#features
#features
By: RJ (@rga_02)
There is a mundane routine with every video game review. You read through all the PR fluff that is sent to your inbox, try to ignore all the hype and discourse found on social media, and try your best to plow through the game as objectively as you can.
I did none of that.
Single Press is a series of short writings on small games.
Good atmosphere is like a bath, or meditation. It’s a space where I can leave myself, slowly taking it in over prolonged periods of time. At its best, a piece ebbs and flows, cresting like a wave and building a small narrative. Shape of the World is one of these standout pieces. It sits alongside games like Proteus, or Future Unfolding, that make an compelling argument for the walking sim, and the subtle power of simply existing in a space.
At some point in the thralls of my Puyo Puyo fever–where I’d stay up all night practicing stair patterns and T-Spins–it became clear that I’d caught the competitive bug. Playing with friends drove me to improve, and getting absolutely bodied by others playing online made me want to understand what techniques I needed to be adding to my arsenal.
Eventually I came to realize that Puyo Puyo Tetris was pretty much a fighting game–you needed quick reactions, practiced techniques and the ability to read an opponent. All of that had just been obscured by my lack of basic knowledge. My practice regimen also wasn’t unlike what happened in a fighting game training mode–hours of repeated motions to nail a specific technique. I’d finally entered the mindset you needed learn a fighting game.
Enter Street Fighter V.
by Shonté (@JohnnyxH)
For the end of the year, we take a look at the Games We Played, and the effects they had on us. Today we bring in poet, writer and friend
of the site Shonté
Daniels, whose other work can be found at http://shonte-daniels.com/.
Games are no stranger to the disposable body. Difficulty-driven titles like Super Meat Boy or Darkest Dungeon rely partially on the notion that characters will always die as part of their appeal. Darkest Dungeon plays with this, though, by giving characters agency and emotion. Adventurers feel less like dominos planted to fall, and more like living beings whose physical and mental wellness determine the success of the game.
by Omar (@siegarettes)
Every year I get a new Kirby adventure may not be a good one, but every year with one is definitely a little better than it was. This year I was lucky enough to have both brand new adventures and revisit old ones. And what beautiful little adventures they were.
by Omar (@siegarettes)
Between spending more time in the arcades of Yakuza 5′s Kamurocho, and a general renewed interest in Wii games, I finally returned Namco’s Taiko no Tatsujin series in a big way. Taiko is dead simple, a rhythm game in the strictest sense. There’s one lane, and only two ways to hit a note, inside or outside, red or blue. After all, it’s meant to imitate the performance of Japan’s traditional festival drums of the same name.
by Omar (@neo_graphyte)
This Time It’s Persona is a series of essays on Persona 3 originally published on ashensiegarettes.
I am lying to you.
At this very moment I am being untruthful. It’s a fundamental truth of our society that we only show certain sides of ourselves to each other. At times we engage in a complicit lie, pretending to care about one another in order to achieve some fundamental goal. At this very moment I am choosing only to show this side of myself to you, to engage you on a “meaningful” level .This concept of the faces we wear around each other, the idea that the relationships we create are based not only on what we choose to share with each other, but we choose not to share, is at the core of the great game that us members of society play with each other.
by Omar (@neo_graphyte)
Bullet Dive is a series deconstructing the craft of the scrolling shoot-em-up genre. They were originally published on medium.com and have been edited for the clarity and format. You can find the originals and keep up to date here.
There’s a method I’ve noticed in the SHMUP genre that’s been bothering me. I’ve dubbed it “creating a lane”.
Simply put, creating lanes in shoot-em-ups means having enemies fire bullets with timing that forces you into an area for a period of time, limiting your maneuverability. It’s a kind of nebulous concept, something that you know when you see but is difficult to define.