This has been a very good year for video games, but it has been an exceptional year for books about video games—surely the best ever. I can’t tell you who will win the prestigious BAGOTY award for 2015, but Cara Ellison’s Embed With Games, Simon Parkin’s Death by Video Game, and Michael W. Clune’s Gamelife…
I didn’t realize I hated my Xbox One until I loaded Fallout 3 on it and felt all warm and fuzzy when I saw the Xbox 360 logo and heard the Xbox 360 theme. It was Thursday, and it was the first time my Xbox One has ever made me feel warm and fuzzy. All…
Approaching Fallout 4 like a tourist isn’t easy. There aren’t as many Bostonians around as there are in present-day Massachusetts, and there are more Super Mutants and feral dogs. (I’m not saying it’s worse in the 23rd century.) Still, there is a sightseeing tour. A version of Boston’s red-brick Freedom Trail is in the game,…
I’m 20 hours into Fallout 4, and I still don’t know whether I like it. That’s a testament to the game’s virtues as well as the game’s failings. I have no plans to stop playing. I’d rather be playing Fallout 4 than typing these words. Yet I still haven’t forgiven the game for taking so…
I’m a confirmed believer in the church of video games, a sect whose faith has been rewarded over the past decade, as games have sailed easily over the hurdles that have been placed in front of them by the apostates. No one really disputes anymore that games can make us cry, make us laugh, teach…
I have a confession to make. I read the comments. Actually, it’s worse than that. I don’t just read the comments, I enjoy reading the comments. I’ve been getting paid to write on the Internet for more than 15 years, and you, Ungentle Reader—yes, you, the one who used to write “More liberal claptrap!” under…
Bob Whitaker, a historian of modern Britain at Louisiana Tech and the host of the YouTube series History Respawned, recommends Assassin’s CreedSyndicate, the entertaining new Ubisoft game set in Victorian London. He likes the way it successfully captures the feel of the British capital in the 19th century, and he particularly likes the way the…
In the fall of 2006, the New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine published dueling Spore previews in the span of four weeks. John Seabrook, writing in the New Yorker, said that the game was “anticipated with something like the interest with which writers in Paris in the early twenties awaited Joyce’s Ulysses” Steven…
Where is a guy supposed to dump a body around here? Here is a three-minute video—taken from a late-game mission but devoid of spoilers—from Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, a game I quite like. The setup: Jacob Frye, the assassin I’m controlling, has just knocked out a British royal guardsman and stolen his uniform. Next, he’s (we’re?)…
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate is—wait for it—an Assassin’s Creed game, with all that that implies. It’s a really good Assassin’s Creed game, mind you, my favorite since Assassin’s Creed II took us to Renaissance Italy way back in 2009. We’re in Victorian London this time, in 1868. As with most games in the series, Syndicate shifts…
Super Mario 4D Universe—or whatever the next one will be called—should come with every single level in the Mushroom Constitutional Monarchy unlocked. The next Grand Theft Auto should make all of its missions immediately playable in the very first minute. Uncharted 4 should let me jump into the middle of Nathan Drake’s adventures as soon…
People are interested in Introversion’s very good sim Prison Architect because it tries to model the complexities of life inside a penal institution. People also seem to be tougher on Prison Architect than they are on more frivolous games, for the very same reason: it attempts to simulate the complexities of prison life. How do…
You won’t be shocked to learn that watching Bernie Sanders shout about email is not virtual reality’s killer app. I watched Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate on my Gear VR, using Next VR in the Oculus store, and the aesthetic experience was markedly worse than watching the debate on TV, like a normal person. I…
Almost a decade ago, a majority of the Republicans in Congress voted to pass a prison reform bill called the Second Chance Act, and a Republican president signed it—during an election year, no less. As a policy matter, the bill was modest, less than $100 million a year for things like job training, mental health…
My favorite film critic, A.O. Scott of the New York Times, is trying to reclaim the word “snob” for people of discernment. “If the words nerd and geek can be rehabilitated—if legions of misunderstood enthusiasts can march from the margins of respectability to the heart of the mainstream—then why not snob as well?” he pleaded…
This picture of a mouse might be the scariest thing I encountered in all of SOMA. Now that I’m not playing the game, I can see that it is not, in fact, scary. Out of context, you might even find the picture funny. Yet while I was immersed in the game, feeling like I was…
SOMA is a standout game, and one of the many ways it distinguishes itself is through its restrained use of achievements. There are 10 on Steam (or 10 trophies on PlayStation), and each is nothing more than a progress marker. They come infrequently and unexpectedly. I wasn’t sure when one would pop up or why.…
Lifeline is supposed to be the best game for the Apple Watch. Like you, I suspect, I don’t own an Apple Watch. I do own an iPhone, though, and Lifeline is a pretty nifty iOS game. So why is Lifeline 2, which was released last week, such a disappointment? The first game reinvented the text…
“When it comes to probing questions about their intimate life as computer-game players, most people don’t have much to say,” writes Michael W. Clune in his absorbing new memoir Gamelife. “They’ve never thought about it. Or they’ve repressed it. Or they’ve forgotten. Or they’re embarrassed. Society has convinced them that computer games are a trivial…
As I write this, Venom Snake is waiting in a Porta Potty north of Kabul during a sandstorm. I feel a little bad about it, to be honest. I’d rather leave him at Mother Base or with Pequod in his helicopter. In a pinch, though, when Snake is in the field conducting an operation and…
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