After Pressing Start: Myst

In the beginning of Myst you don’t know what’s going on. The intro cinematic explains nothing, and you won’t understand what the cinematic’s about until you’ve played the sequel, Riven. All you know at the start of Myst is that

Visible Puppeteers

Breaking the immersion is a popular criticism in games these days. Perhaps not with those exact words, but anything that pulls a player out of the world within the game for any reason, be it a bug or an imperfect

Backlash

Human beings have an interesting reaction to Things That Are Good. Instead of loving them and appreciating them for what they are, we tend towards finding flaws, looking at the things that don’t stick. We say we want something brilliant,

The Weight of Definition: Balloon Diaspora

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pX0LlPLtTw&w=480&h=390] Balloon Diaspora is a funny little game that’s weighed heavily on me since I’ve played it. It is ethereal and wonderful like a leaf blowing in through an open window in fall, but at its core it asks

Depressing flash game of the day: Immortall

Yes, folks, Immortall is a little bit old, but a fantastical flash game from the Pixelate, the developer of such fantastic flash games as Hunter Forever and Pixel Legions (both on the same site, and definitely worth a go). Immortall

Just Gamers

The crucial conversation of this generation of games is not whether games are art, but rather whether we, the games journalist, should be reviewer or critic. The most recent catalyst of this crucial discussion is this review of Metroid: Other

The themes of Limbo

We’ve written pretty extensively about Limbo, the newest game taking the games as art community by storm. And it’s a pretty fantastic piece of work, to be sure. It’s one of the first games to subtlely convey art in a