December 21, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources Reviews for October/November/December These are the last few reviews I published at PopMatters for 2014. I do feel I’m getting better at the practice. I really did want to like Gods Will Be Watching. Of course, what person doesn’t want to play a game they won't like. It’s more than that, though. I have a penchant for gravitating towards works of a philosophical bent. Early on we get that the game is about making hard choices in impossible situations and the sacrifices that have to be made. I soldiered through to the end. | more
December 16, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources Considering the Two Seasons of ‘The Walking Dead’ Video Game My last PopMatters column of the year and I look back to compare Season One and Season Two of The Walking Dead. Everything seemed to be working in The Walking Dead‘s favor coming into Season Two. Everything I was hearing made it sound like we were in for interesting possibilities. Clementine as the main character seemed like a really good move and the integration of the 400 Days cast was expanding it into a wider world. And yet, it wasn’t bad, just lesser. | more
November 24, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources Choose Your Own Clementine Finally, after months post-release we get around to concluding our podcast series on The Walking Dead Season 2. It has been interesting to see the reception of Season 2 over Season 1. I feel that it’s a little more than the fact in 2012 The Walking Dead was new and fresh to people and in 2014 it wasn’t. As we say in our wrap up Season 2 is a little bit of a mess, one way or another. It struggled to connect to its audience the same way the first season seemed to do almost instantly. | more
November 10, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources A House Dividing Despite a bit of a scheduling hiccup, our talk on episode 4 of The Walking Dead Season 2 is out. Instead of discussing the episode itself, I want to touch on something that happened concerning this episode elsewhere. About two days after recording this episode, IGN held a sit down with two of Telltale’s designers. During that talk the subject of Sarah’s death came up. It was made light of as well as the rash way a player has to behave in order for Sarah to save herself. | more
September 3, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources Reviews for June/July/August The summer months are slow and that apparently makes me slow. Anyway, here are the reviews I actually managed to finish writing. When in doubt and bored with the game, make the review interesting. Daedelic Entertainment and I have a running thing with their published adventure games. I keep reviewing them and, so far, with a single exception they keep disappointing me. 1954: Alcatraz is no exception to the pattern. | more
August 4, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources Dictators and Dead Guys Continuing on with our episodic Telltale series we talk about The Walking Dead season 2 episode 3 on PopMatter’s Moving Pixels podcast. Last night we just recorded the podcast episode on The Walking Dead episode 4, so listening to this, its kind of surprising to hear some of the comments we made and our opinion on how the season was progressing. Due to the publishing schedule these tend to get recorded far in advance and we quite remember what we’ve said previously. | more
June 2, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources Reviews for March/April/May I stopped writing PopMatters columns back in March for a number of reasons, all of which have to do with being super busy trying to get technical things to work and those things refusing to. I really want to get back to writing again instead of staring at code sheets, but at least I kept up with the reviews at any rate. I love Shadowrun: Dragonfall. When I finished the game, I exclaimed on twitter that I hoped I wouldn’t even up being hyperbolic when I say it is the front runner for my game of the year. | more
April 28, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources Little Human, Big Apocalypse It may be a little past the time when everyone else was talking about it, but the Moving Pixels Podcast episode on The Walking Dead Season 2 episode 2 is now up on PopMatters. We look at the continuing struggles of the second season to truly provide the same type of morally dubious choices that so endeared us to the first season. At the same time, I think we understand that isn’t as big a problem even if it doesn’t lead to as easily set up discussions. | more
March 4, 2014 Eric Swain External Sources Reviews for Janruary/February The doldrums of the early months of the year have allowed for some catch up to games I didn’t have time for. Both for my own personal enjoyment and as for reviews. In fact, all but one of the games I reviewed were from the very end of last year that the 3 reviews a week schedule wouldn’t allow for. Ok, that’s not entirely honest. I was swamped and couldn’t play them until PopMatters went on break. | 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