Emotive Pixels - All Podcasts

The key thing this podcast might help you with, oh previous player of Bastion, is a far more comprehensive understanding of the story, which our friend Matt knows a suspicious amount about. Listen up!

Also featured are extensive recommendations, some of them strange, based on what we feel are similar or precursory games to Supergiant's first. And somehow, zero spoilers for Transistor!

Relevant links!

• Bastion Original Soundtrack via Darren Korb on Bandcamp
• Automodellista: racing made artsy (and mildly age-resistant) [Editor's note: vexels and oldschool DangeRuss on dA are probably inspired by this, wish I had known more about it]
• Wiki: Zia is an 'unseen character'
• Neal Stephenson's Seveneves is a book y'all should read. Because it rocks.
• BT's "Road Trip" (or, ingame Tiger Woods 2006, "Convergence") sounds awful familiar...

Relevant links!

• Screenie: at the Canadian border
• What in the world is the Zephyr Blade, and where does it come from, you ask? Only the best animated webseries The Escapist ever had anything to do with: Doraleous and Associates.
• Early forays into DLC: the horse armor mod for Oblivion
• "The Internet is a series of tubes": the wonderful words of Ted Sanders, R-AK

Editor's note: But what would I know? I didn't get to play it because it wasn't on the more open platform.

Editor's successive note: Turns out now it's on Android, as of August [2015]! Huzzah! Here's a podcast to commemorate the occasion of actual global accessability!

Relevant links!

• Warm Bodies: a zombie film with heart
• Cinna from that one dumb movie trilogy (quadrilogy?)
• Seven Eves: A[nother] Neal Stephenson novel (woop woop!)
• Justice Scalia's Language 101: jiggery-pokery & the nature of pure applesauce
• Mobile Dead Space interface: 1 was best *neener*

This is a super-spoilery kind of episode, even more than normal, possibly even moreso than our Spec Ops: The Line cast. Which you should totally check out because it had a social worker dad in it. Ok so yeah, only listen if you're immune to spoilers (there's not much point to playing this game if you know the plot!) or you've played it already. Got it?

Her Story is an indie detective 'game' (it's an FMV game fosho) by Sam Barlow, a British fellow, with acting talent of one singular person: a femme fatale rockstar, Viva Seifert, who's damn good. Wiki says it is "about a set of fictional police interviews from 1994", and I see no reason to either disagree or expound upon that considerably other than to say that you play the role of a hip and more-protagonist-y-than-you'd-expect databaser querier who is tasked with querying a database per the direction of you, the player. Search for clips by their audio transcription, 5 at a time, and understand what happened in this woman's life.

Her Story draws heavy influences from things like L.A. Noire and Phoenix Wright in some ways, and we liken it to Papers, Please in that it is effectively a game about you doing the mundane to receive story. This is a game that is utterly new and we all appreciate that about it, just like the critics I'm sure you haven't been able to avoid scrounging the floor for something positive that hasn't already been said. This game is emotional and brave, and though it's written by a man, there's some really compelling female narrative here; some of the best I've seen. (Cue angry folks asking why a woman didn't write it - that's discussed in the interview linked below, so don't blame us for not mentioning it.)

Relevant links!

• True Crimes and Family Histories: The Story Behind Her Story via Klepek & Barlow via Giant Bomb (also in Giant Bomb Presents podcast feed)
• Prisoner's tap code: communicating by tap matrices

URL OF THE YEAR EDITION
Play this (Flash) game now here before continuing.

Seriously, play this game.
It's about 5 to 10 minutes long,
it's free,
and it plays in your browser.
(Don't play on your phone though, it's Flash and Apple killed that.)

Definitely do that.

Okay?

Frog Fractions is an edutainment game, and it is an invaluable part of your toolkit as either a present-day or future parent. Not only will it teach the young people surrounding you, it might make you a bit smarter, too!

Frog Fractions is a one-man production by Twinbeard, a.k.a. Jim Crawford. Ostensibly, it is a Flash-based Missile Command-esque edutainment 'title' that focuses upon fractions and general non-integer values. But if you look at it just right, it might let on to more than it initially appears...

Relevant links!

• Ars: 'Frog Fractions 2 Kickstarter aspires to be so much more', by Kyle Orland (actual Kickstarter link here [now closed])
• Giant Bomb's Interview Dumptruck: The surprising history of Frog Fractions, interview between Klepek and Crawford
• Well, it isn't against the rules: Animal athlete loophole via TVtropes, and how AirBud addresses it
• Zorkmids, straight outta the Zork series by Infocom, and, of course, a fan project to re-mint Zorkmids, sadly abandoned
• Dafuq is 'Toejam and Earl'? Oh Sega. And of course, a reboot has already been successfully Kickstarted!
• Edutainment staff picks (play links via playDOSgamesonline): The Learning Company's Treasure Mountain!, Reader Rabbit, Midnight Rescue!
• Further edutainment picks (post-DOS piratable era): Sesame Street Countdown (no relation to the IT Crowd 'countdown', JumpStart series, LP Elroy Hits the Pavement
• Final nerd tier of edutainment: Logo, the dynamic educational programming language created in 1967 by Wally Feurzeig & Seymour Papert
• Yup, parodied that too: The Matrix end credits track, by Rage Against The Machine
• Spoiler city beyond: Frog Fractions' final tech tree
• Reference alert: Allen Iverson's just talkin' 'bout practice

Topics include which FFs are our favorite, which we [haven't] played, which ones have the best OSTs, which videogame music podcasts you should listen to (just kidding, we didn't talk about this but I have a couple), and which games we want to play just based on the FMVs we saw as each game was being showcased behind the orchestra - a question we were inspired to ask by having seen Zelda performances elsewhere.

These truly are some master works, some of the defining works that will last beyond many other pieces of the medium's finest productions, perhaps even outliving a world in which "Final Fantasy" is a common household franchise to namedrop. Some say Uematsu is regarded as a celebrity in Japan, and some of these pieces - especially some of the earlier ones, say some in our group - really bring that point home.

Relevant links!

• Nobody knows who that is: Ross Geller
• Penny Arcade: Annarchy (this is hanging on Will's wall y'all)
• Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children - Tifa vs. Loz

Relevant podcasts!

• Super Marcato Bros.: A Videogame Music Podcast (lots of retro and really knowledgeable folks about scores)
• Train Station at 8: also A Videogame Music Podcast! (also videogamey, a bit more interviews and more unpredictable)

The game plays with a mild illusion of choose your own adventure, but doesn't quite work out that way by the end. Our host this week, Nate, has a lot to say about the parallels between this game and ergodic literature (a form of literature that requires more out of the reader than basic text); Nate's most prominent example being Mark Z. Danielewski's seminal 2000 work House of Leaves, a book that attempts to answer the questions and fantasies of early media experts prophesizing about what the internet would do to the written word. That is to say, reading House of Leaves is crazy; its text is constantly in changing styles, with some passages being backwards, upside-down, laid out in spirals, or told through margin liners of someone else's inane notes and scraps, for the most part in immersion-constructing ways. And from this, there are some clear but toned-down inspirations in the 'interface' of Device 6, Nate thinks, and we'll talk a bit about that and why that book might interest you if you liked aspects of this game (and vice-versa), in addition to the J.J. Abrams contribution to the world of the ergodic.

It isn't just about books this week though, as we ponder the puzzles in Device 6, their difficulty, the story of the 'game', the divide between reading and playing, and just how similar this is after all to Fullbright and Emotive Pixels both's classic Gone Home.

Relevant links!

• Simogo's official list of all cultural references in Device 6
• Book time I: House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
• Book time II: S. by Doug Dorst & J.J. Abrams
• Bootstrap paradox: the one Esteban was talking about
• Music time I: "Creepy Doll" by Jonathan Coulton
• Music time II: "Anna" by Jonathan Eng from the D6 OST
• Relevant to the next Simogo production: The Lighthouse Painting, a 4-part podcast story

This week we peek at all 9001 bits of retro glory 2D sidescrolling platformer Shovel Knight, a Yacht Club Games production funded via Kickstarter and initially released in 2014. The game is a standout selection for many reasons, not the least of which is its absolutely jammin' chiptune soundtrack arranged by Dearest 'virt' to fit and match the capabilities of the sound card expansion to the SNES console. Didn't know there was a sound card expansion? Well, it was Japan-only, and late in the console's life, but it's a real thing, and armed with that bit of knowledge you'll understand the level of love and care that went into crafting such a beautiful homage to the classics of the 80s and 90s.

We discuss how, thankfully for some of our peasant cast, you don't need to be "in the know" about all these references to really love this game; none of them are too overt or heavy-handed; they're just there if you think to look for them. That being said, comparisons both graphically and mechanically abound, and just some of the ones we can think of off the tops of our heads include Final Fantasy (the early ones), Super Mario Brothers for the overworld map, Duck Tales [Remastered] for just about the entire game, Castlevania for several weapons and the like, and Mega Man - again for just about everything.

Relevant links!

• Plungers as weapons: not to be trifled with
• This Week in Chiptune, your weekly dose of chips pres. The Shovel Knight tag!
• Yacht Club announces physical releases; this game is still going strong!
• Extra Credits: Video Game Music(answering the question of why game music seems to have been better in the past, by and large)
• Kinda Funny: Colin Moriarty plays Castlevania 3
• Joe Matar, Den of Geek! - Why Shovel Knight is a masterpiece
• PlayStation Store: The Last Guy!(go to the PSN on your PS3 and find the subtitled dev interview trailer. Do it now. It's the best <3)

From my humble origins pecking around Beyond Earth, it immediately became clear that something else would be necessary for my full step forward in the 4X sphere, and Rock, Paper, Shotgun's GoTY '14 awards happened to make it very clear just where that fix might be, a potential diamond in the rough from indie developer Amplitude Studios, a tiny ex-Ubisoft Parisian team working one indie darling after another through the Unity framework, and tying together all of their games' lore no less. That gem is indeed late 2014's Endless Legend, released just one month prior to Beyond Earth to quiet rave acclaim, and its subsequent minor add-on, Guardians in 2015.

From the moment I first loaded up EL, it was clear these two games were meant to be contrasted, from their combat to their tech trees to their soundtracks, and that's exactly what we're here today to do; in a somewhat messy and mildly unorganized fashion, we sit down and talk about exactly what makes these two games. You'll benefit most from a passing knowledge of the Civilization series, but it isn't required, and knowledge of Endless Legend is absolutely not required whatsoever - it is new, after all!

Relevant links!

• Rock, Paper, Shotgun: PC Game of the Year '14, Endless Legend
• Polygon: "How 4X fans have helped design the genre's next big thing" by Wes Fenlon
• Reddit: How to find Beyond Earth soundtrack files with standard Steam install
• All you need in one picture: Super Mario Galaxy (as mentioned)

In these episodes, we follow Clementine through more harrowing guts-strewn throngs of zombies on through even more awkward and profound emotional moments and, as our cast is wont to point out, intolerable humans. We get into the conclusion of the series quite deeply and really rue the things we felt we've missed with our endings (especially as they relate to our mostly-merciless treatment of Kenny). We talk about how much Bonnie is no good, the fine balance beam Telltale is walking with their action-to-cutscene ratio, statue quotes, dream sequences neverending, and niche Hotline Miami references.

It's an exciting week, and an older episode serves as an excellent reminder of the thrills that are only possible when you rate games. Remember when we did that?

Relevant links!

• Austin Powers steamroller scene: important cultural references abound
• Wes Fenlon via PC Gamer: The Walking Dead Season 2 Episode 5 review
• MDK: murder, death, kill? A game of madness, but it's Interplay so you know it was good
• SPOILER: Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons death scene - death done 10/10 as only in videogames

Shameless plugs! (quality warning)

• Emotive Pixels #4: The Walking Dead: Season 2, Episode 1 podcast
• Emotive Pixels #9: The Walking Dead: Season 2, Episodes 2 & 3 podcast