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  • Softballchic10

    An Open Letter to Ellie and Joel

    By Softballchic10

    There are certain games that come along from time to time that really get your attention. It could be for the action, the graphics or game play. However, it is a rare occasion that a game grabs you for all of these, plus the amazing experience of becoming emotionally attached and involved in the actions of characters. It is to this that I write this open letter to Ellie and Joel. I met them in the “The Last of Us.” *(Please note that I've tried to write this to contain no spoilers.
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Video Game Review ? The Beatles: Rock Band (PS3)

Get The Beatles: Rock Band from Amazon.com So, a while back I played, and reviewed, the first major rhythm game to be based around a particular rock band – Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. I reviewed it almost a year ago,  and I didn’t think it was all bad. Well, this year I’ve picked up Harmonix’s take on the concept. With the game I reviewed a year ago, Neversoft took the Guitar Hero series, took some of Aerosmith’s hit tracks and put some relevant tracks by other artists around it. Harmonix’s philos
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The Goggles, They Do Everything

I’m sure it’s happened to you: you’re playing a game and you come across a weapon, or ability, or game mechanic that you just love, and you wish you could use it all the time. Only you can’t, because the developer has placed restrictions on it in the name of balance. It’s understandable that you can only use the at the end of Half-Life 2, it being the most powerful weapon in the game. Valve know that restricting its usage makes it more fun to unleash on the Combine.Where does the designer’s
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Quality Control ? Arcana

Get Arcana for the SNES from eBay The problem with picking RPGs for Quality Control picks is I often don’t have the time I need to give it the consideration it deserves. Normally, when I’m reviewing a platformer or some other, more traditional game, I’m able to beat the game in an emulator in a day – or at least get far enough in the game that I can get a pretty good feel for the game. Not so with most RPGs – so I basically had to play this game over a weekend (though you can’t tell, because I
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Where I Read ? Nintendo Power #37

We’re continuing on to Nintendo Power #37 for June of 1992. Our cover story is Lemmings. No, not the lead singer and bassist of Motorhead, that’s Lemmy – I meant Lemmings. Clean out your ears. The call for letters this issue were for feedback about the changes in the magazine. The responses are generally favorable, though we do get a complaint about the George Column, saying that it’s wasted space that could used be for more strategy guides, adding “I don’t care about two guys opinions on vi
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Where I Read ? Electronic Gaming Monthly #98

We continue on with Electronic Gaming Monthly #98 for September of 1997. No, I still don’t have issue number #100 – I wish I did. Our cover story for this issue is Tomb Raider 2, and they’re playing up the game’s sex appeal pretty heavily. Right inside the cover we have a gorgeous two-page spread advertisement for Final Fantasy VII, of the big cutscene with Sephiroth removing the Jenova statue. While the graphics haven’t aged incredibly well, I still think it looks nice. It’s also one of the f
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Movie Review ? Dear Zachary

Get "Dear Zachary" at Amazon.com There are 4 kinds of documentary that I like. There are nature documentaries, particularly of the bent of PBS’s Nature, and David Attenborough’s wildlife programs, as well as the work of the National Geographic Society. There are Historical documentaries, particularly stuff like the American Experience, as well as stuff like the Connections series and some documentaries like One Day in September. There are Journalistic documentaries, such as the material from PB
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Limbus

Note: This is Day 5 of “The Whispered World Week” at The Slowdown, and wraps up our coverage on the game and its creator for the time being. Big thanks for reading, and let us know what you thought in the comments section! The Whispered World is finally out today in most of Europe. North American fans will have to wait a little longer still, as Viva Media pushes the game out the door next Monday. We hope this week’s coverage of the game has been informative and that you will all be able to enj
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Quality Control ? Xardion

Get Xardion from eBay So, for this week’s Quality Control pick, I chose a mecha action game that had caught my eye earlier in my magazine recaps. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get past the second level, even with the use of save states. This isn’t due to difficulty, precisely, as much as it related to an obstacle in the level that I was supposed to destroy to progress, but the obstacle wouldn’t be destroyed, no matter how much I hit it. So, I really wasn’t able to progress enough in the game
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Interview with The Whispered World Designer Marco Hüllen

Note: This is Day 3 of “The Whispered World Week” at The Slowdown. Check back for more tomorrow! Maro Hüllen, with Pet In today’s interview, we talk to the original designer and primary illustrator of The Whispered World, Marco Hüllen (on the right), in the hopes of shedding more light on the curiouser details of the development process of the game – especially, on details that are still left uncertain for non-German audiences. After all, German fans of the adventure game have had the priv
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Ebert: "Video Games Can Never Be Art". Areala: "BULLSHIT!"

You know what? I'm sick and tired of this decades-old mantra being trotted out by every two-bit critic who can't even be arsed to involve himself or herself with the object of his/her derision. I honestly thought we were past this nonsense when Roger Ebert first decided to throw the idea that video games cannot be art out into the open years ago. One would have assumed that the immense number of people (both gamers and developers alike) who took offense at this might have made him re-think hi
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The Secret History of the Whispered World

Note: This is Day 2 of “The Whispered World Week” at The Slowdown. Check back for more tomorrow! Nothing is permanent in this wicked world – not even our troubles. –Charlie Chaplin Sometimes pictures are worth a thousand words. Other times, a video is worth these thousand words; once in a while, though, there comes a time when neither pictures, videos nor a thousand words can accurately portray a story. One such story, in more than one way, is that of The Whispered World, an apocalyptic f
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Where I Read ? Nintendo Power #36

We come now to issue #36 of Nintendo Power for March of 1992. While the cover shows that we have coverage in this issue of Contra III, the game that makes the cover is Darkwing Duck. As much as I like Darkwing Duck (in my opinion it was one of the best early 90s Disney animated TV series), I really think that Contra III would have been a better choice. For this issue’s letters column, the call is for letters asking which Nintendo character you would would want to be.</p> Darkwing D
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Where I Read ? Electronic Gaming Monthly #97

This week’s issue of EGM skips several more issues ahead due to another gap to issue #97 for August of 1997, and takes us to another Star Wars cover, for Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi, the first Star Wars fighting game and the last Star Wars fighting game until the Clone Wars fighting game for the Wii. For the editorial column of this issue, we get an piece from Ed Semrad looking back at the history of EGM as the magazine approaches it’s 100th issue.</p>No, I don’t have their 100
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The Whispered World Week

Note: This is Day 1 of “The Whispered World Week” at The Slowdown. Check back for more tomorrow! Cover Art This week, after a brief stretch of inactivity, The Slowdown prepares to turn its knobs to full blast with five days solely dedicated to the German-made, apocalyptic fantasy point and click adventure, The Whispered World! I consider this week, from the 19th to the 23rd, just as much a return to my gaming roots – the adventure game genre – as it is a gesture towards the game’s only true
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The Creator of Scratches Vows To Scare You Again

Some of you may not be familiar with Scratches, and if that's the case, then I pity you because you missed out on one of my favorite graphical adventure games of all time, and one of the creepiest games of 2006. It casts you as Michael Arthate, a horror novelist who hit paydirt with his first book and is now looking for a suitable atmosphere in which to complete his sophomore effort. His idea? Buy the oldest house he can find, and live there to let the atmosphere surround and penetrate him to
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DVD Review ? Bones Season 3

Get Season 3 of Bones from Amazon.com Crime Dramas tend to be serialized, unless they’re not. Yes, that sounds incredibly silly, but it’s generally true. The majority of crime dramas, whether of the soap opera variety or the serialized drama take the Dragnet/Law & Order tack of one case per episode, and it’s wrapped up at the end. Starting in the late 90s we finally started seeing much more serialized procedurals which would stretch a case out over several episodes, to a whole season, to ev
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Quality Control ? Town & Country 2: Thrilla?s Surfari

Get Thrilla's Surfari from eBay There are certain games which lend themselves very well to speed runs, and videos thereof.  For some of them, it’s because the game’s a non-linear game like Metroid, where the player has multiple ways in which they can jump ahead of the path and find various hidden items in the game. For other games, because of their visual style and speed of the game, they just fit in perfectly with this type of video–the classic example being Sonic the Hedgehog. When I saw the
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X-COM: The Re-Imagining

The reports of an X-COM remake have finally been confirmed by 2K Games, with a bit of a twist. XCOM, a “re-imagining” of the classic MicroProse series, is an FPS under development not at Irrational Games – as the unrelenting rumour went – but at 2K Marin, the studio behind BioShock 2. XCOM is the re-imagining of the classic tale of humanity’s struggle against an unknown enemy that puts players directly into the shoes of an FBI agent tasked with identifying and eliminating the growing threa
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Where I Read ? Nintendo Power #35

We’re moving on to Nintendo Power issue #35 for April of 1992. Our cover story is WWF Super Wrestlemania, and for those not keeping track, Hulkamania is still running wild in the WWF, and will continue to do so for at least another year or so, before jumping ship to WCW. Our letters column asks, “What would you do for an SNES?” There responses err on the side of the insanely absurd. Captain America & The Avengers Guide So, Iron Man & The Vision have been kidnapped by the Red Sku
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Where I Read ? Electronic Gaming Monthly #90

So, this week we have another gap in my EGM archive, carrying us from #84 last week all the way to issue #90, for January of 1997. Our cover story for this issue is the upcoming home console release of Mechwarrior 2. We also get an ad for the home console release of Tekken 2 for the Playstation. Our editorial column for this issue is from Joe Funk, about the Battle of Hoth level in Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire for the N64. I cannot argue with that. I can try, but there wouldn’t be any
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Film Review ? Call of Cthulhu (2005)

Get "The Call of Cthulhu" at Amazon.com When I entered Middle School, I started reading the works of HP Lovecraft. If you’re a fan of Horror, especially horror in the vein of the fantastic, you probably know some of Lovecraft’s works, without actually reading them. Lovecraft has inspired many a horror writer and director, from John Carpenter (“In the Mouth of Madness”) to Steven King (“The Mist”). However, while homages to his work have been made off and on over time, direct adaptations of his
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Nintendo Power Then & Now

So, this week I reached issue #33 of Nintendo Power in the course of my recaps (part of Nintendo Power’s 4th year), so I decided to take a look at what Nintendo Power has become today, and see how it’s changed over the years. For the issues of Nintendo Power I’ve covered thus far, the magazine is, essentially, advertising for Nintendo, but very good advertising. Rather then simply spouting marketing ad copy at the gamers (who were generally children–though the letters column has shown some adul
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