Published in SUPERJUMP·PinnedThe Walls of ControlThe walls of The Oldest House are a veritable pressure cooker, a place of almost unbearable unknowns — Remedy has accomplished something so many before have failed to do: craft a world that feels consistently inconsistent, a place governed by a set of rules far, far beyond our mortal comprehension. Rules we can feel but never truly know. That feeling — that sense you can nearly almost define…Gaming5 min read
Published in SUPERJUMP·PinnedVideo Games Have Become the Soundtracks to Our LivesDigital experiences can leave indelible marks on the story of the self — Video games propose a thousand ways to be. We live, we breathe, we dream the experiences they gift to us — either across an eight-hour campaign as the titular hero or through months as an alter ego in massively-multiplayer world. Become what you want, when you want. Become a beefed-up…Features5 min read
Published in SUPERJUMP·PinnedThe Original Video Game SandboxReflections on a time when play experiences were uninterrupted by ubiquitous, invasive connectivity — Video games used to be a meditative experience. It was just you and the box, with controller and cord as the connective tissue. Those thoughts — those pesky mental constructs — vanished to the experience in the moment. It’s why there’s a soothing silence to consoles of yore. It’s…Technology5 min read
Published in SUPERJUMP·PinnedThe Dystopia for Our TimesNieR: Automata’s opening hours are an eerie parallel to our post-virus world — Everything is changing. The advent of COVID-19 is transforming how we live now — and how we might live for years to come. The world we knew yesterday won’t be the world we know tomorrow. In NieR:Automata, everything has already changed. The sun shines on a desolate land, a place…Gaming5 min read
Published in SUPERJUMP·Dec 14, 2021With Halo Infinite, Smart Has Become the New SpectacularDoing Halo better than ever before — Let’s get to it, then: Halo Infinite’s fledgling multiplayer is properly brilliant. It’s all the bang-bang, pew-pew, pop-pop action you’d expect from the daddy of the modern console shooter — one about armoured punks fighting in an arbitrary life-and-death contest with really big guns on some intergalactic real estate.Videogames5 min read
Published in SUPERJUMP·Jul 23, 2021The Bold and the Braveus: A Look Back at Final Fantasy’s Teenage YearsThe famous franchise had its share of growing pains — We used to be the parents. We were their guardian angels, the commander of our own private army of ensemble characters with wild hair and crazy costumes who burped giant boxes of text from their mouths as they talked about giant monsters and time-travelling wizards.Gaming6 min read
Published in SUPERJUMP·Jul 21, 2021When Mass Effect Neutered the Reapers, and We Didn’t CareWhy world-building and narrative supersede inconsistency in the message — In Mass Effect, the Reapers are absolute killing machines. Waaaaaaah, they cry, telling you just how killy they really are — and presumably that they’re going to be killy at you, too. …Gaming6 min read
Published in SUPERJUMP·Jul 12, 2021Metal Gear Solid 2: The Original Next-Generation Video GameLooking back at Kojima’s enigmatic second “Solid” entry — So, like, in Metal Gear Solid 2, there’s this guy who attached another guy’s arm to his very much arm-free elbow. The transplant apparently included a hidden extra: the spirit of a dead terrorist who’s the genetically identical twin of this guy’s sworn enemy. …Gaming5 min read
Feb 26, 2021Do you think its possible to make suffering before death a happy thing?Do you think its possible to make suffering before death a happy thing? Or, at least, a less terrible thing?1 min readDo you think its possible to make suffering before death a happy thing? Or, at least, a less terrible thing?----
Published in SUPERJUMP·Feb 16, 2021The Fiction of the Video Game Power FantasyThe pursuit of power in our gaming lives — Be the better of your world and everything in it — that’s power. The child staying up past bedtime, the worker telling their boss to get lost: people enacting their will and breaking the rules, free from comeuppance and consequence. …Gaming5 min read
