The Codec Call

In this week’s Cost of a Coffee, Professor Kelvin Harris and Brian talk to the Simon Byron, the creator of Bang Man and David Chenell, one half of Enormous who developed Powder Alpine Simulator.

2014 was a strange year for gaming – there weren’t many highs, or too many lows, maybe because in the first full year of the life of our new console generation there weren’t actually that many new games.  Until November at least.  How do you sum up what you liked and disliked through the year?  We thought we’d do something a bit different to review our picks of 2014, we’ve gone for what surprised us for being as good as it was; and what disappointed us because it failed to live up to our excitement.

Cev, Andy and Matt got together at the end of December to record this Codec Call and talk through their picks of the year just past, and with only a little help from Uncle Grolsch and Auntie Baileys, put together 45 mins of chat that you might find at least a bit interesting… at some point.  You can play along as you listen too!  Answer all these questions correctly and there might be a game in it for you:

1. What are our most disappointing games of 2014?

On this week’s Cost of a Coffee, the Prof and Brian get all festive and play a restaurant management simulation…

The Prof and Brian have been away for a while, but today marks their triumphant return for the second series of Cost of a Coffee.  Before we let them get away with the bags of cash they are demanding as an appearance fee theses days, we’re making them take a dog run… RELEASE THE HOUNDS!

This week the Prof and Brian are getting to grips with pole and laying down rubber with the racing team sim, Motorsport Manager from Christian West on iOS.

This week’s Cost of a Coffee see’s the Professor and Brian breaking the surly bonds of Earth and heading… Out There… with an espresso machine in space!

The Prof and Brian are back from an isolation experiment to review 80 Days, where steam (punk) trains and camels are both viable transport choices

In this Cost of a Coffee special, the Prof and Brian are inspired by an ape uprising to discuss updates to games we’ve reviewed or admired from afar.

It’s time for another Codec Call, and this one features a very special guest joining us to talk about the role of the voice actor within the games industry, and how it is changing with advances and demands of technology.

Our guest this week is one of the most prolific voice actors working today, with credits on animated series including The Powerpuff Girls, Ben 10, Johnny Quest and Johnny Bravo, The Tick, The X-Men, Phineas and Ferb and Tamagotchi Video Adventures (if IMDB is to be believed); along with credits in games including Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Doom 3, SOCOM, Bulletstorm, Uncharted 3, Bioshock Infinite and The Last of Us to name a handful. Even if you don’t know her by name, you’ll know her by game as the voice of both Naomi Hunter in the Metal Gear Solid franchise and Commander Shepard from the Mass Effect series. It’s the supremely talented Jennifer Hale!

In this interview we cover:

• Jennifer’s acting history and her career to date.

Enjoy!

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