So, I guess we’re doing this. Join me as I continue where we left off and play through Thief II: The Metal Age. It’s my favourite of the series, but I’m sure I’ll find something to complain about. The first shot of the intro isn’t quite a match for the last shot of The Dark […]
[] Journey through The Dark Project: Part 3 “Return to the Cathedral”: “Return to the Haunted Cathedral” is up next, I’m deep into the levels I’ve never played before. All I know about this one is: “Fuck. Fuck! Argh…” Objectives for “Return to the Cathedral” (I keep inserting the word Haunted) seem pretty straightforward… […]
Playing the PlayStation 4 demo of Prey resulted in me quitting in anger, hurling my controller at the floor, and deleting the demo. Getting around to playing it on the PC, I have reached a point seventeen hours in where I encountered a bug that, though it didn’t prevent my progress, would result in a bunch of […]
Deus Ex: Human Revolution, like its forebears, allows players to vary their approach, from direct combat to stealth, based on personal expression rather than the requirements of a given set-piece. The mechanics and level design combine to allow the player to engage in any encounter (excluding boss fights) through the use of stealth, combat, or some […]
Note: This was originally posted as a comment on the Sparky Clarkson article I link to. As I was writing I realised there was a broader point to be made, so I extended and adapted that comment into this article. Sparky Clarkson didn’t like Remember Me as much as I did; reading his analysis helped […]
In order to promote my work on Groping The Map: Book 1, I have decided to release a .pdf sample of the first nine pages of the chapter on Nova Prospekt from Half-Life 2. Consider this a “vertical-slice” of the book, as you can see I have made some changes from the traditional format that […]
In any simulated system there are boundaries, points at which the model being used breaks down, where player behaviour is no longer accounted for. The most obvious of these are the physical boundaries of the game space, the chasm too wide to cross or the wall too high to climb. To a large extent the methods for […]
Building off the initial framework outlined in Part 1 these additional concepts serve to provide means of structure and control. The primary appeal of this model is that it marries dramatic character development with player agency while potentially allowing for more variation than can efficiently be achieved through the use of branching narratives alone. For […]
“Don’t think you know something about the Lady I don’t. My dad did tours out here.” Conclusion: There’s one word whose use is all but unavoidable when discussing Deus Ex: ‘possible’. The path across Liberty Island I have described is only one of many available routes, though all players start and end their paths at […]
“A shame, isn’t it? The French terrorist group Silhouette claims that France was wrong to give the U.S. the Statue. We think they planned the bombing.” Annotated Walkthrough, 4: With two objectives and at least two separate entrances the Statue itself represents a higher level problem encounter than those you may have come across while […]