This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us picks from Kris Ligman on topics including The Last of Us's portrayal of women and a seance with the ghost of Citizen Kane. WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE A THING On WEast Fellows, Reetesh conducts an object-oriented, programmatic analysis of Driver: San Francisco. Theorts has a strongly academic critique of Depression Quest as adhering perhaps too strictly to one narrative of mental illness:
By claiming depression has a clear system, and designing a system around it in which players are encouraged to make the "correct" choices -- ones which lower depression levels in the status bar -- Depression Quest treats the experience of depression as "something to be moved through as quickly as possible" and successfully defines the experience as something without value to the person experiencing it. While, I would hazard a guess that this is far from the intention of the creators, this is what the language of illness does, and this is the language they employ.
AS WE MIGHT RECOLLECT On Unwinnable, Chay Close looks back on the Net Yaroze, the $750 hobbyist devkit Playstation released in 1997. A couple of strong retrospectives courtesy of Eurogamer this week. First, Damien McFerran presents us with the making of the original Star Fox. Next up, Rich Stanton remembers on Space Harrier. And this one via Robert Rath may be satirical, but it's amazing nonetheless: a colonialist critique of DuckTales. "Capcom's game rewards Scrooge for the illnesses of his soul." LET'S TALK On Medium Difficulty, Michelle Perez holds a long and candid interview with independent developer Chloe Sagal. Back on Polygon, Tracey Lien takes us through a tour of the game development scene in the Middle East. ALL THE LITTLE PIECES Troy Goodfellow notes that 7 Grand Steps has players developing a family line, but what is the game really about? On Polygon, Lara Crigger takes a look at some of the theoretical sciences informing contemporary sci-fi videogames. Elsewhere, on the recently launched USgamer, Jeremy Parish poses that maybe the groundswell of adult enthusiasm for Animal Crossing: New Leaf is due to its audience growing up enough to appreciate its nostalgia. Max on Daran geht die Welt zugrunde (as you can imagine, this one comes via our German correspondent) questions the lack of non-white protagonists in games. And on Trash Babes, Porpentine and Aevee hold an idiosyncratic letter series concerning Body of Bind, a game which really needs to exist, so help me. THE LAST OF US On the New York Times, Chris Suellentrop argues that despite overtures to gender parity on the part of the developers, The Last of Us still demotes its female characters motivations for its male lead:
The Last of Us aspires to be an interactive, mixed-company version of "The Road," in this case the story of the relationship between an older man and a 14-year-old girl as they try to survive in an oppressive and deadly wasteland. Almost throughout, however, it is actually the story of Joel, the older man. This is another video game by men, for men and about men.
Eurogamer's Ellie Gibson is more optimistic, saying that the portrayal of women in the game is an improvement over the norm, but we ask too much of it to be perfect:
There is a problem with sexism in games and The Last of Us does not solve it. But that's an impossible task for a single game, and I'm not sure casting Ellie as the main character would have made much difference. This is never just Joel's story. The fact he gets more hours of playtime should not detract from Naughty Dog's efforts to represent women in a realistic, intelligent way.
Meanwhile, GameSpot's Carolyn Petit believes we shouldn't go easy on The Last of Us just for trying:
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