First, we link.
Ragdoll Metaphysics, a column on Offworld by Jim Rossignol in which he goes off into the speculative technological aether and then writes about it. Not to be a dick about it, but if there's ever going to be a Times Literary Supplement for gaming, stuff like this could stand as a baseline starting point. Previous posts?
Arma II, an ode to the surrealism of simulation.
Milo and Kate, or artificial people are the new games.
Cloud Gaming is the nebulous shape of ubiquitous gaming.
JG Ballard, boredom, and the violent promise of videogames.
Not into the bleeding-edge future shit? John Harris is an old fogy like you. Valuable for being something other than reminiscing about console games that are less than 10 years old. I guarantee some unknown, intriguing material in here. Whether anything inspires you enough to undergo the retro-gaming gauntlet and actually play any of this stuff is another thing. Which is ironic, of course, because almost any modern desktop computer could crunch the code while rendering high-end 3D animation at the same time. Which is to say that even disregarding the whole copyright clusterfuck, emulation is behind where I wish it were. Although, again, this may just be another case of Windows envy.
20 RPGs (10 from Japan, 10 from, um, elsewhere)
20 Atari Games
20 Mysterious Games (in the sense of discovery playing an important role)
20 Unusual Control Schemes
20 Open World Games
20 Difficult Games
Each of these lists has a handy "printer format" button, which I used, and now I have this huge sheef of papers full of odd old games and little snippets of what's exceptional about them.
Second, we be internets.
Did you know there's a new emoticon? Probably you did. It took me seeing this over a dozen times to realize what the fuck it was. XD And now that I've seen it the struggle begins to never, not ever, use it again. Good times.
Third, we play on the games.
At the top of my games I'm-excited-to-get-to list,
The Crypts of Despair (PC "simple" roguelike) Although I have yet to find anyone on the internet that's truly freaking out about how wonderful it is, Jason Rohrer checked it as one very tangential influence on Passage, which I took as a tacit recommendation. It's a simplified roguelike, a genre I'm continually fascinated by but often intimidated away from due to its almost otherworldly complexity.
People have said it's fun, and people have said it sucks, and even websites that should, by their very nature, have something significant or insightful to say about it only talk about how if you can, "get past the graphics..." Get past the graphics? The graphics are the reason why I want to investigate further! Look!
Are you telling me that this turns most people off? Let's put off the rant regarding "people's" graphical preferences and just say, dude. C'mon.
I did finally get to try Judith, but didn't have enough time to see it to completion, which is a little ridiculous. Also downloaded Cactus Arcade, but have barely even begun to explore my way through it. Not sure if I'm going to be overwhelmingly in love with either, and perhaps it's time that I start attempting to chronicle my disappointments a little better instead of being such a cheerleader. Criticism is important to me as a reader when I'm taking recommendations.
It's an odd time in the mainstream gaming industry when the gulf between East and West is more pronounced than ever.
We're back to contemplating the things we'll never see, and this from the big publishers at that. Imagine what could be happening on the independent front. After all, from the handful of examples I've been able to extract (Cave Story, La-Mulana, Underworld Trip, and Warning Forever), there's no way to tell if these are the few shining gems, or just the tip of an iceberg no one's yet fully realized. (Although there's no reason to wonder if there aren't icebergs we're not even aware of. Poland, Portugal... who knows? I guess we're trusting the fine-meshed net of Indie Games, TIG, and Offworld. And the safe assumption that an international game maker would be able to cobble enough English together to say, "Play my Tajikistani game, you decadent Western son of fool.")
Alright, we're winding down, here. What else in the world. This kind of blew my mind, then didn't, then did again. His work is going to be worth a lot of money.
Can you stand more gaming stuff? Is it all just way too much? Are you begging for relief? Okay, indulge me. Two more that you may like, and then one with nothing, I swear, nothing to do with gaming. And is sort of my new favorite show. A little. Maybe.
Video Games from MUSCLEBEAVER on Vimeo.
[Grumble grumble] Not thrilled about this (embedding unfortunately does not permit turning off auto-play, which I cannot abide), but the last video, the un-game related video, is an odd project by British television personality Robert Llewellyn in which he has tiny, unobtrusive cameras installed in his car and picks up guests, driving them to where they need to be and sometimes having a wonderful conversation, and sometimes less so. My first episode, and the most recent, features this description. Clinical psychologist, writer, broadcaster and rather clever fellow Oliver James gets a lift into Oxford where he appeared at a book festival. Trust me when I say that there's a good chance you will be entertained by their meandering conversation. Further recommended episodes pending, perhaps.
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