Life Is a Race/Torture Game 2At What Pace? | Submitted by the99th on Thu, 06/26/2008 - 20:12. |
Life Is A Race is an artsy banner-game from Cactus, you click to make a baby move across the screen, prompting it to run, get that briefcase and then become old and die. It's like Passage but with an emphasis, rather than ambivalence, on the speed of aging and mortality.
Torture Game 2 has you torturing a rag doll. I linked to the New Grounds page rather than direct because you gotta read those comments. Then you gotta read Ian's response to an MSNBC article about it. A sick world indeed.
Super Columbine Massacre RPGTragic, Controversial, and Curiously Moving | Submitted by costik on Tue, 05/22/2007 - 15:09. |
Why Is Super Columbine Massacre Controversial?
Super Columbine Massacre is controversial for one reason only: Because our culture continues to assume that games are "mere entertainment," that a game based on so horrific an event must ipso facto be in bad taste. Games are fun, Columbine was a tragedy and never the twain shall meet; a game on Columbine must by nature trivialize or cynically exploit the event. Q.E.D.
Yet we do not make the same assumption about any other medium: a documentary on the Columbine massacre, or a novel, or a New Yorker essay would, a priori, be treated with respect, at least until the viewer or reader had experienced it, after which a judgment might be made as to its merits. And if the work proved insightful, somber,and respectful of its material, the world would consider it unexceptional.
I don't know why I enjoy adventure games. Why do you enjoy them? Maybe it has something to do with the fluffy hippie-talk that Michael Samyn keeps publishing about people wanting stories over gameplay. That's probably not true, but good storytelling can definitely amplify weakly interactive gameplay into a meaningful experience, and the King's Quest series is according-to-Hoyle proof of that.
The game is remade with voice acting, relatively lush graphics (compared to the 1986 original), and a streamlined interface using the AGS engine. Purists are going to recall the exploratory joys of the text parser, but if you're a new-skool design geek like me, you're going to prefer mouse-driven context-sensitivity. Use an item, right-click to cycle over the the walking icon, and then mosey right along, pretty smooth.
