The Right Combination

This came up as an ad for Steam sales.

 Could be a wild guess but i think this placement may have been intentional. 

We live in a digital world

In recent years, it has become clear that downloading games have increasingly become a standard - Why would you bother with a physical copy when one can legally purchase and download games from many providers like Steam and XBLA?

I however am viewing such a revolution with a degree of caution. My beef is that is increasingly become compulsory: Sure I can buy a game from a store but what I am ultimately purchasing is not the install disc I was after. The actual installation, so it would seem, involves downloading some monstrously huge exe that seems far bigger than the actual disc would hold. So a physical copy is thus no more than an installation code.

I'm not entirely against digital download - far from it. I would gladly pay for a game that is of a small size (ie Limbo's 98.9mb space) as opposed to some leviathan that chews up a large amount of hard drive space and takes forever to download (ie Dragon Age Ultimate's 23+ gig space).

Speaking as a survivor from the 8 and 16 bit eras, I recall there was a sharp divide between Computer and Console gaming. And one of the major advantages for Consoles was it it didn't have to contend with the load times that plagued the Computer camp - instead it provided games instantaneously. This the advent of the CD era struck me as kinda odd as it introduced load times to Consoles and was, to me, a regressive step from the Consoles' draw-card.
The reason I am bring this up is that people have been talking up the instantaneous nature of digital downloading. But for me, instantaneous does not mean spending more time waiting for the download to complete than actually playing the game.

And if I'm spending more time waiting for the game to download than playing it  then something has gone very wrong

Lost in Limbo

Recently I built up a lot of discount coupons with Steam so I put them into use - one such game I got, and have since beaten, is Limbo.

This is not the first time I've encountered Limbo. Looking back at my original post there isn't a lot I can add to it. I can rave on and on about the atmosphere all I can want there's plenty of other people here online who can do that.

I can tell you what I didn't like though: I hate timing puzzles and the puzzles that require split-second perfect jumps. And unfortunately for, me there's quite a few of them in this game. And something has indeed gone wrong, when I should be feeling a sense of dread but I'm actually doing is shouting at the computer screen.
Also I'm annoyed at the Steam version in that a) the achievements don't work and b) the option the XBLA version had of blacking out the deaths isn't available. The latter is particular off-putting as I liked how the deaths cut to black - seeing them play out in front of me seems to lose something completely.

Still, Limbo is great and I'm glad to have finally played it all the way through. Contains more dread, foreboding, and fear than any zombie game can cook up I can tell you...

A lost child

Today I was in a book store where I noticed a new edition to the book 1001 games you must before you die. It must've been new as they included more recent games like Limbo and Red Dead Redemption. However, much like the previous edition, Ico is still excluded.

Okay seriously guys, you really need to get with the program: Ico is the greatest game ever made and it's exclusion is beyond baffling. Come on, Peter Molyneux referenced it in his introduction! If Ico is being looked over then I seriously question the book's claims of being being selected by a range of respected critics

Limbo Rock

Last week, I was at my friend's place. It's a weekly thing, where a group of friends get together and watch Xena:Warrior Princess and play console games. This particular evening, we were all playing the recent XBLA darling, Limbo.
I say all of us, becuase we took it in turns to solve problems and provided solutions - and one some occasion share shouts of surprise/horror.

So what do I think of Limbo? Well, I'm quite impressed: Comparisons to Ico are somewhat inevitable but I can see similarities in the creation of atmosphere, the usage of subtly, the strength in simplicity and a different spin being but on the tried-and-tested 'rescue the princess' gaming formula. I like the use of black and white graphics - Indeed, it works in such an effective way, it makes you wonder why a B/W template isn't done more often. The atmosphere makes way for a tension that is paper-thin. Indeed, there were some genuinely frightening moments that made me jump out of my seat - particularly with those moments involving the spiders. And as strange as it may sound, having the option of cutting out the death scenes in favor of an abrupt cut to black makes the game all the better for it. And when a game provokes such a reaction you know you're onto something good.

Funnily enough, it is kind of interesting to see how a horror game can really bring people together. Indeed, there is some fun value in making a joint effort to escape a haunted house or something: You know, one person is using the controller whilst other people are frantically shouting out instructions to prevent certain doom.
Just like any zombie apocalypse horror movie shows, there's nothing like a crisis situation to bond people together.