Start Press: Metal Foes & Metaphors

"A metal slime draws near." If you scrubbed off his goofy grin, he’d be indistinguishable from a silver foil-wrapped Hershey’s Kiss. His buggy round eyes gleam like a pair of tadpole eggs. As far as monsters go, he’s about as unthreatening as they come. But anybody who’s played an installment of Square-Enix's Dragon Quest RPG franchise, understands that the metal slime is not meant to inspire fear. The metal slime is purely an object of desire. Toppling one of these gelatinous buggers awards your band of adventurers a truckload of experience points, fast-tracking your stat boosting and potentially shaving hours off...  read more

Start Press: Dear Videogame Store at the Mall

Dear videogame store at the mall, Why do you suck so badly? Why do you positively revel in your antiseptic, soulless, funless, melted low-fat vanilla soft serve-ness? A set of newborn octuplets with eight bottles wedged in their tiny gluttonous gobs couldn't pull off as much sucking as you, videogame store at the mall. When a 31-year-old male finds himself at the mall and his pregnant wife is shopping for baby clothes, your job is simple: offer an oasis of time-killing euphoria to help pass the weary hours. When you are not providing this service, it means you are vigorously...  read more

Start Press: The Coming Age of MMOARSNs! (Massively Multiplayer Online Augmented-Reality Social Networks)

Earlier this week, Twitter—the only news source on the planet whose “reporters” spend less time fact-checking than Fox News—lit up with discussion of Robert Zemeckis’ 1989 film Back to the Future II. The subject began trending after a UK-based film magazine and website called Total Film tweeted that July 5th, 2010, just so happened to be the once futuristic-sounding date that Marty and Doc Brown had punched into their DeLorean dashboard. This ‘fun fact’ proceeded to go viral, triggering a global Twitter dialogue about how our late 20th-century hopes for futuristic technology have panned out....  read more

Start Press: Daddy's Love, His Yoke

“Then he just sat there holding the binoculars and watching the ashen daylight congeal over the land. He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.” (Cormac McCarthy, The Road) *** This past Sunday was Father’s Day, an occasion that has historically compelled me to look outward. It’s a day on which I’ve grown accustomed to considering my own dad, actively muting my lingering nitpicks with his job performance and focusing instead on the ferocity of the man’s affection; his contagious, untidy laughter; his irrepressibility; his resolve...  read more

Start Press: Immersion 2.0 (A Bug Report)

If you’ve watched any online streaming video coverage of E3’s press conferences this year, chances are you’ve seen people jumping and/or flailing their arms in front of a television. At Microsoft’s press conference on Monday, they showcased their Kinect motion-sensing device, previously called Project Natal. Onstage at LA’s Wiltern Theatre, a handful of Microsoft staffers navigated a virtual white-water raft down a virtual river. They leaned to steer. They jumped to launch the raft into the air to reach in-game collectibles. They squealed with delight, presumably when the scrolling text on the teleprompter read “[SQUEEEAAAL!!]” The rafting mini-game actually...  read more

Start Press: Pining is Evergreen

My most vivid childhood memory of my dad involves his obsession with classic rock. The '80s were winding down and our family had relocated from Ireland to Southern California. If there was music on his car radio, you better believe a DJ at K-Earth 101 FM was serving it up. My dad lost his mind every time they spun “Crystal Blue Persuasion,” a psychedelic slow-jam from 1969 by Tommy James and The Shondells. Singing along wasn’t enough; he compulsively slapped his fingers, tabla-style, on the steering wheel of his ’78 Toyota Celica. The loose fit of the horn buttons in...  read more

Start Press: The Floating Gun Barrel

I watched the dawn of the first-person shooter genre in third person. It was my older brother Trey obsessively playing id Software’s Wolfenstein 3D at the family computer, while I skeptically eyed the proceedings over his shoulder. I had no interest in playing the game myself, steering that floating gun barrel down one indistinguishable stone corridor after another. Every few seconds he’d plug a Nazi or an attack dog. I never stuck around to see if he got a chance to nestle a bullet in Hitler’s pencil-thin moustache....  read more

Start Press:
Groundhobbit Day

So I’ve finally managed to get my hands on a copy of Demon’s Souls. It’s been out long enough for me to glean its reputation for being an adamantium-tough nut to crack in terms of gameplay difficulty, just a smidge less forgiving than the God of the Old Testament. But I’ve also been assured that it amply rewards patience and dedication. Both assessments have proven entirely accurate. I spent my first 4-5 hours with the game logging a series of failed attempts at scaling the outer ramparts of Boletaria Castle, a gorgeously imposing bulwark that has presumably driven many an...  read more

Start Press: Herding Scapegoats

Once upon a time, rock ’n’ roll was controversial. To concerned parents and clergy, Elvis Presley’s dance moves on late-night television prefigured some hip-swiveling apocalypse that would bump traditional moral values right off the planet's outer rim. In 1985 there were even Senate hearings (Senate hearings!) in which Frank Zappa, John Denver and Dee Snider of Twisted Sister were forced to answer for rock’s moral transgressions before Tipper Gore and her colleagues in the Parents Music Resource Center....  read more

Start Press: How I Learned To Love The Plot Spoiler

As I played through Remedy’s thriller Alan Wake (check out our review of the game here), I kept thinking about the gaming community’s paranoia over inadvertently reading plot spoilers. Just a few hours before the board of CrispyGamer.com sent the most talented editorial team in online game journalism packing, a feature by journalist Tom Bissell went up on Crispy’s homepage entitled “Spoilsport: On Gaming’s Unhealthy Obsession With Spoilers.” At the Game Developers Conference earlier this year in San Francisco, Crispy’s former managing editor Elise Vogel shared with me the urgency she felt in getting this particular piece up on the site...  read more

Start Press: In Your Game We Play

In the Old Testament book of Sega Genesis, you can read about the first game Adam and Eve played together in the Garden of Eden. Before the Apple IIe. Before LuCiFeR666 tricked Eve into downloading a virus-infected copy of Resistance: Fall of Man. Before the curse descended and 8-bit Nintendo cartridges had to be mouth-blown like harmonicas. Before the sinister Red Ring of Death. Before Cliff Bleszinski dyed his hair streaky blond for the first ill-advised time. Before Adam and Eve were ordered to go play outside the garden....  read more

Start Press: Lookie Here!

My apartment is relatively compact, meaning the kitchen, dining room, living room and study all occupy the same room. What this means is, I don’t have the luxury of a basement “man cave” where I can stash all my videogame consoles and musical instruments. What this means is, my wife frequently finds herself in the room with me while I’m playing videogames. And that probably wouldn’t be such a bad thing—it’s easy enough to plug in headphones, which provide a better sound experience anyway—but I have this one compulsion that drives her crazy....  read more

Start Press: The Daily Grind

During my childhood gaming years, I spent an inordinate amount of time marching my poor avatar in circles. He’s just lucky he wasn’t self-aware, that stocky knight draped in plate armor, walking the same tedious circuit for hours beneath the heat of a sun that no one had programmed to set....  read more

Start Press: 'Roid Rage

Early last week I found myself suddenly, utterly engrossed in a Seattle locksmith's quest to topple the world-record high score in arcade classic Asteroids. The score to beat, set in 1982 by Scott Safran, stood at the confounding perch of 41,336,440 points. Safran’s high score had proved to be one of the most stubbornly enduring high scores in retro-gaming’s history, largely due to the unthinkable stretch of playtime required to accomplish the feat—not hours, but days. While learning to guide your tiny spaceship deftly around splintered, drifting asteroid shards can be effectively mastered without a Sysiphian expenditure of effort, the...  read more

Start Press: Color Me Impressed

I’ve just finished playing through Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time. And, if you’ll permit me a brief spasm of tongue-lolling, googly-eyed hyperbole, I found it to be one of the most enjoyable, seamlessly constructed, well-written, gorgeously rendered videogames I’ve played in my life. Seriously. Holy crap. Knowing I’d be writing about it for this column, I set about mulling over what I enjoyed most so I could focus on that particular aspect. Would it be the gleefully oddball weapon design? (Someone at Insomniac deserves a raise for coming up with the funny-looking, blowfishy alien that you coax...  read more

Start Press: It's Not Me, It's You

Dear Final Fantasy, We’ve had some really good times. Hell, we grew up together. Remember that summer of 1991 when we first fell in love and I had to leave you for a couple weeks to go with my parents on a church trip to the Philippines? I thought about you every day, looking forward to returning home to pick up where we left off. When I finally made it home, my friend who’d borrowed you while I was gone had already completed the quest to obtain the rat’s tail from the Castle of Ordeals, thus proving the party’s courage...  read more

Start Press: Not Just Another Pretty Pixel

Before leaving San Francisco after the conclusion of the Game Developers Conference, I carved out some time to visit Dog Eared Books. It’s one of those exceedingly rare bookstores where the clerks are so genial and eager to help, you’re almost disappointed when you realize there’s no tip jar by the register. Some men dream about Megan Fox; I fantasize about being rich enough to walk around Dog Eared with a grocery cart, filling it to the top with any titles that seem remotely interesting. Considering how heavy books are, it’s astounding how helium-balloon light they make you feel as...  read more

Start Press: The 2010 Game Developers Conference

Hordes of game-industry developers and journalists converged in San Francisco this week for the 2010 Game Developers Conference. Tuesday was the first proper day of the conference, and I’m already dizzy with new perspectives on the artform I love most. Floating between the various game summits in the Moscone Center will do that to you. This year’s conference included summits for areas such as artificial intelligence, international game development, mobile devices, indie games, social & online games and serious games. There was even an entire summit devoted to people who are developing games for the iPhone....  read more

Start Press: Project Natal Better Get Ready To Rumble

As I press the electric razor to my face, it vibrates in my hand, emitting that familiar shrill hum. I finish mowing the overnight stubble from my chin and shut off the razor. For a second afterward, my hand courses with a dull ghost vibration. As I turn the key in the ignition of my old beater ride, I feel the engine buck and settle into a low idle before I shift into gear. In a confrontation with a knife-wielding assailant, I feel the thud of his rushing body as it collides with mine. Quantic Dream’s new interactive thriller Heavy...  read more

Start Press: Oh Brothers!

My nephews are videogame enthusiasts. After firing up New Super Mario Bros. Wii, they slip into their respective signature playing postures. Isaac (nine years old) stands stiffly upright and alert in front of the TV, like an English Pointer signaling the death of yet another Koopa Troopa. Seán (seven) sprawls across a nearby armchair, with his nunchuck arm lolling over the side. He looks like a boy sultan in a floral-print gaming throne. They laugh. They scream when somebody inadvertently—ok, vertently—steals their power-up. My brother Trey goads Isaac with a chuckling, “hey, you snooze you lose,” after forcing him off...  read more