A great thread on r/games right now features recollections of levels so frustrating, or difficult, or obnoxious that they prevented gamers from returning for a second playthrough. There are some classics, like the “Cortana” level of Halo 3, the Water Temple in Ocarina of Time, and the descent into B
We told you about Jack Lumberjack last April, then we recommended it to you in our Playlist. It’s just as fun as a game about a grief-mad lumberjack taking his revenge on trees sounds like it would be. It turns out Owlchemy Labs had bigger plans that we thought. They took a copy of the game to the 2
If you think about human death vis-à-vis World of Warcraft, you probably think of the unfortunate 2006 incident in which a guild raided the digital funeral of a player from a rival guild who had died of a stroke. That story was one of those things that you tried not to think too hard about, so poten
Descent broke my vestibular system and I didn’t care. The mid 90s spaceship-trapped-in-mining-bases shooter is famous for its “six degrees of freedom” – essentially, you can flip over and up and around whenever you want. I got stomach-sick every time I played it and I kept playing anyways. A hero of
We’ll render a verdict on Halo 4 next week, when everyone has had a chance to calm down and we’ve had a chance to venture into the terrifying darkness of Lower Manhattan, where our copy of the game rests, very much unlooted. In the meantime, if you need to get excited for the game, Joystiq has you c
In the past few weeks, we’ve told you about some pretty heady political games: the Redistricting Game and Randy Chase’s forgotten but classic Doonesbury Election Simulator. But maybe you want a political game that is a little simpler, one that features less thinking and more smashing. Well, Bam Bam,
I played Amnesia: The Dark Descent alone, on a couch in my old studio apartment in lower Manhattan. Some fish live there now, but nevermind. Anyhow, the apartment was basically a room with no insulation from the city, so I felt like I lived in the middle of Second Avenue. It was not a particularly p
Disney owns Lucasarts; a hurricane nearly drowned humble Kill Screen; a robot may be president in a week. These are times of frightening and great change, but, dear reader, as I just remembered, the greatest changes present the greatest opportunities. I would never do something as crass as to sugge
Reviews of the new Assassin’s Creed game are out, and they are mixed (we’ll have our take as soon as we get off of the ark. The goats and the zebras are trying to mate and we keep shouting at them, FERTILE offspring. Cabin fever? Cabin fever.) It’s still another blockbuster game this fall – after Re
Chances are if you see a Kill Screener on his or her phone in the office these days, they aren’t texting. They are playing Punch Quest, the free-to-play infinite PUNCHER. The point of the game is that stuff keeps getting in your way, and you keep punching it. In a way it’s like you are a quest, of p
It is an inherent fact of games that the player will identify with the play-character; the act of playing literally requires it. Perhaps, though, it’s time to realize that creating characters to identify with and characters to empathize with are two hugely different things. Maciej Szczesnik, lead ga
Kill Screen HQ is boarded up. We’ve stocked up on beans, candles, masking tape and buoyant 16-bit cartridges, and two of every animal. It’s like Tokyo Jungle, but in Brooklyn! Lots of aspirational facial hair. At any rate, the big one is almost here. And this got us thinking about bad weather in vi
While our basic insect/arthropod policy at Kill Screen is EWWWW EWWWWW KILL IT GENOCIDE, we are making an exception for the delightful new browser game Incredipede. In it, you play as a fairly uncoordinated eyeball named Quozzle with the ability to grow insect limbs, which are the levers you use to
We here at Kill Screen have had a love affair with sling shots since we first laid eyes on a plucky elf with a wedge of wood and flawless aim: Then we grew up. The slingshot made attempts sure; once I saw a forty dollar oak sligshot on the counter at a J. Crew, but it looked uncomfortable, and I fel
Minecraft was the most popular game on Xbox Live for the week of October 15. More popular than Call of Duty and FIFA. Yep.
RAGE Control takes away a player’s ability to shoot enemies if his/her heart rate gets too high: Dr Simone Fox, a clinical and forensic psychologist, and a senior lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London, said it was important to use this type of technology to demonstrate to children why the
Long story short: Robert Florence’s piece lambasting swag-hungry game journos called out one in particular, who publically defended her right to enter a raffle for a free PS3 at the Games Media Awards. Lauren Wainwright’s (who, it turns out, does undisclosed work for major game studios in addition t
Leigh Alexander’s column today in Gamasutra bites off a lot — games literacy, game awards, and the evolution of game writing. It’s hard to disagree, though, with the argument that holds the piece together: gaming culture doesn’t properly distinguish between vastly different quantities (casual gaming
That’s not a joke. Japanese company Cyberdyne announced a new human-worn robot suit that can assist movment: – – – “Robot Suit HAL” is a cyborg-type robot that can supplement, expand or improve physical capability. When a person attempts to move, nerve signals are sent from the brain to the muscles
Yesterday, Unfinished Swan mastermind Ian Dallas told our Yannick LeJacq that deliberate humor in games is hard. He didn’t say anything, however, about pre-release mockumentary trailers. Rad Dragon, the indie behind Shove Pro, a new chase-scene and shove game, released this week a short about their
The Electronic Software Ratings Board announced a new, streamlined way to rate the flood of digital-download games washing into the market: The ESRB’s new “Digital Rating Service” gives developers and publishers access to a “brief but detailed online questionnaire” to define a product’s content, age
The INTERNET reacted with great anger and furious vengeance when we published Ben Richardson’s mixed-to-negative review of Dishonored. You know what? We felt a little bullied. But then! Penny Arcade said the exact same thing, in succinct, comic form. And then! Internet treasure Yahtzee agreed. So
Michael Abbott has an essential post at Brainy Gamer today about the state of game writing as it relates to the experience of playing indie games. Game writing, he argues, has ossified into shorthand that does not capture what it is to play truly new-feeling games: What emerges is a stark and narrow
Edge reports that digital versions of popular board games, created to serve the booming tablet audience, have greatly boosted sales: While the popularity of the boardgame has never been in question, the growing number of touchscreen enabled devices – and the broad market reach of those products – ha
