Save State Podcast

Save State Podcast is a site where various writers from the GTA can contribute posts as well as discuss the latest news and trends in video games, movies and everything in between.

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Papo & Yo making its way to Steam April 18

by Royel Edwards

The tear-jerking game that is Papo & Yo, created by Vander Caballero and the Minority Media team is going to be available on Valve's digital platform on April 18, as reported by Game Informer.

The game tells a tale of a young boy named Quico and his best friend Monster, who has to explore his world to solve the problem of Monster turning violent after eating frogs.

Papo & Yo is based on a true life experiences where Caballero was abused by his alcoholic father as a child.

Originally published by Sony Computer Entertainment, Papo & Yo was released on the Playstation 3 console August 2012.

Check out the trailer below.

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Unity middleware support on Sony platforms, incoming

by Khristopher Reardon

"We're looking to begin releasing these tools late this year, which means a beta lays somewhere in between," said Unity to its development community. "They’re really focused on bringing the most creative studios, with an emphasis on independent developers, on board their platforms." It's going to be interesting to see how else Sony will court potential development as the PS4 draws closer to releasing. 

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by Khristopher Reardon

Any kid who was around in the late 80's and early 90's probably knows the titular theme song by heart and can recite it without skipping a beat as the familiar tune chips in. But in 2013, a whole 23 years after the show had officially ended, there are few children recognize the iconic duck in all of his greedy grandeur.

In a surprising move at their PAX conference,  Capcom has decided to remaster the DuckTales video game they made for the original NES back in 1990. The game will feature all new graphics but with the same gameplay intact and will be release on WiiU, PSN and XBox Live. Anyone old enough to have played the original might remember it as one of the predominant platformers on the NES. So it's good news to those who want to revive that tight knit gameplay from the past which has become a solid part of the foundation for platformers. I'm just hoping this somehow means I get Scrooge McDuck in the next Capcom VS game, but only time will tell.

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Can't make dudes kiss other dudes

by Khristopher Reardon

In order to make a successful title the protagonist of the game has to be male, said publishers in a recollection from creative director Jean Maxime-Morris. The sentiment was that the player, who is obviously a male, wouldn't want to take on the role of a female especially when things get a little steamy under the collar. "We had people tell us, 'You can't make a dude like the player kiss another dude in the game, that's going to feel awkward'," said Morris to Penny Arcade. This story is the most recent display of female exclusion from the gaming medium but Dontnod was too far in development to simply retcon the gender of their lead character.

Morris argues that the audience can handle a female lead.

"The fact that our core target is males 15-25 is not an excuse. We need to be able to create, and respect the audience enough to believe that they can be smart enough to identify with that type of character." The game is slated for release in June and is being published by Capcom.

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Riccitiello resigns, EA stock rises

by Khristopher Reardon

Update: Following the after hours rally by investors EA stock plunged the next day losing nearly 10 percent of it's stock value. So perhaps investors are missing Riccitiello after all?

His resignation is about accountability citing that operating costs cut further than the planned amount in the past year says Riccitiello in a typed resignation "In offering my resignation, my goal is to allow the talented leaders at EA a clean start on FY14. I look forward to working with you in the coming weeks on an effective leadership transition. I'm extremely honored to have led this company and proud to have worked with all the great people at Electronic Arts."

Riccitiello resignation will commence at the end of the current fiscal year and Larry Probst will become the interim executive chairman until someone else is appointed to the position. The news has already had a positive effect on the company's bottom line as stock prices jumped over 2.6 percent in after hours trading following the announcement. Those critical of Riccitiello have taken to social media to showcase their candor on the subject. An article appearing at Kotaku showcased the best jokes about Riccitiello's resignation on Twitter. The article was noticed by Peter Moore who took to Facebook to protest Kotaku. "Kotaku reveling in what, due to their self-smugness, they don't realize is a sad day for our industry, which is the platform on which they actually make money," says Moore. His statements are mirrored by a few other industry voices who are also disappointed in the coverage such as former Epic Games boss Mike Capps and former editor for IGN Hilary Goldstein.

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Movie Review: Oz: The Great and Powerful

by Khristopher Reardon

Make no mistake, I had my expectations set high for this movie, not necessarily for the narrative but more the set pieces and imaginative creatures. This movie even fails to outperform Return to OZ, a movie released in the 80s despite it’s glitzy new technology which allows for such lush, brightly popping visuals and what might be the best 3D I’ve seen implemented in a movie in the last year. The simple truth is the newest trip back to Oz, is put behind not because it’s a prequel, but because it just can’t quite match the wonder and imagination that has come out of such a rich franchise up to this date.

The strange and unfamiliar setting of OZ gives way to the trite and condescending as this 2013 flick pulls nearly all of it’s reveals from the 1939 original and fails to add anything substantive to it.

Can’t blame it on the cast. Though there were some uncomfortable smiles from James Franco that made me cringe just as jarringly at the screen, the cast turned in a pretty solid performance though expectantly with the amount of cheese we’d expect from a fantasy epic like this.

Despite his occasional ugly smirk, James Franco turned in a pretty good performance as Oz, a cocky and deceptive lead who does everything in his power to woo the ladies including tricking them with knick-knacks and lies. Mila Kunis also turns in a great performance but I’ll get into that further into the review.

Spoiler warnings are in effect below this line. —————————————————————————————————————————— So the story is in essence what we got almost 75 years ago the main difference being that the main character is much less likeable than a Dorothy.

Bless James Franco for handing in a good performance as the conniving Oz, but because Oz is such a tried and true dirt bag throughout much of the movie I didn’t really root for him come the finale. Much of the screen time is spent trying to find something redeemable in this character and the attempt falls flat. Instead sympathy lies with anyone who has to put their hopes on this disenchanting schemer.

But for some reason or another, a prophecy saying that the wizard who would free Oz from the clutches of the evil witch gets people to assume that the retail box level magician Oz is this such wizard, especially since the short form for his name is the name of the kingdom, what a coincidence! Oz spends much of his time on screen tricking people with his ‘magic’ into believing he is this personal and mainly for personal gain, which for Oz is hot bitches and a giant treasury full of gold. Oz’s character is meant to tell us that everyone has the power within them to change the world as long as people can believe in them yadda-yadda-yadda, see nearly every Disney movie ever made, etc. And by the end we see him forgoing his treasure to help the people of Oz and using others perceptions of him as a self interested shyster in order to perform his greatest trick in a deception meant to scare the witches away. This turn is incomplete however, as the redeemed Oz doesn’t really feel all that different from the guy we met at the beginning of the picture. Sure he forgoes his treasure and decides to stay in Oz to protect the people but the turn is weak and because of it the conclusion suffers. We are also lead to assume that because the OZ character co-operates with others to pull of his ruses everyone lies about the great powers that Oz wields when Dorothy swings by. This is especially diabolical because Glenda, the good witch is in on everything. That bitch! Notice how I said ‘witches’. Mila Kunis is turns in a laudable performance is the unlikely cuckold in Oz’s self interested games. She’s the first person he meets in his travel there and after a night in which Oz tricks her into believing he loves her, they have implied sex and later when the other bad witch, her sister, deceives her into taking up the evil cause through some kind of cursed apple.

The apple ends up having a strange effect on her face giving her the famous hooked nose, large chin and green skin. This effect is somewhat jarring as it makes her looked like she was stung by a bee that was shocked by gamma rays, trust me on this one, when you see it bricks will be shat. Yeah, Oz is that much of a dick that he macks on the first girl he sees somewhere near Narnia and she ends up becoming the titular villain set for the follow up. So he basically destroys a woman’s life because he can’t keep the rabbit in the hat, that’s our hero. The villain in this flick is the mysterious third witch, played by Rachel Weisz, who controls everything in the shadows and manipulates people into believing Glenda is the evil witch ruining Oz. How she actually accomplishes this in unclear as even at the end of the film catcalling in the crowd reveals the very people of Oz believe her to be the perpetrator of the ills in Oz. It’s okay though as she’s so un-interestingly written she basically falls out of the second act only to have an odd and very Sam Raimi inspired confrontation at the end of the film.  The only character I really took to is somewhat of a periphery character to the plot. Somewhere along the way Oz find himself inside of a town made entirely of ceramic, from bowls to teacups, it’s called, wait for it, Chinatown and it was run through by the witch so it’s all cracked and falling apart. Here Oz meets a little doll like ceramic girl who had to be designed solely to emotionally move the audience. She ends up being the most affecting character as she’s so fragile and small and her one on one conversations with Oz are the only things that give our main character any kind of soul. Kudos for whoever created her because she’s possibly the best thing about this movie and she’s really the only new kind of thing we see from this magical land of Oz in the movie besides the Faeries at the beginning.

Michelle Williams does a good job as Glenda the good witch. The only criticism I have about this character is the hasty romance between Oz and her doesn’t really feel like it fits her character and neither too does the sexual tension; it’s actually almost kind of unsettling and it certainly doesn’t feel like it belongs in the Oz film. 

Conclusion: The movie is robbed of all sense of wonder, magic and heroism. It stands only as a testament to what little Disney will do to movie forward a well established franchise and just cash in on nostalgia. It gives me great fear to think of what they will do employing these tactics with the Star Wars licence, though to be honest Lucas would probably do much worse. Despite a handful of good performances the story doesn’t really bridge what I expect from a fantasy epic. I think the best thing a film like Oz can do is make you feel lost in another world but instead it felt like more of a flashback to the much older film which had originally accomplished all of this and so much more. The visuals were very vivid and the 3D was great although used in such a way as to be predictable, like throwing stuff straight into the camera. I just really expected more imagination to be involved with this new visit to Oz. But instead much of the landmass was just a retread, I guess there are very few sights along the yellow brick road. It makes me sad to think with all of the technology involved to flesh out the 3D and special effects we couldn’t do anything new with it than a little imagination and a lot of can do, did back in 1939. But as a sit down flick it wasn’t all bad, you could definitely do worse.  So if it peeks your interest it might be worth a watch but f you’re a fan of the first film, just remember you’ll be seeing a lot of the same things.

3/5

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Review: Tomb Raider

by Royel Edwards

  Lara Croft returns as her younger self in a life-changing adventure that transforms her into a woman worthy of admiration.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen Lara in action exploring new terrains and discovering treasures from around the world, but what wasn’t clear to the public’s eye was how Lara’s character came to be. Her obvious busty character became well admired as a busty heroine who was a definite substitute for the macho man, which crowds most adventure series.

In order to reboot the Tomb Raider series, the team at Crystal Dynamics went directly to her genesis; the time where Lara can be perceived as weak before transforming into the character we know her for.

The new Lara Croft - a visibly non-busty naïve young aspiring researcher with the knack for adventure along side her research team who ends up getting stranded on a mysterious island after a sinister storm out of nowhere sinks their boat and leaves them stranded. After she washes ashore, she must re-group with her friends and get off the unnerving aura of the island.

When I was at E3 last year, I got a chance to see the unfinished build of Tomb Raider and at that point I didn’t know that it was going to contain RPG elements. I was confused, but after playing the game, it makes perfect sense and I couldn’t see the game being played any other way.

Without that aspect, however, the game can easily be compared to the Uncharted seres in terms of taking out waves of enemies and doing a lot of climbing.

Her features were reduced to make her look a lot more realistic in the eyes of the players. A large bust affiliated with two guns is nowhere to be seen throughout the game.

The mechanics of the game require simple and didn’t take a lot of getting used to: requiring the player to take advantage of Lara’s instincts to reach the next destination.

  Within this instinct mode, everything within the area turns black and white. Objects of interest glow yellow such as scalable walls and targets that can be grappled against. A beam of yellow light that emerges from the ground into the sky shows where you have to go next to progress in the game.

The islands landscape looks stunning. Crystal Dynamics have done an incredible job creating a realistic environment for Lara to survey. From the rough waves of water crashing against the shore and storm clouds encircling the island to the various elements faced, the game presents itself well and makes you feel as if you’re on the island yourself. A personal favourite was a part of the island that appeared to be a ship graveyard of some sort and I loved its ghostly appearance.

Early in the game you are tasked with trying to re-group with your colleagues and as you travel deeper into the island you can see how fearful and timid Lara’s personality is. Screaming, panting and visually showing fear on her face really makes Lara seem small and that’s exactly what she is; small. Her inexperience is transparent and it was a lot of fun watching her progress into a powerful heroine.

Throughout the game Lara will gain 5 weapons that can be upgraded with experience points (XP). These can be gained by killing enemies, hunting animals or by climbing things (yeah, it was weird. All I did was scale a wall and +100xp just popped. I was confused.) Another way to get the best of your upgraded items is by scavenging for salvaged parts scattered across the island.

Not only are Lara’s weapons upgradable, but Lara is too. When you gain enough XP, you will acquire a skill point that can be used to upgrade Lara’s ability to climb, counter, and take more damage while progressing through the game.

To do these upgrades, however, Lara has to encounter a campfire, where she will keep herself warm and do a journal entry. You can also use these camps to fast travel to places you’ve already been instead of traveling throughout the massive island.

  Throughout the game you will find collectable relics, documents and journals that help you piece together all the events taking place on the island. Most importantly and to my surprise, raiding tombs is completely optional. It’s a weird concept, yes, but I think it makes sense. You can either do the story or search for hidden tombs later or vice-versa. I think crystal wanted to focus more on Lara’s becoming. Technically you’ll be exploring shrines and caverns which can be classified as tombs, but that’s how the game was made and I don’t find that to be an issue.

I found enjoyment in watching Lara die. Not something many would say, but there are many different gruesome ways Lara meets her end. I don’t think they were intended on being humorous, but that’s how I perceived it.

There are a few areas where Lara is being carried away downstream in a river and there are small quick time events where Lara has to use one of her weapons to clear debris before being tossed into it by the violent waters. If you get too close to the side, the game shows a sharpened pole piercing her throat, protruding through the back of her neck and you’ll see her struggle to remove it before quickly dying and watch the rest of her body flow side to side with the water. It’s incredibly violent, but I love it either way.

In an attempt to revitalize the series, Tomb Raider was an excellent game that’ll last you around 8 hours of exploration and discovery.

There was also sports multiplayer but I didn’t invest a lot of time into it. In any relation, it heavily favours the Uncharted series’ multiplayer nothing makes it interesting or stand out much less.

In conclusion, Tomb Raider is an excellent reboot to the series. You literally see Lara transform before your eyes from a young vulnerable woman, into a lionhearted fighter. The exciting spin on Lara’s origin provides the action you’d expect from an adventure game without the drawing the players attention to her chest. No one should play a game for that reason anyways. 

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Replacing plumbers with princesses

by Khristopher Reardon

There are few things a father won't do to make his little girl happy, for Mike Mika, an employee at the developer Other Ocean, this meant retconning one of the earliest games in the Mario cannon. Mika says he and his three-year-old daughter enjoy playing retro games together and that one of her favourite titles is Donkey Kong, a game in which the titular monkey kidnaps a princess and tries to keep her atop a girded tower as Mario tries to scale the structure to rescue a's daughter wasn't happy about, he says, she was disappointed with playing the plumber because she could play princesses in other games. So he went to work modding a 2010 version of the NES game and switching up some assets and characters so that Princess Pauline is now scaling the tower as Mario stands captive at the top.

The mod can be downloaded on the Youtube page below though you'll need the original ROM and XDELTA to play it.a

Click here for Youtube link.

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by Khristopher Reardon

If you'd been paying attention to video game news in the past year you might have remembered something about a so called "Anita Sarkeesian" of the website Feminist Frequency. She amassed nearly $160k through donations from almost 7k people on Kickstarter who were hungry for perspective on traditional female roles in video games.

The video series' Kickstarter was finished nine months ago and was the center of massive internet trolling from Gamers who were at odds with her insinuation that women should have a problem with how they've been depicted in video games. A large sexist outcry roared across message boards and soon people who were trying to be representative of 'reason' were telling Sarkeesian to shut up and get back in the kitchen. Despite the trolls, the Kickstarter was enormously successful garnering over 120% of the initial price asked. But despite it's success, when the roar of the internet died down and Sarkeesian was supposedly setting up work, everything out of her camp got really quiet for a disturbingly long amount of time. Fast forward to a couple of days ago and the first part of the series finally went live. I watched the whole thing, I wasn't a backer but I was excited to get some fresh perspective on gender roles in video games. I think Sarkeesian delivers in her first 23 minute piece, although I do think some of her examples are on the nose,  I can see why she'd deconstruct the most popular and well known titles in the first part of her series.

Two days from being published and the video has already been viewed over 350 thousand times.  Click on the link above to check it out.

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Our outing to the Royal Ontario Museum to check out the latest God of War.

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God of War: Ascension, hands on

by Khristopher Reardon

(Hear more about GoW: Ascension in our upcoming podcast)

Me and Royel went down to check out what was up in the newest installment of the series.

I just want to be upfront about this fact, I have not really laid into a God of War game since 2, I skipped GoW 3 because it looked like a lot of the same old schtick but with Kratos climbing up on the ladder of the Greek pantheon.

I wasn't really expecting much to change from 3 to Ascension and honestly I think I'm right on the mark with that assumption. As I sat down watching and even playing for a bit I didn't get the feeling that a lot has been mixed up from one game to the other. A few control adjustments and a few early Godly powers to charge up your Blade of Chaos aim to vary up the gameplay variety a bit. But the game still feels like there's a lot of button mashing and not a tonne of strategy to it. For a person who hasn't really 'gotten' the whole God of War series I don't think anything in here is going to change your mind. However, the backdrops for your blood stained path of vengeance is as awesome as ever. Beautiful vistas, impressively massive boss fights and finishing moves that push firmly and wholeheartedly dive headfirst into the disgusting and brutal all keep dazzling the eye.

The game suffers from a little frame drop here and there but nothing that the untrained eye would really pick up. I skipped on GoW 3 because I lost interest but from someone who took a vacation on the last home console iteration of the series, I'm definitely primed to give GoW: Ascension a go.

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Journey art director and composer form new studio

by Khristopher Reardon

Flow designer, Nicholas Clark will also be on hand to advise the company through it's startup phase.

"We are hard at work creating our first project. Driven by the creative vision of our award winning Creative Director, Matt Nava, we believe our project will deliver a moving, compelling and exciting experience to a wide audience,” it says on Giant Squid's website.

The dynamic team is already working on their first project.

Nava is a BAFTA winner and has a celebrated artistic style that has touched both Flower and Journey, two games that have been held up as high-minded artistic standards in video games and Wintory is a Grammy nominated composer.  

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Tecmo falling means fresh faces for indie devs

by Khristopher Reardon

Long time Toronto resident development studio Tecmo Koei held it's own as one of the first big development houses in Toronto, developing such titles as, Fatal Inertia on the 360 and PS3 and the Warriors Orochi series for the PSP.

Tecmo Koei came to Toronto in 2001 and held a low profile helping it's parent Japanese company by developing mainly for mobile phones.

Miguel Sternberg of Spooky Squid Games told the National Post in an email that people knew of the studio but it wasn't very heavily involved in the local game scene.

“I do hope the folks who’ve been let go land on their feet. Maybe a few of them will join the growing ranks of Toronto indie devs,” says Sternberg.

It wouldn't be the first time a Tecmo employee went on to indie development. Craig Adams, one of the masterminds behind Sword and Socery EP, left the Tecmo studio back in 2008 to create one of the best received art-meets-games for iOS

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Crowd-funding gives Skullgirls second wind

by Khristopher Reardon

Squigly, a new character is going to be added to the Skullgirls roster after nearly a year. Lab Zero turned to gamers to ask for money to bring the new character to life as DLC using the crowd-funding site Indiegogo.

After passing their initial goal of $150 thousand dollars within 24 hours, money continued to pour in so that the development team can also flesh out the story mode and stage for the new character. Stretch goals for Lab Zero include Skullgirls' first male character, Big Band, and a mystery character to be voted on by the community if they reach their $600 thousand threshold.

Knowing the potential backlash from gamers over the price tag, Lab Zero decided to layout where the money is going when the funding has commenced (see picture above).

Lab Zero plans to make the Squigly DLC free for three months once it releases. After three months Lab Zero says Squigly will cost players five dollars.

The Indiegogo campaign still has 28 days left to meet it's other stretch goals. Skullgirls released in the first half of last year and was the debut release of Reverge Labs. The team was laid off in November prompting the team to reassemble under the name of Lab Zero and try to continue efforts to push Skullgirls into the tournament fighting scene spotlight.

A campaign to bring the game to EVO 2013 nearly brought it to the big stage for video game tournament fighting but it fell just short of beating out Super Smash Melee. You can find the campaign here.

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Soon this will be the home of Save State Podcast... Soon.