Gamebros.PH
Contributions originally published to the blog jointly run by myself and a few friends.
December 2013
10 Videogames That Changed My Life
Reflections on my gaming history.
There’s this list meme that’s going on in Facebook lately, and someone asked me for my own. I’ve had a hard time putting this together because frankly I’ve played a lot of games in my life, and 10 seems to be too few to list. It took a while to distill, but here’s what I’ve come up with. Super Mario World If I recall correctly this was the first videogame I played.
5 minutes
Gaming on-the-go is still gaming.
The currently ongoing Steam sale is making me realize something I’ve been too reluctant to admit. As my PC game backlog grows into an increasingly unmanageable length, I have to come to terms with the fact that my old gaming preferences and habits no longer fit the lifestyle I’ve adopted. I’m no longer primarily a PC gamer; instead, I tend to reach into my pocket, pull out my phone, and switch on an app whenever I feel the urge to play.
7 minutes
November 2013
Depictions of violence against children in videogames.
There’s been some heated discussion lately about the practice of using children as characters in violent videogames. While I don’t particularly care, I do find some of the arguments coming from both sides quite interesting. A little bit of background on the topic: a game called No More Room in Hell was recently released on Steam Greenlight, and it contains zombie children. Players can attack these characters, just like they can attack the zombie adults, and they’re encouraged to - because both the big and little zombies will kill the players if they’re allowed to roam.
3 minutes
September 2013
The best possible Star Wars dice roll ever
Never tell me the odds.
I forgot what the roll was for, but it doesn’t matter. We won. Just to put into perspective how difficult it would be to achieve this kind of roll: The purple dice are bad. They’re 8-sided dice, and only one side is blank (the best possible result on these dice, because that essentially means “nothing bad happens”). The yellow dice are good. They’re 12-sided dice, and the icon you see there is “Triumph.
2 minutes
August 2013
Dark and twisty humor required.
I completely missed out on Cards Against Humanity and have thus been denied the guilty pleasure of laughing like an idiot over forming nonsensical subject-predicate pairs, hilariously unexpected direct and indirect objects, and generally making fun of impossibly silly situations. So apparently this little indie card game is a viral hit. I completely missed out on it, and have thus been denied the guilty pleasure of laughing like an idiot over forming nonsensical subject-predicate pairs, hilariously unexpected direct and indirect objects, and generally making fun of impossibly silly situations.
2 minutes
July 2013
On quitting due to cancel culture.
Let’s take a small step outside of gaming for a bit. Don’t worry, it’ll just be two paragraphs worth of text, and it’ll only be to set the stage. Last June, former Boston Fire Chief Steve Abraira resigned from his post following public criticism about his response to the horrible Boston Marathon bombings, summarized in a letter signed by every other fire chief in the city department. The baseless attacks by the Deputy Chiefs, especially their actions of making this a matter of public debate by leaking their letter of April 26 to the press, has made it impossible for me to continue to do my job.
5 minutes
Gamers are the worst (and best) people
On gatekeeping and harassment.
I was very hesitant about posting this article. An anti-gamer rant on a blog that praises games? Blasphemy. Still, I ended up hitting the “Publish” button because being able to love something completely means to look at its ugliness along with the good side; and to accept the reality of its imperfection, while at the same time helping it achieve that impossible state in whatever way one can. It’s true. The vocal majority of people on the Internet don’t think very highly of those who self-identify as “gamers.
7 minutes
Repackaging Done Right: Tomb Raider 2013
Introducing Girls Got Game.
If you haven’t noticed, Girls Got Game just launched their website recently. Not to be mistaken as merely a feminist take on games and the videogame industry, Girls Got Game aims to provide a voice for the traditionally underrepresented half (and yes, it’s about fair to say half) of the gamer demographic; a voice that, unlike many others, is worth hearing. One of their first articles explores the character of Lara Croft - her whole being and what makes her tick, not as a heroine or even as a female, but simply as a (virtual) human.
2 minutes
System Shock as one of the golden standards of storytelling in videogames
Jed from OMGeek.net talks about System Shock as one of the golden standards of storytelling in videogames, and rightfully so: the game heavily inspired the Bioshock franchise (indeed, it’s considered to be the spiritual successor to System Shock) and also influenced the direction of Deus Ex - yet another PC game classic. More than any other game before it, System Shock let me experience a well-written story at my own pace, and let me put things together and fill in the gaps with my own reasoning and imagination.
1 minute
Sarcia, Cube World, Owlboy, Starbound, Project Zomboid
I have a soft spot for indies, be it in the fields of film, music, or—of course—videogames. And luckily for us, in the past few years there’s been a dramatic rise in the number and quality of independently developed games. There’s hundreds of thousands to choose from across practically any platform you can think of gaming on, but in this article I’m going to shine the spotlight on just five upcoming indie PC games that I feel are worth keeping an eye out for.
3 minutes
This is how we get excited for games
A dialog between two friends.
So Marc and I were having a completely rational conversation about games, particularly of the space sim genre. It started out logically enough, as most of our dialogs do, but then it got weird. So yeah, that’s how we hype up games for ourselves. In other news, Star Citizen is an awesome space sim that aims to bring back all the classic elements of the genre and more. It’s amassed $12 million since it started its crowdfunding campaign, and rightfully so; the team making it is headed by Chris Roberts, best known for creating the excellent Wing Commander series.
1 minute
Horse armor’s a given.
You’ve definitely heard about them, and maybe even bought some. I wouldn’t blame you. But somehow, somewhere, a line must be drawn when it comes to downloadable content, to prevent abominations such as the six DLCs enumerated by Nathe of SeraphimGarden.co. Here’s an excerpt from his article: Possibly the newest contender on the list comes from the already infamous SimCity by Maxis and Electronic Arts. The facelifted franchise recently put up a new piece of DLC that features balloons.
2 minutes
June 2013
Recollecting my earliest gaming memories.
The earliest gaming experience I can remember is of me sitting in front of a TV, connected to which was a Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The SNES is definitely not the first videogame console to hit the consumer market, nor was it the first console I played. But for whatever reason, it’s the one that sticks most fondly to the most basic recollections of my gaming nostalgia. Yoshi leaping for coins.
3 minutes