Electron Dance Highlights
Electron Dance 2011 Review
Apologies! This should have been posted in 2011 but there just wasn't any room in the schedule. Better late than after I'm the late HM, though. If you're wondering what Electron Dance goodness you might have missed in 2011, then this post is your compass to great destinations of word.
And dear sweet babies of Jesus, I realise how much I've written last year for no pennies.
This Link Drag Is A Wee Bit Arcadian
So I got booted off Google+ because they said I should use my real name, which is just pants because I wasn't representing the real family man and hard worker Joel Goodwin, I was representing my fictional superhero alter-ego HM. I guess even Professor Genki would get kicked out of Google+. Anyway, it spurred me onto Facebook. You can go there and like Electron Dance if RSS or Twitter don't get your loins a-blazing.
Anyway this time we've got seven links, three games and two videos.
This Link Drag Is In Zombie Slow Mo
Okay, it's about time I burst this boil of links that has been growing with every week. Let the clicking commence.
Below you will find a short Terry "VVVVVV" Cavanagh game, a zombie horror comedy video, info on the Interactive Fiction 2011 competition and... very fast, made of meat?
This Link Drag Is Unexpected
I don't intend to make a habit of this. I don't like to make posts out of single links. Then again, I did say I didn't like to write retro articles either...
Matt Sakey - also known as Steerpike, the Fearful Overlord of Tap-Repeatedly - writes a monthly column for the IGDA called Culture Clash. This month he chose to write about The Last Dream. What elates me is that it's clear he saw the article for what it was - a sad, wistful sigh and a backward glance over the shoulder at childhood, now disappearing over the horizon. Someone else felt exactly the same pain I'd attempted to put into words.
Go read either "Every Day Is Kids Day" at Tap or the IGDA.
![[it came to pass long ago...]](http://www.electrondance.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/quasimodo.png "quasimodo")
This Link Drag Thinks With Portals
In my finite wisdom, I've decided to put out a bunch of links and videos now and then. I'm no Dire Critic, no Critical Distance nor Sunday Papers. I don't have traffic power of that sort... not yet, my pretties. But sometimes just tweeting forward isn't enough. When I have enough links or videos to make a quick Friday post worthwhile, I'll put one of these out.
Links! Five in total, one invokes the non-word "fuckability".
Honorary Mentions! Two new free game releases I haven't played.
Videos! 2 Portal 2 videos: one amusingly strange, one just amusing. YMMV.
Friday Night Cosh Curve
I recently re-jiggered them thar links down the side. Let me explain who these people are.
Sayonara 2010
2010 dies tonight. Let's celebrate by reviewing the Electron Dance year, because there's nothing like churning out the same old content in a sexy new cellophane wrapping.
The Year In Links
- What's the point of a game remake?
- The joy in ignoring the challenges and achievements baked into FUEL and embracing its freedom.
- The Schutzmannschaft were the local collaborators employed by Nazi occupiers to fight the resistance. This was a post about turning on your own.
- When you play games too much, you have the strangest interpretations of reality.
- A six-part Eurogamer Expo exposé. A write-up on a gaming expo that isn't about the hottest new games, about how important I am because I get to party with developers or how awesome it is to be here because I am so great and you're at home sticking ice cubes down your jeans out of sheer boredom. I cover: feelings of alienation; inept gaming skills under expo pressure; how I let Kieron Gillen walk all over me; a presentation I attended about a console game I would never play. The Expo Man series also set the record for most posts in a week ever: I posted something every day for eight days straight. Never. Fucking. Again.
- A write-up of the IGDA Writing Panel on Environmental Narrative at South Bank University. Interesting if you’re into the nuts and bolts of game writing.
- For someone who doesn’t have time to play games, I covered quite a few. I’d have to single out the Beat Hazard article as containing the funniest YouTube video of all time. Well, all time on this site. But I really like what Gregg B and I got up to with Revenge of the Titans and Immortal Defense.
- And the grooviest game trailer I've pasted in, despite the Deus Ex: Human Revulsion love-in, is the one for 4fourths.
- And I can’t go without bringing up Anti Games, the first signs of real life on Electron Dance. It meanders, but it's heart is in the right place, under the ribs. Left side.
For those who want to see Electron Dance in its early what-the-hell-am-i-doing days, the first post ever was back in April, a review of VVVVVV, which was nebulous longhand for it’s cool, you fool. I fumbled around for the right style for some time, most evident in The End of Hardcore. I eventually dropped the third person thing because it wasn’t my voice. A bit like my time playing The Aspiration... but that story is for next year.
Link Drag
Billions of bloggers scrutinise, dissect and reproduce links that will massage your heart, shine knowledge into your brain and touch you where you wanted to be touched but wouldn't dare ask. Rock Paper Shotgun is the worst, serving up the innocuous Sunday Papers, delivering a sawn-off shotgun blast of hyper-important hyper-links to your temples.
On Tuesday I discovered Gregg B of Tap Repeatedly has the same problem as me, a parade of open, unread browser tabs, enthusiastic yet patient. I haven't got time to read every page here. I need some sort of link apocalypse, a browser crash that wipes tab memory. God, something.