The Ready Up Podcast S06E15 – Sweet Little Lies

Welcome to our new currency podcast (that’s the first lie). We introduce our very special guest Leon Cox from the Cane and Rinse Podcast, a podcast dedicated to critically analysing games old and new.

Check out Cane and Rinse’s continuing efforts to cover all the games at caneandrinse.com, and follow them on Twitter @caneandrinse. If you like what they do, head on over to their Patreon to show your support. You can also find the episodes with Susan as a guest: Chibi-Robo and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Or follow Leon @ratsoalbion

What have you been playing?

  • Leon has been back on Puyo Puyo Tetris, since it finally made its way over to the West. Dean approves of jazzing up Tetris, like in Tricky Towers.
  • Leon’s also been keeping up with his daily Rogue Like runs in the form of Spelunky and Binding of Isaac. Leon and Dean find out they are at odds on the issue of procedural generation.
  • Leon’s started playing through the Witcher trilogy right from the start, in preparation for their efforts to cover the series on Cane and Rinse this season. Videogames are, after all, defined by Sisyphean tasks.
  • Leon’s been a busy boy as he’s also been playing Perfect Dark for the show. Somehow we get onto the origins of games and what a successful rip off artist Nolan Bushnell was, and also how dependent the industry is on plagiarism. “Good artists borrow, great artists steal,” as Picasso once said.

  • Both games Dean has been playing are rehashes in different ways. First up he continues his nostalgic dive into the back catalogue of Lucas Arts by jumping into Day of the Tentacle Remastered, which he likes way better than Full Throttle.
  • The other game is Prey, which is a massive love letter to Bioshock, one of Dean’s favourite games, and is reengaging his enthusiasm for videogames with the way it plays with the tropes of games and moves things forward post Bioshock. In fact it’s so good it’s made him reassess exactly what he likes the most in videogames.
  • Susan’s also been reinforcing her interest in a specific game genre: the visual novel. She recently played the FMV narrative game Late Shift on stream, which for better or worse is definitely more movie than game.
  • Susan’s also been playing Porn? Oh wait Pawn… An anime adventure murder mystery set in a high school. Maybe Porn would have been more acceptable after all…

Guest Spotlight

It’s time to talk about Leon about Cane and Rinse, rigorous schedules, imaginary beefs, the importance of critical distance and avoiding hyperbole, subjectivity of taste, ludological minutiae and one humungous spreadsheet!

Theme of the Week: Sweet video game lies

It’s time for theme of the week, which is about deceitful games. In the words of Fleetwood Mac: “Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies!” Discussions of Heavy Rain, Bioshock, Outrun, Godus, Braid, Sega’s Blast Processing, Red Dead Redemption, E3 spin and questioning how much freedom a player really has.

Two Truths, One Lie

After what seems like one enormous segue it’s time for two truths one lie, where we really put Susan’s dedication to Pokémon to the test.

Thanks for listening to the podcast! Do us a solid and leave a rating and review if you enjoy the show! Subscribe using iTunes or our Podcast RSS Feed. Any feedback? Tweet us @readyup.

Ready Up Podcast theme music courtesy of Tommy Tallarico


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