Deja Vu?
A videogamer visits San Francisco and gets a serious case of deja vu — with pictures.
A Pair of Killers
What makes a compelling book tick? Sometimes I find it hard to tell, especially if the story works so well that I don’t even think about the craft involved. A good way to get to know a book, especially for an otherwise quick reader like myself: listen to […]
Happy Bloody Holidays
True crime isn’t new. It wasn’t invented by Truman Capote for In Cold Blood, although Capote certainly raised the bar for many crime writers. True crime has evolved from 19th century police procedural nonfiction, popularized in weekly journals like the Police Gazette, and later in crime pulps of […]
Weird Wasteland
The upcoming Tony Hawk game is set in 1980s L.A. with, if the trailers are to be believed, a soundtrack featuring Dead Kennedys and the Pixies. Prominent in the trailers are bike riding and a light rail train, which is cool but also very weird: L.A. is a […]
Rethinking Brain Eating
If he feels vindicated, he doesn’t show it. As Marc Laidlaw waits for his co-workers to finish a talk, we sit down at a table in San Francisco’s cavernous Moscone Center and talk about Half-Life 2 (Valve, 2004). Its 1998 predecessor is legendary for pushing the form both […]
Rolling Pleasure
In a brief flashback to the hip Queen Street West I remember from the ’80s, I chanced upon a cult-hit videogame there. I was killing time and wandered into Microplay and asked the counter guy if any interesting games had come down the pike lately. “Yeah,” he said, […]
The Cultural Gutter 