There’s no nice way to say this, but it needs to be said: video games, with very few exceptions, are dumb. And they’re not just dumb in the gleeful, winking way that a big Hollywood movie is dumb; they’re dumb in the puerile, excruciatingly serious way that a grown man in latex elf ears reciting an epic poem about Gandalf is dumb. Aside from a handful of truly smart games, tentpole titles like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Call of Duty: Black Ops tend to be so silly and so poorly written that they make Michael Bay movies look like the Godfather series. Taylor Clark's Atlantic profile of Braid creator Jonathan Blow has prompted some strong reactions.
Are videogames dumb? Is hard to make them not dumb? Are most things dumb anyway?
posted by Artw
on May 6, 2012 -
179 comments
Super Mario Bros. Crossover 2.0 is out! An expansion on the original game, which let you play as various NES characters transplanted into Super Mario Bros., but using the rules and abilities of those characters from their original games, version 2 offers more special abilities, more characters, and your choice of audiovisual "skins" based on four Mario games from the NES, SNES, and Gameboy, along with one based on
Demon Returns. There's even
instructions for playing with a gamepad!
For more information, see the
Super Mario Bros. Crossover Wiki or watch the exciting
Super Mario Bros. Crossover trailer! [
Previously]
posted by Pope Guilty
on Feb 12, 2012 -
15 comments
If you enjoy playing Dungeons & Dragons or similar fantasy RPGs, or if you just like reading in-depth analysis of fictional worlds, then the
Tome of Awesome [pdf] is for you.
[more inside]
posted by jedicus
on Jan 12, 2012 -
50 comments
16-bit color schemes, in a classic retro VGA interface! New soundtracks and voiceovers! No typing required!
Infamous Adventures resurrects and lovingly remakes Sierra Games from the 1980's:
Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge and
Kings Quest III. SQ2 was released yesterday after more than five years in production, and comes complete with a
cheesy trailer. Available for download for PC and Mac, but be forewarned, the game is a total memory hog, and uses up a whole meg of RAM.
posted by zarq
on Dec 31, 2011 -
12 comments
??? WHAT IS KUSOGE ??? From the Japanese for "shit",
kuso, and "game." They're relentlessly terrible video games that in some cases have attracted a following because of their awfulness. Here are some of the most commonly recognized examples:
[more inside]
posted by JHarris
on Dec 31, 2011 -
30 comments
Here is a video playthrough of The Legend of Zelda without a sword. It is possible to get right up to the last boss without one, although it requires knowing a
lot of tricks. That is exactly what mev1978 does in his playthrough, without dying. And then he does it again in the second quest.
First quest (1:61:31) -
Second quest (1:13:18)
[more inside]
posted by JHarris
on Dec 26, 2011 -
33 comments
"The days when you could buy a videogame one day and get an expansion a year later are, sadly, lost in time. Instead, it seems there's a constant bombardment of DLC and microtransaction items all vying for our credit card numbers. They're in everything, from MMORPGs through to singleplayer shooters, and it's only getting worse as time goes on." -
An investigation into microtransactions and gaming.
posted by Artw
on Oct 17, 2011 -
114 comments
Red is a simple Flash game. Shoot the descending circles. Some are big and slow, some are small and quick. Shoot the power-ups to collect them. Soon you'll have a shield and some auto-turrets to help you clear the screen. But beware: it gets harder and more frantic as the wind increases. How long can you survive? A fun Missile Command/Asteroids hybrid. (Via
reddit)
posted by BitterOldPunk
on Sep 15, 2011 -
27 comments
Ludum Dare is an annual video game development contest where the contestants have 48 hours to complete a game. This year's theme was Escape and 599 games were submitted. The winning
solo and
team created games have been announced. You can download all games and even view their source code. If you want to experience the awesomeness of real-time game development, check out the
time-lapse videos.
[more inside]
posted by Foci for Analysis
on Sep 13, 2011 -
10 comments
Back when
Super Meat Boy first came out, PETA made a parody game called
Super Tofu Boy, which sort of sucked hard.
Really hard. But the developers were amused, and so
they put a secret into the game, letting you play as Tofu Boy himself! Unfortunately, the anemic little man could only jump half as high as the titular character and was unable to run, making it seem absolutely impossible to use him in any capacity. He can't even complete
the very first level of the game.
And so, he was shelved as a joke character, and everyone forgot about him.
Or not.
{OTD}q has just released a video showing
almost every possible level possible to beat with Tofu Boy and set it to a killer soundtrack, pairing the popular fansong/remix
"The Power of Meat" with
a lovely mix of
everyone's favorite band.
posted by flatluigi
on Mar 26, 2011 -
73 comments
In the mid-1990s, a man named George Wood created a TV show called
Flights of Fantasy on a Maryland public-access channel. The show was was dedicated to videogames, and gained quite a few detractors; Wood was not known for his playing skills, research, or good taste, and the production was rather cheap. He would also tend to go off-topic, sometimes markedly so.
It had a small following, being a local public-access show, but would have been lost forever had Wood not joined a video gaming association called NAViGaTR, who archived the entire series, edited each episode, and put them online as
Gaming in the Clinton Years.
posted by Anatoly Pisarenko
on Mar 21, 2011 -
12 comments
In 1979, gaming company Avalon Hill (since bought by Hasbro) released a board game based on the popular science fiction novel Dune. Regarded by many as a masterpiece of the form, it is an asymmetrical wargame designed by Bill Eberle, Jack Kittredge and Peter Olotka, the people who created
Cosmic Encounter. Six different factions vie for control of the desert planet Arrakis. As WickerNipple notes in
his Everything node on the game, “Instead of giving subtle differences to the various factions like most games, Dune gives huge differences and advantages, that don't over-balance things only because every faction receives them.” The thing is, each player has special rules that give them very different options and abilities compared to the other sides, and yet the game remains balanced (especially when played by a full six players). The game has been long out of print due to the Frank Herbert estate refusing to re-license. Fantasy Flight Games is rumored to be working on a release of the game without the Dune license. Importantly, all the necessary files are available on
the game's BoardGameGeek page to construct a copy of the game. (
Homebrew game board -
Rules, cards, counters and extras -
Windows freeware game client and server)
[more inside]
posted by JHarris
on Feb 23, 2011 -
58 comments
Modern mainstream video games tend to be about framerates and millions of polygons per second. But it is possible to play games that have hardly any graphics at all: audio-only games like
Papa Sangre, designed for iOS devices, being the most recent example of the genre (and with binaural audio, probably the most ambitious). There are others:
In The Pit for Xbox 360 (or a PC with a 360 wired controller)
[previously], the (sadly incomplete)
Cadet 277 for PC and Mac, and
SoundVoyager, released in 2006 for the Nintendo. More at the
Experimental Gameplay Project.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul
on Feb 12, 2011 -
14 comments
Contrary to a lot of idle criticism, Bungie's
Halo series of video games has
a surprisingly rich backstory -- a universe complex enough to support
seven bestselling novels,
a wiki with over 7,000 articles, and
one of the most successful ARGs in history (including
a full-fledged radio drama). The series has also turned out sweeping audiovisual work, from the games'
cinematic cutscenes and
epic music (lots of free previews) to
top-shelf anime and the Hollywood-quality short films --
ODST,
Believe,
Deliver Hope,
Landfall -- that were made to promote the games (the latter of which, produced by Neil Blomkamp,
inspired District 9). And that's apart from all the material produced by Bungie's dedicated fan base:
genuinely hilarious machinima from
Red vs. Blue,
professional-level graphic novels (table of contents at the top),
gorgeous artwork,
hours of recorded dialogue,
complete transcripts of
hidden apocrypha, and more
factual analysis,
story speculation, and
casual discussion than you can shake an energy sword at. But most of these pale in comparison to the latest and greatest exercise in Halo beanplating: the
Svmma Canonica, a 40-page, 17,000-word formal treatise on the nature of canon in the world that Bungie built, and how it will fare once Bungie moves on and the franchise is managed by 343 Industries. Discussion
over at Bungie's official site, or at decade-old fan forum
Halo.Bungie.Org.
posted by Rhaomi
on Jan 31, 2011 -
71 comments
