Whispering Willows is a horror puzzle game. The game starts with Elena lost in the family catacombs as she tries to find her missing father. The game starts off pretty slow, but somewhat creepy. The graphics are great: not realistic enough that I found them scary, but they are beautiful. […]
Charlotte Hyde
106 posts
This weeks post is not about games, but rather about why we continue to write about and criticize the way women are portrayed and treated in games and media in general. I’m staying in Dundee, Scotland right now. It’s a nice little town, not too crowded (unlike Glasgow and Edinburgh). […]
This month, I’m staying in the dorms at Abertay University in Dundee, Scotland. Dundee is a beautiful city, and Abertay is an interesting university to me because they have a computer games department that focuses on the development, design, technology, and management of games. Last night, their chapter of the […]
This month, as I’ve been planning to travel to Scotland, I’ve been obsessed with packing and figuring out what I really need to bring with me. Travel guru, Rick Steves advises to pack a suitcase and then take half of it back out. I’ve been trying to follow his advice […]
In an interview at this year’s E3, Aisha Tyler, star of Archer said, “The idea that there’s not diversity in gameplay is just not true. Does it need to be better? Absolutely.” Tyler’s assessment in the first sentence is technically correct, I guess. There is some small, small evidence of […]
We talk a lot about gamer identity: hardcore, casual, etc, but this week I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit. I’ve been playing a lot of the original Super Mario Brothers on my 3DS. While I hadn’t forgotten how much I loved that game (I talk about it all […]
When I sat down to play Among the Sleep for my Power Hour review, I intended to just play through the first hour and write the blog post. Five hours later, it was midnight, and I had an early morning, so I had to stop. I had been excited about […]
This week, all of my entertainment (television, video games, and novel reading) had a somewhat unintentional Twin Peaks theme. I didn’t watch Twin Peaks when it came out, even though I somewhat inexplicably watched Fire Walk With Me at least twenty times. I assume I never actually watched the series […]
A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine posted something on Facebook that I found insulting, and, at the time I read the post, I wanted to comment, but I didn’t. The person in question is an actual friend, not just a Facebook “friend.” As such, I don’t want […]
This week, I decided to play Chronology, an indie adventure game, for my Power Hour review. Chronology is a platformer, and it initially caught my eye because the graphics looked really well done, and, of course, because I love platformers. When Chronology begins, the main character, the Old Inventor is […]
I have never been able to get into any of the Sims games. I want to; they look fun, but I am instantly bored when I start to try to play one. But, recently, I’ve read a few articles about Love Plus, a dating sim. This game first caught my […]
Lately, we’ve been talking a lot about why we write this blog, why we record the podcasts, and why we do all of this in general. For me, it often comes down to a feeling of being “dismissed” and/or of having deal with people who want to push the issues […]
This weekend I ran across this article, which says among other things “Vita owners are serious game buyers.” This seemed a strange and almost elitist comment to me; one that suggests Vita owners are the most hard core of the hard core gamers. I’m a Vita owner, but I don’t […]
I haven’t been gaming a whole lot lately. The reasons are typical: end of semester madness combined with writing and defending my prospectus. When I first started grad school, it was unusual for me to game at all during the semester. Not gaming during the semester was not a policy, […]
This week Amazon released its Roku-like media-streaming device, the Fire TV. According to Amazon, the Fire TV is more than just a streaming device, it’s also a (sort of) gaming console. I’ve been having a lot of problems with my Roku’s lately, and have been shopping around for alternative solutions, […]
Yesterday, NPR ran this story on the history of pink. I imagine that the actual history of pink as gendered and non-gendered is no surprise to the audience of this particular blog, but, in the comments, the story sparked a discussion about how IMPORTANT it is to many, many people […]