Save and Reload

The End of Save and Reload

2010-07-25T19:01:00.000-07:00

So everyone seems to have left, but I want to tell you guys what I'm up to now. I'm currently working on a Tumblr over here, and I now have a Twitter over here.

I will still continue to write long-form stuff about video games if you care. If you follow either of those you should be able to find them.

So I'm sorry we had to leave you good people, but things will get better.

Thanks,
Spencer

Save and Reload Podcast 19: Recoverycast / Two Spit-Covered Fingers

2010-07-08T10:12:00.000-07:00

So we made our comeback, but don't call it that. Matty P and I were tired as shit, and MC Ryan OD was MC RYAN OD. I don't do the usual intro, because I'm busy sounding like a pedophile.

Download

Here is MC RYAN OD's haiku

I played Alan Wake
Man that game is just ok
Gotta get those ghouls

So as you heard we are now down a podcaster. If you are interested in making the show a little less awkward send me an email and we will get you on this thing. Oldspencer@gmail.com

Another thing you can do to make this less awkward is to ask us listener questions below.

Guys! Missing Alan Wake Manuscript Found!

2010-07-05T22:52:00.001-07:00

Yo! What's up internet? So I have been having a pretty bad case of writers block lately and my wife suggested that we take a little vay-cay out in the woods. Sounded alright at the time but all this crazy shit started happening. It did not really phase me much though. For some reason, I was just looking for thermoses the whole time. Anyways, whilst I was looking for said thermoses, I saw a shining piece of paper laying on the ground. It was written by the infamous writer, Alan Wake.

"So then three dudes came out of nowhere and started attacking me. But first the camera panned out to let me know this. I shined my flashlight right up on these dudes until they materialized and I could shoot them, which I did do. I shot them in the face. They disappeared after this. Then about an hour later, a licensed song that I did not really enjoy played. I personally think the Roy Orbison song that was played previously was much better."

Wow! What a great story! Alright guys. Hope you enjoyed this. Keep it real safe bros!

No Regular Podcast This Week.

2010-06-30T13:04:00.000-07:00

Due to my vacation and some circumstances I didn't forsee we will not have a regular show this week. We will be back next week and will explain things more then. We may have some kind of bonus show this week, but I can't guarantee one. Thanks for being understanding guys.

Keep Pollock and Schafer separate

2010-06-28T10:28:00.002-07:00

If we're going to get off on the right foot, I need to be very clear about something: I don't play video games for their “art” and anybody who does is an ass.

I don't really care if anybody ever takes video games seriously. In all honesty, I have a hard time taking them seriously myself.

Don't get me wrong, though. I adore video games. I spent countless hours working Ken's target-combo-to-Fierce-Shoryuken-to-Super-to-Ultra in Street Fighter 4, months trying to free all the captives in Castlevania: Rondo of Blood and 10 years trying to beat Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos. I've got my credentials in video games.

Take a look at those three games I just mentioned. Do you notice something about them?

If you're sharp, you'll see that they all have their focus in the right place: gameplay.

This is the problem with the “are video games art” debate. In trying to play up the artistic qualities, we ignore what we really play these things for and thereby miss the heart of our love. It's like trying to sell a car by only describing its leather seats.

These three games are perfect examples. SF4 has amazing style and fluid animation, Rondo of Blood's soundtrack is a standalone classic and Ninja Gaiden II's cutscenes tell a classic action story with a grim flair rarely seen in the Nintendo Entertainment System days. All of these factors are what we'd mention if we wanted to prove their artistic merit.

But what do we come back to these games for? The kickass combat system, whipping Death in the face and getting knocked into pits by those fucking eagles, respectively.

There may be art in video games. Metal Gear Solid's story rivals any narrative ever told. Grim Fandango's blend of speakeasy and Dia de Los Muertos was outright genius. But again, you play the game before you study the art.

The problem is that you can't play art. Try Linger in Shadows if you want to dispute that.

My point is that we don't play games for the pretentious aspects of it. We don't play because it looks good or because it sounds pretty.

We play because there's nothing better than pounding punks into mulch as Venom in Maximum Carnage. We play because there's nothing better than calling in that nuclear strike in Starcraft. We play because there's nothing better than swinging around and dropping grenades on fools in Bionic Commando: Rearmed.

All of you kids crying about Roger Ebert and the merit of Okami, shut up and play. Pop that monocle out of your eye socket and stop pretending that you enjoyed playing Killer 7.

As for me, I'm going back to trying to beat Contra 3: The Alien Wars on hard. With a little luck, I've only got another year or two until I get there.

Save and Reload Podcast 18: Spoilers

2010-06-25T00:26:00.000-07:00

This week we discuss Games of the week, the aftermath of E3, and listener contributions. And don't worry about the title, we only discuss spoilers, we don't mention them. Except Super Mario Galaxy 2 but no one cares.

Download

The song is In The Garage by OxygenStar as part of the 8 bit Weezer album.

We would have answered questions this week if there were any. We come on here every week to bring both of you a show and not even a single question? Come one now ask away.

Also at the end of this podcast we ask if anyone would like to try and edit me, into the Dead Space Extraction boxart. Its the opposite of what we did last week.

SUP BROS?

2010-06-18T12:55:00.000-07:00

Yooooo! What’s up internet? This is M.C. Ryan O.D. aka (pronounced ah-kah) Tyrone Shoelaces aka Celery Crisps. A few weeks ago, via facebook chat, the charming Spencer Glass asked me to write and podcast for his awesome blog, Save and Reload. Well, I agreed to do so and I want to let all you guys know that I will try my best to provide you all with magnificent posts.

Now I know you guys all have one question: Who the heck is this guy?

What you guys might not know is that I am already a pretty big person in the gaming world. I am not, however, the biggest person. You all know whom that title belongs to, right? If you guys were thinking of Hamza Aziz, you would be right as shit! Why do I bring this up? Because I am his right-hand man! Don’t believe me? Well I’m about to fuck you guys up with some truth.

You ready? Alright! Check this out!

Here is Hamza’s facebook profile page from January 18th.

BOOM! There I am in the background doing it up really big with an Asian chick.

So yeah, I am glad you can all know I got some serious gaming cred. I am super excited to use this cred and trust that I earned with you just now to write some pretty sweet posts. So be on the lookout for that.

It was awesome introducing myself to all you guys. See you around!

PS. Cora or Mary, will you marry me?

Save and Reload Podcast 17: Barnyard Sluts

2010-06-17T12:14:00.000-07:00

So this week's show happens to be the debut of our newest writer/podcaster Mc Ryan OD. This made the show quite silly as jokes were flying around everywhere and anything could happen. Before going in I have to warn you of some Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy spoilers that happen about 10 and a half minutes in.

Download

The song is We Are Your Friends by Smiletron Ft Joule.

That picture was originally of Grant, do you like what he did with his hair?

The contest we started this week is to make us a creative interpretation of us as barnyard sluts. You can do this through drawing, writing, or any other way you see fit. You can put all submissions into comments below, but Grant has expressed that he doesn't want any submissions with him in them to be explicitly pornographic.

If you have any questions or comments, please put them below.

Tell Me a Story

2010-06-16T18:25:00.001-07:00

When discussing games as an art form one of the most common critique is that games do not have the authorial control necessary for artistic expression. How can something tell a meaningful story when the reader gets to draw all over the pages in crayon? This idea strikes at the core of gaming as an art and more importantly at storytelling in general.

There are two main camps as far as authorial control goes. The first camp is the “Author Is Always Right” camp. This camp is built on thousands of years of storytelling in which authors tell stories to listeners. Books, Movies, Painting, Photography, Poetry, and all other art forms that predate the twentieth century work in this way and it works great. This form allows viewers to experience aesthetic pleasure and derive thoughtful lessons from authors. Its easy flexible and allows for smoother predictable creation and consumption. The second camp is the “Anyone Can Be An Artist” camp. This camp is based on the assumption that authors are not uniquely qualified to deliver meaning, that meanings are based on interpretation and personal reaction. Some Modern and Post-Modern art falls into this category, pieces that don’t have a distinct meaning and must be interpreted by viewers to have any merit.

Video Games come in both of these flavors, although they are seem fundamentally suited for the latter. Games usually have very guided authorships, they have writers and levels are constructed in a way to guide players where they need to go. These principles seem almost too obvious to be considered, but they are not necessary for a game. Some games discard these principles to varying degrees. Noby Noby Boy is a dramatic example in which the game contains very little authorial guidance. The player is a worm that is able to jump, stretch itself, and devour people and objects. There are no objectives or goals and nothing leads to a victory screen. This game is in a sense without an author. Now Noby Noby Boy won’t win any awards for inspiring grand revelations, but it does do something that only video games can do, it presents a space without guidance in which a player can create something. This is something that the ‘Author Camp’ does not believe has any value. But player involvement in content creation can actually have profound consequences and imbue stories that would be less meaningful with one author.

Recently Jason Rohrer released the game Sleep is Death (I’ll refer to it as Sid), a story telling game that required two players. One of the players is the director who controls objects, characters and backdrops; and the other is the player who moves his own character and chooses what to say. With a good director both players have a similar amount of control. Stories that are created in Sid are practically never as good as stories written by individual authors when read afterwards. Despite this fact though Sid stories have something that normal stories do not. During their creation the player is both receiving and creating the story, two people act as both creators and receivers. This results in a story that does not have one meaning for one person, but is rather a conglomeration of multiple meanings. Sid combines the two players prespectives into one strange storyteller after its all over, but other games allow the player to remain independent in their experience. Games like Left 4 Dead survive on stories that players tell their friends, the story is the player experience in the game. And that is a way of creating hundreds of thousands of stories without doing the grunt work. Gaming can create numerous artists in hundreds of genres, easily.

Bonus Save and Reload Podcast! E3 Miracles!

2010-06-15T12:19:00.000-07:00

So Matt, Grant, and I made a bonus podcast for you. There really isn't much to say about it other than the fact that we talk all about E3 so far, and get really excited about things. We bring what we feel is an informative view on both Microsoft and Nintendo's press conferences so far.

Download

Save and Reload Podcast 16: I MAED A PODCAST WITH ZOMBIES IN IT!!!11!1

2010-06-10T11:52:00.000-07:00

I have always subscribed to the theory that I shouldn't lie to the good people of the internet, so I'm going to tell it to you straight. This is the best podcast we have made yet. With that out of the way we talked about all sorts of things that I will include in a huge list at the bottom of this post.

Download

The song is Yeah He Did Write Fanfic Bye by Spamtron . Does anyone else think it sounds like a Phoenix Wright song?

Links to games:
Hydorah (be warned)
I Wish I Were The Moon

If you want to join the elite you can ask us a question to be answered next week below. If that doesn't float your boat you can tell us what your ideal zombie game would be in the comments.

You can also go check out our other blog (it's the same thing) at

So here is the list of topics we talk about (in order) so if there is something you want to skip to, or skip over you can.
Intro/Ebola
League of Legends
I don't like killing my friends
The Shattered Horizon free weekend
Grant still hasn't skinned any bears
I call a bunch of people scum
I am shallow
Waxing Poetic about indie games
Games are pimps
We take a break (the first time ever)
Our ideal zombie games
Listener Questions
Closing

Some Thoughts on Super Mario Galaxy 2

2010-06-07T11:47:00.000-07:00

I recently beat Super Mario Galaxy 2. This may not seem like something big to most people, but I'm not most people. I have a very serious problem. I rarely finish games. This usually comes down to one of two things: either distraction or difficulty. Distraction happens to everyone when playing a game, whether it is something completely outside of gaming(like work or relationships), or something along the lines of a new game coming out. This is completely understandable to anyone who has ever picked up a controller. The second root of my problem is the matter of difficulty. Games almost by definition need to have some sort of difficulty or challenge to them, as without it they are little more than moving pictures.

With implementing difficulty into games comes a whole host of problems on what is the appropriate level for any given part of a game. If a game is too easy the player becomes disinterested and walks off, but if the game is too hard the player becomes frustrated and walks off. Developers have tried to remedy this with the inclusion of multiple difficulty levels, but those open up an entire new host of problems (akin to multiplying the problem with one difficulty setting by however many settings you include).

So when I sat down to play Super Mario Galaxy 2, I sat down to win. I made sure I had no other games tempting me, and I essentially fell off of the Earth for a few days to make sure I wasn't distracted. This left the only thing stopping me from completing this game: the game itself. Recent Nintendo games haven't been known for their mind-blowing difficulty, but some have been enough to frustrate me to the point of quitting. So as I first began playing Mario I became overtaken with a childlike joy that made me know for sure that this game was different.

I continued to play for the next few days and never once was I bored, or frustrated, or aggravated in any way; I was happy. I was constantly intrigued by Mario's world and its constant stream of challenges. These challenges were actually, well, challenging. Instead of setting me up against increasingly difficult waves of enemies I was confronted with constantly changing landscapes and mechanics I had never seen before.

This was perfect for me. I died a few times, but never enough to dissuade me. None of these deaths ever felt like something that was wrong with the game but something that I could track back to one of my mistakes. This didn't lure me into the overconfidence that comes with any game that is too easy, as with every challenge I wondered if I would die and if this was the challenge that would stop me from progressing. I never stopped.

I think that this is Super Mario Galaxy 2's greatest achievement: not the beautiful level design, nor the simple joys of it, but the perfect level of difficulty that brings it all together. This is why it is one of the greatest games we have.

Save and Reload Podcast 15: The Laugh Track

2010-06-03T11:25:00.001-07:00

Grant and Matt are here for this one, but we also got some guy off of the street to come participate. His name is Jesse and as it turns out he is the Community Manager for DestructoidSanFrancisco. He stops by and talks with us for a majority of the show, but has to leave to go do science. The rest of us then talk about which games you should play to get a crash course into indie games.

Grant made the picture for this episode (tell him it is good).

The song is Wing Beats by Wiklund.

If you want to hear Jesse on a more regular basis you can listen to him here.

As always comments and questions are always appreciated!

EDIT: I totally forgot to whore Matt out. His Gamertag is Juturna916.

Save and Reload 14: Too Much Sex and the City

2010-05-27T10:52:00.000-07:00

This week Grant joins me to talk about some new games. I expected this to be Super Mario Galaxy 2-cast, but that didn't seem to happen. Maybe next week. We did however talk about Red Dead Redemption for a while and how much I want to skin a bear (decidedly quite a bit). We chatted about Bioshock 2 for a little while but we unleashed massive spoilers, so be warned of those.

The song is by La Roux (so hip).

If you liked this nonsense leave us comments below.
If you hated this nonsense leave us comments below.
If you have any ideas for next week's show leave us comments below.
If you want to nominate a game for our Cougar Seal of Approval leave comments below.

Samus Happens to be a Girl, Or Why Samus Isn't a Strong Female Hero

2010-05-24T14:19:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I read Ludonarrative Dissonance in Bioshock: The problem of what the game is about, by Clint Hocking, and (aside from learning I was the nerdiest person on the planet) I became inspired to write some game criticism of my own. So I sat down to write about why I felt that Samus was not a truly great female hero. I worked at it for the next hour but when I looked back at what I wrote I realized that writing game criticism is difficult. I sat down and argued that a female hero is one who uses her femininity to her advantage, and was strong through being a female, not a faceless character who just happens not to have a Y chromosome.

So I went back to rewrite my thoughts about the woman in the metal suit, but I kept having Vietnam style flashbacks to the 22 pages I just had to write about the play Double Falsehood (for those of you who don't know, it is a play that Shakespeare may have written), so I quickly shelved that project and got back to playing Beyond Good and Evil. As I was playing I began to pick up very quickly on Jade as one of the best female characters in any video game. She was what I knew Samus was not.

I began to analyze all of Jade's methods and motivations I had encountered so far in the game (I told you I was the nerdiest person on the planet), so allow me to share them with you:

A) She is nurturing.
When the player is first introduced to Jade, she is running an orphanage with a pig-man but struggling to make ends meet. She continues her nurturing throughout the story as she protects the weak throughout (I'm resisting the urge to call her a mama bear).

B) She isn't aggressive, but is strong when she needs to be.
A large portion of Beyond Good and Evil is taken up by stealth sequences in which Jade can either fight or hide. Jade, however, is not particularly good at fighting these enemies, making sneaking a much better option. But Jade is not weak by any stretch. In the beginning of the game Jade has to defend her orphanage from alien invaders and she does so through brute force (once more I'm avoiding calling her a mama bear.)

C)She inspires others to be their best.
Beyond Good and Evil plays a lot like the Legend of Zelda games, which are primarily focused on fighting your way through dungeons and killing large creatures and evils. Jade could fight her way through hordes of enemies (I'm confident she would survive), but instead she chooses to take pictures of what takes place behind closed doors. These are distributed to the masses, who then start to stand up for what is right and choose to save the world themselves.

So after I made these realizations I thought back to Samus. Was she nurturing? Not really. Was she overtly aggressive? Yeah, but she was sent into these highly volatile areas knowing everyone wanted her dead. Did she inspire others to be their best? This one required some thought, as she never really came into contact with anything that didn't want to kill her.

So was Samus really a female hero? Not really, she was just a hero who happened to be female. She could really be replaced by anyone else in that suit, Gordan Freeman, Link, Quote, Chell, the guy from F.E.A.R., Soap, or Ness. This isn't to take anything away from Samus as a hero, or from the games themselves, but Samus could be a man, or an alien, or a robot and the games themselves would not change much if at all.

Save and Reload Podcast 13a and 13b: Fighter X/Chillcast

2010-05-20T12:03:00.000-07:00

This week I got to talk with the boys of Fighter X (who have the patience of saints, Brad Pitt's smile, and Jesus' abs) and that makes up the first 15 minutes/side a. The rest of the show contains Grant and I just hanging out on the air (while still managing to be witty/pithy.

Download

I bet you can guess who the music is by.

So did you guys like the casual nature of the show this week? We aren't terribly certain if we want to keep the show as formulaic as it has been in the past or if we want to make it slightly more casual (probably not so much as it was this week). We want to try something different next week, but we need you guys to tell us what it us you want us to talk about, something broad about video games that we can chat about for nearly a half an hour.

If you have any suggestions/comments, leave them in the comment section below.

Some Thoughts on Lost Planet 2

2010-05-17T13:47:00.000-07:00

This past Saturday I got to go down to the Destructoid San Francisco headquarters to play Lost Planet 2 with some members of the community and the Destructoid editors. I ended up playing the game for somewhere near 7 hours straight and it was a generally mixed experience.

The game itself is a third person shooter set in the future on a planet that is somehow both snowy and tropical at the same time. Once I got over that geothermal marvel, I got to fight some gigantic bugs (I later learned that these bugs heated up the tropical areas) and this was genuinely enjoyable. The enemies required the entire squad of people to work together in order to take them down. These were the best moments of the game; everybody got into sync and it became a well executed dance with people grabbing mech suits to target the boss' legs, another to shoot its weak points for damage, and the remaining two to climb inside and really lay the hurting down.

This lovely experience was marred by essentially every other aspect of the game. The single worst aspect of the game was the blatantly broken checkpoint system. The game is broken up into chapters and larger episodes. Whenever you die you are forced back to the beginning of the chapter, which itself is divided into several smaller areas. This means that every time you die you play through approximately the same hour. This happens to be a problem when the other three members of your squad have had quite a bit to drink. This of course happened to me and I ended up playing the same level for around 4 hours straight. The levels themselves were incredibly linear, while staying under the pretense of being open, and most of the paths that you were on ended up being incredibly confined, which became frustrating as you would be swarmed by a mass of giant bugs and require your teammates to shoot them off of you. This wouldn't be much of a problem, but when you are hit by an enemy you are knocked back which stops you from doing a number of things including shooting. This means that if you are all surrounded with bugs your group is invariably screwed.

This game felt like a bit like hiking; the trip there is hell, but once you get there it's great. I played the multiplayer a bit as well and didn't like it much, but it was at 3 in the morning with a bunch of drunk people so I'm not sure that my experience with that was representative of the whole. I can understand the reviews the game is getting (generally not favorable) despite my hopes for this sequel to sort out the problems the first game had.

I now want to play backseat developer (despite not having any game development background to give me any credibility) and try to remedy some of the problems with the game. The checkpoint system needs to be changed so that it does not force the player to slog down the same hallway 50 times. The co-op life system was a bit janky as well, due to the fact that the the group shares a collective number of lives that increase whenever a respawn point is reached. This system would have worked well if there were not so many instant deaths in the game (fish that happen to eat through your metal armor are in essentially every body of water). There were also too few lives to share between the group. I would fix this by giving the group more lives, but making the respawn timer longer or making the enemies stronger in general. The level design was too compact in most of the places I played, so the act of making a small hallway that was essentially single-file could be widened just a bit to allow for another tactic besides running and gunning. Also while I was playing I had the problem of not being able to see the grunt level enemies against the background. This meant that the only way I could progress in the game is to shoot where I saw giant red Xs pop up over where the game told me there were enemies, this could be fixed by re-skinning the characters in something that isn't the same green color of the trees/grass/bugs/every other thing in the game.

So really at the end of my night with the game I had to put the controller down and walk away. The game had good intentions, but that couldn't carry it far enough. I wouldn't recommend buying the game at a full retail price, but paying somewhere near $20 would probably be worth it.

The picture up above is the Sir Omnomnom plushie I got at the event.

Save and Reload Podcast 12: A wild Pokemon attacks!

2010-05-13T11:12:00.000-07:00

Grant is not on this one. Just getting that out of the way first. Stan was around this week. So Matt talks about the Wii for a bit, and then we all talk about games that we want to come out (even though we sort of did that before). Matt has to leave after a while, and the show takes a turn for the pokemon. Like seriously, after about 30 seconds of Matt being gone the episode turns in to Save and Reload:Pokemon Edition.

Download

The song is More Four (Sex Edition) by Fighter X

If you want us to ask Fighter X a question on the air next week we need you to tell us either via comments on this post or over on the Facebook page (although here is preferable).

We still need people to write for us, so if you are interested please send me an email at Oldspencer(at)Gmail.com

Save and Reload Podcast 11: Call of Duty: Ultra Warfare 2113

2010-05-06T13:43:00.000-07:00

This week Matt was off saving the UK from the Loch Ness Monster, so Kyle and Gary showed up along with Grant as usual. We argued a bit about Halo: Reach and I gave the worst explanation of Audiosurf of all time.

Download

If you liked hearing Kyle and Gary they have a podcast over here.

If you want to help support indie developers (do it) and/or sick children (they need your help) here is the link to pay what you want for some great games.

The song is from Fighter X again.

We still want writers and people to guest host, so if you are interested send me an email at Oldspencer(at)gmail.com

Save and Reload 10: We made it this far!

2010-04-29T11:30:00.000-07:00

Whoa, we have made 10 podcasts!
How neat is that? (the answer to that is very neat)
So in honor of this occasion we all made lists of our top 10 games of all time and we now present them humbly to you. I should clear up before hand that we only picked one game from any given series as to keep Matt's list from being a reordering of the numbers 1-10 with the words Final Fantasy attached to them.

Download

This has our first ever techno remix as our intro song. It's called Rock and Reload and it's by one of our listeners Tyler. You can download that bad boy right here.

I won't include the music I promised for one of the games in my list because that would spoil it, but I highly recommend you all go listen to it.

The E-mail I sent to Anthony Burch (now with an actual article attached)

2010-04-27T19:37:00.001-07:00

EDIT: Here is something that I can pretend looks like Journalism attached to this e-mail.

So Anthony Burch has left the world of gaming journalism for good today. This may not seem like a big deal to you, but to me it has a monumental impact on the level of Superman dying. One year ago I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life, and didn't get any real enjoyment out of anything. This seemed like a problem to me because I was leaving the world of high school and had to plan out the rest of my life. When I was asked by Counselors, friends, and family what it was that I liked doing I said “Playing video games,” out of what felt like obligation. Several months had passed and I was shown a silly web series called “Hey Ash Whatcha Playing.” I started watching this show whenever I had some extra time to kill. They released a podcast a few weeks later entitled HAWPcast. This piqued my curiosity as I figured it would be some more humorous takes on video games. This assessment was only partially right. What I found was one of the most painfully brilliant people I had ever heard. The more I listened to this man talk the more I realized that he was saying the things that I wasn't aware I was thinking, that I thought games were art, and how much I loved indie games.

I continued to revel in every little insight he brought, and waited each week for his podcasts so I could hear everything he had to say. It was at this time that I realized, for the first time in my life, that I had someone I looked up to; I had a hero. This man made me re-realize my childhood dream of becoming a games journalist. Since that time one year ago my passion for games has only increased as I sit around and think about video games and the theories that come along with them. I realized that without this man I would still be sitting around with no goals, no motivation, and no future. Anthony Burch has given me all of that. Today I have created my own humble gaming podcast and blog, which are being continually updated, and every day I work on improving both my skills as a journalist and my skills as a gamer.

So with this I wish Anthony Burch nothing but the best in everything that comes to him (and I know he won't need it) at his new job at Gearbox, and his upcoming wedding to Ashley Davis. It is my sincere hope that one day he will understand just how much he has done for the gaming industry as a whole, and for me personally.

Give them Hell Rev A.

The E-Mail:

I want to thank you for everything you have done for the gaming industry as a whole and me personally.

One year ago I had to choose where it was I wanted to go to college, and what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I had no idea about either of these things. The only real interest I had was in video games, and I had spent all of my life believing that video games were just a pastime in the real world, and that they wouldn't help me do anything. It was about then that I started hearing you talk in podcasts and Rev Rants, and it blew my mind. I was sitting at home and there was this guy on my computer who was saying that games were not only legitimate but he was talking about the exact feelings I had about games my entire life. You made me realize that I wanted to become a games journalist.
Several weeks ago I saw you talk at UC Berkeley and it inspired me to keep going on with my tiny little blog and unpopular articles. Since that time I have made strides in every area of my life to bring me closer to my newly realized dream of legitimizing games (Ebert be damned) and hopefully helping someone the way that you helped me.

I wish you nothing but the best of luck in everything that happens to you, and Congratulations on the engagement.

Thank you.

Save and Reload 9: So Sexy Save and Reload

2010-04-22T11:33:00.000-07:00

Grant isn't here this week because he is at the bottom of a well. This show is quickly becoming Spencer and some guests talk about things. We have a guest co-host this week by the name of Stan, which surprisingly didn't lead to a smackdown about his comments on my last post. I must apologize in advance for all of the tangents we go on, this should have been titled the TangentCAST.

Download

The song is by Fighter X

We are still looking for Writers/podcasters/musicians! If you are interested send me an email at OldSpencer(at)Gmail.com

Why do people Grind?

2010-04-20T11:25:00.000-07:00

If you are an aficionado of shitty music you are most likely familiar with the quote, “I never made the most of my time when I thought that I had plenty of it.” I heard this quote shrieked at me today by some whiny androgynous teens via Pandora as I was playing Spelunky, and it lead me to realize that making a game longer doesn't intrinsically make it any better.

Any advertisement for any Japanese RPG will tell you about their “Epic 80-hour stories,” and this is a major selling point for fans of JRPGs, but it seems sort of ridiculous to anyone(myself included) who doesn't find them appealing. These games are longer than most others on average due to the massive amounts of space in the games that contain no story elements, nor any exploration, but massive amounts of grinding. This has always confused me. Whenever I talk to JRPG fans they always tell me that they love the stories within these games, so why is it that longer JRPGs are chosen regularly over their shorter counterparts? The inclusion of so much grind-heavy gameplay dilutes the story by forcing the player to play until an arbitrary checkpoint has been reached and the game allows them to progress through sheer willpower alone. So why do fans continually buy games with so much grinding? This seems to me a bit like buying a sandwich with an average amount of meat in it, but thirty or so extra pieces of bread. It's a bigger sandwich than usual, but there isn't much in there that you actually want to eat.

The inclusion of so much grinding in a game not only spreads the story elements thin, but it detracts from them as well. One of the main strengths of video games as an artistic medium is their inherent interactivity, and the immersion that it creates. This is thrown out the window as soon as grinding shows up to the party. Grinding asks us to believe that while our heroes are on their urgent quest to save the kingdom and defeat the plague that is devouring the countryside they must spend the next 15+ hours repeatedly killing bears in the forest. Nobody can reasonably believe this within the canon of the story, so for that 15 hours you realize that you are sitting on your couch repeatedly walking in a square while taking breaks every time the screen flashes to press X several times and not actually saving a kingdom or ridding the world of evil.

All of this creates a terrible cycle of people buying these games because of their length and Japanese developers continuing their arms race infinitely until it will take a lifetime to play just one of their games. I think that JRPG fans should respect the time that they invest in games, stop allowing so much of their lives to be needlessly spent slaying goblins in the dungeon under town, and require that developers give them an appropriate play length for the story being told. This resolution is true not only of all other mediums, but of most other genres of games as well. You could argue that this is a defining trait of JRPGs and that it should be respected but it is truly just leeway allowed for game designers to remove any sort of challenge in the game and to make the only difficulty a matter of mental endurance.

Save and Reload Podcast 8: We are Raving Lunatics, and you Should Listen to us

2010-04-15T14:37:00.000-07:00

This week is another two man show as Matt is being held in a Santa Barbara County Prison so we took more listener questions and talked about Sleep is Death. This means that it is not the favorite games episode like we promised last week, we thought it would be wrong for us to leave Matt out of the fun on that one. We made up for it with some announcements that I will append to the bottom of this post.
If you have any questions, again, leave them in comments here or on the Facebook Group.

Download

The Song is Mr.Brightside by Doctor Octoroc You should support him again.
The Picture is from a Sleep is Death campaign called Zombie Inbreak

Now for the announcements bit.

We are looking for more Writers/potential podcasters for the site reboot we are planning.
The site reboot will include a full overhaul of the actual site design
A Theme song for the podcast, and the addition of the writers/podcasters.

If you are interested in writing, podcasting, or making a theme song for us please email me at oldspencer (at) gmail.com

Save and Reload Podcast 7: Admiral Thor! (Now with fixed audio)

2010-04-08T10:26:00.000-07:00

First off I would like to say that this podcast would not have happened if not for the incredibly awesome community member Tyler, he loaned me a mic without question after mine exploded, so that is why I sound different.

This week has the first ever 3 man podcast, and we spend most of the time answering listener questions for you guys, so we hope you enjoy them.

Download (fixed)

As it turns out there is an Admiral Eric Thor Olson, coincidentally I am not him.

The song is A Man's Gotta Do by Doctor Octoroc So go support him.

Want your questions in the next podcast? Ask them here.

A Heartwarming Tale for Easter

2010-04-04T17:21:00.000-07:00

I had always gotten good marks in school and generally stayed out of trouble. That all ended when I was in the eighth grade. The first of these two descriptors I destroyed was staying out of trouble by stealing the answers to a test, but this isn't about that, this is what happened when I got an F in my math class. Now I had never been terribly good at math but I had always gotten decent grades and was able to get by with little to no problems, but in eighth grade I felt a bit like rebelling and not doing my homework for a while. This caused an untimely drop in my GPA and of course angered my mother. This was a time before the Wii so the only things my mother knew about video games were
A. I loved them dearly and
B. I played them when I should have been doing homework.

From these two ideas it isn't hard to predict what she did next, and that was take my Gamecube away from me and put it into the garage. This has taunted me for the last 5 years. Each day as I walk out I see my fallen comrade there sitting stoically on the shelf gathering dust sitting, waiting, and accepting the sacrifice that he made on my behalf. This was the brother who I had begged and pleaded for from one christmas to another, the same brother who kept me company when I fell ill and couldn't go on the big class field trip. I had abandoned him.

This injustice will no longer he tolerated! I have taken him back into the house and have tended to his wounds, cleaning him and dusting every nook and cranny on his incredibly boxy figure. He sits with me now, watching me as I type this, looking much like a previously abused puppy glad to be back inside his adopted family's house, curled up by the fire softly dreaming about things to come.

Happy Easter Everyone

Save and Reload Podcast 6: Lightning Round

2010-04-01T10:49:00.000-07:00

This week we declared war on North Korea, Offended a laundry list of people and were repaid in kind with an enormous number of technical issues. This lead to a shorter podcast than usual. This means that we need to recruit more people for our army so that when we have to do battle with North Korea we will be ready (I promise this isn't turning into a cult).

This podcast contains major F.E.A.R. 2 spoilers in case you were wondering, but we announce them beforehand so if you want to avoid them just skip a few minutes from when we start talking about them.

Download

The song is Little Sound Disko #4 by USK

Some thoughts on Edmund

2010-03-31T12:30:00.000-07:00

There is little I could say to lead into what I'm about to write, so I won't bother. The game Edmund made me feel disgusting. That really is all there is to say on the topic, but two sentences does not make an article so I will push past my discomfort and tell you guys more about all of this. Edmund is a game centered on one simple mechanic: rape.

The act of rape has been approached in games before, but none of them did it in such an emotionally affecting way. The game is linear in nature, allowing you no options but to proceed with the narrative or to quit. The player is immediately deposited on a street with only the ability to move, jump, and hit things. There is a woman sitting on a bench waiting for a bus slightly to the right of the starting area and because it is your only real action you strike her. Once you have beaten her until she can't move you proceed to rape her. This isn't something that you can just do and accept as part of the narrative due to a stroke of genius on the part of the designer; you have to hold down the button to actively rape her. This passes the responsibility from the game to the player themselves, effectively making you the rapist. This is what gives the game its ability to be so affecting in a way that no other has.

I think that this game is an important stepping stone for all of gaming, not just for the topic that it brings up but more for the sense of repulsion that it conveys uniformly amongst players. I found this single 8 bit game made by one guy over the course of a few weeks to be more emotionally powerful than the AAA title Modern Warfare 2 which cost millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours to complete. I think this is telling of what the future of games will bring to the table: that small games can bring emotion into the art form rather than major developers creating controversy to increase sales of a game. I also think that this is great for games because it creates such an emotional impact. This is important for the development of the medium as a whole in that there can be meaningful experiences that don't involve power trips and shooting people in the face.

OBJECTION! A Case for Linear Games

2010-03-28T20:03:00.000-07:00

These days if you walk into a gamestop and read the boxes many games will boast their "open world environment," "sandbox gameplay," or "player freedom." With the success of Grand Theft Auto the entire industry seems to have decided that scripting is always bad. Events and cutscenes that take control away from the player are cheap and easy ways to make games and that what developers should really be doing is making sandboxes. And while there is something noble about this ambition, it really needs to be dialed back.

The problem with sandbox games as they are now is that they don't offer a wide range of interaction. Grand Theft Auto, the originator of the trend, was only open in that you could shoot anyone or steal any car. These were the only two tools in the sandbox. You couldn't build anything or talk to anyone or do anything else you might want to, you could just shoot people and drive around. This results in shallow gameplay. The ability to go on a rampage is entertaining, but not enough to dominate the design choices of almost every game.

Games like these want to make the player feel free, as if they can interact with their environment however they want. But in reality they can't make a player totally free in a sandbox of any magnitude. The impressive crowds of Assassin's Creed and Grand Theft Auto are only possible because those people aren't actually people. This was one of my biggest gripes with Fable 2, it claimed that you could interact with anyone but it made that possible by watering down the definition of interact. You simply performed canned emotes that altered how much people liked you on a scale of disgust to marriage. This is not entertaining gameplay and it is certainly not interaction.

Linear games by contrast offer you richer and more fulfilling means of interaction albeit with fewer characters. Games like Phoenix Wright let you communicate with a large portion of the NPCs in a meaningful way. Letting a player shoot any character they want is fine, but letting a player talk to any character is much more difficult and rewarding.

There is nothing wrong with the idea of a sandbox game, but sandboxes are only as fun as the tools you have to play with. Real freedom emerges when players have all the tools they want to interact with their environment. Having a large environment makes each new tool a monumental task to create. To make Liberty City really work tremendous effort went into making the buildings, streets, and people. Now if they decided to let me enter even a fraction of the buildings in the game their workload would have been exponentially increased. Similarly if they had tried to give players the ability to speak with civilians enormous amounts of work would have gone into writing everyone's lines. This was something Oblivion struggled with and failed spectacularly.

Sandbox games live and die by the enjoyment that can be derived from having a limited number of tools in an enormous environment. However we should not praise this design to the detriment of all others. Games that have fewer possibilities, fewer characters, and smaller environments, always have a higher level of polish, deeper interaction, and in some cases more immersion. Sometimes there are more important things than player freedom.

Save and Reload Podcast 5: Robo-Masochism

2010-03-25T10:24:00.001-07:00

This week I've gotten my ass handed to me by a variety of 2D robots, and Grant has little to no sympathy for me. What a jerk.

Download

You Have to Burn the Rope

The song is Reformat the Planet by Bit Shifter

Spelunky Pacifism Mode

2010-03-24T14:59:00.000-07:00

Games are typically about killing things in one form or another. That is part of the assumed nature of video games, that there has to be a struggle against an outside source be it actual or implied (the battle against debt in Animal Crossing). There used to be alternatives to just rampant destruction in the form of time trials or time attack modes. These modes offered the player an opportunity to do battle against yourself for scores, something that is all but missing from today's games. In this absence of any kind of formal pacifism game mode I have decided to create my own.

Spelunky is an incredibly difficult game that we have mentioned before, and it has many nuances that the player is able to play off of in order to use enemies to make the game easier (avoiding falling damage by dropping them and sacrificing them to name two). This made sense for me to use as a handicap against myself while playing this game (what can I say, I'm a masochist). So here are the rules

1. .No killing enemies

This means no bombs, no whips, and no jumping on them (allowing them to get shot by traps or skewered is alright)

2.Shopkeepers count as enemies

Don't kill those old bastards, they have families to feed!

3. The dice game is off limits

This is to prevent people from just camping in the shop and making tons of money

4. Your score is the amount of money you have multiplied by the level you are on when you kill an enemy.

5. If you manage to get to Olmec (good luck) killing him or the other enemies on his stage do not count against you

This seems incredibly difficult to make any progress on, and it is. You will have to use ropes to avoid falling damage, you will have to check very carefully the areas your bombs will hit, and you need to check how many enemies you have thrown that damsel at. The game becomes drastically more difficult with these new rules in place, because you have to stop using the same skills and tactics that have been drilled into your head through normal play. The emphasis stops being about collecting the gold you see as you make it through the level and more about finding a way to sneak around enemies while collecting as much gold as you can. Items also become a much riskier endeavor because you will lose a significant amount of money (and thus a massive amount of points) whenever you get them, but items like the spring shoes which are normally fairly useless now help you jump directly over any enemies that may be coming at you. So if you think you are up for another run into the caves, I wish you the best of luck and happy spelunking.

Death Has to Matter

2010-03-19T05:01:00.001-07:00

In the early days of gaming death was something that infuriated young gamers. Why? Because it cost them a quarter. In arcades you could play as long as you could stay alive, if not you would have to go beg your parents for more quarters which ultimately ends your gaming session. When game consoles were first brought home they kept the same logic with a limited number of lives. If you lost all of your lives then you'd have to start the game over, from a checkpoint or from the very beginning. Today it would be unthinkable for a game to send you back a significant time.

The newest iteration of the Prince of Persia series demonstrates the modern approach to dying. Whenever the Prince falls into a pit he is yanked back up by his companion Elika. This is similar to the Sands of Time's rewind mechanic which allowed players to rewind time and undo their deaths. Both of these games aim to minimize death. One of the biggest differences between games and reality is the frequent and meaningless death in games. How can a gamer care about their character when the character's death becomes routine? Too frequently games have implemented instant death pits and spikes. This causes the problem of meaningless death and no real dangers, just obstacles to be hopped over. This isn't ideal since it takes a very real part of life that motivates our actions and defangs it completely.

One experimental alternative was Ben Abram's Far Cry 2 Permadeath Run. He led a number of bloggers in playing Far Cry 2 with the understanding that if they died they would quit playing the game and delete their save files. This kind of extreme punishment for death resulted in a more tense and cautious environment and gave the enemy bullets more weight. Of course the problem with this is that it can't be built into the game or large amounts of content would be inaccessible to the average player. And of course game development would change for the worse to accommodate that.

Two indie games I've played recently also have strategies that vary greatly from the two obvious alternatives above. Every Day The Same Dream forces the player to confront death, but as with almost every action in the game death only results in the beginning of a new day. The game is based around a small world that the player is forced to explore by being sent back through it again. In this way death is not permanent, but only a poignant part of exploring the world. Passage is another game that uses death to send players back to the beginning of the game. The farthest a player can get in Passage is the distance they can walk in five minutes. Death is inevitable and cannot be avoided or postponed by player choice. However once the five minutes are complete the player is left to reflect on the life they had lived in 5 minutes and then allowed to play again, making different choices and exploring different areas of the world. These games are tiny and such a retreading strategy wouldn't work with large games, but it's a fascinating take on what it is to have your avatar die.

The easy answer is that there is no perfect solution. For death to matter in games it either has to force repetition, hide game content, or punish the players in some significant and relevant way. The alternative, which is our current state, is that gamers are killed constantly in games. This conditions players to think that those deaths have no effect and demands a huge suspension of disbelief. Death is a major part of life and informs a lot of behaviors, but in games it doesn't matter at all. If we want games to get more immersive we need to ramp up the penalty for death while also to making it tolerable for gamers.

Save and Reload Podcast 4: Grant is a robot

2010-03-18T20:42:00.001-07:00

Unfortunately Grant fell dangerously ill last week, and died. Fortunately science brought him back as a robot, you will see what I mean about halfway through. This episode is a bit short, (mostly due to Grant's robotification) but we have some great stuff planned coming up so stick around!

Download

I'm also curious, with Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver being released this week, I'm curious about which generation people think is best, so it would be neat if you informed us with comments!

Save and Reload Podcast 3: Cardigans.

2010-03-11T17:17:00.001-08:00

(click that picture for me/the cardigan)
I was off guest starring on the HAWPCast (that is what I was doing, guest starring)
Grant was ill for the recording of this podcast so Matt filled in for him.
Also, we talk for a while about our favorite variety of sweater: The Cardigan.

Download

Anthony Burch in UC Berkeley

2010-03-10T16:36:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, I went and saw Anthony Burch in Berkeley this past week and I thought you all might like to see the lecture he gave so I got the whole thing on video just for you.

The audio is really quiet and one of the guys who was running the lecture turned off the lights part of the way through so I must apologize for that up front.

We should also have another podcast up this week for those interested, so stick around for it!
You can also see this on the Destructoid C-Blog I put up for this over here.

EDIT: As it turns out Anthony Burch uploaded his own official version on Hey Ash so you should go and listen to it over there.

The Save and Reload Podcast Episode 2: We are so Indie

2010-03-04T11:55:00.001-08:00

"If I have to listen to a pretentious hipster talk about indie games, I want it to be you, Spencer."

The second podcast contains the both of us talking about our favorite indie games for about an hour. We had an awkward mishap about 25 minutes in, and my editing didn't help it too much so just try ignoring that.

If you like this PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE comment/follow us. Neither Mevio nor Blogspot allow us to easily check how many page views we have gotten so this is really the only way to figure out how many people actually listen to us.

Also, next week's podcast should be one about listener questions, so ask us questions if you want this to happen!

Download

Link-Splosion!

Auditorium
P.B.Winterbottom
Spelunky
Cave Story
Zeno Clash
Passage
Today I Die
Spectre

The first Save and Reload Podcast is up!

2010-02-25T17:44:00.001-08:00

That is right! We made a podcast before we put any articles up, but don't worry articles will come.

Being our first podcast we had to learn to wield a ton of programs, but we are proud of how it turned out!

This will be a weekly podcast, so be sure to favorite/subscribe/bookmark us!

Download