A co-worker challenged me to write something about the current trend of motion control/gesture game controls, but I figured there wasn’t much meat there, or that I was just chasing flame bait. But after thinking about it on my drives home, I’m wondering, are motion controls all that we were promised?
I think we all [...]

[Read more →]

While I would like to investigate what GLaDOS says in this section (I invite players to unpack the audio and listen for themselves, or play through the final sections of the game again), I wanted to first explore what GLaDOS does throughout the game of Portal for this final critique and analysis of the game, [...]

[Read more →]

Every good story needs a love interest, and it should come as no surprise that Portal had one with some very comical overtones. The Weighted Companion Cube has captured the hearts of millions? hundreds of thousands that have played the game, myself included, and now can be purchased as lovable merch on t-shirts, or [...]

[Read more →]

Thanks to all of the great comments in the previous threads, I decided that I wanted to do one more final analysis of the entirety of Portal after the previous two articles, mainly so that I could either convince myself one way or the other regarding my theory on why GLaDOS tortures Chell (and therefore [...]

[Read more →]

Commenter Harvey James posted an interesting image earlier about his own research he started doing after seeing the GLaDOS Bondage piece from earlier this week, and I wanted to link it here, because as it turns out, Valve did use Botticelli’s Venus as their inspiration (as the director’s commentary stated) for GLaDOS.  It’s just really [...]

[Read more →]

Thanks to the great comments in my last post where I waxed all philo about what I think GlaDOS is supposed to look like, I think I’ve changed my tune on why GlaDOS wanted to be free. While I still think she wanted to be free, the only way she could truly be free [...]

[Read more →]

As far as epic level hoppers go, Cave Story might have been legendary for its day, but there’s a really hot new web game making the rounds, called You Have to Burn the Rope. A classic 16-bit throwback retro level hopper, every minute of it a satisfying romp into childhood nostalgia.
There’s been a lot [...]

[Read more →]

Ah, the Quick Time Event.  How do I love thee?  Not very much, honestly.  There was a time when I did love them, back when they were first born in the games Dragon’s Lair and the slightly lesser known Space Ace arcade games…
In “the day,” they were absolutely amazing. I can’t even begin to [...]

[Read more →]

One of the things I’m noticing in my playthrough of Assassin’s Creed (although they aren’t the only ones doing this) that is bugging me a lot lately is this mis-placed idea that the character animations always have to “line up” with what he’s really doing in the world.  Somehow “next-gen” has come to mean “more [...]

[Read more →]

For quite a few years I’ve been impressed with how amazing the Project Gotham’s team is at rendering reality, and while playing PGR4 the other week, I saw that the only two U.S. cities represented were Vegas and NYC. At first I was a bit bummed because I honestly don’t have any real authority [...]

[Read more →]