I had a very long, but very awesome day yesterday. I had some business in Osaka so I left my house in Yokohama early, hopped on a bullet train, and was in Osaka by 10:30 AM. I lived in the Kansai area (Osaka and Kyoto–I was in Kyoto) more than ten years ago as a […]
I’m most of the way through Alan Wake now (at least, I think I am–it’s not supposed to be very long) and so far I’m enjoying it. It’s very different than the Japanese horror games that make up the bulk of this site, and it’s a very nice change of pace. I’ll write more about […]
I’m writing this post from a hotel room in central London. I’m visiting the UK in order to attend the Develop Conference, a Europe-centric conference for game developers. Yesterday I took the train south to Brighton for the first day of the conference, a special day focused on mobile developers, and gave a talk to […]
You might recall that about a year ago, I had the pleasure of attending and participating in the Thinking After Dark conference (my notes: one, two, and three). Now, several of the papers presented at that conference (including, I’m honored to report, my own) are available in the latest issue. Half of the issue is […]
I’m several hours into Heavy Rain now, and I’m throughly enjoying it. There are some flaws here and there but generally the whole thing is amazingly well done, and unlike 99% of other games on the market today. I’ll post a lot more about it when I finish. Playing Heavy Rain got me thinking about […]
The recently released Wii horror game, Ju-on: The Grudge, is not a fantastic game. It’s plagued by a game design that values one-hit kills and requires levels to be replayed over and over, and yet it’s so simple that no amount of replaying can really make you a better player. The level designs themselves are […]
Problem: Balancing game difficulty across ten or twenty hours of play in a way that enables all types of gamers to enjoy your game is hard. Games that get too hard will be frustrating, but games that are too easy are boring. There’s a sweet spot between those two that makes a perfect game, but […]
I’m close to ten hours into Resident Evil 5. So far, I’m throughly enjoying it; it’s not some great masterwork but it’s an extremely well-made game and I haven’t run into any major frustration points. Unlike the technically similar Dead Space, the moment-to-moment game play is deep enough that simple pattern alterations (new enemy, new […]
About four years ago I was working in the game industry making video games. At the time I was getting ready to start on a PSP game (this was before the PSP had shipped, but game development was already in full swing), and I wanted to get up to speed with my company’s 3D graphics […]
There’s a pretty great article over at GameTopius called The Survival of Survival Horror about the way that modern survival horror games resemble their predecessors. The author, Thomas Cross, draws a line in the sand between games like Dead Space and Resident Evil 5, and Siren: New Translation and Silent Hill 5. His point–which is […]