#25 See No Evil
After Spider-Man punches his way out of Martin Li’s stupid dream world, we return to the high-speed chase where Spider-Man is trying to stop the truck, Martin Li is trying to stop Spider-Man, and Sable agents are shooting missiles at everyone.
Spider-Man performs some heroic quicktime events, but he manages to lose the battle anyway. (In a cutscene, obviously. And yes, you must still successfully complete the quicktime events, even though your success will be immediately negated in a cutscene. Failure is prohibited until it’s mandatory.) The truck turns over and he’s knocked out. When he wakes up, Li has escaped with Devil’s Breath. I have no idea how he escaped the scene on foot with an army of Sable agents in pursuit. I guess those guys just suck.
And speaking of things that suck…
Continue reading 〉〉 “Spider-Man Part 16: Grand Central Terminal”
In the past I’ve lamented the terrible state of writing in some games, claiming that for the same money, the developer could have made the game drastically better. In my column this week, we have an even more extreme case where you could vastly improve the quality of Rage 2 by spending less money. Just cut half these cutscenes and you’d have a better game.
In the column, I mentioned that there is ~3.5 minutes of gameplay in the first 23 minutes of the game. That’s actually me being a little generous and counting the tutorial where it locks you in a simple cube room and makes you dash 3 times as “gameplay”.
There’s a lot more to criticize. So let’s do that:
Continue reading 〉〉 “Experienced Points: Shut Up and Let me Shoot Stuff”
Perhaps it would have been good to stop at a nice round number like 256, but we decided to keep making these for some reason. As always, the show email is in the header image.
Show notes: Continue reading 〉〉 “Diecast #257: Rage 2, Outer Wilds, Satisfactory”
This series analyzes the show, but sometimes references the books as well. If you read it, expect spoilers for both.
Here it is – the series finale.
Picking up where we left off, King’s Landing is a pile of smoking rubble, Dany has gone full wrong-side-of-the-coin Targaryen, and all the characters are walking around very slowly and looking troubled. Peter Dinklage’s brows were probably sore for days after filming his first scene.

The action moves deliberately through the city’s ruins, checking in on several characters along the way, and there’s a growing sense of horror at what’s happened. Dany gives a speech to her victorious troops, in either Dothraki or Valyrian.I couldn’t tell, how is it that both the Unsullied and the Dothraki seem to be able to understand her? Checking the credits afterwards, I expected to see that this episode was directed by Miguel Sapochnik, but it turns out to have been Benioff and Weiss themselves. I was a bit surprised, but shouldn’t have been – the direction here shows off some of their strengths, like a knack for painterly framing and creating an operatic sense of scale.
Continue reading 〉〉 “Game of Thrones Season Eight: “The Iron Throne””
Who is this imbecile and why is he wandering around Europe unsupervised?
Some advice to game developers on how to stop ruining good stories with bad cutscenes.
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2013.
As someone who loves Tolkein lore and despises silly MMO quests, this game left me deeply conflicted.
This series explores the troubled history of VR and the strange lawsuit between Zenimax publishing and Facebook.
How did this niche racing game make a gameworld so massive, and why is that a big deal?
Why spend millions on visuals that are just a distraction from the REAL game of hotbar-watching?
Two minutes of fun at the expense of a badly-run theme park.
Ever wondered what's in all those quest boxes you've never bothered to read? Get ready: They're more insane than you might expect.
What does it mean when a program crashes, and why does it happen?