Fall Out 4
by Fall Out 4 is the first videogame I’ve been really excited to play in a couple of years. How many days until November 11th? Half Life 3 on the other hand?
Category: Games
Clash of Civilizations
I have a love hate relationship with the game Civilization. The current version is Civ 5 and coincidentally I’ve been playing a bit of it this summer too. It does lend itself to some historical mismatches from time to time though as illustrated by the very recent installment of Awkward Zombie:
My Favorite: Videogames: FPS + RPG
There are only a handful of videogames that I have really and truly loved like a book, comic, movie or song. The ones that readily come to mind are all post-school for me when computer technology finally got to the point where graphics and gameplay enabled the kind of world building and immersive story-telling that was a generation beyond the Atari 2600 games of my childhood. It’s also when I finally had enough money to afford a decent PC and the games themselves. I like the challenge of games but I don’t love it; no more than I love the …
Tropes in Distress
This first entry in The Tropes vs Women in Video Games project from Anita Sarkeesian (successfully funded on Kickstarter) covers “damsels in distress” and is quite good: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6p5AZp7r_Q] We all grew up with videogames and while I don’t think any of it controls anyone’s behavior (as in the constant political grandstanding over violence in videogames) it does reflect and reinforce attitudes and patterns in society. Examining games with a critical feminist eye is fascinating both because we’re looking at vital pop culture and because Anita is a really good communicator making what could be pretty dry stuff into an interesting walk through …
Three Panel Soul
Matt and Ian are webcomic pioneers and their second webcomic, Three Panel Soul is an impressionistic chronicle of twenty-something post collegiate life. A little bit of relationships, a little bit of work, mix in some video-games and other cultural bits, all layered over realistic yet deeply stylized artwork and you’ve got a consistently interesting, often highly entertaining observational comic. Frankly I wouldn’t be wrong in calling it a journal comic but it bears only the faintest resemblance to the stereotype of that genre. A fairly recent one from the archives captures a particular flavor of angst of early adult life …
PBS Loves Some Homestuck
Entirely justified praise for the webby webcomic, MS Paint Adventures: Homestuck. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLK7RI_HW-E?rel=0] And now Homestuck: The Game — a kickstarter for such an idea raised almost 850,000 dollars. [kickstarter url=http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/14293468/homestuck-adventure-game width=550]
Real Life Portal Gun
[vimeo 43800150 w=550 h=309] POrtal: Terminal Velocity from Jason Craft on Vimeo.
Kickstart My Art: Clang
Neal Stephenson is a geek legend at this point. I don’t think his first novel Snow Crash would have existed without William Gibson’s early novels coming first, but it’s just speculation on my part unless I get a chance to talk to either author. Don’t get me wrong, I love Neal’s books and unlike some, I’ve liked each new one better then the last. What some see as a weakness — stuffing a tremendous amount of knowledge on the subjects of his books — well, I tend to love that part of his books. His most recent project, The Mongoliad, came …