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
Found in: Games, FeaturesStart 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
Found in: Games, FeaturesStart 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
Found in: Games, FeaturesStart 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
Found in: Games, FeaturesStart 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
Found in: Games, FeaturesStart 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
Found in: Games, FeaturesTom Bissell: Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter
Celebrated journalist does some videogame soul-searching In April, legendary film critic Roger Ebert doubled-down on an assertion he first leveled in 2005: "Video games can never be art." His unflinching blog-post dismissal stung gamers the world over, eliciting countless rejoinders. A friend of mine summarized the ensuing fallout quite nicely: “Never have so many gamers expended so many words insisting they don’t care what a film critic thinks of them.”... read more
Found in: Books, ReviewsStart 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
Found in: Games, FeaturesSkate 3 Review (Xbox 360)
Developer: EA Black Box Publisher: Electronic Arts Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 100% 'boarding, 0% boring During the five years of my childhood I spent in Southern California, I was obsessed with skateboarding. I can’t say that I actually skated all that much, but I spent hours hunched over pieces of paper, drawing skateboarders wiping out on half pipes. I memorized all the trick terminology I could. The very mention of pro skaters such as Tony Hawk caused my little 4th-grade pupils to dilate. Skateboard culture provided a heady fantasy world. Watching videos of pro skaters, it seemed as though... read more
Found in: Games, ReviewsStart 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
Found in: Games, Features
