Moving Pixels Podcast

Monaco is a multiplayer stealth action game oozing with retro style with a touch of neon noir flair.   This week Nick Dinicola and I discuss both the single player and multiplayer experience of a game that features a nod to the meticulous planning of the heist and all the frenetic pleasure produced by getting the chance to play out that moment when all that planning goes terribly wrong. Ironically, it is this lat bit that makes the game great. Monaco reveals the pleasure of making mistakes.

This week Nick and I talk minimally-about minimalism in video games.   What more can we say?

Normally, we don't concern ourselves too terribly with spoilers on the podcast. However, given the rather essential and emotional twists and turns of Bioshock Infinite, we did make an effort to save most of the spoilers until the end of our discussion.   This episode we will be discussing Columbia, Elizabeth, Comstock, Booker, and what that infinite in Bioshock Infinite signifies. However, we'll give you fair warning as we approach discussion of the bigger potential spoilers.

As a remake, the 2013 release of Tomb Raider has truly remade an iconic image. But by beating her down, has Crystal Dynamics successfully created a reasonable image of a survivor?   In this week's episode, we look at the re-imagining of Lara Croft in this year's Tomb Raider reboot.

One of the more interesting indie releases of last year was Tomorrow Corporation's Little Inferno, a puzzle game, a parody of casual gaming, and an opportunity to burn everything in sight.   The game has been interpreted as a critique of capitalism, an environmental warning, and as a consideration of childhood and its endings. This week Nick, Eric, and I trot out our own personal theories about and personal experiences with the fireplace that burns at 100 billion degrees.

With a holiday season stuffed with sequels, it was nice to see a new IP arrive alongside other AAA releases.   The development team behind Dishonored has an impressive pedigree. The game offers a fresh take on stealth mechanics and character building, as well as a fairly fresh looking universe to play in. This episode, though, we consider if Dishonored has a soul?

This week Nick, Jorge, and I revisit one of the bigger holiday releases of 2012, Assassin's Creed 3, the conclusion of the game's first story arc and the introduction of an assassin that we aren't quite sure that we've figured out.   With Assassin's Creed 3, Ubisoft presents their vision of an American Revolution. But is the fifth time out all that revolutionary?

One of the more interesting indie titles of 2012 is the often unsettling, but often equally alluring and lurid Hotline Miami.   Does the game have anything to say about video game violence or does it just allow us to further exercise our own grossest tendencies?

This week Moving Pixels Podcast gets together to discuss our best gaming experiences of 2012.   We decided that we would not allow anyone to repeat any picks from anyone else's lists, so there may be a few inclusions that surprise you.   We also want to thank Rick Dakan, who has been with us since the beginning of the Moving Pixels podcast, for regularly hosting for us. This will be Rick's final episode with us, as he moves forward with another job in the gaming industry. We appreciate having had his perspective for the last few years. Thanks, Rick!

One of the best (if not the best) game of 2012 wrapped up its final episode late last year. The Moving Pixels podcast crew is on hand to discuss the decisions and consequences of a game that challenges our sensibilities and those things we find most valuable in human life, despite the presence of the walking dead.   Of, course, spoilers abound.

Over the summer, we took a look back at the well regarded original, cult classic XCOM.   So, with Firaxis giving the series a fresh coat of paint and introducing it to a new generation, we felt it imperative to consider the translation of a decades old system to today's next gen consoles.

With the final episode of The Walking Dead slated to appear this week, it seemed a good time to discuss the penultimate episode in preparation for that impending release.   Despite all of us ending up in Savannah in episode four, this episode Nick, Jorge, and I discover that each of our versions of the game's protagonist Lee are really in very different places from our own perspectives. A lot of decisions have defined this character and his relationship to the group in very different ways. So, we consider how we each have arrived via different character paths at this near final destination.   Of, course, spoilers abound.

Gearbox hasn't reinvented the wheel with Borderlands 2, but they have managed to improve the wheel in just about every way.   This week our podcast crew discusses how tweaking a title in even the smallest ways can result in some generally pretty appreciable advances.

A successful Kickstarter campaign drove the making of this brutally difficult sci-fi roguelike.   This episode of the Moving Pixels podcast explores what FTL does to us and considers whether this is a universe too arbitrary and cruel to be fair to its players.

The new episode of The Walking Dead suggests that, perhaps, we have less control over the outcomes of this game known now for its commitment to player choice. We consider this week what the impact of losing control is on the player's experience.

In many ways, 2012 seems to be shaping up as the year of the little game. While the holiday glut from the big publishers has yet to be seen, those games that build massive worlds to play around in have largely been absent from the shelves this year.   We decided this week to take a look at one of the few games of the summer that attempted to fill the open world void, United Front Games's Sleeping Dogs.   Offering a potentially unique urban sandbox for play through its Hong Kong setting, Sleeping Dogs still largely adheres to the formula established for open worlds by Western gamemakers. However, this week we explore how the game reconsiders how open world combat might play out in a culture with more limited access to guns and question whether or not this is enough to set Sleeping Dogs up as a sufficiently unique experience by comparison to its forerunners.

When is a game a clone and when is it simply an example of a genre? In some sense, this is the question that begins our discussion of that ubiquitous example of the medium: the game clone.   From Torchlight to Saints Row and beyond, some games seem like a deliberate aping of intellectual properties that have gone before. What makes a clone a clone? And why do we sometimes really feel a kinship to clones despite their cloying adherence to a formula created by someone else?

Almost 10 years after its release, gamers are still talking about X-Com. This week, so are we.   The formula is simple, a turn-based strategy game mixed with an economic simulation. And yet, is there any other game that is quite like X-Com?   That is the question that we begin our discussion with.

We aren't talking about how games test your reflexes. What we discuss this week is how games simulate physical experiences and how those experiences add to our immersion in game worlds and heighten the drama in video game storytelling.   Despite games often being thought of as a mental exercpoise, they certainly have a physical component too. We aren't talking about how games test your reflexes, though. Instead, what we are interested in is how games simulate physical experiences and how those experiences add to our immersion in game worlds and heighten the drama in video game storytelling.

Wolfenstein and Doom made them essential, but the shooter has been with us almost since the advent of the video game. Space Invaders, Contra, light gun games, the variations on how we can murder pixels on a screen seems nearly limitless.   Thia week the Moving Pixels podcast focuses on our obsession with this form of the video game and asks why we love this particular virtual activity so very dearly.