Tag: gaming - Page 5 - Kairos – By Brian Niemeier

Retro-Spective Returns

Just a quick reminder that Geek Gab Retro-Spective returns with an all-new series on the cult hit tactical RPG Final Fantasy Tactics. And we'll be playing this classic game the way it was meant to be played: on a Play Station (technically a PS2 - remember reverse compatibility?) running the…

December 8, 20211 Comment

Shooting Up

A striking phenomenon increasingly on display as the generation raised by Nickelodeon turns 40 is the redirection of man's natural religious impulse to pop culture artifacts. A while back, I termed those who make idols of action figures, comics, and video games the Pop Cult. The reason Generation Y is…

October 29, 202124 Comments

World of Darkness

Those who've followed my writings for a while know I'm an avid tabletop gamer. I even made my own role-playing system for Combat Frame XSeed. Unlike many in the #PulpRev and adjacent literary movements, I didn't cut my teeth on old-school D&D. My induction into the hobby came in high…

October 28, 20217 Comments

Link’s Awakening

My last full game review dropped over a month ago, and it's high time for another. The game in question probably isn't a surprise, since I've been telegraphing it for a while now. I've just finished my decades-delayed first playthrough, so this post will be written while the experience is…

October 26, 202130 Comments

Pop Culture Time Slippage

About fifteen years ago I started noticing a curious phenomenon--a sort of jump-cutting in time. The effect wasn't internally consistent, like when I sit down to write at 7 PM, get into a groove, and suddenly it's midnight. The temporal anomaly I'm referring to is oddly selective. What happens is…

October 12, 202116 Comments

The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls

One of my recent posts on the last great age of 2D gaming put me in a mood to revisit the tragically poorly served classic Link's Awakening. I'm still savoring this playthrough, so a full review will have to wait. In the meantime, here's an intriguing tidbit from retro gaming…

September 24, 202112 Comments

Shadow Hearts

Victory may have defeated JRPGs, but video games represent the one segment of pop culture that survived Ground Zero. At least for a decade or so. Today, the corporatization of vidya has made up for lost time with a vengeance. Consider the outright disappearance of the entire video game midlist.…

September 20, 20214 Comments

A Link to the 90s

Recently in my internet wanderings, I chanced upon a rare buried treasure--the sort that used to pop up regularly before the death of the web. The following piece of archived video only runs three minutes, but in that short time it captures the look and mood of Nintendo headquarters in…

September 1, 20216 Comments

Video Gambling

If you're familiar with the refined generational theory discussed on this and other counterculture blogs, you know that Generation Y is clearly differentiated from the Millennials by the latter's gullibility and loathing of the past in contrast to the former's tractability and morbid nostalgia. Of all the pop culture stories…

August 25, 202118 Comments

Ignore the Skinsuits

A major hurdle to understanding our new era that most people struggle to surmount is the shift from an economic frame to a moral frame. Everyone currently living in the West was raised under a Left vs Right paradigm with roots in the eighteenth century. Especially in its American expression,…

July 27, 202127 Comments