If you don’t know who Goofus and Gallant are, think good and bad.
Here’s the Goofus, from the Denver Post:
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,0,36%257E30000%257E2149337,00.html
The dreams and desires of so many people are carefully assembled bit-by-bit, byte-by-byte into the discs and cartridges of the video game world. The games industry is the Matrix where everything that is meaningful is virtual and underneath are dreams of the workers who give it life.
No mas!
Much better, from The Seattle Times:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/artsentertainment/2001931408_e318.html
The graphics look better than they did last year, and the titles have gotten nifty tweaks (like the arm thing). But it still mainly seems like just more of the same. Sequels and movie spinoffs. Shooters, drivers, role-playing. But — and I never imagined a world in which I’d ask this — how many times can you shoot a zombie in the head before it starts getting tiresome?
And:
But I didn’t say they weren’t exciting me. Every inch of these 525,000 square feet is designed to crank the central nervous system into high gear. There’s ear-splitting noise from countless colorful video displays, flashing images of mayhem that would have made young droog Alex in “A Clockwork Orange” consider the country life.
To replicate this at home, have someone lower a large cooking pot over your head, whack the outside of it with a Louisville Slugger, and stick a police light up inside it. Then turn up the thermostat and add 65,000 attendees — a number of them doughy guys with ponytails — to jostle you.
And finally this:
In Nintendo’s area there’s “Donkey Konga.” Players beat little bongos and clap hands in time with music. Buy stock in aspirin now.
Good article. It mentions that 87 of the top 100 games last year were either sequels or tie-ins. Dear god…
