The Codec Call

A rather big racing game was released at the beginning of October that’s a continuation of the vision Playground Games have been developing for several years.  Forza Horizon 4 brings the racing excellence from the previous instalments to the UK, and there was no way we were going to be able to keep Ali and Stuart quiet on it.  With no way to fend of the enthusiasm we gave up the racing line and have let them have their say in this podcast.

In this episode of the Codec Moments Podcast you can hear:

• What Forza Horizon 4 is and why Ali compares it to an extra marital affair

It’s the middle of the month and the team decided it was time to sit down and talk about what they’ve been playing so far in October.  Dakar 18 gets its own discussion to match the scope of the game, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey makes an appearance, and Smash Hit Plunder works its VR magic.  On top of that there’s been a juicy piece of Hitman 2 news that’s really messing with Andy’s Year of Shame willpower, so we needed to record his thoughts, feelings, and make it just that little bit worse for him.

Listen to this episode of the Codec Moments Podcast to find out:

• What games have been reviewed this month so far

Of the many people that gave up their time to talk to us over the course of EGX 2018, Georg Backer and Holly Pickering from A Brave Plan went above and beyond in keeping Matt and Ali entertained whilst Andy played the intro sections of The Bradwell Conspiracy.  We’ll not bore you with that hour because there’s a much more interesting conversation to be had about how the game came about, what’s driving the design style, how the world was thought up, and how they’ve picked some of the voice talent.  There’s a lot of passion and excitement about the game from the team and it’s shaping up to be a great experience when it finally releases.

It’s one of our most anticipated games for 2019, Metro Exodus is shaping up to not just be the continuation of Artyom’s journey through the post apocalyptic ruins of Russia, but also the resolution of the events that started in the Metro 2035 book. We got the opportunity at EGX 2018 to talk to Huw Benyon who’s the head of global brand management for Deep Silver and find out more about the game’s premise and ethos. There might be a cheeky non-Metro question chucked in too at the end…

Here comes September’s Codec Momentum update, and there’s a surprise addition to the Codec Moments team.

With the next highly anticipated instalment of the Hitman series coming very soon, Stuart Cullen and Ali Cornwall got the chance to speak to Sven Liebold from IO Interactive about everyone’s favourite murder simulator.  We can’t apologise enough for the audio, the room was very noisy, but there’s a lot of good info so persevere with the background babble (we know the culprits and will be publishing a lengthy interview with them soon!).

VR games were present in force again at EGX 2018 and not only did we get hands on with one of the newest titles, Smash Hit Plunder from Triangular Pixels, we got the opportunity to speak to John Campbell who’s the technical director of the game.  Have a listen to learn more about the VR development process and some interesting insights on refining the experience for users.

We went.  We saw.  We chatted.  EGX 2018 ended up being a very busy couple of days of playing games, interviewing developers, and walking… a lot.  So what better way to sum it up than to grab some guests and talk through what our favourite parts were and if there was anything we regretted not seeing.

In this episode of the Codec Moments Podcast, you’ll hear:

• Stuart Cullen making a return to remind us all why his weekly page is called Scotch Corner