The world is not short on media based on religious literature: Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, William Wyler’s Ben-Hur and Monty Python’s Life of Brian are all based around the Bible and take their own individual liberties with its content. Where El Shaddai‘s use of Scripture departs with the tradition established by the world of … [Read more…]
The real-time strategy genre of video games is one that has ailed in the last few years: given the large number of such games released in the 2000s, it is shocking to see the sharp decline in the number of these games being produced in the mainstream of the industry. The Command and Conquer series … [Read more…]
The third-person-cover-oriented shooter became a much-vaunted genre with the release of the first Gears of War: though the mechanic had been used previously in games such as Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Kill.Switch, the release of Gears of War served to popularise it to an extent that its implementation of the mechanic … [Read more…]
A test case or two will often arise concerning the role that social mores play in the development of games in terms of their narratives and their mechanics: as an industry, we are at once rape apologists and corrupting the youth with imagery normalising the consumption of magic mushrooms. As the medium progresses and continues … [Read more…]
Lauding the writing of a video game is akin to extolling the virtues of the “ground-breaking” nature of independent journalism: much as a small number of people paying attention to a news story from a niche outlet is not indicative of what would be considered earth-shattering in other circles, to celebrate the writing of a … [Read more…]