Games and that
I wrote an article for Internet Supersite Ramp.ie about how great games are/could be as a storytelling medium, if only jerk developers would get their jerk heads out of their jerk… well, their jerk publishers’ bottom lines, I suspect. You can read it here.
I’m impressed that I got several hundred words in before mentioning Dark Souls, a game I have described in my notes as “everything up to the n+1th coming of Gaming Christ”. It’s not even that it’s my favourite game, it’s just… everything it does, it does well. Particularly the intangibles, things like how it feels to play the game, how it feels to be in its world. It’s not an easy game, but nor is it unfairly hard—you just can’t play it lazily, you have to focus on what you’re doing. Because of that, every bit of progress you make feels like something you’ve really accomplished. It’s an intensely rewarding game to play, even 60-odd hours in.
