Fallout 4 (Bethesda Game Studies, 2015) involves the game tourist in a post-apocalyptic dystopian gameworld and in a multifarious experience of play and video game photography. It is a venture that is both terrifying and intriguing, perilous yet pleasurable. And confronts players with the utopian beauty of the environment and the regenerative appeal of a…
Category: Allgemein
The Game Tourist Episode 7: Remembering the Cyperpunk Vigilante in Watch_Dogs
Reviews for the new Watch_Dogs 2 (2016) suggest that Ubisoft Montreal have learned their lesson and created an improved version of Watch_Dogs (2014) (the cyberpunk vigilante) with their newest iteration. But is this really so? When missions proceed according to the same, cumbersome routine, lacking checkpoints, which would have promoted creative play. But instead the player finds himself encapsulated…
The Game Tourist Episode 6: Hellblade and Senua’s descent into darkness
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (Ninja Theory, 2019) grants players access to the nightmarish visions of Senua, a Pict warrior who embarks of the journey of a heroine to cleanse her inner demons. Senua suffers from psychosis, a mental illness that developed in her childhood with the loss of her mother, Galena, (a trauma she has ever since…
The Game Tourist E05: Why Half-Life 2’s Beginning is Still One of the Best!
When Half-Life 2 (Valve) released in 2004, it modernised game and narrative design alike. Like its predecessor it refrains from telling its story through cut scenes and non-connected gameplay but rather sets players at the forefront of the action. This is thanks to use of scripted events and characters that players care about and with whom…
The Game Tourist E04: The Panoramic Views of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild(Nintendo, 2017) involves players in a world that actually demands exploration. It demands them to wander Hyrule, climb its mountains, and savour panoramic vistas. Lush grasslands and towering mountains create an environment for animals to thrive and offer a wilderness to explore and interact with. Combined with vibrant…
The Game Tourist E03: Fantastic Worlds, Cultures, and Conflicts in Mass Effect Andromeda and the Struggle for Utopia
Mass Effect Andromeda (Bioware, 2018) invites the game tourist to explore faraway places and document their surroundings and foreign cultures through virtual photography. To capture these fantastic worlds and their natural and cultural phenomena is a pleasure in itself. As an astronaut of outer space, the game tourist embarks on this venture, which nonetheless does…
The Game Tourist E02: Enter the Metro
Metro 2033 (4A Games, 2011) is a nightmarish vision of a nuclear future to come as it is a depiction of humankind’s inability to evolve past vital shortcomings. The game involves players in a conflict between ideologies and several factions (the Reds, the Nazis, and so on) and asks the question how ethical can one…
Video Game Tourism E08: Watch_Dogs 2 Selfies (Part I)
With 40H40min, Watch_Dogs 2 (Ubisoft Montreal, 2016) is finally over! This might seem a little harsh, but in the end I’m glad I finished the game. This is not to say that Watch_Dogs 2 is a bad game, that’s far from the truth—and I had some incredible moments with it. Unfortunately, though, many of the…
Video Game Tourism E04: Nature and the Sublime in Firewatch
Firewatch (Campo Santo, 2016) is video game narrative whose experience is something rarely achieved in video game fiction. It begins in the form of a classic text-adventure to then move into the realms of modern versions of the genre. The game, thereby, sets the player into the role of Henry, who struggles with personal issues…
Video Game Tourism E03: BioShock Infinite Part I, Wish-Fulfillment and The Journey to Utopia
Welcome to the first out of three parts of Video Game Tourism on BioShock Infinite (Irrational Games, 2013). As the game is diverse, and to offer you a “complete” experience of it, the segmentation in three episodes seemed necessary. The first part thus deals with Booker DeWitt’s journey to Utopia, where he encounters the enigmatic…
Video Game Tourism E02: Vistas, Gaps, and Thieves: Drake’s Search for Inner Peace
In the second episode of Video Game Tourism, I wish to share with you my personal moments from Uncharted 4 (Naughty Dog, 2016) as I accompany Nathan Drake on his search for inner peace–and on the more tortu(r)ous route he takes until he finally discovers the treasure he so desperately has been searching for.
No Man’s Sky Diary_Log Entry_02: The Euclidian Galaxy_Spacetime_12.08.2016
The hyperdrive was purring as the Rasamama S36 jumped to another system of the Euclidian galaxy. The space that lay before me was vast, and I soon accepted the unfathomable magnitude of the universe; accepted to never see beyond the bricks and puzzle stones of a greater totality—if such a thing even existed. Confronted with…