call of duty

It’s getting rather dark and rather chilly around here. Another week, another list of links for This Week In Video Game Blogging.

Video Games Both Great and Small

Horror month continues a little past October with Zachary McAnally looking at Slender: The Arrival‘s horror design and Soha El-Saaawi explaining the journey of Year Walk.

Emanuel Maiberg at Kill Screen looks at the new Call of Duty and how the campaign ends up turning you unintentionally into a terrorist and a Nazi. While E.T. Brooking at The Escapist explores the real world space faring weaponry that has

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…Consensual Torture Simulator. And on GameChurch, April-Lyn Caouette shares her experience with Tale of Tales’ sensual Luxuria Superbia, and how it helped her rethink cultural pressures about sex — and games, for that matter.

Derivations

On The Gaming Intelligence Agency, Fritz Fraundorf furnishes us with a fond and insightful analysis of the often underrated Final Fantasy X-2, both as variations on a theme and as a story of its protagonist’s self-actualization.

And on Edge, Richard Wordsworth draws attention to a worrying trend in recent Call of Duty games, particularly Modern Warfare 2 and the recently released Ghosts:

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…do with what matters to other people all [their] lives.” Some closeted queer people might not see themselves in a game until Call of Duty includes a gay soldier. I don’t want to burn down a forest in which people are still trying to find their way.

Continuing on this thought, on Errant Signal Chris Franklin has posted his latest video, a ten-minute dissection of how Assassin’s Creed handles subjects of race, passing, and slavery, and suggests the games might achieve this better through their playable protagonists than through story missions and NPCs.

As Franklin notes that…

…Led Zeppelin the hardscrabble underdogs vs. the Bee Gees? That’s as ridiculous as saying Call of Duty fans are oppressed compared to people who like indie text games about what it’s like to have depression.)

Gamergate reached the front page of The New York Times this week, due largely to a school shooting threat called in over a scheduled appearance by Anita Sarkeesian. With the NYT coverage, many game news outlets have come forward officially denouncing Gamergate. However, just ahead of this development, Jetta Rae DoubleCakes published this strongly-worded editorial at Ravishly which urges news writers to properly…

…could pronounce as “cutie;” has anyone done that?). Looking beyond Call of Duty’s cringe-worthy “Press F to Pay Respects,” Cross considers QTEs in a more far-reaching and generous light:

Simply put, at their best, quick time events are meant to blur the line between cinematic and gameplay to maintain the involvement of the player. They can be seen as a form of experiential integration designed to simulate involvement in a particular moment of the avatar’s story. The input device, be it a keyboard, controller, a mouse, or a mobile phone, is used to its fullest extent to provide

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