Fixing Final Fantasy: A conversation, part two

Think Final Fantasy is a little bit broken? So do Nightmare Mode editors Tom Auxier and Adam Harshberger. The difference between you and they is that they had the time and inclination to have a minutiae-obsessed conversation about how to

The Ugly Paulistano

Every tourist is an ambassador for its country. As a man who mostly communicates with bullets, Max Payne isn’t perhaps the best man to represent its country.

Max Payne has always communicated through bullets, though. In Max Payne 3, the only difference is that he is now restrained from relying on any other means. As an ignorant foreigner, unwilling to learn the local language and expecting the impoverish locals to know his, Max forces us to play the role of the ignorant foreigner.

I’ve been living in São Paulo, or Sampa for short, for almost a decade now. A German friend of mine asked me how it felt to play as an alienated foreigner while being able to understand everything being said by the locals at the same time.

Finding out the answer scared me.

Learning to LoL: 10 Tips for League of Legends Novices

When I began playing League of Legends a year ago, I joined the LoL University chat room to learn how to play. Now I moonlight as a professor there, occasionally showing a new player the ropes. Even teaching them the

Fixing Final Fantasy: A conversation, part one

Think Final Fantasy is a little bit broken?  So do Nightmare Mode editors Tom Auxier and Adam Harshberger.  The difference between you and they is that they had the time and inclination to have a minutiae-obsessed conversation about how to make

Role playing games' puzzle paradox

Modern Japanese RPGs have moved to handheld consoles for a simple reason: the genre, as created, requires both major time commitment and a dedication to the relatively mindless. While big budget JRPG’s have become cinematic experiences, games like Etrian Odyssey

Our Games Are Not Depressing Enough [Feedback Loop]

An excess of violence has become a point of criticism for video games. The real problem isn’t the violence, but how games want us to feel about our stylized murder sprees.

In recent interviews David Cage and Warren Spector both addressed the need for games to be more emotive and less violent. However, it shouldn’t be an binary situation. Violent games could be a path to better art, if we deal with the violence in the correct way.

In Edge magazine, Cage’s interview centered around the recent E3 demo Kara. The demo by Quantic Dream showed a game character presenting subtleties of emotion only approcahable by the last Quantic Dream tech demo, ‘The Casting’.

While next-generation technology is not required for good games, Quantic’s demo shows the potential to create characters with greater emotional depth, a characteristic that does more to make them realistic than all the pixel resolution in the world.

Learning how to fly in video games

I was fascinated by flight before hand, but it was Astro Boy that solidified what flight was in my mind. Here was a boy capable of the most improbable thing in the world accomplishing it with a minimum of fuss.

Steamroll: Penny Arcade's Precipice of Darkness 3

A Farce Taken Seriously Aside from a quattro of free-to-play online games released last week, there was only one game released on Steam for the gamer on a budget: Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3. Hothead Games

Thanks to this videogame related ruling, I'm moving to Europe.

I’m moving to Europe. I’ve always wanted to, not least of all because it’s old, beautiful, and full of real castles. But there are other perks as well. For instance: mandatory paid vacation. That’s why Europeans have so much time

Headshots: Do you ever quit games just before beating them?

Welcome to Headshots, where Nightmare Mode writers commit their faces to video to answer weekly questions. This week’s question: Do you ever quit games just before beating them? Why? Apparently, achievement whoring leads to unfinished games. What a shame. Video