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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
Posted in Criticism, Erik Bigras
Tagged Bolt Action, Close Combat, Combat Mission, Game Mechanics, Infinity, Real-Time Tactical, Red Thunder, RTT, Turn-Based, Video game, Video games, Wego
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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
Posted in Announcements, Erik Bigras
Tagged Campaign, D20, Dice, Dungeons and Dragons, Table-Top RPG
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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
Posted in Criticism, Erik Bigras
Tagged 400 Billion Stars, Elite, Elite: Dangerous, Milky Way, Open World, Sandbox, Space Sim, Space Trader. Simulation, Starflight, Wing Commander
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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
Posted in Criticism, Erik Bigras
Tagged Battle of Verdun, Cooperation, First World War, Game Mechanics, Heroes & Generals, Online FPS, Roles, Squad-Based, time, Verdun 1914-1918, World War 1
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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
Posted in Criticism, Erik Bigras
Tagged Ethicality, Gender, Morality, Player Choices, Starflight, This War of Mine
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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
Posted in Criticism, Erik Bigras
Tagged Gamepad, Heavy Rain, Immersion, Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, Proprioception, Tacit Knowledge, Video Game History
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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
Posted in Candice Lanius, Critical Retrospectives, Erik Bigras, Gaines Hubbell, Laquana Cooke, Nick Hanford, Stephanie Jennings
Tagged anniversary, blogging, co-authoring, confidence, how to, podcasting, rants, weekly content, writing, writing for a broad audience, writing process
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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
Posted in Critical Retrospectives, Erik Bigras
Tagged Blade Runner, Cyberpunk, Cyberpunk 2020, Cyberpunk 2077, Deus Ex, Deux Ex: Human Revolution, Heist, Neal Stephenson, Neuromancer, Ridley Scott, Shadowrun, Shadowrun Returns, Shadowrun Unlimited, Snow Crash, Uplink, Uplink: Hacker Elite, Watch Dogs, Watch_Dogs, William Gibson
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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 →