Moving Pixels Podcast

What with all the shooting and the lopping off of heads, romance and video games are not often concepts that gamers think of first when they think of their favorite medium.   Nevertheless, from Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man to Master Chief and Cortana, their are some pretty significant couples that remain central to the history of video games.

This week we discuss the much hyped and very pretty 2014 release, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.   This is a puzzle game about storytelling, and we consider whether the sum of the game's stories is worth more than its parts.

As we do each year, we discuss what was for us the standout video games of last year.   We are now a year into the next generation of consoles, but many of our favorites of 2014 remain the smaller, quieter indie title.

Using RPG Maker XP, To the Moon was fashioned out of the imagery and basic exploration mechanics of the sprite-based era of RPG games.   Less an RPG game, though, and perhaps more honestly a piece of interactive fiction with some light puzzle mechanics, what it does have in common with RPGs of that era is a commitment to telling a very human story despite its simple graphics and character sprites.   Join us for a discussion of To the Moon.

We have written a bit about Spec-Ops: The Line here at PopMatters, but we have never explored this 2012 game on our podcast.   It's hard to understand why as The Line may be the best antiwar war game ever made, rife as it is with atrocities, tragedies, and a thoughtful approach to considering the choices we make in video games and in those more impactful real life "games," wars themselves.

Yes, I know the image above is one of Clementine at the beginning of this season of The Walking Dead. However, this is the episode in which it all comes back to that moment in which Clementine ponders her past and then considers her future.   The final episode of Season Two allows the player to finally decide who they want their Clementine to be by offering multiple paths to conclude this episode. This week we each discuss the Clementine that we have decided will resolve this season of The Walking Dead.

This week we confront the penultimate episode of Telltale's The Walking Dead Season Two in which our erstwhile band of survivors narrows down to the remaining few that will make their way into the finale.   Set against the backdrop of a museum dedicated to the Civil War, Clementine and her companions experience their own house dividing.

October is the month that traditionally big publishers have attempted to get something horrific out on the shelves for gamers to play (see, for example, offerings like this year's Alien Isolation or The Evil Within.   This year in anticipation of Halloween, we decided to take a look at a few games that currently have no publishers attached to them that may have flown under your radar, The Cursed Forest and One Late Night.   Both of these games are available for download for free at IndieDB and ModDB respectively.

The hardboiled detective genre is not known for its subtlety or complication. A good hardboiled tale simply hits you like a right to the jaw.   This week we discuss how Gunpoint presents a hardboiled fiction through simple, straightforward puzzle mechanics and with surprisingly little gunplay.

The mystery of The Wolf Among Us has concluded with an interest in exploring the consequences of crime and its effects on a community.   This week, then, we discuss the politics and justice of a fairy tale world that manages to present these issues in a manner more familiar to us than fantastic.

As we are wont to do on occasion on the podcast, we decided to play through a few little indie titles that are available for free online, which you can find through the following links: Serena, Glitchhikers, and A Dark Room.   Not everything free is good, of course, but at least one of these titles may be a game of the year contender.

Supergiant Games created an indie sensation with its 2011 game, Bastion. As a result, this year's follow up, Transistor, had to contend with some big expectations from fans of the first game.   This week we discuss Transistor and how it measures up to its older sibling.

In truth, there is very little that is happy in the neon noir fairy tale world of The Wolf Among Us. However, the penultimate chapter of Telltale's adaptation of the Fables comic book series to video game form is a quieter and more subdued one.   This week we discuss the possible success or failure of that quiet as the drama of the game moves towards its final act.

While Telltale Games released the fourth episode of the second season of The Walking Dead a couple of weeks ago, we want to spare you spoilers for the most recent episode. Instead, we're talking about the middle episode "In Harm's Way" this week.   So, take a look back with us at Clementine's confrontation with the villainous Carver and his totalitarian approach to the zombie apocalypse.

The surreal world of Kentucky Route Zero continues to fascinate and confound with the release of its third act.   This episode we discuss this act along with the interlude between it and the previous one, The Entertainment.

Not since Sid Meier's Pirates! has there been a pirate game as engrossing as Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag.   This week we discuss the most recent Assassin's Creed, its place in the history of the Assassin's Creed series, and why sailing the Caribbean with Edward Kenway has reinvigorated our interest in this annual series.

We hate them. We love them. We complete them, except when we don't complete them. What makes the side quest so agonizing, yet so alluring?

Following up on our previous discussion of Simogo's quirky iOS title, Device 6, this week we take a look at Simogo's other little game about exploration, Year Walk.   While the two games share an interest in how players are presented with and interact with virtual spaces, a commitment to to a unique aesthetic, and a quirky and unusual world marked by puzzles and riddles, the two games definitely do not so obviously resemble one another in other ways. Gone is the maze of textuality that defines Device 6. Instead, the player explores a barren Northern European landscape in an effort to perform a ritual ages old.   This week we discuss the similarities and differences between the two games as well as what makes Year Walk a particularly compelling game world to explore in its own right.

This week we take a look at the twisty textual passages of Device 6. Device 6 treats text as a location and loses its players in the puzzling act of interpretation.

This season of Telltale's The Walking Dead has offered players a way into the story via a familiar character, Lee Everett's ward Clementine.   This week-among other issues raised this time out-we consider the strangeness of "being Clementine" as opposed to what would normally be the case in a video game with such a serious tone, a less vulnerable, more adult character.