Month: August 2013

Eric Swain External Sources

‘Gemini Rue’: A Matter of Memory

I played Gemini Rue several months ago and upon finishing it I immediately began to play it again. This time with commentary. I let it rest for so long because I was in the middle of trying to write about interactive fiction and that took most of my critical attention. But Gemini Rue is a great game. In fact, I call it one of the best sci-fi stories of the last decade. There’s a lot to talk about in Gemini Rue, but as is often the case it becomes a matter of how to approach the material. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

’400 Days’ of Moral Quandries, Hungry Zombies, and Terrible Humans

I was on another episode of the Moving Pixels Podcast. It’s a lot of fun to be on a podcast you know you don’t have to edit afterwords. This time I actually got to be on an episode where we talked about The Walking Dead. I missed last year’s series of podcasts. I really liked The Walking Dead DLC 400 Days. I think it might be one of my favorite episodes of the whole series. Part of that I think has been my recent interest in short stories. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

August 18th TWIVGB

August 19, 2013 | Filed under: External Sources, Recent Posts and tagged with: Critical Distance, TWIVGB Kris went off in the wilderness and I once again offered my services. This was one hell of a week though. I offered to take the reins at the beginning of the week and only afterwords did I get inundated with review copies and other things I’d have to tackle. It didn’t help that the lot of you decided to write a couple of dozens of posts at the end of the week. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

An Adventure Spun From the Shards of a World: Revisiting ‘Loom’

There’s nothing quite like finishing a great game and then when you go to look for criticism of it, absolutely nothing comes up. In those cases, there’s really nothing else you can do, but fill the void and write your own. I played Loom several months ago and I finished it in a single evening. The only writing I could find on Loom was four reviews from the early 90s that were mentioned. I couldn’t even find the text. It’s rather disheartening, because I think Loom might deserve more praise than many of Lucas Arts other revered adventure games. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

An Exercise in Extinction

Isn’t it always the way. Get an extra week to rewrite a post and only hours after it was submitted do you think of the perfect paragraph to help make the point. Such is the case with my latest essay now up on PopMatters. For as much material as The Last of Us presents a critic, I find the only things I can sink my teeth into are esoteric details and concepts that have little to nothing to do with the main narrative. | more