Author Archives: Jake Shapiro
Cheating in Machinarium
Is a game too hard if the developers have to include an in-depth hint system?Machinarium, a 2009 point-and-click adventure by Czech company Amanita Design, is beautiful. Its hand-drawn artwork and quirky robot characters are easy to fall in love with. … Continue reading
Horror and guitars in Metro 2033
I just finished Metro 2033, a 2010 adaptation of the 2005 book by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. Created by Ukrainian developer 4A Games, Metro 2033 is one of the most chilling games I’ve played in a long time.The game tells a tale of post-apoc… Continue reading
You're completely right, and as I touch on at …
You're completely right, and as I touch on at the beginning of my last post, I do think Braid is a milestone in game design. But since we put this game on a pedestal as the Holy Grail of indie games, I'm scared people will avoid any sort of cri… Continue reading
Why Braid Sucks, Pt. II: The ‘A’ Button
Building off my rant from yesterday:One of the single most frustrating parts of Braid’s design is in its opening moments: teaching players the game controls. Tutorials are notoriously tough to do well in games, and designer Jonathan Blow had noble inte… Continue reading
The Great Wall of Text: Why Braid Sucks
Braid is one of the most overrated games of all time. Creator Jonathan Blow is seen as Art Game Jesus, and lives up to that title by traveling the world giving speeches about advancing video games as a medium.The 2008 game is fantastic. It’s got a beau… Continue reading
The Stanley Parable as a parallel to Portal, and analyzing linear narratives
This past summer, Davey Wreden’s Half-Life 2 mod “The Stanley Parable” was released to a wave of critical acclaim. A one-man project that took two years to create, it explores the concepts of player choice and linear narrative in game design. It’s… Continue reading
What Metroid Prime says about Samus, and how it defines East-West relations in game design
Proposal for a 25-page research paper I plan on writing:Metroid was already Nintendo’s black sheep. While the series has seen just as much critical acclaim as the Japanese gaming giant’s other flagship franchises, Metroid has never been the commerc… Continue reading
Killer7 is why I play video games.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become a pretentious “games as art” person. Nothing sums that up better than Grasshopper Manufacture’s 2005 opus Killer7.It’s a poorly designed mess. Killer7 is essentially an on-rails shooter with an obtuse… Continue reading
Rez is just Tetris at a vibrating rave party.
Rez is the point where rail shooters and music games collide. Designed by Tetsuya Mizuguchi of Lumines and Meteos fame, this 1998 Dreamcast/PlayStation 2 game was re-released in HD for Xbox Live Arcade a few years ago. And if you love ra… Continue reading
The House of the Scorpion vs. Blindsight: paratext
Upon starting Nancy Farmer’s young adult novel The House of the Scorpion, I was taken aback by the wealth of information. Not at the end of the book, but at the beginning appears a short appendix: a cast of characters and family tree.This imm… Continue reading