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Talking to NPCs
1. Link to video essay version at the end of the post. This is a discussion about language. More specifically the language systems NPCs use to communicate, how we communicate with them and how, overtime, those systems have evolved to the point where NPCs have started to sound frighteningly human. For me, Oblivion was the…
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Knowing The Future Wouldn’t Save Them
1 The Drifter was the scariest game I played last year. I don’t mean that as hyperbole – rolling credits left me with a creeping sense of unease that refuses to let go. The game is about one man, Mick Carter, who – within the first hour – has a bag put over his head,…
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How a Game Changed My Views On Life
Outer Wilds took exactly 22-minutes to change my views on life. If you have not played Outer Wilds, DO NOT READ THIS. SPOILERS AHEAD I am not easily scared. I’ve never feared spiders, snakes, heights, or anything else really. But I have always been deeply terrified of death. I don’t know what happens when we…
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Blue Prince: Imperfectly Perfect
What was the last video game that frustrated you? From Soft games tend to frustrate me, although this is by design and likely the reason why I love them so much. The difficulty feels tuned just enough that its frustrating to perish in combat, but victory is always just within grasp. It creates a powerful…
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The Split Fiction Experience
What Hazelight Studios set out to achieve with the 2021 game of the year It Takes Two was beyond ambitious. It effortlessly jumped between innovative puzzle designs and game mechanics without missing a beat. The only fault being the games awkward narrative. This was a forgivable flaw given the otherwise delightful package. Having rolled credits…
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Games That Warp Chess
Many game developers find success by riffing on or twisting the mechanics of existing games. Chess is one of the most influential and established games of all time, with a low barrier to entry and a high skill ceiling that keeps players coming back over and over again. It’s no wonder that so many games…
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Is This Seat Taken: Video Preview
Is This Seat Taken? is the upcoming game from Poti Poti Studio. There currently a demo live on Steam which I played during the Steam Next Fest amongst a number of other games. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game. It has excellent visual presentation and a unique and on occasion quite challenging. I…
Gaming Acuity 