Breaking My Backlog #10 – Pumped BMX+ (Kind Of)

Breaking My Backlog is a semi-regular features on Troamm.com in which I attempt to complete my entire backlog before buying any new games. You can read more about the quest and see my backlog here. This game is a mess. It’s a half-baked Tony Hawk Pro-Skater clone, but with half the complexity and none of the … Continue reading “Breaking My Backlog #10 – Pumped BMX+ (Kind Of)”

Nintendo and Wasted Opportunity

Like most Nintendo fans, I watched the live Treehouse stream yesterday with equal parts joy and excitement to finally see some of the gameworld in the upcoming Legend of Zelda, awesomely named “Breath of the Wild.” I love me some Zelda, and I got goosebumps as I watched the stream and saw Link interacting with his … Continue reading “Nintendo and Wasted Opportunity”

How a Game Reduced Me to an Emotional Mess

I’ve played a lot of video games in my life. As someone who started playing around the time of the Atari 7800 in the 1980s, I can’t even count the amount of times I’ve saved the day, or I’ve beat the big bad guy, or I’ve rescued the damsel in distress. Never before, however, has a … Continue reading “How a Game Reduced Me to an Emotional Mess”

Don’t Kid Yourself: You Care About Sexuality in Star Wars

I’ve read a lot of Star Wars books in my life, both good and bad. When I was in my early teens, my friend Logan, who loved — I mean LOVED — Star Wars books bought a bunch of them and loaned them all to me. Others I bought myself, or I got from the local … Continue reading “Don’t Kid Yourself: You Care About Sexuality in Star Wars”

The Banner Saga, Choice, and Agency

Let’s talk about choice. A couple of weeks ago, I spent much of my freetime playing The Banner Saga, the crowd-funded strategy-RPG from Bioware vets, Alex Thomas, Arnie Jorgenson, and John Watson. In playing this game, I learned two things about myself. The first is that I’m terrible at strategy-RPGs. I shouldn’t say I learned this about … Continue reading “The Banner Saga, Choice, and Agency”

Satoru Iwata (1959 – 2015)

I don’t remember what year it was, but it had to be around 1993. The world had started moving onto the Super Nintendo, but my family remained at the NES. We would eventually buy a SNES — a store model demo from a Shopko in North Platte, Nebraska — but, at the moment, I was still tapping … Continue reading “Satoru Iwata (1959 – 2015)”

Choosing Paths: On Human Depravity and The Cave

At this point, I have written over 1,400 words about The Cave. Fourteen hundred words before I even started. See, before the text you’re about to read, I wrote a review of The Cave. The review was 1,400 words of analysis about the gameplay, and story, and humor, etc, etc. Now, it wasn’t that those … Continue reading “Choosing Paths: On Human Depravity and The Cave”

On VGA’s (Is there an apostrophe? I don’t know.)

I didn’t watch the SpikeTV Video Game Awards this year. I don’t have SpikeTV. Sure, I suppose I could have watched it online, but that would have taken away from my surfing time, and that surfing time is valuable. It’s alright. According to the people I follow on Twitter, I didn’t miss much. Maybe I … Continue reading “On VGA’s (Is there an apostrophe? I don’t know.)”