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The Creator
Markus Persson has the body of a politician but the features of a rock star: Fixed, handsome eyes and a deep-dimpled smile that offsets his baldpate and thickening torso. Perhaps this is why, when he visited Las Vegas in 2011 for the first international convention held in honour of Minecraft, the video game he designed ...
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Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen – Review
Gransys, the green and not-so-pleasant land through which players hacked and thwacked in last year’s grand fantasy adventure, Dragon’s Dogma, displayed a certain anonymity despite its rugged handsomeness. It had to do with environmental cliché: those blanketed meadows, weathered cliffs and sinister forests stretch across all fantasy fiction from Middle-earth to Westeros, a tradition that ...
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Sniper Ghost Warrior 2 – Review
You never hear the bullet that kills you, or so they say. Neither do you foresee the magic bullet that saves you – at least, City Interactive didn’t. 2010′s Sniper: Ghost Warrior, a budget release from the Polish publisher known only for its low-rent productions, unexpectedly changed the lives of its creators. The game, a ...
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God of War: Ascension – Review
The Greek myths, those vivid tales of gods and monsters, have been retold through the centuries via whatever artistic medium is popular at the time. From the loose oral-poetic tradition of their origins through literature, sculpture, painting and, more recently, theatre and film, the towering cast of Olympus has never strayed far from the western ...
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Leaving a home for a home
Every summer holiday I’d lay awake on the narrow bed and listen to the only other piece of furniture in the room – the hulking wardrobe, as the beetles dined. This was the nightly ritual at my grandparents’ cottage, where the insects would feast en masse during the dark, tapping their mandibles loud against the ...
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Tomb Raider – Review
There’s a moment at the start of Tomb Raider Legend – Crystal Dynamic’s first Tomb Raider game, released in 2006 – when Lara Croft, the archaeologist destined for spinal troubles in later life, meets an armed guard standing with his back to her at the yawning mouth of a Bolivian tomb. She lines up a ...
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Drink and Revive: The rise of Barcade
Video games owe a great deal to the American bar. It was here, on sticky carpets, before glinting taps and amidst woozy patrons, that the medium made its public debut — when Atari founder Nolan Bushnell installed his first arcade cabinet, Computer Space, in the Dutch Goose near Stanford University in 1971. The video game ...
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Bit.Trip Presents… Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien – Review
There’s gold in them there clichés – at least for a game-maker with a talent for subversion and quirky embellishment. This belief has underpinned San Franciscan developer Gaijin Games’ past titles, all of which have employed the prefix ‘Bit.Trip’ and all of which have adopted the fat pixel aesthetic of late 1970s Atari games. Partly ...
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Serious Sam Double D XXL – Review
The timing is, if not unfortunate, then perhaps lacking in tact. The issue of guns and their place in society is high on the political and cultural agenda. As Americans grapple with the philosophical and practical questions of whether assault weapons should be permitted in their society, sober reflection and careful deliberation is needed. Into ...
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The importance of video game violence
Nobody remembers their first kill. It’s not like the high security prison-yards, where they pace just to forget, dream-haunted. When it comes to video games, nobody remembers their first kill. If you can recall your first video game, well, then you’ve a chance of pinpointing the setting (over a blackened Space Invaders’ killing field? Atop ...
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Dragon Quest 8: Journey of the Cursed King retrospective
Fairy tales, like so much fiction, are all about leaving the village. Figuratively, of course, as the young man or woman departs the familiar confines of childhood and strikes out into the wilds of puberty, with its rioting hormones and hair-sproutings. But literally too, with many an acne’d protagonist peeling back the village gate in ...
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Shooters: How Video Games Fund Arms Manufacturers
The American confectionery company Victoria Sweets claims to have invented the candy cigarette. A thin stick of chocolate, wrapped in edible paper and designed to impersonate a roll-up, the sweet debuted in 1915 and soon became the accessory of choice for children keen to play grown-up. Hollywood star, GI Joe, team captain: the candy cigarette ...