Now that I'm nearly done with The Witness I can write some words about it. I had been looking forward to this game for literally years, having absolutely loved Braid. When it finally launched, it delighted and did not disappoint. If you ha...

PAX is dead. Utterly dead. For this year, at least. It'll be back, like six times per year now, it seems. But for now, it's dead and gone. All the guests have trickled out. There's still random glasses of water all over my house. Bedding is...

Super Time Force had been showing at PAX for years, so I knew the premise long before it came out: if you die, you can rewind and "co-op" through the segment up till your death to help succeed the next time. While that statement is patently...

It was long ago, feels like a dream, when Occams Electric Toothbrush did me a service only a true father can: he lent me his very own physical copy of Eternal Darkness. This happened, oh, almost two years ago, when he came over for PAX, I...

You know, 2012 was a good year for me in gaming, especially for puzzle gaming--which I love. We started off the year with English Country Tune in February, which carried me through many months. Just months later in April, I got Fez, which s...

I don't know what exactly I want to write about The Last Express. Usually I try coming up with some idea or observation or angle that I want to explore, but this time I'm not sure I have that. Alls I know is I have to write something abou...

Surely some or hopefully all of you have seen the trailers for the upcoming Wreck-it-Ralph (coming soon to a theater near you!). I guess I probably saw it as a trailer for Paranorman (which was pretty good). But man, this looked pretty k...

This year was--I say--was a heck of a time, the best of times, even. I had a whole gaggle of fellas hanging around with me (good people, really good people, just a little kooky sometimes, if you get my meaning). Now listen up now, everybody...

It's no news to any of my friends that I'm severely addicted to Dark Souls at this point. I never could have predicted the way I became utterly gripped by it. Eventually, this largely became a matter of being integrated into a community of ...

Do I bother? I feel like lots of people already know some thing or another about me by now. I feel like I talk about myself too much sometimes as it is. I get self conscious about that kind of thing. Oh, was that #1? Ha ha! Bbain is quite a...

If you haven't played through Journey yet, stop reading this now. Just stop. Go away, play it, and come back to this blog when you can. This game is too beautiful and well crafted for me to spoil even the smallest aspect of it, and I don'...

More Dark Souls! Since it is almost the only thing I've been playing for weeks, I guess it was only inevitable that I write another one of these, huh? If you've been watching my live stream at all, you'd have seen me crafting this build, wh...

Dark Souls is an RPG, right? I have trouble describing its genre to people. It's kind of an adventure game. It has some stats. Your character has some stats. You "level up", and so on. Yeah, I guess it's an action RPG... it just feels so di...

If you listen to me on Twitter it's no secret that I play a lot of Dark Souls. A lot of the time I spent in the game was in co-op play, or, as we Sunbros like to say, JOLLY CO-OPERATION. I've played over 60 games of co-op at this point, and...

It's funny how stories get changed as they're passed down from generation to generation. We read tales of daring deeds, masterful heroics, incredible skill... but how much of that is real, and how much of it is embellished? Bards of old wil...

The title says it all. Dark Souls. DARK SOULS. I can't stop talking about this game. I can't stop thinking about this game. Even when I'm not talking about it, I'm thinking about it, so it's kind of like I have an internal monologue going o...

As the release of Dark Souls approaches, I've of course been trying to wrap up my Demon's Souls playthrough. I'd started writing about my usual crazy exploits, but instead found myself gravitating towards this topic of the world building,...

PAX was a glorious thing. I've been every year since 2005, and this was easily the best one I've ever had. You know what was different this year? The people. I met people this year, and they were such thoroughly, fantastically great, that l...

I won't mess around much. Straight to the meat. #1: Since I asked about it in the panel: what's the best way to go about submitting pictures for that community picture rotating image in the upper left corner of the cblogs? Upload to dtoid ...

The boy stood up slowly, his head swimming a bit as if from some fall, though he didnt remember anything like that. His muscles were slightly sore and felt like he had been crammed in a box for hours. There was very little light, but he c...

Lately we've seen people talking about linear games, which are a type of restriction, and certain techniques that unshackle the player (say, from gravity). I'd like to pile on with a few ways in which the careful restriction of freedom ad...

No daring exploits from Demon's Souls this time. This is actually leftovers from the last post that I uncharacteristically decided to split off into a new post instead of lengthening that one. As I played the game I started ruminating abo...

About a week more, and I still haven't given up on Demon's Souls. In fact, maybe we're starting to reach a mutual understanding. I follow a kind of sine wave of pain/joy that goes something like this: - Grind a bit on areas I know about. -...

Almost a year ago, I got and tried playing Demon's Souls. A couple weeks later, I reluctantly moved it from my "now playing" list to my "on hold" list, since I got stuck. The game is punishingly difficult, yes, but I'm slowly beginning to d...

In this paper, we propose a set of categories for the classification of multiplayer experiences in games, that is, the kind of games where you might have a "P2" (i.e. "player 2") press the Start button in order to commence playing. It shoul...

I left the country for about a week and a half in April. I was visiting Turkey with my parents. It was a wonderful trip, and I saw some amazing stuff. My trips: let me show you them. In honor of the esteemed Dr. Feynman, whose book I had ju...

Warning: contains spoilers for Portal (not Portal 2). This is about Portal. You probably already know the part I'm going to talk about. Throughout the game they present you with two environments. Primarily, the stark white hospital-esque, ...

"In God's name, but these be obstinate and fierce adversaries," uttered the elderly thane, standing at the high battlements of his fortress. The fortress, by careful design of his forefathers generations upon generations ago, was situated a...

...demons slay you! Oh wait, that doesn't really work for that joke, does it? (Note: no story spoilers!) I'm about ready to leave 2010 behind, so this is not a blog about how Metro 2033 was my GOTY (even though it was). It's also not a revi...

I don't often have ideas about games, which is, I guess, unfortunate, seeing as how I possess the power to realize them if I wanted to. No, normally I'm just content to play them. Today I'm going to expound upon this one. I'm going to blast...