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Good Video Games Criticism

karzac

karzac

(he/him)
Here's a thread for sharing good criticism/reviews/analyses of video games, to go along with the reporting thread I just made.

I just watched the Writing on Games analysis of Hitman 3 and quite enjoyed it.


It's quite long, so if you want something shorter from the same guy, his video on the newfound resonance of Dishonored's plague-ridden setting is also quite good.

 
Zef

Zef

Find Your Reason
(He/Him)
I quite enjoy the animation analyses from this channel, but it also occasionally branches out into atmosphere and visual narrative:

 
ShakeWell

ShakeWell

Slam Master
(he, etc.)
I kinda wish I'd written everything Jacob Geller has written.



Zef said:
I quite enjoy the animation analyses from this channel, but it also occasionally branches out into atmosphere and visual narrative:

Click to expand...

Yes! I just got around to watching that one yesterday, super good.
 
Lokii

Lokii

—
(He/Him)
Staff member
Moderator
I really like Noah Caldwell-Gervais's long series anatomies but he's really outdone himself this time with a seven and a half hour long look at 18 Resident Evil games. I'm only three or so hours through it but I was really happy to see how much sugar he heaps on RE3. A total 180 on the usual takes you see about the game and real fresh perspective.

I've been enjoying it a lot!

 
Phantoon

Phantoon

I cuss you bad
Kishi could get through, like, four of the games in that time

I have started watching it, it might take a while
 
RT-55J

RT-55J

space hero for hire
(He/Him + RT/artee)
YouTube video essayists can be good, but in general I find them to be a bit of a wash --- it's so easy for them to just go on and on for several minutes repeating themselves.

Personally, I think the best writing/criticism about games comes from random people on small forums writing to audiences of practically no one. FelixSH's recent FF series playthrough thread is a recent standout example of this.
 
estragon

estragon

In my experience Noah Caldwell-Gervais is one of the few long form video essayists whose work tends to be long because it's exhaustive rather than because it's repetitive or meandering.
 
Klatrymadon

Klatrymadon

Rei BENSER PLUS
(he/him)
I was excited to share Left Shift, a website that was picking up steam a few years ago, which featured a lot of well-written and often quite theoretically grounded articles, but on looking it up it seems to have vanished suddenly around the time I started reading it - even the Twitter page gives no indication as to why it might have disappeared. Don't suppose anyone knows what happened?

Edit: per Phantoon, their website link is NSFW!
 
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Phantoon

Phantoon

I cuss you bad
Well, I clicked on the Left Shift link on the Twitter page and got a page that definitely wasn't about video games (and was quite non work safe), so nobody else do what I did...
 
Peklo

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)

​
Excellent dive into the mechanics of one of the giants of its representative genre and why despite that status it remains almost totally singular of a work. It's got most things I look for in video productions, which usually aren't my preference over written pieces: a manageable length; a dry tone free of forced witticisms, bits and attempts at humour; no visual screen presence for the author; a plain presentation subject to little editing; and a hyperfocus on a niche topic that's fueled by personal passion.
 
Peklo

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)

​
Awesome dedication on display here in unearthing the obscure, for a subject that's strictly in my particular wheelhouse.
 
karzac

karzac

(he/him)
Enjoyed this article by Cameron Kunzelman on Polygon about how The Last of Us game to be regarded as "the greatest story that has ever been told in video games". Big fan of Cameron from his podcast work and I should really read more of his writing. He's got a very matter-of-fact, break down the process sort of style that I find very satisfying.

Warning: Don't read the comments which completely misunderstand the headline and argument of the article.
 
Felicia

Felicia

Power is fleeting, love is eternal
(She/Her)
Liz Ryerson, AKA ellaguro, recently wrote a long blog post analyzing the history of indie games in interesting ways: The California Problem. I think my favorite part is when she discusses early indie game creators wanting video games to be seen as serious art, but at the same time not wanting them to be analyzed critically the way serious art is analyzed. It's something I've been thinking about myself for a while.
 
Rosewood

Rosewood

The metal babble flees!
(she/her)
Thanks, Fredde. That was excellent. And, yes, quite long, but setting up the context for the cyclical nature of these trends was important to the piece, I think. The idea of connection with a creator through their work is very familiar to me as a fan of novels, but the difficulties that neoliberalism/the tech sphere put between creators and players of video games is something I hadn't considered seriously.
 
Felicia

Felicia

Power is fleeting, love is eternal
(She/Her)
Preserving Worlds is an excellent documentary series about attempts to preserve various online games and online communities, things that can be even more difficult to preserve than "regular" games. They've recently announced that a second season is coming, which I look forward to. In the meantime, the first season is viewable on Means TV.
 
lincolnic

lincolnic

can stop, will stop
(he/him)
Ex-Kotaku staffers Nathan Grayson, Gita Jackson, Riley MacLeod, and Luke Plunkett have joined together to make a new site, Aftermath. Unlike many other sites getting ground to dust by their ad-supported natures, Aftermath is funded entirely by subscribers (though still appears to be free to read as far as I can tell). It just launched yesterday but it's looking pretty good so far! I enjoyed pieces from all four of these folks in their Kotaku days, so I really hope this takes off for them.
 
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