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As I argued before, I think it's still likely that Nintendo will profit from the intellectual labor players invest in Maker, and that we'll see the fruits of the community's work in the next Mario game. That said, Nintendo isn't Facebook. Maybe it's better to think about it in terms of participation and collaboration than the work of the many in thrall to the few.
What surprised me was how much this simulation of the irascible human spirit reminded me of some of my favorite moments playing RPGs around the table with friends.
XCOM 2 isn't so much a game about liberating humanity from its extraterrestrial overlords, but a statement about the kinds of stories our games can tell and allow to be told, even when they aren't especially valued for their narrative.
Mini Metro submerges its formulae to create a space for more organic play. Like a city that leaves its streets to pedestrians, pushing highways underground and elevating trains overhead, the game seeks to avoid the anxious hustle of a traditional simulation by reducing clutter and keeping things at a more intimate, human level.
"Point, click, boom" in its most distilled form
In a series underwritten by amnesiac orphans, Fire Emblem Fates breaks away to tell a story about memory, family, and the self, meditating on the decisions that define us and how we regret them.
In a series underwritten by amnesiac orphans, Fire Emblem Fates breaks away to tell a story about memory, family, and the self, meditating on the decisions that define us and how we regret them.
In a series underwritten by amnesiac orphans, Fire Emblem Fates breaks away to tell a story about memory, family, and the self, meditating on the decisions that define us and how we regret them.
Splatoon, then, makes me optimistic about what games can do not with pastiche or duplication-as-serialization, but with sampling. We don't have a genre convention to slot Splatoon into, and that's a rare and wonderful thing.
Titanfall, like my coach, was more concerned with fun than winning. This sense of dedication to a player's good time by offering several ways to contribute, along with the on-point distillation of decades of enjoyable game design, is why Titanfall is already spoken of so highly.
If nothing else, Telltale's third episode in the serialized fairytale noir A Crooked Mile certainly knows what it's about.
"Polarized" is otherwise so linearly story-driven that the puzzle play of its dream sequence feels a little out of place.
Shovel Knight may be retro, but it's forward-thinking.
Madden NFL 15 is a truly impressive football videogame, and probably the best I've ever played. But it is still the NFL, and I am still figuring out what that means to me.
Turning into a machine is both the game's nightmare and its surreptitious fantasy. Isn't every FPS player a brain transplanted into a living weapon? Stuck in stiff undying bodies, gun-arms akimbo, we savor a stretched and distorted and rewound moment of carnage that is never allowed to end. Narrative justifications are appreciated rather than felt. What Blazkowicz really stands for is that mechanical satisfaction that keeps returning for its own sake. In the next Wolfenstein, he might not be human at all. As the philosopher said: he who fights Mecha-Hitlers must take care not to become one.
This War of Mine manages to convey an important message very well. By turning the player into an active participant in the cutthroat rationale of life as an ordinary person attempting to survive a warzone, it encourages a level of empathy only possible through interaction. Instead of simply hearing the stories of people who suffer unimaginable hardship as civilians during war, the audience is asked to inhabit these narratives. When our choices became their choices—as completely awful as they may be—we can better understand the ground-level tragedies taking place across the globe at this moment. 11 bit Studios' greatest success with This War of Mine, it turns out, is in creating a videogame that is profoundly unpleasant to experience.
From the room of VHS tapes, to the security footage, to the bat sanctuary, to the theremin performance, to the camera’s final, extended retreat up the rickety helix of a spiral staircase; Act IV confronts us with scenarios that test and limit our perception.
Thumper is a remarkably physical experience despite the fact that you control it with such modest thumb gestures.
The usual point-and-click caveats are present here: some puzzles are so obvious as to feel like filler material, one or two so esoteric as to drive the player to frustration. The division of Shay and Vella's worlds can sometimes make what is actually a sizeable game feel artificially constricted, particularly in the first act. But these are minor quibbles compared to the mix of delight and unease that a playthrough of Broken Age evokes.
By showing how war games can make virtual fascists us of all, Helldivers takes its place as one of the sharpest critiques of videogame imperialism. Granted, it's not a particularly new observation, but the game delivers it with such bravado in both action and atmosphere that it warrants commendation. To enlist as a Helldiver for Super Earth admits culpability in a system that disguises tyranny as heroism. Helldivers measures its brutal difficulty against a dehumanizing military and political complex that results in humor and violence, both about as subtle and hard-hitting as a freight train. Such is the price of liberty, paid in full with a pile of shell casings and the sickening splat of another expendable soldier.