Wedged between the tasteful classicism of the Renaissance and the rationalism of the Enlightenment was the Baroque era. The unrestrained spectacle and excess of the Baroque is an art historical aberration, a strange and sudden plunge into decadence that encompassed the 17th century and beyond. Some of the style’s defining…
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Illusion Software is one of the genuine trailblazers in video games. The studio has been around for 22 years, having been founded in 2001, but it’s all over now. The company has announced its imminent closure, and in its shutdown notice, also said that it would also be taking all…
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Valve’s inconsistencies around what is and isn’t too offensive for its platform are at the point where it is so blatant that there are ulterior motives at play that it is incredibly offensive. Here’s a story of two different sets of games to illustrate. The first involves Hitler. Steam is…
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Nagasaki in Japan has a unique characteristic among Japanese cities. It has always been the most open location to foreign culture and influence. Even when Japan closed itself off to the rest of the world, Nagasaki continued to be its connection to the outside. This meant that the city took…
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Slow Loop, an adaptation by Connect of the manga by Uchino Maiko, aired as part of the Winter 2022 anime season. Ostensibly, Slow Loop is the archetypal cute show about cute girls doing cute things – in this case fishing. Soft character designs, rounded linework, gentle but vibrant colours, the…
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The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is not a good game. I “awarded” it the rare 0/10 score here on DigitallyDownloaded.net, and most of the other critics have not been much more positive about it. As always happens when a game is a disappointment on any level, the fangs from…
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When you read the title for this feature, which song do you think about? What memories are evoked by that song? How would you feel if you were asked to listen to it again? And, to hazard a guess, was that song from the late 90s or the early 00s?…
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Did you know that you can’t produce your own alcohol in Japan? It’s illegal to brew your own beers and wines in Japan without a licence, even for personal consumption, so those little hobby breweries and home beer kits that are so popular in many parts of the world are…
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The things that the old computer saw… It’s easy to assume that lewd games are a relatively recent addition to the gaming landscape. A lot of people attribute the rise in their popularity to Japan’s adoption of fanservice-heavy anime-style games in the PlayStation 3 and subsequent Vita eras — but…
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Bad endings are an interesting example of convergent evolution in the history of the game narrative. It appears across various genres as an early example of player choice. In games such as Double Dragon or Dragon Quest for the NES, the player is provided with the end-game choice to join…
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