Even without knowing the term "isekai", you have probably at some point encountered a story or piece of media that follows its basic framework. A Japanese term meaning "another world", isekai stories deal with the notion of being adrift in a setting quite unlike one's own; they follow protagonists who are ripped away from a world much like ours and dropped into an unfamiliar place or time. Be it Edgar Rice Burroughs's depiction of Mars as a futuristic kingdom in the Barsoom books or the fantastical realm of Oz, the specifics matter less than the intent - to challenge the protagonist's preconceived notions and lead them to personal growth in the face of unexpected conflict. I lay all of this out for you because I think the intent with Heir to the Queen, a small-scale adventure game, was to hit the basic points of the isekai journey under the constraints of a threadbare budget and no larger media presence. That's speculation on my part, though, sinc...
Today I’m debuting our first of several on-going segments - A Look Back, where I… well, take a look back, duh. Specifically, we’re gonna be discussing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. For starters let’s get into what kind of world we were living in when Modern Warfare exploded onto the scene. We were four years into the War on Terror, and six years out from 9/11. Two world changing events whose ramifications and influence crept their way into every aspect of culture - film, television, literature, comic books, and yes, VIDEO GAMES. War and its particular brand of brutal violence became a sort of norm, rather than a niche interest, in the world of gaming. You couldn’t throw a stone five inches without hitting a game about MASCULINE, OLD FASHIONED AMERICAN MEN FIGHTIN’ THE GOOD FIGHT AGAINST THE FOREIGN AGENDA. Even if the games weren’t necessarily set on Earth or fixated on stereotypical images of terrorists, the imagery and themes on display - ranging from widesprea...