games
Will Faught
September 2023
The game that lets you play it only once.
Wikipedia: One Chance is a Flash game developed by Dean Moynihan and released on Newgrounds on December 2, 2010. It has been frequently cited in video games literature as an interesting and moving use of permadeath mechanic (permanent death). In the game, the player controls a scientist who has created a cancer-attacking “cure”; when it is released in a gas form it begins to cause the extinction of all life by unexpectedly targeting all living cells, rather than just cancer cells.
1 minute
March 2019
December 2017
Finding The Meaning Of Journey In Its Music
If you ever wondered what Journey was all about, this is the best you’re going to find. The ending blew my mind. So great.
1 minute
June 2016
For Nintendo, It’s Not About Specs
Alex Osborn, writing for IGN: When asked how Nintendo NX will stack up against Sony and Microsoft’s forthcoming hardware revisions—namely PlayStation 4 NEO and Xbox One Scorpio—Fils-Aime told Bloomberg (via Nibel): “For us, it’s not about specs, it’s not about teraflops, it’s not about the horsepower of a particular system. For us, it’s about the content.” In other words, not good. I stopped expecting good hardware from Nintendo a long time ago.
games gaming ign microsoft nintendo nx teraflops virtual reality vr xbox xbox one
1 minute
May 2016
It’s Been Over A Decade Since Valve First Promised Half-Life 2: Episode 3
Ars reader Bad Monkey in a comment on an Ars post about it being 10 years since Valve announced Half-Life 2 Episode 3 and then left us hanging: A day at “work” for a Valve staffer: 9am: Arrive at work. Socialize in corridors for half an hour with coworkers, then head to the company cafeteria for breakfast. Free trade coffee and greek yogurt. Socialize with coworkers in cafeteria for 45 minutes.
games gaming half life valve video games
2 minutes
November 2015
It’s that time of the year again. Hide your wallets! I picked up: AI War: Fleet Command Aliens vs Predator Aliens: Colonial Marines Bleed Command and Conquer: Tiberium Wars Consortium Darksiders DeadCore Doom 3 Door Kickers Doorways: Prelude Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy Electronic Super Joy FEAR 2: Project Origin FEAR: Ultimate Shooter Edition GTA Collection Hard Reset: Extended edition Hitman 2: Silent Assassin Hotline Miami Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II Love Monaco Myst V Never Alone Neverending Nightmares Oniken Steam Store and Retail Key Painkiller Hell and Damnation Painkiller Overdose Painkiller: Black Edition Payday: The Heist Primordia Quake Quake 2 Red Faction: Armageddon Saints Row 2 Sanctum Shadow Warrior Star Ruler Super House of Dead Ninjas Supreme Commander Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance TIS-100 The Cave They Bleed Pixels Titan Quest Titan Souls Tropico 4 Unreal Gold Unreal Tournament: GoTY Volgarr The Viking Wolfenstein: The New Order It looks like I spent a lot, but it was all pretty cheap.
1 minute
June 2015
The Steam summer sale has begun! Hide your wallets! Just picked up: Age of Empires II Alan Wake American Nightmare Apotheon Awesomenauts Back to Bed Bastion Battlefield Bad Company 2 Standard Edition Betrayer Steam BioShock 2 Black Mesa Botanicula Bulletstorm Bully: Scholarship Edition Child of Light Day of Defeat: Source Deponia Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Director’s Cut (ROW) Doom 2 Eldritch Five Nights at Freddy’s Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 FRACT OSC Final Doom Goat Simulator Grim Fandango Remastered Guns of Icarus Online Half-Life 1: Source Hammerwatch Hatoful Boyfriend Hero Siege Hitman Contracts Hitman: Blood Money Insurgency Jazzpunk Just Cause Just Cause 2 L.
2 minutes
The Quest To Save Today’s Gaming History From Being Lost Forever
Kyle Orland on the challenges of preserving video games as historic art: Jason Scott knows what he’s talking about when it comes to the preservation of digital software. At the Internet Archive, he’s collected thousands of classic games, pieces of software, and bits of digital ephemera. His sole goal is making those things widely available through the magic of browser-based emulation. Compared to other types of archaeology, this kind of preservation is still relatively easy for now.
1 minute
July 2011
The problem is that too much stuff is thrown into the mix. Everyone has two weapons, a grenade, power ups, boosters, enhancements, experience points, dollars, and all this other random shit that results in a confusing maelstrom that you can only survive for a minute or two at a time. I don’t like dying so often. It’s a jarring experience. I make a plan, and before I can get a quarter way through it, I end up getting shot in the head through a wall by some guy twenty yards away.
1 minute
June 2011
Good interview. Interesting thoughts on the future of gaming.
1 minute
Recipe For Rebooting Tomb Raider
So what steps is Crystal Dynamics [the game maker] taking to reinvent Tomb Raider? … Sprinkle Some RPG Elements: Tomb Raider will use a base camp system as Lara’s home base or hub world. Here she can upgrade and build new gear, as well as purchase new survival skills (although I’m not yet sure what she’ll use for currency). From her base camp, she can revisit previous levels to look for items and reach areas previously inaccessible, much like Metroidvania games.
1 minute
Battlefield 3: Frostbite Trailer
Impressive tech. Check out the scale and rendering parts. The landscapes jumped out at me, especially where you’re in a tank driving over desert. There aren’t many expansive landscapes in games, but I enjoy exploring them. Exploring Hyrule Field is what sucked me into Ocarina of Time.
1 minute
November 2010
I haven’t much enjoyed playing Red Dead Redemption. Controls Despite using an analog stick to direct movement, your character, John, can only move on foot at four speeds. The two slowest are controlled alone by the analog stick. You hold a button to run and tap it to sprint. It’s mind boggling that you don’t have full analog control of John’s speed. Any speed slower than sprinting when on foot or riding a horse is intolerable.
games red dead redemption reviews rockstar world
7 minutes
October 2006
I’ve been reading an essay by Marc Laidlaw, entitled “The Hypermodern Muse“, in which he presents his experiences and reflections on writing for games. In case you don’t know, he’s the writer for Valve’s critically-acclaimed Half-Life games. When describing the essence of fusing writing with gameplay to make truly great games, he uses the game Majora’s Mask as an example. MM is one of my favorite games ever, but I’ve never been able to satisfactorily express why.
games half-life hypermodern muse life majora's mask marc laidlaw nintendo quotations writing zelda
6 minutes