Category: External Sources

Eric Swain External Sources

The Moving Pixels Podcast: The Best Games of 2017

The first podcast of the new year. Nick and I count down our Top 7 favorite games of 2017. Why Top 7? Because there were only two of us and that got us as close to 15 games that we’d normally do with 3 people doing a Top 5. The big news is at the end of the episode we announced that we are moving away from a biweekly format to a monthly one. The fact of the matter is that this podcast is essentially a hobby and it was taking up a lot of time for most of us. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

This Year In Video Game Blogging 2017 – Post-Mortem

This Year In Video Game Blogging 2017. I have done so many of these post-mortems it’s getting to the point I feel like I may just be repeating myself. Yet, at the same time, I can’t help but look back at the project this year and think of how far I’ve come over the past 8 years. Eight years. Damn. A lot has changed over that time. I was still in college when I started doing this. In 2010, I had an idea. Critical Distance does roundups for the best criticism featured during the week. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Wonder Woman: A Mess of a Movie

It’s not games related, but I need to make myself write something. I watched Wonder Woman the other day. It’s the first movie in the DCEU I’ve seen and I found myself asking, “how low were everyone’s expectations if this was the good one?” It’s not a terrible movie, but it’s not one that I’d call good either. I spent most of the run time alternating between annoyed, disappointed and bored. Overall, I give it a resounding meh. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

The Moving Pixels Podcast Kills Nazis with ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’

This week we decide to go back to the 2014 Nazi killing game, Wolfenstein: The New Order. ‘This game is better than it has any right to be.’ That has been my quick and dirty mantra about this game whenever anyone asks. Several years later I feel it still holds true. I’m of two minds about a lot of the facets in this this game. Because so many of its statements about ideology and Nazism work, then don’t work, but then work again in this endless cycle. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Critical Distance Confab – Minisode 16 – Milkmaids and Vikings

This is the last minisode of the year for the Critical Distance Confab. Thank you to Angelina Bonilla, Red Angel, for sticking around after her interview to do this extra 15 minutes of recording. I’ll admit, I’m a little iffy about how well we hyped up these two games. Red Angel was trying not to spoil anything and thereby leave the mystery intact to be discovered. I was trying to explain another game where its greatness comes from the building of many details compounding on one another and is not easily reduced to pithy statements. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

The Moving Pixels Podcast Visits ‘Tacoma’

This week on the Moving Pixels Podcast we go to space to talk AI and workplace drama in Tacoma. This is an interesting one for us, because Gone Home at one point was our longest podcast. There was a lot to dig into and a lot of contextual stuff to talk about. So, one does kind of have some expectations going into Fullbirght’s follow up game. We don’t get as long a conversation out of it as we don’t go into as much detail about the specifics. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Critical Distance Confab – Red Angel

I wrap up this series of interviews with video producers and essayists by checking out relative newbie and indie game specialist, Angelina Bonilla, better known as Red Angel. (Also, a lot easier to say apparently.) We had a long fruitful conversation in which Red Angel was able to display her enthusiasm and passion as she explained her own work. And yes, as cliche as it is, we did talk about her being a woman in this field. Together the two of us could only think of three women doing this type of work. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

The Moving Pixels Podcast Plays ‘Pyre’

This week, we talk about Supergiant Games’ most recent offering, the fantasy fire Basketball simulator, Pyre. Nick stated before the recording of this episode that he didn’t want it to bloat into a behemoth like our What Remains of Edith Finch episode did. It’s a fair thing to ask given that he has to edit them. As such, our discussion is mainly centered on the big picture ideas Pyre presents rather than digging down into the nitty gritty character narratives. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Critical Distance Confab – Minisode 15 – Horror Games Mark II

The latest minisode is up on the Critical Distance Confab. Returning for another horror themed episode is my associate from the Moving Pixels Podcast, Nick Dinicola. I haven’t played a lot of horror games recently, so I went with the one I had played, Stories Untold. It was the game we chose to do for our Halloween episode of the Moving Pixels Podcast, which ended up coming out on the same day. Ironies of irony, given that this is a podcast about highlighting games nobody is talking about, the day prior Campster released a video talking about it. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

The Moving Pixels Podcast Tells ‘Stories Untold’

For Halloween this year, we look at the horror text adventure anthology Stories Untold. It’s an interesting game that deserves a lot more people looking at it. Is it good? Well, it’s got a lot of good things in it. Again, we ended up looking at a game that I hope is influential in future titles that pull off what it did, but better. You can also find the first tale of this “anthology” as a standalone title on itch.io. | more