Game Design & Dev

Welcome to the first part our final interview for Season One of State of Play with Brandon Bales!

We're thrilled to share with you our talk with David Jaffe, director and creative lead for such classics as Twisted Metal and God of War. Join us as we discuss David's humble beginnings in Sony's testing department, his work on the original Twisted Metal games (I & II), and the prevalence of gaming sequels.

The PlayStation Vita is officially upon us, and I've only one major complaint about it so far: I ain't got one. Luckily, I was made doubly fortunate last week by Toronto's own DrinkBox Studios, who not only managed to stave off my hunger for said portable console by putting one in my hands for an extended period, but also showed me their fine new platformer, Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack!

Here's the wrap-up of our talk with Braid designer Jonathan Blow!

Inside, we discuss games publishing, the constant stream of "sword dude" games, and where gaming is going...

The only interesting thing about NeverDead is that it's not actually as bad as it seems after you've beaten it. I don't mean that NeverDead is secretly a good game. It truly stinks, mostly for boring reasons—awkward and mushy controls, inconsistent mechanics, stock characters, vapid story. However, NeverDead leaves an even worse impression than it deserves to, because its concluding bosses exhibit excruciatingly stupid design.

Welcome back again! Here's Part Four of our fantastic discussion with Jonathan Blow, creator of Braid.

In this piece, you'll hear more about Braid's shifting story, we discuss fulfilling our own artistic expectations, and we get into his new game, The Witness!

We are back, baby, with Part Three of our (now) five part interview with Jonathan Blow. In this episode, we get more into trickery in game design, what is "fun," and design by committee.

It's unclear if Grim Fandango creator Tim Schafer intended to change the way games are financed or not, but his latest venture could have long-lasting repercussions on the hobby we all know and love.

There have been some genuinely scary horror games over the years - everything from Silent Hill and Fatal Frame to PC titles like Clive Barker's Undying and so on. Each has worked diligently to merge the idea of the horror narrative with compelling gameplay in order to craft experiences that keep gamers playing even while they cower in fear behind their controllers. As great as some of those have been, few have been as perfect as Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

On the strength of Matt Kaplan's review, I decided to grab Resistance 3. Kaplan didn't steer me wrong. Alongside solid gameplay, Resistance 3 delivers a compelling story about a man's journey through an interesting post-apocalyptic landscape. Like many other recent games, however, Resistance 3 flubs the ending, betraying its own tightly-crafted atmosphere.

Skyrim is a huge and uneven game, and I will be discussing many of its high points. In the spirit of getting the bad news out first, however, I want to discuss the game's secondary quest, concerning the civil war between the Imperial Legion and the Stormcloaks led by Jarl Ulfric of Windhelm. There is much to admire in the way this quest is set up, but as a world element and gameplay series it falls short in several respects.