HAWX and Control Schemes

I played the demo for Tom Clancy’s HAWX recently, and was pretty disappointed in it. I found the plane to be quite difficult to control (for no good reason), and the “action camera” mode is extremely disorienting. You are forced to use the “action camera” for part of the tutorial, and it’s quite maddening — …

Rez

My first brush with Rez in person was at some “games = art” presentation at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts a few years back. (Of course, I had already seen “that article” about it, too, but I wasn’t going to dismiss the game as a gimmick since it had received such widespread acclaim.) …

“Games” Versus “Experiences”

My wife completed The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess the other day, after starting it several months ago, and playing in sporadic but lengthy bursts (the kind that you tend to indulge in only on the weekends, and which usually leave you feeling guilty about “wasting time”). I was a spectator for a small, but …

The Backlog: Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime

I did some air travel a few weeks ago, and had a chance to play and finish Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime. It’s a fairly easy action RPG with some interesting features, and a very good localization, which makes the charming humor in the game seem, well, charming, as opposed to bizarre. Gameplay is split …

Noel Gallagher Sudden Expertism*

Oasis frontman links videogames to knife violence: "If kids are sitting up all night smoking super skunk [cannabis] and they come so desensitised to crime because they’re playing these videogames, it’s really, really scary." * "sudden expertism" being a bit of Ticket lingo describing people who insist that they are an authority on any subject …

1-9

We bought Ticket to Ride on XBLA the other day, and Sandy has pretty much owned me in our (decidedly non-combative) matches. I was 0-9 before I eked out a victory last night. I feel like I have a pretty decent grasp on appropriate strategy for the game (card and route selection), but it never …

Catching Up on the Backlog: Phoenix Wright

When I haven’t been playing GTA IV, I’ve been trying to whack another game off of my backlog — the original Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. I finished it today, having played the series somewhat out of order — 2, 3, 4 (aka Apollo Justice), then finally the first game. While having played the series out-of-order …