Since it looks like most of us are still reeling from the potentially lethal after-effects of E3, there is thus very little new press out there right now – other than the ostensibly amaranthine recaps and bullet point lists – so I thought I would just as well direct our attention to something completely different.
So. I enjoy reading Richard Cobbett. We go way back (…well, he does) as I originally chanced upon his blog, as an impressionable young man, thanks to his very questionable coverage of Sin Episodes. 1 He’s cool and stuff and it so happens that he totally agrees with me on Guybrush’s new hair.
To cut to the chase, he has recently débuted an all-new interactive website called Narrative Flood, under the fantastic subtitle “Because Story Matters”; the right words indeed, in the correct order no less. I would like to be so bold as to highlight just a few intriguing topics that have already been tackled on the website, types of themes that I would hope to ultimately discuss here at the Slowdown as well:
- A straightman take on Al Lowe’s often-disrespected but ultimately oft-reminisced and …yes, even beloved Leisure Suit Larry series and Larry’s romantic search for Real Love ™. Cobbett argues, like Lowe himself, that the “packaging … always promised much more sex than was actually in the games” 2
- Sexy vs. Sexy, a discussion of the dangerous high-wire tap-dance that is the use and abuse of sex appeal in games.
- Arachnophobia vs. Altruism, in which Your Hero laments the monstrous throng of spiders in games. I can’t help but mention I’ve only recently bested my own arachnophobia in video games; For instance – to keep on bringing up Sin any way I can – some years back, I simply could not envision myself playing Wages of Sin, the expansion pack, because the very first enemies in the game so happened to be spiders. I do have to add that I did ultimately conquer most of my fear during my relatively recent play-through of Dark Messiah.
A refreshing new website with a focus I can full well get behind – please do take a look!
References
- Thank you archive.org! I couldn’t find the original post on his website.[↩]
- http://www.noisetosignal.org/2008/10/the-nts-interview-al-lowe[↩]