Sinan and Joe make their triumphant return into 2010, this week accompanied by the equally triumphant Mark Barlet of AbleGamers.com and the AbleGamers Foundation. In more of an interview format than what normally features in regular shows, the pod panel talk about gamers with disabilities, including how Mark’s site caters for said gamers, how informed and involved the industry and press are about accessibility - and where the responsibility for improving involvement may lie - before finally touching on how motion control may change the landscape, for better or worse. All this and plenty of jibes at Sinan’s Britishness in this week’s Big Red Potion. NB: For those who are deaf or hard of hearing, there will be a full transcript of the podcast going up on the Big Red Potion site tomorrow. Thanks to Neemulus for the new UGN jingle, and thanks as always to Derek K Miller for providing the Big Red Potion theme tune.
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Recorded 27th December 2009. Better late than never - eventually salvaged from the depths of screwed up audio feeds and evil Skype gremlins, here is the Big Red Review of 2009! Sinan and Joe are joined for their last show recorded in 2009 by show regulars Jeffrey Matulef, Xantiriad and Eddie Inzauto. The fearsome five talk about their five favourite games of 2009, with a hefty 17 games making up a massive discussion spanning over two hours in this marathon episode. And at the end, the crew stick their neck out and declare the Big Red Potion Game of the Year.
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So much for that rather audacious plan to put up our Game of the Year cast on New Year’s Day…
Sinan here - I’ve been trying to edit the podcast over the last few days, but I’ve realised that - because of some niggles we encountered during the very long recording session coupled with the Skype and Audacity niggles that like to rear their heads after the recording process is done - it’s going to take a lot more time than usual to even salvage this cast let alone edit it into something that works. So I’m pushing the date it will go up on back to Monday 11th - sorry for that. We recommend you go check out some of our excellent friends’ end of year GOTY casts in the meantime - here, here and here.
Hopefully this will be the last delay for a while as Joe and I have agreed on a scheduling change that we hope will ensure that we can get back to getting shows up when they’re meant to go up. We’re preparing an official announcment to go up on the audio feed because not all of our listeners check the site, but I’ll just announce it here. From now on, Big Red Potion will be a biweekly/fortnightly show - instead of releasing a cast each week, we’ll release one every two weeks.
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To celebrate this being the last Big Red Potion of 2009, Sinan and Joe have called upon eleven terrific podcasts and sites to contribute to the biggest Very Important Podcast of the year. The topic: Most Overrated Game of 2009. We asked everyone involved to ignore the best games of the year, to pull out their red pen, and to throw some harsh words at the games that were most undeserving of the praise and hype bestowed upon them in 2009. And everyone duly obliged - and how! There are some fantastic choices, from the predictable to the downright bizarre, but definitely plenty to think about in each person’s vote. If you’re looking for something a bit different from all of the Game of the Year shows out there, this is it.
This grand collaboration was only possible thanks to the efforts and generosity of the fantastic shows and people involved, and they are Gamers With Jobs, Digital Cowboys, The Gamer Scene, Pink & Deadly, Sonic’s Ring, Cheat Code Central, Ninja Fat Pigeons, GamerNode, TheGameReviews, Dangerous Kids and SuperHappyFunTimeShow. Big Red Potion is very proud to be able to showcase the talents of everyone involved, and incredibly grateful to them for letting us do so.
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Pandemic Studios’ swan song, The Saboteur, surprised me in a number of ways. Aside from the puzzling inclusion of a pack-in nudity code (yes, I redeemed it) and a few welcome twists on the well-worn open-world formula, the game’s extremely Irish protagonist, in particular, caught me off guard. Being a man of half-Irish descent, hearing the delightfully thick brogue on main man Sean Devlin made me realize how rare this was in gaming. Sure, I’ve played plenty of distinctly American characters and enough Italians to fill fifty pizzerias, but my Irish and Canadian sides have been depressingly absent from gaming at large. I was also amused to see that Sean covers nearly every Irish stereotype imaginable, as his activities include drinking, racing, flirting, igniting fist fights, and even saying “top o’ the mornin’ to ya” whenever the situation presents itself. Despite his leprechaunish personality, Sean’s attempts at liberating 1940’s Paris from the Nazis are what makes The Saboteur shine, through the game’s fair share of problems can sometimes be more annoying than the Third Reich’s constant meddling.
