Invalid characterset or character set not supported
About Me: Sorry, but I haven't yet shared the information about myself that would typically display here. Check back later to see if that changes, or if I instead choose to remain an enigma. |
I've been playing Fahrenheit. Not Indigo Prophecy, because that version's for Americans and has its boobs chopped off. I've been playing solidly from 1pm until now, so not quite sure where in the story I am - but I'm guessing it's ambling towards the stage where it gets a little bit silly. I hope it can hold out for a bit longer. So far, it's a fascinating game.
Because, really, it's a film. Only it's a film that branches, depending on your actions. Only your actions are never really tangible, because it's mainly just QTEs. Which, incredibly, aren't horrible! It's a Choose Your Own Adventure book, rendered in full 3D.
Worth a post, I reckon.
Andy Johnson's posted the first of a series of articles over at Resolution, examining how games explore matters of national security. The topic of this one is terrorism, and it makes for a thoroughly interesting read. There's a lot of room for this sort of almost-academic writing in serious games journalism, methinks. Well worth a read - and do leave him a nice comment over at Reso if you've any of your own thoughts on the matter.
I just had an incredible moment of flailing where I couldn't decide which game I wanted to play. I launched HL2ep2... no, not that, not today. Quick exit, and throw the Blood Money disk into the drive... wait, no - it's good, butI want something with a bit of bleakness.
STALKER. No, shit, I uninstalled it a bit ago, so I'll need to grab that off Steam again first.
Pathologic it is.
I have some sort of bizarre compulsion to buy truckloads of games at the moment.
It's weird. I'm fortunate enough to get a reasonable amount of stuff sent to me via PR companies, so there's rarely much need to purchase anything. In the past fortnight, though, I've bought seven games. All old, decrepit, budget things, of course, but still. Seven. That's quite impressive.
My favourite recent purchase (LIES. That's Braid. But it doesn't sit nicely with what I want to talk about) is Hitman: Blood Money. Which is just all kinds of brilliance. Sneaky-stabby-shooty-non-linear gorgeousness. I rate it more highly than Thief. Seriously. I've not had this much devilish fun with a stealth game for years.
Mr. Walker points to this astonishing campaign by America's National Organisation for Marriage:
Inevitible games journalism shop talk leads me to consider how we approach our reviews. There's a problem with the traditional method, in that it strays dangerously close to some sort of step-by-step analysis of an artistic product. What is the game about? What's the gameplay like? What are the graphics like? It's all nonsense, because as we know, games simply don't work like that.
This is all kinds of awesome.
A first-person FPS-cum-adventure-cum-beat-em-up from Chilean indie house Ace Games turns out to demonstrate just how true that name is. Zeno Clash is a beautiful ugly. It's ugly in the sense that it's gruesome, often visually disturbing and, at times, oddly frightening to look at. It's beautiful because... well, because just look at it:
Additional Articles:
[01] [02] [03] [04] [05] [06] [07] [08] [09] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31]