As an artistic medium, games in general have become fully realized as perhaps the most poignant form expression to those privy to it. For all intensive purposes, games have replaced movies in the same way movies replaced books as the most accessible and mainstream method of story telling. Most games, however, released nowadays are still wholly integrated with the toxic refuse of Fredric Jameson’s postmodern “depthlessness.” While most AAA (“triple A”) titles have completely embraced interactivity on both a PvE and PvP level due to the advent of new technology, games in general still lack real and meaningful substance often becoming a parody of itself and things that have come before it.

Becoming a game developer in terms of financial success has, like anything in the world, become increasingly more and more difficult due to the nature of the market itself. Large game developers such as Activision and Electronic Arts are concerned with numbers. Financial triumphs over artistic freedom. They would rather risk becoming bigger at the cost of sacrificing quality in the fabric of their products, than taking a financial hit in the name of releasing something meaningful–even if it had a possibility of success.




I’m not going to sit here and tell you what these big game companies do is a bad, even in the slightest. These companies have massive power with the ability to create interactive worlds that overshadow anything we as humans have encountered in any other social medium before it. What I am going to tell you is that because of graphical and technological advancements games have become little more than a mere spectacle. Sega’s Bayonetta is a perfect example of this, and is, in my opinion, the crown jewel of postmodern games embracing spectacle, depthlessness, and parody. Sega wants their audience to drool over Bayonetta, even though under all that tight leather isn’t much meat both literally and in a metaphorical sense.

“To the Moon” by Freebird Games, unlike all the incredible AAA titles we were graced with this year inverts this idea of graphics over substance and beckons us to a time when artistic mediums were truly capable of evoking genuine emotion and reflection. It might be really funny to hear but “To the Moon” caused me to really think, to give some sort of conscious thought to how I got to where I am in life, and where I may or may not be going. I gave a lot of consideration to the idea of quantum realities, after playing it, and to the idea that our lives may be but one part to a multiverse of possible outcomes that could’ve and perhaps did happen in an alternative reality. Check out the “Parallels” episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, if you have no idea what I’m talking about. This shit is fucking deep. And to think, a 16-bit game made with RPG maker caused me to ponder all of this.





Did I mention that I literally wept for the last hour and a half of the game? Experiencing an entire lifetime in five hours can do that to a person. In terms of game play itself, “To the Moon” is in the traditional sense a point and click adventure, but the masterful story telling and musical tone sets off a series of emotions that I refuse to think that you will want to miss. “To the Moon” is certainly a title that will more than likely be forgotten and I find it shameful, repugnant, and down right heartbreaking that amidst all the crazy ass forth quarter releases, that it may never gain the notoriety I think it deserves.

I challenge you as gamers to take one evening, that’s ONE, out of your busy schedule of playing the new Warcraft patch, Skyrim, Modern Warfare, or Skyward Sword and check “To the Moon” out. You can play this game in one five hour sitting, and unless you’re too busy ogling depthless bullshit chock full of spectacle, you certainly won’t regret doing so either. Play this game. Seriously. Play it.

Being game of the year shouldn’t be about having the prettiest graphics, or the most accessible game play. Being game of the year shouldn’t be about how much money went into creating the game, or if it was AAA title. AAA titles get enough coverage. It’s these indie games, these little gems that always come and go unnoticed. Being game of the year shouldn’t be something that catapults further sales for companies that just keep getting bigger. It should be about a game that does something with such wonderful execution and emotional fervor that it can and should be regarded as an artistic masterpiece. “To the Moon” accomplishes this and more, and that, my friends is why I regard it as 2011’s champion. Game of the fucking year.



You can purchase “To the Moon” HERE for $11.99. Please show your support for this incredible game!









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here is a speck of decency to be found in the unvarnished and churlish Serious Sam. It's right there in the name: despite all temptations and probable pleading from the marketing department, it didn't come out as "Shoot Many Monsters." That's exactly what you do, over and over again, but the important thing is how you do it.

Be careful what you call mindless. Serious Sam 3: BFE lacks the long-term mental overhead of equipment upgrades and character augmentation, and the only emergent gameplay is something slimy crawling out of a cocoon, but it does know how to commandeer concentration -- ruthlessly. You're so plugged in from moment to moment, fingers flitting over the keyboard as you sprint, dodge and shuffle weapons in an onslaught of snorting beasts, it's a lie to think you haven't thought. So involving is the instinctive, mechanical game that context becomes a luxury.

And there is context, for some reason, in the form of a pointless prequel plot that explains how a man ends up traveling back in time to thwart a messed-up menagerie of aliens in Egypt. Thank goodness, because that chronological inconsistency was really undermining the drama.

There just isn't much time to contemplate whether or not Sam's eye-rolling emissions are intentionally bad, or why he's the only soldier to show up in jeans and a t-shirt, or whether his intolerable sunglasses are a willfully inflicted accessory or some kind of douchebag tumor growing on his face. Mental effort is best expended on interfacing with the game, picturing your location in the environment, discerning between informative enemy sounds and picking apt weaponry in response to the game's merciless stream of targets.

Your improvised tactics need not be elaborate, only appropriate within seconds. You alternate between attacking and retreating, and often pray that the reload animation concludes before a screaming suicide bomber gets too close. It's primitive, direct stimulation that always keeps you in motion, and it channels id's classic Doom better than Doom 3 did.


Just as the action requires more thought than is obvious, the game's pacing is more considered than it seems at the height of trouble. There's a palpable sense of defiance when you're absurdly outnumbered (which is all the time) and pull through with just 11 points of health remaining. Serious Sam 3 makes you climb hill after hill, each one taller than the last, and lets you survey the immense destruction from the top.

That sounds an awful lot like every other Serious Sam game -- a third game seems almost redundant if you're not drawn to the well-lit attractions of Serious Engine 3.5 -- but it's a distinct exclamation mark at the end of a fabulous year of shooting. Even if Bulletstorm, Crysis 2 and Resistance 3 are smarter and healthier choices, sometimes all you want is a damn cookie. Serious Sam 3 is like a dam filled with cookies.

It goes without saying that you shouldn't eat them all in one go. As deliberate as the pacing is within levels, developer Croteam loses sight of the entire game's effects, letting it devolve into a grueling fight against one-upmanship. There's such an obvious climax: you defeat everything the game can throw at you at once, burn through all your bullets, rockets, and comically oversized cannonballs, and survive the craziest, most chaotic thing ever. And then, somehow, there's more.


our passion can't help but wither when the final level says you still have 1,750 kills to go. By the end of the game, I had amassed 6,311 kills. I had eaten 6,311 cookies.

It seems odd to slam Serious Sam 3 for a lack of restraint, especially if you've spent space arguing that it's not as mindless as it appears. So, a piece of advice, rather: play it in spurts, play it with friends in sixteen-player co-op, and shoot many monsters.

Programación y físicas. No había dos cosas que mejor entendiera Christopher Weaver, fundador de Bethesda Softworks, y para demostrarlo sólo hay que atender a que él fue el responsable del primer motor de físicas de un videojuego deportivo en la historia. De hecho, fue para su primer videojuego: Gridiron!, un simulador de fútbol americano que, a pesar de tener unos gráficos que no hacían honor al potente Commodore Amiga, se ganó el favor del público justo en un momento donde los títulos del género sólo buscaban una genial ambientación. Y no exageramos. Aquella obra fue el mismo germen de la serie Madden, previo interés de EA, que copió su código (con una demanda judicial de 7,3 millones de dólares de por medio) para convertirse en lo que es hoy en día.




No fue un gran éxito de crítica, pero abrió el camino en el sector del videojuego a los “doctores” Ray Muzyka y Greg Zeschuk (denominación que se debe a que estudiaron juntos Medicina en la Universidad de Alberta). Como productores co-ejecutivos trabajaron inspirándose en uno de los éxitos del momento, MechWarrior, para darnos un simulador de acción en primera persona a bordo de “mechas”. Y el experimento salió bien. Tanto, que daría paso a que, dos años después, empezaran a aparecer los primeros bastiones de la compañía, como el mítico Baldur’s Gate.





 uy pocos podrían haber predicho que el “remake” de un videojuego de Commodore 64 pasaría a convertirse en la primera producción de la que ahora conocemos como Blizzard Entertainment. Y es que sus fundadores (recién salidos de la Universidad de California), tuvieron unos orígenes modestos, basados en la creación de hasta siete “ports” antes de inmiscuirse en sus propios diseños. De hecho, RPM Racing fue un título de carreras programado por una sola persona bajo un microprocesador 65816 en cinco meses, convirtiéndose -por cierto- en el primer videojuego estadounidense para Super Nintendo.

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