14. April 2008 by the author.

N’Gai Croal opened his gob to talk about the Resident Evil 5 trailer recently. He spoke at length about how Africa is portrayed as a dark and dangerous place, how the trailer is reminiscient of racist imagery from the past, and how blowing holes in shambling, infected, murderous black Africans is different from blowing holes in shambling, infected, murderous white Spaniards. This may have been a specific dig at Yahtzee Croshaw of Zero Punctuation fame, as he (the Aussie) pointed out several months ago that little has actually changed since the fourth numbered installment of the series. Arrive in country X, pick up the inane but roller-coaster plot as you go, and blow away an astonishing number of zombified locals en route to whatever MacGuffin you’re dealing with this time. Read the rest of this entry »

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3. December 2007 by the author.

I always love seeing what old and low-end hardware is capable of. Tech demos, demoscene releases, homebrew games, and end-of-lifecycle titles are my favorite brain candy. 2D fun like the ill-fated Grand Theftendo and odd ports like Big Mutha Truckers for GBA tweak the same neurons. I followed GBAdev.org from somewhere near its beginnings to its sidelining when the DS came out, so I’d seen and even jerkily emulated some basic 3D engines on the Game Boy Advance. All smoke, no fire, I thought, since the only worthwhile commercial 3D games at the time were Doom-style shooters (including a mediocre port of Doom and eventually an impressive port of Doom II). When I heard rumors of Quake for the GBA, I was intrigued, but not exactly floored by the videos. Apparently a company named Pocketeers had developed a polygonal engine and merely used the opening map of Quake as a demonstration. They had actual game ideas: two GTA III wannabes, named Zero Tolerance and The World Of Crime. Read the rest of this entry »

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