Awhile back Clint Hocking wrote a pretty kickass piece critiquing Bioshock’s Ludonarrative Dissonance. For a long time I wasn’t sure what the hell he was getting at with the word “Ludonarrative,” and after I just recently did an interview for a gaming journalism student, I learned that he had combined the terms “Ludology” and “Narrative.” [...]

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I just tried the Army of 2 demo tonight, and I have to say that I think that while making a game all about co-op play was an incredibly great idea, making a demo that must be played with another human being was a colossal mistake. I just wanted to get a taste of the [...]

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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, [...]

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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 [...]

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Just about every game hits a point where they need to start talking about fine tuning the balance of how their combat works, and oftentimes, guns are usually brought up as the proper way to get the balance ball rolling. Normally, this is a pretty good argument to base a balancing conversation on, but typically [...]

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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 [...]

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The first time I saw GlaDOS in Portal, I was overcome with a distinct sensation that I was in the presence of someone in pain. Troubled. At the very least, immense frustration. At first I wasn’t sure if it was the gyrations of the physical construct of GlaDOS, or if it was the tone of [...]

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When the first Metal Gear 4 trailers first started hitting the net, the Mini Gears (or whatever the walkers are called) garnered a ton of attention. The Gears polarized a lot of opinion, ranging from “holy jeebs is that cool” to “why do the cow-walkers moo??!?” They were decidedly…different. Some people claimed that the moo-ing [...]

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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 [...]

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Cutscenes. Cinematics. Full Motion Videos. Non Interactive Sequences. As long as there have been video games, there’s been story elements forced on the player. Sure, Pong didn’t have them, but Pac Man did. And as long as we’ve had cutscenes, they’ve been linear cutscenes. It really doesn’t matter if they’re pre-rendered or in-game and real-time, [...]

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