push.the.button: Archive

To be or not to be

“I do not consider myself a feminist or particularly aligned with the feminist movement. I just know bullshit when I see it, and I’m tired of bullshit that involves the vapid, shallow arguments that crawl out of the comments section of every single website whenever this subject comes out. It feels like the same 50 people are just making dupe accounts across the Internet, and making sure to...

Nov 30th

24 notes

2 tags

Five Shorties for All Hallows Eve

Introduced a new thing at our annual Halloween gathering at my apartment last night where we screen a bunch of handpicked horror shorts before watching Trick ‘r Treat. Here they are!

Nov 1st

3 notes

7 tags

Thanks, G4

There have been three formative moments in my longer-than-you’d-think career. Being hired as the San Francisco-based reporter for MTV News, and writing under Stephen Totilo, who’s now the editor of Kotaku. Totilo was a brutal editor, and he savaged my work—an editorial beating I needed. I was a curious writer prior to working with Totilo, and I came out of it a reporter. Getting laid off...

Oct 27th

31 notes

5 tags

Honesty

“klepek, you are the biggest hipster i know. That why you are upset? glad someone close to you died, GB improved.” I’m used to courting abuse on the Internet. It’s part of the job, though one that takes getting used to. This guy (or girl, I suppose, but let’s be realistic) has every right to convey the underlying sentiment behind that comment. Since the passing of my father, I’ve been...

Jul 31st

43 notes

1 tag

30 Days o' Horror: 2011 Edition

Horror movies are the best, you guys! Logically, October is also the best. Even though I’m watching horror films all year long, when October rolls around, I tend to go overboard with things. You’ll notice there are very few horror “classics” on this list—Exorcist, Night of the Living Dead, Alien, etc. I’ve seen all these movies way too many times. The point of...

Oct 1st

5 notes

3 tags

The Beer Test

“The true test of a game’s narrative is whether I’m willing to go grab a new beer while a cut scene is going on.”—me, on Twitter, being snarky. I’m joking—mostly. I’ve just finished Crytek’s Crysis 2, a game supposedly taking narrative seriously enough to hire a screenwriter. I have little knowledge of Crysis beyond aliens and a magical suit, myself a...

Apr 6th

11 notes

3 tags

It's Not Your Fault

Locke: You saw the film, Jack. This is a… this is a two person job, at least. Sayid: This argument is irrelevant. Jack: Sayid, don’t. Sayid: Jack. Jack: Don’t. It’s not real. Look, you want to push the button, you do it yourself. Locke: If it’s not real, then what are you doing here, Jack? Why did you come back? Why do you find it so hard to believe? Jack:...

Mar 25th

21 notes

3 tags

Why this year was my first successful GDC (and...

I’ve had the pleasure of attending the Game Developers Conference for several years now, free of charge. Almost everyone else forks over hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars for the same privilege. And it’s exactly that: a privilege, one that I’ve come to realize I’ve been misusing, to my own detriment, because of the wrong priorities—albeit ones that have been...

Mar 14th

9 notes

3 tags

Watch

LOST + Dead Island = this

Feb 16th

280 notes

2 tags

The (71?!) Games I Played And Finished In 2010

2010 was a good year for well-designed games, though I have to admit that very few experiences embedded into my subconscious (like Flower did) after the credits. That’s a blog for later, but I wanted to share my second annual documentation of games I played and finished throughout the last year. All told, the list includes 71 games. Holy shit. 71 games. There are a few caveats, of...

Jan 5th

2 notes

2 tags

“People are quick to dismiss Dragon Quest because it’s so “generic” — never mind...”

– With a dose of sarcasm and biting insight, Jeremy Parish makes me completely rethink my own assumptions about Dragon Quest.

Jan 4th

6 notes

2 tags

“Using a book analogy, if a book starts awesome, and then abruptly ends, the...”

– Great quote from Tom Bissell’s Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter, a book anyone who cares for furthering videogame criticism should read.

Jan 4th

9 notes

4 tags

The Tragedy of Milton Porter

BioShock 2 was by no means a bad game, but for long stretches of play—the middle, mainly—it was a very boring thing. There were forgettable environments with no lasting mark, characters whose presence felt mechanically contrived and slightly better combat rendered limp by repetitive Little Sister protection missions in pursuit of more Adam. And this comes from someone who, all told, enjoyed...

Dec 23rd

6 notes

2 tags

In Post-Apocalyptic Russia, You Don't Need To...

I’m not sure what it is about the Russian accent, but it makes everyone sound like a cartoon villain when pushed through the English language. Compared to native Russian—a brooding, often dangerous sounding tongue—it’s comical. I started playing Metro 2033, a sadly overlooked Ukranian-developed shooter set in a post-apocalyptic Russia overrun by mutated beasts, with English flipped...

Dec 17th

2 notes

2 tags

The Games I Played And Finished — Oct/Nov 2010...

Phew. I sure played a bunch of games. How about you? October Enslaved: Odyssey to the West Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions Freedom Bridge/Walk to Die Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light Get Home Medal of Honor Super Meat Boy November Costume Quest Kinect Adventures Kinect Sports Dance Central Call of Duty: Black Ops GoldenEye 007 Kirby’s Epic Yarn Donkey Kong Country...

Dec 14th

1 note

4 tags

The Dreamweaver

Here’s what some of you said. “BioWare! Use Mass Effect as kind of a model, including dialogue trees, except speed up combat and make it more action-based.” —nickmichetti “honestly its probably EA or an Activision studio.” —robkrekel “If BioWare did this game, it would actually become real and we would live in a dream world for all eternity.” ...

Dec 1st

2 notes

5 tags

Life Without Achievements

*Feel free to swap Achievements with Trophies or your preferred arbitrary term. A few months back, I finally turned off Achievements notifications. I’d grown tired of the graphic blipping into my screen during an important cut-scene or actively disrupting my engagement with gameplay mid-shot, mid-jump. I’ve never been a completionist, so my relationship with Achivements and their...

Nov 30th

6 notes

3 tags

Enemy Combatant

“I literally stopped the game, paused and grunted in fury, actively angry at the Taliban.” That’s from my notebook at around 1am, scribbled during the first hour or so of Medal of Honor. The game opens with a satellite viewpoint of the Earth, military chatter filling your ears. It’s easy to tune out; there’s not much there that hasn’t been in any other...

Oct 27th

2 notes

2 tags

The Games I Played And Finished — September 2010...

September was a busy month of deadlines for the new EGM, but for work and pleasure, I still managed to sneak in a decent amount of gaming. Horray! These are the games I played and finished—or, in the case of games without a narrative conclusion, enough to review—in September. What did you play? One Button Arthur e7 Far Cry 2 Halo: Reach Super Scribblenauts Rock Band 3

Oct 6th

6 notes

3 tags

Peer Pressure

“This is the way Halo is meant to be played.” Normal is usually just fine for me, thank you. It’s not often I’m compelled to play through a game a second time on a harder difficulty, a notion I’m acuately aware exists because I’m privileged to always have access to new games. In the case of Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST and Bungie’s farewell to the series, Halo:...

Oct 5th

3 tags

Pull The Trigger, Bro

Note: This post contains spoilers about the ending to Far Cry 2. I’d been told Far Cry 2 was better enjoyed in small spurts, rather than long sessions, but with a copy of Halo: Reach just days away, I’d endeavored to finish off Far Cry 2 before embarking on Bungie’s latest. I play games one at a time. That conclusion came Friday afternoon, when it appeared Ubisoft Montreal was...

Sep 15th

4 tags

My African Identity Crisis

Far Cry 2 is one hell of a weird thing. How was this game even made? I’ve never more thoroughly examined a videogame morality choice than the one presented halfway through Far Cry 2, where you’re presented with two options: save a church filled with innocent children or defend a bar with a bunch of nameless, kill ‘em all mercenaries. Easy, right? I play my videogames like...

Sep 10th

7 notes

2 tags

The games I played (and finished) in August

Transformers: War For Cybertron DeathSpank Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: The Game Shank Comic Jumper Metroid: Other M Dead Rising: Case Zero I keep track of the games that I finish every month. It’s pretty easy, since I tend to play narrative-driven games. I’ve written this down for the past year and a half, allowing myself a chance to reflect on my own playing habits,...

Sep 1st

1 note

4 tags

The Man on the Other Side of the Scope

I’ve been playing FarCry 2 for an inexplicable reason: I’ve mostly caught up on the games I’ve felt needed playing so far in 2010, so I’ve been using the time before the typical holiday avalanche to catch up a few that fell through the cracks. I decided to play Clint Hocking’s largely ignored FarCry 2. That’s actually a lie; there is a specific reason. If...

Aug 31st

1 note

5 tags

The (un)surprising role Steam places in piracy?

I wanted to share a few quotes from readers who have submitted their stories about piracy—sometimes for, sometimes against—and one common thread I found: Steam. Here’s one… “I’ll admit that (maybe…) I pirated a game once (As I might have with 1 movie, for the same reason). The sole reason was that I couldn’t find it for sale anywhere in Australia, and it...

Aug 19th

1 note

2 tags

Some thoughts on piracy, after browsing various...

Piracy isn’t new to games, but I’m currently doing research for an upcoming EGMi piece sporting a hopefully refreshing angle on the subject (look for it online in a few weeks), but I couldn’t help but chuckle at some of the descriptions attached to various torrents. Look at this one, part of the freshly minted Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days for PC torrent: 1. Unrar. 2. Burn...

Aug 18th

8 notes

1 tag