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Of course I go and turn a simple prompt of "here are some awards for video games" into something actually personal. I'm kind of proud of this (I say kind of because I think it shows how much I need to have been stretching my writing muscles). Proud enough to share anyway.
Every year, our crew of refugees from Gameological turned AV Club turned gutted media site because fuck Jim Spanfeller and capitalism in gen
Keyboard #Geniuses #Gameological readers declare their favorite #games of 2016 @TheBrainDriver #tDCS #FastBrain http://flip.it/V3WKyn
A Commodore 64 oddity created the survival-horror template seven years before Resident Evil shambled onto the scene
Happy Hallo-Week!
Great write-up from Alexander Chatziioannou for Gameological about Project Firestart, one of the first games to try the survival-horror format.
Gameological posted a group article today of video game songs that feel like Winter to us. Unfortunately, one of the entries I wrote about had only one video on YouTube and it was region-blocked outside of the US, so we decided to cut it rather than exclude our non-American readers. I supported this decision, but I’m also rather fond of both the song and my write-up, so here it is for Tumblr to (hopefully) enjoy.
Most of Junkie XL’s original soundtrack for SSX Blur is full of high-adrenaline excitement and rousing beats. Makes sense, what with the game being a bright and colorful spin on the thrill-seeking sport of snowboarding. “Snow Park NZ” is different, though. Sure, there’s a beat, but it’s a slow burn, building one slim layer at a time, piling up like snowbanks on the hillside. Wave after wave of synthesized energy wash over the speakers as the pulsating core of the melody ping-pongs back-and-forth. It’s comforting in its coldness, and it hides the more aggressive beats as they begin to trickle in behind the walls of soft safe powder. This is a song about becoming comfortable with the cold, finding your place in it and rising above the frost. When the light finally shines, it reflects off the snow more brightly than the summer sun. The song glows the same way winter glows, by rising above, slowly.
Never judge a game by its jumpsuit:Friday The 13th on NES was ahead of its time
“There are positives here that bely the game’s bottom-of-the-barrel notoriety. Friday The 13th is horror, and horror games, as they’ve developed since 1989, are largely about managing resources. Early entries in the Resident Evil series made great use out of clunky “tank” controls and limited access to save points and bullets, and while Friday The 13th doesn’t have that level of intention, the hostility toward the player kicks in immediately, setting a tone that’s fit for the genre. Working against the clock and fighting an overpowered foe under rules that aren’t immediately clear is entirely fitting. A good game based on the Friday The 13th series should have a feeling of hopelessness running through it. If Jason were easy to beat, he wouldn’t be scary.”
Downwell is a nonstop struggle against gravity and greed
“And that’s where the driving tension of Downwell comes from. After enough attempts, you’ll start to learn about the enemies and traps that fill each of the game’s themed areas, but the well’s hazards are laid out randomly at the start of each run, so there’s no way of knowing exactly what lies ahead as you plunge into the darkness. Firing your boots and controlling your descent to the point where you can actually plan a route on the fly is the key to survival, but it’s all too easy to find yourself out of ammo and plummeting into the unknown. You could always try to land and cash out your combo, but as dangerous as it is to zoom past solid ground and potentially toward ruin, the allure of seeing that little combo tally above your head tick up even higher is often powerful enough to assuage such fears.”
Katamari Damacy’s whimsical cosmology is built on a father-son relationship
“All due credit to the King: He may be a drunken, irresponsible dick, but he’s not actively malevolent. His rule could best be described as one of benign neglect. Casting the night sky into inky blackness because you have the woozy celestial stumbles is regrettable, but it’s not like he buried all of creation under an unrelenting flood because he spied a few of his denizens dipping their lobster claws in butter. The King is a gnostic deity and uninterested in the universe beyond himself. He’s more Dionysus than Yahweh. His hands-off style of rule might be more consequential if it weren’t for The Prince and his quiet pursuit of doing the right thing.“
Words and illustrations by Nick Wanserski
Katamari Damacy’s whimsical cosmology is built on a father-son relationship
Illustrations by Nick Wanserski
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