random recreational reflections
For all the exploitative design, games provide solid female characters, too.
Happy International Women’s Day! Female gaming characters don’t have a reputation for being feminist-friendly, but there are many exceptions. In that regard, allow me to highlight a few of my favorites.
Continue reading “Top 3 female gaming characters”Let F# types guide you to better user experiences and stopping terrorists.
Boolean logic is central to many business rules. But sometimes it’s not enough to know whether a chain of conditions evaluates to true or false; we might want to know which of the conditions failed. F#, unsurprisingly, lets us model this in a very succinct, composable, and completely type-safe way. But there are pitfalls – sometimes, a seemingly simple and pure function just won’t cut it.
Cradle is an interesting and imperfect narrative puzzle that may or may not be a tad bit too smart for me.
You know you should prepare your mental faculties for a potentially challenging experience when the development studio is a Ukranian four-man team called Flying Cafe for Semianimals.
Their first game, Cradle, is a first-person exploratory sci-fi adventure released in 2015, and a game I find rather difficult to review. One reason is the game’s short length making it hard to avoid spoilers (which I also experienced when reviewing Abzû). But more importantly, I get the distinct feeling that the game had some deeper layers that were lost on me. Regardless, quite a bit can safely be said, and there are a few bones I’d like to pick.
Continue reading “Review: Cradle”Good storytelling trumps impressive graphics any time.
My game backlog continues to shrink (albeit slowly, having had to prioritize other stuff the last few months), and two more games can now be struck from the list. With one of them being depressingly boring and another being quite short, I opted for one more round of mini-reviews – which, looking at my current backlog, will probably be the last pair of mini-reviews in a good while.
Continue reading “Mini-reviews: Rise of the Tomb Raider and Firewatch”Neither gets my unreserved recommendation, but one of them can certainly be worth a closer look.
Another warm summer’s day, another two games completed. (Hey, don’t judge.)
I think the mini-review format I experimented with in yesterday’s thoughts on Abzû and Manual Samuel worked quite well, allowing me to jot down some thoughts on my experiences with them without having to spend too long writing a proper review critically observing any and all aspects of the games. With a few more fairly short games on my backlog, I figured I’d repeat the format. Today I’ll be looking at a first-person shooter with a distinct twist, and a first-person puzzle game desperately wishing it was Portal.
Continue reading “Mini-reviews: Superhot and The Turing Test”Two great, short and very different games for a rainy day (or a sunny one, I’m not judging).
Having “saved up” games for six months, my backlog of games has started to grow, and while I like to put my thoughts to the paper, I also want to prioritize actually playing games during the summer holidays. Since several of the games are also very short, mini-reviews seemed to be a good solution.
Continue reading “Mini-reviews: Abzû and Manual Samuel”While not perfect, Owlboy is masterfully crafted on all levels and is well worth experiencing.
Originally announced in 2008 and released in late 2016, Owlboy is a pixel-art platformer almost a decade in the making. It’s developed by D‑Pad Studio, an indie developer based in Askøy just outside my hometown Bergen, and was very well received by the international game press upon release, with a Metacritic score of 88 – no small feat seeing that Norway isn’t exactly known for internationally acclaimed games (those of FunCom being notable exceptions).
Lest you worry that the developer’s geographical proximity to yours truly will impact this review, do not fret – I will hold this game to the same high bar for what I consider worth spending my time on exceedingly high ethical standards I always have when reviewing games.
Step-by-step development of one of my images.
I thought I’d start something new on this blog: Writing about how I’ve post-processed some of my photos. First out is my recent image “Olsvik church in sunset”.
Continue reading ““Olsvik church in sunset” post-processing”Ideals and patronizing Microsoft policies be damned – I’m coming back to you, Windows.
Every few years, I have a brief stint with Linux as my primary operating system (dual booting with Windows for gaming etc.). Each time I try Linux, I hope “they” have finally fixed all the little annoying details that made me quit last time. And this time, I thought it was finally for real, and I lasted longer than ever before. But in the end, like every other time, I left disappointed.
Continue reading “Linux – I’m giving up again”Like so many other open-world games, The Witcher 3 is way too big for its own good.
I’ve long been a fan of Andrzej Sapkowski’s world of The Witcher, centering on the professional monster slayer Geralt of Rivia who tries and utterly fails to stay away from grand politics, intrigue and conspiracies. Having enjoyed Sapkowski’s seven novels and CD Project Red’s first two games in the series, I was looking forward to the much hyped third installment. To quote its product page on Steam, it boasts of a large open world “full of meaningful choices and impactful consequences”, and I’ve traditionally quite liked those kinds of games. What could go wrong?
Continue reading “Review: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt”
