The Final Fantasy VII Letters, Part 5
Part five in our ongoing retrospective letter series. An index of all letters can be found here.... read more
The Final Fantasy VII Letters, Part 4
Part four in our ongoing retrospective letter series. An index of all letters can be found here.... read more
The Final Fantasy VII Letters, Part 3
Part three in our ongoing retrospective letter series. An index of all letters can be found here.... read more
Reality is Bokeh: The 2011 Game Developers Conference
Work on games for too long a stretch and they take over your mind and spirit. Sensation deadens and the hours bleed into each other as you grapple with the problems inside your virtual worlds. It’s partially a result of those long nights in front of the screen, deep into that many-day limbo world of crunch and looming deadlines—but it’s also the enveloping embrace of the medium, the way you can come to inhabit, or be swallowed by, your own creations.... read more
The Final Fantasy VII Letters, Part 2
Part two in our ongoing retrospective letter series. An index of all letters can be found here.... read more
Broken Out Of The Box: Bethesda's Non-Fallout Consumer Products
Now that we've all finally had a chance to complete Fallout: New Vegas, we can reflect on the sheer number of things about the game that were buggy and malfunctioning on launch. Paste contributor Brian Howe thought he'd take a humorous look at four "new" retail products that the makers of Fallout were planning to bring to consumers next.... read more
See What Happens When Hipsters Rule The Galaxy
Hipster memes are becoming quite the norm, what with Hipster Kitty and Hipster Ariel, hipster puppies and of course, our own look at the evolution of the hipster. Apparently, all it takes is a pair of black-rimmed glasses to make a hipster, but when that logic is applied to the Mass Effect series, the results are hilarious.... read more
The Final Fantasy VII Letters, Part 1
Editor's Note: Even among the most rarefied videogames of the last twenty years, Square Enix's 1997 masterpiece Final Fantasy VII stands apart. Widely held to be one of the greatest JRPGs of all time, the lovely and melodramatic saga of Cloud, Tifa, Aeris and Sephiroth has inspired more accolades, retrospectives, musical remixes, remake rumors and frothing fan fiction than perhaps any game ever made.... read more
A Note On Paste's Game Review Scores
Videogame review scores are a contentious subject. For whatever reason, the number assigned to a game review seems to hold a lot more importance to fans of the medium than, say, the number of stars assigned to a film or the grade given to an album. What's more, over the past 10 years, game review scores have become inflated to a hideous, almost irreversible degree.... read more
The Many Faces of Tim Schafer
Tim Schafer is a very expressive fellow. In addition to being the head of Double Fine Productions and the creator of beloved games like Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, and Psychonauts, he's also a funny, charismatic, and genuinely nice-seeming guy. We received further evidence of this on Wednesday at the Game Developers' Conference, when Schafer hosted the 11th annual GDC Awards.... read more
An Appropriately Epic Dragon Age Retrospective
Kirk: I’m excited about Dragon Age 2, which is mostly due to the fact that I loved Dragon Age: Origins. I remember that before it came out, I was largely unsold on just about every aspect of the game. The graphics looked dated, the combat was dated, the story looked entirely unoriginal... and yet as I started playing I fell under its sway and sank a ton of hours into it, making my way across Ferelden and finally defeating The Darkspawn. Yes, the enemies in the game are actually called “The Darkspawn.” Shut up. It’s awesome.... read more
On Videogame Criticism
[Editor's Note: I'm very pleased to share the following letter series, and I thought I'd give a brief preface to the conversation you're about to read. The past few years have seen the rise of some creative and intelligent new voices in games criticism, and Tom Bissell and Simon Ferrari stand out among the very best of them. Tom is an award-winning author whose new book Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter is one of the most purely enjoyable collections of videogame writing I've had the pleasure of reading. Simon is a doctoral student at Georgia Tech's well-regarded Digital Media program,... read more
A Game To Remember You By: Mossadegh's Cat and the Iranian Coup
In 1951 Mohammed Mossadegh was elected Prime Minister of Iran. He quickly moved to cancel an agreement the Shah had signed with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company--the government owned conglomerate that would later become BP. Under the concession, the British paid the Shah a minimum annuity of 750,000 Pounds in lieu of a tax for rights to extract oil from Iran.... read more
Interview: Katamari maestro Keita Takahashi is still plenty playful
The phenomenon of the “one-hit wonder” doesn’t really exist in gaming. Generally speaking, gaming’s most successful auteurs go on to be looming figures in the industry, from the mysterious Suda51 to Metal Gear mastermind (and self-proclaimed foodie) Hideo Kojima. But Japanese game director Keita Takahashi has always been a little bit different. ... read more
"The Wii Plays" Presents Videogames, Adapted to the Stage
For many there remains a stubborn and irrational fear of looking at the common roots videogames share with other art forms. Call it a lingering inadequacy complex—an anxiety over being seen as inadequate when the creative scope is widened from fun and quirk to issues of love, identity, moral dilemma, and death anxiety. These have been the emotional fixations of art yet they’re subjects videogames remain hesitant to address.... read more
Recreating The World of New Orleans in Sucker Punch's InFamous 2
The phrase "world-building" gets tossed around quite a bit these days, and it's interesting to think about what it really means. After all, every game needs a space to occupy, so usually it's someone's job to actually go in and build one. As I mentioned in my column last week, videogames take us places. But no matter how real those places may feel, the fact remains that they are constructs, controlled digital spaces created by humans.... read more
Interview: Team Bondi's Brendan McNamara talks L.A. Noire
In early 1947, a young woman's murder rocked Los Angeles, California. Her name was Elizabeth Short, but newspapers called her “The Black Dahlia”, with photos of her mutilated corpse covering their front pages. In the years since, a good number of fictional tales have been crafted around the Black Dahlia case, but never one you can play. Until now, that is.... read more
Five Overlooked Games From 2010
Take a quick look around the game-infested underbelly of the internet and you’ll find no shortage of “Best of 2010” lists cluttered with the likes of blockbusters such as Call of Duty: Black Ops, Mass Effect 2 and Red Dead Redemption. Sadly, however, there’s been only a modicum of debate about the many deserving games which, for one reason or another, were generally overlooked in the button mashing craziness of 2010. With respect to The Wall Street Journal, Paste plans to actually attempt to rectify that situation, offering up five somewhat overlooked games deserving of a second chance. ... read more
2010: The Year in Downloadable
Game Content
For the first few years of the current console generation, it seemed like most developers hadn't quite wrapped their heads around the concept of Downloadable Content. The bulk of post-release DLC was limited to map packs for popular shooters, new outfits or skins for player-characters and new gear, power-ups and weapons to use in various games. These packs were nice bonuses for hardcore fans, but for the most part they had a whiff of the insubstantial about them, a hint of the nickel-and-dime.... read more
The Musical Villages
of Jim Hall's Isle of Tune
Ever since I was young I've had this compulsion regarding windshield wipers—whenever I'm in a car in the rain, I can't help but get into their hypnotic, rhythmic groove. No matter the driving conditions, I find myself bopping my head and humming along as they swipe, swipe, swipe. This habit has produced a lot of interesting beats over the years, from the deep, uneven swing of a pair of oversized bus wipers to fast pulse of a sedan in a downpour. But it wasn't until this week that I saw a videogame designer take that absent-minded compulsion and run with it.... read more
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