May 6, 2015 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

April 27, 2015 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

April 14, 2015 Eric Swain External Sources

‘Valiant Hearts’: The Unneeded Narrator

This week I look at an unremarked upon aspect of Valiant Hearts: the narrator. Valiant Hearts is one of the big shames of 2014. Not in that it is a shameful game, just that it is a shame it fell short of what it was actually capable of. It seems … (This post is lost beyond this point.) 'Valiant Hearts': The Unneeded Narrator » PopMatters | more

April 13, 2015 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

April 7, 2015 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

April 2, 2015 Eric Swain External Sources

Reviews for January/February/March

A new year, a new slate of games to review. A bit of a theme going on here. 2015 starts off with 4 new episodic games and my attempts to review every single episode of each one. All of Telltale games, so far, are licensed games. It’s difficult not to frame their game in the light of the licensed property. I may have gone a bit too far with my Tales from the Borderlands review, but I really do not like the main Borderlands games and Tales by comparison, I am enjoying so much. | more

March 31, 2015 Eric Swain External Sources

The Games of IndieCade East 2015

This took a lot longer than I wanted it to. Last month was really busy, but I got my work done, but delays happened. This series of posts should have concluded earlier, but oh well. Last year was my first year attending IndieCade East. I wrote a primer on the … (This post is lost beyond this point. | more

March 30, 2015 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

March 16, 2015 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