If we expect gaming to grow into its own as a medium to stand among literature, film and music in terms of cultural relevance, we can’t dismiss any work’s artistic merits. If we don’t take our medium seriously, then who will? To that end, I have a hypothesis that some would call downright mad: that Goat Simulator is the most important interactive experience of the year. No, I’m not kidding (no pun intended). READ MORE
The JRPG is going through an oddly fruitful point in its life right now. On one hand, it is undeniable that the genre lacks the cachet that it had during the 32-bit era, and it is doubtful it will ever reclaim that. However, publishers like Atlus, Nippon Ichi and XSEED — long regarded as some of the biggest risk-takers in publishing — have taken it upon themselves to ensure that many of the more offbeat titles in the genre actually make it outside of Japan. That has never happened on this scale before, and it is the only way that a game like Conception II would have ever seen the light of day in English-speaking territories. READ MORE
While we must not mistake correlation for causation, no top-selling game system of any generation so far has been the highest technical performer. Alas, history has a tendency to repeat itself. Platform creators can still lose the forest for the trees, neglecting to deliver a quality lineup of software in favor of running glorified tech demos with a high price tag. READ MORE
There’s a growing trend in game remakes that has proven to be somewhat of a double-edged sword. A lot of games are being remastered in high definition, and released with a sequel or two on the same disc. While some HD remaster collections add new features or even bits of content to give the player more incentive to pick up the pack, there are many that offer nothing more than a resolution bump. This is fruitful for the interests of game preservation and keeping classics relevant and available, but it also sets a worrisome precedent for remakes as a whole. Most of these games remain fine as they are, but the fact that it has become so easy for publishers to repackage one or two old titles without giving them the careful and lavish presentation upgrade they deserve is disappointing. READ MORE
Being too far ahead of its time is a common way for a product to fail, especially in the technology business. This is often the most tragic kind of failure, because it is not the result of apathy or cynicism, but just a great idea that the rest of the tech world couldn’t quite support yet. This was the undoing of Nokia’s N-Gage phone. It is a concept that we take as commonplace and even expected in today’s mobile space, but nevertheless garners a great deal of ridicule in retrospect: that a cell phone can run games as well as its handheld competitors. While much of that ridicule was valid due to some baffling hardware design decisions, the N-Gage was a capable handheld that deserves a second look. READ MORE
