Random Encounter #2 – Tell Me a Story

Monkey Island

Welcome back to Random Encounter, the monthly digest of gaming’s hot topics. This month, Olivia Cottrell wants to know where all the good scripts have gone.

Last week, I had a very strange moment. I was sitting in my living room, controller in hand, and I cried. Not big, dramatic sobs, just a sudden overflow of emotion that left me scrabbling around for a tissue. This was not prompted by anything melodramatic. All the game had done was build a character up through interactions and dialogue, then scripted something for them to say that touched me in a way that only a few things ever have. This had never happened to me in a video game before – but perhaps I should have seen it coming. Continue reading

The Hunger Games – From Page to Screen

Sarah Burrow and special guests Suzie Nockles, Charlotte Marchant-Jones and Alex Gatherer discuss the new film adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ book The Hunger Games!

Join us as we compare the book and the film, and give you our thoughts on the casting choices and how the film was shot. We also discuss our favourite characters and how they’ve translated to the big screen. And interestingly we see what differences arise when you put two Team Peeta and two Team Gale supporters together in front of a microphone!

The first three minutes contain a quick spoiler free review while the rest of the podcast contains spoilers for the film and first book (with very minimal spoilers for the two other books in the series).

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What did you think of the film? Are you happy with what they did with the book and the characters? Has seeing the film made you want the read the book? And are you Team Peeta or Team Gale or are you more TeamWhatAreAllTheseTeamsAbout? Head over to Facebook or Twitter and let us know what you think.

Visual Memory #2 – ‘God Hand’

Welcome to the latest Visual Memory, the monthly column exploring classic video games on extinct systems. This month, Christopher Bell thinks it’s time to re-assess a stone cold turkey…

In a market saturated by cookie-cutter first person shooters and awful movie tie-ins, it’s great to see a games company try something different. And while God Hand is remembered as the game that killed Clover Studios (the people behind the rather beautiful Okami), it did at least turn heads. Poisonous chihuahuas, a demonic Elvis, the ability to spank your female opponents…  I couldn’t make any of this up if I tried!

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Random Encounter #1 – Girls, Guns ‘n’ Games

Welcome to the very first edition of Random Encounter. Running as a counterpoint to our retro games column Visual Memory, this new monthly feature tackles the issues facing gamers in the here-and-now. Podcaster, reviewer and hardcore gamer Olivia Cottrell kicks things off with a matter very close to her heart…

All the Mass Effect news lately – especially the trailer featuring the female version of Commander Shepard – has gotten me thinking about the first game in the series. Mass Effect introduced me to gaming as a hobby (some might say an obsession), but why did I latch on to that particular game when I had played others before it and have enjoyed others since? What made Bioware’s space opera so special? Which buttons did it press that others didn’t?

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Merlin – Review and Discussion

It’s time to ride to Camelot in our second podcast of the day…

Caleb Woodbridge, Sarah Burrow and Olivia Cottrell discuss the fourth series of the BBC’s other big telefantasy success – Merlin. Does it pay to play fast and loose with Arthurian myth? What direction could the show take next? These and other searching questions are answered in our latest podcast. Click below and listen!

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NB: This podcast was recorded via Skype so the audio quality does vary in places.

Visual Memory #1 – ‘The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap’

The Legend of Zelda celebrates its 26th anniversary next week but Christopher Bell is looking back, not forward, in the first edition of Visual Memory – a brand new monthly column exploring classic games on extinct systems…

Legend has it that the kingdom of Hyrule is protected from an ancient darkness by the Picori Blade, a sacred sword entrusted to the royal family by the Minish – a race of Borrower-sized folk who can only be seen by children. Every century, the people of Hyrule celebrate their victory over the forces of evil by holding a royal tournament, at which the winner is allowed to touch the sacred blade. It just so happens that this year’s winner is an evil sorcerer by the name of Vaati, who shatters the sword, unleashing a tide of monsters on the land. To make matters worse, he turns the young princess Zelda to stone. It’s up to her young friend Link to track down the mysterious Minish, re-forge the Picori Blade and restore the princess…

 

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