The Ten Best Wholesome Games On Switch. What exactly makes a game wholesome?
Is it the player's state of mind while playing? Is it an adherence to specific aesthetics or messages? Is it the inclusion of birds? Well, you might be forgiven for thinking it's the last one, because at least half of the games on this list are about birds specifically, but the idea of a "wholesome" game is a bit more nebulous than that. It's more of a feeling, really: a game that you can relax to, that can be challenging but never punishing, with elements of friendship, community, and kindness. And, of course, there's always the Wholesome Direct, which is packed full of anthropomorphic animals, cafés, camping, and farming.
Without further ado, here we are: the bestest wholesomest games on the Nintendo Switch. A Short Hike (Switch eShop) Publisher: Whippoorwill / Developer: Adam Robinson-Yu Release Date: 18th Aug 2020 (USA) / 18th Aug 2020 (UK/EU) Untitled Goose Game (Switch eShop) Publisher: Panic / Developer: House House Haven Park (Switch eShop)
Opinion: Ass Effect - What's really behind the Miranda Lawson freakout? A rearguard action is sweeping the world of video gaming.
“Butt me no butts!” Cries the neo-Puritan game developer as they erase all evidence of women’s derrieres from gaming. “Get thee behind me!” Shouts a wickedly censorious gaming journalist. Opinion: Devs, please don't encourage 'teabagging' Quick question for developers working on multiplayer shooters right now: why is teabagging having a comeback moment?
It’s been a long time since I’ve given the act any real thought. My multiplayer game of choice right now is Apex Legends, a game that often doesn’t let the camera linger on your dead body long enough to see what your opponents do to it. I’ve seen the sexually suggestive act occur a few times, but it doesn’t feel like the old days of Halo where it was commonplace. And yet in the last week, I’ve spotted two different developers seemingly giving a wink-and-nod to the act of teabagging in their multiplayer games: 343 Industries and 1047 Games. First, a quick refresher for the unfamiliar. The classics that go forever when Sony switches off its PS3, PSP and Vita stores. What was rumour has now been confirmed, with Sony announcing it's to close the PS3 and PSP stores on July 2nd, with the Vita store to close soon after on August 27th, taking with them a whole bevvy of games that were only available via digital download.
It's bitterly disappointing news, and while Sony confirmed you'll be able to re-download games in your library for an undisclosed time after - because who needs details? - for many there's now a limited window to pick up some true gems. What follows isn't meant as a comprehensive list of what's going to be lost - it'd be too depressing, for one - but rather a guide to what's worth picking up before it disappears. The 2D Adventures of Rotating Octopus Character What a beautiful, challenging thing this is: a game about moving an octopus between one wall and the next, collecting stuff, avoiding stuff, and marveling at the sheer variety on offer as the levels fly by. Alien Zombie Death. The Gnawing Terror of Death Stranding's Tomb Cities - The Escapist. Death Stranding gives you a lot to be scared of: giant, oily ghosts, rain that ages you in seconds, and a gene pool that’s a little too reliant on Geoff Keighley and Conan O’Brien’s contributions.
But none of these match the gnawing, stomach-squeezing terror I feel when I gaze at Death Stranding’s cities. For all its monsters and piss mushrooms, Hideo Kojima’s genre-blending outing tries to deliver a message of hope. It’s set in a future where, thanks to a cataclysmic world-warping event, America is a near-wasteland. Humanity survives in scattered but heavily protected cities, and only you, Sam “Ride with Norman Reedus” Porter Bridges, can put the country back together. Aidan Herron's Blog - Ori and the Will of the Wisps: Destroying Hope. The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. By Shelby Carleton | @bdotexe *Spoilers Ahead! * 'Art of Rally' Shows That Racing Games Need to Get Weirder. 'Art of Rally' screenshots courtesy of Funselektor Last year, I watched John Frankenheimer's 1967 racing epic Grand Prix.
It's a remarkable movie that both romanticizes and documents an era of racing that was unconscionably dangerous to drivers and spectators, but was also beautiful and exciting in a way that is very different from modern racing. The movie certainly finds something ghoulish about the culture surrounding racing at the time, and posits that drivers of the era must have been raging narcissists who would rather die trapped in a burning race car than go to therapy. Despite the Outrage, Doctor Who Is Less 'Woke' Than It's Been in Decades. With rumors circulating that Jodie Whittaker may depart the lead role at the end of her third season, it seems right to reflect upon her time in the TARDIS.
In particular, one of the most revealing and interesting aspects of that time: the persistent criticism that the show’s recent seasons have been “too woke” or “too politically correct.” It’s interesting to think about what those phrases mean, particularly in the context of the most conservative stretch of Doctor Who in over three decades. The recent seasons of Doctor Who overseen by Chris Chibnall have been criticized in some quarters for being more radical than the ones that came before. This is a frequent attack in the British tabloids; The Telegraph called it “flat, worthy and woke,” while The Sun ran stories about the show’s “unbearable political correctness.” Former Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson complained that the show was pushing “Lefty dogma,” even though he hadn’t watched Doctor Who “since [he] was a small boy.” Readers' top 50 games of 2020. 2020 has been an extremely unusual year, so hopefully it's a bit of a treat to end it in our usual way - with the top fifty games of the last twelve months, as chosen by you. 50.
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands. Watch Dogs: Legion Doesn’t Challenge Oppression but Enforces It. You and me?
We’re resources. Grist for the mill. Watch Dogs doesn’t want us to know that. It wants us to think that we have power and agency, even in a world where governments and corporations have unfettered access to every detail of our lives. The problem is that the Watch Dogs games – even Watch Dogs: Legion, with its vaunted “play as anyone” feature – cast us as people who exist outside the system. The Video Game Industry Has No Clue How to Respond to Protests. How RuneScape is helping Venezuelans survive. VenezuelaVenezuela used to be one of the richest countries in South America, but it has spent the last 10 years engulfed in a political and economic crisis.
What started as the gradual crumbling of the country’s economy in 2010 snowballed into a devastating avalanche of crime, corruption, and mass starvation, leaving millions of people in the country unable to feed themselves or access basic medical supplies. Ninety percent of Venezuelans are now living in poverty, and one of the most extreme and sustained periods of hyperinflation ever recorded means that people working minimum wage jobs are earning the equivalent of $5 a month.
Against this cataclysmic economic and societal backdrop, millions of people have fled the country in search of better lives, with many more desperately trying to find their own means of escape. In November 2019, the number of Venezuelan refugees and migrants reached 3 million. Those who remain in the country have been forced to find innovative ways to survive.
The Doctor, The Disease, And The Division. Soon after the coronavirus struck my busy Brooklyn hospital, I found myself caring for an older gentleman with kidney issues. Let’s call him Mr. Johnson. I’m a specialist in kidney medicine, and I knew it should have been a fairly routine visit. Mr. Johnson’s diabetic kidneys had failed five years ago. Beyond dysfunctional kidneys, dialysis patients also have weakened immune systems that leave them prone to severe infections. - Where next for the video game power fantasy? Forced to recount the litany of sins that we have committed in the virtual world to a priest, the average video game player might not exit the confessional booth for some time. It’s not just the body-count, which, for even the mildest-mannered of players, is of genocidal proportions. There’s also the colonialism we have promoted in Civilization, the social manipulation we’ve engaged in while puttering about in Animal Crossing, the fornication meted out in Leisure Suit Larry, and the thievery of, well, Thief.
We brush off most virtual transgressions as playful tomfoolery. The casualties of our gamely actions are, after all, no different to fallen tokens in a boardgame (nobody grieves the toppled pawns in the grisly aftermath of a chess match). But as technology renders the virtual worlds conjured in video games with ever greater fidelity, old questions are being asked with new urgency. Looking Back On The Hypnotic Charm Of Breakout. Pilgrim In The Microworld, a 1983 book by professor, sociologist, and musician David Sudnow, was far ahead of its time.
As a book-length digression on a single video game—Breakout for the Atari 2600—it took the emerging medium seriously at a time when it was largely dismissed as a mere fad on the verge of dying. Out of print for decades, Pilgrim In The Microworld will soon be back in print thanks to Boss Fight Books, which is currently taking preorders via Kickstarter. In this excerpt, Sudnow first gets his hands on the game, and quickly discovers the subtle magic behind its deceptively simple graphics. They were all out of Missile Command, damn it. The Reason I Don’t Play Multiplayer Games Is Turning Me Off Single-Player Games. Once upon a time, it was geographical barriers. I didn’t play multiplayer games because you can’t on a dial-up internet connection. When that barrier vanished, I dabbled in multiplayer — a racer here, a shooter there, a LittleBigPlanet, or an always-online survival game.
None of them grabbed me enough to make me want to spend 10, 20, 100 hours in their worlds, not in the way Skyrim, Valkyria Chronicles, or Heavy Rain did. I enjoyed campaigns. The stories may not always have been up to scratch, but those campaigns were wonderfully paced. Halo: Reach's Remastered Graphics Are Almost Too Perfect to Be Good. 'Civilization' and Strategy Games' Progress Delusion. The mystery of Atlantis – Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster. Stories usually describe the legendary city of Atlantis as a wondrous place – imagine a fantasy version of ancient Greece but with more ornate fountains, fish, and the casual use of technology so advanced it easily blurs into the magical and you’re halfway to writing your own tale already. Death Stranding’s difficulty settings made news, let’s change the discussion. HowHow did difficulty become such a controversial issue?
Someone should make a game about: The Palomar Observatory Sky Survey. Hello, and welcome to our new series which picks out interesting things that we'd love someone to make a game about. 20 years in 20 Eurogamer articles - as they appeared at the time. The first ever post on Eurogamer was made 20 years ago today, on 4th September, 1999. To celebrate our 20th anniversary, we've picked 20 articles - well actually, 21, including that first post - one for each year we've been running. Some are serious, some are silly, some are a bit embarrassing to us, some we're proud of, and some are just an interesting record of the times we've lived through. The Rise of Regular Beer. My most prized brewing possession is a crumpled aluminum can. It’s white, slightly rusty, and bears but one big word: BEER. Innocence lost: What did you do before the internet? The creepy corridors of video games.
We pass through passages and hallways everyday without pause. They're boring, empty, uneventful dead-spaces unworthy of consideration - not so much architecture to stop and appreciate, as infrastructure to quickly pass through. All they do is channel things around buildings, moving us from one room to the next. But while we so often take these in-between areas for granted, rushing down them in order to reach places of real importance, they can also be incredibly evocative.
The Anita Sarkeesian story. Toy Story 4 & Passing On Our Favorite Characters to the Next Generation. How We Happy Few explores the injustice of motherhood. Be warned: the following article contains major spoilers for the first and second acts of We Happy Few. Games Have Always Tried to Whitewash Nazis as Just 'German Soldiers' 'Call of Duty: Modern Warfare' Can't Decide Whether War Is Bad or Badass. The folklore roots of Sekiro's anus-ball snatching enemies. From the feral beasts of Bloodborne to Dark Souls' assorted grotesques, FromSoftware has a habit of infusing its work with horror. Its latest game, Sekiro may have swapped out gothic spires and dungeons for silvergrass and sakura, but there's still darkness festering beneath the surface. Game director Hidetaka Miyazaki once explained "it's important to have that sense of fear and terror" in order for players to go onto overcome it. One of these encounters with terror can happen early on in Sekiro.
OCD Ruins Every Video Game - Escapist Magazine. 'Our house is on fire': Greta Thunberg, 16, urges leaders to act on climate. Parliament must declare a climate emergency – not ignore it. This CO2-Powered Turbine Could Transform Power Plant Efficiency - GE. What Is Glitter? Fortnite's Appropriation Issue Isn't About Copyright Law, It's About Ethics. DeepMind's 'StarCraft' Victory Was as Worrying as It Was Impressive.
The promise of a game world you can touch. We need to change the sector's definition of teacher wellbeing. What can we do, right now, about climate change? The Flare Path: Crosses the Pennines. Limbitless & 343 Collaboration - 343 Industries. Qlone Mat. Red Dead Redemption 2's Redface Proves How Far Games Haven't Come. The Emotionless Death Throes of 'Battlefield V' Tumblr’s 'Adult Content' Ban Is About More Than Porn. The Invention of Capitalism: How a Self-Sufficient Peasantry was Whipped Into Industrial Wage Slaves. Zombies Have Their Origins In Slavery. Vatican launches Pokémon Go-like game where you collect Catholic saints. Remaking a children's hospital in Minecraft. Making cars and writing code: Production Line's refreshing dev approach. The Nukes of 'Fallout 76' Are Where Power Fantasies Hit a Breaking Point.
The state of blackness in games. The Endless Stream of New Game Releases Is Exciting, but Also Exhausting. PICO-8 Fantasy Console. If Ubisoft wants to cling on to Clancy, it's time to talk politics. Shadow of War’s captain Baranor stands out by fitting in. UK engineering's gender imbalance is embarrassing, leading figure says. Amazon Created A Version Of Alexa Just For Kids. Ready Player One is the roadmap to digital dystopia. The question of fidelity and Shadow of the Colossus. The topic every game dev is talking about behind closed doors : The cost of doing business. Bartlomiej Waszak's Blog - The physics of trains in Assassin's Creed Syndicate. Where next for the video game power fantasy? The Joy of Chell’s design in Portal.
Why Carmakers Always Insisted on Male Crash-Test Dummies - Bloomberg View. Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is a perfect metaphor for late capitalism. The Coming Software Apocalypse. ZAM - The Largest Collection of Online Gaming Information. Night and the City. Owning a car will soon be a thing of the past. Seven years have changed nothing at Oxbridge. In fact, diversity is even worse. XP is helping me to learn German. Decoding Shenzhen: The Chinese city that makes the world's tech.
TeacherGaming - Connecting Educators With The Unique Teaching Ability Of Games. The lifting of chicago. Where do monsters come from? How Dishonored: Death of the Outsider makes rats of us all. The doors close on The Chinese Room - for now. How games often live in memory. Cubibot 3D Printer - Launching SOON! — Cubibot 3D printer. Raspberry Pi Make Your Own Robot Deal. We need to nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon. Here’s why. How video games win back time.
I know what it’s like to spend school holidays hungry. So do today’s kids. VR’s Grand Challenge: Michael Abrash on the Future of Human Interaction. Boxed In – We Punch Robots. A Post-Modern Ideology Delivery System – amr al-aaser – Medium. The story of Mean Machines magazine. How to get the perfect tyre pressure on your road bike - Evans Cycles. Searching for a video game hero. Inc Magazine on Flipboard. The ‘shining lie’ at the heart of Where The Water Tastes Like Wine. The Occupation and the perils of politics in games. The six Brexit traps that will defeat Theresa May. On NASA, the video game developer. IMechE urges schools and industry to boost links. Rock, Paper, Shotgun - PC Game Reviews, Previews, Subjectivity. Pokemon Go is a mass demon summoning that's destroying our reality.