[ Content | Sidebar ]

Search results for dbcdb/759/

system shock

I first played System Shock right when it was released: a friend of mine who worked at Looking Glass gave me a copy. And it’s apparently lodged itself in my brain—over the summer, I wandered across some footage of the game, and it all came back, almost two decades later. So I figured I should […]

jesse schell, games, and extrinsic motivation

Jesse Schell gave a great talk at DICE earlier this year on “design outside the box”. There are pretty good writeups by Kris Graft and Kim Pallister, and his slides are available, but if you’re at all interested, I recommend just watching it: his presentation style is very entertaining and engaging. The talk was all […]

the joy of tech trees

(See conflict of interest disclaimer.) We launched Tiki Resort last month, and it took me a few days to come to grips with it. I was dutifully doing what the game told me to—placing buildings, gathering coins, clicking on messes to clean them up, feeding my tourists—and leveling up apace. But I was starting to […]

small worlds

(Short game spoiler disclaimer: Small Worlds takes about 15 minutes to play.) Small Worlds is the first in what I hope will be an irregular ongoing series of short game posts. And, as such, it leaves me nervous: while I imagine many of y’all will be just fine with me not writing 1500 words every […]

persona 3

I’d heard a lot about Persona 3 over the last year, and was torn: on the one hand, it sounded both good and interestingly different, but on the other hand, people reported it as taking 70-100 hours to finish. So it kept on never quite making it to the top of the list to play: […]

phoenix wright 2

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Justice for All is the second game in the Phoenix Wright series. It’s very similar to its predecessor, which is a good thing: its predecessor was excellent. So go and read my review of the first one, and come back. They tweaked the game mechanics slightly. For one thing, they added […]

etrian odyssey

I’ve talked about Etrian Odyssey before. It’s a dungeon crawler, which isn’t my favorite genre, but it also has the gimmick that, as you play, you have to draw the map of the dungeon on the bottom screen of your DS with your stylus. And I love (and miss) drawing maps while playing games, so […]

console buying thoughts

I just fired off a letter to my local paper’s video game journalists, in response to a question they asked in their latest podcast. And, of course, blogging has trained me to never type something longish without thinking about whether it could be considered even vaguely relevant for the blog! So: a lightly edited version. […]

i don’t completely suck

After my post yesterday, I picked up Gradius III again; this time, on my first try, I not only made it through the first level for the first time, I made it through the second level on that same first try. The latter is a fluke, but I am managing the former fairly reliably now. […]

i am teh suck

Just started playing Etrian Odyssey and Gradius III. And both are kind of kicking my butt. I seem to remember being decent at the latter’s predecessor, and finding its initial levels routine; not sure how much of my troubles are that the sequel may be harder, how much are due to my declining powers, and […]