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Silicon Sasquatch
Hosted by Silicon Sasquatch · EN
An independent podcast covering the cultural significance of games.
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Review: Resident Evil Requiem
Mar 22Tap to summarizeReview: Resident Evil Requiem The Silicon Sasquatch Podcast So we’ve got a ninth Resident Evil now. The ninth entry in just about any series often represents a long-accumulated but little-addressed identity crisis: how do we make this feel meaningful still? There aren’t a lot of success stories to draw upon. Final Fantasy went delving for nostalgia and came up with mere pastiche with its much-beloved, but in my opinion emotionally hollow, ninth entry. Mega Man 9 went all the way back to the visual style and limitations of its 8-bit ancestors, delivering a game that felt authentic but ultimately unnecessary. Dragon Quest IX aimed for some creative online features but wound up delivering another rote Dragon Quest, one that even fans of the series, the people who kinda just — said with love! — want more Dragon Quest, don’t hold in high esteem.With Resident Evil Requiem, Capcom decided to have it both ways: a game for fans of every era of Resident Evil, somehow all wrapped up into a single game. It’s kind of a risky proposition — didn’t they try that with the much-maligned Resident Evil 6? — but this time they delivered a game that, at its best moments, is a truly excellent ride. And at its worst moments? Well, it’s still all right, but it lacks the courage to follow through on its telegraphed intentions and close the book on a bygone era. We’ve got to start with the game’s structure and presentation. Like many games in the Resident Evil series, Requiem starts out quite scary. You’re alone, vulnerable, under-resourced, and in an unfamiliar labyrinth full of untold horrors, and it’s going to take a lot of caution and courage to make it through. By the second half, though, we’ve largely abandoned that sense of powerlessness for a merely creepy action power fantasy. This is by design, and the game communicates this intention to the player through its recommendation about which camera system to use. Before playing, you’re instructed to choose a default camera view — first- or third-person — for the two playable characters, Grace Ashcroft and Leon Kennedy. Grace’s sections are designed for first-person, much like Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and Resident Evil Village; they lean heavily into themes of vulnerability and terror, and they’re best experienced in first-person for maximum impact. Leon’s sections, on the other hand, are more action-themed and far less scary. You can mix and match as you like, but I chose to follow the game’s recommendations: give me horror when you’ve got horror to give, and give me stupid action when that’s what’s on the menu.We’re mostly in Grace’s shoes for the first half. We’re treated to, yes, another mansion to explore, but one that is immaculately designed and populated with a delightfully creepy host of undead creatures to disable or flee from. The pacing is, in my view, nearly perfect: it’s taut, exhilarating, and interspersed with quiet victories and sinking terror in equal measure.The game swaps between player characters frequently in the first half of the game, which allows it to convey even larger tonal shifts to the player than in the series’ earlier games. I remember a palpable relief when I saw a cutscene starring Leon begin to play just after finishing a stressful Grace sequence, knowing I’d get a hit of catharsis while I run-and-gun some zombies down. The inverse also applies: just as my victory lap with Leon comes to an end, I’m thrust back into fresh horrors as the far-less-powerful Grace.For the first half of the game, I think this all works marvelously. My sense was that this game was trying to grapple with the very real challenge of being the ninth entry in a long-running series, one with sky-high expectations placed upon it. The first-person games are critically beloved, but the intense horror of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard was a step beyond anything from prior games, and its hard commitment to a first-person perspective drove some fans away.So now we have a Resident Evil for everyone. Play it all in third-person if you like! It’s up to you! From an accessibility standpoint, I think that’s lovely. From a game design standpoint, however, it becomes apparent that this is a particularly unbalanced experience, even when compared to the rest of the series. <img data-stretch="false" data-image="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/582cd816414fb523e7e035e7/2b39782a-14af-49fa-832b-04f994c3bf24/20260316...
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GOTY 2023: Nick Remembers Some Games
Feb 27, 2024Tap to summarizeA big ol’ N for little ol’ me Listen to this article if you want to As 2022 drew to a close, I was possessed by the spirit of unrealized desires. I set a new goal for myself: I would watch 50 movies in a single year. I’ve always been good at delaying gratification, so much so that I often put off culturally and intellectually enriching activities just because I’m worried I’ll enjoy them too much — that I’ll, god forbid, burn through all the good things before I’m even remotely close to death. It’s a foolish instinct that’s rooted in perfectionism, which in turn is rooted in, well, all kinds of harmful nonsense.Anyway, I achieved my target. In fact, I doubled it. I saw plenty of contemporary movies, and I also delved deep into a wide range of old classics and forgotten gems. I enjoyed my time watching exactly 98% of them — that’s pretty good! And I can now say I’ve properly kickstarted a new habit: I’m goin’ to the movies again, folks.It sounds so, I dunno, painfully normal to say this, but I’ve gotta be honest: setting goals really works. And goals are really important! It’s surprisingly easy to fall prey to distractions and pointless routine in their absence. But when I declare to myself that I’m really gonna do something, and I go through the requisite motions — write it on a piece of paper and tape it to my wall, or tell enough friends that I’ll feel guilty if I don’t follow through, or whatever — more often than not, I achieve what I set out to do.Which leads to my current problem.Fresh off the rejuvenating and enriching results of my film journey, I spent the end of December wondering what worthwhile goals I could set for myself in 2024. I first thought of other media: had I been neglecting books? (A little bit — I only finished 17 books in 2023, barely over half of my goal.) What about music? Yeah, I’m kind of out of the loop these days; I’ll see what I can glean from Stereogum and whatever remains of Bandcamp’s editorial team. But goals for either medium didn’t feel very compelling to me; I’d rather just set an intention and see where that leads me. Okay, so…what about video games?Well, Part 1: I don’t like playing video games very much right nowBut we have to talk about them. So:Here’s a list of pretty much everything I played last year, sorted in alphabetical order. In the interest of brevity and scannability, I’ll be using my own proprietary emoji system to describe these games:🏆 — A great game🙂 — Hey, I had fun!🤠 — Yeehaw! (Cowboy friendly)🌲 — I often thought that I’d rather be outside instead of playing this💔 — A letdown😲 — A big ol’ surprise!🧠 — This one got me to thinkin’📝 — In this game you will take Notes🥲 — Ah, just to feel something once again🚮 — Do betterAnd here’s the list:Alan Wake 2 🏆🙂🌲🧠🥲 Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon 🙂🤠BABBDI 🙂🤠😲Baldur’s Gate 3 🙂💔Castlevania: Rondo of Blood 🏆😲Castlevania: Symphony of the Night 🏆Castlevania: Circle of the Moon 🌲Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance 🤠🌲🚮Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow 🙂Cocoon 🌲🚮Counter-Strike 2Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty 🤠🥲🧠 (I spent some time thinking about this game in more detail here)Diablo IV 🌲💔🚮Final Fantasy VII Remake: Intermission 🙂Final Fantasy XVI 🌲💔🚮 (read my review of this very bad game here)F-Zero 99 🙂😲God of War: Ragnarök 🙂🥲Hi-Fi Rush 💔🚮Humanity 🙂🧠Jusant 🌲💔The Legend of...
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The 15th Anniversarycast
Dec 20, 202302:12:42Tap to summarizeMight be time for a design refresh, methinks. Here we are: 15 years to the day since our first post. In traditional marriage anniversary terms, we’ve celebrated our wood, tin, and now our crystal milestones. And, oh boy, isn’t marriage quite the allegory for a collaborative partnership lasting 1.5 decades? We’ve fought, we’ve triumphed, and we keep coming back for more because we love doing this, and, frankly, love each other. It’s a lucky thing to work on a project with your friends for this long.Five years ago, our very sanguine post highlighted our greatest hits. Since then, not a lot has changed and so very much has changed. This site has experienced some of its longest periods of post drought. Meanwhile, most of our group focused on our family lives: marriages, moves, and, most significantly, children! Yes, we’ve procreated and we’re sorry for that.Let me quote myself from that last anniversary post:Since that first post, we: wrote a book; launched three podcasts; hosted several talented contributors, interviewed some of our favorite game developers; wrestled back control of our WordPress installation from (presumably) Russian hackers; ceased publication not once, not twice, but thrice; and, perhaps most notably, posted nine Game of the Year features comprising hundreds of hours of unpaid work entirely fueled by our love of the medium and a dark desire to yell at each other.Since our 10th anniversary, well, we’ve sweated over another five Game of the Year features, experimented with post formats, podcasted when we could, and over the past two years had quite the renaissance of new content thanks to Nick’s output as he’s fallen back in love with critique. And unlike last time, there’s no grand promise for the future. Which is a great place to be. For once, I’m not worrying about defining what’s next or making pained, hedging bets on whether or not this year will be the last year.If having two children and approaching 40 has cemented anything in me as we celebrate 15 years of Silicon Sasquatch, it’s that this site and its heritage are worth preserving as they are. We intend to keep the lights on for the next 15 years, if only for the incredulity of the experiment, if only for the amazing time capsule we’re creating.And, at the risk of speaking for Nick, Doug, Spencer, and Tyler: I can picture them happily joining me for the 30th Anniversarycast in 2038.Imagine that. The 15th Anniversarycast Silicon Sasquatch
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Review: Final Fantasy XVI
Nov 24, 2023Tap to summarizeThis is the first Final Fantasy where they can say “fuck,” and they’re very proud of that Listen to this article below, including additional commentary on the nature of game criticism from the author. Want to get every podcast and article reading sent straight to your device? Subscribe to the Silicon Sasquatch Podcast on iTunes, Overcast, or your favorite podcast app. Review: Final Fantasy XVI The Silicon Sasquatch Podcast Throughout the 52 hours I spent wringing every ounce of content out of Final Fantasy XVI, I was all but certain I didn’t want to write about it. My reasoning is that the game didn’t surprise, delight, or infuriate me; it didn’t provoke an emotional reaction at all, really. It’s the first game in the series to fail that crucial test. And that probably says everything you need to know, doesn’t it?But I’ve been coming back to this draft over the past few months because I feel I ought to say something. I want to warn readers, to help set the record straight. Final Fantasy XVI coasted right into an 88 review-score average on OpenCritic and an 87 on Metacritic, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that’s a good thing instead of a red flag. (I could go on for a long time about how games that score in the high 80s on these sites are often the games you have to be the most cautious about approaching — in short, they’re often kitchen-sink, triple-A schlock that costs a lot of money, takes no risks, and checks all the right boxes to pass muster among the throngs of half-baked game criticism sites out there — but I’ll save that for another time. Let’s just focus on how they missed the mark with this specific game.)The whole reason I sought out and completed every little scrap of the game’s abundant, dreary, and bland capital-c Content is that I kept hoping that, somewhere in there, I’d finally unearth the game’s beating heart. I was certain that, buried in some dark recess or another, the game’s intact soul was waiting to be excavated, desperate to be witnessed by the series’s most dedicated fans. I regret to say that I emerged empty-handed. For the first time in series history, we received a Final Fantasy game lacking a soul.So, just to set the scene: Final Fantasy XVI is a breakout critical success. As someone who has liked every single other game in the series, many of which also take massive risks and departures from previous entries, I despised it. What happened? The game is brimming with name-drops and references back to previous Final Fantasy games. In a better game, and in smaller quantities, they’d feel like reverential nods to series regulars. Instead, it just feels exploitative. First, just to restate my credentials: I’m thirty-seven years old. Final Fantasy IV helped teach me how to read. I’ve played through every single-player main-series game to completion at least once, and many several times through. I know this series intimately. I care about it.What I love about Final Fantasy — besides the great music, beautiful worlds, richly imagined characters, and barely-disguised goofball spirit — is that it’s constantly reinventing itself. Battle systems get fundamentally re-imagined from game to game; storytelling techniques often vary significantly; themes and core concepts are distinct and often resonant. Having grown up in a world where the media industry started out risk-averse and has only grown increasingly paranoid, Final Fantasy is the rare exception: the one mass-market game series that must reinvent itself.To its credit, Final Fantasy XVI is a major reinvention. It forgoes party-oriented, turn-based combat for real-time control of a single character in what most resembles the “character action” subgenre. It deals extensively with heavy topics like...
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Finding Love in the Landfill: on Cyberpunk 2077's 2.0 update
Nov 9, 2023Tap to summarizeFinding Love in the Landfill: On Cyberpunk 2077's 2.0 Update Silicon Sasquatch There was a moment in Cyberpunk 2077, probably about 20 hours into my first run through the game, where I thought I was playing a triple-A artifact that had dislodged itself in time and arrived on my doorstep years in advance. You might gather from this feeling that I waited to play the game until it had been out for about a year and thoroughly un-fucked itself through countless patches. You’re correct, and that waiting wound up proving quite prudent. I remembered the game I played being mostly pretty good, frequently quite intelligent; occasionally it even rendered me speechless in realizing the dramatic lengths of its ambition. I would have recommended it back then, but I wasn't recommending much of anything to anyone at the time. That was in 2021. Now it's 2023, and I've played through almost the entire game again a second time. So? Would I still recommend it? Cyberpunk 2077 is not the game it launched as. It's been patched so many times now that it's even incremented to a second major version number, complete with an advertising campaign and plenty of incentives designed to woo skeptics and fans back into the fold. All of this was rolled out like a red carpet over a mountain of frayed and wine-stained old rugs just in time for its one expansion, Phantom Liberty, to step out of a Tesla Cybertruck and glitch its merry way down the runway.The Cyberpunk 2077 of 2023 is basically not broken. It's still got plenty of bizarre glitches (stroke-warning-sign lighting effects, with no tangible connection to the current environment, are constantly popping off), half-measures (character progression is better, but a talent tree feels repressive for a game that's otherwise all about a plug-and-play world), and performance compromises (why do cars almost always only show up on one side of the road? At least they're constantly running me the fuck over, firmly grounding me in the authentic SoCal setting) that look weird as hell, but you're not likely to notice them if you're new to this game. So: it's not broken, but it's still an open-world, triple-A game. It’s a beautiful depiction of a disgusting world, a monumental collaborative work of pop culture that's inexorably and perpetually burning itself to the ground. But you'd have to be pretty jaded to not find joy and wonder in watching a controlled burn.It’s mostly fun to play. Running, driving, dashing, air-dashing, dash-double-jump-air-dashing, and shooting/slicing people are your primary verbs, and they roll off the tongue. There’s a story system running under the hood that's always tossing fresh choices your way; you'll quickly realize that most of these are mere window dressing, but every now and then you'll dip your toe into an oil-contaminated puddle and discover it's disguising a seaweed-choked lake of rich narrative complexity. Because it's an open-world game with cars and guns, there are hundreds of opportunities to do reckless shit with both of them. Most of this stuff is not fun to engage with because, at best, it's meaningless and, at worst, it props a mirror up in front of you and exposes the sheer depravity of your actions as a player. Night City is full of all kinds of characters; many are blank caricatures who bark bizarre, Rockstar-adjacent quips at nobody in particular, and a few are fully-voiced, opinionated, autonomous androids you may even grow quite attached to. But the vast majority of the non-people populating this awful city amount to mere obstacles to avoid, lest you mow somebody down in view of the police, which means you've got to spend the next couple minutes playing hide-and-seek with some truly wretched adversary AI.But then there are the NPCs with arrows over their heads, and this is where the depraved, grinning rictus of the game's core design reveals itself. Some arrows are blue, and others are yellow. You are encouraged to kill these people because you'll get items and experience points for it. If you kill the blue ones, you get in trouble because they're the cops and, despite being at best a heartless criminal, your character has no motivation — and indeed, the game offers no real reward — for picking a fight with them. The yellow-arrow folks, however, are fair game, and hunting season never ends. During story missions, you associate yellow-arrow NPCs as enemies to be avoided, quietly dispatched, or brutally killed in a full-on violent assault. But out in the open world, you'll see tons of people with these arrows. Some of them are committing violent crimes when you find them. But the vast majority are not; they're petty thieves, drug users, or just guys being dudes. But the longer you play any game like this, the deeper-entrenched your neural pathways for deriving rewards from a Skinner box become. Yellow arrows equate to free guns, free money, and fast XP. And so you'll likely find yourself, at some point in your playthrough, mindlessly ...
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"An American Illness: Gamergate and the Capitol Riot" — The Silicon Sasquatch Podcast: Episode 63
Jan 14, 202101:05:35Tap to summarizePhoto by Ted Eytan 63 - An American Illness: Gamergate and the Capitol Riot Silicon Sasquatch Download The details of the January 6th, 2021 insurrection attempt and attack on the United States Capitol grow more horrifying each day. Doug and I felt compelled to chat about what happened, both to grapple with the shock and for the sake of posterity.This episode asks a pointed question: Did Gamergate contribute to the riot in Washington D.C.? Were its proponents' online harassment campaigns a precursor to sedition? We also explore white privilege, conservative anger, and systemic racism.Heady stuff for our first numbered podcast in almost three years. Still, we felt it prudent to continue our mission of examining the intersection of games and culture during such uncertain times.Click on the link above or subscribe to the Silicon Sasquatch Podcast on iTunes, Overcast, or Stitcher. Questions for the Squatchcast crew? Send them to questions@siliconsasquatch.com and we’ll answer the best ones on a future episode.Thanks for listening.
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GOTY 2020: The Game of the Year Podcast
Jan 1, 2021Tap to summarizeOur Game of the Year award is the industry’s highest honor.* But how do we make those tough calls and scientifically** determine which games are the best? Listen in and discover why it’s so remarkable that we still speak to each other, much less voluntarily associate on a regular basis.*Not actually the industry’s highest honor. **No science has ever been used in our decisionmaking.Note: Once again, profanity and mild bickering are present. But considering society, where aren’t they present? GOTY 2020: The Game of the Year Awards The Silicon Sasquatch Podcast Don't miss out on our Game of the Year coverage! Check out our full schedule to see what's coming up and follow us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook for instant updates. Please subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher or Overcast for our latest podcasts. You can also subscribe to our RSS feed to get our posts delivered straight to your RSS reader.
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GOTY 2020: The Category Awards Podcast
Dec 31, 2020Tap to summarizeIt’s like the McLaughlin Group, but for video game opinions. Join us for an inside look as we review our categories and decide which games are the best fit for our 10 awards—with an extra-special eleventh award added this year only! Please enjoy our exceptionally long debate session. Or don’t. We won’t hold it against you.Note: Some profanity and mild bickering are present. Also it gets a bit weird toward the end. GOTY 2020: The Category Awards The Silicon Sasquatch Podcast Don't miss out on our Game of the Year coverage! Check out our full schedule to see what's coming up and follow us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook for instant updates. And look out for our massive, several-hour-long podcast! Please subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher or Overcast. You can also subscribe to our RSS feed to get our posts delivered straight to your RSS reader.
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GOTY 2019: The Game of the Decade Podcast
Dec 30, 2019Tap to summarizeGame of the Decade Deliberations Silicon Sasquatch We’re all kinda just stunned we even pulled this off. But yeah, here it is: the complete deliberative process behind our top 20 games of the 2010s. Enjoy! Don't miss out on our Game of the Year coverage! Check out our full schedule to see what's coming up and follow us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook for instant updates. We've also got some GOTY podcasts in the pipeline, so please subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, or Overcast. You can also subscribe to our RSS feed to get our posts delivered straight to your RSS reader.
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GOTY 2019: The Top 10 Games of the Year Podcast
Dec 27, 2019Tap to summarizeGOTY 2019: The Top 10 Games of the Year Silicon Sasquatch Well, here it is: the part where we choose our top 10 games and crown our Game of the Year. Allow us to don our best James Lipton impression and take you…inside the GOTY studio. Note: Once again, profanity and mild bickering are present, but at least we're not jerks. Don't miss out on our Game of the Year coverage! Check out our full schedule to see what's coming up and follow us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook for instant updates. We've also got some GOTY podcasts in the pipeline, so please subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, or Overcast. You can also subscribe to our RSS feed to get our posts delivered straight to your RSS reader.
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