About two-thirds of the way through Binary Domain, the player enters the evil Amada Corporation’s tower of evil. It’s a sleek, modern, generic company headquarters. The player walks by a bathroom and a teammate, Shindo, halts the team’s progress so he can step inside to make use of it. During this time, security attacks the rest … Continue reading A Place of Refreshment: A reading of the bathroom scene in Binary Domain
Between review games I’ve been picking away at Deus Ex: Human Revolutions. It’s a game with a fair share of problems: the shoehorned-in boss fights completely break the game’s tone, its plot and characters are wafer-thin, some of the character designs are a self-parody and it’s clumsy with some of its more complicated themes. Still, … Continue reading “We’re helping people, Adam”: Deferring Responsibility in Deus Ex: Human Revolutions
This week I wrote about the uncomfortable dissonance created by the violence in recent releases like Tomb Raider and Bioshock Infinite (“Killing Spree: The Inconsistency of Video Game Violence.” PopMatters. May 7 2013). Both of these games try to treat murder as a profound horror while at the same time making shooty fun and sweet … Continue reading Just Killing in Binary Domain
Pfft. Shooters are so lame. They’re all the same thing anymore. They’re all just the same game following the same gruff testosterone-poisoned manfridge from chest-high wall to chest-high wall committing a genocide against Hitler or Hitler-eque aliens. They aren’t nearly as original as your average RPG or point-and-click adventure game or platformer or action game … Continue reading The Shooter Can Do Anything
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