The End of Save and Reload

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

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.



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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!

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.

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

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

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.



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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?

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

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.





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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

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!

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.



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

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.



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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

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

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

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

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

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.



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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

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!

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.



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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

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.




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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!

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.



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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.