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Against our best intentions, video games that get left by the wayside often stay unplayed and are ultimately forgotten. Games are a temporal art form. They can only be fully enjoyed within a short period of time after their release. Once a title is no longer considered new, many players distance themselves from it and discard it into the annals of history. Albeit with a few exceptions, many offerings’ influence wane significantly over time.

Games differ from sculpture, painting, film, and music in this sense. Because the evolving technology powering them is more apparent, titles can quickly appear outdated. Simple mechanics like running and jumping can be easily rendered archaic through minor advances in design.

Gamers and critics lauded the early Tomb Raider entries for both their gameplay and graphical quality. Time colored these opinions, but this does not render them obsolete. Crystal Dynamics remade the original Tomb Raider with more-modern mechanics, releasing it as Tomb Raider: Anniversary in 2007. The company vastly improved basic movement through technology and highlighted the lack of precision and control in the original game. I feel both the original and remake, however, should be considered valid options to play. The releases represent certain periods in gaming and reflect the limitations technology imposed during their respective eras.

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In the music video for House Shoe's song "Sweet," an animated version of rapper Danny Brown transforms into Q*Bert, Pac-Man, and an unnamed Pac-ghost. I think it’s not a stretch to say that these guys are into classic arcade games.

The folks over at RuffMercy.com created this sketchy (lightly NSFW) short, and producer House Shoes made the beat.  

The video description -- on music blog Pitchfork’s YouTube Channel -- states that Brown “morphs into different cartoon characters.” Before anyone gets upset at the music site for grouping Pac-Man and Q*bert with ‘toons, remember that both of these digital heroes starred in animated series at one point.

Does having a couple of iconic arcade characters in a music video qualify the artists as gamers? To an extent…. But for an even better example of Danny Brown’s 8-bit street cred, check out his outrageously offensive song Pac Blood (in reference to the late, great rapper Tupac Shakur) from the XXX mixtape. In it, he name drops the obscure Soda Popinski from Nintendo’s Punch Out!! franchise.  

Who does that? Someone who loves video games, no doubt. 

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Boss fights. We can’t seem to get rid of them. It seems like every game these days feels obligated to build up to several intricate, large-scale, and often difficult fights with significant enemies. Traditional boss fights are a remnant of the past and are no longer necessary (for the most part). Also, very few games successfully execute a good boss fight, making them a waste of valuable money and production time for most developers.

The new trend in gaming, with some exceptions, is omitting a traditional boss fight in favor of a challenging sequence that leads up to the final showdown with the “boss,” which is short and sweet. This approach also lends itself well to games that are trying to preserve some level of realism, as it eliminates problems like human bullet sponges.

The game that does this best is Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. The previous Uncharted games had lackluster boss fights (at best) but were both flawed in different ways.

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Metal Gear’s Solid Snake is getting old, and we all know it.

Not every game character has superhuman powers, infinite continues, or the ability to remain the same forever. Some age. Some have feelings. Some deal with conflict. Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima made Solid Snake gray for a reason. Not only is the stealth-game franchise a cinematic one, it also adapts to real-life situations we can relate to. Snake is vulnerable, much like us. We are born, and we all eventually die.

Snake’s mortality came into focus before his appearance in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. I wasn’t the only one upset when Raiden stole the spotlight and took over the protagonist role in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. A new, blond-haired, girl lookalike is replacing Solid Snake? Screw you.

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Across the street from a Greyhound bus station in a small, unmarked storefront, eight electronic musicians from around the Southern California area got together last Friday night to bang out some chiptunes using a variety of portable game consoles.

The crowd was a good mix of interested girlfriends and rocking nerds. Everyone was clearly there for the digital music, considering the only other points of interest within walking distance (besides the bus station) were an American Apparel factory and a bunch of gentrified, industrial lofts.

I decided to film what I could of the show for a little montage video. It was pretty dark, save for the colorful flashing lights on-stage and the glitched-out NES graphics projected onto the wall by video jockey Tim Abad. I also couldn’t stay to shoot all the performers (I missed out on EvilWezil and 1000 Needles) since I had to wake up early for work the next day.

Talking to event organizer and artist Kevin “Wizwars” Martinez about Los Angeles' chiptune scene, however, definitely helped to put the night in perspective. Check out the video for my interview and a glimpse at some of the awesome things these musicians are doing with the family of Game Boys, Nintendo DSes, and more. 

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I was 15 years old the night my family entered a local Safeway store, and things were about to change forever.

A troublesome childhood had deteriorated into a hell-raising adolescence. After battling with my father over everything two people can battle about, we had settled into a tense, uneasy silence. We would never admit it aloud for my mom’s sake, but my father and I just didn’t like each other. In fact, we may have hated each other.

Having taken refuge in video games, words like "blast processing" were still fresh in my mind as I considered the tremendous technological leap from the original Metal Gear to Sonic the Hedgehog. Unfortunately, my father learned how I dreamt of earning a living in video games and quickly made it his mission to destroy that ambition. He almost succeeded, brainwashing me with continuous mental pummeling about how I'd never make it, how there was no money in video games, blah, blah, blah. Couple this with mainstream society's negative view on gaming and, well, it didn’t look like I had a bright future ahead of me.  

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One, two, read reviews. Three, four, read some more. Five, six, links to click! Seven, eight...alright, that's all I got.

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Papo & Yo and complicated relationships
By Ethan Clevenger

Papa & Yo is a game about abusive relationships! Fun! "I’m skeptical of the blatant nature with which the developer approached the extended metaphor," writes Ethan in his review. "And in my opinion may have done well to keep the entire thing under wraps until the player reached the twilight of the experience. Regardless, it’s an emotional keepsake that, for the small time investment, gamers would be remiss to pass up."

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50 Games in 2012 -- #20 Trine 2 [PSN]
By Bryden Keks

Trine 2 is an action-platformer where you switch between three different characters to solve puzzles, but Bryden had more fun earning PlayStation trophies than completing the adventure. "Through my experience, I enjoyed the game at large points but found myself often disinterested by the story and more interested with completing fun puzzles and unlocking the game's trophies."

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Runescape: Teaching gamers the fundamentals of MMORPGs
By Ronnie Smith

Runescape was one of the first (and still most popular) free-to-play massively multiplayer role-playing games. Ronnie argues that it is the perfect place for newbies to the genre to learn the ropes. "It allows potential future players to experience many of the same aspects of more popular MMORPG games while not forcing them to buy any software, have effective hardware, or otherwise."

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Our culture is obsessed with things returning from the dead. Why not the video arcade? About a month ago, Ars Technica published an article that sounded almost too good to be true, "The Surprising Stealth Rebirth of the American Arcade." I was somewhat skeptical; I have fond memories of time spent in arcades as a youth, but I was never privy to the true heyday of the video arcade in the '80s.

I wasn't willing to believe that arcades could make a comeback for only one reason: I wanted it to be true, and so of course, it was never going to happen.

Then one opened a mile from my house.

Last night, I took a couple of my friends to check out the Joystick Gamebar in Atlanta, and after a night of cocktails, quarters, and aching wrists, I've changed my tune.

To borrow a line from our friend Fox Mulder: I want to believe.

Joystick proved to me, in a few short hours, that establishments like this really have a shot at success. A handful of factors have convinced me that we're going to see more and more barcades pop up in the next couple of years.

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While there are a lot of things to complain about in online gaming, like unreliable servers and online passes, right there on the top of everyone’s list are newbies (or noobs).

People don’t seem to mind sharing their games with the foul-mouthed, misogynist, and outright disturbing players they frequently find online. But if they’re brought down by a guy hiding in a corner in any shooting game … that’s a real problem.

“That’s cheap! That’s not the way I’m supposed to be defeated!” They were felled by a dishonorable play, a pagan tactic only employed by those unskilled enough to fight like real men do -- in other words, a “noob.”

I mean, there are people proudly quitting from online matches, while there are some assholes claiming that harassment is part of the gaming community. But being a noob, or being called a noob, seems to be the worst offense any player can bear.

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I can't believe I never thought of this. I mean, it's so obvious. Of course the Pokémon world would have a crime fighter named Zubatman! Oh well. At least I can enjoy the hilarious combination with you guys even if I couldn't invent it.

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Once again, we assemble the absolute best people in the world to deliver something we think other, not-so-good people are ready for!

Grant! Crecente! Pitts! McElroy! Plante! Another McElroy! Gies! Frushtick! Together, they are Polygon, the Super Friends of game-coverage sites...coming in 2012. But a mere placeholder web-page hasn’t stopped this all-star league of video-game journalists from releasing a trailer for Press Reset: The Story of Polygon, an upcoming reality-show webseries chronicling their dramatic struggle to be video-game journalists.

Naturally, the Internets judged them harshly, because that’s how the Internets roll. And since humans only need a 44-second teaser to judge anything, that’s how we roll, too! So what say you, panel of experts? Press Reset...pretentious or pioneering?

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“Cut the s**t. Who’s sleeping with who?”

- Isaac Clark, Dead Space 3

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Just so long as someone’s told to pack up their consoles and go because it’s Game Over every week, I’m cool. In fact, I’ll call it now…Justin and Griffin McElroy will form an alliance with Arthur Gies to back-stab Brian Crecente right before Chris Grant kneecaps them all.”

- Nathan Drake, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception

 

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This article contains minor spoilers for Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Mass Effect 3.

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I'm guilty of blaming game developers for creating unsatisfactory conclusions to otherwise outstanding stories that, quite frankly, deserve much, much better. You see, I recently revisited Eidos Montreal's cyberpunk masterpiece Deus Ex: Human Revolution to remind me of how expertly crafted its story is and how effectively its sinister atmosphere managed to make me feel paranoid of the world around me. 

Everything is just as I remember: the characteristic sepia tone of the world, charismatic voice acting, and the ... not so great ending. Human Revolution’s critics might have criticized the misplaced-and-immersion-shattering boss battles at the time of its release, but I found the polarizing ending to be far more disappointing. 

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