(Warning, this post contains spoilers. If you haven’t played Batman: Arkham Asylum, stop reading now). A year late to the party, I grabbed Arkham Asylum GOTY edition a month or two ago on the recommendation of pretty much everyone, and started a playthrough of it for what I anticipated was going to be combat design [...]
Entries Tagged as 'critique'
A Narrative Trumping Mechanic
August 16th, 2010 · 4 Comments
Tags: critique · design · mechanic · narrative
Debate the Spy (Movie)
May 18th, 2009 · 2 Comments
So, the Spy Update is complete (although they never revealed his 3rd kit upgrade, unless it IS the portable Baccarat detector), and already there is some fun debate over a tiny tidbit in the short. First off, this is super spoiler laden, so if you haven’t watch it yet, go see it in HD here. [...]
Tags: critique · nitpicking
Nitpicking the Heavy Update
August 19th, 2008 · 2 Comments
Okay, it’s finally here, so what do folks think about it? I for one am somewhat non-plussed about it, but then I don’t play the Heavy anyway (so feel free to dismiss). But more to the point, reviewing their decisions from their own design requirements, I don’t really feel that they flexed any superior Valve [...]
Tags: critique · design · nitpicking
Making a Batman
August 18th, 2008 · 3 Comments
While looking at the pictures of the new Eidos Batman game, Arkham Asylum, I kept thinking that Batman reminded me of someone. I’m normally not a “screenshot” kinda guy; I know how much they get “bullshot” to make them look better, and I really want to see something in motion before doing any kind of [...]
Motion Controls: Everything They’re Cracked Up to Be?
June 19th, 2008 · 6 Comments
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 [...]
Tags: business · control · critique
The Clone, the Cube, and the Construct: Part 3
April 15th, 2008 · 107 Comments
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, [...]
Tags: combat · critique · design
The Clone, the Cube, and the Construct: Part 2
April 14th, 2008 · 42 Comments
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 incredibly [...]
The Clone, the Cube, and the Construct: Part 1
April 13th, 2008 · 91 Comments
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 [...]
Tags: casual · critique · multiplayer · nitpicking · uncategorized
GLaDOS Followup: She’s Your Venus.
April 9th, 2008 · 38 Comments
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 [...]
Wherein I Overanalyze GlaDOS’s Song
April 6th, 2008 · 204 Comments
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 was [...]
