Glitch Faced

It has been just over a month since Animal Crossing New Leaf was unleashed upon North America; and, I have been playing it for nearly as long. I purchased the game on release day, something I don't do often for most games, simply because I had been a big fan of the series since it's original release on the Gamecube over ten years ago. For those of you not familiar with the series, Animal Crossing is a pretty simple game, it involves mostly performing little odd jobs here and there to earn Bells (the in game currency) in order to pay off a loan for the house you move in to. Along the way you make friends with your villagers (all of whom are a variety of animal species), take part in special holiday events, decorate the inside of your house, and work on providing a museum with pieces of art, fossils, fish, and bugs. It really doesn't sound too exciting when reading about it but it does have an oddly attractive nature. Regardless, I did not intend to write about what the gam...

Video games, since their inception into modern culture, have always made it a point to try and convey some semblance of a story to the player. And as the technology behind them advances, so does the complexity and richness of the stories they are telling us. In the early days of video games, the hardware had major limitations in how it would allow developers to tell their stories. We will take a look at a few examples of storytelling conventions in the past and then look at how they evolved into what we have available today. Space Invaders gives away the game's entire plot in two words. Because, seriously, who could tell what was really going on otherwise? The sprites in the game look bug creatures while the artwork on the cabinet showcases a frightening, glowing eyed Sasquatch. If a child were to play the game today with no idea of the title and on an arcade cabinet devoid of any artwork what they would make of it? The enemies look more like crabs and octopus while the ...