S2 E28: Sucking Down John Romero’s Daikatana
This week we say farewell to John Romero with his last AAA shooter, Daikatana. Last week we talked through its disturbed development, and this time we talked about how, despite Daikatana being one of the most reviled games of all time, it still left us disappointed...
S2 E27: Daikatana’s Mythic Production Woes
This week we begin to wrap up our journey with Id co-founder John Romero with a look at the ill-fated production of his post-Id project Daikatana. Daikatana has been a punchline for the last 23 years, but it wasn't always. There were a few years when it was one of the...
S2 E26: Deus Ex’s Philosophy of Human Agency
This week we continue our retrospective on Deus Ex, the seminal Immersive Sim. While age hasn't been entirely kind to the game's visuals and sounds, we found a surprisingly relevant and meaningful story and clever design to be found. We talk about Deus Ex's...
S2 E25: How Deus Ex Was Made
We're back after a bit of a break with Matt Devil to continue discussing the history of the immersive sim with the quintessential spy action thriller Deus Ex. This episode covers how the game came to be from a spark of an idea while watching the X-files to John Romero...
S2 E24: System Shock Remake With Matt Devil
This week we're joined by special guest Matthew Devil to talk games that have made us cry, Sonic the Hedgehog, the upcoming Mario movie and of course we get around to talking through our thoughts on the System Shock remake demo at some point. That's it for Gameography...
S2 E23: System Shock 2 – How SS2 Was Made
We talk a bit about the punishing difficulty and how that probably stopped many from seeing the quite insane ending. And we finally get to talking about how the game was made by a small team working in symbiosis with the company who made the original System Shock,...
S2 E22: System Shock 2 – The Story of Our Voices
System Shock 2 took players into deep space and placed them in the middle of a politically complex and tense situation. While the player character has amnesia and wakes up to the horror of an alien infestation on their ship, the player knows that this is System Shock...
S2 E21: System Shock 2 – The Horror of Discovery
System Shock 2 saw rookie designer Ken Levine and his new business partners at Irrational Games take a swing at their take on the System Shock universe. System Shock 2 introduced true survival horror elements to the franchise, and concerned you less with hacking AIs...
S2 E20: System Shock: the First Great Immersive Sim
System Shock was an early example of a game that thrust you into a fully realized world, with a backstory, seamless travel between areas and interlocking systems. It could appear almost quaint given that these things are in many ways the standards by which almost all...
S2 E19: System Shock, Dreaming in Cyberspace
Looking Glass Technology did what Id didn't. The plan for their 1994 immersive first-person shooter was on the face of things quite similar to Romero and Hall's vision for Doom: A story driven, action packed, seamless open world adventure through a space station. But...