No, this hasn’t become an Assassin’s Creed blog. This is my attempt at a short diary series which explores video games’ greatest mountains. Mountains have long gripped our imagination, and, reaching beyond the crests of any city, call to us with a primal urgency. Why do we climb them? How do we feel when we […]
“In the midst of far-flung ruins and debris, we calmly and adventurously go traveling.” It was a rare day on the Isle of North Uist – a winter afternoon that was neither wet nor windy, as is most common. The atmosphere was cold and clear, the sun was coming down, and the sky was a […]
“That looks a bit crap,” my dad said whilst looking over my shoulder. I was playing some pixel-art throw-back, all blocky and two-dimensional. He wasn’t commenting on the subject or mechanics of the game, simply the visual fidelity – how it looked. My dad isn’t a regular player, but he’s seen games through the generations […]
What makes the ideological constructions in the City and the City so effective? The legal apparatus bring into focus the strange mental conceptions that work to sterilise any of the cultural or political tensions that would normally be present in such a place. The cities are part mental construct, a visual and ideological architecture (upheld […]
The original 1979 Ridley Scott sci-fi horror film has always stuck with me. It’s dark simplicity has never quite been matched by any of the sequels. It is the first time we are thrust into the unknown depths of space to witness the brooding violence of the Xenomorph. It is these original, glimpsed images of […]
“Escapism” is a word/concept often used to describe fantasy and science fiction. In the most simplistic sense, the term seems to appropriate a field of distance or extension between the text, those engaged with it, and our actually existing reality. The word seems to attribute to readers a certain passivity and disengagement towards the […]