General gaming

Closure Review: A Brilliant Light in the World of Puzzlers
Do As We Say, Not As We Toon
Let's Talk About Fortnite
Journey: Seeking the Light

Closure Review: A Brilliant Light in the World of Puzzlers

Posted: 02 Apr 2012 06:04 PM PDT

Anyone who appreciates the loneliness and isolation in games like Super Metroid and Limbo will fall immediately in love with Closure. Winner of the DICE 2012 Indie Game Challenge, Closure is a puzzle-platformer for PSN that taps into man's primordial fear of the dark in ways which few games has ever quite understood. One of the very first things you're likely to do in the game is walk just beyond a light source and immediately fall to your doom. You see, the world of Closure is sprinkled with light sources that not only illuminate the world, but actually bring it into existence. Step outside the beam of a spotlight or glow of a light bulb, and you'll find yourself tumbling down into a void of nothingness.

While black space in Limbo was used primarily to advance the mood and atmosphere, Closure takes the actual concept of darkness and weaves it into the game's mechanics. This creates an experience where the tone of the game is symbiotic with how it actually plays. In the early levels, you only need to pick up a light bulb and carry it across the level to the exit door. Simple enough, right? Well, like all of the best puzzle games, Closure reveals its intricacies slowly and intuitively throughout the experience. You'll soon find doors that need to be unlocked using a key, so your goal becomes finding that item in the darkness, then making sure that you bring it back to the door without losing it in a nebulous void. As the game advances you'll have to make flowers bloom using spotlights, create gaps in walls using darkness, and collect moths that show themselves only when illuminated.

Do As We Say, Not As We Toon

Posted: 02 Apr 2012 01:18 PM PDT

Feature

Do As We Say, Not As We Toon

The misguided morality within some of your favorite Saturday morning video game cartoons.

By: Nadia Oxford April 2, 2012

If you played video games in the '80s and early '90s, then you probably watched the tie-in cartoons that were broadcast at around the same time, God help you. At first glance, the marriage of video game heroes and Saturday morning still sounds like an idea that should, by all rights, completely rock. Alas, the reality stank. Those early video game cartoons weren't just bad: some of them were arguably a bad influence.

It's almost heartbreaking to watch the likes of Super Mario World, Mega Man, or Double Dragon as an adult, because you can still smell the cartoons' wrecked potential. With a little effort, the storyboarders could have expanded on Mario's universe, or given Billy Lee a multi-episode quest to rescue Marian. Unfortunately, the cartoons' production companies weren't interested in making anything except an animated game commercial that would hold fast to kids' attention spans for half an hour, preferably without offending their parents. And in order to yark up the cartoons as cheaply and as quickly as possible, the show's writers typically built an episode around ten-cent morals that would make a fortune cookie manufacturer blush and turn away.

Let's Talk About Fortnite

Posted: 02 Apr 2012 11:17 AM PDT

When a new game gets announced, it?s fun to pretend that it will be everything you ever wanted. It is especially easy to have wonderful hopes and dreams when the details are very sparse. The game I'd like to discuss today that we know very little about is Epic Games' new title, Fortnite. The game was announced at the VGAs back in December, and we still have very little information on the mechanics, its platform, or the release window. Take a look at the teaser trailer below, then you'll know everything that I know.