Archive - Nightmare Mode

Indie Devs vs New Games Journalism [Feedback Loop]

July 18 Comments Off on Indie Devs vs New Games Journalism [Feedback Loop] Category: Feed, Games, Nightmare Mode

The last year has seen the rise of the independent developer as hero. Does this growing consideration of the developer challenge an eight-year-running trend in game journalism?

The explosion of commercially accessible independent games on platforms like Steam or XBLA have introduced us to a new successful and far more accessible generation of game developers. These new indie game dev stars have induced a change in the approach of some game reviewers. A change brought to the forefront in Walter Garrett Mitchell’s piece on The Escapist, “Alfred Hitchcock Would Make Good Games.”

Mitchell’s focus on the developer is entirely unlike the experience-focused New Games Journalism style proposed in 2004 by Kieron Gillen. That experiential style has more recently been popularized by Zero Punctuation, the rest of The Escapist, @Play, and a variety of other reviews that approached games based on how they played, instead of how people created them.

Cubemen mostly succeeds with new take on tower defense

July 13 Comments Off on Cubemen mostly succeeds with new take on tower defense Category: Feed, Games, Nightmare Mode

Cubemen’s aggressively simple design combined with clever manipulations of traditional genre mechanics creates play that is fun, but slightly too long.

The game presents the player with three game types. Each revolves around a variety of three-dimensional levels, two or more spawn points, and the titular cubemen, voxel-style humanoids with access to a variety of weapons and color coding.

Units within the game are split between two classes. The first are your soldiers, units purchased with the game’s currency that fall into the standard Tower Defense types, including slowing units, morters, flamethrowers and the rest. The second type are spawned cubemen, who are created automatically by enemy spawn points in the Defense gametype and by both sides’ spawns in Skirmish and Mayhem modes.

Our Games Are Not Depressing Enough [Feedback Loop]

July 04 Comments Off on Our Games Are Not Depressing Enough [Feedback Loop] Category: Feed, Games, Nightmare Mode

An excess of violence has become a point of criticism for video games. The real problem isn’t the violence, but how games want us to feel about our stylized murder sprees.

In recent interviews David Cage and Warren Spector both addressed the need for games to be more emotive and less violent. However, it shouldn’t be an binary situation. Violent games could be a path to better art, if we deal with the violence in the correct way.

In Edge magazine, Cage’s interview centered around the recent E3 demo Kara. The demo by Quantic Dream showed a game character presenting subtleties of emotion only approcahable by the last Quantic Dream tech demo, ‘The Casting’.

While next-generation technology is not required for good games, Quantic’s demo shows the potential to create characters with greater emotional depth, a characteristic that does more to make them realistic than all the pixel resolution in the world.

Resonance impresses with remarkable narrative, gameplay

June 19 Comments Off on Resonance impresses with remarkable narrative, gameplay Category: Feed, Games, Nightmare Mode

In Resonance, developer Vince Twelve has created one of gaming’s more dazzling narratives. The game is a pleasure to play.

Resonance puts you in control of four characters thrown together in a science fiction setting to prevent world-wide disaster. A high-quality adventure game, Resonance has some of the best storytelling you’ll encounter on the PC. This is complemented by an interesting cast of characters, excellent 2D pixel work, great music and some unique game mechanics.