I’m so indie, only I can understand my art

I have to stop buying those indie games that get rave reviews from “New Games Journalism” sites and are promoted on the front page of Steam and included in “mid-week madness” packages. I mean, I like indie games, and I like the idea of a cottage industry of game designers who risk everything on a crazy idea that no major studio (except Valve) would touch with a ten-foot pole simply because they have nothing to lose anyway, but seriously, you may think of yourself as the next Peter Molyneux or John Romero or Gabe Newell or David Cage, but you see, Molyneux, Romero, Newell and Cage know something you still haven’t learned: it doesn’t matter how innovative your game is, it still has to be playable. Continue reading “I’m so indie, only I can understand my art”

Unimpressed: Drake’s Fortune

Finally got myself a PlayStation 3 (I’d link to the official site, but it’s totally retarded), and bought a bunch of “pre-played” (i.e. what you and I would call “used”) games along with it. One of the games I picked up was Resistance: Fall of Man, but the guy at the store claimed that it wasn’t really all that good, and that if I really wanted to “experience the PS3” I should get Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune instead, and I vaguely recalled reading about it after seeing a Penny Arcade strip about the sequel, so I did.

As you can tell from the title, I was not impressed. Continue reading “Unimpressed: Drake’s Fortune”

One step forward, two steps back

I play a fair number of games. I go through about one PS2 game a month, on average, plus various PC games once in a while—mostly platformers and first or third person shooters on the PS2, and strategy / adventure on the PC, with some puzzle gmaes like Oasis thrown in.

The one thing that never ceases to surprise me with these games—especially console games—is how most of them share the same two elementary flaws, which you’d think they’d discovered and fixed years ago. Continue reading “One step forward, two steps back”