Thursday, April 28, 2011

Rewind to Advance: Jordan Mechner's Games with Time

I kind of love Jordan Mechner. I've written on the significance of Karateka for the development of my appreciation for gaming as a storytelling medium before. We also recently posted a podcast exclusively on The Last Express over at the Moving Pixels blog.

As a designer and storyteller, Mechner is mature and artful, so I thought that I would consider some of the ways that his interests in playing with time as a game mechanic may or may not relate to the way that other visual media have approached temporal representation.

The following discussion is the result:

Rewind to Advance: Jordan Mechner's Games with Time

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Portal 2 and the Politics of Stupidity


What I perceive to be my own initial misreading of the political subtext of Portal 2 lead me to think about intelligence and competency and how those ideas relate to political power, especially in the context of Valve's new game.

Keeping Wheatley in charge may be the best option from the perspective of the oppressed lab rat, Chell. But that isn't an option that the game allows for, which highlights the very cynical perspective that is represented by Portal's take on the meaning of power and authority.

A more thorough examination of these issues can be found here:

Portal 2 and the Politics of Stupidity

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Portal 2: Very Much "Still Alive"


No blog post for me today, as I spent the weekend tearing through Portal 2 in order to be able to post a review of the game in a timely fashion.

I haven't had the opportunity to dabble in co-op, but the single player campaign is very, very good, and I may get a multiplayer review up at some later date.

One of the more interesting things about this particular playthrough was having to play through without any access to FAQs, which I haven't done in years. While I generally try not to immediately jump to FAQs for solutions to games, I definitely would have done so in two spots here, what I now think of as the "painting room" and then maybe the last "official" test chamber in the game. I spent at least two hours on the aforementioned room and was just purely baffled for awhile on the second.

However, beating the whole thing on my own was really refreshing and satisfying. My wife refers to me sometimes as "mensa boy," and I kind of feel like I deserve the title having taken on some real mindbenders, persevering, and then actually getting through them.

Anyhow, my review at PopMatters covers the game and story in more depth, rather than just my personal experience of it:

Portal 2: Very Much "Still Alive"

Monday, April 18, 2011

Moving Pixels Podcast: Stepping Back into Portal

I should have some thoughts on Portal 2 on Wednesday, I think. But before that happens, the Moving Pixels podcast has some thoughts on the original game right now:

Moving Pixels Podcast: Stepping Back into Portal

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

A Study in Sado-Masochism: Lesbian Spider-Queens of Mars


Based on a brief mention of Lesbian Spider-Queens of Mars by Kris Ligman, I recently sought out said bawdy sounding title, and I wasn't disappointed. Anna Anthropy's game for the Adult Swim web site is pretty damned cool and pretty damned punishing, which I liked.

As I have said elsewhere, it's a "women in prison" movie, in reverse.

For a few additonal thoughts:

A Study in Sado-Masochism: Lesbian Spider-Queens of Mars

Monday, April 11, 2011

Moving Pixels Podcast: Rewinding The Last Express

Nick, Tom, and I had what I think is a really good conversation about Jordan Mechner's The Last Express last week, and this podcast is the result. To say that the game is very different than most other games is an understatement. It is mature, experimental, and contains innovations that still haven't been tapped by contemporary game development.

In addition to this 'cast, the game has also inspired a rather lengthy column by me (that is still being edited at present) about Mechner and his games with time (The Prince of Persia, of course, is also a dominant focus) that will probably appear over at PopMatters later this month or in early May sometime.

Moving Pixels Podcast: Rewinding The Last Express

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

War, Death, Wagers: Cormac McCarthy on Video Games

This week's Moving Pixels post may seem like a bit of stream of consciousness thinking about games (and it kind of is). It concerns an interest that I have had since seeing a particular scene in No Country for Old Men about chance, will, and games. I feel like McCarthy really “gets” what games are all about—largely because he understands their stakes.

As a result, I have put together a post that somewhat misleadingly claims to be about “Cormac McCarthy's [take} on Video Games.” It is a pretty unfiltered post, as I just wrote it the way that I actually think and make connections in my own head. I haven't really bothered to organize the thoughts before I actually “compose” them--in the way that I might normally try to do when writing with an audience in mind (sometimes people ask me how I make the connections between ideas or (in other words) how it is that one begins interpreting something--I have given many answers to students, readers, and others over the years (some more authentic than others), but I guess that this is the “real” answer, take it or leave it). As a result, it may make sense to no one but me. But I think that it is kind of profound (if kind of really grim), and that's what blogs are for, right?

Ummm... right?

War, Death, Wagers: Cormac McCarthy on Video Games

Monday, April 4, 2011

Moving Pixels Podcast: The Evolution of Hack and Slash


Hacking, slashing, getting phat loot. That's what it's all about, right?

The Moving Pixels crews considers the phenomenon of the dungeon crawl, both as a gameplay style and as an experiment in co-operation and competition.

Moving Pixels Podcast: The Evolution of Hack and Slash