Category Archives: Erik Bigras

What I’m Playing Now: Combat Mission Red Thunder

In my ongoing effort to find a hybrid game uniting the best principles of table-top RPGs, wargames, and video games, I’ve been exploring the world of wargames a lot. Specifically, I’ve been following two table-top wargames: Bolt Action and Infinity. … Continue reading

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“We Just Want to Make Good Games.”

I’ve been writing a lot for I Search for Traps lately, but through my discussions of table-top RPGs I’ve come across an old question that I’ve encountered when I was studying the world of video games: What is a good game? … Continue reading

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I Search for Traps

I’ve been contributing to this blog for over a year now. I intend to continue contributing, but I’ve also been wanting to write about other things. Despite the fact that I write about video games a lot, most of my … Continue reading

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What I’m Playing Now: Elite Dangerous

I’ve made no secret in the past that I love space sims and that I’m on the lookout for the next Starflight. I’ve tried many games, but none really filled in that particular gap in my heart. Until recently. I’ve … Continue reading

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What I’m Playing Now: Heroes & Generals, and Verdun 1914-1918

Contrary to Gaines, I’m not a big competitive online FPS player. In fact, I’m quite frankly horrible at them. However, there’s a few games in the genre that I’ve lately enjoyed; the first one was Heroes & Generals, but lately … Continue reading

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In Search of Transformative Encounters

Over the course of the last couple of years, I’ve slowly drifted away from video games in favour of table-top RPGs. That trend probably started a few years ago when Gaines and I played TTRPGs weekly with a group of … Continue reading

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What I’m Playing Now: This War of Mine

I’ve been guilty of not posting enough on the site. In the hopes of changing that, I’ll be starting a new feature called “What I’m Playing Now,” which will be exactly what it sounds to be. Rather than long, elaborate … Continue reading

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Playing with Heavy Rain: The Gamepad and Personal Knowledge

Immersion has long been held in popular thought as one of the defining characteristics of video games (Keogh, 2013). A good game, to many, is one where they can lose themselves within the game and its narrative. Such escapist understandings … Continue reading

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First anniversary: What we’ve learned

For Higher Level Gamer’s one year anniversary, I thought we’d share what we learned while writing for HLG this past year. So, what follows is the result of us sharing what we’ve learned in a google document dialogue for the … Continue reading

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A Decked Out Retrospective: Cyberpunk Games

Welcome to a Higher Level Gamer Critical Retrospective! Retrospectives can take many forms: some focus on a single franchise while others are more expansive. For these retrospectives, I’ll be taking the latter approach. These retrospectives aren’t meant to be best-of … Continue reading

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