Category: Videogames
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Aftershock
At some point during the blur of the past few weeks, I “finished” BioShock. (The Xbox Achievements are still there to remind me I haven’t really finished until I’ve played through a second time, even more slowly and methodically). The game has been out so long by now that it’s been picked clean of things…
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“A Triumph of the Human Spirit”
I haven’t been writing on here much lately (apart from tonight), because I’ve been too busy not getting my work done. Since I’m currently failing on the development side of things, maybe I can be of use to my company in marketing and promotion: Sam & Max Season Two has been announced, and there’s a…
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Zero Punctuation
The best commentary being made about videogames today is from a guy named “Yahtzee” Croshaw, who started with videos on YouTube and is now doing them for the online magazine The Escapist. I don’t know the guy, but after seeing his review of BioShock I want to be his best friend. And below is the…
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They chose to build… an action game!
I’ve been limiting myself to at most an hour of BioShock a night, plus I’m going through it very slowly, even for me. So I’m still only done with the first two levels. But if I waited until I was finished with it to write anything about it, then by the time I was done…
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No gods or kings, only power-ups
The buzz around BioShock is getting monumental, and as a videogame fan with no stock in Take 2, I couldn’t be happier about it. It’s got the Penny Arcade guys talking about storytelling and the narrative potential of games as art using lots of italics. It’s got the normally somewhat reserved guys at Eurogamer writing…
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Steady now, your genetic code is being rewritten.
The Xbox 360 demo for BioShock came out last night (a PC demo is in the works), and I tried it out for a little less than an hour. Key discoveries: It’s awesome. It looks like it may be able to live up to most of the hype it’s been getting. They weren’t lying when…
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I don’t know much about power-ups, but I know what I like
I’m going to take a short break from not updating my award-winning* series of posts about storytelling in videogames, because the whole “Are videogames art?” debate has flared up again this week. People are already tired of the debate, and for good reason. But I can’t tell if people are tired of it because they…
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Lawful Good
On Monday (or was it last week?) I saw a friend I haven’t seen in a long time, and he asked how I was liking the new job. I’m so used to answering that question by launching into a string of complaints or highly-qualified compliments, that it surprised me I couldn’t come up with much…
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For the Overlord!
I hadn’t heard anything about the game Overlord until its demo was released on Xbox Live a while ago. Now that’s how you do a game release: under-hyped to the point of obscurity, then a wide-release demo that builds buzz, and the full release a month later. The game itself (I’m playing the Xbox 360…
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You’ve unlocked… Rosebud!
When I started writing about storytelling in videogames almost a month ago, I’d intended to turn it into a series, with more arguments and maybe even some examples more concrete than “videogame stories should be good.” To keep things going, I’ll take some of the comments I’ve read about the topic online (in blogs, articles,…
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Back to School
I’ve been dropping hints left and right that I quit my job, but nobody’s been taking the bait, so I guess I have to make an announcement or something. (I guess it’s pointless to even try to pretend there’s a distinction between professional and personal on here at this point. If any future employer wants…
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Is there anybody going to listen to my story?
There’s been quite a bit written on the internets lately about writing and storytelling in videogames, and frankly, I’m relieved. I was starting to get concerned that everybody had just given up. People have been bitching for years about how the writing in videogames sucks. Long cut-scenes suck. And nobody cares about that stuff anyway,…