LSG 009: Sandy Pountain talks about the power of video game storytelling in Spec Ops: The Line, the epic scale of battles in the WarHammer 40K games, and the fun bonding experience co-op playing the Lego: Batman game

Welcome to Episode 9 of Load Save Game, a podcast where I talk to people about their personal journey with video games. I am your host Jose Eusebio. My wonderful guest today is my great friend Sandy Pountain. Sandy is a huge fan of Warhammer and talks about how his love of war games lead him to loving games turn-based and real-time strategy games like Command & Conquer,  Dawn of War, and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. I tease Sandy a little bit because he has this contrarian hipster streak that shows up a lot in his playthrough of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition where he plays the Engineer class, you know, pretty exclusive class, not sure if you’ve heard of it. Sandy also talks about his love of sharing co-op experiences like playing Streets of Rage with his brothers and Lego: Batman with his wife and how those were wonderful bonding experiences for him. We also talk about a kind of duality of violence where increasingly as graphics in games became more impressive the violence in them felt more real and how he experienced this reckoning with that when playing Spec Ops: The Line, which is a game that tries to examine and humanize the experience of military shooter games. We ask the question, is the newly crowned King Charles immune to holy spells? And also how hard would a Hitmonchan have to punch to knock out a Wailord, which is a Pokemon that’s as big as a full size whale? 

Sandy is a lover of Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer, among other tabletop roleplaying games. He posts some of his customized painted minis on his instagram so make sure to follow him @smallman_syndrome_painting. A link will also be in the show notes.

Follow Sandy’s Miniature Painting Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smallman_syndrome_painting/ 

Make sure to subscribe and review Load Save Game on your podcast listener of choice. Follow us on socials we’re @loadsavegame on most platforms. If you have any thoughts or questions about the show feel free to email us at [e-mail]! I hope you enjoy the episode!

Thank you to Shaun Panado for the use of our theme song "One Shot One Kill Kestrel" off of the album Kind of a Big Deal Vol. 2. You can find his music and projects at his Linktree:  https://linktr.ee/shonix

Show Art by: Jordan Maeve https://www.instagram.com/thejollity/ 

Corrections:  According to Wikipedia plugging the original Sonic the Hedgehog or any other Sega game would unlock the “Blue Sphere” minigame in Sonic & Knuckles. 

Games Discussed: Mass Effect Legendary Edition, The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, Command & Conquer: Generals, Soul Calibur II, Street Fighter II, Dynasty Warriors, Dungeons & Dragons, Bow and Arrow, Paranoid, Breakout, Battle Chess, Sonic 3, Sonic & Knuckles, Worms, Streets of Rage, Vectorman, Altered Beast, Mortal Kombat, Sonic 3D, Worms 2, Age of Empires II, Command and Conquer Tiberian Sun/Red Alert, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire/Red/Blue, The Lord of the Rings GBA games, Van Helsing, Devil May Cry, Soul Calibur II, Conflict: Global Storm, Gladius, Dynasty Warriors, Batman Arkham Asylum/Batman Begins, The Warriors, Killzone, Indigo Prophecy, God of War, Fallout 3/New Vegas, Condemned 1&2, Lego Batman: The Videogame, Lego Lord of the Rings, Red Dead Redemption, Spec Ops: The Line, WarHammer 40K: Dawn of War, Age of Empires III, Half Life, Borderlands 2, Return of the Obra Dinn, Pentamint, Diablo III, Advance Wars, Tiny Metal, Wargroove