Seep – Gris

Animation is one of those mercurial arts that, unless you have tried your hand at it, it seems simultaneously so easy and also impossible. Draw pictures in a way that simulates movement? What magic is this? To animate requires a thorough understanding of not only how an object looks, but how it always looks, how…

Another Day – Scott Pilgrim, Book Five

What happens after the monster is defeated? What happens when the hero has to settle down and re-acclimate to an ordinary life? I’ve always loved stories that ask these questions, that treat the usual climax as a secondary focus, prioritizing the emotional journey the character faces even if they’ve stopped moving their legs. Scott Pilgrim…

Figures in the Distance – Scott Pilgrim, Book Four

This is the book I've been rearing to write about. The Scott Pilgrim books are all enjoyable, but the latter half of the series raises the stakes to much more than relationship drama and magical battles. I love both of those, but now they have layers. Now the books charge ahead with all of the…

2-D Psychonauts? YES, PLEASE! – Stick it to the Man!

So there's this game I like, Psychonauts. Maybe you've heard me gush about it before? Well, I'm always on the lookout for anything remotely similar, so naturally I've dabbled with a few games, films, and the like with similar art styles or premises or themes. Seriously, just look at the number of things I've compared…

Not All is as it Seems – Broken Age

If you've heard of this game prior to playing it, chances are you know it as Double Fine Adventure or That Video Game Project Wot Done Broke Kickstarter. Back in 2012, indie game developer Double Fine announced that they were opening up a Kickstarter project to fund a small classic point-and-click-style adventure game. As the…

Into the Smoke – The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

I sometimes find it curious that we group video games together despite many genres having completely different appeal. Sports games rarely overlap with platformers which rarely overlap with simulations which rarely overlap with strategy games. Even within genres, you can often find games that are hardly connected to each other by anything but one mechanic…

The Times They Are A-Changin’ – Scott Pilgrim, Book Three

The culmination of tension in the past two books as to the identify and significance of Scott’s former squeeze precipitates here as we finally meet the mysterious Envy Adams. To further complicate matters, she’s here with Todd, Ramona’s third evil ex. Unlike the short fights in the previous two novels, this one extends through the…

Meals and Mimickry – Scott Pilgrim, Book Two

Relationships are hard, what with boyfriends and girlfriends and friend-friends, some of whom have secret evil exes that attack you at random with lethal weaponry and sick finishers. It's a common problem. We rejoin Scott and company as they struggle through the difficulties of Canadian adolescence, Scott with the dual quests of breaking up with…

Leap – Breakfast Recommendations #2

For a genre invented almost forty years ago and is well past its heyday, the platformer is a surprisingly resilient beast. Under the simple definition (a game in which a substantial mode of traversal involves jumping between sections of ground separated by air, lava, water, and similarly impassable substances), platformers have been included in the…

The Deserts We Make of Ourselves – Scott Pilgrim, Book One

  The world is a cold place. Life takes a lot out of you, even when the stakes are as low as they can get. This series is about a lot of things. It changes as you get older and see new ways to interpret its subjects. It’s more than it appears on its surface.…