A Viewpoint

        If there’s one videogame franchise that’s at the same time the most beloved while also being the most tragically heartwrenching, it’s Half Life—the granddaddy of the modern first person shooter experience whose DNA is ever present in almost all fps’ that came after it. Universally celebrated as one of the greatest games ever made, Half Life 2 was one of those seminal experiences that not only reshaped an entire genre, but also gaming in general. From Level Designs to Gameplay, from Character-focused-storytelling to rich, dynamic worldbuilding, from being one of the rare models of the 3-elements-fusion (merging Gameplay, Level Design and Storytelling) to inventive use of scripted sequences which were previously unseen and perhaps even unthinkable—Half Life 2 remains a masterclass in videogame design lesson relevant to this very day, which is 3 entire generations after it’s release. The Half Life saga continued through 2007’s Half Life 2: Episode 1 and 2...

It’s like a droplet in an Ocean that believes itself to be a separate entity and tries to conquer the Ocean not realizing it’s own insanity it’s dilemma is that it can’t really see that it’s not separate from the sea never was and never will be the droplet can’t ever understand the ocean it can only merge with it and see the Truth for what it is.

    Inside the core of all great videogames ever made, there are multiple inventive gameplay mechanics working their magic. And this article is about celebrating the most groundbreaking and influential gameplay mechanics that have, by virtue of their sheer ingenuity, also made way to an incredibly wide range of videogames. Ever since their debut, these 4 gameplay features have been adapted and implemented in so many different titles throughout the years that they’ve slowly carved their own footprints in videogame history, to the point that right now it's difficult to even imagine videogames without them.     4. Dynamic Cover: Before Gears of War introduced it’s Dynamic Cover system that allowed players to seamlessly move and position themselves in firefights without getting hit , there wasn’t much in terms of cover mechanism in both the first and third person shooter genres. They relied mostly on the good ol’ run-n-gun shooting and any element of cover w...

      Even though all videogames share the same 3 core Design Elements (namely Gameplay , Level Design and Storytelling ), some turn out as classics while most others simply can’t come close. And this article will attempt to explore the reason behind this with just as much detail as to not hinder an enjoyable reading experience too much. And for full breakdown of the Design Elements along with how they work together to create the videogame experience we all know and love, you can read up on the Anatomy of Videogames trilogy of articles. Besides, it’ll also help you comprehend this article fully. The difference between truly great games and the not-so-great ones lies solely in how the 3 Design Elements are working in them. We know that these work together in tandem to create the experience the devs intend, but in most games these elements merely support each other whereas in case of any great game ever made, the elements or at least some of them, completely fuse ...

  If you play the Guitar or just love to listen to it as an instrument, it’s impossible not to know Steve Vai—the virtuoso guitar Enigma who absolutely needs no introduction. But what makes him stand apart from other super shredder guitar Deities is that his virtuosity extends well beyond his technical prowess and to his compositional directions as well—making Vai’s decades spanning catalogue of otherworldly guitar works belonging to a genre that's as musically exquisite as unmistakably unique. His compositions aren’t just showcases of extreme dexterity and expressiveness on the fretboard, they’re also meticulously crafted, nuanced sonic arts which are beyond any pre-defined genre or even culture and probably has it’s roots in the unknowable depths of consciousness itself. What Vai has created throughout his works, is a whole new language of expression on the guitar that completely surpasses the limitations of the usual idiosyncrasy of the instrument while also taking the list...

  A game engine is responsible for the look and feel of any videogame—and that’s about the most oversimplified way they can be defined. It works, for the sake of enjoyment value of reading this article, to focus not on the technical backdrops of how game engines (essentially a network of many different softwares, each working together to translate the videogame experience from the developers end to the players’) work in all their magnificent detail but to simply describe what they mean for the games they power and what makes them as great as they are.    So to narrow down the vast technical aspects of game engines into something that makes the overall reading experience more fun than overly indulgent, we’ll just reduce all the different parameters of both the inside and the outside of game engines into just two simple categories— realism and scalability . The former is about the overall presentation (from graphical richness to animation details) and the latter is ho...

    Imagination is the primary element in Videogames and that’s why there have been characters and storylines in games that have pushed the limits of believable reality in ways that’s simply not possible in any other medium. And to celebrate this element of ‘hyper realism’ or just pure power fantasy that only videogames are capable of delivering, here’s a presentation of the 10 most powerful, limit-breaking, over-the-top characters to ever come out of this incredibly interactive medium that many of us grew up with.    These characters are listed here in a sort of ‘power level’--based tiers, cause there are literally hundreds or more who can rightfully fit into this list, so to accommodate as much of them as possible, the ones in this list also represent their respective power levels. And these range from ‘slightly beyond human’ to straight up ‘Planetary level’ beings. So even if someone like Raiden (from Metal Gear Revengence) isn’t here, there’s someone who repre...