(Some spoilers for the first three episodes of Life is Strange here, but painted in broad strokes.) Now that we’re halfway through Life Is Strange, with two episodes to go, the game is shaping up to be quite the experience. While some of the major plot events are so heavily […]
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[Spoiler warning: The following post covers some potentially triggering content and contains major plot spoilers for Life is Strange Episode 2: Out of Time and some slight conversation/situation based spoilers for Life is Strange Episode 3: Chaos Theory.] The warning signs were there from the start of the second episode: […]
I recently read an essay by Ann Friedman entitled “On Being a Badass,” in which Friedman explores what it means for women to be considered badasses in today’s corporate landscape. As Friedman explains, the term badass generally seems to imply “both toughness and disaffectedness. It’s rare to look at someone […]
I have spent a lot of my last 40 years playing adventure games. Text based adventure games, monochromatic adventure games with crazy little pixelated figures that “moved” from screen to screen along with the story, 8-bit, 16-bit, cel shaded, PC, console, mobile…you name it. Lots of them. More of them […]
Recently, this article about Disney’s cartoon, Miles from Tomorrowland popped up on my Facebook feed. The article, titled “Google, NASA work together on Disney show to inspire girls into science,” describes Disney’s efforts to involve professionals from Google and NASA to help create a more representative strong female character in […]
The Witcher III: Wild Hunt is the third in a series of games based on several books and short stories by Andrzej Sapkowski. Throughout the first two games, you play a “witcher” named Geralt. A witcher is someone with supernatural powers, who is not entirely human, and who is a […]
This week, everyone is talking about the final scene of the most recent episode of Game of Thrones, the meaningfully titled “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken,” from those who would define it in generous terms to those who would denounce it and go so far as to declare they’re done with the […]
Sometimes gamers forget that the virtual worlds we participate in, while they often become as much our “real” world as meat space, are not subject to the same laws of freedom of speech as our meat space. When we participate on forums, chat within a game, or send someone a […]
The latest entry in the Mad Max franchise, Mad Max: Fury Road, employs its grim, post-apocalyptic world to comment on a good many contemporary concerns. There’s the obvious one, which was confirmed to be director George Miller’s inspiration for the series: the oil crisis and ongoing concerns over the sustainability of […]
Last October, Sega released Alien: Isolation, and much of the discussion around the game has dealt with its pacing, its level of difficulty, its relationship and faithfulness to the film franchise, and whether or not the game is successfully scary. Relatively little discussion has occurred, however, regarding the manner in […]
I had a little extra time this week, so I thought I would take a risk and buy a new game without more than the most cursory glance at information. I chose Lifeless Planet because the cover was fascinating. I didn’t know what kind of game it was or anything […]
You’re the lone occupant in a desolate hotel reminiscent of the Overlook Hotel, the haunted building in Stephen King’s The Shining. The corridors appear to stretch on forever and ever, growing longer with each and every step. Is it a trick of the mind? Your stomach plummets as a winged figure zooms at you from down the hall, shattering the […]
Miguel Sicart defines games as systems “in which the rules force the player to face ethical dilemmas, or in which the rules themselves raise ethical issues.” The game rules force players to interact in specific ways in order to confront ethical issues. In this manner, Life is Strange asks players to […]
Episode 101: Rage On Fleek: On Choice Feminism and Diverse Identities (Right click and save as to download, or hit us up on iTunes or Stitcher) The episode where we talk about “Choice Feminism” and how we understand what it means and what the implications of it are. Discussions of the […]
With summer break looming and with my daughter’s (Pea) recent discovery of Stampy Cat’s Terraria Let’s Plays (thanks to the research that I was doing for an earlier NYMG piece) there has been a lot of Terraria going on in my house. Oddly enough very little playing of the game has […]
It’s been 25 days since I gained early access to State of Decay Year One Survival Edition. We don’t get a ton of review codes around here; as a smaller site with a focus a little to the left of traditional gaming sites, we’re not exactly a standard destination for reviews, […]