Brian Taylor – Portfolio words and photos
Phone: 724-322-2297
Email: taylorbri@gmail.com
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Words
Save Aeris – How Can We Be Moved by the Fate of Aeris Gainsborough (Kill Screen)
Everyone has an Aeris story. You’re fifteen or sixteen years old. Or maybe in your twenties. Or maybe ten. You’re playing your (or your older sibling’s, or your friend’s) PlayStation in a dark room—a basement or a bedroom at night, maybe—bedcovers shoved at the base of the door in a weak attempt to fool your [...]
Pittsburgh City Paper – Advance Base
For Pittsburgh City Paper’s 8/31/2011 issue. —————- Just over a year ago, Owen Ashworth announced he was killing his one-man-and-collaborators band, Casiotone for the Painfully Alone. He spent the back half of 2010 playing his last shows under that name — the band’s final appearance on Dec. 5, 2010, was the 13th anniversary of its [...]
Start Snitchin’ – Quidditch in Kill Screen and Pitchfork
My article for Kill Screen Magazine’s Public Play issue ran on Pitchfork.com. You can “Start Snitchin’” it if you want. It’s about college students who play quidditch. Also, the photo of the game of Ninja on the second page is mine.
Game Reviews
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations – Paste – 11/29/2011 Saints Row: The Third – Unwinnable – 11/15/2011 X-Men Destiny – Xbox 360 – Unwinnable – 11/3/2011 Space Marine – Xbox 360 – Unwinnable – 9/9/2011 BloodRayne: Betrayal – Xbox Live Arcade – Paste – 9/23/2011 Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet – Xbox Live Arcade – Paste – 8/17/2011 [...]
Columns – Paratext on Joystick Division
Will keep this post updated with links to each of my Joystick Division columns. Magic Words – September 4, 2011 On Dying – August 21, 2011 Pac-Mania Is A Book About Pac-Man Things – August 7, 2011 So I was reading this strategy guide… – July 24, 2011 IMCO – In My Court Opinion – [...]
Game Stories: Pulling Them Apart, Putting Them Back Together Again
This post was promoted to the front page of Bitmob.com on February 24, 2010. An edited version later appeared in the July 2010 issue of GamePro magazine. “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” It’s a bold statement that opens the eponymous essay in Joan Didion’s book The White Album, first published in 1979. When the [...]
Game Pairings: Red Faction: Guerrilla + The Hurt Locker = ?
This post was promoted to the front page of Bitmob.com on 10/31/2009. Tyler Miller recently wrote a piece on pairing other media with your games. While his idea is to choose different media items that go well together and enhance your experience, sometimes a serendipitous pairing can send you down a rabbit hole of mechanics, [...]
Home of Vanna White
Originally posted on Don’t Kick Food on 11/9/2009. I’m on vacation in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I’m standing in front of a full length mirror in the condo my parents rented for the week. It’s late October – over the course of the week, it will feel like I’m the only tourist in town who [...]
Reflections: Assassin’s Creed II
This essay was originally published on Bitmob.com on December 2, 2009. Note: This essay contains spoilers for Assassin’s Creed 2, (which I flew through in a few days after writing this post about expectations and doubt) talking about story and character (I love the mechanics, especially the movement, but that only gets touched upon in [...]
Walkthroughs and Wikis: The Many Faces of Game Strategy Guides
This article was promoted to the front page of Bitmob.com on 1/21/2010. Paperback books full of all-text TIPS! and TRICKS!, game booklets with a friend’s older brother’s method for beating Star Tropics scribbled on the ‘notes’ page, that Battletoads map from Nintendo Power — these were the strategy guides of my youth. The discussion in [...]
My Own Alexandria: Keeping a Video Game Library
This post was originally promoted to the front page of Bitmob.com on 1/29/2010. I didn’t have a lot of video games growing up. I’m sure most of you can remember this situation — some of you probably still live it. You’d get two or three new games a year — maybe a few more, if [...]