Tag: PopMatters

Eric Swain External Sources

When ‘Mark of the Ninja’ Clicks

I’m rather thankful that Klei Entertainment decided not to or rather the deal they had with Microsoft didn’t preclude them from publishing elsewhere than the Xbox 360 for a long time. Us PS3 users are used to waiting a long time for exclusivity agreements to expire. But PC always seems to be different than PS3 in this regard. Now I was a little late in getting around to it and I’ve been hearing about it for months from ever outlet and podcast. I even did a preview of the game back at PAX East. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

The Unfinished Artist

Last week was Turkey week and it seems everyone got the week off from writing at PopMatters. It was Desert Bus so I was cool with this. So, this post comes a week later than planned. Also, my review of the game went up today. I mention them together, because they were really written together. I had two-word documents open at the same time and when I got stuck on one, I moved to the other to get my ideas down. My head was a swirling mass of things I wanted to say, but they all weren’t compatible with one another. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

An Inability to Empathize: Fumbling to Grok ‘Papo & Yo’

I was really excited to play Papo & Yo a few weeks back. I knew it was going to be one of those games that I could write a lot about. Turns out not to be the case. In reality I found myself fumbling to try and find anything to say about it. I could have done an analogy reading, going over every element for what it is trying to say, but for the most part that would be retreading old ground. Ground that lead designer Vander Caballero covered in interviews himself. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

A Tale of Two Reviews

I’ve written two reviews in the past week for PopMatters. One on Jonas Kyratzes’ The Sea Will Claim Everything and the other on Borderlands 2. I could make a grand connecting statement like this being the true-blue indie verses the AAA goliath, but really, they’re just two games I played that I noticed reviews hadn’t been written for yet. Though I won't deny there were a lot of opposites in both my opinion and writing the reviews. I’m not going to compare them. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Discovering the Familiar in ‘Journey’

Journey is a game I’ve wanted to write about for almost the entire year, but have just never gotten around to it. What makes it difficult is after so much time, finding something new to say. The thing is, in trying to figure that out I wondered why I kept going back to play it after so long.  Especially, since it is basically a game about exploration and yet, I pretty much knew everything it had to offer already. In the end that came down to trying to define what I was feeling on repeat playthroughs. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

‘Silent Hill 2′: The Oppression of Atmosphere

Also known as, Experiencing the Atmosphere First Hand. I close out horror month with the big fish, the granddaddy of all horror games: Silent Hill 2. So much has been written and said about this game that coming at it almost 11 years after the fact I wondered what there was left to say about it. I was honestly hoping that the game would just drop something into my lap as I played. Of course, I didn’t get to play much as the power for pretty much my entire state went out the day before my column deadline. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

‘Dead Space’: The Frightening, the Dauntless and the Meh

My weekly post on PopMatters is up. This week in horror month I wrote on Dead Space. It went up a day late, because I posted it in the back end a little later than usual and it was missed until late afternoon. And it was late because I was actually still playing Dead Space early on Tuesday morning. Friends on the weekend and the Monday Presidential Debate cut into my play time. Pretty much everything I have to say on the game is in that post. There really isn’t anything extra. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Horror is Knowledge: The Presentation of Fear in ‘Call of Cthulhu’

I’ve moved on the Lovecraft this week. Few horror games get you right off the bat. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth manages to do just that. I play these games on the lookout for something to talk about. Thankfully I only booted the game up for about a minute when the Warning symbol gave me the perfect jumping off point. I knew the game would screw with me with the visual and audio because that is what Lovecraft inspired video games do. I didn’t expect for the game to warn me about it ahead of time. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

The Haunting of ‘Dear Esther’

I finally get around to writing about Dear Esther, one game in a long list of my to write about backlog. It is a little difficult talking about a game so late that so many others have already discussed. But few seem to have written about the content of the game rather than if it is a video game or not. I figured I would write about it for October, because it is a ghost story. However, in trying to parse through the game’s meaning I felt stuck on what to say about it. So, I went and played it again. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

The Fear is Gone: Reconsidering the ‘Left 4 Dead’ Series

It’s October and so begins a month talking about horror games.  It seems only fitting. First up are the Left 4 Dead series. Always one to be oh so punctual, I was looking over the list of horror games or at least games with tangentially connected horror elements and for some reason couldn’t find an angle to write about any of them. I have three or four false starts hanging around in word documents. But in thinking about Left 4 Dead I reminisced on my changing attitude to the game over time. | more