January 31, 2012 Eric Swain Critical Responses, Recent Posts

PopMatters Top 20 Games of 2011

Well, PopMatters put up their list of top 20 games of 2011. I was a proud participant in their first ever end of year list for games. Back in December G. Christopher Williams put out an email that we were doing this and despite it only coming out recently all the decisions and blurb writing was completed obstinately before the new year. It was done by having all of us listing our favorite games of the year in order and our editor did some voodoo math to come out with this list. | more

January 27, 2012 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

January 24, 2012 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

January 23, 2012 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

January 12, 2012 Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

It’s all in the presentation: Why I let Driver: San Francisco get away with poor driving

And because I submitted my PopMatters post a bit late for a Tuesday release it got pushed back to Thursday, so I ended up giving everyone a double dose of Driver: San Francisco love. My Nightmare Mode post though focuses more on the ongoing narrative I seem to be building about racing/driving games across my posts. I realize how damn lucky I got that the first driving game I tried was Burnout: Paradise with all junk I’ve been going through since. | more

January 12, 2012 Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

Magical Realism as a Game Mechanic in ‘Driver: San Francisco’

My second post is up at PopMatters, this time looking at an actual game. Thanks to the scheduling of the hiatus on the Moving Pixels Blog at the end of last year meant that my second post would be pushed back to the new year. Driver: San Francisco is a game that is so much better than its advertising gives it any right to be. This is another case of the developers and PR not knowing how to sell their own game. Driver: San Francisco is a slow burn of a game. | more

January 5, 2012 Eric Swain Critical Responses, Recent Posts

Words Have Meaning Dammit

I just read this post, a pretty well written one, talking about the trash lady from Deus Ex: Human Revolution. He contends that the character in question is not racism. His is only correct on a technicality, but his reasoning has me boiling. See, he argues that racism requires intentionality. [These sentences have been removed until they can be corrected properly.] Then he goes too far. Several times he gives examples that show words have no meaning without intention, but he removes all context so that there could be no intention. | more

January 2, 2012 Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

Critical Distance End of Year Spectacular

The last month have been a very special sort of self-inflicted hell. For some unearthly reason I think last year was so much easier to get everything done. On a whim last year, I decided to revive the CDC podcast with an end of year retrospective and pull off the first ever This Year In Video Game Blogging without telling anybody. Both ended up being stealth projects that took a lot of people by surprised, none more so than my editor in chief at the time Ben Abraham. Was I going to make it an annual thing? | more