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?

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 set
• The Playdate Podcast
• MKBHD's podcast interview with Teenage Engineering

We regale in deep philosophy and fantastic Yugoslav architecture.

We aim to hit the best line of loving Forza without comparing to Gran Turismo, 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.

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

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! 😅) Also covered: A psychology test from UW Madison that reveals interesting patterns in how you think - whether you're a visual thinker, whether you visualize language, and whether you have an internal monologue.

Craig has a blast being a dog.

We try to classify Alan Wake, like, as a person.

• Alan Wake from the Control universe

We tango our 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 learn Kratos's full story, and ponder why Microsoft struggles with the Sony flavor of AAA.

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.

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 process what we absorbed from Sam Barlow's film fragment exploration game. In the next episode, we dive deeper.

We have our minds blown by just how much is going on in the Final Fantasy VII Remake part 1 and INTERmission Intergrade. Referenced pictures: one, and two

We debate whether DVD menus are games.

In Space With Markiplier, part 1
In Space With Markiplier, part 2
Bloopers & Behind-the-scenes
Corridor Crew + Markiplier

Our 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 turn the art dial on mental health to 11.

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

We solve the mysteries of Perfect 25 to a soundtrack of divine Scottish citypop.

• Road to IGF: Inside the fantastic murder-mystery design of Paradise Killer
• Interview with Kaizen Game Works
• LudoNarracon livestream with Kaizen Game Works
• XGM Radio Episode 70 w/ Composer Barry "Epoch" Topping' seems to have been lost to time...
• Making the Music of Paradise Killer
• Music for Paradise: A bit more in-depth looks at some of the songs' constructions

We process the deaths of 150 years in a labyrinthine house in Friday Harbor, Washington.

• Shall We Play a Game?, What's Good Games, Ólafur Arnalds

We traverse the United Cities of Iceland and reconnect America.

We discuss the emotional impacts of two large presences in our year of Covid, and attempt to process why the experience of playing these two games felt somehow transcendent in a year of isolation, loneliness, and a void of travel.

• GeoGuessr, a free to play online gamified Google Maps Street View game
• astronaut.io, a website that randomly serves unseen YouTube videos and somehow strikes a similar chord to GeoGuessr

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.

• Un Pueblo de Nada, or all WEVP broadcasts
• GDC '14: The Scenography of Kentucky Route Zero
• Junebug's solo album
• Eggplant's 'Into the Depths' series
• Justin Clark's GameSpot review

Personal reflections:

• Blake Hester: A Kentuckian ex-alcoholic's deep reflections on Kentucky Route Zero
• Amanda Hudgins, Bullet Points: The anger, pain, and disgust of Kentucky Route Zero being the primary game experience about Kentucky, written by outsiders (also see the whole issue)
• Nicholas O'Brien, Critical Distance: On the themes of Kentucky Route Zero (theme analysis, with many supporting links)
• Carolyn Petit: Revisiting Acts I-IV while Desperately Looking for Work

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.

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.

We compare a game of contextual discovery to a game whose incredible philosophy is apparently all skippable.

This week, we take to the streets in 2015's return to form for a gigantic franchise that got so lost it even had a movie before examining its roots.

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

We are joined by a psychologist to examine the setting, feelings, and depth in Sony's brilliant cosplay generator.

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.

We travel to Indigenous Alaska with the traditional Iñupiaq tale "Kunuuksaayuka", a co-op platformer juxtaposed against micro-documentaries.

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!

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.

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. It's an experience with few parallels in gaming, the depth and intensity of our responses reminding me of 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.
The episode prior to this one in our feed is about The Stanley Parable, Davey Wreden's previous game, whose rave acclaim may have inspired some of this game.

• Galactic Cafe: Davey Wreden's blog post about The Stanley Parable
• The 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 person

The 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! And we also hear his Unravishing!

Join us for a discussion of The Stanley Parable, a game entirely focused on turning negative possibility spaces into positive possibility spaces. Game design theory and meta-commentary abound in this episode about the utterly-hilarious Half-Life 2 mod The Stanley Parable by Davey Wreden. The level of fergazzlement on display is outstanding!

Tune in with us next week for a talk about the emotional follow-up to this game, The Beginner's Guide. If you enjoyed this game, BG is a must-play from Wreden's own experience after the release of SP.

Relevant links!

• UPDATE! The Baby Game has been patched as of 2016/12!
• Jazzpunk by Necrophone Games, an absurdest alt-Cold War comedy game with a similar sense of humor to Stanley
• Way of the Samurai, an oldschool game about multiple endings
• The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, a textbook on game design
• yep, we talk about the Swiffer in this podcast

The theme this week is "The Func" by VCMG, a free download from chipmusic.org. Also from chipmusic, the WILL'S GAMING MINUTE(tm) theme is "Wienerhype" by jaar.

Warning: This is an early podcast of ours and is long! You have been warned.
Join us for a discussion of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4. This week, we talk about the differences between the base game and the glorious PS Vita port, Golden, and whether you have to actually experience something the first time for it to be nostalgic when you play the remaster - a more involved discussion than the "yes" you'd expect from a podcast who's been doing this for a lot longer than we had been at this point. (Yes, the legends are true, it took us a year to bother editing this one.) We discuss Nate's uncanny similarity to Yosuke for frankly pretty trivial reasons, and the intricacies of polyamory. Yes, there's lots to talk about and a contest to be won!

The theme this week is Linker, by our very own Pauly!

Nine years out from its release, we return for some thoughts and critical analysis of Mass Effect. This is almost a companion podcast to our bookclub on Drew Kapyrshyn's first Mass Effect novel, Revelation, and in this podcast we hear Nate being a huge grump after (or because of) missing what is easily argued to be the entire point and centerpiece of not only this game but entire series of games; also hear us talk about the Mako, that lovely divisive game mechanic (I guess some people have to like something for it to be divisive, huh?). We'll chat about other things too, but you'll have to listen to find out!

The theme this week is "Cracks" by Clamm, a free album download from chipmusic.org.