Author Archives: Karl Parakenings

Dishonored, Kickstarter, and the Nostalgia Delusion

Posted on October 27, 2012 by Karl Parakenings

I’m tempted to think this is all Tim Schafer’s fault. At the beginning of 2012, “indie” meant the same thing that it did with Kyle’s article in April, just after the release of FEZ: 8-to-16-bit platformers with a twist. At … Continue reading →

Posted in Criticism , Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Nirvana , Phil Fish , , , , , , Valve , , , | 19 Comments

The Many Lives of Max Payne

Posted on September 25, 2012 by Karl Parakenings

I can’t help but wonder if I’m playing the same games as everyone else. I just put down the controller and looked up Max Payne 3’s Metacritic in a fit of irritation: “A technological tour de force,” sighs G4TV; GamesRadar … Continue reading →

Posted in Criticism | Tagged detective fiction , , , , , noir , , Remedy , , , , , | 3 Comments

What Is Games Journalism? Part One – What Is A Journalist?

Posted on August 24, 2012 by Karl Parakenings

“…while the medium in which [journalists] work affects the nature of specific tasks, it does not inherently make those tasks any more or less journalistic.” – Cecilia Friend and Jane B. Singer, Online Journalism Ethics: Traditions and Translations 1. What … Continue reading →

Posted in Critical Conversation | Tagged , civics , ethics , games journalism , journalism , , lack of style sense , rageamaholism , sleep deprivation , tautology , workaholism | 1 Comment

Sadistic Design in Spec Ops: The Line

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Karl Parakenings

“Yet to go further in tackling these issues I’d like to look at them as symptoms, not as the problems themselves. There’s something wrong with our commercial games, and with the core audience that buys and loves them. There’s something … Continue reading →

Posted in Close Playing , Critical Conversation , Reviews | Tagged allistair pinsof , daniel ravipinto , , francis ford coppola , full metal jacket , gamespot , heart of darkness , , jeff gerstmann , joseph conrad , , machinima , mitch dyer , sanitarium , slouching towards bedlam , , , star foster , the shining , will whitman | 4 Comments

Horror Done Right: Being Gordon Freeman

Posted on June 18, 2012 by Karl Parakenings

by Karl Parakenings “…His figure is synonymous with the darkest urges of instinct, ignorance, and decay. Some of the worst excesses of the Black Mesa incident are laid directly at his feet. And yet, some continue to imbue him with … Continue reading →

Posted in Criticism , Horror Done Right | Tagged , Call of Duty , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Horror Done Right: Identifying The Player in System Shock 2

Posted on June 11, 2012 by Karl Parakenings

by Karl Parakenings These days, it’s probably better known as the spiritual influence behind the Bioshock series, but in its heyday it was one of the first 3d games that used the technology for immersion and tension instead of showing off hardware. The first game, the eponymous System Shock, detailed the creation of a rogue AI gone bad, SHODAN, who was so evocative that she now serves as the shadow behind many of gaming’s better-known moments and villains. In the second game, you are given the choice of defining your character, up to a point: after walking into a recruitment centre on Earth, you’re asked to run through a series of training programs related to the tours of duty you’ve chosen. You can become a marksman, a psionic expert, or hacker par excellence, and after running through your training regimens, you’re sent off to the Von Braun for a supposedly-routine Continue reading →

Posted in Criticism , Horror Done Right | Tagged , , , , Looking Glass Studios , , , , | 6 Comments

Horror Done Right: Horror as a Pejorative

Posted on June 4, 2012 by Karl Parakenings

“…there are all these games in which your health regenerates after a while but they aren’t about finding shelter or moving from one point of cover to another. they’re just there because they’re cruft that’s been accumulated. a lot of what contemporary video games are is the accumulation of that cruft. it’s all borrowed material that’s been completely divorced from its original context. we’re not looking carefully at our history, we’re just taking the shiny thing and running with it.” -Anna Anthropy, interviewed at ctrl-alt-defeat May 1st, 2012 A great deal has been made lately of ‘evoking emotions in players’ by game developers and the writers who love the games. The recent Lone Survivor by Jasper Byrne spends a fair bit of time trying to get under your skin in familiar ways. Players commonly remember Silent Hill 2 and 3 as the last great horror games, with pretenders such as F.E.A.R. and Continue reading →

Posted in Features , Horror Done Right | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Life and Undeath in Chernarus: Why Day Z Is the Worst Best Zombie Game

Posted on May 28, 2012 by Karl Parakenings

Another recent viral phenomenon is the explosion in popularity of Day Z, a mod for the formerly-niche military simulator Arma II: Combined Ops. Only a few months old, Day Z is now so popular that Amazon recently ran out of keys for Arma II and a recent version of the mod added support for more than a million player characters in the central database. It’s officially a Thing.

Even more striking than the scope of the mod’s sudden success, though, is the way in which every game blog of note seems to be covering it. Rock Paper Shotgun and PC Gamer are publishing post after post after journal entry, describing the poster’s experience within the mod. Even the recent interview with the mod’s creator, Dean “Rocket” Hall, is mostly in the form of the interviewer and interviewee comparing notes about their respective experiences with the game.

So the question remains to be asked: why is Day Z so popular? Continue reading →

Posted in Criticism , Features | Tagged , , , , , DayZ Guide , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

The Decline of the Western Games Industry

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Karl Parakenings

Game designer and blogger Anna Anthropy is thought of by many as inflammatory, provocative, and controversial. Whether the issue at stake is the legitimacy of the Independent Game Festival’s yearly awards, the questionable taste of Kotaku articles and the problems with the editorial response, or even the validity of a father speaking for his game designer daughter, Anthropy thrives on a hard-line, take-no-prisoners approach, and refuses to apologize for it.

She pops up in the gaming press with tidal regularity, here mentioning her game design philosophy, there presenting her unconventional response to a solicitation from Stephen Totilo. Regardless of where you engage with her opinions, she presents and defends her opinions with the heat and passion of one utterly certain of her convictions.

Which is why I snapped up her book “Rise of the Videogame Zinesters” as soon as I was able: for once, she had her own platform and space to present her own case rather than being forced into a reactionary role. What would she say? Continue reading →

Posted in Critical Conversation , Reviews | Tagged , , , , , Kotaku , , , , , , Stephen Totilo , | 1 Comment

Review: Mass Effect 3

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Karl Parakenings

by Karl Parakenings Let’s get one thing out of the way: Mass Effect 3 is a deeply, deeply flawed game. While the game does a few things well, it mostly suffers from the same resource and vision conflicts that have … Continue reading →

Posted in Criticism , Reviews | Tagged | 9 Comments