(urth) Tor review of _Shadows of the New Sun_

[Gwern Branwen]

On Mon, Sep 23, 2013 at 12:07 PM, DAVID STOCKHOFF
<dstockhoff at verizon.net> wrote:
> Also, ICO and Shadow of the Colossus seem to be Japanese games. Anybody know
> them?

I've heard a great deal about ICO, and own _Shadow of the Colossus_.
They're famous as the standard examples now for 'games as literature',
because of how they have a theme or message which is conveyed by the
*game mechanics* and not just text on-screen or music or videos (which
one could argue is just literature being printed to a screen rather
than paper).

I won't try to summarize the details, but see (in rough descending
order of usefulness):

- http://www.etc.cmu.edu/etcpress/node/278
- http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/09/ico/
- http://web.archive.org/web/20110928052422/http://www.brown.edu/Research/dichtung-digital/2007/Ciccoricco/ciccoricco.htm
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_of_the_Colossus
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ico
- http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_266/7954-Videogame-Myths-Debunked.2

-- 
gwern
http://www.gwern.net