We swear we’re not fooling around with a new community writing challenge, for it is with a little April Foolery in mind that we offer up a new topic this month about secrets, hoaxes, and general (yet fun) trickery in games! It’s no secret that developers have been hiding some fun and frustrating secrets in…
Author: cary
Let’s Talk About the Alienware Alpha
Talk of getting a gaming PC has lingering in our house for years. It usually resurfaces in the fall when many of last year’s electronic goodies hit the sale tables, and the discussion has usually taken the same turns. We look at all the pre-made gaming PCs for sale, talk about exactly what games to…
Five Favorite Females of Final Fantasy (Who Aren’t Aerith or Yuna)
When I first made up my list of favorite female video game characters, it was…long. Very, very long. After a number of cuts, I had a manageable list of a dozen people, and subsequently got to writing. When I was done, my magnum opus reached into the double digits of word processing pages. Fine for…
How Gamefly Made Me See Games in a New Light
Earlier this month, my household bid a gracious farewell to Gamefly. We signed up for the service in 2009 and quickly enjoyed having access to a wide array of games for a number of systems. When we originally became members, we were on Gamefly’s two-games-a-month plan. About two years ago, we downgraded to the one-game-a-month…
Seven Favorite Female Game Characters (Who Aren’t Samus)
In case you’ve failed to look at a calendar during the past two weeks, it’s March, and that means it’s Women’s History Month. Though I’d like to think that we should simply celebrate humanity year-round, this provides some excuse to examine more closely the many contributions women have made to our collective history…of video games!…
We need more etecoons and dachoras in games
The following post originally appear on Geek Force Network, May 24, 2013. Media substitutions have been made in accordance with UWG’s guidelines. Well, not literally. But bear with me here… (And keep reading if that title makes no sense. I swear it will.) I’ve been on something of a Metroid kick lately. Between writing about…
Rated “M” for “Might Not Matter?”
A couple days ago, an announcement hit the airwaves that the highly-anticipated Batman: Arkham Knight is going to be rated “M” for mature. (Rocksteady’s previous Batman games, Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, as well as WB Games Montreal’s Arkham Origins, were all rated “T” for teen.) In an interview with IGN, Rocksteady’s founder and Arkham…
Deleting the Fluff; Playing with Passion
If I was placed under duress to name one amazing aspect of modern gaming, (because there are many) it would be accessibility. Simply put, one need not stray far from common technologies to access video games. They are available through consoles, desktops, laptops, streaming devices (i.e. Roku), tablets, and phones. And perhaps most importantly, a…
What is a Video Game? A Conversation (with Myself)
As I ponder this question, (“What is a video game?“) my mind can’t help but go back and pose it to a teenage me. Me, around 1989, with Atari histories, Nintendo fancies, and PC realities. The conversation goes something like this. 2015: So, me from 1989, what is a video game? 1989: (thinks…stares contently) Any…
Metroid Prime remains, and the question of “beating” games
Last month, the fine folks of A Most Agreeable Pastime posted a thoughtful article titled From The Armchair: Leaving Things Unfinished. As someone with a plentiful backlog of started-but-not-yet-completed games, which I made mention of in that article’s comment section, the post deeply resonated with me, especially considering my grand promise of 2014 to finally complete…
VIRTUAL BASTION 