This piece inspired Rhizome to reissue Theresa Duncan’s three computer games. Thanks to Kickstarter support, the games were made available to play online. Developed in 1994 and published the following year, Chop Suey was a cunning piece of multimedia edutainment, suited just as well to grown-ups — smirking hipsters and punk rockers, probably — as it was to the prescribed...
Earlier this month, New York University’s Game Center presented Bad is Beautiful, a playable exhibit of some of video games’ most brilliantly aberrant atrocities. At least one game was missing. “This is the crap avant-garde,” the exhibit’s website gushes. And the Game Center’s main mission — to champion garbage, to uncover the truth and beauty burning within even the most inane — sure is...
Jenn Frank interviewed game developer Jake Elliott in time for last year’s Indie Games Festival, but once she had the entire interview in front of her, she hardly knew what to make of it. Elliott has remained busy, though: in the year since their interview, he has released Balloon Diaspora and Ruins. Elliott’s latest work, The Penguin’s Dilemma, is a...
I thought about what I had done to these creatures. I thought about how I had wanted to save them. I was not looking at save dates. I was looking at epitaphs. I was looking at headstones. This was not suspended animation at all. I had made coffins.
Struggling to Connect in a Pixilated World The process of estrangement from self and others results from a declining sense of embodiment in social space and an associated diminishing of communication possibilities. …The dementing body is situated temporally and spatially in a known past as opposed to a confusing and incoherent present. From this basis, we can suggest that the not-uncommon...
This review—slapped out in a fit of pique—is not particularly well written. But it’s notable for what happened next. For you see, my review of the early Wii title Boogie—which hit the Internet the moment the embargo lifted on August 7, 2007, two days before the game’s launch—was immediately denounced and ridiculed. People assumed that my low score, compared to the 4 out of 5 stars...
Electronic Gaming Monthly, February 2007: OK, guys. I’m split. I’m happy Capcom tried to make this sequel feel different with the Psyche-Locks (which make the exploration parts more difficult), but they don’t really improve gameplay. Instead, they simply serve to distract gamers from how much of a retread this truly is. Still, I loved the original, and I don’t feel the...
Electronic Gaming Monthly, June 2006: What? I scroll away for one second to get a quick look-see at my minions, and I scroll back only to learn some monster has been punching my hero in the face repeatedly. Uncool. While its hybrid of game mechanics is truly nifty, Lost Magic quickly becomes a fast-paced terror of multitasking and micromanagement. Granted, there’s an enemy...
Electronic Gaming Monthly, January 2006: In this hack-n-slash fest, you are Shinbu, one of the last members of an otherwise buried clan—and the hero of a really dry story. Despite your bizarre Larry Hagman eyebrows, Shinbu, your character model looks really good, even if your voice acting is stilted and scene-chewing. Nonetheless, you compensate for your shortcomings with fluid, responsive...