Category: External Sources

Eric Swain External Sources

Syria’s Endgame in ‘Endgame: Syria’

With all the recent refocusing of the news on the Syrian civil war right now I figured now might be a good time to actual play Endgame: Syria, a newsgame app that I downloaded months ago and left sitting idle on my tablet and write about it for PopMatters. This is one of those games Apple refused certification because it dealt with real world issues and where they said the creator should have written a book instead. That logic is maddening, but more importantly it is unhelpful. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Kentucky Route Zero: A Game of Mines, Maps and Madness

And so, we continue our unofficial, accidental series on indie games in this week’s episode of the Moving Pixels Podcast with Kentucky Route Zero. It was noted in the preshow talk that apparently the recordings have gotten quite longer since I started appearing on the show. That continues here with almost two hours of talk. So, note the length just in case. As for the sound quality on my end, this is becoming a real pain, I tried a new set up for this episode that managed to get the mic right in front of my face the whole time. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

This is the Story of a Crusader King

I seem to be finally writing on a bunch of games lately that I’ve played but hadn’t written anything about. This week I quickly typed up some thoughts on Crusader Kings II for PopMatters. One of the biggest problems I’ve had with the game is how to accurately describe it to others. Part of it is that the most interesting aspect, the part of the game that got me interested enough to buy and play it, is something that is buried behind intimidating UI and seemingly lack of cause and effect. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Inheriting Work in ‘Rogue Legacy’

After a few weeks off the podcast is back with Rogue Legacy. I have to apologize. Starting with the last podcast I started experimenting to try and get my audio sounding better. Changing mic, changing audio settings, changing recording locations. Whichever one I did for this podcast didn’t work too well. You can understand me, but there is a noticeable difference in sound quality between myself and my fellow podcasters. Luckily that should all be fixed now. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Reviews For July/August

I have a large backlog of review copies I have to get through. August was the first month I got nearly every game I requested. Usually I got one, maybe two. And then I got more review copies offered through my PR contacts that I seem to have now. I’m still making my way through those, but these are the reviews I published at PopMatters in the last two months. Combo Crew was the first game where I had to get an APK manager for to get the game installed. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

‘Gemini Rue’: A Matter of Memory

I played Gemini Rue several months ago and upon finishing it I immediately began to play it again. This time with commentary. I let it rest for so long because I was in the middle of trying to write about interactive fiction and that took most of my critical attention. But Gemini Rue is a great game. In fact, I call it one of the best sci-fi stories of the last decade. There’s a lot to talk about in Gemini Rue, but as is often the case it becomes a matter of how to approach the material. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

’400 Days’ of Moral Quandries, Hungry Zombies, and Terrible Humans

I was on another episode of the Moving Pixels Podcast. It’s a lot of fun to be on a podcast you know you don’t have to edit afterwords. This time I actually got to be on an episode where we talked about The Walking Dead. I missed last year’s series of podcasts. I really liked The Walking Dead DLC 400 Days. I think it might be one of my favorite episodes of the whole series. Part of that I think has been my recent interest in short stories. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

August 18th TWIVGB

Kris went off in the wilderness and I once again offered my services. This was one hell of a week though. I offered to take the reins at the beginning of the week and only afterwords did I get inundated with review copies and other things I’d have to tackle. It didn’t help that the lot of you decided to write a couple of dozens of posts at the end of the week. Then of course there was Gone Home. I don’t think there has been such an immediate outpouring of critical essays in such an amount that made it into the roundup since Heavy Rain. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

An Adventure Spun From the Shards of a World: Revisiting ‘Loom’

There’s nothing quite like finishing a great game and then when you go to look for criticism of it, absolutely nothing comes up. In those cases, there’s really nothing else you can do, but fill the void and write your own. I played Loom several months ago and I finished it in a single evening. The only writing I could find on Loom was four reviews from the early 90s that were mentioned. I couldn’t even find the text. It’s rather disheartening, because I think Loom might deserve more praise than many of Lucas Arts other revered adventure games. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

An Exercise in Extinction

Isn’t it always the way. Get an extra week to rewrite a post and only hours after it was submitted do you think of the perfect paragraph to help make the point. Such is the case with my latest essay now up on PopMatters. For as much material as The Last of Us presents a critic, I find the only things I can sink my teeth into are esoteric details and concepts that have little to nothing to do with the main narrative. | more