I have had the fortune of growing up alongside the gaming industry. I have seen games advance from board games, to Pong, to Warhammer 40k and The Last of Us. What I never overlooked was that the games I played were compelling and full of possibility. During this relatively short history, games have been relegated to the domain of children, which is understandable. However, I champion the idea that games can be a valid tool for expanding a person’s worldview by exposing him to foreign ideas and culture. Books have long been lauded as the escape and education medium of choice, and rightly so. The nuance of word choice and the tone and meter of the author combine with the reader’s imagination to create compelling worlds to which he can escape and characters to which he can escape. However, video games can offer a similar experience, while allowing the player to feel in control of the story, at least to a degree. More than that, video games can expand players’ understanding of the world, cultures, and even themselves. Human history is told in stories. What more is a video game than an interactive story? Continue reading
Category Archives: Guest Blog
Guest Blog | In Defense of Games in the Modern Age
Filed under Gaming, Geek Life, Guest Blog, Kurt Klein
Guest Blog | “Gone to Texas” Review, Preacher Vol. I
“This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
An angel from heaven and a demon from hell share a moment of celestial passion that produces an entity—an idea—called Genesis that is so powerful it could challenge the Almighty himself. Kept incarcerated in heaven, this creature finally breaks free and heads screaming to Earth, decapitating a seraph on the way down. Looking for a human soul, it slams into a preacher in the middle of a crisis of faith, giving his Sunday sermon in a backwater town in the wastes of Texas. The impact obliterates the church, incinerates the parishioners, but leaves the preacher unharmed and with the power of the word of God. This sequence of events sets in motion Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s epic series Preacher.
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Filed under Comic Reviews, Comics, Guest Blog, Joseph De Paul, Reviews
Guest Blog|Dark Souls 2 review *Spoilers*
***** SPOILER ALERT *****
This review will be discussing plot points which may be considered spoilers. Consider yourselves warned.
I stood in line for about an hour waiting patiently for my copy, like a pilgrim in line to see a relic. I had pre-ordered Dark Souls 2 Black Armor Edition way back in September, and it was finally release day. The first guy to get his big box o’ goodness had no troubles, but I flinched when ALL the clerks had to head to the back to find my copy. After a minute that seemed like an eternity, they all irreverently resumed their positions after finding my copy of the game. I left the store like all the other gamers that night, with a huge box in a bag that somewhere inside held a world contained on a 180mm by 1.2mm disc. It was a world I was anxious to explore. I got home and opened my prize. There she was, right on top after opening the flap. I ripped off the cellophane and popped the disc into my PS3. The title screen, the same as the first game, allayed my fears of drastic change. In the end, this was false hope.
Heide’s Tower of Flame
Filed under Game Reviews, Gaming, Guest Blog, Kurt Klein, Reviews
Guest Blog: Godzilla Review *Spoilers*
***** SPOILER ALERT *****
This review will be discussing plot points which may be considered spoilers. Consider yourselves warned.
When I think of the embodiment of raw, awesome, power, Godzilla is the first thing that comes to mind. Pulverizing humanity’s great cities, brushing aside the world’s militaries, and slugging it out with other big honking monsters, Godzilla did it all. Seeing these movies as a young boy I loved the giant radioactive dinosaur dragon. Admittedly, in the sixty years since his debut in 1954, Godzilla’s movies have ranged between wildly entertaining, to reflective and poignant, to just plain laughably and ridiculous. It is just hard to not like Godzilla, and truth be told, it is really hard to mess up a Godzilla movie, (although it has happened). When I first learned that a new Hollywood Godzilla film was coming out in 2014, I was cautiously optimistic. Continue reading
Filed under Guest Blog, Joseph De Paul, Movie Reviews, Reviews
Therefore I Geek 