mittentacular, by mittens

Magnetic Butterfly

Magnetic Butterfly is now finished.

After a development period of about a month and a half spread over the last six-seven months, I'm finally cool with "launching" it. I started working ...

Revisiting Halo 3

Bungie's original Halo, released for the Xbox in 2001, was a landmark console game. Aside from giving Microsoft's freshman entry into the console arena a system seller and a uniquely Xbox cultural character, Halo was the best first-person shooter to be rel...

The Power of Powers and Purpose

A number of AAA open-world games were released in the last month and, coincidentally, two of these games are based around the concept of the player's character possessing superhero-like powers amidst a major metropolis. It's the video game industry's own A...

Opportunity

When I was finishing up what ended up being my second-to-last semester at the University of Michigan, I knew I was going to be a High School English teacher. That was my goal. The forthcoming summer was the first summer since my freshman year that I didn't...

Magnetic Butterfly Progress

After I finished up with the second gameplay section of my Call of Duty 4 level, I decided that Magnetic Butterfly would probably only take a few more weeks of work to get to a decent place. I do...

Early "Escape"

Over the course of the last month I've been juggling a few projects, one of which is Magnetic Butterfly which I have already discussed a bit (and isn't my primary project for the time being)...

Challenge in Games: Everyone Hates Nathan

Resistance 2 is a first-person shooter which doesn't seem to understand what era it was released in. There are moments in the game where a player, in the role of Nathan Hale, is walking through a forest, the screen will shake and some loud footsteps will o...

An Economy of Fun

The average video game, as it is thought of by both mainstream culture and even most gamers, is a heavily-authored gameplay experience with a discrete beginning, end, and climaxes strewn haphazardly about. At this point in the life of the video game, gamer...

Resident Evil 5

In Resident Evil 4 there is this great feeling that you're going to have to face an enormous giant (El Gigante) as you explore one particular area of the game. Eventual...

The Game Industry's Twitter

So, I'm on Twitter.

I'll assume for the moment that you've never heard of Twitter. First, that would mean that my mother has beaten you to knowledge of something rel...

Things That Suck About the Magnetic Butterfly Publ

There are a number of things that suck about the first public prototype for Magnetic Butterfly. Let's talk about those things.

It's very much a prototype; it's not at all a "game" yet...

F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin

What is most astonishing about F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin is not its poster-child of horror: that Gothic-looking nine-year-old child look is about as familiar to anyone who has seen any of Hollywood's reinterpretations of