for the little things you might have missed
I've spent far too long now extolling Breath of the Wild as the best that open-world game design has to offer, but open-world games pose a huge narrative challenge for developers trying to tell a coherent story. Because the game's events can be played out in any order, it's quite difficult to build a satisfying, well-plotted narrative, especially … Continue reading An Exploration of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Part IV: The Post-Post-Apocalypse
So Breath of the Wild is open world in the best sense of the term; it presents you with a vast world to explore, where everything you see can be reached, every mountain climbed, every river sailed, every canyon traversed... but so what? I've extolled its world design and its exploration mechanics and rambled about its well-crafted mapmaking, … Continue reading An Exploration of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Part III: Into the Wild
In modern game design, "open-world" has become something of a buzzword; after series like GTA and Elder Scrolls popularized the genre, developers (especially Ubisoft) embraced it and began to churn out game after game after game in that mold. Open-world games, in short, discard the notion of linear progression and instead throw the player into what is … Continue reading An Exploration of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Part II: “Open World”
Rarely, if ever, does a game like Breath of the Wild live up to its expectations. I still remember the first time I watched the trailer for what was then known only as "the Wii U Zelda"—a mysterious, supposedly open-world title that Nintendo had spent almost three years developing for its flagging console. It starts with a black … Continue reading An Exploration of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Part I: A Genealogy
It's been almost three years since Yacht Club Games released Shovel Knight, a long-awated Kickstarter project featuring, well, a cerulean knight wielding a trusty shovel. From that whimsical, retro-inspired concept, they built a game that was simple yet not simplistic, zany yet never pretentious, and controller-smashingly difficult but always satisfying. The original Shovel Knight has remained one … Continue reading Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment, or How to Make a Prequel
There has been a recent spike in interest for what people sometimes refer to as "art games"—a subgenre of gaming that includes legitimately interesting pieces like Campo Santo's Firewatch, flawed yet thought-provoking experiments like Davey Wreden's The Beginner's Guide, and walking simulators of questionable intent like Dear Esther and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. But more often than not, the implications behind … Continue reading The Minimalist, Ethereal Storytelling of Hyper Light Drifter
If you're reading this, and have ever read many of the other posts I've made about games on this blog, you're probably aware that I spend more time than is physically or mentally healthy playing, thinking about, and writing about videogames. But all obsessions start somewhere, and for me, my love affair with games began Christmas … Continue reading Pokémon Sun and Moon: Finally, A Story Worth Telling
Rogue One is many things. It is an action movie, an abbreviated hero narrative, a heist film (for about twenty minutes), and, yes, undeniably, a Star Wars story. However, more than anything else, Rogue One is a war movie, and it inhabits that intersection between escapist action and a horrors-of-war narrative better than any other … Continue reading Rogue One: A (Star) War(s) Story
Ah, Phineas and Ferb, legendary chronicle of the immortal adventures of Phineas Flynn and Ferb Fletcher, it may have only been a year or so since you were yanked from the airwaves, but it feels like so much longer. Now that those halcyon days of eternal summer have passed into the rearview, I find myself longing for your exuberant … Continue reading Moooommmm!!: A Feminist Reading of Phineas and Ferb
It's no secret to anyone who's ever booted up Steam that there are a lot of indie games in the world. I've even heard the suggestion that Valve should curb Greenlight—their crowd-sourced independent access program—at least for a while since it lets through so many subpar projects that it makes sorting the diamonds from the rough seemingly impossible. … Continue reading You Might Have Missed: Thomas Was Alone
Sunset Over Ithaca 