Monday, February 29, 2016

Best of the Moving Pixels Podcast: Getting Schooled by the Tutorial

Bit of a scheduling snafu on this week's new episode of The Moving Pixels podcast. So, no new episode this week. Instead, we're running another "Best of..." episode on the topic of video game tutorials.

Next week, though, we will return to our regularly scheduled programming with a discussion of Metal Gear Solid V, featuring regular Moving Pixels blog contributor Scott Juster as a guest.

I've never played Cut the Rope by the way. It seems much too hard to learn.

Best of the Moving Pixels Podcast: Getting Schooled by the Tutorial

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Song of the Introvert

With the exception of you, I dislike everyone in the room.

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Best of the Moving Pixels Podcast: The Value of Death in Video Games

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....

(Why are there four dots in the Star Wars ellipsis? I don't get it. One could argue that it is an ellipsis and a period, but that isn't actually a complete sentence. Baffling.).

Best of the Moving Pixels Podcast: The Value of Death in Video Games

Monday, February 22, 2016

As Longfellow said

Learn to labor and to walk it off.

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Firewatch and the Case of the Much Too Obvious MacGuffin

This is my follow up to yesterday's Firewatch review, which is a much more expansive discussion of a particular element of Firewatch, specifically its use of something that looks to me like Hitchcock's MacGuffin. The discussion, I fear, may give the impression that I am less of an advocate of the game than I really am, since I argue that this element of the game is mishandled. However, once again, I really do like this game, despite what I view as the game's only real flaw.

Also, I do spend a bit of time talking about the MacGuffin as a concept in this essay. I feel like more often than not when people talk about the MacGuffin they describe how it functions, but that its purpose is often not acknowledged. So, I kind of felt the need to talk a bit about what Hitchcock viewed as the purpose of using a MacGuffin before getting into how it works and what its purpose is in Firewatch. I think that it is useful, though, to do so, as talking about what it is meant to accomplish clarifies why I think it doesn't end up working to the game's advantage more clearly.

>Or,at least, that is my hope.

Firewatch and the Case of the Much Too Obvious MacGuffin

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Firewatch Is Less about Observing the Wilderness Than It Is about Observing a Relationship

A nicely told story. Also, quite pretty to look at. Its plotting reminds me of Hitchcock in certain ways, containing characters that are way less than perfect human beings, with its real focus on human drama, despite the lure of a thriller-style plot. In other words, the mystery doesn't really matter here. Much like in Hitchcock's Notorious, it's a MacGuffin that motivates the characters to act, but isn't the real heart of the story, which is, instead, its focus on exploring the relationship that evolves between its characters.

I allude to this idea briefly in this review, but I will talk about the idea of Firewatch as governed by the MacGuffin in greater depth in an article that will post tomorrow. There are some problems with that MacGuffin and the way that it's handled, I think, but again, that's something I'll talk about more in a longer post that is less of a review of the game and more of an analysis of it.

In the meantime, it is still a game worth playing. Not quite as compelling as January's Oxenfree, but Firewatch is still a pretty good character-driven story, despite its flaws as a "thriller."

Firewatch Is Less about Observing the Wilderness Than It Is about Observing a Relationship

Monday, February 15, 2016

Moving Pixels Podcast: Learning about Love from Cibele

Come listen to us chatter about the worst game that I played last year.

I mean I can always talk about something when it comes to a game, and I did write a bit about Cibele last year. So, at least the game gave me that, but still, the game itself amounts to little more than an hour and a half tediously spent.

Moving Pixels Podcast: Learning about Love from Cibele

Friday, February 12, 2016

Truth Rising from Her Well to Shame Mankind

--Jean-Léon Gérôme, Truth Rising from Her Well to Shame Mankind, 1896

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

The "Jiggly" Scenes

The National Federation for Decency boasts about 20,000 members. Its first and best known project involved monitoring prime-time television that might appeal to "man's prurient nature." Each monitor spent one night a week tallying televised incidents of violence, profanity, and "skin." As The Wall Street Journal reported at the time, "One monitor, a woman, cited the September 13 episode of Charlie's Angels for 23 'jiggly' scenes. Another monitor, also a woman, didn't note any such scenes. Mr. [Donald] Wildmon[, head of the National Federation for Decency,] says, 'I'd just use the higher estimate and not bother with the other one.'"

--"The Indecent Crusade." Playboy Oct. 1984: 13.

Monday, February 8, 2016

The Best of the Moving Pixels Podcast: Love Stories in Video Games

Since we began publishing the Moving Pixels podcast on a biweekly (rather than weekly) basis a couple years ago, I have had a scheduling hole on Mondays that I have never quite seemed able to fill in the Games section at PopMatters.

My wife had what I consider to be a rather scathingly brilliant idea over the weekend. We have about six years worth of podcasts (about 200 episodes) sitting over on the Soundcloud servers, so why not fill the hole by creating a Best of the Moving Pixels podcast feature to post during those off weeks?

So, this is a discussion from 2010 about love stories in video games. Hopefully, it is of interest to those that have never heard it before or is a pleasant bit of nostalgia for those that did.

The Best of the Moving Pixels Podcast: Love Stories in Video Games

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Undressing Kratos

If you want a man to represent brutality, in the end you're going to end up taking his clothes off.

Undressing Kratos

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

The Didact and the Analyst: Learning How to Not Get Screwed Playing Tharsis

After hyping Tharsis to a friend who is a board gamer (not so much a video gamer) as an extremely difficult digital board game, I was slightly annoyed when he won his first game. Assuming I'm not just being a crybaby about it, though, I tried to examine what this experience indicates about how we learn to play games.

The Didact and the Analyst: Learning How to Not Get Screwed Playing Tharsis

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Monday, February 1, 2016