Tag: PopMatters

Eric Swain External Sources

‘Binary Domain’: A Shooter That Assumes You Are Intelligent

As with last week’s piece, I noticed that Binary Domain, one of the best games of the year so far, was also missing a review. Might as well correct that oversight as well. There is a lot in Binary Domain that one could focus on in individual pieces, but what all of them have in common is the subversion of the modern conception of the third person shooter. It takes away a lot of assumptions that games of this ilk take for granted that you don’t realize it takes for granted and then decides to focus on them. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

‘Driver: San Francisco’: The Best Game of 2011 that No One Played

A while back I got bored and wanted to see how PopMatter’s best games of 2011 compared with the reviews of the games over the year. Then I wondered if there were any high rating games that didn’t make the list. Which led me to look up what PopMatters review of Driver: San Francisco. Turns out we hadn’t done one. I set out to correct that. Now I could wax lyrical about Driver: San Francisco for thousands of words and, in fact, I have. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

Drake’s Greed and Fortune

And I make it to the last of my Uncharted essays exploring the themes of each game via its title. I like it when a work’s theme can easily be summed up by the work. It’s nice in part, because that means there is some sort of cohesion to it. I’m sure that the titles were chosen in some part because they sounded badass in marketing or something, but they still manage to evoke the core of each game. Now I have written about Uncharted a long time ago and much of the content in that post and this one are very similar. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

‘Among Thieves’: Honor or No Honor?

The next post in my mini-series on the Uncharted games is up at PopMatters. This time I look at the themes of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Like the previous post I use the title as a jumping off point to see the deeper meaning of the game is. In fact, Uncharted 2 was the game that clued me in to this possibility. While I figured Uncharted 1′s meaning and concept pretty quickly and Uncharted 3 was obviously pushing it to be about Drake the second game had me stumped. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

What is the Deception and Who is Drake?

After a hiccup last week and talking it over, I will be weekly at PopMatters from now on. So, continuing on from last time I’m talking Uncharted again. I’m going to be talking about the themes of each title in their own post and up this time is Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. I have to say that while my review on the game still stands, I do now appreciate what it was trying to do a little more after writing this. I never put much thought into what the game meant or the themes of it because so much of the craft was off in this installment. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

The Implicit Promise and the Uncharted Series

Months ago, I wrote my first commercial review. We hadn’t done a review on Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception and G. Christopher Williams, my editor there, asked if anyone would do it. I wanted to try my hand at a commercial review with a score and everything rather than the critique I’ve been doing pretty much my whole ‘career’ as a video game critic. It was interesting to say the least. Trying to boil everything about the game down into a coherent argument that described and affirmed an opinion into not only into something solid, but something digestible. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

Never Break the Flow: Interface Design in ‘Driver: San Francisco’

Again, I write about Driver: San Francisco and again it’s at PopMatters. Instead of going the more esoteric route with the game, this time I went for straight design analysis simplicity. It only occurred to me afterwords that I probably should have started from this angle and worked my way up. I’m actually a little disheartened that nobody else has taken up the torch for this game and got to writing. It was largely forgotten once it was released and didn’t have that much hype industry wide, despite IGN’s best efforts to pump people up for it. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

‘Driver: San Francisco’ and ‘Drive’

In my campaign to single handedly push Driver: San Francisco into the critical consciousness I have written yet another piece for PopMatters on the game. That makes 3 total so far. I amaze myself that I’m still able to write about the game from fresh angles after all this time. I knew I was going to write about Driver and how it relates to Drive before I had even the seen the movie. I felt like there could have been a connection, but then I saw it and it’s a phenomenal movie and has absolutely no connection to what Driver is about despite the similar titles. | more

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

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