Pixel Vision turns 50 with some earthshaking news, before Ben and Tao turn protector and carrier and take on the armies of Provence in A Plague Tale: Requiem, sequel to A Plague Tale: Innocence. The duo take opposing views as they discuss the contradiction between a didactic story and fun gameplay; why all in-game villains have caricature evil voices; how The Last Of Us sets the benchmark for effective storytelling in adventure games; if crafting, collectibles and upgrade elements are superfluous and interfere with a strong narrative; the influence of JK Rowling; force walk; and rats. Lots of rats.

Every key story element is spoiled by the end, but the first 45 minutes are spoiler free and pretty much all spoilers are heavily forecast.

Content Warning: PEGI 15. Coarse language, violent scenes, tragic developments.

Clarifications:

• The soundtrack to A Plague Tale: Requiem which features heavily is by French composer Olivier Deriviere, who also composed Greedfall, Alone in the Dark and Dying Light 2 among others. Ben’s a fan:

• The Arnaud aka Beast aka Wall confusion exhibited by both Tao and Ben is real, as testified to by several Reddit threads and errors in YouTube compilations. The Beast and the Wall are not the same guy:

  • https://www.reddit.com/r/APlagueTale/comments/yrz5an/when_it_comes_to_arnaud_and_the_beast/

  • https://www.reddit.com/r/APlagueTale/comments/z3njza/the_beast_arnaud/

  • https://www.reddit.com/r/PlagueTaleInnocence/comments/10cj2dq/major_spoiler_why_did_arnaud_become_hunted_by_the/

  • https://www.reddit.com/r/APlagueTale/comments/y6cx7o/a_plague_tale_requiem_chapter_vii_discussion/

Audio extracts:

• Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

• The Prodigy - Firestarter

• The Last Of Us OST by Gustavo Santaolalla

• The Godfather 3

• Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

• Monty Python and the Holy Grail

• Dame Vera Lynn - We'll Meet Again

• Citizen Sleeper - Density

• Disco Elysium OST

• Fleetwood Mac - The Chain

• The Revenant OST by Ryuichi Sakamoto

• Wes Anderson Horror Trailer - SNL

• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)

• Skyrim Level Up

• Playstation 5 start up sound (reversed)

• Wolcen Lords of Mayhem OST by Jean-Gabriel Raynaud & Cedric Baravaglio

• Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels - “Chill Winston”

• Pentiment OST by Alkemie

• Dark Souls OST by Motoi Sakuraba

• The Offspring - Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)

• Brad Mehldau - Exit Music (For A Film), original by Radiohead

• The Mouse Outfit - Money

• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Substack: Sign up free to read our reviews and commentary at www.pixelvision.net
Twitter: @pixelviz
Email: pixelvisionpodcast@gmail.com

PS. So long and thanks for all the fish (and the listening!) - Ben and Tao xx

Content Warning: PEGI 3. There’s literally no content. WTAF.

Clarifications:

• Yeah, to be clear, nothing to see here.

Audio extracts:

• Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? composed by Matthew Strachan

Find us at www.pixelvision.net
Twitter: @pixelviz
Email: pixelvisionpodcast@gmail.com

Content Warning: PEGI 12. Pretty PG this one. ‘Tis the season, innit.

Clarifications:

• Citizen Sleeper’s excellent soundtrack is by Amos Roddy. It’s available on Spotify:

• Gareth Damian Martin talks to PCGamer about his personal experience relating to gender and its influence on the game’s development.

• The other game by Gareth Damian Martin and ‘Jump Over The Edge’ studios is In Other Waters, which also looks really cool…

Audio extracts:

• Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

• The Twelve Days of Christmas - The King's Singers and The Tabernacle Choir

• Slade - Merry Christmas Everybody

• Disco Elysium OST

• Weird Al Yankovic - Smells like Nirvana

• The Beatles - All You Need Is Love

• Kool & The Gang - Get Down On It

• Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows

• Icewind Dale 2

• The Dark Knight

• Free Guy

• The Sopranos

• Repo Men

• Nina Simone - My Baby Just Cares For Me 

• Sunless Sea OST

• Shaun of the Dead

• Hearthstone OST

• Observation OST

• Paradise Killer OST by Barry "Epoch" Topping

• In Other Waters OST - A Drifting Lens by Amos Roddy

• A Plague Tale: Innocence OST

• Frank Sinatra - Jingle Bells

Substack: Sign up free to read our reviews and commentary at www.pixelvision.net
Twitter: @pixelviz
Email: pixelvisionpodcast@gmail.com

The big wheel keeps on turning
On a simple line, day by day
The earth spins on its axis
One man struggle while another relaxes
~ Massive Attack

Ben and Tao are on a roll, fleeing the all flattening, deadening turn of the great wheel of time - or not time, just a massive, physics defying concrete cylinder crushing everything in its path for all eternity - aka The Eternal Cylinder. Your hosts try to make sense of the allegories therein, pondering metaphors and surrealism, story narration, procedurally generated landscapes, the perks of multiplayer gaming, and when an animal’s trunk is not a trunk but a snoot. As usual the game’s ending is outlined with some spoilers, but given the nature of the story, the gameplay impact would be minimal.

Content Warning: PEGI 12. Swearing. Ranting. One offensively audible clip from the Teletubbies.

Clarifications:

• The UK’s Teletubbies narrator was Tim Whitnall. This is a seriously disturbing show with an adult’s eye.

• Stephen Fry explains the story behind the ‘Pocketed It’ compilation. (TL;DR - he stumbled over the phrase while narrating the Harry Potter audiobooks so JK Rowling inserted it into every subsequent book).

• Ben enjoyed this take by Lewis Gordon of Vice: “I couldn’t help but look back towards the gigantic cylinder, an image nearly bursting with allegorical possibilities. In a way, we’re all the tiny Trebhum, doing whatever we can to postpone our eventual annihilation. In another, perhaps we—and I mean this in the humanity-encompassing sense of the word—are closer to the cataclysmic rolling pin, flattening and destroying everything we encounter.” And this one too: “For this time of gigantic crises we find ourselves in—none more so than that concerning the environment—it’s a fitting allegory, a reminder of the power that resides in the collective, and that our differences are an asset, not a hindrance.” You can follow Lewis here if you haven’t yet abandoned Twitter to the vultures and ashes.

• If you nostalgia hard on the Zoombinis reference, we recommend this video ‘deep dive’ into the game by GamesOnHardMode - it’s worth it for the comments alone:

• According to his Wikipedia entry, Peter Molyneux did not have any involvement in Creatures, Tao’s memory playing up (again). It was created in the mid-1990s by English computer scientist Steve Grand.

  

Audio extracts:

• Dance of the Knights by Sergei Prokofiev aka The Apprentice theme

• Other tracks from The Apprentice by Dru Masters

• Sir Alan Sugar, also his fictional secretary, whose real name is Samantha Moon, not ‘Frances’.

• Left 4 Dead OST

• Apex Legends OST

• Outer Wilds OST

• Void Bastards

• Midsomer Murders

• Stephen Fry - ‘pocketed it’ compilation

• Baldur’s Gate 2

• Chicago - If You Leave Me Now

• Blues Brothers - Everybody Needs Somebody to Love

• David Cronenberg’s ‘Crimes of the Future’ trailer

• Zoombinis

• Creatures game SFX

• Spore OST

• Astroneer OST

• Line of Duty TV Series - End Title theme

Substack: Sign up free to read our reviews and commentary at www.pixelvision.net
Twitter: @pixelviz
Email: pixelvisionpodcast@gmail.com

To explore what it means to be human, Ben and Tao play with a pussy - a personified cat with an AI drone sidekick - while befriending wannabe artistic bipedal robots in feline post-apocalyptic, post-Homo sapiens adventure tale, Stray. It’s not all highfalutin social commentary though, they do get to remote detonate mutant bacteria with a light gun strapped to their teeny weeny cat vests. Analysis includes discussion of dystopian storytelling and tropes, the role of animals in games, children’s storybooks, whether art is a uniquely human venture, Tom Hanks, prison escapes in games, plus Ben shares why he’s not fond of cats or domesticated animals in general. As usual, some major story spoilers towards the end of the pod. If you’re going to play it, it’s recommended you do so before listening.

Content Warning: PEGI 12. Cursing. Animal cruelty. Egregious cockney accents.

Clarifications:

• All music for Stray was composed by Yann van der Cruyssen

• The collective noun for cats is, apparently, a ‘Clowder’. Doesn’t roll off my tongue either. The collective noun Ben used, ‘Posse’, is ‘a group of people armed with legal authority’, for instance, policemen.

• The Road is a dystopian novel by Cormac McCarthy. There’s nothing ‘basic’ about it. Ben regrets the term!

• The book Tao is clutching for is not ‘The Earth Remains’, an entirely different and unrelated novel by Shelley Burchfield, but sci-fi classic, Earth Abides, a 1949 American post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by George R. Stewart. It tells the story of the fall of civilization from deadly disease and the emergence of a new culture with simpler tools.

• Kurt Zouma’s personal contact details are… not really going to be published here. That was a joke. Read the room, or alternatively, this article about his crimes against cats.

• Here’s details on the prevention of migraines using vitamin B2, riboflavin.

• Machinarium was not from Annapurna Interactive, it was Amanita Design. It was released in 2009.

• Tom Hank’s new movie is called A Man Called Otto

• Prison escape features in Fable 1 and 3, but it’s also a story element in Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, The Witcher 2, Metal Gear Solid, Splinter Cell: Double Agent, Deus Ex, Dragon Age: Origins, Resistance 3, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Dishonored to name just a few.

Audio extracts:

• Machinarium soundtrack by Tomas Dvorak

• Prey

• DePresno ft. Liv Dawson - Gold

• Cats (2019)

• Transporter 2

• Half Life 2

• Minions

• Vinnie Jones and Ross Kemp in Extras

• Jason Statham

• Ocean’s 11 and Ocean’s 12 soundtracks, by David Holmes

• The Quarantine Zone (20 Years Later) from The Last of Us OST by Gustavo Santaolalla

• The Sixth Sense

• Superbad

• LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring

• John Prine - Pretty Good

• The Lion King

• Eddie Vedder’s ‘Tuolumne’ from Into The Wild

• Rush Hour and Rush Hour 2

• Fallout 4 OST - Main Theme

• The Police - Every Breath You Take

• Alone Too Long - Daryl Hall and John Oates

• Fable

• Shawshank Redemption OST

• Escape from Alcatraz

• Blaktrix - Ironfist

• Castaway

• The Witcher

• A Man Called Otto

• Max Payne

• Snowpiercer

• Alex Jones ranting

• Squeeze - Cool for Cats

• Goat Simulator trailer

• Halo Infinite - Zeta Halo

• The Eternal Cylinder OST

• Cats and Dogs - Dr Syntax and Pete Cannon

Substack: Sign up free to read our reviews and commentary at www.pixelvision.net
Twitter: @pixelviz
Email: pixelvisionpodcast@gmail.com

Happy Halloween! Ben and Tao wallow in corporate servitude and debt until unionisation galvanises them to join the intergalactic picket line in zen, outer space deconstruction simulator, Hardspace Shipbreaker. In addition to the usual breakdown of the game’s story and gameplay mechanics, the duo get into gaming loops, micro objectives and puzzles, corporate megalomania and mandatory agreement to terms and conditions, the role of banter and companionship in games, dystopian retro futurism, and if gaming companies should use unsigned musicians for their soundtracks to foster more variety and cultivate new talent. Major story spoilers towards the end of the pod, but nothing detrimental to gameplay.

Content Warning: PEGI 12. Institutional oppression, bosses from hell, occasionally explicit cursing.

Clarifications:

• All music for Hardspace Shipbreaker was composed by Blackbird Interactive, specifically Jono Grant, Traz Dimji, Ben McCullough, Philip J Bennett

• Hardspace Shipbreaker was released on 16 June 2020

• Tao was right about the navigation system in Myst. It’s marginally different, but certainly comparable:

• While digging out the South Park ‘terms and conditions’ audio, I found this track by Seb Lowe which I think is worth sharing. Seems like a talented young guy:

• According to the Nintendo product page, there are actually 500 different products in Wilmot’s Warehouse

• Owen Wilson says ‘Wow’ compilation is, bizarrely, worth watching in full. It’s absurd:

• Vincent D'Onofrio, who acted Edgar in Men in Black (1997) is not the voice of Hal Rhodes. That honour goes to Adam Nurada.

• ‘Welcome to Night Vale’ is a twice-monthly podcast in the style of community updates for the small desert town of Night Vale, featuring local weather, news, announcements from the Sheriff's Secret Police, mysterious lights in the night sky, dark hooded figures with unknowable powers, and cultural events. Check out their website here: https://www.welcometonightvale.com/

• Hypnospace Outlaw was our second ever episode and is available here. I like to think we’ve come a long way:

Pixel Vision

E2 Hypnospace Outlaw

Listen now (54 min) | The podcast gets a name. Ben and Tao run through the ups and downs of moderating a 90s era cyber space in the sci-fi web simulator, Hypnospace Outlaw. Topics include the early internet, nostalgia, when puzzles become too puzzling, minigames, microtransactions and pseudo-currencies, music genres, and the limits of satire…

Listen now

6 years ago · Pixel Vision

Audio extracts:

• Futurama theme

• Half Life 2

• Radiohead - Everything In Its Right Place from Kid A

• 2001 A Space Odyssey

• Men in Black - Farmer Edgar

• Chuck Brodsky - Bill & Annie in full. Available for purchase here:

• The Office - ‘Good news and bad news’

• The Office - David Brent interviews Tim Canterbury

• South Park - HumancentiPad - S15E01

• Wilmot's Warehouse OST by Eli Rainsberry

• Pigs In Space, The Muppets

• Owen Wilson says ‘Wow’ over and over

• Welcome to Nightvale

• Hypnospace Outlaw by Jay Tholen

Substack: Sign up free to read our reviews and commentary at www.pixelvision.net
Twitter: @pixelviz
Email: pixelvisionpodcast@gmail.com

Ben and Tao tug and pull each other - not like that - as they swing from leaf to bough to frog to swan, in stringy suburban couch co-op pendulous puzzler, Unravel Two. The duo break down exactly what they’re looking for in a co-operative platformer and if this side scroller has all the right ingredients. Between comparisons to other co-op titles and nearly random film references, they talk friendship, fascism, faux urgency, the role of metaphors in story design, and of course their own interpretations of the Unravel Two plot. Plus, what makes a suitable audience, and why Ben’s sudden interest in simulations may be linked to his new VR headset. Negligible spoilers.

Content Warning: PEGI 12. Some bad language but not worse than your average playground. No violence. No sex. Good or bad? You decide! (And let us know in our Suggestion Box…)

Clarifications:

• If it isn’t obvious, the audio at the end is Ben and Tao narrating their own playthrough of Unravel Two. It’s not the commentary track of an inappropriate DVD.

• Safety Not Guaranteed (2012) is a sci-fi comedy from Mark Duplass. 

• Vengeance (2022) is a comedy film written and directed by B. J. Novak. Ben enjoyed it and recommends. You can see other films he liked (and hated) here: BennyViews.com

• Tao references N! - game you can still play in browser here: https://www.thewayoftheninja.org/n.html (it’s not as fun as everyone remembers it)

• We reviewed Overboard! Here:

Pixel Vision

E39 Overboard!

Listen now (57 min) | Danger lurks as Ben and Tao figure out not just how to get away with murder, but how to do it with aplomb, in Inkle’s inverted murder mystery whodunit - (we did!) - Overboard! As well as discussing the various solutions and outcomes of the tricksy puzzler, the pair discuss the innovative use of time, repetition as b…

Read more

4 years ago · Pixel Vision

• We reviewed It Takes Two here:

Pixel Vision

E26 It Takes Two

Listen now (60 min) | Ben and Tao sit down to overcome their differences through Dr Hakim’s therapy-with-a-difference in the maritally redemptive, cooperative 3D platforming genre mangler, It Takes Two. In a very grown up discussion, they chat relationship difficulties, target audiences, comparable cooperative games and the confusion of critical acclaim, the role of minigame…

Read more

5 years ago · Pixel Vision

• We reviewed Astroneer here:

Pixel Vision

E11 Astroneer

Listen now (57 min) | Equipped with space suits, backpacks and their trusty terrain tools, Ben and Tao shuttle between stars and planets while sucking up every available resource in space industry sandbox, Astroneer. The duo ponder the contrast between procedurally generated sandboxes and narrative driven adventures, the importance of tutorials, creation versus consumption, …

Read more

6 years ago · Pixel Vision

• We reviewed Greedfall here:

Pixel Vision

E9 Greedfall

Listen now (62 min) | Ben and Tao don their tricornes, unsheath their long swords and spare no prisoners as they ravage the virgin lands of Teer Fradee in colonialist RPG epic, Greedfall. Tao takes issue with the representation of race and colonialism, while Ben takes umbrage with just about everything else. Despite the theme, diplomacy goes out the window and harsh truths a…

Read more

6 years ago · Pixel Vision

Audio extracts:

• Monty Python - Bring Out Your Dead

• Al Bowlly - Goodnight Vienna

• Spanish Flea by Herb Alpert

• Overboard! Game (2021)

• The Amazing Spiderman - 1960's Cartoon theme

• The Mighty Boosh - ‘Hold Me’

• Half-Life 2

• Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes by Liam Sauvé

• It Takes Two OST

• Are we the baddies? - Mitchell and Webb

• Who Do You Think You Are Kidding Mr. Hitler by Jimmy Perry and Derek Taverner (Dad’s Army theme)

• A Way Out game (2018)

• Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons game (2013)

• Portal OST - 'Still Alive' by Jonathan Coulton

• Astroneer OST

• Safety Not Guaranteed (2012) feat. Mark Duplass

• Greedfall OST by Olivier Deriviere

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Twitter: @pixelviz
Email: pixelvisionpodcast@gmail.com

Content Warning: PEGI 15. Strong language and strong opinions from the start. And a Trump quote, for which we are very sorry.

Clarifications:

• Interestingly, after both Ben and Tao criticised the gaming controls and aiming system - the devs just announced they’re releasing a new aim mode. There’s no suggestion these things are related.

• The film to which Tao refers depicting violent Native Americans is Bone Tomahawk (2015).

• We still don’t know if it’s possible to recruit Across Rivers to your posse if he is corrupted by the Spirit of Greed during his storyline.

Audio extracts:

• ITV Take Me Out - TV Show theme and intro feat. Paddy McGuinness

• Bite Your Crush - Monster Prom OST

• The Wanted - I Found You (as heard in ITVs Take Me Out)

• Calamity Jane from ‘Deadwood’

• The former and possibly soon to be incarcerated President of the US

• Ly O Lay Ale Loya (Circle Dance)

• Vince Noir from The Mighty Boosh says, ‘Oh Yeah’

• Weird West OST performed by Weird Wolves and Choose Hellth

• Arcanum - Main Theme from OST

• Spider-man (2002)

• Baldur's Gate - Main Theme from OST

• DISHONORED - Main Theme by Daniel Licht

• The Pink Panther theme song by Henry Mancini

• The Sword of a Thousand Truths - South Park

• I Need A Dollar - song by Aloe Blacc

• Dragon Age 2 - Main theme from OST

• Dollar - song by Electric Guest

• One Pound Fish! Meme song. Turns out this guy made a music video out of this meme. All the power to him:

• Morrowind OST - main theme

• Commandos: Beyond The Call Of Duty main menu music

• Commandos character voices

• Desperados 3 OST - main theme

• Game creator, Raphael Colantonio, talks about implementing the aiming system and how it nearly broke the game’s development. More in this Gamespot vid

• Nuclear Throne OST - main theme

• Options - song by Gomez

• Fallout 3 Soundtrack - I don't want to set the World on Fire’

• Bodied (2017) - brilliant film, check it out if you didn’t already

• Bone Tomahawk (2015)

• Jeannie's Diary - song by Eels

• Death Stranding OST - main theme

• Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem OST

Substack: Sign up free to read our reviews and commentary at www.pixelvision.net
Twitter: @pixelviz
Email: pixelvisionpodcast@gmail.com

Content Warning: PEGI 15. Swearing, sounds of screaming. Tao’s tap. The horror, the horror…

Clarifications:

• SOMA was released on September 22, 2015. It’s a sci-fi horror game from Frictional Games, the creators of Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

• The name SOMA is not an acronym, it originates from the Greek word σῶμα (soma) which refers to the body, specifically the body as distinct from the mind or the soul.

• Robert Nozick was an American philosopher.

• The Paperclip Maximizer is a thought experiment described by Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom, author of the book Superintelligence.

Audio extracts:

• Windows XP start up and shut down sounds

• Upgrade (2018) feat. Logan Marshall Green

• The Magnificent Seven theme by Elmer Bernstein performed by Cincinnati Pops Orchestra and Erich Kunzel

• The Ricky Gervais Show feat. Stephen Merchant, Ricky Gervais and Karl Pilkington

• Nat King Cole - There Will Never Be Another You

• The countdown timer from ‘24’

• A Real Hero - College & Electric Youth

• The Last of Us OST - The Quarantine Zone (20 Years Later) by Gustavo Santaolalla

• Céline Dion - All By Myself

• Clippy - Office XP launch, 2001

• Amnesia: The Dark Descent OST by Mikko Tarmia

• Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

• Return of the Obra Dinn OST by Lucas Pope

• Outer Wilds - Angler Fish sounds

• The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

• Bioshock

Substack: Sign up free to read our reviews and commentary at www.pixelvision.net
Twitter: @pixelviz
Email: pixelvisionpodcast@gmail.com

Content Warning: PEGI 13. The yobbish space monsters are full on Sweary McSwearface, but your hosts are fairly restrained this ep. You’re welcome.

Clarifications:

• The original music for Void Bastards was composed by Ryan Roth. The developers are Blue Manchu.

• It was originally released on May 28, 2019.

• Ben annoyingly conflates two separate (but very similar!) space comedies, each released in 2020. One is Armando Iannuci’s Avenue 5 starring Hugh Laurie:

•  The other, whose audio is featured, is Space Force, a series created by Greg Daniels and Steve Carell for Netflix. They’re both a bit crap, so his point still stands.

Audio extracts:

• The Terminator (1984)

• MC Devvo - ‘Have a game of coins, mate’:

• Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace

• Half-Life

• Slay the Spire OST by Clark Aboud

• Lovespeake - DNA

• Borderlands 3 OST by Michael McCann

• Alan Partridge - Tannoy (Steve Coogan)

• The Mighty Boosh - Isolation

• Space Force (2020)

• Dale's Supermarket Sweep

• Arrested Development - ‘Come on!’

• Terminator 2 theme by Brad Fiedel

• Hades OST - House of Hades theme by Darren Korb

• And, of course, from Pixel Vision’s back catalogue - E1 Disco Elysium:

Pixel Vision

E1 Disco Elysium

Listen now (69 min) | Ben and Tao introduce themselves and the podcast before jumping straight into a forensic analysis of the hilarious and novel RPG game, Disco Elysium. Topics include censorship, discrimination and politics in game stories, save scumming, whether Ben’s an unlucky person, gaming alter-egos and breaking the rigid gamer mindset, and the merits of an in-game …

Read more

6 years ago · Pixel Vision

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Twitter: @pixelviz
Email: pixelvisionpodcast@gmail.com

“As an adult, I don’t think I could ever bring myself to play a pokemon game.” - Ben, Pixel Vision outtake, episode unknown.

This blunt admission from Ben could be interpreted in a number of ways. Perhaps he means that, as adults, we just don’t have the necessary time to dedicate to the franchise. After ordering a takeaway dinner and putting my imaginary kids to bed, where would an adult such as myself carve out the space? It could be that Ben is pining for days gone by, when he caught little pocket monsters to his heart’s content. I think back to Pokemon Yellow on my beloved Gameboy Color. Are these cherished childhood memories corrupted with each marginally different iteration of the game? Of course, there’s also the outside chance Ben feels he’s grown out of Pokemon. He no longer strives to be the very best, that no one has before, and is comfortably settled in his adult milieu. This interpretation is surely the most Farfetch’d. After all, we do host a video games podcast.

Ben in just a few years:

There’s no doubt the pokemon games are a time sink, and Legends: Arceus is no exception. Although howlongtobeat.com puts the story in at 25 hours, I can reveal that I have spent over 30 hours in the game and haven’t even unlocked the last map. Yes, sorry listeners and readers, predictably am yet to finish. Compared to previous titles, its large open world areas are a wonder to explore. Unlike Sword and Shield, where each ‘wild area’ feels about as free roaming as a small breeds farm, Arceus is reaching for something closer to Breath of the Wild. It’s no big surprise that it doesn’t reach that level, either in the landscape’s verticality or its distant vistas, but in the context of the pokemon series it does an admirable impersonation. In the next edition I fully expect to be able to swap my Cucco for a Starly, floating off each and every mountain. Screenshots of the game were panned for looking bare and unfinished before release, but I love the colourful, anime art style and graphics.

The promise of Sword and Shield’s free roaming pokemon is taken to its logical conclusion in Arceus. Gone are the ninja-like skills of Caterpies and Zubats, which in times gone by would forever catch you unawares in long grass and dark caves. Now you have much more control over how you approach and interact (or not) with the pokemon scurrying above ground. This is clearly the game’s biggest innovation, and I imagine it will split the crowd. For me, the reduction in undesirable battles is welcome. Outside a battle, a wild pokemon might do enough damage to knock you out, but generally you can scarper past them without issue. However, this change also removes the mystery of not knowing which pokemon is going to ‘appear’ at any moment. It’s a tradeoff, and I feel like there’s still more room for compromise: where there could be ‘less’ but still ‘some’ random encounters.

But what about when you’re not just running Mareepishly away from pokemon? Battles are seamlessly integrated into the open-world, but still follow the age old turn-based formula. Manually throwing the pokeball containing one of your selected team of six starts a duel. It’s straightforward enough, but just this small extra freedom feels great. How did the series go so long without the simple joy of manually directing the throw of a pokeball? It’s a much better battle introduction than being pounced upon and going straight to navigating a menu - but menu lovers rejoice! Once you get into the turn-based mode, it’s poke-battles as usual. There’s the new light-touch strategic decision of ‘strong’ and ‘agile’ versions of each move, but nothing that will bamboozle either newcomers or long time fans.

The freedom to throw an occupied pokeball naturally opens up the opportunity to chuck out an empty one. There’s no need to initiate a battle to catch a pokemon. Instead, you crouch through the long grass, sneaking and lobbing all the balls you’ve hand-crafted from conveniently shaped fruits, nuts and rocks. It feels a little like you’re engaged in a strange stakes snow ball fight with everything that moves. It’s a rudimentary stealth system, but it’s fun! Crouch, watch, catch, repeat. It’s a pleasure to explore an open world filled with all the pokemon that were previously so static. Where Pokemon GO has been so successful by bringing pokemon to life into the real world, Arceus does the same trick, but brings them back into their own universe. Like Breath of the Wild, it’s easy to look out from a mountain and think ‘I wonder what’s over there?’, before setting out to see what you can catch.

It seems too obvious to say that the core satisfaction from Arceus comes from catching pokemon - but it’s true! In every other pokemon game I’ve played the emphasis always felt like it was on powering up your core team of pokemon. Sure, you might want to fill out your pokedex along the way, but this somehow felt secondary to what the game was asking you to do. Less ‘gotta catch em all’, and more ‘gotta quickly decide which six to catch and use forever, or be sentenced to a world of grind’. Here it’s the opposite, thanks mainly to the fact that your pokedex doubles up as an intricate list of research tasks to complete. 

Now, I love a good quest log, but the professor has really outdone himself this time. Every pokedex entry includes up to ten mini-challenges to complete. There are 242 pokemon, so you do the math(s). Tasks include straightforward tallies such as ‘number of pokemon caught’ or ‘number of times you’ve given a pokemon food’, but also more flavourful errands like investigating a Combee’s honey or understanding the medicinal properties a Croagunk’s poison. You’ll usually have to wait for a befuddled villager to ask you a typically pokemon related favour before you can complete these unique challenges. Does the pokedex sound more like a list of chores than epic quests? Well it pretty much is - but that’s OK! It works as an extra little nudge to get out and investigate every pokemon to the full. You only have to tick off a few of the tasks to complete the pokedex entry, so there’s not too much added pressure for casual players. It really adds to the sense that everything you do in the world has purpose. For checklist fans such as myself, it’s a dream.

The main storyline has marginally more depth to it than usual, but nothing that is worth describing in detail. Your character arrives in the ancient Hisui region via a wormhole from the future. Rather than facing off against a series of predictable gyms, you’re asked to calm the pokemon lords that have gone berserk in each region. You do this as a member of the village survey corps, helping the inhabitants thrive alongside both pokemon and the native population. There’s no clumsy attempts at post-colonial discourse here - Greedfall I’m looking at you - it’s pokemon y'all. The only subtext I noted was a ‘mysterious’ similarity of the four village corps to the regiments in Attack On Titan, but the parallels clearly end there... Although if you really want me to try, Arceus does also feature ‘alpha’ pokemon. These ‘titanic’ pokemon are very powerful, and best avoided in the early stages. They stay big once captured too, which is fun. No grappling hook sword fighting to take them down though, just good old fashioned pokeballs and tackles.

You level up your rank in the survey corps by completing your pokedex, which bags you more pokemon related crafting options. This is another nice little carrot which structures and incentivises your time in the game. There are a cartload of different items to collect, gather and craft. Various berries, which in previous games were left to ferment in my satchel, can now be chucked around to lure pokemon, making them easier to catch. All these items, as well as organising your team of pokemon and their abilities, are managed through some exceptionally pleasing menu interfaces. Everything feels lovingly drawn, crafted and designed: from the item thumbnails to the region maps. There are countless systems I haven’t covered here, both new and old. However, without wanting this article to take me even longer than it has done, I think it’s time to wrap up.

It will be clear from this review that I love Legends: Arceus. It’s the pokemon game that we all wanted in 2022. It feels like a departure from previous titles in all the right ways, and it has been produced with care and attention: there’s no doubt it’s moving a somewhat stagnated franchise in an exciting direction. In fact, even the things it could do better have me hyped for future installments. Given Ben’s views, it’s fortunate that I’ve instead played the whole game so far sitting alongside my girlfriend (in fact she has played considerably more - staying up late chasing space time distortions). Naturally, we played it exclusively in handheld mode on the sofa. I would have loved the option to actually join her world and play together. I’m not suggesting any sort of MMORPG pokemon game here, but a two-player co-op would be welcome and feels like a natural next step. Until then, I’m more than happy scampering about solo in the wilds of the Hisui region.

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As the player, you step into the collared leather jacket of Jack Joyce (played by Shawn Ashmore, of X-Men fame, though I preferred him in 2010’s Frozen) whose estranged, and just regular strange, brother William Joyce (Dominic Monaghan, aka Merry Brandybuck from The Lord of the Rings - after Lost he clearly found a taste for time travel) is an eccentric genius and possibly the only man who can save the world from time-tastrophe. Assisted by sassy seer, Beth Wilder (Remedy favourite, Courtney Hope, who also plays Jesse in Control), they set out to reverse or prevent the Fracture.

But wait - there’s an Evil Megacorp in the mix, Monarch Solutions, spearheaded by smooth supervillain Paul Serene (Aiden Gillen of The Wire, Game of Thrones) who grows increasingly less serene with every story beat, perhaps because he has agitators in his midst, like the enigmatic and always profoundly annoying, Martin Hatch (Lance Reddick, another alumni of The Wire, but perhaps best known to gamers as Sylens in Horizon Zero Dawn / Horizon Forbidden West, not a dissimilar character.) While Paul races to stop Jack and Will Joyce, Hatch is pursuing his own agenda - namely to scupper everyone else’s. There’s more to it, subplots involving craven geeks (actor Marshall Allman) and desperate husbands (actor Patrick Heusinger), but it all becomes a bit soap opera once you get into the weeds, so for simplicity I’ll spare you the details.

If you’re thinking, “Wow, that’s an all-star cast of the sort I assumed only David O. Russell could wrangle” - forgivably, after that Amsterdam trailer - you’re not too far wrong.

Quantum Break was directed by Mikael Kasurinen, but the casting of high profile actors is due to a misguided attempt to serialise its own story and release it in tandem, built into the game. These days it’s not surprising to find yourself manipulating celebrities in your gaming universe of choice. It’s been going on at least a decade, and now the tech is improving to near photorealism, enabling the actors involved to really flex some acting chops. To name just two recent (and major) examples, Death Stranding cast you as Norman Reedus and Cyberpunk 2077 cast you as Neo from the Matrix. I mean, Keanu Reeves. Even in 2016, character modelling was sufficient that the talent on display here are all instantly recognisable.

Listeners to the pod will know that by and large I’m not a big fan of this. It breaks immersion. There’s a neutrality to unknown gaming characters that operates in a similar way to characters in a book. Their outline is there, but you can shade in the colour and detail. They allow your imagination that bit more leeway. In some ways I find it peculiar that games are trying so hard to be cinematic (see my recent piece on this very subject), and limiting themselves to the same set of rules as the silverscreen. There’s a reason teams of people from make up artists to CGI animators are involved in mutating actors’ appearances - if they could change their physical appearance from film to film they would (Christian Bale almost manages it!)

Games have the power to introduce us to entirely novel characters every single time, but rather than lean into that, they’re spending big bucks on familiar faces. The cynic in me assumes this is for the same reason Hollywood studios are afraid to cast new people: audiences love a celebrity, and more eyeballs tuning in to see an A-lister’s performance means more dough 🫰, moolah 💰, scratch 🤑. Story, art and innovation is never the priority - it’s all about those dollar bills…

As mentioned, Quantum Break is interspersed with interludes of actual live action video, featuring the digital cast enacting the outcomes of all your decisions during gameplay. While there's nothing particularly wrong with these, they play out with that sort of hammy sense of escalated action and compressed drama more akin to fan made films than multi-million pound blockbuster titles. The content itself is vaguely reminiscent of Jonathan Nolan's Person of Interest: a convoluted sci-fi story complete with flashy, low budget, fun but implausible style action thriller set pieces. They're entertaining enough to keep you switched on for their runtime and do an effective job of humanising the key players, but instinctively, I wasn't a fan. When I sit to play a game, I want to play a game. If I wanted to watch bad TV, I'd watch it.

I had anticipated these sequences would be 'fill in the gaps' type cut scenes, much like regular video game cut scenes but acted rather than animated. In fact, it starts to feel like these are where the real jumps in story take place. So many of the key story developments are left to unfold in the live action episodes that it undermines the progress you feel you make in the gameplay. Not to mention, these sequences don't replace regular cut scenes, which still pepper the game throughout. As I wrote previously when discussing video game adaptations and their inadequacies, some silliness that makes gameplay more exciting or rewarding can be forgiven in games, but TV doesn't enjoy the same privileges, even when the actors look and sound (and are) the same. Quantum Break is often more TV than game.

All that said, there are elements of Quantum Break’s approach that work really well. For a start, it’s incredibly engaging, weaving retrospective voice-overs in the same stylish way Remedy pioneered with Max Payne. The visuals, the voice acting and acting in general, the sound effects and implementation of your time manipulation abilities - everything feels smooth and well choreographed. A bit too well choreographed if anything, because much like in The Order: 1886, a 2015 third person adventure game so desperate to be cinematic it surrendered nearly all free thinking gameplay to the cause, it holds your hand too tightly, as if afraid its clever time travel plot might unravel if you stray too far from the path destiny (and the writers) have laid out for you.

Banalogy time. To enjoy Quantum Break, you first need to accept you're not really going to play it in a conventional sense. Instead, you need to think of it more like reading a particularly immersive book, never straying from the words on the page, absorbing what's right in front of your nose, then turning the page for the next few lines of story. Just as you can't (coherently) read a book in any old order, and your experience of it will not drastically differ from the next reader's (this banalogy is already starting to break down), neither can you forge your own path through Quantum Break. It is a carefully curated experience, right down to which buttons to press and when. Tao mockingly called it ‘Quicktime Break’, a jab at its use of quicktime elements. While they're not quite as egregious as that suggests, the game is certainly riddled with controller prompts. You also never really get the sense you've discovered something for yourself because every interactable is highlighted at the press of a button in 'Time Vision', and every puzzle is slapped in front of you right next to its simplistic solution.

Fortunately, if you're not wedded to autonomous gameplay and you're happy to fairly passively consume an intriguing sci-fi story, it's still a gripping yarn. And that's not to say it doesn't try to convince you your play-through does have variety: it uses a device it calls a ‘Time Junction’ to give you a sense of control. This is a two pronged fork in the narrative after each Act. Oh, yeah, I may have forgotten to mention: It’s not just the actors that emulate cinema. The story also unfolds in Acts. And Parts. And Junctions, apparently.

By way of example, the first such choice is whether Paul Serene and Monarch Solutions should eliminate all witnesses to the Fracture and the immediate events leading up to it - these witnesses are mostly students at a university protesting about the demolition of a heritage building (which alone may predispose you one way or another) - or whether they should push for a PR campaign, threatening these witnesses, coercing them into spinning Monarch’s angle and thereby advancing their agenda. I didn't see this choice, or any of the Time Junctions, as a decision between right and wrong, so much as two different approaches to the campaign, rather like in Deus Ex deciding whether to tackle a squad of heavily armed enemies head on, or to use a stealthy vent and go around them. These options ask not which is the correct answer, but which answer speaks to the kind of gamer you are. Of course, you know you can always play again to choose the other fork, so in either case the outcome doesn't feel too weighty. While I’m not inclined to replay right away, knowing that there are alternative versions of all the episodes I watched (and potentially played), does make me at least open to the idea.

The story itself is quite clever, though not without problems, and its characters are satisfying shades of grey. Morally, I mean. There’s nothing erotic going on. For example, arch villain Serene is made sympathetic, suffering as he does with an incurable illness, and with an ultimately benevolent ambition of prolonging humanity's survival. His methods might be ruthless, but maybe the ends justify the means. (No-one told Aidan Gillen though, who delivers every line with the unctuous drawl of an unrepentant, self-satisfied megalomaniac. A strong performance, if not particularly fair to the written character.) Even your character, Jack Joyce, dedicates himself to saving the world right up until he’s confronted with ulterior motives - saving a love interest, revenge for the loss of a loved one - and then he’s not quite so clearsighted. Meanwhile Monarch’s top security operative and executioner, Liam Neeson Burke, turns out to be a doting husband and father-to-be with a very particular set of skills.

Not all characters are given the luxury of nuance. There’s a security guy who enthuses, 'I'm really gonna enjoy killing your wife' and a scientist who quietly abandons his whole family in the night to save his own skin. These people don't feel plausible. That's not to say I don't believe malicious, sociopathic individuals exist. I'm just not convinced they all end up working for one organisation (although the UK government and Tory party is doing its best to dissuade me of that notion). 

Due to its innate complexity though, there's more exposition in Quantum Break than a Christopher Nolan movie, delivered not just by the cast, whose ignorance on all things is an opportunity for other characters to fill them (and you) in on backstory, but in verbose emails at logged in computers (their op-sec sucks), waffling presenters on live TV feeds, inarticulate goons over radio chatter, and all that in addition to more conventional collectibles like schematics, posters, graffiti... the list goes on. In fact, there's so much exposition, most of the time it audibly and visually overlaps in a really distracting way. For instance, two characters are talking, but you want to open a door which interrupts them with a mini cut scene, then one of the NPCs wanders off demanding that you follow them, but you're still reading page one of an emailed novel from Carol in IT...

The only way to take it all in without endless interruption is to leave your character milling about waiting for each audio sequence to end, and ignoring the pleas of nearby NPCs exhorting you to get on with story progress while you click on every interactable in the environment. Some areas have more than others. In one scene, during a protracted Stutter - when time stops, freezing everything and everyone except you - there are two floors of office rooms to explore and it seems every single cubicle has at least one item that triggers a wall of text and lore to catch up on. Jack kept insisting the Stutter was going to collapse soon and I didn't have all day, but the devs didn't get the memo and had left so many memos for me to read I took me chances. Spoiler: I was fine.

Like with Control and the Uncharted games - even The Last of Us to some extent - the problem with focusing on narrative to the exclusion of real gameplay is that the player spends the game levelling up special abilities and unlocking new and improved skills, but there are precious few opportunities to actually use them. Once, after about 20 minutes of uneventful, room to room, story based interactions, finally a horde of enemies descended on me simultaneously in a garage, and I thought gleefully, ‘now we're talking’. I could slow time, pause it in localised zones, stacking bullets to riddle the enemy as soon as it resumed, sprint across huge distances in bullet-time, blink in and out of enemy vision while relocating with ‘Time Dodge’, and I was armed to the teeth. It felt like a recipe for fun. But three minutes later, after using maybe half of my talents and exerting very little effort, they were all dead and I was back on rails for another dry section. Where a hack and slash like Diablo or Darksiders (or Wolcen!) throws endless waves of enemies at you, giving you ample time to flex, Quantum Break rations encounters out as though giving blue M&Ms to children. Only the M&Ms at least give you a sugar rush.

Those who listen to the pod will know I'm not exactly a glutton for punishment, but that doesn't mean I don't relish a stimulating challenge. This game's 'normal' difficulty feels like 'God mode' or at least, 'very easy'. The various environmental hazards littered around for you to exploit to take down ‘Monarch Flunkies’ - as the game calls them - are entirely superfluous, because a few well placed shots down even elite opponents. My only deaths resulted from lack of clarity during the glitchy splintering visuals. There were a couple of moments this proved tiresome: when time freezes during Stutters it is usually in the middle of some dynamic explosion, and you navigate the objects being decimated as a visual distortion ripples through the surroundings. These objects are sometimes unstable, and flit between different positions. They can catch you unaware, particularly as the edge of their danger zone isn’t very well demarcated. Also, in the inevitable boss battle with Paul Serene, his attack isn’t so much an attack as a ballooning orb of death that corrupts your visuals. It’s a one hit kill. Once you’ve figured out the boundary, it’s trivially easy to avoid, but that boundary is obscure by design. More infuriating in this section is actually that the save point ahead of this boss fight is before a cut scene, so every retry, you’re forced to skip it and endure a loading screen. This shit has got to be trolling by the devs at this point…

All this leaves Quantum Break with a major flaw: it mostly asks the player to grind for all the wrong things, the unfun things. When the combat is limited, brief and unchallenging, the puzzles are basically non-existent, and the bulk of the work is running from Intel point to Narrative Object reading endless texts, what you end up with is pseudo-gameplay. The exciting story, vividly realised world and rich characters make it worth a run through, but it sadly feels so much less than the sum of its parts.

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Further listening:

Pixel Vision

E8 Control

Listen now (68 min) | Fresh off the Hotline, directors Ben and Tao uncover the mysteries of the Oldest House and resist the Hiss, all while clearing out a serious Mold infection in Remedy’s third person shooter, Control. (Yes, Ben does take Issue with the Lazy Naming Convention of all those Proper Nouns.) Subjects include why gaming tropes are so persistent, the power of act…

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6 years ago · Pixel Vision

Pixel Vision

E4 Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem

Listen now (48 min) | Ben and Tao arrive in character (and with a new microphone!) to confront their demons and run through the cheerfully derivative action RPG/ Diablo-rip-off-hack-and-slash, Wolcen Lords of Mayhem. The duo chat about inexperienced devs, lag spikes and game breaking bugs, gender stereotyping, coop multiplayer, why feeling like a bad ass has limited appeal, …

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6 years ago · Pixel Vision

Content Warning: PEGI 13.

Clarifications:

• The original music for Manifold Garden is composed by Laryssa Okada

• Here’s the explainer Ben watched on Non-Euclidean Geometry by YouTuber, CodeParade:

• Christopher Nolan’s short early film was called ‘Doodlebug’ not just ‘Bug’. You can watch it here:

• Incidentally, if you’re an affectionate critic of Nolan (which is to say, you like his films but think they all suffer from expositional incontinence), you might enjoy comedian Michael Spicer’s take:

• Here’s the Reddit thread where they confirm the yellow tree cube bug Ben laments: https://www.reddit.com/r/ManifoldGarden/comments/ifydmf/missing_cube_on_a_yellow_tree_bug/ (note the thread is 2 years old!!)

• Here’s the developer explaining how to load older save versions of the same save file:

• Game Maker’s Toolkit is presented by Mark Brown on YouTube. Coincidentally, the magnet concept Tao mentions is actually implemented in Qube, the 2011 puzzler from Toxic Games.

• Antichamber - a hugely similar game to this one - is a first-person puzzle-platform game created by Australian developer Alexander "Demruth" Bruce and released in 2013.

Audio extracts:

• The Shining (1980)

• The Mighty Boosh

• Jesus Walks by Kanye West

• The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers (2002)

• The Other Guys (2010)

• The Witness challenge music

• Return of the Obra Dinn OST by Lukas Pope

• Urban Species - I Wonder

• Coherence (2013)

• Qube

• Antichamber

• Doodlebug by Christopher Nolan (1997)

• BBC Sherlock feat. Benedict Cumberbatch (2010)

• Austin Powers (1997) feat. Mike Myers

• Portal 2 feat. Stephen Merchant as Wheatley

• Blade Runner (1982) - Vangelis - Tears in Rain

• Halt and Catch Fire theme by Trentemøller

• The Rite of Spring - Ballet by Igor Stravinsky

Substack: Sign up free to read our reviews and commentary at www.pixelvision.net
Twitter: @pixelviz
Email: pixelvisionpodcast@gmail.com

Content Warning: PEGI 15. Swearing and stuff. Ben tempts you to the dark side. Oh, and autosave is enabled on this podcast - don’t turn off while it’s saving.

Clarifications:

• The music for Fallen Order is by Stephen Barton and Gordy Haab

• BD-1, Chewbacca and Wall-E are all voiced by Ben Burtt (not Brad or Bret, Tao! He only shares a name with your co-host…)

• Andy Serkis did not win an Oscar / Academy Award for his performance as Gollum. Indeed, he has never won an Oscar. However, according to Wikipedia, for his role in The Lord of the Rings film series, he won the Empire Award for Best British Actor, Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor, and Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture, which he obviously shared with the rest of the cast.

• The difficulty levels are: Story, Jedi Knight, Jedi Master, and Jedi Grandmaster (which means if Tao did play it on Jedi Knight, Ben completed it a superior level. In your face, Tao!)

• Our episode on Subnautica is here:

Pixel Vision

E24 Subnautica: Below Zero

Listen now (77 min) | Ben and Tao take a deep dive into the awe-inspiring underworld of Subnautica: Below Zero. Is everything as it seems or is something fishy going on? Nah, it's as it seems, I just really wanted to use that pun. They talk breathtaking moments, the exciting and troubling possibilities of VR, the magic of sound design, vocal protagonists, photorealism, and w…

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5 years ago · Pixel Vision

• Our episode on Sekiro is here:

Pixel Vision

E3 Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Listen now (50 min) | Shinobis Ben and Tao give Japanese a whirl, lament the naming conventions of video game franchising, and discuss the virtues or not of Souls-like-samurai-boss-brawler Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. The conversation swings from Dark Souls and the genre it spawned, to controller defaults and remapping, skill versus luck, gaming versus musicianship, godliness …

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6 years ago · Pixel Vision

• Our episode on Immortals Fenyx Rising is here:

Pixel Vision

E28 Immortals Fenyx Rising

Listen now (59 min) | Ben and Tao rock out with their Gods out adventuring through the beautiful, peacefully fraught open world of Breath of the Wild wannabe, Immortals Fenyx Rising (no colon). After introducing the pre-jingle jingle - a novel feature nobody asked for - they discuss what makes great comedy writing in games, the power of narration (reliable or otherwise), how…

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5 years ago · Pixel Vision

• Oh, and Lara Croft doesn’t really ‘wall run’ in Tomb Raider, she kinda wall scrambles.

Audio extracts:

• Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), theme and audio clips

• Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope - Cantina (1977)

• 5 live bulletins remix from 10 Jun 2022 - apologies to my former colleagues, it’s just a bit of fun!

• Only Fools and Horses theme

• Star Wars Pod Racer N64

• The Mandalorian

• The Book of Boba Fett

• Obi Wan Kenobi

• 24 - Season 2 - actor Carlos Bernard as Tony Almeida

• Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) - Luke Lands On Dagobah

• WALL-E (2008)

• Beverly Hill Cop 3 (1994)

• The Taming of Smeagol from The Two Towers OST by Howard Shore

• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) feat. Andy Serkis as Gollum

• Dark Souls OST by Motoi Sakuraba

• Immortals Fenyx Rising OST by Gareth Coker

• Spaced, Season 1: Chaos feat. Simon Pegg

• Imperial March (From "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back")

• The Prince of Egypt (1998) - Parting the Red Sea Scene

• Subnautica OST by Simon Chylinski

• The Mighty Boosh - Howard Moon (Julian Barratt)

• The Martian - feat. Matt Damon

• Game of Thrones Season 7 - Ed Sheeran

• Austin Powers

• Sekiro OST by Yuka Kitamura

• Family Guy - ‘Join The Empire!’ spoof

• Samuel Jackson asks George Lucas for a purple lightsaber

Substack: Sign up free to read our reviews and commentary at www.pixelvision.net
Twitter: @pixelviz
Email: pixelvisionpodcast@gmail.com

With HBOs The Last of Us adaptation just around the proverbial corner (2023), and leaked videos from on set absolutely ramping up the hype train, it seems a timely moment to do a bit of expectation management and consider the successes, or more bluntly, the failures of previous video game adaptations. Why is it so rare for a game adaptation to hit the sweet spot of commercial and critical acclaim? In short, why are game adaptations usually balls?

It's worth acknowledging that book adaptations are often ribbed for the same reason: an apparent failure to live up to the imaginations of their diverse fanbase. Of course, with a book (excepting occasional illustrations, as well as comics and visual novels), films would seem primed to fail, since they're standing in direct opposition to the capacity of the imagination and every reader's preconceived ideas about what characters look and sound like, the aesthetic of each location featured, even the overall ambient tone and visual style.

And yet there are countless success stories of book adaptations, like The Lord of the Rings trilogy which many, myself included, would argue presents Tolkien's vision more effectively than his own writing does; or more recently, Dune, which despite claims to be 'unfilmable' proved a critical and commercial success when it was released earlier this year; even the Harry Potter series, albeit clearly inferior to JK Rowling's books, still made for a thoroughly enjoyable film franchise. With books though, arguably part of the thrill is in the realisation of something that hitherto existed only in the reader's mind. Interpreted effectively, this alone, even if it deviates from the envisioned world, is enough to provide a thrill of excitement. For example, both parts of The Hobbit were lacklustre, but I was overjoyed simply returning to Jackson's immersive and beautifully detailed Middle Earth.

Contrast this with game adaptations and the same opportunities don't arise. A game, in many ways, is already a superior product, visually, to a film. I don't mean that in terms of photorealism (although graphics are heading that way, see Unreal Engine 5, below), I mean that a game can create a depth to its world for the gamer that a film cannot for its viewer.

A film is limited in its scope. It can present you one vision: the director's. It unfolds, in gaming terms, "on rails". In a game though, more often than not, the gamer doubles up as the director, choosing where to go and when, which vistas to soak up and for how long, which enemies live and die, whether a scene is characterised by silent stealth or by furious gunfire and physical combat. Further, through embodying a character (either in first or third person, Gordon Freeman or Joel Miller), the gamer is afforded the opportunity to discover that world from a uniquely personal perspective and experience enhanced emotion as a result. Autonomous decision making in games, whether real or illusory, is clearly more impactful and engaging than passively observing a choreographed sequence, which is what films offer instead. This is a gaming phenomenon being studied by scientists the world over, like Katherine Isbister, author of 'How Games Move Us' who specialises in human-computer interaction:

That said, it seems a reasonable supposition that some games would lend themselves to the silverscreen more naturally than others. You'd expect a strong story-based game like Uncharted or Tomb Raider to play out much along the lines of any traditional adventure film, Indiana Jones being the obvious example. Similarly, a 'real world' based adaptation of Hitman (which has been attempted twice, with Timothy Olyphant and Rupert Friend in 2007 and 2015 respectively, and met with a poor reception both times) or Splinter Cell (announced in 2012 with Tom Hardy as Sam Fisher, but yet to see the light of day), or even Max Payne (whose 2008 effort with Mark Wahlberg flopped hard), should be fairly straightforward, whether it's along the lines of James Bond, or Jason Bourne, or John Wick. Their poor cinematic depictions seem more an indictment of weak scripting and unimaginative direction than because the content doesn't translate well to screen. Assassin's Creed, with its cast of thousands and rich lore is another example - it's hard to offer a strong defence for just how bad it is. Another case in point is that the Uncharted fan film starring Nathan Fillion actually looks much better than its more recent, feature length, big budget, big brother.

In fairness though, maybe the same can't be said for sci-fi or fantasy adaptations, or game formats whose narrative generally takes a back seat. For example, it's unsurprising that Mortal Kombat struggles to seamlessly integrate a line like, "Kano Wins" or weave a convincing plot justification for its bizarre, supernatural one-on-one battles, or that Duncan Jones' Warcraft, with its toothy Orc protagonists and sparkly spells - imagery that's forgivably hammy in a game but is swiftly condemned as bad CGI on film - faced a battle to be taken seriously even before the battle for Azeroth was unleashed, or that explaining a mechanic like the Dagger of Time in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time without introducing plot-holes is nigh on impossible, never mind asking audiences to accept Jake Gyllenhaal dressed like this:

These are issues that gamers don't care about to the same extent. They can focus on how it feels to be these characters, to wield their abilities. They can solve the puzzles laid out for them, and figure out how to navigate and discover the wondrous, fantastical environments. Film audiences don't have these perks to fall back on. If the core story is lacking, implausible, or just plain silly; if the script has to cram exposition into every line in order that the plot makes any sense at all; if, after all this, the acting rings false as a result, there is no secondary merit to laud. Instead, it is a disappointment on every front.

None of this bodes well for HBO's forthcoming series, The Last of Us. But there's another factor to consider here, and that's length. A typical gaming experience is upwards of 10 hours. In contrast, a typical film is 90-120 minutes. Unsurprisingly, story, backstory and character development that can unfold organically over the course of tens of hours in a game, will likely feel contrived and unnaturally contorted if squeezed into an incompatibly short runtime. Released episodically, The Last of Us has an advantage here. As its writer, Craig Mazin (of HBO's Chernobyl acclaim), noted:

"Just by dint of the fact that they [HBO executives] said ‘yes’ [to a 10-episode first season], you get a feeling that this is going to be different."

I really hope so. Aside from anything else, if game adaptations continue to disappoint, it's going to be depressing as shit when Amazon's Disco Elysium and Fallout series hit screens. Unfortunately, if Paramount+'s Halo is anything to go by, it might be worth tempering my excitement...

Bah, who am I kidding? That's never gonna happen. All aboard the hype train! Choo choo!

Further listening:

Pixel Vision

E34 Halo Infinite: Multiplayer

Listen now (80 min) | The boys are back for their first episode of 2022, armour donned and dropping feet first into a guns blazing, heady and impassioned round of Team Doubles in Halo Infinite: Multiplayer. Except there are no Team Doubles in Halo Infinite’s multiplayer - but don’t worry, they cover that; that and everything from TTK to the Freemium Model, to the Mangler, St…

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4 years ago · Pixel Vision

Pixel Vision podcast listeners will recall I mentioned at the conclusion of our Resident Evil 3 (2020) episode that my interest in the franchise had been well and truly reinvigorated. Following that game, I immediately sought out RE7: Biohazard and RE8: Village - the most recent of the games I'd yet to play. I'll get to Resident Evil Village in time, but first up: Biohazard.

Biohazard marks several departures from the series to date. For one thing, it's a first person perspective rather than the traditional third person over the shoulder view. For another, the protagonist is not an established character or even an unknown from an established organisation. He's not a cop or a member of a paramilitary group, but a regular guy (a systems engineer), trying to survive against the odds. It's also in a new location (unsurprisingly given ‘the history’ of Racoon City… I’m trying to keep this spoiler free 😉). According to a magazine found in game, Biohazard is set at least 16 years after the events of RE2/3. If you didn’t yet listen to our coverage of those games, check it out here:

Pixel Vision

E38 Resident Evil 3

Listen now (66 min) | Among the streets and sewers of Racoon City, Ben and Tao flee the relentless Nemesis, hunt an elusive vaccine, stop an unstoppable sociopath, and split up to look for survivors in Capcom’s riveting zombie horror remake, Resident Evil 3. They discuss the gimmick of the invulnerable enemy, the controversial redesign of classic characters for new generatio…

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4 years ago · Pixel Vision

The first person perspective did throw me a bit. I was apprehensive, worried it'd be more along the lines of Outlast or Amnesia, those games that are such terrifyingly immersive horror experiences they're borderline unplayable for anyone but a sociopath or total masochist. But having played both RE2 and RE3 fairly recently, and The Forest not too long ago either, I hoped I'd be somewhat desensitised and was confident I could hack whatever scares it had in store.

Scant moments into the game, in the all encompassing darkness of a creepy mansion in the middle of nowhere with just torchlight illuminating a circle in front of me, the beam sluggishly roaming the cracked and peeling walls and cockroach laden, putrid remnants of abandoned cooking, the wind thrumming in my ears as it chased through the draughty rooms, I began to doubt that confidence. I felt like one of the moths on the farm porch at night, bouncing back and forth in the thin orange glow of the tungsten, helplessly flapping against the glass bulb, burned over and over, but endlessly allured by the light.

Your character is Ethan. You're looking for your wife, Mia, who has been missing for three years. After receiving a cryptic video file, you're led to believe she's here, somewhere in this creepy backwater farmhouse, barely standing amid an encroaching swamp. Unfortunately, within minutes of arriving, you find she isn't quite the life partner you exchanged your vows with, and she furiously attacks you with a knife and chainsaw (thankfully, nothing a healing med won't salve!). You survive, perhaps killing her in the process, and a mysterious girl, Zoe, gets in touch with you to advise you of an escape route from the house. Would that it were so simple.

There's a simplicity to the Resident Evil series that I really appreciate. It doesn't throw intricate game mechanics and awkward leveling systems at you, it doesn't overwhelm you with a dizzying array of weaponry and upgrades, it just drenches you in atmosphere, goads you with a few mysteries, locked areas and unanswered questions, and drops some key items in the environment to help prod you on your way. The rest, a fraught but not unenjoyable journey of discovery, is up to you.

There's also a comedy to it. On arrival at this derelict house, you watch a video revealing three guys arriving here before you. One goes missing, the remaining two discover a sinister secret passage, find their friend gruesomely murdered and bleeding from his eyes, and then get attacked. Your instinct at this point is not to get the fuck out of dodge, but instead to think, 'Huh, now I know how to access that hidden hallway where those guys got massacred. Let's go there.' It's entertainingly preposterous, and somehow feels like a hat tip to you, the player, who, after all, is doing the exact same thing!

There's no doubt that playing a first person perspective results in a more intense horror experience. There are jump scares galore, but if you play anything like me, you anticipate every freshly explored area to involve a sudden new threat, and maybe some of the previously explored areas, too. You've learned the hard way that Resident Evil is a series where the enemy is not contained by brick, or fire, or locked doors for long. Sure enough, this game is no different. Enemies burst through concrete walls, drop like stalagmites (or Dropbears) from the ceiling and erupt through flimsy, rotten floorboards to accost you. Despite the novel perspective though, the focus on exploration, constrained view and claustrophobic, labyrinthine map, felt stylistically similar to the RE games I'd already played. The moment I picked up bolt cutters and saw their clunky little choreographed animation, I got such a sense of satisfaction. Yes! Never mind the changes, this is what Resident Evil feels like.

But then the craziness went a little too far. The RE franchise has always required suspension of disbelief. I mean, it's about a Zombie outbreak, it includes invulnerable monsters, two dimensionally villainous villains, and doors and secret passages locked with bizarre symbols. In this game, some doors require animal based keys - crow, snake or scorpion - and others only open when you successfully line up the shadows of wooden statuettes to overlay on paintings. Who makes this shit?! (The game offers an answer in the form of a contract from Trevor and Chamberlain Construction.) By and large, these quirks are the recipe for a good time, and a hefty pinch of salt more than helps make the extraordinary events and characters palatable. In Biohazard, that disbelief gets pushed beyond its limits. Within the first hour or so of playing, your character, Ethan, has his hand pinned to a wall with a screwdriver before being sawn off entirely, a knife thrust into his eye, his arms struck repeatedly with a hatchet, his leg is detached from his body then somehow reattached without impairment. Even within the confines of RE's bizarre ruleset (and its subsequent relevant plot developments), this is a crazy stretch.

As well as the usual bag of tricks, Biohazard has a few novelties tucked up its sleeve. For example, when you watch a VHS tape (like the one described above), you embody one of the characters in it, giving you free rein to explore and look around. It's a really inventive idea and proves itself more than a gimmick by contributing to the playthrough: the video sequences clue you into areas you've not yet visited, as well as preventing the exposition from feeling as passive as it can do with simple cut scenes (which, mercifully, are few and far between).

Fortunately, Biohazard, like other RE games, capitalises on the thrill of cautious progression and the reliable sense of achievement won with new unlocks and revelations - whether story based or literal. That means despite its flaws - and they are numerous - it still comes out on top. But contrary to the tone of this review so far, it's not all fun and games... (I know technically it is, but...)

Regular Pixel Vision listeners and readers will know I'm often skeptical of a boss fight, particularly when the fight doesn't offer much by way of variety, involves an abrupt difficulty leap, and feels more like an obstacle arbitrarily laid in your path to slow your playthrough and create a narrative peak rather than because the devs thought you'd have a lot of fun dying over and over trying to beat it. The chainsaw fight with Jack, the father of the family who live in the farmhouse, falls precisely into the latter category. It's a tedious, overly long battle in which two clumsy and inhuman psychos with cumbersome chainsaws (and low fuel) swing them at one another, with neither party unduly affected when they hit home. It's a slog, and its weird pacing, and lack of any discernable rhythm makes it feel a chore to complete. The first major black mark against the game. I'd like to say the subsequent boss fights proved more entertaining, but they followed a similar style: chaotic, unstructured, unrewarding.

The RE series has always involved back tracking, and where most of the time this works well (as Tao and I acknowledged and praised in our episode covering RE3 remake), in Biohazard there's not quite enough variety in this single location - one lonely bleak house - to keep the exploration feeling fresh, and the map doesn't do you the favour (unlike in the remakes) of colour coding zones to let you know when they're fully explored. As a result, you find yourself retreading old ground unnecessarily each time you become disoriented or confounded by a locked door. One particular section saw me cover the entire house, room by room, because I couldn't find the next passable entrance. I was working methodically, top down, and it was in the damn basement. The red zone - blue zone combo of the recent remakes would have obviated this frustration. Hopefully this is corrected in Village. Similarly, the remakes let you know when an object had outlived its value, overlaying a little trash can onto its icon so you knew it was safe to dispose of or remove from your inventory. In Biohazard, my inventory was constantly too full, and I was yoyoing to and from the save rooms simply to stash more and more stuff (an issue that compounded the backtracking exhaustion mentioned above).

Sometimes, the game's desire to have you follow a set path at its own steady pace causes confusion or, at the very least, a break of immersion. One sequence sees you enter a room, pursued (as usual) by Marguerite, an old woman with a lantern. There's an interactable locked door puzzle in the centre of the room, but approaching it prompts a message saying, 'not available right now'. So you hide. Then you run back through the room as she follows you again (it's still not interactable). You hide again the other side as she returns. Finally, after repeating the same steps three times, you can now interact with the puzzle. Why?! It was there the whole time. The game simply declines to let you use it. Another example, in a different area, was when I left the main house, immediately explored the frontiers of the new zone I was in and encountered a locked gate. I went to the save room (a little caravan on this occasion), and when I reemerged, was unclear how to proceed since the only exit was the very same locked gate I just discovered. Turns out, with no explanation or prompting, the game unlocks it behind the scenes, another invisible wall lowered for you to progress through the story. It's an oversight when the unlocking could easily have been justified narratively, or a key could simply have been left in the caravan.

Ironically enough, this is actually the exact opposite of another issue I encountered with the game (a bone I have to pick, if you will). It lets you, even encourages you to interact with tonnes of irrelevant things! You can open some empty cupboards and drawers, pick up scraps of paper or dog-eared indecipherable photos. It's a weird decision. Most of the time in the game, something is only interactable if it's going to prove relevant to the gameplay (which makes sense, because otherwise the whole house would be full of pointless interactables). But perhaps for a bit of variety, or for some false hope, or I don't know why, the devs have included loads of items and objects that are devoid of purpose. It's just annoying. It doesn't add threat or atmosphere, it just wastes time. In 2022, gamers simply don't have time to waste, if they ever did, and games that don't respect that will fast lose favour.

This introduces a concept that's worth exploring further: player agency, or lack thereof. In Biohazard, you don't get much of it. Linear feels too generous a term, you're near enough on rails. In addition to the previous examples, when you enter a particularly dark area, Ethan unilaterally activates what appears to be a head torch (which is to say, a light clicks on and illuminates the area directly in front of you. But you're not holding a flashlight and you have no power to control it). This would be fine, except there are loads of areas in the game that as a player, I'd prefer to be a bit brighter, whether to diminish some of the fear of the unknown, or to make collectibles easier to spot. Given that Ethan clearly has some form of torch available to him, it's vexing that I can't use it, except when the game arbitrarily decides I can. It's another one of those decisions which takes autonomy away from the player unnecessarily.

This sense that I'm a disconnected observer, rather than someone embodying Ethan, is compounded in the game's occasional movie scenes. At one point a character goads you as he abducts Mia (again): "Well don't just stand there, do something!" I couldn't have said it better myself. Why do game designers script cut scenes that would never plausibly happen? Why am I forced to just stand gawping as crazy shit goes down? This is particularly annoying when the cut scene surrenders any advantage my character might have had (for instance, having the jump on a villain and plenty of opportunity to fill them with lead, but instead I'm forced to just observe them passively). It's hardly unique to Biohazard (I also complained of it in my review of Horizon Forbidden West), but it feels like an own goal that could easily be avoided.

The game's enemies are mostly aptly ghoulish. The predominant threat comes from the family of cannibalistic lunatics who each prowl a different area of the house, pursuing you in that omnipresent, indefatigable way Mr X and Nemesis did. Often running, hiding and hoping is your best option. The other enemies are the molded, a kind of undead mutant fungus (or 'mold') thing, vaguely reminiscent of the Leech Man zombies of Resident Evil 0, or Clickers from The Last of Us. So far so good. Oh, you also have flies. Yeah, you heard me: Flies. At various points you're literally swiping at giant mosquitoes with a knife. Did not like that. Sure, you can eventually spray them with a flamethrower or detonate the whole room with a grenade launcher, but anything more than a knife feels like overkill. This is the kind of enemy that's a nuisance rather than a threat, but still depletes your health and harasses your playthrough, raising your blood pressure for all the wrong reasons.

This is where I found myself pining after the more conventional zombie outbreak stories and settings of earlier Resident Evil games. The weighty analogue feel of the telephoned story updates, its tape player save points, magic storage containers and save room safe havens (with accompanying reassuring music) were pleasingly nostalgic, but pleasantly uncomfortable as this house of depraved and cartoonishly manic psychopaths is, it just doesn't feel as grounded, or as realistically unrealistic as being a cop fighting visibly humanoid zombies in lifelike environments that resemble places I've seen or even been.

At one moment in Biohazard, as you watch a video entitled 'Happy Birthday', your character (one of the family's previous victims), curses, 'This is fucking disgusting,' as he reaches into a toilet overflowing with shit. It's a sentiment I shared multiple times throughout my game, whether shoving my hand into the mangled, fleshy neck of a beheaded police deputy, having my arm carved into with a quill pen, being force fed maggots, or watching as a mutated and mutilated old woman crawls around on all fours giving birth to swarms of bees. This is a game that ramps up the gross outs without making much (if any) effort to contort them to fit narratively.

In fact, what's significantly lacking is any motive for the craziness that surrounds you. I know method's not always got a role in madness, but it's hard not to wonder why Lucas, while plucking his own fingernails out, is plotting a birthday game involving automatons, bombs, showers, passwords and UV lights. Or why he has rigged an entire floor with booby traps, disco lights and speakers and feels the need to commentate as you battle some raging mutant. I was reminded of a scene near the end of Spectre, when James Bond is lured to a building by Blofeld, and there are posters pinned up everywhere, like, literally everywhere, and I was so distracted by the set design, how much work must have gone into orchestrating this and how easily it could have been ruined (what if the blu-tac had failed?) that it broke the whole story.

Nobody would do this, not even if they're really loony tunes. Not even if they had a point to make (which they don't). It's insanity as imagined by game designers, without any relationship to real life mania. In short, it's nonsensical. Even Far Cry feels more plausible than this. Well, maybe.

The final section of the game is unexpected, and unexpectedly detached from the house. Your escape is cut short and you find yourself first aboard a ship, then within a mine. This is such a geographical disconnect from what's happened so far, it almost feels like a separate game. It's the same formula, just at different locations, but feels tacked on in a slightly annoying way, like I was ready for the game to end, then they moved the goal posts. As a result, the concluding chapter is lacklustre, fizzling out in correlation with my interest in the game, and the final boss battle less of a battle than an inexplicable explosion of black goo.

A shame that it overstayed its welcome, but overall, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is fun and immersive, and it happily distracted me with its own sickness as I suffered a few IRL sick days. (Aside: common colds these days are savage, right?!) Comparing it to the recent incarnations of RE2 or even RE3 is night and day, though. The more recent games are more polished and more interesting in just about every regard. Having heard Village is a sequel to this game specifically, I confess I'm now much less enthused at the prospect of playing it. But don't worry, I will.

Further survival horror listening:

Pixel Vision

E22 The Forest

Listen now (74 min) | Ben and Tao take a walk on the wild side in Lost meets The Descent survival game mash-up, The Forest. The duo share their adventures in the deep and discuss inventory management, save mechanisms, enemy AI, slaughtering animals, big breasted naked mutants and getting wood. The latter is not connected to any of the former. Promise…

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5 years ago · Pixel Vision

Pixel Vision

E12 Observation

Listen now (56 min) | Like ghosts in flying space balls, floating laptops and archaic CCTV, Ben and Tao go full Wheatley, buddying up with Dr Emma Fisher to solve the mysteries of low orbital space station, Observation, and its wonky AI, SAM. The pair ask where all the decent AI games are and tease apart scifi’s genre trope of ‘space gloop’, before Tao goes full Sigmund Freu…

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6 years ago · Pixel Vision

Danger lurks as Ben and Tao figure out not just how to get away with murder, but how to do it with aplomb, in Inkle’s inverted murder mystery whodunit - (we did!) - Overboard! As well as discussing the various solutions and outcomes of the tricksy puzzler, the pair discuss the innovative use of time, repetition as both an obstacle and invitation to discovery, player knowledge to supplement character knowledge and whether there’s method to Inkle’s madness. Plus, Pixel Vision make a special announcement…  Spoilers upon spoilers. This game would be nearly impossible to discuss without game critical reveals. If you like the sound of it from the intro, it’s recommended you play before listening.

Content Warning: PEGI 12. Seduction and saucy behaviour, but nothing graphic (in the game, Tao and Ben are platonic as ever). Delightfully sociopathic murders depicted through comedic text snippets (also in the game. Ben and Tao are alive and well. At the time of writing).

Clarifications:

• You may hear us refer to the main character, Veronica Villensey, as Villensley, with an L. This is an error. Ben regrets this error. Tao says “it might as well be the same name”.

• Much of the music is performed by the US Army Band, US Army Blues, US Army Strings and The Dixieland Band of the US Army Band's Jazz Ambassador and includes:

  • Flight of the Bumblebee

  • Coventry Carol

  • Souvenir De Florence Mvt 1

  • Main Stem

  • Kelli's Number

  • Stardust

  • Bugablue

  • Bayou Farewell

• The a cappella group Ben references is not The Inkspots, it’s ​Birmingham Jubilee Singers, singing Pharaoh's Army Got Drowned

• Ben mentions the love poems and at the time of recording hadn’t figured out their usage. They are relevant to a playthrough achievement dubbed ‘The Leap of Faith’.

• Despite many endings and achievements discussed here, there are many more!

• The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold is a novel by Evelyn Waugh (1957)

• Here’s evidence of Ben’s fastidious note-taking:

Audio extracts:

• Knives Out! (String Quartet in G Minor) by Nathan Johnson

• Death on the Nile (ITV’s Poirot)

• Deathloop Theme by Tom Salta

• Palm Springs (2020)

• The Simpsons - Marge joins the Springfield Police

• Bright Young Things (2003)

• Heaven’s Vault OST - Before the Fall by Laurence Chapman

• 80 Days OST by Laurence Chapman

• Former British PM, Gordon Brown, calling a lady a ‘bigoted woman’ in 2010

• Leon Bridges - If It Feels Good (Then It Must Be)

• Gomez - Meet Me In The City

• Rounders (1998) feat. John Malkovich

• The Godfather (1972)

• Louis Prima - Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing)

• Dixieland One-Step by Sidney Bechet

• Django Reinhardt - Sweet Georgia Brown

• Open a Breach from the Into The Breach OST by Ben Prunty

• Dexter - Blood Theme by Daniel Licht

• Main Stem by Duke Ellington & His Famous Orchestra

• Psycho (1960)

• Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata 

• Handbags and Gladrags arr. by Big George from The Office (UK) (2000)

• Star Wars - Imperial March (Apashe Remix)

• I Love You, Man (2009) - ‘Ridonculous’

• Rachmaninoff plays Prelude in C Sharp Minor

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Twitter: @pixelviz
Email: pixelvisionpodcast@gmail.com

The book is a polemic, but the ideas therein are perhaps less divisive than the author himself. For those unfamiliar with him, the TL;DR is that Hari was a hugely successful, award winning and well respected young journalist, before it was found he had plagiarised other people's work as well as aggressively smearing his detractors on Wikipedia. Thereafter, he had a spectacular, resounding fall from grace, was effectively exiled to the USA, and started to rebuild his career. Rebuild it he has, albeit first with [1] several [2] apologies [3]. His three most recent books have each been best sellers, enthusiastically received by readers, if not so wildly by his critics. The first was Chasing the Scream, about the war on drugs; the second (and by far the best in my view) was Lost Connections, about depression; and this one, Stolen Focus, is about distraction and its multitude of contributing factors, namely: big tech and modern society.

Stolen Focus is by no means a great book. It's actually very irritating at times, but equally irritating, is that the points Hari makes in it, however condescendingly framed, seem perfectly valid. In fact, while social media is awash with naysayers disparaging him, in particular former Guardian writer, Dean Burnett, and psychologist, Stuart Richie, of Unherd - incidentally, these two have been critical of Johann for years and he specifically addressed them both on the corrections page of his website for Lost Connections - I am struck that very few of his critics challenge the actual claims and ideas he presents. For the curious, this is a tactic discussed by Conor Friedersdorf in his The Atlantic piece, The Idioms of Non-Argument. Case in point:

To be clear, Hari is not also without powerful and influential support. He counts the likes of Oprah and Elton John as friends, even Hillary Clinton has praised his work.

Alastair Campbell described Lost Connections as Hari's "latest excellent contribution to public debate", and indeed, in the US, Hari's Ted talks (which have racked up nearly 20 million views between them) and his public appearances are met with something akin to adulation. Here he is in an hour and a half two-parter episode with Oprah on her podcast Oprah’s Super Soul, where she recommends everyone buy the book, saying: “I promise you it’ll be worth your time”.

Unsurprisingly, given this article, I fall into the latter camp. I’m not interested in Johann’s previous crimes, I’m interested in his work today. (Forgiveness and rehabilitation are definitely beyond the purview of this piece!) Suffice to say that his work may be imperfect, but it’s always thought provoking. In any case, Stolen Focus inspired me to further consider the role video gaming plays in our lives: is it a distraction from something more meaningful or is it meaningful in its own right, like all contributions to culture; art, novels, poetry, music, sport, TV and film?

As with those things, the answer isn't clear cut. Can video gaming be a distraction? Absolutely. Indeed, it's such an effective distraction it's recommended as pain relief following research by medical professionals. When I suffered Covid, and beforehand, when my partner did, I sank myself into video games deliberately to consume my mental energies and prohibit fear and anxiety from taking hold. It worked a charm. (Thanks Desperados 3!)

Pixel Vision

E18 Desperados 3

Listen now (68 min) | Fresh from the saloon with dusty wide-brimmed hats a-tilt against the scorch of the midday sun, Ben and Tao turn gun-slingin’, knife-flingin’ cowboys and massacre their way across the Wild West in pursuit of vengeance in the paradoxically stealthy, real-time tactics showdown: Desperados 3. Topics include: when it’s ok to cliché, bad parenting, charming …

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5 years ago · Pixel Vision

I’ve spoken on this podcast of finding myself unable to resist spending hours or even days playing even games that I hate (say, Death Stranding); Tao has gently mocked me for what he called my ‘addiction’ to Halo; and only recently I wrote of finding myself trapped in that same ‘Dark Playground’ while playing Horizon Forbidden West:

Pixel Vision

Ben Plays: Horizon Forbidden West

You'd be forgiven for reading this and coming away with the impression that I don't like Horizon Forbidden West. I want to dispel that notion. It's not that I don't like it. On the contrary, I found myself peaceably content sinking into that hypnotic state which, when generating creative output gets reverently labeled 'Flow', and otherwise might be bett…

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4 years ago · Ben Garman

But when we talk about distraction, we tend to have another concept in mind at the same time: whatever it is we are being distracted from. Distraction doesn't exist in a vacuum. There is always the implication that we could and should be doing something ‘better’. If someone is distracted, they are distracted from doing something more important, more worthy, more esteemed. We may not have any control over the esteem - how gaming is viewed by our peers - but what if we challenge that assumption, and we contend that the playing of a video game is (or at least can be) important and worthy, quite aside from being really fucking fun? Indeed, is there any reason to suppose that reading a book, or enjoying an art gallery, or watching a film is any more so?

The hierarchy of culture.

Suddenly we find ourselves in the hierarchy of culture, a subjective mess of opinions where everybody's personal interests and biases collide and contradict one another: a fan of reading says it's expanding the mind, growing the vocabulary, or as Hari himself writes, growing 'empathy'. A fan of film argues it's the distillation of an era, a political expression, an educational insight into the lives of others. A fan of sport makes the case that it’s socially unifying, demographically levelling, bonding, fostering a healthy (read productive?) spirit of competition and achievement. The list goes on.

Each proponent of a different art form has a myriad of arguments to espouse their own preferred medium. What we begin to surmise, is that the reason video gaming is often lambasted as a waste of time and energy is not because it is either of those things, but because it is losing the battle of perception in this hierarchy of culture.

While impossible to quantify, I'd argue a video game such as The Last of Us, or Spec Ops: The Line, or BioShock Infinite, is every bit as profound and affecting as acclaimed titles from more respected mediums (classical literature, I'm looking at you).

Yet societally, gaming doesn't carry the same cachet, and gamers elicit much less respect than readers, for example. Gaming, then, is only as much of an 'unproductive' distraction as reading, but prolific readers, no matter what they're neglecting in favour of reading, are (mostly) met with admiration by peers. Distraction as a consideration doesn't come into it. Whatever they're reading at the expense of doing doesn't seem relevant. And that brings us back to the key question in all of this: distraction from what? What is it that sceptics are so convinced we ought to be doing in place of playing games?

(As an aside, the language here is critical, I believe. Both 'playing' and 'games' imply triviality and childishness. This is unfair, given that entire books have been written about the role of play in brain development, like Play and Free Play, as well as more mainstream books like Jonathan Haidt’s The Coddling of the American Mind which among other things points “to the decline of free play as a contributor to later depression and fragility”. Hari writes at length about play in Stolen Focus.

Not to mention the volumes of other books and research about the importance of fulfilment and happiness in composing ‘a life well-lived’. But it's an inescapable quirk of English: we ‘play’ games. Interestingly, this same inbuilt function of language to belittle art is also seen with music: one ‘plays’ music in English, but in Spanish, for example, you 'touch' the guitar and in Italian you 'sound' it. Lo and behold, music appears to fall only marginally higher on the hierarchy of culture than gaming in the UK, while in countries with more respectful language it’s arguably much more integral.)

The Answer.

The answer to this question - what is gaming a distraction from? - in my view, was best expressed by George Orwell in Down and Out in Paris and London (emphasis mine):

"In practice nobody cares whether work is useful or useless, productive or parasitic; the sole thing demanded is that it shall be profitable. In all the modem talk about energy, efficiency, social service and the rest of it, what meaning is there except 'Get money, get it legally, and get a lot of it'? Money has become the grand test of virtue."

Orwell writes that, "By this test beggars fail, and for this they are despised. If one could earn even ten pounds a week at begging, it would become a respectable profession immediately." I can't help but wonder if the same is true of gaming. This (now somewhat dated) 2014 study by Erik Hurst makes it more or less explicit:

The researchers find that young men increased the number of hours dedicated to leisure by about the same number of labor hours they lost… They used three-quarters of these hours for gaming and other computer leisure activities.

And there we have it: Games are a distraction from work! It is by this test that gaming is rarely seen as a pastime worth attending to. It is consumption. It doesn't earn. It is a distraction from all the things that do.

Little wonder then, that with the emergence of Esports, its huge prize pools (as much as $40m for multiplayer online battle arena, Dota 2), and the massive production industry kicking into gear to support it, people are starting to sit up and take notice of gaming, even going so far as to offer scholarships to universities and gaming specific degrees. In the UK, Roehampton in London became the UKs first university to offer an esports scholarship last year, but in the USA, there are enough to populate 'top 25 eSports scholarship' lists. Even BBC Online (two years after my Inquiry podcast 😜) has made the case that video gaming could get you a better job.

I imagine this trend will continue, and five or ten years from now, gaming will be viewed very differently by society. Who knows, maybe one day, someone will walk in on their friend playing Xbox or Playstation (or more likely PC when cloud gaming wins the race 💥) and ask, 'what are you working on?' I wonder if gaming will still be considered a distraction then.

What’s your take? Let me know in the comments!

I’ve always liked setting up board games. It may be that this inclination was nurtured through necessity, as I have two aunts that are addicted to playing Settlers of Catan. They rely on me to randomise and place hexagonal tiles quickly and efficiently, so that they can roll dice and feel the dopamine hit of receiving wood, brick, wool, grain and ore. There’s something immensely satisfying in seeing each unique island take shape; of seeing those endless combinations of beautifully illustrated tiles. A few times over the last 2 years I have been denied this very particular satisfaction. When limited to board games online, we all arrive with each virtual table already setup. This makes for lightning fast rounds, but removes the need for administering tokens and cardboard. This removes the simple pleasure of putting hexagons next to other hexagons.

Enter Dorfromantik. A game designed and created by four German students, its entire hook is centered around this single mechanic. You begin with a lone hexagonal tile on the map, and a stack of fifty other tiles. You take the tile on top of the stack and place it down next to your starting tile. Continue this rhythm until all the tiles in the stack are gone, at which point you will have a gorgeous map sprawled out in front of you. This game loop is made for avid tile placing fanatics such as myself. At the risk of stereotyping a great board gaming nation, I have a feeling there are many such people over in Germany. I can’t imagine a game which doubles down on such a beautifully simple loop coming from anywhere else, and I wonder whether the game was partly inspired by a lack of tile placing moreishness in recent times.

Every side of each tile is randomised to include a certain terrain characteristic: forests, villages, fields, train tracks and rivers. These features are drawn as if to imitate a paper cut out or pop-out card, a style reminiscent of Don’t Starve or The Flame in the Flood. The colour palette is wonderfully blended, mixing pastoral hues so that everything feels warm and welcoming. Animation is scarce, but just enough is added to make the land feel alive. Smoke puffs peacefully from chimneys; boats and trains chunter along waterways and tracks; and windmills revolve peacefully above fields of lavender and wheat. It feels like it has been designed by a talented children’s book illustrator, and that they have provided you with all the necessary materials to construct an idyllic world. Although you are the architect of this world’s geography, they retain creative control over the details, tone and style. You’re more than happy to let them have this responsibility, as you fondly observe the ever-growing map from a bird's eye view.

With the core mechanic and artstyle dealt with, we can move on to the puzzle these twin pillars support. You score points for every side of a tile that is placed next to a tile with the same terrain characteristic. For example, pop the village side of a tile down next to the village side of another tile and you’ll get ten points. If you manage to match every side of a tile correctly you’ll earn yourself a bonus sixty points, as well as a few extra tiles for your ever dwindling stack. Tiles might also come with a challenge to earn you more points and tiles. You could be tasked with growing an interconnected forest of one-hundred trees, by placing your tiles in such a way as to fill the required quota. These challenges become more intricate as the game moves forward. A set of fields might only need a specific number - any more and you’ll fail the challenge. Furthermore, some challenges will require you to close off the set, and you’ll need to surround them completely before you’ll be given a few more precious tiles to play with.

Following this pattern, Dorfromantik becomes a deceptively intricate puzzle. You can only continue growing the world for as long as you have tiles to do so. Since tiles are granted for perfectly positioned tiles and completed challenges, the potential opens up to keep playing indefinitely, so long as your tile placement is optimal. As with the best puzzles, this is far more easily said than done. As your borders expand, it becomes ever more difficult to know which challenge to focus on. You are only given a preview of the next three upcoming tiles, which is hardly enough to plan a long term strategy around. It’s unclear whether the game generates a set of balanced tiles in the background based on your challenges, but hedging your bets in the hope that certain tiles will eventually appear seems to be the most viable approach for chasing a high score.

There is a wonderful difficulty curve to each game of Dorfromantik. It’s initially straightforward, with the options for placement limited based on the small number of tiles in play. However, there’s a point at which you realise you’ve lost the thread of the optimal placement coveted in the early game. There’s only so many little forest, village and field borders that you can hold in your head at once, weighing the merits and demerits of shaping and expanding one over another. Your decision is further complicated by the placement of trains and rivers, both of which act as natural barriers in the world. Although both aesthetically and mechanically discouraged, other tile sides can be mismatched to serve a greater purpose. Not so with trains and rivers, which enforce placement of the corresponding tile. This encourages you to weave these opinionated tiles away from your main landmass to avoid conflict, but in doing so you forsake their other precious sides, which could contribute to filling other parts of the map.

I don’t in any way consider myself an expert Dorfromantik player. For me, wrangling with the late game puzzle quickly transforms into acceptance that my tiles will eventually run out. I choose a few of my challenges to focus on, but I don’t agonise over making the best decision on every turn. Similar to the zen mindset of the board game Carcassonne, you’re gambling that you’ll pick up the tile you need to complete the section of the map which is important to you. I find juggling these vague probabilities satisfying, but it won’t suit players who want a chess-like puzzle that it’s always possible to solve. My mind begins to wonder to the next game, where I can once again begin to simply turn over and lay down pretty tiles, creating a world that is different to any that has come before.

Content Warning: PEGI 15. A subtle blend of lateral thinking and extreme violence. (No, not like ‘It’s a Knockout!’)

Clarifications:

• The original soundtrack to Resident Evil 3 is by multiple composers, including Masami Ueda, Azusa Kato, Ryo Koike, Takumi Saito, Kota Suzuki, Takayasu Sodeoka, Saori Maeda, Jeff Broadbent, Zhenlan Kang. It’s available on Steam

• As Tao suspected, there is an accompanying series of novels. Wikipedia says the first Resident Evil novel was Hiroyuki Ariga's novella Biohazard: The Beginning, published in 1997 as a portion of the book The True Story of Biohazard. The story serves as a prelude to the original Resident Evil, in which Chris investigates the disappearance of his missing friend, Billy Rabbitson.

• Ben says this is a continuation of the events of Resident Evil 2. It would be more accurate to say they happen in an overlapping time frame. Parts of Resident Evil 3 even take place before Resident Evil 2, though this concludes later in time. The YouTuber Gamer’s Little Playground does an admirable job of piecing the cutscenes together chronologically:

• Ben reviewed Alien Isolation here:

Pixel Vision

Ben Plays: Alien Isolation

There's a lot to commend about Alien: Isolation, particularly given that it was released in 2014. Playing it now, I'm conscious there are another 6 years of gaming developments skewing my reactions and assumptions and watering down its achievements. That said, I want to convey how it feels to play today, not reiterate how impressive it might have been f…

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6 years ago · Ben Garman

• The character of Jill Valentine also appears in Resident Evil 1 & 5 as well as some non-numbered Resident Evil games.

• Here’s the episode where we discussed achievements in Desperados 3:

Pixel Vision

E18 Desperados 3

Listen now (68 min) | Fresh from the saloon with dusty wide-brimmed hats a-tilt against the scorch of the midday sun, Ben and Tao turn gun-slingin’, knife-flingin’ cowboys and massacre their way across the Wild West in pursuit of vengeance in the paradoxically stealthy, real-time tactics showdown: Desperados 3. Topics include: when it’s ok to cliché, bad parenting, charming …

Read more

5 years ago · Pixel Vision

Audio extracts:

• Channel 4’s Spaced. Series 1 Episode 3. Watch the whole series here for a slice of fried gold: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/spaced 

• I MONSTER - The Blue Wrath

• Night of the Living Dead (1968) OST - Driveway to the Cemetery

• Simon Pegg in Mission:Impossible (who knows which one of them…)

• Resident Evil 2 - The Beginning of Story Music

• The Simpsons - McBain

• Resident Evil 2 Remake OST - Mr.X

• Love is in the Air by John Paul Young

• Alien Isolation theme by Joe Henson and Alexis Smith

• Zombieland feat. Jesse Eisenberg

• Puffin de herb - Human Traffic

• Bob Marley interview 

• Falling Down (1993) - ‘take some shooting lessons’

• Ratchet and Clank PS5

• The Room (2003) - ‘Oh, hi Mark’

• Scooby Doo - ‘We should split up’

• Ivan Ave - Circle

• The Forest theme by Gabe Castro

• The Flight of the Bumble Bee from the Overboard! Trailer:

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