Posts

Zachtronics Solitaire Collection Analysis

Yes, solitaire. No, really. The thing your dad played at work because it was less boring than actually working. Zachtronics is generally known for their very unique takes on puzzle games, a series of 'zach-likes' that are based primarily around problem solving rather than puzzle solving. The games never really feel like they have a specific solution in mind for a given puzzle, like a lot of puzzle games do, and instead drop you in with a select list of mechanics and have you figure out everything for yourself. This makes it both incredibly engaging and incredibly difficult. I've never beaten one, not because I probably couldn't but because I keep losing my progress halfway through for a bunch of...

Another New Layout

k i'm back While I was gone I made another another new layout. This is definetly not the third layout I've been on in the span of under a year. The new layout contains both obvious upfront changes as well as behind the scenes changes, namely that I've started using 11ty for static site generation. Why? Really the only big reason is because I could never wrap my head around Go's templating language and Liquid was a lot easier. Everything should still be intact aside from the hiatus announcement and a recent review that I made and have since grown less fond of. New to this layout is the addition of an "iuse" page, which lists software that I use....

Games of Theseus

I have made something of an effort to say that video games, if not whatever mysterious quality 'art' would be, are at least something more than a dopamine generator. I won't say all games are like this, and that's what this post is going to be about. Let me put it this way, the most coveted award in all of film, for example, is the Oscars Best Picture award. A prestigious event's most prestigious award. 2016's Best Picture was this little film called Spotlight. If you've never heard of it, I haven't either, but it's a film you could probably watch today the same way as it was in 2016. The equivalent of such for video games is The Game...

Echo Point Nova Review

Movement Shooters are a subgenre of FPS primarily based around moving while you shoot. More accurately it's about returning to the roots of FPS and including freeform, fast paced movement with little penalty for jumping around like a jackrabbit as opposed to more tactical shooters where movement often affects aim and recoil, and you're meant to take it more slow. Echo Point Nova is one of these movement shooters. I saw this and decided to play it on a whim. Looked cool. It was pretty cool. If you don't feel like reading the rest of this I'll say I recommend it, both on the high class route and on the high seas route. You're right, I really should...

Gaming Language

There is a concept in film known as "the language of cinema", essentially all of the elements films can use to tell a story unique to their medium. It's how the camera moves, it's how the actors perform, its how sound connects to the picture, it's the framing of the shot. Non-expository elements that can very quickly get a large amount of information to the audience and convince them of realities within the plot. Searching a similar concept for games leads to people talking about programming languages or real languages like Japanese. Go figure. Maybe I'm just not sure of a term pretentious enough to make people feel smart for knowing it, maybe I could call it The Language of...