If you haven't gotten a chance to check out Age of Chivalry, it's worth a few rounds to play around with. I love the combat in M&B (the horseback combat, in particular, is phenomenal), but Age of Chivalry does take a slightly different twist to it. It focuses more directly on foot soldiers, adds a team deathmatch…

I'll admit to say that Morrowind might be my favorite game - but, compared to melee combat contenders like Mount & Blade and Age of Chivalry, TES games don't have a lot of flow or rhythm to the combat. Not to say that the combat in TES games can't be fun. However, it's not quite "there" in terms of having strong…

I was thinking this throughout the presentation. He lost me a little when it claimed that, in the mid to late 1990s, arcades had better controllers than consoles. Considering that the SNES was out at this point, and contained a controller better shaped for a human hand (and including two bumpers), I have to think that…

I have a question I figured someone here might be able to answer.

Let me know if you ever find out - that sounds really interesting as a game concept.

I was a little confused how I got through this whole article and it repeatedly assured me that the writing wasn't the problem when all I could think was: "everything you're saying points exactly to the writing." Good to hear that someone else managed to pick this up too.

I've never been a huge fan of Bioware's dialogue in the ME series outside the most important characters. Some of the NPC dialogue is embarrassing, frankly. As for the story itself, between the jarring shifts of theme and tone throughout the entire series (with maybe ME1 presenting something of an exception), it's no…

This is why I'm so excited for Journey. All games can be reasonably dissected through a critical lens (I mean - hell - people are writing their theses for M.A.s on Harry Potter and Twilight), but there are a very few that are dedicated enough at presenting their best artistic foot forward instead of their best…

Oh, I'm aware what they're asking for. And I do agree that it's - probably in the best terms I've read - "reaching beyond" their boundaries as audience members for what it counts. I suppose, putting my critic hat on, I'm just a little disappointed with some of the caliber of the arguments from the opposing side on…

Ooh, hidden stuff is good news. I did a trophy run after finishing up Flower, and it was a lot of fun finding the different hidden caves and paths. I'm just looking for a game that I can get literally lost in - a world without proper nouns, if you want to get Borges-esque and overly poetic about it - and Journey looks…

I'm not sure I agree that Barthes's discussion on interpretation is much different than the one here. (This is mostly the reason I disagree with changing the ending, after all.) The difference here is that Barthes is speaking about criticism in a descriptive sense, which is the traditional method. The interpretation,…

Considering that I've used the same general software Bioware uses for the ME games when it comes to script-writing, there's no more inherent complexity between a Choose Your Own Adventure novel and a Bioware game. The difference isn't in technical complexity, as you might find with language, in which you can…

I have to think that the ability to change is more to do with gaming's online connectivity as opposed to it's actual core artistic tenets. Think about pre-internet console gaming. Good luck patching my copy of Donkey Kong Country 2, Rare! (By the by, they'll have to rip it from my kung-fu grip first.)

In 1967, a philosopher and critic named Roland Barthes wrote an important essay called "The Death of the Author." In this essay, Barthes argued that the author of a work was "dead" - that is, needs to be divorced from the work once it's given to an audience to experience.

This exits the direct discussion of "Japanese" gaming and widens it a bit, but I think there's a decent argument to say that AAA gaming will slip pretty hard without an indie scene to threaten it. I certainly feel more stagnation in console gaming than in PC gaming. (Here comes the hate, maybe?)

To be fair, I play a lot of games of TF2 checking through most of my own players for Spies until it seems reasonably viable to charge the objective. Such is the life of a quasi-diligent Pyro.

From a thematic standpoint - is there really a difference in the narrative whether Shepard or the human race is treated as exceptional? I mean, we - the human player - are given agency over Shepard, and our choices are made out to be his/her choices. Not to mention how many times Shepard is presented as an ambassador…

Edit: Nevermind.

The all-knowing also couldn't figure out that the humans would beat them in the end. So... I have to take their omniscience with a grain of salt.

Did we miss the sarcasm? I feel like we missed the sarcasm.