Year: 2011

Eric Swain Game Issues, Recent Posts

TGC 2011 Game of the Year

Before I get to my top 5 games I want to give out some honorable mentions to games I played some of, but not enough for me to feel comfortable honoring in my official list. These are games that I either only played the demo to or just didn’t get far enough to pass full judgment on, but in either case impressed me enough to warrant a mention. First is Avadon: The Black Fortress. This is a massive cRPG based in old school isometric design with deep characters and lore that feels relevant to the story to are taking part in. | more

Eric Swain Game Issues, Recent Posts

State of the Blog ’11

And so ends the third full year of me trying to figure out what the hell I’m doing. Thank you for whatever readership I’ve garnered in that time and for continue to stick around. In looking over my work here at The Game Critique I find that I did indeed write more this year than last (33 posts to last year’s 24) and that much of my writing hasn’t happened here. Most of the posts here at my blog are External Sources to my work elsewhere and this is by no means a bad thing. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

Let me play: 7 issues with racing games

My weekly post is up at Nightmare Mode and only one day late this time. Here I go on about Gran Turismo 5 and Need for Speed: Shift. Neither game really grabbed me, in fact in the beginning they seem to do all they could to repel me. I understand both games are hardcore driving sims. Though I thought Need for Speed was a bit more arcadey. I just happened to pick up the only sim in the franchise. But as they are hardcore sims and I’ve only started playing racing games a few months ago I didn’t want to flap my mouth off too much. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

Miscellaneous

Lots of minor things to get through, yet not much to say. Really just a bunch of little things happened my way. On Monday I reposted my Limbo retort, on Nightmare Mode a critical site of a sort. It got edited there by the entire crew, as well as a brand spanking new title too. Taking a quote from the piece was the key, to finally give a title that would satisfy me. A grander audience I have there, that is to be sure. For I got far more comments there than here I could lure. | more

Eric Swain Critical Responses, Recent Posts

Better the World Think You a Fool than to Open Your Mouth and Prove It Right

Tadhg Kelly is a very good marketer and a pretty good essayist when it comes to that field, but every time he ventures forth out of marketing or the cold world of numbers I cringe. A recent opinion piece on Edge is one of the bigger offenders in cringe worthiness and laughably contradicts itself so spectacularly that it almost doesn’t need a response. But I am going to respond anyway, because 1 I don’t like people constructing untruths from my former field of study and 2 as a jumping off point to clear up some misconceptions I see perpetuated mostly by accident. | more

Eric Swain Critical Responses, Recent Posts

In Response to the Responses I Got For What I Said About Limbo

I like getting thoughtful and intelligent criticism of my work. I like reading what people had to say. It means I had enough of an effect on them to make them think and ad drive them enough to respond. And while I like the criticism, whether it agrees, disagrees, clarifies or whatever else, I also like responding back. I want to head off at the pass that I’m writing to the following in an effort to silence my critics. No, I’m responding to them the same way they responded to me. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

Desert Bus: The Cultural Event/Game

So a lot of good things have been happening to me as of late and here’s another one. I’ve been invited to write for the Moving Pixels blog over at PopMatters. My first article has been published today and as per usual when I’m writing for a new site I am super nervous. PopMatters is another huge step and I can’t thank G. Christopher Williams enough for giving me this opportunity. (Strange thing, he’d been wanting to talk to me for weeks, but since he doesn’t have Twitter and I don’t have Facebook it wasn’t until a random time on Skype did it happen. | more

Eric Swain Recent Posts, Thoughts

Shock to the System

I am writing this, because I am freaking out right now and not entirely in a good way. I need to get this out of my right now, before my heart does something it shouldn’t. Twice today I’ve gotten a shock and both concern free games. Earlier today I was hanging out in my room reading my twitter feed, trying to catch up and I’m seeing a lot of chatter on Steam Sales, seems like they get earlier every year, and then I see Justin Keverne mention he feels like gift a game. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

Motorstorm: Apocalypse, the game that wasn’t there

This is one of those posts that felt like pulling teeth. It just didn’t want to come out. Then again it’s a post about how the game offered nothing to talk about, so that is understandable. I say in the first sentence that this was my fourth attempt at writing this piece, but with the editing and major corrections it went through it’s probably even higher. It should have come out a week or two ago, but it kept getting pushed back because I didn’t know what to do with it and the editorial team was equally stumped. | more

Eric Swain Critical Responses, Recent Posts

The Supergenres of Action, RPGs and Adventure Games

I wrote a piece for Gameranx asking the question, ‘What is action/adventure?‘ This is part of the larger question about game genres, one that’s been discussed at length over twitter and several posts have come up as well with regards of what certain genres are. As much as the genre debate is generally one of semantics, or in the case of Action/Adventure pigeonholing, I feel there is a necessary undercurrent of philosophy and focus behind the question of what they are that is generally lacking in the current discussion. | more