Playing DOTA 2 as a Newbie: First Impressions of the Beta – Part 1.

Valve has a reputation for producing highly polished games that communicate themselves clearly to the player.  What can they bring to DOTA 2, a sequel to the grandfather of the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) genre?  I was lucky enough

Orcs Must Die! 2 as Mousetrap

I have a distinct childhood memory of the board game Mousetrap. I had a set that I inherited, like many of my youthful amusements, from my older sister. It was well-worn and woefully incomplete; many of the titular “trap” components

After Pressing Start: Psychonauts’ Mental Dentist's Office

The human mind . . . six hundred miles of synaptic fiber . . . five and a half ounces of cranial fluid . . . 1500 grams of complex neural matter . . . a three-pound pile of dreams.

Psychonauts doesn’t even give you a chance to press start. Instead it says, “You don’t need to set up a profile or configure the look sensitivity and you already saw our logo when you looked at the box! Let’s get this show on the road!” I reserve a certain amount of praise for a game that just starts the moment you pop it in (or boot it up, since I played the Mac port from the Humble Indie Bundle V).

Reality Check: Only Entertainment

Objectivity is pretty fucking boring. I recently wrote a feature entitled “In Defence of Subjectivity”. Some people liked it, while others suggested I had drifted into madness. In hindsight, maybe it was a little hyperbolic: of course there’s a place

Welcome to the Big Leagues: 10 Tips for Expert League of Legends Play

After several dozen matches, you’ve finally hit the level cap in League of Legends. You’ve grown up, and now you face rivals with hundreds of wins under their belt. The old tips (split into novice and intermediate articles here; be

Vive la Révolution: A French Studio Brings Democracy to Development

Even as studios become larger, and publishers hide more and more behind their PR departments, some video game creators are taking the opposite approach and bringing the development process back into the open. From video games funded by Kickstarter to

Steamroll: Multi Kung Fu Resonance

Now that the Steam Summer Sale has finally ended, the steady trickle of indie games has resumed. We’ve got games covering every corner this week: a Horde FPS, a kung-fu brawler, an old-school adventure game, and a co-op adventure RPG

Squires of Skyrim

From bestowing blessings to being the scourge of a countryside, dragons are encountered in tales young and old. Among their legends, one of the most enduring is that of battle against another powerful symbol: knights. From epic poetry to modern

For there shall be no rip-offs: talking with Rocksmith's Paul Cross

  We kind of love Rocksmith. Like, love love. It’s the second game ever to give me hand calluses (love hurts) and the first one that does so without wrecking my controller. So I was kind ecstatic to find the game on

JETPACK JOYRIDE and the essence of bullshit

I hate the coins from the Super Mario games.

Even when they were born they are merely a vestige from the arcade days of endless gameplay. When Super Mario Bros. introduced the idea of a game with an ending, the coins were merely mending the gap from the concept of playing a something to beat the score. Now, despite the fact games have fully embraced the idea of chasing an end goal, those coins have never disappeared. As we talk about the benefits of applying game mechanics to our real lives, we started to recognize these coins as the most basic achievement unit. Coins are the atoms that form achievements.

The reason why I hate coins is that they are too easy to use. In both games and real life, coins can trivialize the concept of gamification. They blurry the line and, instead of enhancing your experience, game mechanics become an end in itself. That’s the exact point gamification starts being bullshit.

Jetpack Joyride is a bullshit game. There is no better way to put it. Basically, it’s Canabalt without the elegant simplicity, without the context and meaning, without the balanced gameplay that encouraged the player to gain momentum… but with many things Canabalt did not need. Coins and ranks and purchasable items and crap.