“It is easy to kill someone with a slash of the sword. It is hard to be impossible for others to cut down.” Yagyu Munenori Hollywood, games and fiction gets fencing wrong. Protracted clash of blades. Wild telegraphed flailing and awkward cuts. Casually absorbing lethal attacks, or powering through guard positions. Ridiculous speeds. Most of […]
XCOM: Social Justice
My fondest memory of X-COM (the original 1994 game) was my first base defense mission. Which happened to be the first mission of the campaign. The run began swimmingly. I established my first base on the coast of North Africa. From here I could cover a goodly portion of Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle […]
LA Noire and the Tragedy of Cole Phelps
L.A. Noire broke new ground in the history of game design. Released in 2011, L.A. Noiretransported the player to 1947 Los Angeles, seen through the eyes of Detective Cole Phelps. Mixing investigation and interviews with traditional combat and chase sequences, the game charges the player with solving myriad crimes across Los Angeles, culminating in the massive conspiracy […]
Can post-cyberpunk fiction be superversive?
“The important part in Cyberpunk is just that: it’s not the technology, it’s the feel. It’s getting that dark, gritty, rain-wet street feeling but at the same time getting that rock and roll, lost and desperate and dangerous quality. Cyberpunk is about that interface between people and technology, but not in that transhumanist way where […]
Children of a Dead Earth: Future War in Space
Children of a Dead Earth bills itself as the most scientifically accurate space warfare simulator ever. And it lives up to the hype. In the universe of CDE, World War III wiped out the Earth, forcing the survivors to colonise space. The game covers a superpower conflict between the Republic of Free People and the United Sol […]
Sunrider Academy: How NOT to Write A Romance
Sunrider Academy is a spin-off from the Sunrider series. Set in an alternate universe, Sunrider Academy reimagines the main characters as high school students. The Sunrider series is a collection of visual novels powered by the Ren’Py engine, with gameplay sections interspaced with VN storytelling segments. Where the original game was a turn-based strategy game […]
On the Radar: Children of a Dead Earth
Children of a Dead Earth is the most promising science fiction computer game I have seen since Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri. It tries to do for the genre what I attempt to do with my forays into science fiction: to create a compelling vision of tomorrow based on real-world science. Storywise, the game is fairly […]
Why Polygon is DOOMed
On the 12th of May, gaming review website Polygon released a 30-minute gameplay video of DOOM. To call it horrible is an understatement. The player’s performance is embarrassingly abysmal, quite literally on par with someone who has never played a first person shooter on a console before. It’s as though the concept of aiming, moving and shooting […]
A Tale of Two Devs
The recent furore over Blizzard’s Overwatch and Beamdog’s Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear illustrates two very different approaches to game design and response to criticism. Blizzard’s Overwatch is an upcoming multiplayer first person shooter. The original controversy began when people complained about a victory pose employed by the game’s first revealed character, Tracer, claiming that it […]