of Lost Video Game Saves 2016/09/19 Take A Look At These 15 Minutes Of Metal Gear Survive Before…

    January 2nd

    …characters from multiple angles and critical contexts.

  • Never Trust a Lady Mechanic: Final Thoughts on The Witness | Gold Machine Drew Cook ruminantes on gendered and racialized Others in an 80s Infocom IF game and not, in fact, that more recent puzzle game.
  • Descending the Lighthouse – No Escape Skeleton writes about Bioshock Infinite‘s Elizabeth and the whole uncomfortable, convoluted, sprawling culture of clinical, possessive horniness that surrounds her creation and arc. I probably summarized that badly but take that as extra reason to just go read the article for yourself.
  • “Bioshock Infinite is a…

    Abstract image evoking bird silhouette

    Episode 1

    …I apologize for the audio quality as this is our first attempt at a podcast – rest assured that the quality of the recording will improve in subsequent episodes. With that in mind we hope you enjoy the first episode and stay tuned for more in the coming weeks.

    You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes here, or via regular RSS here. You can also download the episode directly. (55:42, 52MB)

    Show notes:

    • Rock, Paper, Shotgun
    • Sparky Clarkson’s Bioshock Compilation
    • Corvus Elrod’s Man Bytes Blog
    • String Theory: The Illusion of Videogame Interactivity
    Abstract image evoking bird silhouette

    May 24th

    …about. The second is Logan Crowell’s follow-up post to his initial gauntlet-throwing column ‘The Alligators Have Good Graphics’ mentioned in TWIVGB a couple of weeks ago. In Part 2, he applies his erudition to Braid and, for a large part of a long essay, compares it and its reception to another critical darling; the game Bioshock. He also delves into its “critique of Mario” nature, with perhaps the best contribution coming from his observation that, at least in platformers, narrative is less the player’s actual motivation for doing things and more “an acknowledgment that there is an ending up ahead….

    November 22

    …critical community, akin to institutionalised film reviewers and critics, would go a way toward curtailing this tendency?

    Gamasutra this week featured an interview with Susan O’Connor of Gears of War/Far Cry 2/Bioshock writing fame and I’ll leave you with a link to Hardcasual’s piece on how 4 members of staff of EBGames survived the release of Left 4 Dead 2 through “teamwork and Molotov cocktails”.

    A reminder that for all TWIVGB posts on Critical Distance comments are turned off by default to encourage discussion on the original entries, and we can always be reached via the contact page.

    April 18th

    Today’s This Week in Videogame Blogging contains slightly less than the usual crop of links to the best videogame criticism and writing of the week. I think it’s partly because we’ve reached the first real lull of the year in terms of releases. We’ve met and written about the onslaught of Bayonetta/Bad Company 2/ Bioshock 2/Darksiders/Just Cause 2/Sleep is Death plus a host of others, and it now seems like we’ve collectively taken a bit of a week off.

    Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw hasn’t been sleeping, however, as he writes about why he likes Kratos so much, primarily because

    May 30th

    …the Western than videogames. Think of it as an opportunity to brush up on your French.

    David Wong, editor of comedy website Cracked.com, lists 5 no-nonsense reasons why it’s still not cool to admit you’re a gamer, and it’s hard to disagree.

    John Radoff has a brief pictorial & narrative history of social games [mirror] on his blog this week, locating social games like FarmVille in a broader social context.

    “You say apocalypse, I say retro chic” by G Christopher Williams of PopMatters is a comparative look at the worlds of Fallout 3 and Bioshock that notes: