Eyyyyyyyy brilliant stuff Rebekah, a perfect fit, best of luck there!

Fantastic stuff, delighted for you folks!

"Tamagotchi on steroids" - how one "groundbreaking" video game from the 90s paved the way for the AI of Google DeepMind, Gemini and beyond Peter Molyneux, Google DeepMind's Richard Evans, and more on the making and legacy of Black & White as it turns 25.

A reported feature I've long wanted to write:

For @eurogamer.bsky.social, I draw a direct line from Black & White's creature AI to the world-transforming ambitions of Google DeepMind, with the inside scoop on Lionhead's starry-eyed, stoner culture of the time.

www.eurogamer.net/black-and-wh...

🐵⛪

Delighted to have this wonderful long-form feature live on the site from @lewisgordon.bsky.social - a bit wistful, a bit worrying, very funny - on the direct lineage from the designing of B&W's creature to the creation of the world-spanning AI models of today.

There are days when I have 4 coffees by 3pm and feel like the world is falling in, and then days when I have 4 coffees by 3pm and feel like the human spirit is so boundless in its creativity that it can never be destroyed and each of us is capable of genius. There are no other days.

Reb!! Huge congrats, you've done wonderful, inspiring work over the years - hopefully still see you around some time soon!

Double Dragon original illustrated cover art, cropped, showing two men facing off against each other from left ot right, biceps flexed as they hold a whip and dagger respectively

When I was eleven, Double Dragon was the only game in the world that mattered.

Remembering the arcade classic, after the passing of its creator, Yoshihisa Kishimoto:

www.eurogamer.net/remembering-...

I hate having to do the "look, they're normal just like us" post, but sometimes you have to do that when American propaganda tries to convince everyone Iranians are "animals".

Eyyy, congrats James!

Marathon review - ignore the noise, this game speaks for itself With spellbinding combat and high-concept maps, Marathon is far more than a cool aesthetic draped over the bones of an extraction shooter. Eurogamer's review.

Hello here's 2,000 words about why Marathon rules. www.eurogamer.net/marathon-rev...

can see you doing a good version of the Marge Simpson "I just think they're neat" voice when presented with a really really high frame rate

worryingly accurate summary of my life there tbh

also that more basic "is this fun" stuff can live beside your literary insights. It's ok for your opinion that the sidequests are repetitive to live alongside your take on how its a whithering critique of capitalism/whatever. They're not mutually exclusive; it's hard, but you can segue between them!

Feel like this is v open to bad-faith readings so fwiw, I don't mean awkwardly jamming in DF-style perf analysis, "worth a buy"/consumerist language with your Art Review poetry. I mean you can write criticism, if you really work at it, in a way that your insight itself is actually useful too

You can, actually, do both Real Criticism and a useful 'product' review within the same piece of writing. The presence of one doesn't necesarily lessen the impact of the other. A great piece of writing and intellect can also be in service of others' needs - and can even be better for it.

Think I like questions like this because they're just inherently unsolved. There's no definitive line a game crosses where it is suddenly Valid for Deep Analysis, and likewise not one where the Skinner Box elements of live service game are Permissable to Ignore. We have to repeatedly figure it out.

Great bit of writing and great take on Marathon. Ties in a bit with the "don't look too closely at games" chatter from over the weekend, which I also both agreed and disagreed with.

The big interesting thing here is the question of why we permit some hamster wheel games, and why we don't others.

Paging @mattreyn.games

ON3! I'm back in this one, this time talking about The Elder Scrolls and open worlds, which I've heard are quite popular? New edition sounds fantastic - kickstarted this time for some extra sauce on the stretch goals.

Crimson Desert blends whoop-inducing bombast with brain-smoothing banality — like a prestige take on Candy Crush.

I've never played a game that has felt more hard-wired for the attention economy: every frame, menu, and interaction seems to radiate this commercial ideology.

Lmao

A cracking review from @lewisgordon.bsky.social here. Enjoy!

John Carpenter's Toxic Commando review - adequate cooperative action, but it's no Left 4 Dead John Carpenter's Toxic Commando blends Left 4 Dead-style zombie blasting with systems borrowed from Saber's back catalogue. The results are just fine.

Reviewed John Carpenter's Toxic Commando, and had a little grumble about how games like this keep getting Left 4 Dead wrong. www.eurogamer.net/john-carpent...

(Actually I think what Chris says *is* true, in that this what games are *supposed* to be and why they exist in the first place. Think what I worry about is more: can that successfully hold off the collective weight of an unbelievable amount of capital invested in making them into slop instead)

Also the undersized elephant in the room is… kids. And not like, erudite gamer dad kids raised on vinyl, but mobile game slot machine slop kids, which unfortunately is most kids. Whether they grow out of their tolerance for this stuff, or allow it to become the norm, is going to be massive.

Suppose the real truth is that there isn’t a single homogenous group who want one thing. I think a lot of people take the yellow paint fork that leads to this AI endgame. And a lot of people take the Elden Ring / BOTW / you must bring something to the game yourself fork. Just a question of how many.

I think a defining question of our time - not just in games but all media/beyond - will be whether this point is actually correct.

I *want* it to be correct. It’s correct for me & most people I know! I’m no longer certain it’s true for the masses today. I worry a lot of people want convenient slop

Got that Donlan on Marathon good stuff for you right here

I've finally stepped out of my no-work funk and have created (big surprise!) a newsletter. It's also a website. Please read Low Poly Mess, which is home to a weekly Tom Orry Minute newsletter as a minimum. It's basic right now, but need to get something out there lowpolymess.com

logging into marathon