T w e n t y S i d e d

Late in this episode we compare The Walking Dead to Dead Island. Here’s my review of the latter, if you’re curious. Here is the original Dead Island trailer, which caused such a fuss and led to unrealistic expectations for the game.

That game is pretty much my poster child for soulless AAA game development. Uncanny valley photorealism. Big-budget production values. Tacked-on leveling mechanics that actually detract from the core experience. Horrible kinesthetics. Loads of bugs. Lame-ass quests. Dissonant storytelling that can’t seem to present a coherent tone, theme, or plot. Jarring cutscenes that don’t mesh with the world. Completely unbalanced mechanics where one class is objectively better than another and all classes are rendered pointless by the kick action. Cringe-inducing pop-culture references. Shockingly awful character designs. Huge marketing push that was almost completely at odds with the game itself. A late entry into an oversaturated genre.

Millions of dollars were spent to produce and sell a game that just wasn’t worth playing. It would be like spending half a million bucks to make a solid gold Prius, and then not bothering to make sure the engine works. It’s heartbreaking to see so much money and hard work poured into producing such an unworthy product.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Walking Dead EP4: I LOVE Candy Bars!”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Here is episode three of Spoiler Warning’s coverage of episode one of the first season of The Walking Dead, which is the third incarnation of the source material and the tenth season of Spoiler Warning.

I think it would have been an interesting idea to make the stupid evil nutjob a different person from the insufferable abrasive loudmouth bully. Right now the deck is stacked so hard against Larry because he’s wrong, unreasonable, and rude. I wonder how things would go with players if the guy arguing to kill the kid was doing so in a detached, clinical manner, and the person against it was being emotional and irrational. Instead of saying, “Let’s wait until we find a bite”, they could be simply making appeals to emotion and denying that a bite was possible. How many people would lean one way because they want to side with the voice of reason, or the other way because it’s the more reasonable thing to do? With time pressure and uncertainty, you might be able to nudge some people into considering the “kill the kid” side of the debate.

Here, Larry wants to kill a little kid without even waiting to find a bite. He’s so eager to do this that he’s practically taunting the parents. The whole exchange is why I quit watching the TV show. The danger here isn’t from the zombies but from one person being completely unreasonable. His insistence that everyone stop and murder a child without even waiting to find a bite or see any symptoms is ludicrous.

Early in the show I accuse Lily of being “irredeemably evil”. Here’s why: (Spoilers for next week.)

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Walking Dead EP3: The Only Winning Move”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

At fifteen minutes I was running my mouth and managed to mangle the point I was making. When you have one of those moments where you’re free to roam around and talk to everyone, the game doesn’t usually make you talk to everyone. You can often ignore people. That’s nice, although it’s not the same thing as all conversations being optional, which is kind of how I made it sound.

I made a fuss over the facial animation system, but it’s entirely possible that it’s only impressive because the art style is so… uh… stylized. The animations might not actually be better than a Bethesda / BioWare style face animation, but it looks better because it’s happening on a cartoon face and not on a photorealistic one. In any case, it really makes these conversations come to life.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

What if you took the choice and conversation wheel gameplay of (say) Dragon Age or Mass Effect, and made that into a game all by itself? No shooter combat. No classes. No equipment. You just talk and make decisions. The whole time.

Telltale Games has done it, and the result is basically a new genre of videogame. Yes, on the surface it’s mechanically similar to Sam & Max or the Strongbad adventure games. But making it a serious, drama-based story with gut-wrenching choices creates a very different experience.

The game is based on the Comic series by Robert Kirkman, and features brief cameos of existing characters. There’s also a TV series based on the same material, which I hated because it’s way too much a soap opera of idiots and jackasses. I watched the first several episodes and didn’t connect with a single character.

The entire Spoiler Warning cast has played through the game by this point. I realize the game is a bit “new” by the standards of our show, but this is an important game and we all have stuff to say about it. If you’re looking to play along at home, the game is available right now on Steam for less than $20. It’s an innovative high-quality game that weighs in around twelve to fifteen hours. I punch those numbers into my calculator and it makes a happy face.

We normally take a couple of weeks off from Spoiler Warning when we finish a season, but we’re rolling straight into The Walking Dead. Buckle up.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.