*Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for BioShock, BioShock 2, and BioShock Infinite.* The BioShock franchise is one of the most beloved in the modern era of gaming, being a model for storytelling and world-building to developers and creators across the industry. With the rumored existence of a BioShock collection for the Xbox One and PS4, …
sto-ry noun A narrative, either true or fictitious, in prose or verse. Designed to interest, amuse, or instruct the hearer or reader. Along with ‘why are we here’, the age-old questions of whethere videogames are art or a true storytelling medium have been thrown back and forth for over three decades. And as always with …
With Failure to Connect, we asked our writers what games they were unable to connect with, regardless of their fiscal and critical success. For the month of May we will attempt to explore this issue in detail on a case by case basis. Bioshock and its spiritual-sequel Bioshock Infinite (and to a lesser extent its …
Upon its release in 2008, there was little to indicate that the original Dead Space would be anything other than a limp trudge through stock horror. After all, it hailed from the development studio EA Redwood, a team at the time best known for releasing a succession of deeply ordinary takes on the cash cow …
AAA (triple A) video games and the people who play them need to get over their embarrassing and childish insecurity. If I spent as much time getting in shape as gaming culture spends defending their chosen art form from mostly imagined assaults, I would have the abs of Ryan Reynolds. “We’re art too!” everyone cries, …
As science fiction has popularly shown, the best dystopias always began as utopias. The idea of a fallen utopia is something that humanity seems to take an inherent comfort in. Much like our unflappable interest in seeing our heroes and idols fall fall from grace, a destroyed wonderland, or one that hides a myriad of horrors beneath its carefully constructed facade, is a reassuring proposition, one that works to assuage any guilt we might have for not trying to be better, or affecting any real change in our own society or circumstances.
For a publically traded company that is “dependent on the future success of [their] Grand Theft Auto products”, it takes an unwavering amount of confidence and respect in RockStar to allow a 5-year development cycle for GTA V. Take-Two Interactive is dependent on this franchise to survive and yet, unlike the majority of AAA publishers, is uninterested in exploiting its cash cow. The company doesn’t publish quick cash-in games like Activision, cut corners like Ubisoft, or chase the mobile and FPS money train like Electronic Arts. Their strategy is a humble one: create few, but high quality video games. It’s right there in their 2014 Annual Report:
If you’re anything like me, the ending of Bioshock: Infinite will have made you dump your controller, stare agape at the screen and yell “no!” in disbelief over and over. It is a conclusion which shakes up the game experience like no other. It is cathartic, unsettling, and joyous. It’s a clear example of the developers following the storytelling maxim of beginning at the end and working backwards while serving as an enormous impetus for players to immediately restart the game and piece together the clues that fit into this monumental narrative. I, for one, started a new game right away.
Rarely, if ever, is a game so exceedingly great it warrants a remake only a year after release. This is, however, the case with The Last of Us, the late PS3 entry from Naughty Dog (the Uncharted series) that is coming to the PS4 in the way of The Last of Us: Remastered. Perhaps this is merely an effort …
As a teenager, I felt I would never age. Yet I also knew I would, and more than that, I could anticipate that when I did, everything would change. So I stood then, with confused ideas about time. The future would never arrive, yet it was also imminent. Now, my teenage years were horribly boring and sexless, so I was certainly looking forward to some sort of revolution. It was only a matter of emerging out the far side of high school, into the end of the world as I knew it. Life is a succession of points of no return, and if we find apocalyptic stories about crashing asteroids and alien invasions so absorbing, it might be because they exaggerate this fact. Popular fiction brims with characters who undergo processes of self-discovery while everything around them burns, from The Lord of the Rings to Akira. Watershed moments can be as monumental as they can be personal and private, and though graduating high school or parting with your family are not exactly comparable to a tidal wave, such commonplace events can inspire fear and trembling regardless.
10- Amnesia What’s scarier than waking up and not knowing where you are? How about not knowing where you are, who you are, and what’s trying to kill you? Welcome to Amnesia, in which you find yourself trapped in a dark castle without your memories while creatures slink about in the dark.Unlike most games, which …