Sauntering in a Virtual World

  Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “It is a great art to saunter.” In his essay on walking, Thoreau explained that sauntering is derived from the French phrase, a la Sainte Terre, the saints of the Earth. These saints were

Love Interest: Ikezawa Hanako, the Otaku Exotic

Mattie Brice picks a date from a visual novel and breaks down how they represent culture’s expression of sexuality. Today she talks about her time with Ikezawa Hanako from Four Leaf Studio’s Katawa Shoujo. Spoilers ahoy!   (Warning: There are

L.A. NOIRE and the Story That Wasn't There

Hank Quinlan: “Come on, read my future for me.”

In some ways, a game based on Film Noir would be the anti-GTA. Ah, the GTA series! The pursuit of the American Dream! To fight that good fight requires a great deal of optimist, no? The optimist believes the future is within his grasp.

Tanya: “You haven’t got any.”

Noir Films, however, are filled with pessimists who already know that the game they are playing is futile. That what they are playing is actually a poker game of death.

“What do you mean?”

The world is merciless. It’s unforgiving. We are already doomed no matter what we do. In the search of the American Dream, the fall from glory is a surprise; in Film Noir, the surprise would be not to fall from glory.

L.A. Noire isn’t the anti-GTA. It certainly isn’t the gaming equivalent to L.A. Confidential… or Double Indemnity …or even Who Framed Roger Rabbit. L.A. Noire may be many things – but it certainly isn’t Noir.

“Your future is all used up.”

Final Fantasy Versus XIII lives and has cutscenes galore

In an interview with Famitsu, Tetsuya Nomura confirms that Final Fantasy Versus XIII is still in the works. Apparently it’s looking pretty damn good too, better than the trailer shown at last year’s conference due to advances in real time

Time and Eternity features hand drawn animations [UPDATE]

RPGs with anime-inspired visuals are to Japan what brown shooters are to Americans, so on its surface Namco Bandai’s Time and Eternity doesn’t look like anything new. Games like Ni no Kuni and the recent Naruto fighting games seem to have already reached the pinnacle of what anime would look like in a 3D space, but what sets Time and Eternity apart is developer Imageepoch’s choice to actually use hand drawn character animations in 3D environments. This includes walking around outside of battle.

World of Warcraft: The Austrian Paradise

When the caucus results came out in Iowa, Ron Paul declared that we we’re all Austrians now. What he meant was that his followers were supporters of the Austrian School of Economics. A school of thought that was championed by

Final Fantasy XIII-2 Demo Impressions

Although I ultimately could not finish Final Fantasy XIII, I saw a lot of potential in its world and characters who I was actually starting to like right when the game became too frustrating for me. That’s why I was actually excited to try out the sequel for myself to see if the improvements were enough for me to revisit Cocoon and its surrounding territories.

Just won the moon, what else?

Apollo 2 is a Unity-based browser game created by Robert Yang. It can be played here. It was full of gold! That’s what he said. I mean, it wasn’t really gold and he didn’t say anything, not much. He pulled

The Most Dangerous Game: Multiplayer in Assassin's Creed

  The multiplayer in Assassin’s Creed is fun. A lot of fun. The kind of fun that is rare in most multiplayer games and the kind of fun that makes a person want to write an article about it with

The saga of Sega's stance on SOPA

In case you’ve been living under a rock, the Stop Online Piracy Act is kind of a big deal. It threatens the very existence of some of the largest sites on the Internet and its vague wording would grant unreasonable power to those ready to abuse it. Naturally everyone is taking sides, but a lot of larger publishers like SEGA have remained silent on the issue. Until now.