Chris Suellentrop's saved articles

I disagree a little that it doesn’t teach you anything about prisons. The for-profit system does have a little of the “Papers Please” style of showing you that a broken system almost forces you into bad behaviors. For example, once my “license plates and beds” workshops really became profitable, I found myself taking… Read more

“I found myself wanting to watch my prison grow just for the sake of growth. The individual needs of each inmate grew less pressing. Their docility, in aggregate, however it was purchased, would give me the time and freedom to pursue my aims.” Read more

Although I agree with your sentiments concerning mass incarceration, your review is flawed because the developers have said time and time again that the game does not represent the United States prison system. Read more

how about this one: a snob doesn’t care about how many units a great game sold, or the financials of the company that made it. Read more

You’re not really playing System Shock unless you’re playing it on a 486 attached to a CRT monitor.
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You’re already doing it wrong if you’re not using a keyboard/mouse. :P

This article doesn’t matter unless it’s full HD and a smooth 60 FPS

The word you’re looking for, heathen, is connoisseur. You’re a gamer. I’m a video game connoisseur.
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It’s been a long time I’ve been so immersed in a game. In some ways the game reminds me of playing Half-Life (and, yes, Half-Life 2, later on). For me those were the first games that really understood first-person storytelling. This game slow revelation of (terrifying) information and (gruesome) details kept me… Read more

So far it’s much much more sad than scary. I’m still fairly certain I’m early into the game (just passed the sunken ship) but I’ve already got a good handle on what happened and what’s going on, and it’s all just depressing. Read more

I agree. The Monsters are there to add some sense of challenge but end up being mere props to what makes the game so horrifying. The story itself and particularly the ending (including the post credits scene) are some of the most thoughtfully horrifying things I’ve seen. The result is an amazing game that should be on… Read more

I found the scariest monster scene in the game was at the end of the sunken resupply ship when the monster appears in front of you and you have to dash to the loving arms of your minisub. Read more

You could say the same thing about Amnesia. The monsters in that game are only scary until you figure them out, and after that they’re mostly annoying. The scariest parts of that game happen when you know you’re not in any danger at all.
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If there was a mod to remove the monsters I would buy the PC version and install it in a heartbeat. On top of the themes and ideas, which were the best and “scariest” parts of SOMA, the distant clangs, scrapes, and hisses were WAY scarier than the monsters which just got in the way of me exploring the world and story… Read more

Right. This game. So I just played through SOMA last week and you are absolutely in the same zone with what I was feeling. That creeping dread buried within anxious movements, trying to stay quiet knowing there was something waiting to get me down the next hall, reading through the scraps left behind by others and… Read more

Like most good horror fiction, the most frightening parts of SOMA come when the player is imagining things. Read more

“There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.” -Alfred Hitchcock
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The monsters are only around SOMA the times. Read more

I turned off achievement notifications around 5 years ago and it has helped immensely. The lack of visual interruption is nice. As I am not reminded of them for weeks at a time, the achievement systems become more of a record of how I have played a game. Only if I like a game will I find myself going back and seeing… Read more

sorry, i think you meant “none”