All Posts by: Dan Crabtree
I don’t like what I’m going to say about Borderlands 2 because it’s difficult to objectively support. I’m going to say it anyway and do my best to provide evidence. The game is arrogant in its brash humor and elegant… Read More »
I am not the main character in Papo & Yo, and neither are you. Vander is. Before Papo & Yo (translated to the nicknamed “Papo and I”), I knew video games were player-centric. In every other game’s given galaxy (excepting… Read More »
Take beefcake gunman Chris Redfield, alone, in a mansion, turning a corner down a hallway, a new static camera, and an unexpected dog-through-window. Now imagine it’s all being rendered by a 32-bit processor, and there’s no music, and it’s just… Read More »
I haven’t stopped believing in Kinect’s concerted gaming potential. A game like Flower, not “casual” or “hardcore” by any stretch, but captivating, clever, and moving, has the listless corners that would fit right into Kinect’s approximation controls. From Software did not… Read More »
Isaac dated survival horror. Then he started coming home late, his space miner’s suit smelling like a different genre, and still survival horror stayed quietly by his side. He’d been fooling around with action horror. It never got bad enough… Read More »
Heavy Rain taught us that the mundane can become the humanizing. Remember putting away the Mars family groceries, buying a balloon, checking into a motel? Probably not, but the emotive effect sticks like a bad habit. These are people, we’re… Read More »
If there’s a bright center to the God of War IP, Ascension‘s multiplayer is the mode that it’s furthest from. That’s not to say that the melee-focused brawler isn’t a joy to play. In fact, movement and combat controls are so… Read More »
Qualia are irreducible experiences, also known as instances for “the way things seem.” They are a key component to human consciousness, and integral to the concept of strong emergence. The sum of the parts is greater than the whole, in… Read More »
With E3 over faster than a hip-hop concert at a gaming convention, I’m reminded of the unique, uncomfortable interactions between gamers, games press, game developers, and… the others. That is, specifically between the “nerdcore” and the “observers,” whose well-intentioned false… Read More »
Bethesda isn’t satisfied to bask in Skyrim‘s glory. We may be, but the publisher is not. At E3 2012, the company plans to slough off the old (Prey 2, RAGE) and usher in the… fairly recent and new. It’s a… Read More »
