Category: External Sources

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

What is the Deception and Who is Drake?

After a hiccup last week and talking it over, I will be weekly at PopMatters from now on. So, continuing on from last time I’m talking Uncharted again. I’m going to be talking about the themes of each title in their own post and up this time is Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. I have to say that while my review on the game still stands, I do now appreciate what it was trying to do a little more after writing this. I never put much thought into what the game meant or the themes of it because so much of the craft was off in this installment. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

The Implicit Promise and the Uncharted Series

Months ago, I wrote my first commercial review. We hadn’t done a review on Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception and G. Christopher Williams, my editor there, asked if anyone would do it. I wanted to try my hand at a commercial review with a score and everything rather than the critique I’ve been doing pretty much my whole ‘career’ as a video game critic. It was interesting to say the least. Trying to boil everything about the game down into a coherent argument that described and affirmed an opinion into not only into something solid, but something digestible. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

Political Correctness in Video Games

I was thinking about doing a line-by-line take down of this article from IGN a while back. Now I just don’t care. Part of that were the responses others wrote before I could get my act together. While they all have overlapping points, the four posts that I saw in response to this piece didn’t come at it from the same direction. Upon reading the first three I felt I could still add something because my particular angle when it comes to these sorts of posts hadn’t been thoroughly explored. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

Two More Critical Distance Roundups

In the past couple of weeks I took over TWIVGB from Kris Ligman as she went to E3 and needed a break. Kris hand it off more, there are 5 people who can pick up the reins. I don’t want you burning out. First one was for E3 week and I couldn’t help myself making my own little commentary with how I presented that week’s material. As an old timey snake oil salesmen barker. It’s not like there was a convention filled with foul tasting, somewhat sketchily presented hype to products that may or may not be any good around that time, right? | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

Never Break the Flow: Interface Design in ‘Driver: San Francisco’

Again, I write about Driver: San Francisco and again it’s at PopMatters. Instead of going the more esoteric route with the game, this time I went for straight design analysis simplicity. It only occurred to me afterwords that I probably should have started from this angle and worked my way up. I’m actually a little disheartened that nobody else has taken up the torch for this game and got to writing. It was largely forgotten once it was released and didn’t have that much hype industry wide, despite IGN’s best efforts to pump people up for it. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

‘Driver: San Francisco’ and ‘Drive’

In my campaign to single handedly push Driver: San Francisco into the critical consciousness I have written yet another piece for PopMatters on the game. That makes 3 total so far. I amaze myself that I’m still able to write about the game from fresh angles after all this time. I knew I was going to write about Driver and how it relates to Drive before I had even the seen the movie. I felt like there could have been a connection, but then I saw it and it’s a phenomenal movie and has absolutely no connection to what Driver is about despite the similar titles. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

TWIVGB on a tight schedule

Last weekend I did another TWIVGB for Critical Distance. Kris Ligman hasn’t been feeling all that well and I suggested she hand it off to Katie for a week to relieve some stress and get better. Well, I ended up being the only non-busy person this weekend and now Kris is bleeding from her face. But I’m not going to talk about that here. Just wish her better and move on to something that occurred to me during last week's curation. Due to one thing and another I didn’t get all the suggestions from the week dumped on me until Saturday evening. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

Atmosphere is enough: Why Flower succeeded where Limbo failed

This was a piece that spawned from the end of last year’s debate on Limbo. I figured I might try to be more positive and provide an example that actual does the atmospheric storytelling well instead of ragging on Limbo all the time. I really did want to like that game. If only it wasn’t avant-garde just to catch attention and could follow through.  After a little time thinking of a few titles, I figured Flower was the best one to make my point. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

The Intersection of Mechanics and Aesthetics in ‘Driver: San Francisco’

My second post on Driver: San Francisco is up on PopMatters. I’m surprised the title made it through at all. Hell, I’m surprised I wasn’t told to write something else. I mentioned on twitter I was playing fast and loose with terminology and was told that is how you know you made it. This piece spawned from the simple thought of how the game got around the problem of breaking my immersion by taking innocent civilians in their cars and smashing them into oncoming traffic. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

Episode 9 of the CDC Podcast

Yeah so another podcast episode came out this week. I know, there must be something in the water. Well it’s the missing episode 9 that was recorded back in August in an attempt to release it for the third anniversary of Braid’s release on the XBLA. Rather foolish as I spent three weeks trying to get a panel together and ended up doing an open call for people on twitter 10 minutes before recording. I may just do all future Critical Compilation Companions like that. | more