I completed The Last of Us last week, one of the better survival horror games to come out recently, and probably the best this year so far. I also got the chance to play through The Walking Dead: 400 Days and came away slightly disappointed, its short-story structure made it feel like a prologue to Season 2 of Telltale’s series than its own, fully-realized game. Nonetheless, I liked the characters that were introduced and I’m excited to see where this new antagonist will take them.
Two new articles have been published to The Artifice, both of them about zombies.
‘The Last of Us’ Review – My first video game review in two years. Its been a long time since I last critiqued a game, and I hope that my new style of writing about games could create some constructive conversation about the games. Another thing: playing a game on deadline is still not much fun.
Making Sense of the Zombie Apocalypse – Oh no, I’m doing that kind of writing. Here, I try to explain the current resurgence of zombie fiction by connecting it to Millennial’s fears, all whilst hoping not to come off as paranoid, crazy, or pretentious.
Also, I did a zombie-type game with my old team Subtle Stone about a year and a half ago. Its an arcadey style shooter for Windows built in XNA. I have major regrets about the interface in retrospect and think the controls could have been much better designed. Also, the default gun type should have dealt more damage and had a slightly shorter interval between shots. If I didn’t lose the game’s code in a hard drive failure, I would have gone back and changed that. Oh well.
Happy Belated Independence Day!
KEVIN JAMES WONG 