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Geon: Emotions – 360 Review
Somebody has been working hard to make Geon: Emotions sound more enigmatic than it really is. Not content with letting the game’s specifics hide within the vagaries of the abstract futuristic sports genre, the developer/ publisher/ PR agency has sought to further befuddle consumers with talk of gameplay based around ‘playing to emotional strengths’, ‘using ...
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Halo 3′s Lobby World Map: The Great Divide
In Halo 3 there is a map. Not a cartographic layout of one of the videogame’s many levels nor a treasure chart revealing where hidden items are tucked; rather, this is a map to show where in the world – our world – all of the people currently playing the game are located. Pinpricks of ...
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Chewing Pixels in Wonderland
Regular readers might recall that, as well as being employed by various publications as a freelance videogame journalist (these days principally for Edge, Eurogamer, Official PlayStation Magazine and, increasingly, Yahoo.com – if you’re interested in reading some of the things I write), I’ve recently been working with animation company Littleloud as a producer for their ...
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Tokyo Game Show 2007: Bedknobs and Broomsticks
“And what of Tokyo Game Show? As I’ve been telling everyone who will listen, this year’s TGS really seemed to me to be like one of Microsoft’s X0n events, where they bring journalists out to foreign countries to distract them with an international vacation and a screwed-up biological clock, then show them the same games ...
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Michael Chabon’s Guide to Creating a Superhero
“This is not the question,” he said. “If he’s like a cat or a spider or a f***ing wolverine, if he’s huge, if he’s tiny, if he can shoot flames or ice or death rays or Vat 69, if he turns into fire or water or stone or India rubber. He could be a Martian, ...
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Breaking the Halo 3 Streetdate: A Breakdown of Cause and Effect
Earlier today Argos employees broke the Halo 3 street date by selling copies of the hotly anticipated videogame a full week before it’s due to go on sale. What’s the big deal with that? Well, here are the issues broken down into a neat QA format for your insta-editorial delight. So, what’s actually happened again? ...
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Flagon Quest: Square-Enix’s Drinking Games
Japanese RPG mega-developer Square-Enix has just announced a new DS title for Japan titled ‘Beginners Wine DS’. The game will feature step-by-step instructions on choosing a suitable bottle to go with particular foods as well as how to correctly swirl a glass before breathing in the bouquet. With a database of 120 selected bottles, a ...
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Wisdom re-applied #7: Lincoln advises Thompson
“Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.” Abraham Lincoln reminds Florida attorney Jack Thompson of a higher calling than that of his current obsession with Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two.
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Living in The Projects
Over at PC Gamer freelancer hive-blog, Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Alec Meer performs some excellent videogame name research. It stems from the story of how developer Monolith, having created popular first person shooter F.E.A.R has decided to make a follow-up. However, in moving over to a new publisher, the studio lost the rights to use the ...
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Orange Box Achievements, um, leaked?
Valve’s super generous new Half-Life+ package, The Orange Box, is due for release soon (19th October if all goes according to plan I think). Included is Half-Life 2, HL2 Episodes 1 and 2, Portal and Team Fortress 2, making for an astonishingly well-endowed release. However, Microsoft has apparently only allowed the company the stock 1000 ...
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Playing Columbine
Earlier this year I interviewed Danny Ledonne, creator of the freeware videogame Super Columbine Massacre RPG and Ian Bogost, Assistant Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in a two-part feature about the controversial game and the issues it raises. It’s one of the few pieces of videogame-related journalism (in the strict sense of the ...
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Heroes of Mana – DS Review
You have to feel a little sorry for fans of the Super Nintendo’s Secret of Mana, a videogame that constantly makes the All Time Top 100 lists for its seminal offline multiplayer adventuring experience. Almost every sequel and spin-off since its release in 1993 has been an abject disappointment, critically panned (or at least met ...