So a travesty occurred in this year’s Video Game Awards (I think the event is a sham, but it does its good anyway), wherein Geoff Keighley mentioned that Hideo Kojima was banned from attending to receive an award for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Keifer Sutherland received the award instead, which is definitely an indication that Konami is still adamant about keeping Kojima away from his creation. (more…)
As of this writing, it’s less than a week until Fallout 4 comes out. Being too excited for it, I’d been looking for new info and stumbled upon a page detailing the new perk system, complete with descriptions for each perk. This immediately resulted in me coming up with character concepts and builds to prepare for release. I rarely get excited for day one of a new game, but this is Fallout 4—I’m taking a week off for this. (more…)
There’s an art to writing reviews on bad stuff—an obnoxious one at that. It’s also quite fun—at least at first—to tear a bad game or movie apart by using metaphors and hyperbole to describe their badness. But as it usually is with objectifying subjective experiences, there is also such a thing as a badly written review. It neither offers connects the dots nor solutions to problems and only serves to insult the creator(s) without subtlety or any careful consideration. (more…)
By now, this controversial post on Polygon has made its rounds and got nerd panties up in bunches. I thought of writing something about it not because I have anything to prove, but merely to express a bit of my incredulity on the subject, which is a moot and futile point anyway. But since I don’t take myself too seriously, I’ll make an ass out of myself anyway by putting on my pretentio-hat and stretch my pseudo-intellect to analyze this whole “video games as art” topic, just like hundreds of thousands of times before by other pretentious pseudo-intellectual pricks before me. (more…)
Recently, for reasons only known to my subconscious mind, I opened solitaire on my computer after several years of not even a passing thought on the game. It then made me think of games that were meant to pass the time like solitaire used to be. Nowadays, it has been relegated to idle time in offices, and even that has been usurped by browser and mobile games for the most part. Those solitaire slayers are what I want to talk about, but from an outside perspective since I have barely touched the damn things. (more…)
Fallout 4 is coming out later this year, so fans are most likely replaying older Fallout games right now. In the meantime, let’s look at one of the most radioactive places in the world for some inspiration. Chernobyl was nothing short of a complete fuck-up, but it’s now a ghost town noteworthy for some of the most beautifully haunting photographs ever taken and even some games. There’s also a woman who likes to walk around in the damn place like a frolicking school girl while making videos about it. Also, I’m not patient enough to wait for the 30th anniversary of the disaster to post about it. (more…)
Maybe this’ll be a permanent series on this website, where I just throw up different ideas for games. I did it a while ago with ideas for a Superman game that may actually work. For this first post in the new series, I take inspiration from the local gaming scene here in the Philippines with the idea of an internet cafe simulator game. As far as business management games go, I think this is a very interesting idea as I can see the layers of tasks and priorities to be juggled during gameplay. Despite being seemingly mundane, running an internet cafe isn’t your typical business. (more…)
Being a fan of media is not a bad thing as it brings variety to the usual drab monotony of daily life. Some may even think of such distractions as needless and counterproductive. But where would the world be without admiration for works like Citizen Kane? Without passion for Star Wars and Star Trek? Without those who went mental when the Final Fantasy VII remake got announced? Despite what detractors may think, they’re great to have around. But in time, most of that genuine liking become hearsay and conjecture typical of magazine write-ups. Immortal they may be in concept, but they still age. (more…)
Here’s something just for the fun of it. I was throwing around writing ideas against the wall one day when I thought of something my friend said about a Daredevil game and how it’s actually almost every third-person action game anyway (more on that maybe in a future post). Then I thought about how Batman got most of the fun with the Batman: Arkham series (including the recent disaster that is Batman: Arkham Knight). Then I thought about something while watching Screw Attack’s Superman vs. Goku Death Battle 2—What Superman game can actually work? (more…)
The practice of an art form is indeed self-expression. There is much thought and dreaming that goes into it, but you can make mistakes if you stop and think for too long. A common case would be putting way too much of oneself into the project without considering other factors other than your own, which has the creator enter the realm of delusion. This is what we shall talk about here, the product of obsession that drives some talented yet misguided creators to the brink of madness. (more…)
This news on professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players taking Adderall for performance enhancement came as no real surprise. There has always been the talk regarding steroids and other performance enhancing drugs in sports, and it wasn’t long before it became a topic in eSports. But while the dynamic is more obvious with athletic sports, there’s less that’s known about how performance enhancement affects eSports and other competitions centered more on the mind. (more…)
This post was written in haste, hoping to get it up while the news was still fresh. I slept just after the news started to circulate; I admittedly didn’t think much of it at first. I just posted a semi-humorous status on social media about it before I turned in (I’m nocturnal at the moment). I did show respect to Iwata-san with that status, but I kind of feel bad that I didn’t think of writing a post about him right away. My experience with the products of Iwata-san’s hard work and vision had only been recent, but he still made an impact. (more…)
