The Sunday Papers
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Sundays are for catching up after a day of misadventure, and squeezing in a shortened Sunday Papers in between other activities. Onwards!
- Digitiser 2000 continues to be great, as Mr. Biffo writes about the Games Of [His] Years: PC, a look at some of the PC games that mattered to him.
- At PC Gamer, Tom Senior writes about the comforting fun of brainless games.
- At Polygon, Richard Moss spoke to developers about the feeling of imposter syndrome. The sense that at any moment you're going to be found out.
- Mariel Cartwright did a GDC talk last year in which she talked through the animation process for the game, covering details of how to make movements read and hits have impact. Interesting!
- This Civilization 5 'worst deity strategy' video is fun in ways I can't wholly summarise.
It was a revelation; we were two years away from Goldeneye on the N64 at that point, and there was nothing like it on the consoles. The buzz I got from seeing that main menu for the first time, from hearing that music, was tangible. As far as I was concerned, I was in Star Wars. It remains one of my favourite games of all time, and I don't think there has been a Star Wars game since which has so successfully evoked the spirit of the movies.
...just because a game lacks a worthwhile story doesn't mean it has nothing to give. I love the moment-to-moment monster-crushing of Diablo 3, but I've long since moved past the point where I have to learn new skill combinations or consider character builds too much. I like Dynasty Warriors 8 because I enjoy having amazing hair and inflicting 1000 hit combos on an army of enemy drones. Sometimes after a long day the idea of killing millions of cartoon characters seems appealing, even comforting, but I like to squeeze more into that time. I mean no disrespect to Dynasty Warrior's squealing guitar opera soundtrack, but I could be catching up on the latest episode of Serial while I blitz up Lu Bu with a giant bladed fan.
Schütze's friend had learned about it from a masterclass with John Powell, who wrote the musical scores for the "Bourne" films, "Kung Fu Panda," "How to Train Your Dragon" (for which he was nominated for an Academy Award) and dozens of other major motion pictures. Powell is one of the top composers in the movie business. Yet he felt like an impostor. Schütze was shocked. He couldn't believe it.
Music this week is the talk-sung The Leanover by Life Without Buildings, a Scottish indie band who sadly released just one album in 2001.