The problem isn’t the game itself. Glee Karaoke Revolution is fine, fine. The problem is that I also own one of the Sing It! games.
Music games. Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Sing It, Karaoke Revolution -- even the now-classic Donkey Konga are all part of this stunningly popular genre. Though once they were the stepchild of gaming, earning the derisive descriptor of “casual,” they’ve become so huge that any serious gamer can’t afford to ignore them. And why should we? No matter how nerdy you are, chances are, you’ve secretly dreamed of being a rock star, renowned for your good…]]>It’s odd to think of such an expensive hobby that is so often associated with a privileged class as designed purely for escape. What could such an audience have to escape from?
Life is slow moving and mundane, games aren’t. Therefore, games satisfy a need for speedy, direct progress. It’s difficult to point to when the idea that games exist for the sake of escapism was popularized, but in recent years, such an idea has driven much of games journalism and probably a good deal of design as well. It’s odd to think of such an expensive hobby that is so often associated with a privileged class…]]>Despite sharing many of the same problems, I'm willing to cut Mirror's Edge more slack than Sonic CD.
This week, I take aim at an easy target: myself. I recently reviewed Sonic CD and was a bit underwhelmed. However, after re-reading the piece, I noticed that most of my criticisms of Sonic CD are equally applicable to Mirror's Edge. Both games offer fast-paced platformer experiences and both fall victim to some of the same pitfalls brought on by such a combination. I'm on record for calling Mirror's Edge tragically under appreciated, so I…]]>It isn't really a song about video games, of course. However, it is interesting for what it implies about games by taking gaming for granted as a normalized cultural practice.
I know that Lana Del Rey is receiving all kinds of critical backlash at present from the music community about her authenticity as an artist, her botched SNL performance, and the like. However, one way or the other, “Video Games” is a rather beautiful song. It strikes a pretty, but mournful tone that is full of a melancholy, uncertain nostalgia from a twenty-something-years-old artist, and it has managed to solder itself into my consciousness pretty…]]>Granted, Link does “hiyah,” “eyah,” and “ahh” his way through all of his post-64-bit adventures, but no amount of elfish interjections can change his status as a silent protagonist. Is a failure to communicate much, a failure to communicate?
As far as narrative and gameplay mechanics go, the silent protagonist has a long and venerable history in video games. In fact, it is only a slight exaggeration to say that the silent protagonist has been around as along as the medium itself. In the late 70s, the text-based RPGs Colossal Cave Adventure and Zork featured silent protagonists borrowed straight out of the D&D tradition, and the advent of graphical interfaces gave the first Ultima…]]>Two men dictated by driving: one driven by an intense focus on the calm precision necessary to master the physical science of it all, the other driven by the raw emotional power that a two ton extension of the self provides.
I watched Drive the other night, a movie that takes place in California about a nigh unstoppable badass, a possible sociopath with an almost supernatural ability regarding cars, whose enemy is a crime lord who will stop at nothing to kill him. Before putting the DVD into the player I was wondering if it would have any thematic connection to a certain video game, namely Driver: San Francisco, a video game that takes place in…]]>The Moving Pixels podcast crew get together to discuss the varied approaches that they took to exploring the vast world of Skyrim.
Between them, hundreds and hundreds of hours committed to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Rick Dakan, Nick Dinicola, and Mattie Brice get together to discuss the varied approaches that they took to exploring Skyrim.]]>Filmmaker Kevin Smith may be in a celluloid slump, but his new podcast network is on point.
Just two years ago, Kevin Smith was at a crossroads. Cop Out, the first movie he directed from a script he didn't write, starring Tracy Morgan and Bruce Willis, tanked at the box office. It was the second straight box office bust for him after the weak performance of Zach and Miri Make a Porno. But Cop Out was different: it was panned by critics and not received warmly by his old fans. Burned by…]]>SoulCalibur remains the most accessible fighting game series out there, but it certainly won’t make anyone a pro.
SoulCalibur is a weird series of games. It’s always been popular, but unlike Street Fighter, it’s never been a game that people play in tournaments. It’s the fighting game for the casual fan, and as such, it refuses to take itself seriously. Each game is populated with weird guest fighters and increasingly nonsensical costumes, even for a fighting game. SoulCalibur V continues the bizarre traditions of its predecessors, and it works. It’s a flashy game…]]>It’s interesting that the AC-130 makes a return in Modern Warfare 3, and it's impressive that it’s not just a repeat of what’s come before.
The “Death From Above” level in Modern Warfare was a great, unique level, putting you in an AC-130 raining explosives down upon your enemies. Since then it’s been mimicked with varying results, and Modern Warfare 2 wisely avoided retreading this familiar ground. So it’s interesting that it makes a return in Modern Warfare 3 in the level "Iron Lady," and it's impressive that it’s not a repeat of what’s come before. Infinity Ward has changed…]]>Quarrel is Scrabble meets Risk. It fixes some of the problems of Risk, while adding a few new irritations of its own.
Okay, so if you haven't heard, everybody is saying that Quarrel is a mix of two classic boardgames, Scrabble and Risk. And this is a pretty fair description of this word game released on iOS last year and recently released for XBLA. Basically, Quarrel features a gameboard divided into territories. Each player is assigned a few territories on the board and a number of units that occupy those territories. The object of the game is…]]>Rayman Origins utilizes a gradual teaching method with amazing finesse and offers a great opportunity to explore the risks and rewards of gated learning.
Platformers can offer a reliable breath of fresh air from the cornucopia of complex and dense games. The exhilaration of moving quickly through a level or mastering skilled jumps with ease is endlessly rewarding. More than this, I love the frequent transparency of platformers and the joy of a well taught lesson.Take Outland for example, an overlooked 2011 release from Housemarque. The game is aptly described as an Ikaruga platformer. The protagonist swaps between emitting…]]>I'm not around little boys enough to think too much about them. I kind of take them for granted. Too often, they just seem loud... and dirty.
I do like games that celebrate little boys. Some might argue that most games celebrate little boys, from the juvenile and madcap mayhem of Saints Row: the Third to the countless titles that allow for cooing over big breasts in bikinis or big breasts in chainmail or big breasts in chainmail bikinis. But I'm not talking about that man-boy crap. I'm talking about real little boys, the cool ones.]]>The Sims 3: Pets is the best available option for playing the addictive series on the go.
Though there's a rich history to simulation video games in general, the subgenre of social simulations (or perhaps more appropriately, virtual doll houses) has existed for much less time. Though arguably introduced with Little Computer People in 1985, these kinds of games didn't really take off until the release of The Sims in 2000. On the surface, social simulations appear to offer a good degree of opportunity for crossover appeal. The gameplay largely skews towards…]]>Batman: Arkham City is often criticized for being too open to tell as good a story as Arkham Asylum. But the lack of focus reveals a side of Batman that Asylum couldn't show. Arkham City isn’t a prison district, it’s a playground for a billionaire wearing rubber tights.
2011 wasn’t a bad year for games. There were some disappointments, some unsung gems, and some outstanding successes. One game that struck audiences as being all three is Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham City. “Sure,” the universal criticism begins, “it’s tightly designed, it has fluid controls and the world -- while having a somewhat silly premise -- is open and free. Still, it can’t hold a candle to the more focused, superior narrative of Arkham Asylum.” While…]]>If game mechanics are meant to provide players with experiences such as fun and anxiety, then narrative actually is a game mechanic, as much as game mechanics can also be narrative elements.
Narrative is a naughty word. Its appearance in video game discussions trigger froth to arise from corners of mouths and paints internet forums red. This is most likely because of a prevailing insistence on entertaining an old binary argument: video games are just another medium for telling as opposed to narrative being an inconsequential component in games. The latter opinion, along with the ideas of ludology and formalism, mostly won out, and narrative studies maintains…]]>In which the Moving Pixels podcast considers the merits of the sometimes zany, sometimes puerile, most often both, Saints Row: The Third.
Saints Row: The Third is a title that arrived at the close of the year to a surprising amount of fanfare. Most often seen as a Grand Theft Auto clone, though sometimes admired for some of the polish that it brought to the open-world, crime game, the Saints Row series has often been treated as a competent, but not especially exceptional alternative to GTA. By ratcheting up the general insanity of its world (way, way…]]>This year was a year when something called Lesbian Spider-Queens of Mars could be celebrated alongside the latest Gears of War game. This was a year in which one of the most reviled games, Dragon Age II, was also one of the most revered.
Our Game of the Year list is taking shape. I don't remember the previous year being so full of nauseating dilemmas. “Mass Effect 2! DONE." -- Ludwig Kietzmann (@ludwigk), Senior Editor, joystiq.com It's not clear yet exactly what 2011 will mean for video games once we gain the perspective of hindsight. It could be that the increased quality of independent and digitally-distributed games is blurring the lines of what are considered truly great game experiences;…]]>Sonic CD is the most faithful kind of re-release, if not the most flattering.
The past few years have seen numerous older games updated and released. This can be interpreted cynically as a quick money grab by publishers looking to cash in on aging gamers' nostalgia. Yet it seems that for every attempt at a quick buck there is an example of a respectful remastering. Sonic CD is one such example: it provides ready access to a classic game, allowing us to indulge our nostalgia, experience the game in…]]>Tank controls, bad checkpoints, and awkward combat can be good things.
Video game controls are complicated. Not just using them, but creating them. Whether or not something controls well can be extremely subjective, but even if a developer creates a universally praised control scheme that everyone else latches onto as a template (I’m looking at you Call of Duty), that doesn’t mean that it’s an ideal control scheme. There is no ideal control scheme, even within a single genre (i.e. Halo to counter Call of Duty).…]]>Skyward Sword marks the point where the Zelda formula finally reaches its expiry date.
It would be entirely fair to say to say that Nintendo “made” video games. There was a time not long ago that playing Nintendo was synonymous with playing any type of video game. Suffice to say, they’ve had a storied history centered around just handful of intellectual properties that have been cycling through their consoles every year for the last two and a half decades. The Legend of Zelda is second only to Mario in…]]>After a weekend of football and board games, I'm finding that video games have more in common with the former.
It was a rough weekend for Bay Area football fans. It was an especially rough weekend for Kyle Williams, the San Francisco 49ers' kick returner. His two unfortunate fumbles were crucial parts of the 49ers' defeat and the end of their Super Bowl run. Now that the disappointment is starting to wear off, I find myself able to appreciate the disastrous sequence of events in an academic sense. There's something exciting about a game in…]]>Batman is a bit player in his own story, and I think a lot of that stems from his desire to save everyone.
Playing Batman: Arkham City has confirmed a suspicion I’ve had for a while now: Batman is a boring character. Sure, some writers and directors have done interesting things with him, and those stories are rightly propped up as the best of the Batman stories, but for the most part, he’s surprisingly static. Arkham City serves as the perfect example: Batman doesn’t change. He doesn’t develop over the story, he doesn’t grow, and there are no…]]>After settling into the competitive, online playing field of some games, I find all other functions of the game superfluous, especially single player mode.
Counter Strike version 1.3 was the first video game that I played online in any capacity. In my high school years, I was a Nintendo devotee, which afforded the bare minimum of online gaming experiences. Though I owned Phantasy Star Online: Episodes I & II for the Nintendo Gamecube, the $10-a-month charge to play online was too steep for my part-time, $7 an hour job. So when a friend told me to buy Half-Life in…]]>The player is given a power to behave like one would in an exaggerated 1970s cop show. That's the implied memories that that era imbued on culture in our collective memory, a cultural meme that exists in both the real-life player’s mind and evidentially in the mind of the fictional John Tanner.
Many years ago there was a contentious debate concerning where video games got their meaning from. The debate was broken up into two camps: the narratologists, those that believed that a game’s meaning came from its story, and the ludologists, those that believed that a game’s meaning came from its mechanics. Then, it was thought to be somewhere in the middle. Now most agree that a game’s meaning comes not from a single element but…]]>Batman: Arkham City is so much bigger than the Asylum, but is that a good thing?
This is a weird episode. Because while all three of our podcast regulars appreciate Arkham City on some level, boy, do we all have some criticism to level at this sequel to what many feel was one of the best games of 2009.]]>It's nice to be able to listen to the soundtrack without the distraction of all that pesky, you know, gameplay.
You know you're doing something right when you can make an audio track called "Main Menu" a riveting, touching piece of music. Deus Ex: Human Revolution was one of the most talked about gaming experiences of last year, an exercise in stealth whose fatal flaw was its willingness to abandon that mechanic for three excruciating boss fights. The majority of the game was brilliantly done, however -- the stealth mechanics required patience and skill, and…]]>If I'm looking at a mini-map instead of the world around me, it's not actually helping.
Minimaps can be helpful, but for some games (or most games, for me personally) they can be too helpful. Since a mini-map usually gives you more information about your surrounding than the surroundings themselves, I usually find myself navigating a world using the mini-map exclusively. This first became apparent as I played through Final Fantasy X, the first Final Fantasy game to have 3D environments. I’m sure they looked incredible, other people seemed to think…]]>It isn’t just being pretty that makes Skyrim feel like a Jack London story, but instead its philosophy of striving for a photorealistic depiction of a reality.
Art has had its periods of depicting reality as plainly as possible, an emphasis on painting or writing exactly the actual object or scene. At those times, gone were hyperbole, mythic interventions, and patchy brushstrokes. One such moment was the advent of Naturalism, whose practitioners usually told stories of characters faring harsh environmental situations and struggling with the uncaring figure of nature. Sound a little familiar? Skyrim is a revitalization of Naturalism as its graphic…]]>Zelda could not succeed as a business venture if it were to change too radically. But should art evolve beyond business concerns?
Recently I wrote an article for another website entitled The Problem With the Legend of Zelda. The problem, in a nutshell, is that since Ocarina every Zelda game has been essentially the same and the only time that the series is interesting anymore is when it breaks from form. Unsurprisingly the article was met with vehement disgust, but one of the recurring counterarguments in response to it was that Zelda could not succeed as a…]]>To tap the potential that historical systems have to offer, we must be willing to step on fragile ground.
The strategy game genre has long featured elements that mirror or model colonization, including many of its inhuman components. The Civilization franchise, for example, explores the process of colonization as players settle foreign lands, occupying territory forcibly from “barbarous” natives. Up until Civilization V, the series also included slavery. Perhaps Firaxis removed human bondage from the series to avoid discussing such a sensitive issue distastefully. Sid Meier’s Colonization does the same, which Trevor Owens of…]]>Skyrim most often seems to me like a fantasy veneer spread over the most boring occupation that I can think of, managing and prioritizing tasks at an office.
This isn't the first time that I have felt this way while playing a Bethesda game. A couple of years ago I wrote a blog entry about the manner in which the Fallout series felt like some sort of “to do” list simulator (“Fallout, the “To Do” List Simulator”, PopMatters, 24 November 2010). But in a sense, I don't feel so alone in my feeling this time. Having spent some amount of time in the…]]>Video games reflect themes and skills found in boys’ styles of play as children, and any introduction of qualities that are different from that (especially if tagged as feminine) are cast out as inferior “casual” games.
There is a difference between “mass appeal” and “accessibility,” though some word-slingers and comment fanatics find the terms interchangeable. Who uses them determines a large part of their meaning, as a lot of gaming discussion also determines who belongs to the "in group" and who belongs to the "out group." Games striving for mass appeal tend to come from a series or lineage of some sort that include conventions that appeal to hardcore gamers but…]]>The Moving Pixels podcast talks about what the open world genre means to the last decade in gaming and what kinds of worlds most compel players to explore them.
In view of our topic, this episode of the Moving Pixels podcast is expansive. In other words, this is quite a long episode. Nick Dinicola, Mattie Brice, and I found quite a lot to discuss about the open world genre this week. It is a genre that has become widespread across the medium over the past decade (thanks in no part to a little game called Grand Theft Auto III). Worlds of all kinds have…]]>Add Go Vacation to the ranks of social games that bring face-to-face interactions into a virtual world. Its premise is simple: the game takes you to a virtual resort where you can participate in a variety of mini-games thinly disguised as sports and recreational activities.
When the Wii was introduced in 2006, it was marketed as a kid-friendly console with easy-to-use controls and a wealth of titles that the whole family would enjoy. Its premier launch title, Wii Sports, made eloquent use of the new controls and brought even small children together with their older siblings, parents, and grandparents to experience the joy of gaming. Inherently social, these games function adequately by themselves, but when played with a roomful of…]]>Battlefield 3 is neither a cynical war story, nor a heroic one. By failing to take a stand either way, it stumbles along with a painfully inconsistent tone.
Thid discussion contains spoilers for Battlefield 3. It’s good for a war game to be cynical; in fact it’s necessary. How else can you mow down hundreds of people with a machine gun and blow up global landmarks with glee? Cynicism and pessimism are -- and always will be -- inherent to war games (at least, as long as they continue to follow their current template), so it’s in such a game's best interest to…]]>There is a surprising amount of beauty to be found in LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7.
There is a fairly limited repertoire of terms that someone who has played any number of the LEGO (Insert Movie) games has at the ready when they begin to play a new one. "Whimsical", "humorous", "silly", "fun", "easy", "great for children", "imaginative", and "collect-athon" come immediately to mind. In general, apart from a few specific sequences in a few specific games, these are almost passive experiences, hyperlinear things that encourage the player to wander from…]]>Magical realism becomes a means of deepening an otherwise standard crime story.
This discussion contains spoilers for Driver: San Francisco. The shift ability incorporated into Driver: San Francisco is something that I wish games did more often. I don’t mean what the mechanic does physically in the game, but allowing the main activity of the player to correspond directly to the central core of both play and narrative. In the game, magical realism becomes a means of deepening an otherwise standard crime story, allowing it to plumb…]]>Skyward Sword's design raises a simple, yet important question: Who did Nintendo think was going to be playing this game? I don't have the answer, and I don't think Nintendo does either.
I'm not yet finished with The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and I make a point not to formally review anything that I haven't finished, so consider this a critique. It's a critique born of the unorthodox way that I'm playing the game, which is itself the reason that I haven't finished it yet. For reasons I'm still unclear on, my wife Hanah has expressed interest in Skyward Sword, so we're doing a quasi-cooperative playthrough.…]]>League of Legends is an excellent multiplayer experience. Unfortunately, you do have to play it with a lot of other people.
My daughter was recently asked by her teacher to interview my grandfather for her seventh grade class. The teacher was interested in getting some insight into the rapidly disappearing GI Generation, those that served during World War II. One of the questions that my daughter asked my grandfather was what he liked most about living through the 1940s and 1950s. His response: “I liked that the population was smaller.” I was really taken by this…]]>Rumble Blast's position as a mindless, cute, but somewhat enjoyable title would be completely understandable if the game were marketed as a modestly priced, downloadable title.
There's no denying that Nintendo has been a driving force in the video game industry for decades. Their consoles and first party franchises helped raise a whole generation of gamers. While they are sometimes criticized for releasing titles that are thematically, if not mechanically, identical to games that they've released before, as well as for their stodgy approach to concepts championed by their competitors (most notably online gaming), they've also demonstrated amazing feats of creative…]]>The Moving Pixels podcast discusses not just our own picks for game of the year, but what significance (or lack thereof) such declarations about our most beloved games have.
This week Nick Dinicola and I are joined by our fellow blogger Mattie Brice to discuss, in part, the games of the year. However, with PopMatters posting a forthcoming list of the best games of the year, we discuss more specifically that list, our writers' tastes here at PopMatters, and also what Game of the Year might mean in general to gaming.]]>