Art Tickles – Emotionally Over Budget
It costs something to be a part of games spaces.
It costs something to be a part of games spaces.
Written for Haywire Magazine. Weather in The Zone of Exclusion doesn’t behave the same way it does everywhere else. Sometimes a furious energy storm sweeps through the sky, shaking the […]
Games are a great many things, and for both mundane and complex reasons, they are difficult to write about.
There is a gulf between understanding what a videogame is meant to evoke in its players, and intuiting what a player experience is like. The former is something that can be read in nearly any Wikipedia article; the latter is difficult to experience without having first-hand play time and knowledge in games.
An empty, vacant soundscape resolves to the sound of rushing air. The camera starts on a tight angle along the side of an old military plane. It follows the line of an airplane’s body, as though flying in its slipstream. As the camera draws back, the view quickly dips down through the empty space where the tail of the plane would be. We discover that the old shell of this military bomber is sunken into the dirt. Unpaved road slides into view, which the camera follows until a bright red sports car rips across the frame.
It’s all glitzy neon and flashing lights, people in suits and waistcoats mill around the streets barking advertisements for their stores and inviting businessmen into the bars to drink with well-dressed women. The finest sushi is paired with an array of booze. Bars offer karaoke machines to every patron, each booth its own private singing club. The streets of Kamurocho are packed with pedestrians, flitting to and fro in the city of glitz and light, and Kiryu is punching a man halfway to death in an alleyway.
Written for Haywire Magazine. Los Santos looks magnificent from the top of Mount Chiliad. The sun sets over the ocean, orange ripples reaching inward toward silhouetted towers dotted with unfocused […]
Written for Haywire Magazine. Super. Hot. Super. Hot. Super. Hot. I love guns. I do not like guns. They are fascinating. They are terrible. This world is beautiful. Muted whites […]
Written for Haywire Magazine. I don’t really know what I’m doing. Subnautica isn’t a game about anything in particular. At least, not for me. It has crafting mechanics, certainly, and […]
Written for Haywire Magazine. The Animal Crossing series has always felt like visiting a vacation home. Far from life’s stressors, it’s a place to wear some favorite clothes, maintain a […]