January 30, 2014 Eric Swain Game Issues

Top 13 Most Talked About Games of 2013

January 30, 2014 | Filed under: Game Issues, Recent Posts and tagged with: End of Year In the run up to Critical Distance’s annual end of year podcast I was under instruction to shrink it by whatever means necessary. No one was in the mood for another 7-9 hours recording session and as the date came closer, I was in no mood to edit one. I cut down the events list by merging items and collectively we knocked off most of the inconsequential stuff. | more

January 28, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources

The Denouement of “Dead Man’s Switch”

And with this post so ends what I’ve nicknamed fluff month. I have an easier time writing with guidelines to work with. Often, I come up with theme months for myself, this time was just easy to parse content off the top of my head. December takes quite the toll on me. At first it was supposed to only be a week off, but then there was catch up and adjustment. As for the piece itself, I like Shadowrun Returns. I like the system and the campaign it comes with. | more

January 21, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources

A Change of Pace in Episodic Gaming

Yeah, apparently one post wasn’t enough to exercise this idea out of my head, so I wrote a little bit more on how The West Wing as a Telltale game could work. Specifically, on something broadcast television shows do in between their important direction altering plot-based episodes. Some weeks the episode is an easy watching piece of relative fluff where nothing much happens that would effect the overall plot of the show. A problem of the week episode as it were, but with less stakes. | more

January 20, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources

All That Remains of ‘The Walking Dead’

With a new season of Telltale’s The Walking Dead we bring together the Moving Pixels crew to compare notes on the podcast. Unfortunately, what transpires is a podcast where we all ended up making the same decisions and so did most other players. The discussion of the game seems a lot more ill focused and scattershot, because the episode itself feels that way. Though as usual the actual discussion turned out much better than I remember. Funny thing, I couldn’t stand the two-channel mix of the podcast. | more

January 16, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources

Critical Distance End of Year Podcast 2013

And we finish the Critical Distance end of year stuff late this year with episode 14 of the CDC Podcast because I was lazy and there wasn’t anything about 2013 that seemed to inspire anybody. I had a lot less to edit and did a far more slapdash job of it this time and it is a much shorter show. And yet, it difficult to care about this particular year. As long as it was and I got complaints from both panel and listeners, at least 2012 was fun. The more I think about 2013 the less I think is worthy of remembrance. | more

January 14, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources

Considering the Direction of the Telltale Style Adventure Game

My latest post on PopMatters came from a need to exercise the idea out of me. Nick and I got to talking about a lot of things after the podcast recording this weekend and this was the last topic before calling it a night. I went to twitter and put it out there. Compared to my usual response and retweet traffic this was huge with people. Of course, despite writing and publishing a basic pitch concept for Telltale’s The West Wing, I keep thinking about how to implement it. | more

January 13, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources

TWIVGB January 12th

Yes, I did that last round up of the year and the first one of the next. Thanks to a scheduling snafu I volunteered to do it at the last minute. Which contributed to its lateness. I had to plow through 2-3 weeks' worth of suggestions, a lot of which I hadn’t read. I was behind on my reading as it was time of decompression after TYIVGB for me. As is often the case for us who have done this for a long time we play with how the round up comes out. | more

January 7, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources

The Tabletop Sessions of ‘Shadowrun Returns’

And I’m on schedule with my first post of the year on PopMatters. I decided to ease myself in with some easy writing about a game that has been consuming my time as of late, Shadowrun Returns. I bring up comparisons to Baldur’s Gate and Dragon Age: Origins with how it feels with its presentation of the game as an RPG system. It’s difficult to point out concrete elements in this area. All three games look and act very similar to one another and yet they feel like very different games with different purposes. | more

January 6, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources

Moving Pixels Podcast: Our Best Games of 2013

Our first podcast of the year at PopMatters is up and it’s us looking at last year’s games. Chris, Nick and I rundown our top 5 games of the year or rather we start off by doing that, but near the end it sort of goes off the rails and we end up talking about a few more. Only two games appeared on more than one list and one appeared on all three lists. We also get to talk about some honorable mentions. Then, and I forgot about this, we wrap up by discussing the very concept of Game of the Year awards. | more

January 6, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources

TYIVGB 2013: An Examination of Methodology and the Nature of Curation

January 6, 2014 | Filed under: External Sources, Recent Posts and tagged with: Critical Distance, TYIVGB This is the fourth annual This Year In Video Game Blogging and I think I’ve finally gotten the hang of such an endeavor. I have a few things to say about this end of year roundup and a few things about Critical Distance as a whole. They are divided into sections. Normally, I wouldn’t go to such extreme and just do a quick linking post with an interesting anecdote or two about its creation, but I feel there is more that needs to be said. | more