RPS Feature A beautiful b-movie
There’s been a lot of talk about INSIDE‘s [official site] beauty and poignancy, and I don’t disagree with any of that, but my own appreciation of it was for another reason. I thought it was bloody funny, in the malevolent manner of Evil Dead 2 or Braindead. Inside is a horror videogame, yes, but it’s also an extremely cheeky videogame.
N.B. here be FULL SPOILERS.
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RPS Feature And bowed
Concluding – for now, at least – a short, primarily in-character chronicle of adventures in The Witcher 3. Please be aware that this entry contains spoilers for ‘The Bloody Baron’ line of sub-quests, though does not reference the wider story. Please also be aware that it covers subjects which some readers may find upsetting.
He’s a monster. Everything I know about him, everything he’s admitted to – I should strike him down where he stands. But all I want to do is put my arm around him and say how sorry I am.
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If you’d rather not read spoilers on whether a cool mod exists, you’d better stop reading this sentence right now because – SPOILERS – it does. If you’d rather not be spoiled as to the name of that mod, you’d probably be better off not reading the rest of this post, really. Because – SPOILERS – it’s called the Blue Frog mod. It’s for Spelunky, and it turns every character sprite in that game – the player, plants, bats, exploding frogs, the ghost, everything – into the blue frog sprite. That sounds initially dumb, but actually it’s clever and great. If you don’t want spoilers as to why, you definitely shouldn’t read on.
RPS Feature Haroooooooo
Two Smiths and one Meer gather to discuss the latest episodic adventure game from Telltale (they of the recent Walking Dead series). The Wolf Among Us is based on the comic series Fables, and concerns folk from fairytales carving out a noirish life in the big city. It also concerns MURDER MOST HORRID. You should perhaps read Adam’s thoughts yesterday for a more fulsome summary, but moreso you should have played the game, for this here article is awash in the dreaded SPOILERS.
Are you sitting comfortably, or at least in a way that won’t cause you back problems in later life? Then we’ll begin.
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RPS Feature The scary crow, the tin soldier and the cowardly lion
The following theory is not true, but it could be. It’s surely no accident that BioShock Infinite often evokes The Wizard of Oz – there’s even an early stage of the game named after it. Even so, the similarities, be they deliberate or coincidental, run deeper than a turn-of-the-century character being mysteriously transported to an amazing world of technology and magic. Once I started down the yellow brick road of looking for parallels between Dorothy’s adventure in Oz and Booker’s adventure in Columbia, I couldn’t stop – I identified what seemed to be dozens of them. Am I onto something, or am I projecting? It doesn’t matter – this is purely a thought experiment, not a claim to accuracy, and I’m entirely sure you could achieve a similar effect by comparing Binfinite to Star Wars or the Bible or Peppa Pig. I’m doing this for fun. Mostly.
Also, SPOILERS UNBOUND. Do not read past this point if you haven’t completed the game. (Or if you somehow haven’t seen/read The Wizard of Oz). If you have, fire up Dark Side of the Moon and let’s go off to see the wizard.
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RPS Feature Defending The Ending (DefEnding)
The obsession with endings is a peculiar one. Perhaps it’s a result of having been indoctrinated by a lifetime of movies with “surprise twists”, or stories so poorly written that they rely on their final hook. But however we’ve come to this place, it’s one that fails to recognise the real pleasure of being told a story. Mass Effect 3 tells a story, and I’m here to defend it.
All it takes is a TV show for everything and everyone to want a manly hug from you. Bigpoint’s free-to-play MMO is the third game I’m aware of that’s based on George RR Martin’s easily spoiled fantasy doorstops, A Song of Ice and Fire, but it’s the one that’s interesting me the most. It plonks you right in the middle of Westeros during the first book’s timeframe at a very specific moment, and gives you everywhere from the North to the South to explore. The Lannisters, Baratheons and Starks are all scrabbling to grasp flicking tail of power (can you guess why?), and you can either take a side and get involved in the political PvP backstabbery, or wander the land headbutting the environment in PvE. Actual spoilers below.
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