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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
This is the finale of my list of my top 50 favorite games. Check the links above this sentence for links to the other parts if you’re reading on the blog (I’m gonna update previous parts on the blog with links to future parts, not the PDFs). Anyways…
This article went up a week earlier for my Patreon backers, as do the majority of my writing. If you want early access, consider joining my Patreon today!
Free PDF download here
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I’m finally playing Jade Empire, about ten hours in so far, and I’m enjoying it. This baby is also going to play a large role in my eventual Mass Effect project, assuming that doesn’t balloon into a full look at Bioware’s various RPG games. Baldur’s Gate scares me! But as for this forgotten middle child between KOTOR and ME, I am surprised by just how much of a Rosetta stone this is for understanding how we got the modern tropes and design structure Bioware makes their games in. Particularly, it’s a great example of how we got where with did with their signature morality system, both what that system thinks it is and what it actually is.
This article went up a week earlier for my Patreon backers, as do the majority of my writing. If you want early access, consider joining my Patreon today!
Free PDF download here
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Something I’ve come to hate, and I’m somewhat guilty of at times, is framing games writing around how “mature” or “important” a game is, how much it is worthy of the term “art.” We have this obsession with seeing our niche interests as something with real substance and worthy of respect, and I think it sometimes poisons how we connect to games on an emotional level. This has also had the effect of warping our language, treating games with silly or absurd tones as something worthy of scorn or treating those qualities as something the rest of the game has to overcome to see its real value. I think I cross this line a lot when writing about SUDA 51’s work, even though I love his games for both their thematic resonance and their ridiculous detours. It’s difficult to express how something that doesn’t wear airs of importance resonates with me. It’s difficult to talk about the value of…well, stupidity.
All of this is to say I’m about to write a bunch of words on a very stupid late 90s FPS and why it being dumb as hell is good, actually.
Continue reading “The Value of Stupidity with Shogo: Mobile Armor Division”
Bi The Dark Side 