Gone Baby Gone


I saved Skyward Sword for after the holidays, despite the fact new Zelda games are currently a sort of Christmas-to-New Year’s kind of ritual for many people.

I’m really liking it so far, inasmuch as I can like a new Zelda. To a certain extent my enthusiasm for the brand has diminished with each installment; might just be some formula fatigue, like I got with Pokemon and Harvest Moon despite the fact that games in those series have probably collected hundreds of my hours over the years.

A Link To The Past has this distinctly alien, mysterious quality that I think the brand has lost over the years in favor of a prettier sort of magic. Zelda games are so ritualized now, so tautly Nintendo (not a negative adjective by any measure) that they start to feel like Disney rides or something.

Never stops me from finding things to love about almost every one, though. This time it’s Zelda herself, and I think she’s indirectly brought something new and special to Skyward Sword I’ve explained in my newest Gamasutra editorial, if you’d like to have a look.

Also new at Gamasutra: A look from inside Prototype 2‘s dev team, with its nifty design director — even if you’re not that into Prototype, he’s uncommonly candid about some of the twists and turns these internal processes take. What’s the value of a Masters of Fine Arts in game design? NYU’s resident smart cookie Frank Lantz explains.
Finally, Microsoft has tapped Arkadium to explore cross-platform social gaming; Microsoft Games Studios, to be precise. If you don’t really know what that means or you think it sounds irrelevant, you should probably read my new Kotaku column on the biggest new ideas in the games space that you should fully expect to start invading your familiar world in the months to come.
Lastly, I jump on the “Shit ____s Say” bandwagon (if you haven’t seen Shit Girls Say, Shit Black Girls Say or Shit Girls Say to Gay Guys, to name a few, git yr azz up ons) by writing Stuff Gamers Say over at Thought Catalog. They are all composites, and one of them is me.
Yes, I know Katawa Shoujo is out, although I appreciate all nine thousand of your mails and tweets. If you don’t know what I mean, please read this article I did at Kotaku on the development of this Japanese-style dating game about disabled girls, and the niche internet communities that birthed it.
Yes, I’m going to play and review the final game and you will be the first to know about it when it runs. Properly playing visual novels takes time.

How y’all doing? What’re you playing? If I made you forums, would you use them?