Search Results for “sound” – Page 5

September 13th

…this was the same NYT review that inspired Ian Bogost vitriolic backlash, and in this author’s opinion, yes it was more than just a little bit over-the-top. Crispygamer also have a look into how the review trade works, and why some PR firms do and don’t give out lots of copies of their game for review. Insightful.

Create Digital Music interviews the creators of trippy indie game Brainpipe, and talk about synaesthesia, integrating music into the design from the beginning, building their own sound engine, and reference some other indie games that use music in a distinctive manner. What’s…

October 4th

…out and remind themselves that they are living in a capitalist society in which companies actually have no obligation to bring out excellent games for them to play. Valve actually isn’t providing a social service for their benefit, but a product for them to pay for.

How does a new collaborative blog called ‘Red Kings Dream‘ sound? It was launched late this week by a few Australian game writers – here’s what their ‘about’ page has to say,

RedKingsDream was created by four Australians who just wanted to find a new way of writing about games, one

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Grand Theft Auto IV

…of the year, Wes Erdelack nonetheless acknowledged, “GTA IV is less than the sum of its parts. It contradicts itself; it contains multitudes.“

Full of sound and fury, signifying bullets

Opinions remain divided on whether the story being told warranted the sacrifice of the series’ historical gameplay traits. Trent Polack praised the game’s slow start, because it makes the first real shootout feel like the game-changer that it is. In his view, however, the effort to ratchet up the tension late in the game led to what he called “an uninteresting and nonsensical mafioso finale.” Duncan Fyfe argued…

February 28th

This will be my last This Week In Videogame Blogging before jetting off to San Francisco and the Game Developers Conference. Taking my place for the next two weeks will be enthusiastic contributor Eric Swain.

First up this week, Michael Clarkson makes a case for Santa Destroy as a valuable and necessary part of the original No More Heroes, and it’s omission from the sequel is all the more regrettable.

Zeke Virant is a new blogger who wrote in to let us know about a piece on ‘Expanding Sound in Videogame Narratives’ [mirror] which sounds a lot

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June 6th

…of tension or consistency:

Eventually, the sound sample of Barry’s cries for help stops playing, but there’s no reason for Alan to stop looking for ammo before going upstairs. Barry’s not going anywhere. These are the value systems video games are still working with. Even the “serious” ones.

Continuing with the subject of collectibles, Daniel Bullard-Bates had this to say: “Soldiers collect dog tags, sure. But seriously, no one collects identical coffee thermoses or identical flags or identical anything.” His piece, ‘Collect Everything’, is a list of what a good system of in-game collectibles should do.

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June 20th

…controls, British News Parody service NewsArse reports on a similar trend from E3 with the following headline; ‘When will there be a controller I can have sex with, ask gamers’ [mirror].

Rick Dakan writing at the PopMatters Moving Pixels blog examines ‘Character flaws in Red Dead Redemption’.

Richard Clark’s relatively new Game Set Watch column ‘The Gaming Doctrine’ examines how to go about “Reviewing with Values in Mind”. It’s certainly an important issue for many people, and one that the formal reviewing of games hasn’t really addressed, busy as it is with measuring frame rates and sound quality….

July 18th

…blogging, Lost Chocolate Lab performs an ‘Informal Game Sound Study‘ by looking at the sounds of footsteps as heard in a number of games. Footstep sounds are a microcosm of the broader issues of game development. Gallant also recommends Brilliam’s piece ‘Pretense, Affectation, Videogames‘ [mirror] in which Brilliam diagnoses what he sees as the problem of affectation in the game enthusiast community: “the real problem: we, as game nerds, are too embarrassed by our pretentiousness to call it what it is.” Not sure I agree with this one, but thought provoking nonetheless.

Keeping the contrarian theme going is the…

August 29th

…in ‘Every Death Is Progress’ [mirror]:

Progress in [a Rogue-like] is not progress in the traditional sense. Descending lower in the dungeon and advancing in character levels are secondary to the real meat of the experience: understanding gameplay systems and how they interact. Through experimentation and exploration, which are core design tenets of the genre, you slowly become a better player.

Chris Green at Chronoludic asks ‘Are Games Too Easy?’ [mirror]

At The Escapist, the ExtraCredits series looks at ‘the God of War trilogy’s triumphs and failings as a narrative.’ That sounds like it could

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September 5th

…bad at combining an array of weighted factors so as to arrive at a rating or decision –it’s just not how our minds were designed. Jelly or game review guidelines that require us to over analyze our decisions or check them off against a standardized list of factors (graphics, sound, etc.) can exacerbate this limitation and lead us to consider what should be irrelevant information when making our ratings. This corrupts the rating process and takes us farther from our “true” feelings or evaluations.

Chris Dahlen of Save The Robot has a new installment of his on-going series…

October 3rd

…severely impacted the Australian games industry.

Another trio of posts, this time at community site Bitmob: Jon Porter looks at ‘Heavy Rain and the destruction of traditional game design’ [mirror] which is a catchy title if ever I saw one; Richard Moss writes about ‘The Sound of Falling Tetronimoes’ [mirror]; and Rob Savillo brings us ‘Two Stories of Conquest and Catastrophe in Civilization 5’ [mirror].

At Pop Matters, Jorge Albor writes about ‘Photo Opportunities in Videogames’, suggesting that rather than detracting from player engagement, viewing a game world through an in-game lens can contrarily serve to draw us…