Tom and Phil talk about Deadly Premonition 2, Five Nights at Freddy’s, the Netflix series High Score, Project Warlock, Metro Last Light, Metal Slug X and the latest news. Thanks for listening.
Microsoft Flight Sim
Microsoft’s Flight Simulator has always been a series of games that I aspired to play but never got around to. When I did buy a copy of Flight Simulator X, in 2006 (the most last full version released, my computer did not have the chops to play it.
Now, 14 years later, with just a small side game released in between, Microsoft is bringing back the series in just a few days as a PC exclusive. Interesting it was developed by Asobo Studios which made A Plague Tale: Innocence which Tom reviewed in episode 126. Given their prior games they are not exactly the studio you would expect to handle one of the crown jewel’s of Microsoft’s library.
Judging from the trailer above, which is an interesting retrospective of the series, Asobo has done well, though we’ll soon find out if they can measure up to the high expectations from followers of the franchise.
Phil Fogg
Game Under Podcast Episode 128
Tom and Phil talk a lot about a lot.
SimCity of Dreams
Recently I did not have access to the internet, so I was compelled to look at images that I had compiled for myself, rather than those that internet saturates me with. What I found was disturbing. For the most part, because of what it revealed about myself, in that, in over twenty-plus years, my neurosis has changed not at all. Observe for yourselves, a dot matrix printed image from the 386 PC version of the original SimCity.
I recall now that I had printed out my progress of a city so that I could review it the next day at work and make plans of what hoped to bring to life that night. Of course, I never spent so much time on my actual future, or the people around me, but damn, I had the city of Pinion in my hands.
The name was certainly a subconscious choice, Pinion meaning to immobilize a person by pinning back their extremities, while also being the definition of a part of the wing that gives flight. At the time I likely thought it as a conjunction of a state of stability linked with that of being a citizen/ denizen, a name without cognitive dissonance, or what used to be called irony.
You can see that I was planning a "NPS" (New Power Station) and various roadways when I could afford them, fortunately for the future Sims (yes, even back then they were called Sims) the nuclear powers station in what would become the 'burbs” was not to be. At some point I arrived at Pinion one hundred years later and low and behold, things pretty much panned out as planned (though those NPS were placed more reasonably further out of town). Also, I've gotten rid of a phallic island and infringed on a poor internal waterway. These images, my first time seeing them in at least a two decades, raised some introspection. First that of sadness, a simple emotion and so easy to cut straight to. But then, ruefulness, a contextual sadness. But then something more, resentment, one which carries over to my un-simulated world, an embarrassment of naivety. A naivety that believed, without reflection, that the future can be planned and that the current inhibitors and restrictions are not necessarily defied, but unknown.
-Phil Fogg
Game Under Podcast Episode 127
Tom and Phil discuss Sludge Life, Beat Cop, Death and Taxes, Metro Exodus and the new season of Sky: Children of Light. Thanks for listening.
The Beautiful War Porn of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
The Call of Duty series has always been an aesthetic delight, from its technicolour explosions to its bathos-ridden anti-war quotes preceding joyful renditions of combat, assassination and even mass murder (in what way was Spec Ops subversive, again?); but Modern Warfare was the first Call of Duty that went beyond being an exercise in gratifying titillation and flirted with beauty.
Released in the same year as 1917 and two years after Dunkirk and Darkest Hour, it is certainly a part of a new trend in war propaganda which aims to rehabilitate the notion of war as a way not simply to solve the immediate problems of the white man’s burden—I mean policing the world—but mass societal ones, too; and, supposedly anyway, the dangers associated with such solutions.
The artists behind Modern Warfare have no such pretentions (even if the writers and gameplay designers do). Modern Warfare is a visual feast inspired by war photography, snuff, propaganda and TV torture porn with absolutely nothing to say, allowing for its grotesque petals to truly bloom.
(Right-click open image in new tab for full-size versions.)
Gana Mini Hardware Review
That’s a Retron 77 if you were wondering.
Phil Fogg reviews the RCA to HDMI upscaler from Gana, a solution to how to connect old systems to new televisions.
At $13.99 delivered is it too good to be true? Find out here.
Game Under Podcast Episode 126
If screenshot mode was a common thing when I was reviewing games, my screenshots would have been slightly more inappropriate than they already were. Unfortunately I only figured out how to get the GeForce overlay to work with A Plague Tale after finishing the game (windowed mode, FYI), so this is all I have to offer; the wonderful lens distortion and great imagery (not pictured: worth seeing for yourself if you ever play) really makes taking screenshots in it fun.
In episode 126 of the Game Under Podcast Tom Towers and Phil Fogg show solidarity by purchasing the biggest game bundle in history (what could possibly have motivated itch.io to make such an incredible bundle, I wonder?) and playing A Mortician’s Tale from said bundle, offer their thoughts on the PS5, Streets of Rage 4 and A Plague Tale: Innocence.
The dice also rolls on Sky: Children of Light, and the battle between modern history’s biggest tyrants (Hitler and Hobbes) is settled once and for all!
Listen here!
Game Under Podcast Episode 125
Imagine two of these placed leg to leg with a disc levitating between them. That’s Tom’s concept for the PS5.
After seven years Tom and Phil re-play and give their impressions of That Game Company’s Journey, but not before giving impressions of Minecraft Dungeons (and Diablo III on Switch), Final Fantasy VII Remake, Resident Evil 3 Remake and final impressions of Sky: Children of Light (coming soon to Switch). We also spritz in some Trademark Banter about the SNES and cover some of the latest news in gaming.
Phil also discovers that he can rip ESRB rating descriptions for his review copy.
