This Week In Video Game Criticism: Shameful Joys To Start Screens

"Calling the tech 'revolutionary' seems a little premature when so much seems geared to Rage's old habits, its look harking back to the likes of Myst and Riven. But it is disruptive tech which, at a time when games are still struggling with parallel processing, provides the clearest indication yet of how old techniques – sparse voxel octrees and the like, which in id Tech 6 might bring this game's uniqueness to geometry as well – can show us the way forward. On top of that, Rage is a disruptive game. It reminds us how far we've erred from the thrills of 'run-and-gun' into pedestrian 'stop-and-pop'; how we've lost the rhythm of the firstperson shooter; and how look and feel are still more important than gimmicks and Gamerscore."

"DXHR's myriad eccentricities form a thematic whole that casts a rueful eye over the miseries and frustrations of modern life. The game begins this examination with a meaningful departure from the culture of generosity and empowerment created by the first two games in the Deus Ex series, before ushering in an atmosphere of frustration, claustrophobia and willing submission that closely resembles the mind-set required to survive in a system dead-set on grinding you into the dust."

"Black Ops never once portrayed the Vietnamese as living, breathing people. In the storied history of the Call of Duty franchise, or in the Battlefield or Medal of Honor franchise for that matter, never once have we seen the opposition as people. We shoot them as people, they stumble and roll across pavement as people, yet their humanity is categorically absent from our encounters with them."

"…how similar they are and how one gets what it's doing so right and the other gets it so wrong. Both games are silent environmental puzzle games that tell their story through imagery and mood more than anything else. Both games exude an air of loneliness and oppression by the world at large and end ambiguously. But where Another World utilizes this as a basis to dive into other matters and themes, with Limbo it's the whole show."

"One of the most famous examples of someone using a game to explain a legal concept is Ronald Dworkin's Hard Cases on the difficulties of creating a representative democracy. He uses the example of a chess tournament dispute to explain why the same rule can affect two people differently. Let's say you have a rule which says, "If you taunt another opponent, you immediately forfeit the game." Seems innocent enough, right? Two players sit down and one smiles at the other. For cultural reasons, the opposing player is insulted by smiling and flips out. They demand that their opponent be forced to forfeit for taunting them. How do you call that? If the player is genuinely offended, then technically the other player broke the rule. Is it a fair outcome to let them win in this manner? What if they're just abusing the rule? Dworkin explains that the best we've come up with for resolving this problem is to have a judge make a decision one way or the other. And that comes with a whole host of issues about how they should go about doing that."

"To some extent, then, the game is an accusation, a statement that we, the game players, are responsible through our apathy for events of this sort that transpire. This is quite different than most games, which typically cater to appeasing the player entirely."

"I wasn't really sure what I was expecting, but the game quietly informed me in three brief screen changes that Bandai Namco had published it, From Software had developed it, and that it would be running on the Havok engine—nothing especially surprising there. Most modern games run through these brief "credits" before a start screen. They had appeared quietly, though, as I said before. There was none of the 'WE'RE TEAM FUCKIN' NINJA KA-BLAMMO' fanfare that some publishers go for. Then, the next screen came. It was black with just vaguely pulsing white letters, and it simply read: 'Dark Souls,' then 'Press Start Button.' No music. No intro movie. That was it. And it filled me with utter dread."

"…all this time I can't help thinking that this was because I'm working with games. If I was a fimmaker, this is issue would never crop up. But games have to constantly defend their status as a way of creative expression. When creating games, you are by default suspected of either selling out or producing nothing of value what so ever. Or both."