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The Death of Death

While we were on break, Ludwig Kietzmann over at Joystiq raised an interesting question about the nature of games, elaborating on a point made earlier this month by Penny Arcade's Tycho here. The basic idea is that death in games is an outmoded convention that often makes games frustrating for no reason other than because that's the way it's always been done. Prince of Persia is the game that has raised these questions.

Basically, Prince of Persia provides you with a cute sidekick that rescues you when you're about to die. From what I understand, it's relatively easy to complete the game without dying. It's a seamless, spawnless jaunt through a wonderland begging to be discovered through your character's physics-defying acrobatics. So why are people complaining?

Posted Jan 02 2009, 02:00 PM by Cole Stryker with | with 4 comment(s)

Filed under: penny arcade, prince of persia, ubisoft, joystiq, cole stryker, death

Playstation Home: All Your Worst Fears Realized To Hilarious Results

As previously noted, Home is upon us, and yea, it is utterly pointless. Right now, Playstation Home is Second Life with more load time, more frequent advertisements, and fewer people to interact with. Oh, there is the promise that someday there will be content and it will be a glowing interactive testament to our lives as gamers, and even that doesn't sound particularly attractive, but for now it's pretty much a waste of digital space and real time.

Well, actually, I take that back. Home so far has been good for one thing: painting an accurate portrait of its users. I, apparently, have been lucky my whole life to have had the social grace and fortune to talk to and befriend girls. All the jokes about gamers being Dungeon Master mouthbreathers who'd never seen a real live girl before seemed like wild charicatures of fictional persons to me. I would like to thank Playstation Home for finally showing me what kind of imbeciles I'd been ignoring this whole time.

Posted Dec 18 2008, 02:00 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 3 comment(s)

Filed under: playstation 3, home, derrick sanskrit, sony, joystiq, Playstation home, quincy

LucasArts Classics On Nintendo DS?

As many have remarked, the DS seems perfect for a revival of classic adventures — it's got more than enough processing power to handle early-'90s PC software, and the stylus is a fine match for the traditional point-and-click interface. (Diehards, myself included, who prefer the still-more-traditional parser interface, will have to wait for the inevitable PowerGlove II to simulate an old-fashioned keyboard.) Beloved games like Monkey Island and Sam & Max Hit the Road would be natural archive releases for legendary adventure producers LucasArts. But today...

Posted Jun 02 2008, 03:00 PM by Peter Smith with | with no comments

Filed under: nintendo ds, joystiq, quest for glory, adventure games, lucasarts, monkey island, fracture, jeffrey gullett, sam & max hit the road, eurogamer

Metal Gear Solid: Hideo Kojima’s Inability to Show Instead of Tell

As Metal Gear Sold 4’s June 12th release date looms, more and more information about Solid Snake’s purported final adventure has begun to leak into the press. British gaming mag CVG reported late last week that MGS4 features a cutscene that lasts a full ninety-minutes. While the article doesn’t mention where said cutscene appears in the game – it may be smack in the middle or after the conclusion of play for all we know - it still means that a player will watch MGS4 for an hour and a half instead of playing it.

Director and designer Hideo Kojima, in his Metal Gear Solid series especially, is notorious for using long non-interactive cutscenes and filling them with verbose, convoluted narrative. This over-reliance on the narrative language of film turns a number of players away from the games completely. Just two months ago, I replayed through MGS1 through 3 and both of my roommates could barely stand to be in the room while I played because, more often than not, the screen was filled with stiff talking heads. Games are meant to be played, not viewed, and that maxim makes Kojima a difficult creator to engage.

Posted May 27 2008, 11:00 AM by John Constantine with | with no comments

Filed under: john constantine, metal gear solid, hideo kojima, joystiq, cvg

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.