Gaming Round-Up: November 30, 2015

"Nintendo Origin" by Paris, France-based Demian Laudi

Cinemassacre brings us the trailer to the long-awaited film adaptation of the infamously terrible and bizarre Dr Jekyll and Mister Hyde for NES.

At Cyborgology, Stephanie Jennings argues that, while the lone hero trope used in Fallout 4 is both shallow and trite, it had its silver lining.  Meanwhile, Yussef Cole of Medium notes that the game’s emphasis on its 50’s aesthetic excludes the racial politics of the era.  Cole argues that while its refreshing to see a person of color play the role of protagonist without constant reference to race, the net effect is that the game whitewashes American history.

Endless Sky is a space trading and exploration game, dubbed as a spiritual successor to Escape Velocity. It's free to play, available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, completely open-source (GPLv3), and available on Steam.  Never heard of Escape Velocity?  Escape Velocity was a space trading and exploration game, originally released for the Macintosh in 1996, with additional installments in 1998 and 2002. It quickly developed a cult following, earning praise for its rich and expansive in-game universe.

Errant Signal has just released a discussing the Fallout series and how it’s changed from being about Role Playing characters, for better or worse.

At Eurogamer, Keith Stuart discusses AI and open world game design.

Gaming for Millennials: "Games such as Mass Effect allow a millennial to spend hours modelling my own face but prettier, something that has become important to me after years of Mad Men era advertising deriding my own self-image in order to have me buy their beauty products in a feeble attempt to feel better. Mass Effect also enables me to go out into a world of arseholes to battle some made-up concepts in order to gain made-up currency, something I imagine Wall Street executives braying over as they have a butler hold their dick at a urinal. What an outlandish idea! How could it be applicable to the real world."

At Kotaku UK, Keza MacDonald writes about how Dying Light memorialised a 17-year-old who died of cancer.

At Not Your Mama’s Gamer, Bianca Batti examines how mother and father figures are represented in video games, particularly citing Rise of the Tomb Raider.

Robert Yang offers an analysis of the "Diamond City Blues" quest in Fallout 4.  Yang calls it a fascinating bit of design that builds the setting while subverting genre tropes

The Serial Swatter: Internet trolls have learned to exploit our over-militarized police. It's a crime that's hard to stop — and hard to prosecute, according to Jason Fagone.

Wesley Yin-Poole of Eurogamer loves Fallout 4’s skeletons. Not only do they build atmosphere, they also perfectly set the tone for the game, which hovers between humor and horror.