Emotive Pixels Podcast

We break the hearts of fandom as we are baffled by the rampaging success of Baldur's Gate 3, an interesting game made of many spectacular details that don't cohere for us into something that we like playing - a game whose reception and accolades led us to be very confused: "It's all informed by the next sentence you don't get to pick."Part 2 in our evolving series of wrestling with understanding the inherent appeal of all-consuming and frictional media objects.

We continue our investigation of what big-budget gaming means with one of the titans of AAA graphical fidelity, marred by a rocky launch. Yet, after 4 years, the game captivates us all. Was it all the dollars spent on Polish demoscene graphics programmers, fantastic voice acting, and Studio Trigger tie-ins?

From Keighleys 2024 winners to Italian gamebook dozen-sellers. Craig: Lil' Gator Game, The Plucky Squire, Shadow Warrior 3, Road 96, Astro Bot Nate: Balatro on mobile updates, Another Crab's Treasure, 1000xResist, Final Fantasy XVI, Felvidek Pauly: 49 Keys, Home Safety Hotline, White Knuckle, NaissanceE

Season 5 is all about AAA gaming in 2025, and in episode 1 we inspect the EA-published Immortals of Aveum, which was declared a commercial failure last year, with most of its studio laid off. What is going on in the game - can we find a reason for its lack of success? Is it actually an indie game in disguise, and is that what "AA" gaming is? Remap Radio interview with Bret Robbins

We ride the cozy caravan into the storm in this charming open world. We ponder identity, coziness, and the differing texture between this and Sable.

We dive deep into the mind of a lekky on a crumbling North Shore oil rig as the otherworldly manifestation of our avoidance gives us a hard time.

We press through the fog of trauma.

We fall into the Olympic Peninsula trauma-bonded to a four-wheel Object of Power. Pacific Drive and the New Weird A Shell in the Pit's website Dear Dwery: Pacific Drive with Alexander Dracott

We probe the tender and potentially autistic-coded Harold Halibut, a German narrative game handmade with over 200kg of clay.

Three gamers absolutely fail to grok a cultural phenomenon that uniquely represents today's neoliberal world. Ordered map of Elden Ring Hustling Souls — Hard games and neoliberal catharsis Hollywood's Downfall Hidetaka Miyazaki on guides

We question the voice in our head during a surrealist existentialist Siberian adventure about faith and relationships, full of a lot of interesting and satisfying mechanics. This game has it all!

We slay a major white whale. Pauly: Future Racer 2000/Silkbulb Test, Chess For Idiots, Asphalt Legends 9, Mullet Mad Jack, Star Trucker, racing sim updates Nate: Night Runners Prologue, 20 Small Mazes, Sheepy: A Short Adventure, Exophobia, NASCAR Heat 4 (bad), Exit 8, The Thaumaturge Craig: Cuccchi, Super Mario Maker 2, Super Mario Brothers Wonder, God of War Ragnarök: Valhalla, Red Dead Redemption 2

We are gripped by poker-solitaire fever. Playing Balatro is Like Being Elon Musk on Ketamine

The gang's all here! We cover racing sims, VR DJing, visual novels, aspirational Unity jank, and splatterfests. Automobilista 2, Assetto Corsa, Hotshot Racing, Vampire Survivors, Windy Meadow - a Roadwarden Tale, Slay the Princess, Jett: The Far Shore + Given Time, Foam Stars, Persona 5, virtual reality DJing feat. Vinyl Reality and Tribe XR, Killer Frequency Pauly Mallwear's Necrowave Nightmare DJ setThe Playdate PodcastMKBHD's podcast interview with Teenage Engineering

We regale in the deep philosophy and fantastic Yugoslav architecture of the Talos Principle 2.

We aim to hit the best line through Forza Motorsport, but end up off-track.

A celebration of the Playdate, as well as some retrospectives on 2023. We take a new approach to reviewing the year, with 6 categories of highlights and a look to the year ahead. Some of what we mentioned: Saturday Edition, Crankin's Time Travel Adventure, Forza Motorsport, Talos Principle 2, Chants of Sennaar, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Tinykin, Super Mario Brothers Wonder, Jusant, Red Dead Redemption 2, Cities Skylines 2, and Baldur's Gate 3.

We attempt to fit Alan Wake 2 in the Alan-Wake-2-shaped-hole in Nate's heart labeled "POSTMODERN MEDIA THEORY".

We remove all the limbs, and are not triggered by any of it. In a bonus segment, we also fail to escape prison.

We visit Mortimer Goth's digs while creating a gorgeous but confusing [Loading...] bridge to the undead and time-warped.

A smattering of minisodes. We cover: Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, Cult of the Lamb, Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores, and also, more quickly: Dear Esther, Resident Evil Village (demo), Venba, Madison Karrh's "Birth", The Master's Pupil, Terra Nil, Suzerain, Roadwarden, Dave the Diver (speculative), Inscryption, Haven, Deathloop, Star Wars Jedi Survivor, Viewfinder, Forza Horizon 5 & Rally Mexico/Hot Wheels DLCs, and Ace Attorney Chronicles. (Whew!

Craig has a blast being a dog.

We gather to flesh out exactly how much of a jerk Alan Wake is - and to what ends. Alan Wake from the Control universe

Nate, Pauly, and Craig tango their way through the tensions between Finance and R&D.

We explore the historical and theological sides of Josh Sawyer's Pentiment with an enjoyer of all things Lutheran.

We journey deep into City 17 in true first person mode, and discover who employs the G-Man.

We explore a procedural Chicago, in which we were twice joined by an open-hearted A$AP Rocky.

We debrief both of the recent God of War games, with Craig thoroughly describing their plots, the context of their reemergence within Sony, and his (positive) feelings on an arc of gaming extending back to 2005 - all to a Sony outsider, Nate. We then examine Microsoft's attempts to mimic Sony's AAA successes.

We journey to the hopeless glittering land of Revachol, where tides of history wash over citizens in ways we are unaccustomed to.

We reconvene after giving Immortality some time, and ingesting some thinkpieces.

We gather and process all the stuff we absorbed in Sam Barlow's film fragment exploration game Immortality. In this episode, we explore the plot of each of the three films, posit some theories about what might be going on beneath the surface that connects them, and discuss how we felt about this experience as a game. In the next episode, we'll be armed with internet analyses for a deeper dive into the game and its cultural context.

Join us as Will blows first-timer Craig's mind with just how much is going on in the Final Fantasy VII Remake part 1 and INTERmission Intergrade. Referenced pictures: one, and two

We explore the limits of what is and is not a game with Sweet Radiant Markiplier's YouTube Originals series "In Space With Markiplier". In Space With Markiplier, part 1 In Space With Markiplier, part 2 Bloopers & Behind-the-scenes Corridor Crew + Markiplier Favorite Channels: Craig: Noclip, People Make Games, Writing On Games, Game Maker's Toolkit, MKBHD, Johnny Harris, Binging With Babish, Luke Thomas, Kinda Funny Nate: Regular Car Reviews ("Mr. Regular"), Numberphile, VHS Rallies Pauly: Pat Finnerty, StoneMountain64 and F.A.S.T Squad, CodeMiko (Vtuber), Paul's Hardware Will: Philip DeFranco, Corridor Crew, Jazza, Magnus Midtbø, Anton Fomenko, Crooked Media, Adam Savage

We dive into the headspace of Tim Schafer as we stand divided over the Gruloat-ness (oof) of Psychonauts 2.

Will, Nate, and Craig fail to live up to Lucas Pope's hopes in his artsy and ambitious supernatural high seas detective followup to Papers Please.

Join Nate, Pauly, and Craig as we debrief the vaporwave-adjacent platform-walking simulator murder-mystery visual novel Paradise Killer, developed by Kaizen Game Works and released in September 2020. Road to IGF: Inside the fantastic murder-mystery design of Paradise KillerXGM Radio Episode 70 w/ Composer Barry "Epoch" ToppingMaking the Music of Paradise KillerInterview with Kaizen Game Works, Creators of Paradise KillerLudoNarracon livestream with Kaizen Game Works

We process the deaths of 150 years in a labyrinthine house in Friday Harbor, Washington. Shall We Play a Game? podcast episode with Ian Dallas What's Good Games podcast episode, also with Ian Dallas Ólafur Arnalds, Icelandic musician. Pauly and Nate refer casually to his 2018 album re:member, a beautiful modern classical album performed with his software Stratos that uses generative algorithms to play secondary and tertiary accompanying pianos alongside his compositions.

Craig and Nate attempt to break down Death Stranding, Kojima's spectacular big-budget walking simulator.

New host Robbie joins Nate and discusses the emotional impacts of two large presences in our year of Covid. Join us as we attempt to not only compare and contrast these two almost-games, but also philosophize and attempt to process why the experience of playing these two games felt somehow transcendant in a year of isolation, loneliness, confusion, and a void of travel. GeoGuessr, a free to play online gamified Google Maps Street View gameastronaut.io, a website that randomly serves unseen YouTube videos and somehow strikes a similar chord to GeoGuessr

Join us as we sit down and debrief after Nate finally, finally gets his cohosts to play his utterly favorite game, Kentucky Route Zero. We talk about our perception of the themes and designers' intents in this labyrinthine surreal art of 5 acts, conceived and released over a decade in the wake of American recession. WEVP's Un Pueblo de Nada broadcast, also WEVP's broadcast history Tamas Kemenczy, GDC '14: The Scenography of Kentucky Route Zero Junebug's solo album Eggplant's 'Into the Depths' series on KRZ Justin Clark's tremendous GameSpot review Deep, moving, and critical reflections: Blake Hester: A Kentuckian ex-alcoholic's deep reflections on Kentucky as seen through Kentucky Route Zero; GameInformer, 11/25/2020 Amanda Hudgins: The anger, pain, and disgust of Kentucky Route Zero being the primary game experience about Kentucky, written by outsiders; Bullet Points Monthly, February 2020 (also see the other 3 articles in February 2020's edition) Nicholas O'Brien: On the themes of Kentucky Route Zero; Critical Distance, September 2019 (an analysis of the 4+ main themes of Kentucky Route Zero, with many journalism links supporting each) Carolyn Petit: Revisiting Acts I-IV while Desperately Looking for Work; Medium, January 2020

On our first episode recorded since 2017, we gather to discuss Snowrunner and its predecessors, off-roading games about driving trucks through miserably gorgeous terrain.Check out the Story Break episode proposing a movie based on Snowrunner! Naturally, it's a Tarkovsky flick.

This week we have a very interesting one, wherein we get deeply philosophical and compare J. Blow's own original The Witness and Croteam's somewhat less original The Talos Principle. If you're interested in some conversation about truly genius puzzles and truly genius game design from a questionable man, or Croatian developers absolutely sending it in terminal-based philosophy that it's apparently possible to not even read, then this is a great one.

This week, we take to the streets in 2015's return to form for a gigantic franchise that got so damn lost it even had a movie before examining its roots -- that's right, it's time for Need For Speed. They haven't added a 'the' out front yet, but they're close, folks.The theme this week is "Duck Wings Going Down in Smoke and Flames" by Duck Boy, a free album download from chipmusic.org off of his new album Unknown Command.

It's a trash heap of a game of things to collect today as we examine Fallout 4 and inevitably compare it to 3.

Horizon: Zero Dawn is Sony/Guerilla Games' triumphant return to... mascot platforming in the PS4 generation? Infinite cosplay generation? Just a darn good open world game with a great story and fiddly inventory, is the answer the intrepid crew this week settled upon. With great depth and a very interesting temporal setting, settle in with us as we discuss this wonderful game.

Join Craig and Nate live and raw around an iPhone as they lavish Virginia with criticism and praise both immediately after finishing it. There will be fun times and sad times as they each respond with their most visceral, unprocessed responses to a fresh playthrough of Variable State's indie darling Virginia. (Editor's note: My (Nate's) opinions are very dumb in this episode. Oh, to be 5 years younger...)

Conclude Nathan Drake's (and one arc of Emotive Pixels') journeys here with a long, rambley discussion of the best in the series, deserving a lower score than Uncharted 2.

This is a 2021 release of a podcast from 2015, and in some ways has aged a little bit. Nate is our host this week, and he is so invested in the success of this game, he tends to override the other guests present on a couple key points. That being said, Never Alone is a 2014 game that features the traditional Iñupiaq tale "Kunuuksaayuka" as produced by Upper One Games, a for-profit studio underneath the nonprofit Cook Inlet Tribal Council. It won a BAFTA for "Game with the Best Impact", and we all have thoughts about just that - the impact of the gorgeous documentary mini-shorts as juxtaposed with the experience of playing the game. Join us in 2021 to look back at how novel this game felt in 2015! This podcast has minor spoilers for the following: Spec Ops: The Line Harry Potter book 7 Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons A Lil' Wayne song (almost) Final Fantasy 11 You have been warned! (You should have played Brothers before now anyway.)

This episode of Emotive Pixels sees us, like so many others in the doldrums of 2020+, return to things left unfinished in our past. In this fine week from years past, we discuss Pauly favorite game Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, from 2010. Many things are said, it's unclear why Nate was here, and Craig loves God of War. Pauly leads the show this week with some discussions into the mechanics of this game, how it relates to other Castlevanias, and a very impressive award he bestows upon the game. Will brings interesting questions like the inspirations bordering on homages peppered throughout this game from design doc to architecture.

Let's get back to nature with someone fresh from the cast of Mad Men.Relevant links!From "Irritable Heart" to "Shellshock": How Post-traumatic Stress Became a Disease (via Gizmodo)The theme this week is Linker, by our very own Pauly!

Join us for a discussion of The Beginner's Guide. This game is so complicated and so deep and so oddly emotional - whether funny or brutally devastating is really up to you, apparently - that we bring in a psychiatrist to help us sift through the experience. I'm having a hard time deciding exactly what to type here about this game; it's almost a divine experience certainly without parallel in the gaming space, an opinion I hold to the level of that for Kentucky Route Zero. The Beginner's Guide is not as much all about videogames as The Stanley Parable, but instead it's a game all about the making of games, the sustaining of the creative forces required to make such inhumanly exhausting projects that are such pieces of the creators' soul(s). I don't want to spoil this experience for any of you (spoiling is what listening to our podcast is for, after all), but take it from me: this is a game you should play if you've ever even considered the humans behind your games.We recommend listening to our The Stanley Parable podcast beforehand, the spiritual precursor to this game, also by Davey Wreden.Relevant links!Check out our own musician Pauly, whose song Unravishing is featured in this episode!Galactic Cafe: Davey Wreden's blog post about The Stanley ParableThe Artist is Absent: Davey Wreden and The Beginner's Guide - a truly amazing analysis video of The Beginner's Guide by Innuendo Studios on YouTube (33m)Errant Signal: The Beginner's Guide - another awesome breakdown analysis from the YouTube channel Errant Signal (20m) - watch this if you suspect Coda might be a real personThe theme this week is "The Func" by VCMG, a free download from chipmusic.org.The Will's Quiz Minute(tm) theme is Linker, also by beloved Pauly!