gore gaming (thoughts on the genre)

it's like christmas all over me!

This post was originally ranted out at the Escapist forums, in response to Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw’s post/article about Splatterhouse and potential gore gaming mechanics:

I think what’s interesting about gore gaming is – the concept of sadism.

If video games are this magical invention that frees you to “do anything you can think of,” then why are you perpetrating all this gore?
Make the game focus on this. If you ignore this aspect of the experience (by making the game about a stylish world travelling treasure hunter, for example) then you’re robbing the gore of it’s punch. You’re making a different genre of game that happens to have some gore in it. which strikes me as lame/irresponsible. Continue reading “gore gaming (thoughts on the genre)”

Game Dev Story : emperor’s new clothes? crippled tamagotchi?

(this was posted initially as a response to gamasutra’s best iOS games of 2010)
I’ve heard nothing but praise for Game Dev Story (GDS), but disagree heartily.

Isn’t it more like some sort of simple limited tamagotchi than a real game? (is there a better term? “micro simulation with minimal input allowed”?) Continue reading “Game Dev Story : emperor’s new clothes? crippled tamagotchi?”

Tron Legacy – not for snobby idioticritics

(Update: my comment, below, led to me being banned from io9.com sooo. fuck.)

Just wrote my angry retort to all the haters of the world. Focusing on Charlie Jane Anders at io9, who I actually dig as a contributor.
looks like my account there may not post my retort (they’ve disabled facebook logins, and looks like my direct login was disabled/deleted?).

anywho. In response to this rather lame review, here are some more ranting thoughts on the movie: Continue reading “Tron Legacy – not for snobby idioticritics”