Hitpoint Pals

Episode 39: On our penultimate episode of the year, Travis and Will have a game shoutout for AI Dungeon 2, an experimental text-based adventure that uses a database of choose your own adventure stories to respond to anything you say or do. Then we do some shoutouts for our favorite games of the year, including Sekiro, Resident Evil 2, and Ape Out. After a Dark Souls diversion, we take some time to reminisce over some of the decade'...

Episode 38: Life is Strange 2 spoilers from 25:25 - 37:10. We begin with a declaration from Will that he is a born again Christian and things only get less pious from there. But first Travis and Will recap their experience watching the Playstation Awards, a Japanese broadcast translated on the fly and often indecipherable, to us but mostly to the stream chat. Meanwhile Rebekah has been playing Stardew Valley and finally learns how ...

Episode 37: The crew speaks with members of Rebekah and Cam's D&D group on the finale of their campaign, and their takeaways from a story that lasted two years. Then we talk about a few games we've been playing, including Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, GRIS, and Betrayer. Before we can wrap, we get in some offhand mentions of Sonic the Hedgehog, and Cats.

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Episode 36: Travis has been enjoying the satisfaction of positive feedback and repetitive tasks in Death Stranding, which we only discuss in vague terms since Will is eagerly awaiting the 2020 PC release, and doesn't want the game spoiled. But we fully discuss Caleb's time in Luigi's Mansion, where apparently Luigi looks really, really good. Also, Will has been playing narrative adventure The Council, a mystery game set in the...

Episode 35: The divisive auteur theory changed the way we critique films, and could go on to impact the way we talk about video games as well. There are many figures known for their collective works as video game directors and producers, but is Hideo Kojima spearheading a new brand of gaming auteur, for better or for worse? That's our topic this week, which explores auteur theory and how it could apply to video game creators as muc...

Episode 34: What do you do when your service corgi gets swept down a storm drain and into the creepy tunnels beneath the city? Will fills us in on that journey in the lo-fi horror game Lost in Vivo, which he enjoyed a lot. We then try to determine whether or not ghosts are real and share some paranormal or just plain odd encounters we've all had. Rebekah might have seen a ghost running at her, and Will once encountered a scene stra...

Episode 33:  Sony's Playstation 5 is a year away, and we just... aren't very excited about it. We get into the evolution of games hardware and the shrinking gap in technology leaps between major console generations. With the PS5 expected to be backwards-compatible with the PS4, we also touch on hardware architecture and compatibility, where the lack of the latter creates a need for remasters and remakes of aging games. Also di...

Episode 32:  Will reads us a Steam review critical solely of gameplay time, and presents us with an open-ended question. How do we value games in relation to money spent and "content" time received? And how dependent are our opinions on an economic system where time is money? We discuss the "$1 = 1 hr. of gameplay" line of thinking, the stagnant $60 price tag, wages, physical discs, and the perceptions of studio prestige. We a...

Episode 31: Are subscription services the future? Does it make any sense to spend $60 on a game anymore? We're back from our hiatus to talk all things monthly payments, including Apple Arcade, which launched with a strong catalog of exclusives. Rebekah asks for advice on romance options in Stardew Valley, while Travis has enjoyed exploring The Oldest House in Control. Meanwhile, William is engrossed with the thick atmosphere in Met...

Episode 30: How can a single player RPG be "dead?" We take a look at the tumultuous evolution of player-developer interaction over time, and the expectation players have grown to have for not just technical patches, but free content updates. A new culture has formed around reworking games that had less than stellar releases a la No Man's Sky, and the way players expect studios to fix bad games they paid for rather than move on to s...

Episode 29: William and Travis have been enjoying the surprise hit Remnant: From the Ashes, while Rebekah experiences an over the table dilemma in her D&D game. Mount & Blade II finally gets a tantalizing early access date, and megacorporations continue to reign unchecked. Also, thoughts on Life is Strange 2 - Episode 4, and the Popeye's chicken sandwich. Spoilers for Remnant: From the Ashes from 24:48 - 30:02 and Life is S...

Episode 28: Examining the work of Amanda Phillips in Shooting to Kill: Headshots, Twitch Reflexes, and the Mechropolitics of Video Games, the valorization of the headshot from multiplayer lobbies to the esports stage, and the media propaganda that rationalizes police brutality with the narrative of split-second decision making. How does our interpretation of game mechanics color our attitude towards police violence? And with corpor...

Episode 27: The idea that video games are responsible for mass murders is still pushed by political figures and fans of the guns industry. On this episode we take a look at systemic violence in the United States and the intersection between capitalism, hatred, gun control, and yes, video games. If that sounds messy, well, it is. But we know that games are about much more than violence, and can have positive impacts on the world. We...

Episode 26: You guys ever heard of Mixer? Forgot about that. Will has been adventuring in what he calls "Stealth Souls," or Sekiro. We break down how effective Sekiro's stealth system is, then reminisce on Thief: The Dark Project's challenging but rewarding stealth mechanics, and wish more games would treat stealth with the depth it deserves. Also, we reflect on mobile, idle tie-in games like Mass Effect Datapad and the Black Flag ...

Episode 25: Going to a Denny's at 3 in the morning is a classic American ritual, an experience shared by many and from which we derive a greater meaning. This week, we're talking about the shared experience of playing games, and the rituals we partake in before and during our gaming sessions and the purpose behind them. Gotta get that bad juju out of the d20 before the game starts, right? We wrap up our discussion on rituals in gam...

Episode 24: Some games we associate with so many positive memories that picking them up again feels like returning home, and there are psychological reasons behind the phenomenon. This week we discuss an article by Polygon's Astrid Johnson, who breaks down why a game like Breath of the Wild can evoke such a reaction. Cam Call joins us on the podcast this week and he's waiting on a card game stuck on a boat because of the new China ...

Episode 23: Rebekah has released a new and exciting zine called "Brave," and we kick things off by talking about the project and being passionate about independent publications. Then it's on to video game news. The "Den of Thieves" G2A came under fire again Monday when indie developer Mike Rose condemned Google ads directing people to buy his games from the grey market site. "Please, if you’re going to buy a game from G2A, just pir...

Episode 22: We recorded this episode a few minutes after an earthquake shook Vegas, so Travis is on edge. But we dive right into The Outer Worlds co-director Leonard Boyarski's statement that the game will be "political," but not "politically-charged" and the misguided pandering developers often practice to reassure sensitive fans the game is worth buying. We also look at how The Last of Us handles complex moral issues, and how the...

Episode 21: Marianne Williamson is channeling powerful crystal energy. Beto o'Rourke wants to make sure you know he can speak Spanish. And the planet is rapidly advancing towards irreparable destruction. Meanwhile, we discuss an article about climate change from a gaming perspective, where beautiful digital recreations of nature are overshadowed by the dark reality that global warming is destroying the world we inhabit in real life...