Invisible Walls
A thing about video games that I wonder sometimes if people really understand is that they’re made to be completed by the player. Dark Souls is made to be completed. Cuphead is made to be completed. The most challenging (or…
Category Exploring Transgression
Violence
There’s been a great deal of discussion about violence in video games over the last couple of decades, but the conversation usually doesn’t go anywhere interesting because the participants don’t really understand what violence is. What makes a violence isn’t…
Skins and Costumes
Halloween keeps growing. More and more over time, this act of pretending, and of naked greed for candy, has defined who we are. It’s expanded, taken over the entire month. October is Halloween now. It’s a couple of days before…
Shifting
My problem is that I can’t schedule. When I try to plan my actions at any sort of regular interval, it works out all right at first, but after a week or two passes I drift further and further away…
Undertales
I played Undertale and I’m not sure if I’m going to actually be able to write about it. It’s a remarkable game, but I don’t know what to remark. I guess I’ll try, even though I’m sure people have written a…
War Stories
America has a relationship with violence that is, let’s say, a little too friendly. That’s not to say that the American mindset is violent necessarily, that we are predisposed to do violence, but that so much of our outlook is…
City On Fire
There are certain common threads that run through stories about violence. Violence has consequences – this is almost the very definition of violence. When you forcibly enact your will upon the world, things change, and often not in the ways you…
Prisoners
A couple of years ago, I was driving across the Bay Bridge when I realized it wasn’t over. That makes it sound like I was in a way darker place than I really was, but there was a part of…
Solipsism
He also programmed robots to write books and magazines and newspapers for you, and television and radio shows, and stage shows, and films. They wrote songs for you. The Creator of the Universe had them invent hundreds of religions, so…
Hotline Miami: Critical Analysis
Doing reviews and analyses of specific games is kind of out of form for Problem Machine, but I seem to be doing it a lot nowadays regardless. The thing is, I’ve been playing these games and they’re just too damn…