The Pixels

Elemental Video Game Critiques

Action

21 min read

“Kindness and good nature unite men more effectually and with greater strength than any agreements whatsoever, since thereby the engagements of men’s hearts become stronger than the bond and obligation of words.”
-Thomas More, Utopia

18 min read

“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”
-Roald Dahl

18 min read

“Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”
-Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy

11 min read

“Negative space is important. When I teach students to read critically I advise them to look for what the author isn’t saying just as carefully as for what he or she is.”
-Aaron Belz

9 min read

“It wasn’t like there was some obvious change. Actually, the problem was more a lack of change. Nothing about her had changed – the way she spoke, her clothes, the topics she chose to talk about, her opinions – they were all the same as before. Their relationship was like a pendulum gradually grinding to a halt, and he felt out of synch.”
–Haruki Murakami, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

15 min read

“Wherever he saw a hole he always wanted to know the depth of it. To him this was important.”
-Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth

23 min read

In this Vagrant Story critique, we revisit one of the more challenging and inaccessible offerings from Square right at the tail end of the 90s.

19 min read

“Here I am, stranded on a toxic planet, fighting to survive, and yet I’m intrigued… I must research this fascinating creature!”
-Captain Olimar

17 min read

“Looking for an oasis on earth? You fool! Earth is already an oasis in the space!”
-Mehmet Murat ildan

17 min read

“When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”
―Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

9 min read

“I think what a lot of action movies lose these days, especially the ones that deal with fantasy, is you stop caring at some point because you’ve lost human scale.”
-Harrison Ford

15 min read

“No art or learning is to be pursued halfheartedly…and any art worth learning will certainly reward more or less generously the effort made to study it.”
― Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji

16 min read

“Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”
-Lt. Colonel Bill Kilgore, Apocalypse Now

13 min read

“You take the blue pill; the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill; you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”
-Morpheus, The Matrix

8 min read

“We don’t need to have just one favorite. We keep adding favorites. Our favorite book is always the book that speaks most directly to us at a particular stage in our lives. And our lives change. We have other favorites that give us what we most need at that particular time. But we never lose the old favorites. They’re always with us.”
-Lloyd Alexander

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