malvasia bianca

What web sites should I be reading if I want to learn about iPhone / iPod Touch games? There are an awful lot of games for the platform already, with a pretty staggering variety, and the web sites that I’m reading now are generally more focused on the traditional console space. So I’m pretty sure […]

Searching for others’ blog posts about Persona 3 got me exposed to the different kinds of posts people write about games. And I was surprised about the extent to which my search clarified my feelings about what kinds of posts I like. Generally, the posts fell into a few different categories; I could break them […]

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: […]

My iPod Nano has served me well over the last few years (though I could live without its habit of freezing on me after syncing), but it seems to be reaching the end of its life span. The menu button had been slightly iffy for a while, but not enough to be a real annoyance; […]

I’m planning to go to the Game Developer’s Conference next month, if for no other reason than to hang out with some other bloggers; the early registration deadline is approaching, so I’m trying to figure out what the best option is. Possibilities I’m considering: Don’t actually attend at all: just drive up on Thursday evening […]

I finished Spore quite some time ago, but I’ve been putting off blogging about it: it’s a hard game for me to wrap my brain around. Still, a month is long enough to procrastinate, so I suppose I should say something now. I’ll begin from the point of view of a traditional video game player […]

This probably deserves a full blog post, but I’m not sure I’m going to get around to it, so: Brian Marick on communities of practice, communities of interest, and boundary objects. The examples just get funnier and funnier. Very interesting take on GlaDOS. I’d never heard of umami before, I’d always thought we only had […]

Our friend Scott came over last night, and we spent the evening playing Rock Band 2; Miranda was, unfortunately, away at an overnight field trip, so we didn’t have a full band, but we did at least throw drums into the RB2 mix for the first time. Lots of fun was had by all. Scott […]

I’d been playing Rock Band with Miranda (my daughter) since we got it, but Liesl (my wife) had been resisting. She was clearly somewhat interested in the game—she would sometimes get caught singing along in the background—but somehow we never managed to pull her in. But I kept asking; I tried not to be annoying […]

The Vintage Game Club is returning from its holiday break; as its fourth game, we’ve chosen Beyond Good & Evil. This is the first game that we’ve chosen that I’ve actually played all the way through; I’m curious to see what the experience of replaying a game in company will be. I’m also curious about […]

I was just looking over at my shelf of games; here are the non-downloadable games I currently own for the Wii: Super Mario Galaxy Animal Crossing Boom Blox Endless Ocean Rayman Raving Rabbids Super Smash Bros No More Heroes Super Paper Mario Wii Sports Wii Play Zack & Wiki Metroid Prime 3 Zelda Super Monkey […]

One meme that’s been floating around in my twitter feed recently (and elsewhere, e.g. it got mentioned in the holiday Confab): there are a lot of us who like being part of a conversation about video games, who like talking with others about whatever game we’re just playing or just finished. But we don’t manage […]

I learned about the game Achievement Unlocked from Ludus Novus, and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It’s a game that looks like a single-screen platformer, but is in fact all about unlocking achievements: rather than traditional platformer goals, your only goal is to unlock the 100 achievements in the game. And these […]

Animal Crossing: City Folk is a marvelous game; I’m very glad that the series is out on the Wii, I recommend it to anybody who hasn’t played a previous iteration. It is, however, in no significant sense a new game, so I don’t see any reason to spend further time talking about it here.

I had the pleasure of being one of the guests of the special holiday edition of the Gamer’s Confab. I haven’t listened to it yet (and wow, that’s a lot of podcast, it won’t come close to fitting into my commute during this abbreviated work week), but I thoroughly enjoyed participating in the recording of […]

As our third game, the Vintage Game Club chose Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee. Which has the distinction of being the most actively annoying game that I’ve played in several years. For one thing, it’s a really difficult game: it’s not unusual to find areas that you’ll have to play through dozens of times before succeeding, and […]

At any given time, I’m normally in the middle of one game that I don’t let Miranda watch; but that slot in my schedule has been open ever since I finished No More Heroes. I was planning to finally get around to playing BioShock, but recent events have rendered my 360 unavailable. Any suggestions? My […]

Art Style: Orbient is the first new game (i.e. not a repackaging of one previously published) that I’ve purchased via download. (For the princely sum of six dollars.) And it’s a delightful little game, and one that makes me happy about the increasing variety of mechanisms by which games can be disseminated. It’s a very […]

I just got a copy of Call of Duty 4 in preparation for tomorrow’s VGHVI play session. I figured I should get my fingers used to the game first, so I went to play it tonight; I launched the game, futzed around with the menus, started a game, and it froze. (Soft, not hard, the […]

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started playing No More Heroes. I was astonished by Suda 51’s previous game, Killer 7, but I didn’t really expect more of the same: for one thing, my brain isn’t imaginative enough to contemplate what more of Killer 7 would be like, and also the reviews had […]