Recent content by Obiter

Glitches can be a good source of innocent fun too. The early days of WoW (and before there were PvP Arenas or Battlegrounds where this could be exploited) had all kinds of terrain glitches that made exploring the nooks and crannies occasionally quite surprising. It was addictive in some ways...

I found this to be a bit of a ponderous and wandering article without a strong central thesis. But then it struck me that there couldn't possibly be a better way to summarize Sega than that! Because as the article notes, the problem particular to Sega the game company (as opposed to Sega the...

It is absolutely brilliant. WoW has been a game on rails for far too long. Gamers have been clamoring for the chance to enjoy this virtual world in ways that will actually affect and change it. The Zombie Invasion strikes a great balance in this regard. It is relatively easy to avoid if you...

As usual, threads like these take far too narrow a definition of what the "gaming industry" is. And as usual, that narrow scope is restricted to mainstream titles. Which by definition are, you know, the mainstream titles. Behold! An incredible display of innovation...

The person who got screwed over the worst by a game had to be developer Richard Garriott, aka "Lord British." In many peoples eyes he is a father of online RPGs. Which makes his "dick moment" all the better. He made a live appearance in Ultima Online back in 1997 as a promotional stunt...

Anything uttered by Link in the Phillips CD-I masterpiece for the ages, Zelda; Wand of Gamelon [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mHw5g55oC4]. "I can't wait to bomb some dodongos!" Oh, and did I mention the entire ending sequence of Limbo of the Lost [http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=URcvdDtnM_0]?

"The Generic Dudes" from River City Ransom FTW!!

Still selling physical media in boxes seems like a pretty big design flaw to me. A standardized digital download portal (lets say "the iTunes of Gaming") would not only make life easier on the gamer but also probably help the PC industry with its piracy problem. I offer that in many cases it...

Ironically, on XBox Live at least, it is usually the younger kids who I hear most frequently uttering highly questionable invective related to race, mothers, gender, sexuality, bestiality, incest, renal openings, biological discharges, and any infinite combination thereof. Adults seem to...

I generally ignore numerical scores. They simply don't capture the nuance of gameplay. There is no meaningful difference in my mind between an "8.2" and an "7.8". The only thing a numerical score contributes is to broadly identify particularly mediocre games, say anything getting less than a 7...

That fact that I am gainfully employed on a more than full-time basis as a lawyer but somehow still find the time to make fansites about Heroes of Might and Magic Kingdoms (link in profile if you are interested). Or perhaps the fact that I post 1500-word missives on Roguelike games to game...

There are all kinds of virtual world / real world hybrids coming to cell phones that will offer a lot more depth (and a lot less embarrassment) than a stand alone device like this. Also, the value in such games is their pervasiveness. Walking around with a fishing pole in my pocket is a lot less...

After putting in about 11 hours with Shiren the Wanderer over the last few days, I'm left pondering how it might be the video gaming epitome of Gilles Deleuze's philosophy of rogue-like structure [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze#Metaphysics] of the game is expertly and cleverly...

[LI]MMORPGs -- capable of reducing your gaming budget to a single $15/month payment; also typically provide new content on a regular basis for free; only require three fingers to play in case the local loan shark took the others; [LI]Strategy games -- Older titles like the Heroes of Might and...

There was this really old Apple IIgs game called Aztec wherein I one time was simultaneously drowned, crushed between walls, poisoned by snakes and impaled on spikes. I was really, really dead. There was also this old MECC edutainment game in which every fricking time my fish got eaten by a...