Trope (iPhone, Generative Music)

Canabalt (iPhone, Semi Secret)

Mirror’s Edge (PC, XBox, PS3, EA)

Osmos (PC, Mac, Hemisphere Games)

Eufloria (PC)

Not video games, but proof that game-related stuff can be well designed:

Both via TIG Source.

A while back REZ was quite a bloggable game. And it may be a bit old hat to bring it up again, but I stumbled across this fascinatingarticle by Douglas Brown on its recursive interactions between visuals, audibles and references to other art.

“Abstract: Douglas Brown’s Rez: An Evolving Analysis dives into Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s ‘trance shooter’ to reveal how the game’s recursive dynamics – between sight and sound, rhythm and novelty, abstraction and representation – work to construct the player’s spatial and temporal experience.”

That and it opens with a Kandinsky quote. Win.

A great paper. On the denser, more academic side of things.

Well, it was interesting. I’m not sure it was quite in the E3-league of things, but there were some really great games. The Avatar game looks amazing in 3D. So amazing, in fact, that my faith in 3D things has been restored since seeing the Polar Express. Disappointingly, though, 2k seemed to be absent, rendering me unable to see any of their offerings (read: Bioshock 2).

From a game-critique perspective, it wasn’t hyper-enlightening. There was a large gearing towards game design in education, and there were some developer panels. But both these things were meant for students. This is great, don’t get me wrong. But the event wasn’t purely gaming-oriented experience. However, seeing some live progaming was quite awesome.

But that being said, gaming events aren’t always about the games themselves. I did get to meet Mario:

A US marine walked be through the harder parts of DragonAge: Origins:

And I left with a desire to play Warcraft II:

All in all, it was enjoyable, just not particularly enlightening. It is also good to see that Melbourne yields a burgeoning gaming community with countless active and engaged players and designers.

The lapse in quietness will end this weekend when we grace the eGames Expo in Melbourne, AU. We expect to see some cool stuff and, well, basically chill over the weekend.

While you’re waiting for that gold, here are some awesome things worth checking out:

• This article at the NY Times.
• This totally rad design blog called HI+LOW (particularly this post).
• This ‘design-y’ game called UNIQLO_GRID produced by emag, UNIQLO – It’s absolutely beautiful and satisfies the autistic within me. Oh, and it’s online and totally free. Do it.

But to keep your appetites whet with game blogging, here are some recent offerings from some other bloggable blog sources:

• What Makes Video Games Scary? [Kotaku] — Concise, interesting and, well, obviously we’re going to like this kinda stuff.
• Creative Fluff have a new section game design written by The Game Critique’s Eric Swain. Check it out here, yo.
• Critical Distance have a new addition to their Critical Compilation series. This one’s on Grand Theft Auto IV.
• And finally, a Google search unveiled this article at Christian website Revelife. In it, blogger ‘Travis’ rehashes some old ideas about video game violence. The upshot? Well, essentially he’s just warning us of the ills of violent video games with reference to the bible and the Robbin Williams film Toys. Not convinced, Trav.

It’s that time of year again. It has nothing to do with the warmer weather, increasing unease about bushfires or anything to do with the swarms of morons who will swarm your local city for the cricket. No, it’s time for the biggest games expo in Aus: the annual iDEP eGames Expo in Melbourne.

So what can we expect this year? Well, in terms of exhibitors, amongst a whole lotta gold, we’re most excited about the appearance of 2K Games, Ubisoft and the Xbox 360 team. Apart from that, we can anticipate the usual: developer presentations, gadget demos (sweeeet), competitions and egames. Oh, and I’m going to guess there will be some cosplay.

We’ll be trawling the event to find the coolest / most pro / cutting edge stuff. We will be writing-up what we see and do at the end of each day and we will live-blog throughout via Twitter. Feed this site to stay abreast of new announcements and other stuff pertaining to the event.

The event is running Friday October 30th – Sunday November 1st, yo. Tix are $33 for an adult to attend all three days.

In conjunction, there is the eGames Masters pro-gaming exhibition on October 10th is Brisbania and October 18th in Melbourne. This could be totally rad considering how starved we are in Aus RE e-sports.

You’re Friend,

Touché, bitches!

• This article in a ‘mainstream‘ publication — located at News.com.au — takes a look at the social side of gaming in an attempt to dispel the curse of the basement-dweller. I’m often skeptical of how a lot of journos portray games and gamers, but this, I’d say is pretty good.
• Over at Geek.com, Joel Evans takes a quick look at games that are SFW because they look just like work. I wish we’d written the post, damn it! A useful and SFW post. The double threat.
• In a weird kind meta way, I direct you to Critical Distance‘s weekly roundup of game criticism. It was particularly good (even by their standards) for October the 4th, containing some particularly relevant links and editorials.
• Lol wut – Are they really making a Spore movie? According to this article they are.
• And finally, an iPod touch/iPhone game you play with your tongue. Rad.

See for yourself here. Google Trends never lies (or is inaccurate).

Get it here.

And here’s the past day or so in video game blogs. Important stuff, folks!

• Over at Game Politics, we find a neat little challenge to a Salisbury Post claim that video games were a cause of the recent shooting death of 20-year-old man by his 19-year-old-brother.
• Telegraph (UK) dishes up a pretty neat write-up of the Top 10 Video Game Anti-Heroes.
• Movies Buzz has a surprisingly comprehensive Top 16 Horrible Celebrity-Based Video Games. Reading this, I had a few moments of depressing nostalgia. (they also have a Top 12 Crazy Celebrity Apologies).
• And this lolarious article at French e-zine Amusement on the mythology around classic video games like Pong, Arkanoid and Mario gave me about a minute of entertainment (it’s short).