A Viewpoint

This second and final part of The Dark Side of Videogames will focus on a personal experience on how videogames condition our psyches towards violence. Back in 2005 (or maybe 2006), when F.E.A.R came out, it quickly became one of my go-to videogame experiences, I was hooked from the onset----the gritty, realistic graphics (by the standards of it’s time), the visceral gameplay that seamlessly blended both surreal first person shooting mechanics and close combat martial arts thrills perfectly, and on top of all that, it’s horror infused story that had you trying to bring down a threat that you have absolutely no idea how to. Needless to say, it was one of the most promising videogame experiences and totally lived up to it’s premises and more. And even to this day, in the ‘lists’ of most memorable FPS’ of the past decades, you’ll most likely find F.E.A.R popping up in them. Anyway, there was a certain level in the game which gave you a pretty unique kind of weapon—instead

The MCU is now officially the biggest movie franchise of all time and they’ve completely earned every bit of their supermassive success. The greatest thing the Marvel films did lies not in their sheer cinematic spectacles but in their delicate balancing act which focused on it’s characters’ super-heroism as well as their human vulnerabilities, simultaneously humanizing these super heroes on a level that’s both relatable and heartfelt for us. This is the real key to their success—they made those fictional characters feel real and brought them closer to the audience with their individual emotional journeys, character arcs and resolutions. It’s what makes the MCU both universal and intimate, at the same time. To make us feel for it’s characters so deeply is the real success of these films and that’s what’s responsible for bringing back the audiences into the theaters for multiple viewings. However, when viewed from a purely cinematic standpoint, it’s also not hard to see that

Videogames are infinitely more than just interactive-audio-visual trips and they have more than proved themselves as an equally capable medium with much meaning and impact as all the rest of the entertainment mediums out there. But there’s also another side to videogames that gets rarely highlighted and as gamers, we’ve somewhat grown to almost gloss over it completely. Yes we’re talking about the darker aspect of videogames, the part about it’s gratifying and unnecessarily-excessive mechanics of violence and over-indulgence in all kinds of moral deviations. Videogames, from the sole viewpoint of the player, are psychological experiences. Simply because in a videogame, we play with our minds . And even though they are interactive in nature and have a complex inner structure, but what videogames ultimately affect us on, is on a purely mental level, and from there, they also leave a deep footprint that stays with us long after we’re out of it. So yes, videogame

In the 'Anatomy of Videogames' series of articles, we’ve seen how a videogame works on a skeletal level—from it’s interconnected design elements that form the ‘mechanics’ of a game and the underlying design philosophies that’s responsible for it’s thematic significance. So we’ve come to a point of understanding as to how the entire videogame experience is ‘built’, from the inside-out. And this article is about what makes a videogame truly great in the first place, what is it that lies in the DNA of games such as Half Life 2, Dragon Age Origins, Batman: Arkham City, Mass Effect 2, Bioshock that makes these games stand in the highest echelons of the videogame experience. What is the secret element that’s responsible for them being so endearing, rich and finally, what makes us still replay these games and want to get lost in their worlds. This article will explore the fundamental reason for the success of ANY videogame, why is it that a game sticks with us for ye

Although there exist plenty of reviews, critical analysis and all other forms of ‘verdicts’ on any videogame, there’s only one ultimate form of judgement that stands above all of them—Time. How much a videogame stands in respect to time is the one ultimate yardstick that holds true, all the time (pun intended). It means that no matter what the critics say, no matter what the numbers are—in our hearts, the greatest games are simply those that we find ourselves keep coming back to, with time. Time also shows ultimately what truly matters in a videogame—it’s always the gameplay and the sheer amount of fun that it allows the player to get out of from the game. Graphics get ‘older’ with time, as well as most other design elements that form the ‘exteriors’ of a game, but it’s the core of a game (which is the gameplay) that’s single handedly responsible for whether it still holds playability or not, over time. That’s why only the truly great games stand the test of Time, while the res

Avengers Endgame is a movie about payoffs, it’s not just the culmination of the Infinity Saga that started with 2012’s The Avengers, but it also serves as the closing chapter to many of the characters whose journey started with 2008’s Iron Man. So whether you’ve been following the MCU ever since then or from any later point, whether you are a causal fan of the connected cinematic Universe or a die-hard comic lover who is heavily invested in the journey of these characters, you should definitely watch Endgame, simply cause there’s going to be massive payoffs for you that you’ll find both deeply satisfying and rewarding. So yes, Avengers Endgame is worth your watching. But how much is it worth, whether it feels rewarding to watch multiple times (like the first Avengers film was) or is it just another Marvel flick that’s hugely entertaining but fails to be memorable in the long run, is what this review is going to be all about. Avengers Endgame, in many ways, is the grand