May, 2012

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m traveling for four weeks, returning in mid-June. During this period, I’m running a series of articles that take another look at some of the bigger releases of 2011, reassessing their impact outside of the release-schedule hype. Alice: Madness Returns proves two totally contradictory things. First, that a well-designed environment can sometimes be [...]

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m traveling for four weeks, returning in mid-June. During this period, I’m running a series of articles that take another look at some of the bigger releases of 2011, reassessing their impact outside of the release-schedule hype. While it was widely critically acclaimed at the time, in retrospect Arkham City feels like it [...]

Today, the Salvation Army released a game, playable in your web browser, to tie in with their Red Shield Appeal. This is how John Herring, direct marketing director at the Salvation Army Australia, spoke about the need for the game in an article at B&T: “Gen X and Y has always been elusive for us [...]

In fortnightly ‘Notes’, Game On presents a short, curated collection of games and links that don’t fit elsewhere. Games:  It’s the big name, heart-rate raising iPhone games like Ski Safari, Jetpack Joyride and Ziggurat that usually get the loudest praise from me. In practice, though, I obsess over these games for many weeks before gradually [...]

When Fez’s cute two-dimensional puffball, Gomez, opens a chest to claim a secret item, the camera rotates around him, his excitement visibly growing. When finally the item is revealed, Gomez leaps into the air, his mouth agape with pleasure. This animation is a pixel-perfect representation of nostalgic joy. The obvious reference point here is the Zelda series, which [...]

I was young enough in 1992 that when Wolfenstein 3D came out, I either didn’t know what it was or wasn’t allowed to play it. Nonetheless, it was still one of the first videogames I ever saw, on a neighbour’s computer some years later. Wolfenstein turned twenty years old on the 5th of May, last [...]

Today, some quotations about governments, funding and videogames: Interactive entertainment is increasingly becoming a more significant part of our cultural and creative production and will therefore play a more important role in expressing our cultural identity. The creative and technical expertise that the sector generates has the potential to make a significant contribution to Australia’s [...]

‘Notes’ is a new fortnightly section for Game On that presents a short, curated collection of games and links that don’t fit elsewhere. Games: When I first decided that Ski Safari would be the featured game in this fortnight’s notes, I felt like I had uncovered something few others had seen. At that stage (the [...]