Ep. 193 - The Gex Hive, with Ian Bogost and Ash Parrish

Writer, game designer, and professor Ian Bogost joins the panel along with Kotaku and Insert Credit regular Ash Parrish to cover Hairizon Zero Dawn, Gex vs. Bubsy, and Sonic Actually Being Back. Original music by Kurt Feldman, including the all new Violence Island theme!

Questions this week:

1. From Liz Ryerson: What’s your favorite romhack? (06:04)
2. Which video game metrics and features do critics tend to ignore? (11:17)
3. Which games were most affected by ESRB ratings? (16:34)
4. What are the best non-Bonk Turbografx platforming games? (21:58)
5. Now that Facebook games are mostly gone, how do you explain Cow Clicker to somebody who wasn’t there? (26:23)
6. Violence Island: forums.insertcredit.com Submissions (32:49)
7. Has a video game ever changed your opinion about something outside of video games? (41:47)
8. What was the most ambitious video game to actually deliver on its promises? (47:13)
9. Who is the Slavoj Zizek of video games? (51:47)

LIGHTNING ROUND: Dirtbag Driftglass presents: Casting call (55:29)

Have answers of your own, do you? Share them in the forums!

A SMALL SELECTION OF THINGS REFERENCED:

• Crush 40
• Sonic Shoes
• Peter Piper Pizza
• Grand Poo World
• Sonic 3D Blast Directors Cut
• Super Mario Clouds
• I Shot Andy Warhol
• Horizon: Zero Dawn
• Lucio from Overwatch
• Marvel Spider-Man: Miles Morales
• Monsters, Inc. (2001)
• Megatextures
• Rage
• Hot Coffee
• Indivisible
• Blanka
• American McGee’s Alice
• Let Cloud Strife Pole Dance
• Doki Doki Literature Club Plus trigger warnings
• Grounded’s Arachnophobia mode
• Trypophobia
• Chicory: A Colorful Tale
• Keith Courage in Alpha Zones
• Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu
• The Legendary Axe
• Cross Wiber
• P47
• Ninja Spirit
• Rygar
• Cow Clicker
• WIRED’s piece on Cow Clicker
• XBLIG
• Parkour
• Tapwave Zodiac
• N-Gage
• Servbot
• Lemming
• DeBlob
• Inkling
• Francis York Morgan
• Raz
• Fred Dukes
• Gex
• Bubsy
• Dragon Age II
• Black & White
• Minecraft
• Death Stranding
• Sonic Mania
• No Man’s Sky
• Destiny 2
• Bioshock Infinite
• Inside Out
• Coco
• Slavoj Zizek
• Roger Ebert
• Steak-umm’s Twitter

Recommendations:

Brandon: dedeco VGM DJ, Kino Lorber’s Cool As Ice blu-ray

Ash: Chicory, Kotaku Splitscreen Podcast

Ian: Drink an Americano, play Psychonauts

Edited by Esper Quinn. Original Music by Kurt Feldman.