Jesse Wengel

Critical Analysis of ABZÛ

April 9, 2017 by Jesse Wengel Leave a Comment

ABZÛ is an underwater exploration game with a distinctive, breathtaking art style and a soundtrack to match. Diving through open oceans or sunken ruins, the player experiences vast numbers of oceanic life of all shapes and sizes. There is no violence other than a basic food chain among the fish, and there’s not even any way for the player to die. Despite this, there is plenty of suspense and anxiety as the player encounters darkness and dangers in the deeps. The story is vague – told only through hieroglyphics encountered in the game – but it is emotionally deep and engaging. Its gameplay is simple but creative; it is peaceful and immersive in a way that must be experienced to be understood.

Upon starting a new game, the player watches a short intro sequence before being given control of a Diver floating on the surface. The player is instructed on how to dive and swim, and before long…

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Gauntlet Dark Legacy (2001) vs. Gauntlet: Slayer Edition (2015)

March 9, 2017 by Jesse Wengel 2 Comments

Gauntlet is one of the longest-running dungeon crawlers in the video game industry. In Gauntlet, the player takes control of a class/hero (with specific abilities or attributes) who hacks and slashes his or her way through hordes of enemies throughout various dungeon-style environments. Ideally, the player is one member of a group of heroes who can work together to overcome the challenges of the dungeons, with a simple story giving the characters a goal, and some bosses along the way. Here, we will compare Gauntlet Dark Legacy for the PS2 and Gauntlet: Slayer Edition for the PS4.

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“Tech Support” – Initial Pitch

February 25, 2017 by amj5584, Jesse Wengel, Matthew Carson Moll and Michael Gissi 1 Comment

“Tech Support” (tentative/working title)

The player must navigate the world of his computer in order to destroy the malware that has taken hold of his beloved gaming rig. The game world itself will be a caricatured vision of various computer hardware components. The narrative is as follows:

“Our hero downloads a game torrent, only to find out the file was a trojan horse! His roommate, who is the Will Hunting of Computer Science, rigs together a system that will allow our hero to upload his consciousness into the computer in order to do battle with the malware without having to reformat and lose all of his files for class or his precious dank memes.” [Read more…]