The Gamer's Quarter

I'm reading Perdido Street Station. It's a good, classy steampunk/fantasy/SF/whatever novel, although the plot gets amusingly much like a console RPG at times. I really like how the magic is treated ...

this is going to sound terrible, but i seriously doubt that a jrpg that's biting nietzchean titles is going to really rock my boat.
Oh, Xenosaga is just trash. 'gears doesn't have much to do with Ni ...

These two are very common examples, but so be it.

If you haven't played FFVI, you really should. The story is just as cliche and (at times) incoherent as you'd expect, but it's worth it for the ae ...

Is [url=http://www.chroniclogic.com/index.htm?gish.htm]Gish in this zone, to some extent?

What I was trying to say about KB is that, as I very hazily remember it, it shifts tone too often, and the individual segments of tone seem justified by homage value rather than by the story.

It's ...

I didn't like KB V.1 that much, for something like helicopterp's reasons. To say this in broad and patronizing a manner as I can, it felt like it was made by a geek who really really liked a disparat ...

Can anyone recommend something by Kenzaburo Oe? This is coming from someone who doesn't like Japanese literature much because the translations tend to be really bland, and the straightforward take-ho ...

I never got more than 30 mins. into Cave Story. It wasn't bad, and I could see what would make people rave about it, but doing so involves stretching my imagination--if I'd played it without hearing ...

I like Birnbaum more than the other translators. He's kind of awkward, yeah, but that's actually a strength. When the characters recount vague impressions of their situations, Birnbaum makes them so ...

Gah, I want to finish Foucault's Pendulum before school starts, because I'll forget what's going on pretty quickly, and I'll be reading too much for school to want to continue it. I was really enjoyi ...

just finished reading the prince. purple underlining sucks balls. her notes were amusing, however.

re-reading steven pinker's how the mind works. he's an engaging guy, even if he overreaches with h ...

Neuromancer dragged for me a little at the beginning, but it quickly gets into an action-thriller pattern that's totally conventional, but (therefore) engrossing. It didn't seem brilliant to me, exce ...

Re: good ending.

The only reason I used the phrase was to emphasize when a choice that seems to go against the game's general, uh, paradigm can be the "right" choice, using Alc's word. I'm not sur ...

Again, I can see where you're coming from, but I really like that ordered, single-file gameplay. I get annoyed when I can't undo a wrong action - I don't want to deal with the consequences, I want to ...

The only survival horror game I've played is SH2, and I didn't get far. That said, I have a hard time understanding how so many people see the survival horror "experience" as so effective and easily ...

Yes, I agree. I guess what I mean is, people at this kind of site tend to spend so much effort emphasizing that stuff that they forget the effects interactivity confers on anything. This is particul ...

I'm willing to go with the general sentiment here, but it seems a little artificial to insist that, if any element of your idea can't be depicted without the player's control, then your entire idea sh ...

In a high school class, I once recommended that a friend write a paper about DeLillo. Crucially, I hadn't read any of DeLillo's books! (I still haven't.)

We spent a lot of time talking about how ...

Ignoring for a moment those developers who make games where the story is the primary purpose, a fun story can add a lot of motivation to a game, even one that already speaks for itself. Whether or no ...

Pongism is my least favorite Jutla article, and I like his articles. *shrug*

I never got the appeal of writing it. People act like it's easier and more pleasant to do than original fiction--which fits with the idea that it develops one's writing style, like a "tutorial mode" ...

I think the main reason so many games have these kinds of plots is that games:
1) involve "work" that isn't always pleasant
2) are supposed to be entertaining
and if you want to be entertained by w ...

I'm reading:
-The Iliad, for school next year. The writing is so "dogmatic," not unexpectedly, that's it's hard to find the literary merits, if they're there. Like most (all?) epics, it seems much ...