Gaming Round-Up: November 3, 2014

"Crimson Fist - Warhammer 40k Space Marine Costume" by Gary Sterley

"This is my Warhammer 40k Space Marine Costume. It is a Crimson Fist and was completed just in time for Halloween this year. This is my second ever costume build and I have been working on it since March of 2013."

News: Destiny’s first expansion, titled The Dark Below, launches on December 9. The add-on will feature story expansion, new weapons and equipment, and a higher level cap, among other things.

News: The fine folks at the Internet Archive bring you The Internet Arcade: some 900+ emulated arcade games from the 1970's through the 1980's. Most of them are playable, many of them through your browser. This is name brand stuff: Pac-Man, Defender, Ghouls 'N Ghosts, and on and on.

News: Walmart Starts Selling Used Video Games

6 Horror Games That Will Make You Vomit If You Don't Pee Yourself First.

Arthur Chu reflects upon his identity as a geek and how he identifies with the anger demonstrated by supporters of the campaign on Salon. Chu relates his experiences to Felicia Day’s blog post, in which she described the personal consequences of the campaign and how they’ve affected her.

Bayonetta is brilliant, Bayonetta 2 is apparently great also, but the main character is troubling to many. Maddy Myers considers the game in an article on the male gaze: Femme Doms of Videogames: Bayonetta Doesn’t Care If She’s Not Your Kink.  It’s a smart, well-read, and incisive critique of how “the male gaze” raises more problems than it solves.

At Eurogamer, Simon Parkin contemplates the origins of the political utopianism undergirding every modern MMO: "MUD was a place in which players were able to succeed according to their actions and intelligence rather than an accident of birth into a certain social class or fortune. 'We wanted the things that were in MUD to be reflected in the real world,' he says. 'I wanted to change the world. MUD and every subsequent MMO that has adopted its designs are a political statement.'"

Five Scary Video Games To Play Alone In The Dark This Halloween.

At Game Sound, Kenneth Young compares the auditory approaches used to introduce characters in two science fiction games, Destiny and The Swapper.

Horror Games Aren't The Scariest Games, argues Kotaku's Nathan Grayson.  EW agrees and jumps in with an explanation as to Why the most frightening video games aren't horror games. I have to agree. Thinking back to my childhood, the games that scared me the most were the ones where I wasn't expecting a scare - titles like Myst and the 13th Guest. Hell, there were moments exploring underground lairs, just before the tension broke, in the original Halo that had me more on edge than 90% of the so-call horror titles out there today.

As a casual gamer, I ca really relate to Chris Plante's piece "Why I don't finish most video games."  Most Triple-A titles are too long for me to immerse myself in.  As a kid, loosing myself in a game for a sleepless weekend was my favorite pastime, but as an adult, I find myself standing in the game aisle wondering how long I'm going to have to disrupt my daily routine to get enough of an emotional pay off to justify the price tag of a game.  So why aren't there adult-length versions of the big releases?

The Internet Archive Console Living Room harkens back to the revolution of the change in the hearth of the home, when the fireplace and later television were transformed by gaming consoles into a center of videogame entertainment... Simply click on a system below to browse through available games and cartridges and try them out. Where possible, links to manuals and additional information are available for reference.

Kill Screen writes on the architecture of Silent Hill 2 in The Basement’s Basement: "Silent Hill 2’s architecture, along with its iconic blend of fog and darkness, is its main antagonist. Returning to the game after all these years, it’s surprising to find that its enemies are barely a threat, its puzzles mostly “lock and key” affairs and its bosses require a single tactic—point and shoot. But navigating its dim hallways, cramped rooms and sprawling titular town can be a challenging affair."

The Motley Fool explains the finances behind Why Activision Blizzard Inc.’s “Destiny” Couldn't Stop Video Game Sales From Plunging 35%

The New York Times praises the "Old-School Horror" of Alien: Isolation and the Evil Within

Pop Matters asks Why Is It So Difficult to Find Fear in Video Games?

Someone has already blockified the Halo 5 trailer in Minecraft!

Todd Harper shares his impressions of the queer characters in Borderlands the Pre-Sequel, in particular how his impressions are inflected by how media has treated similar characters in the past.

At Videogames of the Oppressed, Mike Joffe concludes his three-part analysis of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night with a meditation on the game’s setting as the childhood home of its protagonist.