Recent content by Flitcraft

Yeah, I haven't heard real good things about those. Really don't like hearing that they have a tendency to melt copper-bottomed pans. It's not just a gas vs. other heating methods thing. Every oven and stove is a little bit different, and it takes awhile to get used to any of them. I'm a...

@Obrien Xp - I once tried to use the Channel as a shortcut on my way out to patrol. It's insane there. What was really stupid on my part was that I got in two fights with the Royal Navy during my passage, won both encounters, and decided to try and press through. It didn't occur to me that they...

Assassin's Creed. I had to play through it in a couple days, and the middle section was so excruciatingly tedious that I was just relieved to see the game finally start to wind down. Original Stalker: shadow of Chernobyl was another train-wreck of an ending. 90% of the game is one kind of...

Thanks, Troy. I'll grant that I permitted myself to conflate transparency with instruction toward the end of the piece, but for a good reason: I think they're closely related. Transparency is useful when a player already knows what he's looking for. A veteran wargamer automatically starts...

Wow, this is an incredible series. Going to have to bookmark this for when I playthrough Bioshock again, because this uncovers a lot of narrative that is easy to miss while playing the game. Great work.

Sean, I'm inclined to agree with Ryan Scott's assessment as opposed to yours: companies need to stop trying to create MMO's, because the race is over. Blizzard won. Rather than being transfixed by WoW's numbers, think about all the money lost by other efforts at creating MMOs. They're...

Did you have the beard prior to working from home? Because I'm sporting one right now that's entirely due to the fact that I've got nobody I need to impress, and I could spend that 15 minutes a day doing something important. Like leveling my party.

As a Latino I instantly understood and sympathized with this article, and find a lot of the responses here both predictable and telling. It's not an issue solely with how women are portrayed in videogames (though other posters are right in that, by and large, the situation isn't very good)...

You know, I'm a little mystified as well. I guess I agree with yonsito, in that it is a genre that publishers perceive as having limited appeal. The fact that a really good one requires a joystick probably further reduces the appeal of making one. It doesn't help that LucasArts released the...

Deadman, I had knee surgery for an ACL that I tore during, wait for it, football practice. It was several years ago. Second day of practice and I took a sloppy hit during tackling drill. Just one of those things. You tear a ligament, damage cartilage?

My introduction might seem like it's suggesting that gaming is a treatment for emotional pain, but really I just wanted to recall that line from my friend because it's something I've thought a lot about over the years. My research interest was physical pain, how it works, and why gaming helps us...