Reading List June 2021 (Patreon)

It's time for another (youtube heavy) reading list! This one had a lot more longform content than usual, but from in-depth documentaries that cover a massive amount of ground to giant collabs of smaller essays, they're worth the time. Turns out it's also a pretty eclectic list this month, too, as for the first time I don't have too many categories to lump individual stories together into.

Second Opinions

Slipways Review: Schedule-Shatteringly Moreish by Nic Reuben: The always fantastic Reuben also covered Slipways, and came away with a positive opinion of it you should check out!

The Causal Appeal of Strive — Top Five Reasons by Maximilian Dood: I spent a lot of my time in my Strive review talking about how the game made itself more accessible to the casual player, and Maximilian happened to put out a video in a similar vein with a lot of additional points on the topic. My personal experiences falling in love with Strive don’t mirror everything he has to say about the game, but there are a lot of solid points he made that didn’t make it into my own review about why this game is so accessible.

Breaking Down Guilty Gear Strive’s Ambitious Story Mode Anime | Animator Spotlight by The Canipa Effect: The Canipa Effect reviewed Strive’s story mode, and their verdict is pretty spot on, highlighting an animation project that is plagued by plenty of hiccups, but is frankly an absurd accomplishment coming from only four animators working outside their element.

The Animation of Guilty Gear Xrd & Dragon Ball FighterZ by New Frame Plus: It’s an oldie but a goodie. Dan over at NWP covered the nitty gritty behind how ArcSys achieves their trademark visual style.

The Occupation: Mind Your Deadline by Ben Sailer: You might remember political thriller The Occupation from when I reviewed it over two years ago (wow, time flies). Sailer interviewed the devs behind the game about its political themes, its rare decision to make a journalist the protagonist, and the way the game plays with its fixed playtime.

How Small Open-World Games Feel Big by Razbuten: It was inevitable this one would show up! Raz ran into a recent phenomenon where he found himself far more attached to the open worlds of smaller indie titles than the big AAA releases, and set out to explore why in an ode to smaller games punching above their weight class.

All About the Ending

I love it when a game comes together! This month had a few great essays discussing phenomenal endings to various works of media and why they hit so hard.

The Misleading Finale of Whiplash by Evanonline: Evanonline talks about the movie Whiplash, its ending, and the major themes about how figures of authority wield abuse that it explores. And, of course, I promise this also has something tangentially to do with video games by the end.

How Mother 3 Breaks You by Super Eyepatch Wolf: From the little details like baths to the biggest, darkest plot twists, SEW gave a crash course on everything that Mother 3 gets right.

So I’ve Finally Played...Control by Raycevick: Raycevick went back to the Oldest House to talk about Remedy’s latest game, and while he wasn’t absolutely in love with it, he made a strong case for what worked for him, what didn’t, and why not every game has to be for everyone.

Everything Else

How VR Training Works: Combat Simulators by LambHoot: LambHoot’s been working the VR beat for a long time, and recently dove into how its shooting simulations are getting more realistic every day, how cool that is, and how it might have unintended and unwanted consequences.

Inside The World’s Largest Video Game Cheating Empire by Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai: Franceschi-Bicchierai managed to snag an interview with the creator of Cheat Ninja, an incredibly popular and lucrative cheat for PUBG and other games, and talked about their almost Catch Me If You Can-esque life making absurd amounts of money and dodging the Chinese police.

13 Creators, 13 Essays, 13 Sentinels by JayEm et. al.: Video essay collabs are always entertaining, and this time, a bunch of creators got together to talk about 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, highlighting everything from how the time travel story changes its environment over time to the many, many cues it takes from previous science fiction narratives.

Hello Kotaku, It’s Me, Your New EIC by Patricia Hernandez: Hernandez is taking over at Kotaku, and her stated vision for the website is as much manifesto as it is a broad and no-nonsense view of what the video game industry has become at large and the struggles it wrestles with today.

The Audio of Killer Instinct: Killer Sounds by Hold Back to Block: HBtB has been covering Killer Instinct these past few months with three epicly long videos. This one covers everything you could ever want to know about the entire franchise’s soundscape from sound effects to music to production schedules, but don’t skip the followup where Mick Gordon takes you through the soundtrack’s construction song by song!

Is It Actually Hard to Make Textured Hair for Video Games? By Josh Rios: Rios at Polygon talked all about the surprisingly complicated and time-consuming process of creating one hairstyle for one character and why some hairstyles are harder to pull off than others, specifically focusing on Miles Morales’s dope fade.

How to Make a Video Game While Rationing Water and Amidst Rolling Blackouts by Patrick Klepek: Klepek interviewed the developers behind indie RPG Beautiful Desolation about the game’s development process and how it was influenced by their home in South Africa.

Does Crash Still Work? By hotcyder: Cyder did a big Crash retrospective a while back, and now that there are more Crash titles out to explore, he went back to the series to see if it had survived the transition to the modern day.

A Love Letter to the Source Engine by Leadhead: Leadhead went through her own memories of how the many, many games and mods built in this engine have affected her, covering everything from roleplay servers to learning the basics of game design.

U.S. Healthcare Is So Trash This Game’s Localization Needed Changing by Ian Walker: On the one hand, this article is an amusing anecdote about the unique challenges translators need to tackle to bridge cultural differences. On the other hand, it’s yet another small sign that holy hell, our health care sucks.

The Best Games from GMTK Game Jam 2021 by Game Maker’s Toolkit: At this point, the GMTK Game Jam is so big that its arrival is almost a yearly holiday, and as is becoming tradition, Mark Brown himself highlighted some of the best and most popular micro games produced by the jam.

How Pokemon Became a Logistical Nightmare of Design by Foxcade: If you all remember the big kerfuffle around Pokemon Sword and Shield, Foxcade dove into all the numerous pressures that not only led to that explosion, but have also more generally caused the Pokemon franchise to paint itself into a corner where no matter what it does, it’ll end up disappointing some fans.

Chicory Review: A Warm and Cozy Picnic by Ty Galiz-Rowe: Galiz-Rowe checked out Chicory, a delightful little puzzle game about repainting a world full of color. It’s one of many I’d like to cover for the upcoming quarterly wrapup, but with such a long list of titles to tackle, at the very least you can learn about the game here if I don’t get to it.