Search Results for “journey” – Page 8

This Year In Video Game Blogging 2010

…attention in his latest RPG class. A majority of his students were defeated by Ultima IV‘s design and he wonders if the game is now completely unplayable by a modern audience. Our history is important and it may be that we can no longer experience some of it for ourselves.

L.B. Jeffries in his column at PopMatters wrote how most games are variations on Groundhog Day and how we as players mirror the philosophical journey Phil Connors experienced in every game we play. Lastly, there is L.B.’s final post ‘On Design-Centric Game Criticism‘; a perfect bookend for his entire…

March 20th

…the journey, not the destination. Whole cities are laid out in a way that only makes sense if you are trying to have as much fun as possible going from point A to point B. They do not reward or even allow efficient transit. Video games are about long strings of interesting travel. They have few loops and many way-markers. Video game architecture drives you forwards to the next thing.

Over at community site Bitmob, Rob Savillo has written an interesting piece about storytelling in two zombie/strategy games: Atom Zombie Smasher and Trapped Dead.

Missed this last…

September 25th

…past week. James Dilks looks at the names of video games and what they convey about what is within, particularly the unusual case of VVVVVV. Brendan Keogh is behind a barrier of his own making as he realizes that, like Red from The Shawshank Redemption, he too has been institutionalized. And Lana Polansky reviews indie game Rock of Ages and its tumultuous journey through time and Western art history.

In the ‘contemporary art corner’ over here are the submissions from the Bitmob writers collective. Sumo Attuqayefio has a short, but heartfelt piece on how Shadow of the Colossus helped…

October 23rd

…the “Incredible Hulk” persona the writer adopts, the post is written in allcaps.

Kirk Battle, once known to the blogosphere as L.B. Jeffries, has written a piece on Killscreen Daily about complexity in games—with Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey as his example—and how understanding that dynamic may give us a better grasp on dealing with it in the real world.

On GameSetWatch is an interview with Pippin Barr. In the interview, Eric Caoili Jason Johnson queries the game designer on the subject of The Artist is Present, a game which consists entirely of waiting—and one that steps outside…

This Year In Video Game Blogging 2011

…had a character she found acceptable in the fiction.

Eurogamer had a piece by Rich Stanton looking at the two releases of Skyrim and Dark Souls and how each in turn tells its stories.

Meanwhile, Brendan Keogh chronicled his journey through Dark Souls how it treats both grinding and its concept of time.

At Nightmare Mode, Eric Swain responded to posts that took umbrage to his criticisms of Limbo and its empty atmosphere by declaring “The Text Says No: Why You Can’t Interpret Limbo Anyway You Want.” Also writing at Nightmare Mode, Swain looked at Heavenly Sword…

January 15th

…introspection. Keeping the same genre of games but tackling them from a vastly different perspective, schoolteacher Kyle McKinnon draws some connections between his students’ classroom behavior and their taste in violent versus nonviolent games.

I have a hobby horse hidden away somewhere on the damage Joseph Campbell has done to the state of popular storytelling, but until then, we have Kate Cox (voted by us here as one of 2011’s best game bloggers) outlining why to read Dragon Age II as a hero’s journey is to read it incorrectly.

Speaking of RPGs, Rowan Kaiser has been bustling about…

March 18th

…ends up playing it. I think it’s a shame when that doesn’t happen.”

The penultimate piece, and certainly the most creative this week, is this beautiful pictorial review of Journey by Games.on.net’s Tim Colwill. Indescribable.

And lastly for the week (I did say it was TWIVGB lite!) is from Dan Golding’s incredible Game On blog, which has lately been churning out fascinating and insightful pieces. This week Golding scoured the Australian Parliament Hansard Record to tease out what Aussie politicians think and say about games. But it’s not what you think – it’s actually quite surprising.

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May 13th

What the heck– you’ve waited enough. Let’s get right to it with this week’s best and brightest of the Ludodecahedron. It’s time for This Week in Videogame Blogging!

Tumblr-er Flutiebear starts us off with this excellent two part series applying Victoria Lynn Schmidt’s Heroine’s Journey to Disney’s Tangled and Bioware’s Dragon Age 2. These analyses come highly recommended.

From there, we pay a visit to GayGamer where newest writer EccentricTomboy writes on seeing sexism in competitive gaming from two sides:

See, back before transition I would have been that guy: amused by the girl trying

…

June 10th

…is less addictive than Diablo 2. But, wait there’s more. Get both of those and I’ll throw in Eric Schwarz’s Critical Missive piece on the attempts to fix currency in games.

Yes, good sir or madam. I see you’ve been eyeing this little bauble. That is a very rare Darius Kazemi write up. You must have a poet’s heart within you to seek it out. For it chronicles the strange journey he had undergone with his magical Metaphor-a-Minute.

And let us not forget the every popular criticism of criticism. The Leveling Criticism of Craig Bamford is about a…

June 24th

…to absorbing the environmental factors of games, and whether these are simply establishing a context, or attempting to reach out to the player. With very few rewards outside a warm fuzzy feeling inside, most of the questions in Metro 2033 were true questions of morality, most of which were asked without ever posing a question.

And then, between ’em all, we got Steven Poole– who thinks that, like Spielberg’s A.I., Journey shoulda ended at that bit in the ice.

The Kid’s got a few more. She’s gotta keep going, after all– keep goin’ until the links are…