Tag: External Sources

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

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

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

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

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 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 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