Tag: Moving Pixels

Eric Swain External Sources

Adventure Games As Theater and ‘The Charnel House Trilogy’

My weekly PopMatters post is up on the newly redesigned site. I talk about The Charnel House Trilogy and the thing that stuck out to me the most about it. I’ve had this idea of point-and-click adventure games as a form of theater without the script given to the player ahead of time for a quite a while. The static nature of the frame of the point-and-click just makes the concept of performance to an outside observer more apparent than other game genres where the camera moves. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

The Ghost of ‘Murdered: Soul Suspect’

This time on the Moving Pixels Podcast we are looking at last year’s AAA 3D adventure game, Murdered: Soul Suspect. I think we had a pretty good discussion on the game. We cover a lot of ground, mostly non plot related, if you’re worried about us spoiling the mystery. Instead, we spent our time focused on the context surrounding the main plot. We look at the tone, the genre mash up, the investigative design, the quality of the writing, character functions and a nice sized chunk of a discussion at the end of the asylum, one really problematic element I didn’t notice the framing of the first time through. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

‘The Cat Lady’ and the Terror of Loneliness

This time we podcasted about The Cat Lady, an indie adventure game from 2012 about suicide, death and living. This is not a game that gets a whole lot of talk about it. It not hard to see why. It came out during a year exploding with great indies of … (This post is lost beyond this point.) Moving Pixels Podcast: 'The Cat Lady' and the Terror of Loneliness » PopMatters "While I'm gone, think of a vegetable." | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Slaughtering a Sacred Cow, Revisiting ‘Grim Fandango’

I’m back to writing criticism in my weekly PopMatters’ posts, starting with an evaluation of Grim Fandango. I’d like to take this chance to expand upon one point that I didn’t really explore properly in the piece: why Grim Fandango gained the title as “greatest adventure game of all time” in the first place. I do mention that resonance and evaluation of the game was elevated over time thanks to the all the attention and praised heaped on it by its fans. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Revisiting The Great War

We continue our look at last year’s indie games with Ubisoft’s Valiant Hearts. I really like this discussion. I come out very coherent and make a lot of good points. Everyone does. We talk about the war and war in general as exemplified as a thing unto itself. We discuss the concept of identity from the nationalistic to the individualistic. We talk about the end of rationality and larger cultural forces that Valiant Hearts is playing with given its subject matter. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

This War of Ours

Continuing to talk about games from last year, we dig into the narrative and systems of This War of Mine. I like the game on a micro level, but feels it falls apart somewhat on a macro level. I don’t think it can maintain itself with what it has. It needs more contextual material otherwise that part of game dries up. My compatriots have different opinions. You can give it a listen here. Additionally, we’re still trying to get the podcast back on iTunes and hitting one snag after another. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

The Greatest Couples in Video Games

We don’t honor many holidays with a specific themed podcast, usually only Halloween, but this year we decided to do one for Valentine’s Day. We each list our Top 5 Couples in Video Games. Sometimes silly, sometimes revealing our lists are a bit of fun. And just to note, it’s top 5 couples not top 5 romantic couples or top 5 man/woman pairings. We took advantage of the broadness of the label. There is a way how our choices do reveal something about the person who made them and not just the video games. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

‘The Banner Saga’ Presents a Living World Through a Lore That Is Actually Lived

I examine the elegant delivery of The Banner Saga‘s lore this week in my PopMatters column. This is one of those subjects that if I had the time and space I could have expanded into a very long piece. Most lore is extraneous information meant to give texture to the world. Often, it’s done abstractly, but along the journey you do actually cross a few of the locations on the map. Had you read it ahead of time it grants that extra texture not abstractly, but through better understanding of the goings on. | more