Hey all!
Just wanted to give a brief update about what's going on.
First: I just got this in the mail! I just wanted to thank all of you for sticking with the show through thick and thin. This means a lot to me. I know it is in some sense just an arbitrary milestone, but it's a sign of just how much the show has grown in just six short years. Here's to another 100,000 someday soon. :)
... 2017-05-26 00:36:20 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey all!
If you couldn't guess, I'm holding off on that 0451 video until Prey comes out - it didn't seem to make sense to release it with that game on the horizon, so I want to incorporate it in any of my thoughts.
In the mean time, here's a mostly spoiler-free (ish?) look at Scanner Sombre, the latest title from long-time indie devs Introversion Software.
2017-05-02 01:58:35 +0000 UTC View PostEdit: Not sure what I was thinking; I've updated the link to be a forever-link rather than a 24 hour one. Sorry for the e-mail spam!
Original post as follows:
So taking after my good friend Mumbles, I've decided to mess with setting up a Discord for my Patrons and a few other peeps. I would note that:
A) This is ENTIRELY EXPERIMENTAL and is not necessarily sure to be around forever, especially if only few people join or it turns into a cesspool. I reserve the right to ...
2017-04-16 04:51:12 +0000 UTC View PostI am not sure whether this episode needed a spoiler warning, so I just sort of put a loose one at the beginning. Still: Everything! A game about all of the things! Pretty neat! And more importantly, closer to on schedule than I've been in a while! Hooray!
2017-04-10 00:48:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Night in the Woods is a really neat game about being a cat! Also about being a 20-something facing the ennui of being an adult. Also it is about Sharkle, who is the best thing ever.
Anyways, I took at look at Night in the Woods, which was a weird game to write about because it's got a ton of stuff to talk about but it wears its thematic content on its sleeve. Like, some games you have to dig a bit to get to the "What is this even about?" part, but Night in the Woods makes it pretty...
2017-03-25 05:24:46 +0000 UTC View Post
So I get into this a little bit in the video, but I've been running behind all month due to various life things (the new job, getting a new dog, and some other personal stuff). That was okay, becasue I was gonna dedicate the last weekend of the month to getting some stuff out there! Then I got a sinus infection and was a zombie for a week, and uh... not much got done.
So to try to make up for it I whipped up this little thing. It's a bit unpolished and I still sound all weird, but ...
2017-03-01 02:10:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Apparently I forgot to post this when it went online a few weeks ago! So I'm correcting that now in case anyone hasn't seen it. Be warned, there are big spoilers for the entire game throughout the whole video.
Anyways, I noticed this when getting ready to post the next little thing, so sorry for the in-box spam.
2017-03-01 02:06:16 +0000 UTC View Post
So originally this month was going to be a Dishonored 2 video, and that kind of fell through because I accidentally ballooned the script out into a giant thing that's gonna take a lot more time. So the good news is we've probably got a bit Looking Glass/0451 retrospective coming our way at some point in the next month or two!
The bad news is I didn't realize that I wasn't gonna be able to make something that huge until about halfway through January, which is why this episode is so late. ...
2017-01-30 06:26:37 +0000 UTC View Post
Merry Christmas Eve everyone! To celebrate here's perhaps the most Christmassy episode I've done. Well, Christmassy in a Gremlins/Shane Black/Die Hard kinda way. But at there's snow and lights and some santas!
Anyways, Dead Rising 4 is a frustrating game. It fixes so much of the tonal problems that ran rampant in the last game, but in the process pretty much finishes the job of converting Dead Rising from a quirky, kinda-broken, but totally unique thing to generic ...
Hey all! This time I'm talking about a game where you pick up trash! Sometimes you try to sell it! It's... it's more interesting than that sounds.
Anyways, this week I'm looking at Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor! I'll be back soonish with a Christmas themed episode... well, kind of... you'll see.
2016-12-14 03:28:18 +0000 UTC View Post
This video took far longer than it probably should have to make, and for that I apologize. It was a fun mix of technical and game design issues, but I can bore you about that later. For now: A new episode is up! Yay!
And hopefully now for something a bit shorter, sweeter, and lighter.
2016-11-24 01:42:30 +0000 UTC View Post
October continues with what is probably our first (perhaps only?) really scary episode: a look at Kitty Horrorshow's works and Anatomy in particular. I've been a fan of her stuff for a while now, and I wanted to look at why Anatomy stood out as perhaps the most robust of he games I have played so far. That said, it's far from her only great game - they're all on the small side, but they each have their quirks and charms while all feeling distinctly from her mind, with Chyzra and Gran...
2016-10-23 20:41:50 +0000 UTC View Post
The second Halloweeny episode is out! This time it's a mostly spoiler-free look at Oxenfree, an adventure game that mixes spooky ghost stories and young adult fiction.And despite being a cranky 31 year old guy I mostly liked it, so that's gotta be a statement in favor of either me or the game (I'm not sure which).
Anyways, the next Halloween episode should be up soonish - I've got at least two in mind and they're both finally approaching actually scary, so this should be fun.
2016-10-14 09:08:45 +0000 UTC View Post
I'm kicking off a month of Halloween-y games with Devil Daggers! It's basically Geometry Wars-meets-Quake, and the results are pretty neat!Anyways, I figured that covering a bunch of jump-scare games would get repetitive (and there's like a million YouTube videos on those as it stands) so I'm gonna be looking at a bunch of scary-adjacent games that aren't necessarily straight-up horrifying. More to come soon!
2016-10-08 12:41:41 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey all!
This time I wrote a whole lot about Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. The response to this video has been pretty polarized, and I guess it comes off as more harsh than I really intended it to be?
Like, there are some games I genuinely dislike for how they engage with their themes - Bioshock Infinite and Watch_Dogs are two examples that pop immediately to mind. But Mankind Divided isn't one of them! I actually enjoyed my time with it once I got used to the idea of a Deus Ex tha...
2016-09-22 14:46:20 +0000 UTC View Post
In this episode I took a look at No Man's Sky! I feel like discussion of the game proper has been lost in the derailment of the hype train and the kerfuffle about whether its marketing was truthful, and I kind of wanted to step back and look at the game as it stands.
This episode was also produced much faster than normal - a two week turnaround instead of my normal month-to-month approach. I kind of feel like it shows, a bit, but I'd like any/all feedback. Like I said in that...
2016-09-02 14:59:41 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey all! I've put up a video on Firewatch looking at its overall themes and its structure.
2016-08-20 16:45:52 +0000 UTC View PostThank you so much for the support this month!
2016-07-31 23:59:00 +0000 UTC View Post
New video is up! This time I look at TF2 and Overwatch and how they sculpt their individual communities.
I don't know how common this sentiment in the video will be, though. For a while (this was probably five or six years ago) I was very much involved in a TF2 server - I ran trivia nights and made friends. We had custom mods that could play music to the whole server and we'd all sing along in a broken, laggy cacophony of doom. We played at a level that was just serious e...
2016-07-11 01:03:59 +0000 UTC View PostThank you so much for the support this month!
2016-06-30 23:59:00 +0000 UTC View Post
The DOOM episode is now up! I try to talk about why I really really enjoyed the game but also struggle to see where it can go from here. Plus: DOOM 3 jokes!
2016-06-13 23:25:25 +0000 UTC View PostThank you so much for the support this month!
2016-05-31 23:59:00 +0000 UTC View Post
And here we wrap up Dark Souls III. Like I said last time, this was my first Dark Souls game and I'm glad I finally sat down and played all the way through it. It's an interesting game - I really dig the game's defense-oriented approach to combat, the macabre art direction and world building, and the fact that the game isn't afraid to be weird and obscure with both its mechanics and its story.
That said, I think I'm pretty exhaustively done with From Software games for a bit. &...
2016-05-22 22:12:16 +0000 UTC View PostThank you so much for the support this month!
2016-04-30 23:59:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey all!
I've posted the first is what looks like is going to be two videos on Dark Souls III. Originally it was going to be a bunch of shorter essays strung together, but this difficulty one sort of spiraled out of control and ended up basically being a full length episode onto itself.
I still have all the footage sitting around, though, so the next episode (which will basically be the other micro-essays strung together) should be pretty quick!
T...
2016-04-26 11:51:17 +0000 UTC View PostThank you so much for the support this month!
2016-03-31 06:59:00 +0000 UTC View Post
This episode went through a lot of rewrites. Part of that was simply the need to keep my meandering writing habits in check - I love this game, and it was pretty easy to go off onto tangents. I had wanted to say something about the evolution of its artstyle (the original billboards didn't glow and had more muted colors, and the original ...
2016-03-11 15:59:51 +0000 UTC View PostThank you so much for the support this month!
2016-03-01 07:59:59 +0000 UTC View PostThank you so much for the support this month!
2016-01-31 00:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post
This time I take a look at The Beginner's Guide in an awkwardly self-aware video!
2016-01-18 04:47:48 +0000 UTC View Post
