NGai Croal's Recent Blog Entries

• 3D-ing Is Believing

  N'Gai Croal opens Pandora's box and thinks that the depths of 3D really do have something special to bring to videogames.

  Officially, the 2010 edition of the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas began on January 7. Unofficially, however, the show kicked off the moment that James Cameron’s record-breaking hit Avatar landed in cinemas around the globe. Anyone who was paying attention to the pre-show buzz for CES knew that 3D TV sets were going to be heavily hyped at the event. But there was a certain doubtfulness that accompanied the advance coverage, an underlying assumption that TV manufacturers were simply making a cash grab.

  March 15, 2010
• Memory Lane

  N'Gai Croal remembers the highlights of his first decade in gaming.

  The confession, in these very pages, brought me scorn: “I’m a relative newcomer to videogames, having only dedicated myself seriously to the medium – both as a journalist and as a player – since 1999.” When I wrote those words in early 2008, I was only trying to make a point about how if developers would rethink their approaches to difficulty, progression and challenge in games, they might reach – and retain – larger audiences than they would otherwise.

  February 8, 2010
• Learning Russian, With Spoilers

  Modern Warfare 2's No Russian level isn't perfect, says N'Gai Croal, but that doesn't mean we can't learn from its successes and failures.

  In today’s blog-Facebook-Twitter-crazed world, avoiding the revelation of key plot twists, cameos, surprises and other elements of our pop culture before we’ve had a chance to experience them ourselves is more challenging than ever. Perhaps I should have known not to click on the link that followed this tweet: ‘Blog entry – Modern Warfare 2: The Controversy to Come’.

  January 18, 2010