There are two games named Prey. There’s one from 2006 that had gravity walkways and astral projection as a gameplay mechanic. Then, there’s the new one in 2017 that had people jamming surgical devices into their eyes to learn new skills, which turned out to be made from aliens. I got to play the new Prey recently, and it gave me the same feeling I get from Deus Ex, the Resident Evil 2 remake, and BioShock combined. (more…)
Overwatch is still a fairly important game to me, even if I tend to hurl verbal trash at it these days. I still play it with my friends whenever I can. Competitive play doesn’t really make me as salty as it does other people, but all the big changes it goes through over the years did make me uncomfortable. This planned change is perhaps the biggest one to date and it can change how the game is played, for better and for worse. (more…)
This is a personal gaming story from a long time ago, back in simpler times when Electronic Arts was slightly less deplorable than it is now. It was from the late 2000s to the early 2010s when EA actually started putting out original IPs and made gamers believe again, and one of those titles was Mirror’s Edge. I quite liked the parkour simulator for what it tried to do, as well as the clean and minimalistic visuals that almost became the basis for this blog’s web design. While that later was superseded by Deus Ex: Human Revolution, I still quite liked the look of this now decade-old game. (more…)
One of the most unique experiences I’ve had in a cinema was the end of Avengers: Infinity War. The palpable silence that followed, with everyone in the theater wondering if the movie was really over and the Avengers really lost was quite something. Unlike what I feel about whatever follows Star Wars: The Last Jedi, I was actually excited about this one. I had not been able to write a review on Avengers: Infinity War, so I’ll make up for it by doing this one. (more…)
It has been well over a week since I was at the Retro Gaming Expo in Fisher Mall and then uploaded the vlog, so I got to think over everything I saw and experienced over 4 hours of being there while getting myself hopped up on caffeine and other legal stimulants. You should be able to sense the weird mix of enthusiasm and dejection from the vlog as I alternated between having fun looking at retro gaming stuff and getting pissed at something else. (more…)
Overwatch is a sinking ship. I start this blog post with that statement as I’ve seen this before with another Blizzard game I used to be obsessed with. StarCraft II peaked in 2012, then floundered in the following years due to numerous issues. I’m seeing the same patterns now with Overwatch, but there’s a lot more going on with this one due to what is both its biggest strength and weakness—its expanding lore. (more…)
Overwatch was my 2016 Game of the Year due to its engaging team gameplay and how it helped me bond with friends. Two and a half years since its release, while it’s still fun to play with others, the gameplay itself has become what many describe as both stale and frustrating (at least from what I’m seeing). This is from the perspective of players who take their competitive rank with some degree of seriousness. (more…)
It has been well over two weeks since the furor surrounding the announcement of Diablo Immortal. Perhaps it’s already quite late to give my two cents on the whole thing, but I’ve had some brain farts lately that may be worth pondering on. I’m not sure if I’ll play Diablo Immortal when it comes out, but the events surrounding it are pretty interesting thus far. (more…)
The recent release of Red Dead Redemption 2 entailed a subsequent hoopla regarding the reportedly abhorrent working conditions in Rockstar Games. Just after that, the disappointing beta of Fallout 76 and its game-breaking flaws added more fuel to the AAA dumpster fire. While the debates on how to solve the various problems in the AAA space are still ongoing, I would like to prompt more focus on a different and often overlooked facet of the games industry. (more…)
With the passing of Anthony Bourdain last month, I thought I had to write a bit about how his work has influenced my view on “exploring experience”, as this blog’s tagline states. I want to focus on the memories he left behind with the travels he embarked on for his show Parts Unknown — a program I quite liked for how it packaged food and travel as a way to better understand the world and its people. (more…)
At the moment, I have a video project queued up regarding deliberate practice and the importance of stakes in competitive video games to incentivize performance improvement. Perhaps I’ll actually finish that video one of these days, but I felt like I should post something about what Overwatch had got me thinking as of this writing. As I delve more into topics related to competitive gaming, I hope to dig deeper into the attitudes and behaviors I’ve been observing first hand in games so far. (more…)
There has been talk lately about how video games may actually be underpriced these days, as unbelievable as that may sound since AAA games are quite expensive already. However, pundits are making their cases as to why the video game industry is now at its current state of having microtransactions and other predatory forms of monetization being shoved down consumers’ throats, as well as horrible working conditions for the rank and file in the industry. I’m no insider, but I’d like to try making better sense of the whole video game price debacle. (more…)
