Danielle Riendeau's Page

Welcome to casual core, a new monthly series on the games and culture of the weekend warrior. Scoff at the casual gamer stereotypes, yet you can’t devote 24 hours a day to grinding your character to godlike levels? You have war stories of your own but can’t find the time to master every FPS to spawn an Internet meme? You’ve come to the right place, friend. The unfinished game Just a couple of weeks ago, I finished The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. I watched puppet Gannon go down for the firs… Continue

More bad game movies, psuedo-film geek reviewing and schlocky horror ensues... It’s time for yet another edition of lame game movie nights, wherein our intrepid columnist takes in a double feature of videogame films and lives to tell the experience. This time, we’re diving right in to a sub genre of a sub genre – the horror videogame movie. Since the games that these films are based on are much more terrifying than their film counterparts, we were in for a real “treat” this week when we surviv… Continue

In previous columns, we’ve deliberated the nature of storytelling within games and movies and complained about the quality of writing in many movies based on games. This week, we’re looking into the other side of the equation – writing a movie-based game, with a little inspiration from a very insightful Gamasutra interview posted last week. In the interview, screenwriter Dalan Musson (writer for The Golden Compass game) described the process of writing a movie-based game, from dealing with mov… Continue

So, games and films are undeniably vastly different media, but they're increasingly being treated as convergent forms. I wanted to explore the nature of writing and storytelling between the two... please check out the column and let me know if I've been successful in that regard: CutScenes

In honor of the recently deceased (though some still have hope) Xbox Live Arcade port of the classic Nintendo 64 shooter, last week's column took a look back at one of the greatest movie-to-game adaptations ever made: Goldeneye 007. In 1995, MGM announced that Pierce Brosnan would be the next actor to fill the shoes of James Bond, the debonair super spy made famous in films that often rode the line between serious action and goofy antics (see: whacked out gadgets, nigh-insane character names).… Continue