Hello, Escapist readers! As part of our partnership with curation website Critical Distance, we’ll be bringing you a weekly digest of the coolest games criticism, analysis and commentary from around the web. Let’s hit it!
First of all, a game called Mountain recently came out, and it’s surprisingly controversial for a modestly interactive, $1 mountain simulator. As writers discuss the game, Michael McMaster takes the conversation in an interesting direction with his essay on Medium titled “On Formalism”:
Games are expected ideally to be fun/digestible/gratifying, but if that’s not possible then they should at least be meaningful (i.e. if I can’t play it like a game, I should at least be able to read it like a book).
Brendan Keogh uses McMaster’s post to understand his own feelings on Mountain. Meanwhile, Austin C Howe gives a short but sweet two-part rebuttal to one of McMaster’s headier claims: On Mountain and On Text Vs Form.
Switching gears a bit, over on Kotaku the illustrious Aevee Bee writes a great primer on the fighting game tournament EVO 2014, which went down this past weekend. In a similar vein, Robert Yang talks about communication through code in a “post-mod culture.”
Finally, if you want some more joy in your life, Heidi Kemps’s journey to find the secret origins of a lost Sonic the Hedgehog level at The Atlantic is an incredible read.
Want more? Be sure to swing over to Critical Distance to have your fill!
