I’d only briefly played a few of the XCOM games, many years after they were released, and dismissed them pretty quickly as not my type of game. I picked up the new one after hearing so many good things about it and enjoying the demo, and it immediately hooked me. XCOM: Enemy Unknown is an old fashioned game that feels very modern, and I love how successful it’s being for doing so.
More …I don’t even know why I played so much Words With Friends. The more I played the more I became disillusioned with the core game: they took Scrabble, took out what made Scrabble great, and then put it on the iPhone. No longer was it a game of smarts and vocabulary, impressing your friends with big words - ‘is that even a word?’ - but instead a game of repeatedly putting down every combination of letters on the triple word score until the game decides that you’ve somehow come across a word. But every time I’d get that notification that my friend played a turn I’d have to go back and play.
More …Buying groceries with roommates, sharing bills, and splitting the check at restaurants seem to be a problem just waiting to be solved. Having to carry around cash is a pain enough, but now you’ve got to split change, remember who owes whom… I felt like, in our digital age, surely there’s a simple way to keep a tab between friends?
More …I managed to convince half a dozen friends to see The Master with me over the weekend. I knew it was reviewing well, it was a Paul Thomas Anderson film, and it apparently included some kind of critique of Scientology, so I decided I wanted to see it. I also avoided trailers and previews to try to go in with as few expectations as possible - though, considering I ended up bringing friends with the promise of ‘this movie is supposed to be great,’ perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea.
More …I meant to post about this earlier, but the whole controversy surrounding Steam Greenlight’s $100 fee took the attention away from what I consider to be the core issue with the service. Greenlight allows the gaming community to vote on which developer-submitted titles they wish to see on Steam, but I’m not sure it’s as successful as Valve is hoping. The reason (and I’m still working on the phrasing of this) is: people are stupid. Individuals may be smart but you get a large enough group of people together and you’ll see some pretty dumb things happening.
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