Hello, and welcome to The Back Page Video Games Podcast. I’m Samuel Roberts, I’m joined as ever by Matthew Castle. Hello. Matthew, we’re joined by a three-time special guest, Andy Kelly, how’s it going? Hello, very well, thank you. Thanks for having me back. Yeah, it’s a great honor. You’re always very, our listeners very much enjoy your episodes, this is your third one, so great to have you. Andy is formerly of PSM2, PSM3, PC Gamer and The Gamer. And we thought this would be a good time to do another episode with Andy because he’s moving on from games media after 18 years. So we’re going to talk to Andy a bit about his career, and then he’s going to take us through a few game review scores that he feels differently about in retrospect. So it should be a fun one. If anyone remembers our second episode of the podcast, Game Review Schools We Got Wrong, kind of like that, but Andy’s version. So Andy, what’s it like to leave journalism after around two decades? How are you feeling about it? Yeah, it’s really weird because my entire adult life has been spent doing this job. So I know nothing else. I’m fully institutionalized. So it’s going to be a bit of a shock to the system, I think. I don’t think it’s fully sunk in yet. You know, come Wednesday this week, I would no longer be playing a game and thinking, how do I make this into content? Yeah, very different. Yeah, you are a true veteran. Like, it’s almost like you moving on is, feels like a sign of the times in some ways, just because I kind of, I suppose, I don’t know if I thought you would never move on. I thought you would at some point, but it’s still surprising. So what kind of like tweaked it for you at this point? Did you, had you been thinking about moving on? Yeah, well, for a while, I’ve wanted to sort of sidestep more into like the games industry rather than the media. So, I mean, I guess I should say what I’m doing. I’m moving into PR for Devolver Digital, who’s been one of my favorite publishers for a long time. I really, there’s very few publishers I’d want to do that job for. And I just think that I love the whole vibe and the games. They’re very good at curating good games. So that seems like a kind of way into the larger industry. I mean, from working for a company like that, there’s probably other ways to move sideways again into some other part of the industry. But that’s really the main thing. I feel like I’ve kind of exhausted my, I mean, I’ve squeezed everything I can out of writing about games for a living. I mean, 18 years is a long time to do any one thing. So I just feel like it’s time. I don’t want to say it’s time for new challenges like someone on LinkedIn, but it is. Oh, man, LinkedIn. It’s like a whole platform of people putting out those little statements about like, don’t underestimate Gen Zers on ability to market things on TikTok. I don’t know if you get this. Occasionally get sort of, you know, pinged from LinkedIn going, oh, someone’s looking at your account and I think, oh, maybe it’s going to be someone like legit who’s kind of like heard of, you know, read some of my writing or heard the podcast and is now looking to like instantly fast track me to be like a writer at their studio. And it will always be some spod student at a university who’s just looking me up because they listen to the podcast and just wanted to see what my day job was. So I feel very sort of exposed by LinkedIn. So, yeah, Andy, it’s interesting because I think Devolver, of course, like, you know, great publisher. Congratulations on the new role. That’s awesome. I always found the idea of leaving Games Media weirdly tricky. And I always felt like the job fit me like a glove and became like a big part of my identity. I’m sure it has been for you too. And so letting go of it was tough when I left PC Gamer in 2019. Did you ever think about what you do next in previous years? Do you ever have a dream gig that you were kind of waiting for? Yeah, I mean, not really like I’m not much of a planner or really don’t look too far ahead. I’m sort of a roll with the punches, see where the dice fall and other such cliches kind of guy. So I mean, when the the devolver opportunity just kind of appeared and I just felt like, you know, just a sudden, it was almost a sudden on the spot like realization like, oh, yeah, maybe I am a bit bored of writing about games. Maybe I do want to do something else. So I’m quite guilty of like getting into, you know, like settling into something and just coasting and being like, yeah, this is this is nice, you know, but when something lands in my lap like this, I’m like, I get a sort of jolt of like, you know, energy. I’m like, oh, yeah, I should do that. So it was one of those sort of situations. But what makes it less of a big change for me is that the thing I enjoyed the most, especially on PC Gamer is writing about indie games and finding small developers and covering their game and getting a buzz out of seeing them suddenly get a lot of attention out of it. So I figured like this is like, you know, an industrialized version of that for Devolver. It’s, you know, championing cool games by small developers. But now, you know, now in a more formal way with the might of like, you know, a big company like Devolver behind it. So it’s like, in some ways, it’s quite similar to what I’ve done before. But obviously now I can only be nice about Devolver games. It’s more limited in some way. Yeah, I kind of get it though. Like it’s, you know, I work with a few smaller developers in my role and like they are legitimately happy whenever their games are covered by the press. And, you know, your ability to get other people excited about the game is like a huge part of what the job is. And it is pretty creative in that respect. So I think it will click for you. I’ll say the thing I always found is that in the UK, like the avenues for what you do next after games media always seemed a bit a bit more opaque because like in the UK, like you don’t get the same opportunities US journos do where they would just find themselves in like writing jobs at major studios or whatever. That just seems to happen quite often in the US, whereas in the UK, I don’t feel like I’ve seen many examples of that. So it’s a lot harder to kind of figure out what the next thing is, you know. I don’t know if you have any thoughts on that, Andy, if that’s something you never thought about like, oh, you know, having a writing job would be cool. But I don’t know. Just something I thought about is from a media background. Yeah, there’s definitely less of that in the UK, I guess, because the industry is smaller. And if you go to like an industry event in, you know, New York or LA, there’s probably 50 times more people there than there is something in London. But yeah, I mean, yeah, there’s other avenues of industry type words related jobs. I’d be interested in looking at some point. I thought about doing narrative games writing stuff, but I follow quite a lot of narrative designers and writers on Twitter. And, you know, they make it sound like quite hard and like a bit of a battle against. It’s not just writing a story and some people make levels based on it. It’s very like a, you know, you can spend ages aching over some big plot point that you love. And then because the level wasn’t working or the pacing wasn’t right, it just gets taken out. I hear so many stories about games writers having stuff just cut out and slashed out of a game. That sounds quite harrowing. So I’ve been put off that by following lots of writers on social media. Yeah. You also have to be like a maker immersed in that scene, I think, to get the breaks as well, where it’s like, yeah, I’ve been, I’ve wrote like, I wrote like 15 Twine games this year. And I’m like, well, that’s, that’s not the headspace I’m in. So, yeah. You really earned your place on the table, you know. I wrote one Twine game and abandoned it halfway through because I hated my own prose. So that was good. I was going to say actually about that thing, about the kind of like, what happens next. I don’t know if either of you had this, but, you know, when, when I first started, maybe a couple of years into the job, it did sort of dawn on me that there was like no one who was 40 doing the job. And I was thinking, oh, that’s weird. Like, wonder what happens to everyone. That’s, you know, there’s lots of people my age and maybe some sort of early 30s people were like editors or whatever. It’s like, where do you go? Especially as the mags started sort of disappearing. And I remember it being actually quite shocking to me when Greener, Mark Green, who was like my first editor on NGamer, were like when he left games to go and work on, like he did like sort of running websites for various museums. Like he actually ended up at, I think, the National Rail Museum in York doing their web stuff. And I remember thinking like, well, that’s what’s that about? You know, you’ve got this huge skill set and all this knowledge and you don’t get to use it. Like, I can’t imagine myself ever getting to that position, but it does happen. I think you kind of get to, you know, maybe the 10 year mark or maybe the 15 year mark or in your case 18 year mark. And there is a sort of like a, oh, yeah, there’s like a natural end to this. Like, I can’t think of any major exceptions to that rule in definitely in the UK. Yeah, that’s accurate. I think this seems to be like a cut off point where people feel the urge to move. But I mean, I’m, it’s hard to, like I said, I don’t really look ahead too much. So it’s hard to say, like, if this opportunity didn’t land in my lap, then would I still be, you know, writing features about games? And when I hit 40, I don’t know, maybe not. Maybe there is just a natural point where people in this line of work are just nudged elsewhere. I got the same thing. It was kind of like tied to the fact that when I was on PC Gamer as Editor-in-Chief, I was there thinking, well, I think there’s another website that I personally like as much as PC Gamer. So it’s not like there will seem like a natural stepping stone and there’s less media around now than there was before, Matthew, which like you mentioned, that’s kind of a factor. And so, yeah, I don’t know, like the, I could keep doing it, but I just don’t see what the end point is. And when I left PC Gamer and came back on TechRadar, I was like, well, this, you know, it was, it was really a really nice team to work with and a massive website. But it was definitely a sense of like, I can’t really see a way forward in media anymore. I just let that, the past have kind of disappeared. Is that sort of what happened to you as well, Matthew? I think I’d probably still be like grasping on if I had a viable way, like, you know, I’ve had a few potential routes back into print hilariously, which I really did sort of um and are over. And I was thinking that I was like, I just can’t, I just can’t do that to myself anymore. You know, I just have to move on. And, and, you know, it’s just that bit’s done. And, you know, I can find a different way to keep like one foot in that world, you know, through this podcast and the occasional bit of freelance. And that actually keeps me like keeps me happy. I might feel differently without the pod admittedly. But yeah, it’s more just I just think it’s mad that there are all these people who I consider like legends of journalism, both who came before us and, you know, who I’m lucky enough to call my peers who are now not doing that job. And it’s like, you know, OK, this is a ridiculous metaphor. But it’s like, you know, Mr. Incredible in The Incredibles when he’s just doing his office job. And you’re like, this guy, this person can do all this other stuff that you don’t know about. Like, it really tickles me. Like, you know, Mark Green’s wedding and like listening to his colleagues talk about him and their perception of him. And it’s like, that’s so different. Like, this guy is so fucking funny at writing about Mario. That’s like his superpower. But like that is that is not what you do in the civil service. You know, it’s just sort of wild that people who did do it once are now just hidden away. They’re like sort of sleeper cells dotted all over the world doing other jobs. And it just, I don’t know, it tickles me. Yeah, I was curious, Andy, like, I suppose as well, you’ve seen a lot of waves of peers sort of go by, right? Like, the world around you sort of shifts a little bit. Do you have any kind of like reflections on that, I guess? How strange it is to see generations of writers and editors kind of move on around you? Yeah, I mean, the natural trajectory for someone in games media is to, you know, staff writer, section editor, editor, editor-in-chief, whatever. But I always actively resisted rising above the sort of features editor writer level because I’ve never had any interest in doing admin or managing people or dealing with ads or dealing with, you know, the suits upstairs. So I sort of froze myself cryogenically frozen as a features writer, which I don’t actually regret at all because I’ve seen, you know, I watched a lot of writers who I worked alongside becoming editors and sort of lamenting their, you know, lack of time to be creative and write stuff as much or at all. And that’s the reason I did the job. It’s never to be in charge of anything. I’ve got no interest in running a games magazine. Some people, you know, built for that, whereas I just want to just want to write. So that that made me feel a bit odd than that. I was kind of there. You know, I’d hit that ceiling and I was just, you know, stuck there whilst people around me were ascending and, you know, flying out of the building like the ghosts and Ghostbusters when they open the containment unit. So that was a bit odd. But occasionally I felt like, should I be, you know, some kind of careerist guy? Should I be trying to climb the ladder? But I look back on my career in games shows and I don’t regret, you know, refusing that kind of path. It’s weird because like the skills that make you good at that job, like the writing about games and being a good presence in a magazine, none of those skills speak to being able to like manage a magazine. The idea that suddenly like a writer magically becomes like a good manager. Like I was not good at the management side of running a magazine. I was fine at the ideas and like corralling people and, you know, helping the kind of, you know, creative vision or whatever, you know, wanky thing you want to say. But in terms of the nuts and bolts, you know, I’m terrible at management games, you know, the idea. I should have looked at that and gone, maybe I shouldn’t be in charge of like the fate of flesh and blood humans. I mean, not to put you on the spot, Matthew, but I don’t think you’ve paid me for the podcast this month still. I think the money still sat in your account, which I’m not saying that tells the whole story, but does it tell part of the story? Yeah, well, that’s exactly it. I mean, luckily, I wasn’t in charge of like staff pay on anything. That was a futures deal. But yeah, I mean, yes, you literally give me a number. And the hilarious thing about that is I paid everyone else and I just didn’t do it for you at the same time. I have no idea why I got distracted, probably buy some snacks and that’s it. Yeah, I think it is true. I think Andy, you made all the right moves, I think, because it means that like when you leave Games Media, people will remember you for, you know, specific pieces you’ve written. Whereas I think that, like you say, the longer people go on, the more it kind of like blurs out your role as a writer and you’re writing less. And so people don’t associate you with your work as much. Andy, I was curious though, like, I do enjoy that, the gamer, I can click on your name and see a whole list of articles and you will, there’s like some games I consider key Andy Kelly texts, I guess. Are you sure you’ve truly got LA. Noire, Alan Wake and Max Payne features out of your system? There are other games too, but like, yeah, are you going to miss covering like your favorite games in that much detail? Yeah, I think, I mean, those games I have written about a hell of a lot for so many outlets. I think, I think I’ve well and truly bled that stone dry. Like, there’s nothing else I can say about LA. Noire, Max Payne, Else Heartbreak, Alien Isolation, European Truck Simulator 2. Yeah, all that stuff. But yeah, I feel like I’ve well and truly got everything out of my system. Every thought I’ve ever had about any game I’m interested in, I’ve put on the internet somewhere. Like, I’ve really, there’s no unfinished business here. I’m not going to come back to haunt game journalism. I’m done. I’ve finished. I’ve written it all over in every word and thunk every thought. I was curious, actually, because you do seem like you are a bit of a slight Nintendo head on the side. Like, do you ever kind of feel like you missed out on writing about Nintendo much? Were you ever interested in writing about Nintendo more than you did? Yeah, definitely. I mean, I started with Nintendo, you know, SNES, SNES N64 trajectory. But for some reason, yeah, never. I did a little bit of freelance for NGamer, O&M. But yeah, for some reason, Nintendo, I was never an, you know, in terms of writing, I was never a Nintendo guy. But on The Gamer, I’ve been writing a lot more about it purely because I’m playing the Switch. You know, Switch is like my main console at the moment. I love it. So yeah, I’ve had a bit of a like, I’ve written more about Nintendo in the last year than I have in my whole career, weirdly enough, just by virtue of sitting there and thinking, what should I write about? Oh, yeah, I was playing that on the Switch. It’s all right about that. You got 24 pages of bylines on The Gamer. So definitely recommend people go and dig out your page so you’ve been writing about nonstop Andy Kelly features, which is cool. This has been quite a tough year for media generally. It’s always a little thankless, I think, working in games media, but it’s tougher to break into and there aren’t as many gigs around. More people seem to want to be influencers, I guess younger people. What do you think will happen in games media in the next 10 years or so? Do you have any kind of like feelings about where you think it should go? That sort of thing? Yeah, I’m quite bad at sort of predicting the way things go. I mean, when I was on working in print, I could never have foreseen, you know, the rise of Twitch and YouTube as the main platforms. Like that completely blindsided me and to even possibly imagine where people speaking and writing and having thoughts and critiquing games is going to go. I guess, I mean, YouTube, long form YouTube essays are like the hotness right now. And I do, I say watch a lot of them. I basically treat them like podcasts. So if someone’s done a four hour video about the Resident Evil series, I’ll stick it on while I’m doing other stuff and do it in chunks. And so maybe that’s more of a thing like, yeah, like long form audio, I feel like, slash video seems to be like a way for people. I mean, it really is just people taking what PC Gamer used to excel at doing long form essays on video games and just making it into a video slash podcasters. You know, it’s nothing new. It’s just been presented in a way that more maybe fits more easily into your existence. Like, you know, you don’t have to stop and pick up a magazine or scroll down a scroll along article on an iPad or a laptop, you can just have it on while you’re doing other stuff. I think that’s that’s probably feels like the future to me, like, yeah, games media as a as a way of like fitting around your life rather than being something you stop and do. Yeah, I can kind of see that. I think I’m watching a little more of that stuff, too, and I would have said five years ago that I would never watch that stuff. So, yeah, habits, I think even if you’re a little bit older, can definitely morph around that. I wish I could make it, but it’s so fucking intensive making videos. That’s the thing. Like, I feel like this is a good space for games media people to go into. But yeah, to get to the point where it’s kind of profitable or kind of worth doing, that’s the sort of struggle, I guess. Video is really I did a video at PC Gamer for about maybe just less than a year. They basically said, do you want to do some videos alongside your writing work? And I used to love premiere and editing and doing video stuff. But when it became a job and I had deadlines and stuff like that, I really lost the love for it. And I sort of hate making videos and that’s like made me fully fall out of love with the medium. So yeah, like people who do those, you know, intricately constructed multi-hour video essays, I’ve got, you know, massive respect for them because that’s really, you know, quite tiresome making videos. And premiere is a god-awful piece of software that crashes all the time. And yeah, so I don’t think I’ll be embracing that medium again anytime soon. Did you just, did you make a video about about Facing Worlds and Unreal Tournament when you were on PC Gamer, Andy? I think I came across that the other day when I was just looking for stuff. Yeah, yeah, I did. Yeah. It was basically just my kind of features just done in video form. And I was never fully comfortable with it, though, like I was trying to when I was doing the voiceovers, I was trying to do like kind of I was trying to be like the Mark Cousins of video games. You know, like YouTube’s all shouty and noisy. And I was trying to be like a bit more low key and a bit more softly spoken and try to sort of carve a bit of a niche that way. But I think I just a lot of the comments just said this guy sounds depressed or whatever. The comments on your voice are just the worst because they just cut cuts at your core. I always used to get it because I was trying to sort of when I was doing the video for RPS, I was really paranoid that it sounded very, very low energy. So I’d sort of do a more high energy version of my voice, which sounded very strained. And because of that, all the comments would always say, this guy sounds like he’s crying. Why is this guy crying while he’s doing his script? Because I don’t know what element it was that drew out my voice, but oh, man. It’s so hard to find like a voice without either sound like people go too far the other way and sound like a top gear presenter, you know, that like really presentory, overenthusiastic voice and then you can sense of neocomatous like I did, I was just trying to find it. I just really like that kind of narration a bit like, you know, like a Chris Morris monologue in Blue Jam or something like low and like slow delivery and kind of relaxing type thing. But I thought that would that could have been a thing on YouTube, but I guess not. Who’s the video essay Noah someone something? Yeah, he’s great Noah Caldwell Gervais. He’s like my favorite essay guy. Yeah, I quite like his stuff though, like given the effort I put into sort of matching my footage and like really trying to make my video sound more polished, it always sort of infuriates me a little bit that like because his script is like so lo-fi, there’s just like errors in it. You know, like he just records himself stumbling over words and then goes back and starts sentences again, doesn’t even cut it out. Like that’s just so confident in your material. It’s just random as well, isn’t it? It’s just an unassociated pile of… I mean, I watch his videos, like podcasts. They’re some of my favorite, like do the washing up with something on my headphones type videos. There’s one on Mad Max. It’s especially good. I don’t know if you don’t know Noah Caldwell, Gervais’s work, watch his video on Avalanche’s Mad Max game. It’s really great and made me… I watched it and then I went and played it for 40 hours and finished it. Like it really is just a great bit of just writing slash speaking. Well, there you go Matthew. That’s how we could succeed in video is just like fucking talk and talk and talk and then just stick 40 minutes of capture in the background. We can make that work I reckon. My video by comparison, it was so try hard. Like all these naff like visual gags where I’d be like trying to freeze frame it to draw certain things out of the script. So just, it’s just not what people wanted. I never, I never understood video. Well you always want to cut out the erms, your erms from these podcasts and I don’t think they’re a big deal. I think keeping those in wouldn’t upset anyone. You know, we wouldn’t get like bad reviews on iTunes saying, this guy won’t stop going fucking earn halfway through a sentence. It’s not going to happen. I won’t worry about it. But yeah, I get you. So on a on a cheerier note, Andy, what’s your memory of starting in games media? I think I did ask you a bit about this the first time you came on last year. But what was Bath like at the time? And what was it like doing it so young? Yeah, I mean, I look back on that as like a really great time. I mean, I was a reader of PSM2 magazine. I used to go down to the newsagent by every month. And because they had DVDs with them, they basically speak over game footage, probably eight, nine years before that became a thing on YouTube. And they did like DVD commentaries on on games. And by listening to those, I really got to know the team’s personalities. And I guess, yeah, PSM was really ahead of the curve in terms of making the writers the kind of forefront of it. And, and then I got the job and then I went to the office in Bath and obviously, I was sat with all these voices and faces I knew from the magazine, you know, and, and my actual 3D space, which is really, you know, quite a quite a buzz. But yeah, I mean, it was back then, like, the office was tiny and it was like above a Thai restaurant in the middle of Bath and it had like a really small scrappy, kind of felt quite independent and sort of not very corporate. Like it was just small offices of small close knit teams who knew each other incredibly well, knew each other’s sense of humor. Every magazine had a distinctive personality. Like when you went into the edge office, it was always dark with jazz softly playing in the background, like some kind of, you know, like these, like people would joke about edges probably like that, but it really was. And yeah, it just felt like it really, it just felt like I imagined it would, because it came across in the, in those old games mags that these were, you know, tight teams of people with strong personalities. And yeah, that was great being a part of that. I mean, I, I just left school and from like living in, you know, quite a rough part of Glasgow and had no idea of the real world. I thought I’d been living with my parents and suddenly I was on my own in Bath and, you know, I’d got a room in someone’s house and it was just like a total baptism of fire in terms of life. So even with the job, which getting my head around that, I also had to figure out how to like live, how to do washing and feed myself and not die. It was quite intense, but it was, it was amazing though. Like yeah, PSM2 was such a good mag back then, like really funny and full of daft ideas. And it was great, like actually getting to come up with those daft ideas and do the DVD commentaries as well, which was, you know, a lot of them are on YouTube and it’s really weird listening back to the earliest ones because I’ve got full on thick, mumbly Glaswegian accent, which I quickly had to kind of sharpen up a bit working for a large media company. So it’s weird hearing this little confused little Scottish boy wildly out of his element, but it was amazing. Like it was just, you know, it was having a job at that age, but not only that, but a dream job already. It felt like a bit of a cheat, like, oh, shouldn’t I have had to, you know, strike a struggle a bit for this? I’m just here doing what I always wanted to do. Yeah, it’s mad. Weirdly, my day job now are in those offices. So, you know, I never worked in them. This is Seven Dulles, right? Yeah. Was it like a magazine per route? Like, was it structured like that or were you mixed in with other people? I think some magazines, there was two to a room, but we were lucky enough, we had a whole room to ourselves. And there was a few side desks that freelancers would occasionally pop in a bit. It was basically our whole room. And there was a, there was like a wall. The edge was through the wall, but it was behind a bookcase. So it was like a sort of hidden, you know, if you moved a few magazines, you’d see into edge. So it was like, so it was like a bit of a fake, you know, divider, but it was basically our own room. And we got told off a few times for them by playing music too loud. Again, another cliche of what you imagine edge to be like. But I love, I love the idea of like edge existing in like a Narnia realm that you have to go through a bookcase to reach. Or like the Batcave kind of thing. Like, you know, move these two magazines and the shelf itself will come out and yeah. Except Batman doesn’t come out and tell you to stop playing FIFA so loudly at lunch. I’m curious actually, Andy, like was there one thing that kind of won you the role? Was it like a writing sample you sent in or was it a writing sample you did during the interview? Like what do you reckon landed it for you when you were that young? Years before I got the job, I was writing reviews a lot at home just for fun and I basically sent some to PSM and never heard anything back. It probably just ended up in a pile of mail or someone looked at it and went, oh, is this not a sending in, you know, unsolicited reviews or whatever? And you know, nothing happened. But then they did a, they had like quite a, Dan Griffiths, the editor at the time, had a really clever idea because they wanted to hire a new staff writer. But instead of just putting a job ad out, like, you know, into the usual places, they advertised in the magazine and they like framed it as like PSM2 idol, you know, like a pop idol thing. And so the idea was that it was just, you know, you still had to send in samples, a CV, do an interview. It was like just a normal job ad. They just did it in a way that it might attract people who, you know, readers of the magazine. So I applied to that and sent this, I actually sent the same reviews in because I, you know, I was happy with them. And this time they, they seen them and I got invited for an interview, but which was quite surreal because I went to Bath, you know, I got, I got like a really overnight, like mega bus or something from Glasgow to Bath. I was absolutely tired and bewildered. Went for the interview and I remember like, I really vividly remember being in this meeting room with Dan Dawkins and Dan Griffiths, who was the Ed and Depp head at the time and doing the interview and just being like, I must have looked like, I don’t know, you know, just this little glass switching kid, like totally, I was all, I remember being really red in the face from just the stress and just confusion of like being out of my comfort zone in such a crazy way. And yeah, I mean, I apparently, I thought I did all right, but I was, I learned later that my interview was a disaster. Really? Right. Yeah, like apparently I was just like, you know, I just was just a sort of muttering, you know, probably looking, you know, not looking him in the eye and staring at the carpet. I just, you know, but they like the writing samples. But, but one was I actually didn’t win PSM2 Idol, Nathan Irvin, who you both know, won PSM2 Idol. And I thought, well, you know, that, you know, you know, good for him, but that sucks. But then they decided to, that shows you this was pre recession. They decided on a whim just to hire another staff writer. And so I was the, you know, the runner up. And so I got the job. And I think like Nathan was really confident and really good at like, apparently he like bossed his interview and he was really great at talking to PRs and like being the kind of face of the magazine. Whereas I was the little gremlin in the corner, you know, doing the words. Like Nathan was a great writer. So I’m not diminishing, you know, Nathan as a writer, but I feel like that, I don’t think that anyone really said that, but that’s the vibe I got. Like I was, yeah, that’s why I got the gig. They’re like, let’s hire a freak who can do Dynasty Warrior reviews. Yeah, so that was a bit of an odd way into the industry, but I think I stopped reading PSM for a bit. I remember my mate tapping on my window and passing the issue through and going, you should apply to this. So I guess I got him to thank for all this. Is there any other job interview where like the person who’s interviewing you is probably someone who’s in your world is sort of famous to you? I mean, it’s such a crazy thing, the idea of like being interviewed by people who you grew up reading. Yeah, that increased the pressure as well. Yeah, it’s a nightmare. Anyone freaks out. I was always slightly miffed and this is just because I’m an absolute egomaniac. When I did interviews for staff writers, it was so obvious they weren’t familiar at all with like anything I’d ever done. Like I’ve never seen more people look as unimpressed with me. And it’s like great. Like when I was there, I was like, shit, it’s greener. I can’t believe it. I remember like Geraint and Jez walked by like when I was sitting in the future entrance waiting to go into the interview and I was just, I almost went to meltdown at just the sight of those two going past me, let alone being stuck in a room with one of them for half an hour actually having to talk to them. It’s just a wild, wild thing. I remember they asked me stuff like, they were asking me really like basic stuff like what’s the difference between a publisher and a developer? I remember them asking me that and I remember me instantly replying and feeling very good about myself for knowing that like they were trying to suss out like if I was, you know, if I was actually, you know, really into this stuff or if I was just angling for a job, you know. I get you. Like, it’s funny actually, because your story about sending in writing samples hearing nothing then sending in the same samples, I did almost something exactly like that where I sent my samples to play to the senior staff writer, which is exactly who you don’t send writing samples to. And like, I didn’t and I didn’t hear anything back. And then I got hired to replace that same senior staff writer. I kind of like the idea that he had to clear out his desk and somewhere in there was my printed out copy of a Zone of the Enders 2 review that would later go on to get me the job replacing him. Like there’s something kind of kind of beautiful about that. But yeah, that age is the, yeah, the, the, when we were doing this, like my, my sample reviews were for SSX Tricky and Metal Gear Solid 2 and sort of games of that era, like 2001, 1999. Yeah, PSM2 Idol itself dates it as a concept. The big early noughties energy to that. So yeah, Andy, it’s like a such a long time period, but what are your personal highlights of working games media? There are a few that come to mind. I mean, a lot of the things I look back on as posos was getting to interview people, I mean, devs and stuff who I was like a genuine, you know, proper fan of. So getting to sit and talk to Tim Schafer about Full Throttle, which is one of the first games I really loved. Getting to talk to Harvey Smith for almost two hours about the first level of Deus Ex. Getting to talk to Romero about Doom for an hour as well, just reminiscing about him making Doom and, you know, speaking to Ken Levine for, you know, 45 minutes about Bioshock Infinite before that came out. There’s not many opportunities for, you know, to do that in this life. So I feel really, you know, privileged to have gotten that opportunity. I mean, all the traveling as well, like, you know, I went from never leaving Glasgow to suddenly going to Japan, the States, you know, all over Europe, Scandinavia and visiting game developers as well. Like, I guess that’s sort of seeded my current interest in like, how games are made and the people who make them. And which has led to, you know, like this new career shift and want to be more involved in that. I remember when the PS3 first came in, it was really exciting being there for like a new console coming in. And because of, I guess, like diminishing returns on tech, all the consoles after that didn’t feel quite as exciting. But going from PS2 to PS3, even though the launch games were a bit of a, I remember a sort of feeling of being underwhelmed when we fired up Resistance for all of man and went, is that it? It was still cool to be like, there’s actually video footage on YouTube of the moment when the first PS3 came into the PSM office. And if you type, I don’t know what you’d search for it, like type PSM3, you know, PS3 arrives in office or something, you’ll see a video of all, as you’re looking very young and boxing it. So I’m glad like stuff like that’s been, you know, saved for posterity. But yeah, that was really, really fun. I think when like the other consoles came in, there wasn’t merely as much of a sort of ripple of excitement. But when the PS3 came in, there was people poking their heads around the corner and, you know, squeezing into the games cage to have a look at it. And yeah, that was, that was, that was fun. I mean, it’s hard to, 18 years has been a lot of moments there. But yeah, it’s been basically all good. E! Fanfest, Andy. You’re gonna miss that as a journalist? Oh, definitely. Yeah, I’m glad I got one more in before I left. I went to last year’s, which was its return after COVID. And I almost feel like I’m just like, I’m going to end up missing it. I feel like I might just go as a partner and then try and get into the press room and just pretend I’m still a journalist. I feel like you’re basically like a patron saint of E! You’re kind of part of the furniture there a little bit. So yeah, but I did always regret missing out on that as a journalist because everyone was like, even if you know nothing about E! Online, you’ve got to go to this. It’s basically Games Journal Christmas. Yeah, was it you called it Games Journal summer break, spring break? Yeah, that was it. Yeah, that’s it. That was good. So, Andy, that’s it’s great to hear your sort of memories of working games media. So I’m curious how your Alien Isolation book is coming along because last time you came on, you were in the throes of getting it funded. Now it is funded, which is awesome. So I’m assuming you get to keep working on this in the background while you’re doing your new job at Devolver. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it’s funded now. It gets 122% funded. So the sort of pledges are still rolling in, which are at this point, I know, pre-orders for the book. Yeah. I mean, the writing is ongoing. I’m just having to juggle it with everything else, but I’ve set myself end of Jan to get it finished. So as soon as it’s finished, it will be sent to the publisher and then they’ll do all the hard stuff, the printing, proofing, binding, shipping and all that. So it’ll be out of my hands. But yeah, it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s been really fun. I’ve been playing, replaying the whole game all the way through and taking, you know, filled up the bulk of a notebook with just a billion observations that I’m now having a hammer into some readable copy. But yeah, it’s, it’s going well. I just can’t wait to actually get, you know, an early copy of my hand and go, I manifested this. I turned my obsession with Alien Isolation into something tangible. Yeah, I think we both backed it, didn’t we Matthew? So I’m excited to read it. Should be good. Yeah, really cool. But I’m excited to see that kind of come to fruition. So Andy, last up in this session, before we get to some game review scores chat is, what have you been playing lately? And now you’re free of games media. Do you think it will change your playing habits at all? I mean, I’m sure you both know that when you, when you write about games for a living, meaning it’s impossible to just play something on its own terms, you’re constantly analysing it or thinking, oh, that was a cool moment, I should write something about that. So I’m looking forward to not doing that and just, you know, playing games on their own terms just purely for my own enjoyment and for myself. Right now I’m playing Persona 5 on the Switch OLED, which is just a perfect game for that handheld format because there’s so much clicking through text and not doing much between dungeons that is perfect to have it in a handheld format. I just got an Xbox Series X, so I’ve been doing the game past thing of downloading everything on there, Halo Infinite, et cetera, Forza Horizon 5, because I just got a new 120 hertz OLED TV and so I’m playing a lot of Xbox stuff and blisteringly high frame rates and super crisp visuals. I just reviewed Pentament for The Gamer, which has turned out to be my last ever review as a journalist and that was a great way to go out because it’s probably my game of the year. I really love Pentament. But yeah, that’s my main thing at the moment. I’m playing, I’ve been playing a bit of Session actually, the skateboarding sim. It’s left early access and is really good. But I’ve also been playing a lot of the Xbox PS, the Xbox 360 version of the original skate on backwards compatibility. But I feel a bit guilty spending 500 quid on a Series X and just playing an old game from 2007 on it. But it’s still so, it’s still great. The original skate really holds up like amazingly well. Yeah, that’s all we do with this podcast is buy next gen consoles and play old games on them. First thing I install with shadows the damn day. Complete misappropriation of the hardware. Yeah, I think it does change your habits fundamentally. I was curious, have you played Signalis yet or Signalis? Not sure how you pronounce that. That seems like your sort of thing. Yeah, so many people have messaged me saying you’ve got to play Signalis and I’ve got it on my Switch, but I’ve not played it yet. So I think that’s going to be a Christmas sat on the couch, you know, wiling with the the festive hours type game. Yeah, I looked on how long to be and it’s eight hours long and I’m like, yep, I can accommodate that. That’s fine. I just bought a DS Lite actually on eBay because I really felt the pang to play Hotel Dusk, which I’m sure has been spoken about on this podcast many times. So I’ll be playing Hotel Dusk over the brick as well. Oh, what a Christmas game. Yeah, definitely. I will mourn the articles that won’t happen now as a result of that playthrough, Andy. That would have been sublime to read your takes on that. Okay, great. Well, we’ll take a quick break then and we’ll come back with some game review scores chat. Welcome back to the podcast. So, for this episode, we asked Andy if he’d be up for revisiting some old review scores to see if he’d change anything. Andy, I’m really curious how you felt about this exercise and what that process was like for you, revisiting a bunch of old scores. Yeah, well, I’m kind of an obsessive data holder, and so I’ve still got a folder full of Word docs from when I was in Bath working on PSM2, you know, of all reviews. Oh, wow. And I went through a lot of them, and like nothing really jumped out as like a score that I really regretted. But as I got, you know, as I went forward in years, there was a few things that, you know, stuck out. So none of these are like massive. I gave this game 10%, and I wish I’d given it 95%. But there’s a few where maybe I’ve, you know, might have missed the mark slightly, or, you know, should have gone higher slash lower. So, yeah, so most of them are quite, some of them are quite recent, but yeah. We, when we did it, I think it was more like, I think like Matthew, one of yours was Red Steel, wasn’t it? The inevitably and then like. Yeah, but that’s like an infamous howler. Yeah, and then also the, that’s when the Twilight, no, the Skyward Sword 10 came up as well. But then you stood by that, didn’t you? Yeah, sort of. I keep seeing, it’s funny actually, there’s a lot of Edge this month has kicked up a lot of forum back and forth in various places, because they kicked Sonic’s face in violently and gave God of War Ragnarok its lowest score. And it, you know, it triggers the, it triggers the same old kind of people bringing up certain things. And I just love that a lot of people are like, if they’re making the argument that Edge is shit, the reviews they bring up are inevitably one that I’ve written. I have like single-handedly ruined Edge’s good name with my bad scores. Yeah, it’s funny because I think on the episode we did, I also picked Assassin’s Creed as one that I scored too high, the original Assassin’s Creed because I did think it was kind of duff and stuff like that. So I’m not expecting Andy for it to be like, you know, outrageous, but it was more an excuse to get you to audit your library of reviews really and pull out some memories. So yeah, you’ve got eight of them in total, right? So do you want to go into the first one? Yeah, it’s weird. I’ll just add that it’s weird with scores that it’s something people really fixate on and we’ll talk about for 50 pages on a forum. But when I put a number on the end of a review, I don’t really think about it for more than a few seconds. I just write the copy and instinctively just go, reads like a 79 and writes it down. I don’t know, maybe some other writers more ache over those scores, but I never have. And just like that, the studio’s Metacritic bonus is doomed. So yeah, so fairly recent. I’ve lost all sense of time. I don’t know if this game was recent or not, but you know, SOMA, Frictional’s first non-amnesia horror game. Have either of you played that? Yeah, yeah, it’s like it wasn’t for me, but I admired the craft of it, you know, that’s kind of where I stood on it. Yeah. Well, I give it 80 for PC Gamer, which seems reasonable for what it is, but I feel that I really, really feel I should have stuck a nine on it, because ever since I reviewed it, which might have been 2018, maybe. I think it was early in that game. Yeah, maybe even earlier. I think it might have been like 16 or 15, something like that. Ever since then, I think about it all the time, and I’m always referencing it, and I’m always, you know, watching clips on YouTube and I’ve replayed it a few times since. And like, I think any game that makes that much impact on you. And I think the story as well is like probably one of the best stories that a video game’s ever told. And one of my favorite sci-fi stories, you know, of any medium, like really, really the ending really gets under your skin and really, you know, freaked me out a little bit. The sort of existential nature of the ending and stuff. So, yeah, I gave it 80, but I actually slapped a 90 on it. Yeah, maybe it just left you in such a place of like dread and confusion. That you just weren’t in a headspace where you could give this game the score it deserved. Yeah. Yeah, so I could sort of see why it appeals to you as well, Andy. It’s like that, you know, that very strange underwater, kind of like almost alive feeling kind of machinery around you. And then these strange creatures that pursue you. I mean, it seems a little bit, a tiny bit alien isolation. Oh, yeah, very, yeah. Superficially, you know? Yeah. So I could see why it’s very you. I’ve had things like that, though, where you review something and then you just keep thinking about it. And I do think some games take a while to grow in your affections or maybe like the initial shock of playing them. Once that gets out the way, you can start appreciating, like my, you know, very fervent support of Hotel Dusk and Last Window, for example. You know, to hear us speak about it on the podcast, you’d think, you know, I gave those games nines and I didn’t. You know, I gave them eight out of ten and I consider them some of my favorite games of all time now. And that was because I think they were they were like growers or they were like some nostalgic mood pieces. And I almost had to develop a nostalgia for them to sort of unlock what they were really about for me, maybe. Yeah. I’m somewhere in Hotel Dusk. Very different vibe, I should say. One of those places I would love to hang out, one of them not so much. Yeah, I think there’s a lot like this. There’s like probably the biggest sort of flip flopping I would ever do with a score was between an eight and a nine or between like a high 80s and a low 90s. Like that, that’s just like something where picking a low 80s or an eight always felt like playing it safe. And I was always at the mindset of you probably should play it safe because I came from the era of like play giving San Andreas 99% and being like, well, it’s obviously not even just for the zero missions in that game and like the driving test. That was definitely not. That was Dan Dawkins on I was there when he settled on that score for San Andreas. We’d given Vice City 97 and he thought, well, it’s at least two points better than Vice City. Yeah. And it just creates massive headaches when GTA 4 comes out. And you’re like, well, what do we give this now? And then everyone gave it lower and it’s like, okay, fine. So yeah, that’s a good one, Soma. What’s your next one, Andy? So I was surprised at myself for this one when I looked back at what I reviewed Assassin’s Creed 3. That was when I was on the editorial studio with Matthew back in the day. And I gave it 80. And I really don’t see what happened in my brain to make me think it was an 80, because I think it is truly one of the worst AAA video games I’ve ever made. Like 40, I’d give it now. Like it’s a dreadful, dreadful game. Like it’s, it’s like, I remember the, like it’s, it’s so full of, they basically, they took away all this, all the agency from Assassin’s Creed. Assassin’s Creed 1 and 2 had some, they were still linear and constricted in some ways, but there was an element of like, you could, you know, take a different route, take a different approach to an assassination. 3 really went full on linear scripted, stiflingly linear, instant fail states if you wandered through the wrong bush for half a second. And I remember the director of the game, you know, coming out and saying, that’s just how we wanted it to be, you know, you know, it was by design like that. I think there’s some nice scenery in it and the environments are quite nice, the time period is interesting, some, you know, quite fun story moments. But as a game, like it’s so even all the animations, the climbing, the fighting is all really labeled. You feel like you’re just triggering canned animations by pressing buttons, like there’s no, it doesn’t feel organic. I just, I just really hate that game. And I played it, I put it recently when they did a, a fairly recently when they did like a remaster of it and it just reinforced that. So I don’t know why I gave it 80. I really don’t understand that. I don’t know what was, what was, maybe it was just the excitement of a new Assassin’s Creed, I don’t know. Yeah. Maybe it was, and it could have just been sort of like the joyful buzz of working in the games hub, you know. It was such a good vibes that you could, you know, I imagine you were having a good time in the day because we tended to have a good time in the games hub. Yeah, that could have easily colored it. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. The other thing is that game was like, it was not, it’s not like it felt next-gen or anything, but it felt pretty advanced visually compared to other games at the time. Like I remember, like the morning mist when you go through the forest in those games, even on 360 being like, oh, this is pretty amazing. Snow effects as well, like crunchy snow that left trails in it and all that stuff. Yeah. Yeah, like 80 is high, but I can sort of see why there are things to sort of like about it, even in retrospect, also made that game made the terrible error of letting you play as a much better main character, and it’s for opening chapter before putting you in the, putting you in the shoes of a much more boring character. Connor, the ultimate tough hang. He was pretty bad. Okay, cool. That’s a good one, Andy. I’m really curious if Max Payne 3 is going to come up, actually. If it doesn’t, I’ll ask you a little bit later about it, because we replayed that lately. So what’s your third one? This is a more recent one. It’s the first review I did for The Gamer last year. It’s 12 minutes. You ever replay that? Oh, yeah. Oh, I’m aware of the controversies around it and what happens in the plot. That’s all I know about it. Well, it’s unrelated to that, but I give it its five-star ratings on The Gamer, which took a bit of getting used to having worked for percentage-based outlets for years. But I give it three out of five, which in hindsight is incredibly generous. I think it’s a deeply bad video game, and I should have given it one star. I think I was caught up in the fact that Willem Dafoe’s in it, and I love him. And his presence as the antagonist maybe distracted me from the fact that I think it’s just a horribly clunky, full of itself, loves the smell of its own farts, because it’s got a Hollywood cast. Just the time loop thing is interesting, but it’s so incredibly clunky and labored and the sluggish transitions between if you fail a loop, you have to go through all these same repeated long animations again and again. And it’s just a really, yeah, I mean, three is generous, I should have given that a one. I love the idea of just being blinded by your excitement for Willem Dafoe. But it’s still only to the tune of Three Stars. I mean, he’s great in it, but they got Daisy Ridley and James McAvoy. James McAvoy has got a great, lovely Scottish accent. They’ve got him playing an American and Daisy Ridley as well. Like, why? Why do they have to be American? I don’t know, just everything about it rubs me up the wrong way. Yeah, that was a strange choice. Yeah, I feel like the phrase loves the smell of its own fart should be used in reviews more. That feels like something that only comes up when you’re sort of doing a podcast about something. But like, yeah, not any of the games I do PR on, but you know, like other games, that’ll be fine. Yeah, good one. Matthew, were you a fan of 12 Minutes? Did you play this one? Yeah, I was really excited for it because it had, you know, not a detective element, but a mystery element and, you know, like time loop stories. And I was really intrigued by how it was going to spin out this like one location, you know, the idea of like a thriller set across three rooms. You’re like, wow, I can’t believe, you know, I can’t wait to see how they do it. And actually, it’s just not very interesting at all, really. And you just find yourself replaying the same old kind of crappy sequences again and again, just to try something, you know, arbitrary to see if something different happens. And the end of the story, where it actually goes is just garbage. I don’t know if I’d give it one star, I might throw it two. But it’s, yeah, I was definitely excited for it and it just didn’t really land for me at all. Five stars is a hard scale to go to after, like, doing 90s. Like, sorry, 100, like, point of 100, you know, like for, what, like, nine years, something like that. So, yeah. It’s more nuanced. I feel like five star, you can, giving a five star isn’t the same as giving a ten. Like, it’s easier to get five stars. It feels a little bit more throwaway to me. You know, I’m just sort of like, you know, three star, you know, like a three star film, you would go and see. So like a three star game, you’re like, yeah, it’s fine. Yeah, you’ll have a good time with it. And four stars, you’re like, yeah, probably definitely consider this. And five stars, like, yeah, why not? Just absolutely. This is great. But it’s not like the difference between a four and a five. Just, I don’t know, doesn’t feel there’s enough of a gulf there to kind of express a kind of jump to Masterpiece. So all kinds of shit gets five. VGC score out of five, and I find it really difficult. Like, I had no idea where to put Splatoon at all, because I was like, yeah, it’s just a great Splatoon game. That feels like three stars. And everyone lost their fucking minds because Metacritic’s like, we gave it a 60. And I didn’t give it a 60. I gave it three stars. Those are those are very different scores. Metacritic. But, you know, what can you do? A five star isn’t 100 percent. It just isn’t like, anyway, whatever. Yeah. Okay, cool. So I think we’re in your fourth one, Andy. So what’s your next one? So I reviewed Disco Elysium for PC Gamer. And I gave it 92, which is incredibly high. But this might have been talked about before on this podcast, maybe when Phil Savage was on. But PC Gamer never gives more than 96 percent. It never has, I think, for at least the UK side. And 96 is like, Phil gave Kerbal Space Program 96. It just says this is one of the best games you can play on PC, full stop. And I should have given that to Disco Elysium, because again, that’s another game like Soma that I look back on, and I’ve been thinking about ever since. And I follow a lot of accounts on Twitter that post quotes from it. And every time one of them comes up, I go, that’s a great video game. So, you know, I only give it 92%, but I should have given it the symbolic 96. This is the best shit possible. Yeah, I think the 96 was used for like, I think maybe Kerbal was the only time it was used while I was there. And then it was the score that Half-Life got, for example. So like, it’s definitely powerful symbolism to it. Have they given any big scores the last couple of years? Like higher than 92? Did Norco get a really high score? Yeah, Norco did, yeah. Yeah, that’s meant to be like legit, isn’t it? Oh yeah, absolutely. But there’s like legit and then there’s, you know, I have confidence this is like an all-timer. And definitely like, yeah, I don’t know, Disco Elysium definitely for that, like, I would say for like, like the PC Gamer audience feels like this is going to be extremely your shit. I’m really confident you’re going to think this is a masterpiece. Yeah. Oh yeah, definitely. I think, yeah, I only gave like a few nineties of my time on Gamer, but I think there were always games that had that kind of, you know, sense of being like the kind of game that a PC Gamer reader would really appreciate. I gave her a story 90 percent and I have no regrets there. I think that was a really interesting, very PC Gamer type game. Yeah. Yeah. I think you were like one of the first to review her story as well, Andy. You were like early on the San Barlo train, if I recall. Ninety-three, I think you gave to Alien Isolation as well. So yeah, you were pretty sparing. So I always had to try and make sure that you got some of the big reviews. Yeah. And it’s also why to make sure that some of our freelancers didn’t break the review scores by giving them like 95 percent to like, I don’t know, fucking bass fishing 2022 or something. That never happened, but just an exaggeration. Yeah. OK, cool. So what’s your fifth one, Andy? So yeah, I mean, I was going to throw one of them was just me jokingly throwing Alien Isolation and saying I should have given that 96 as well. But that’s just in my ridiculous headcanon. Ninety-three is probably about right. So I think we gave it a game of the year at the time, didn’t we? Yeah, like 2014. Yeah, that was good. I suppose like that was a weird one, though, in the sense that we were like still much higher than everyone else. So it felt like it, right? Like we went to bat for it, but not everyone else did. That was kind of strange. But yeah, yeah, that was that was quite shocking, actually, the score split on that one, you know, where it didn’t get like it was very US slash UK divide, I think, with schools. I think, yeah, because the word in the office, because, you know, you people were reviewing it at the same time and you started hearing like the scores coming out of the UK and you were like, you know, yeah, I would say we gave it a 9. And, you know, I’m thinking like, is this going to be this? And so I kind of sort of sniffed around to see what other people were doing. You were like, oh, yeah, OK, this is this is going to be really legit. And yeah, I was amazed. It got like, you know, four or five from a couple of places. It’s like, what? What happened then? Crazy. You’re a PR now. You have to be nice to do this. What’s the next one, Andy? So yeah, this is another one for PC Gamer. And it’s one that I kind of it’s more of a personal regret. And so I reviewed the original Pillars of Eternity, which is one of my favorite RPGs. I gave it 91 or something. And, you know, I stand by that. Then I reviewed the second game, Dead Pills of Eternity 2, Deadfire. And I gave it 88, which is like a very good score, you know, for, I mean, Obsidian games seem to be like high 80s. They’re like the high 80s studio, I think. Yeah. Which is not, you know, it’s not faint praise or about kind of compliment. They just, you know, that’s still a high score, but I gave it 88. And I just feel like apparently Deadfire like underperformed sales wise. And, you know, what’s a bit of a dud for them, which really has, you know, I wrote an article recently saying how much that annoyed me. And I think Josh Sawyer, who was like the creative director of that game, you know, retweeted it and seemed to appreciate that someone out there was going to bat for it. So I wish I’d just get it from her personal thing. You know, 88 is probably about right for what, for the fact that it’s still a great game, but it doesn’t, it does a lot of what the first one already did. So there’s not that newness or that. So I wish I’d just given it a 90 just to like give, you know, the meta score a boost and just hopefully, you know, help maybe sell a few more copies because it’s a crying shame that something as good as Pillars 2, which is beautifully written, massive sweeping nautical seafaring RPG, where you sort of sail between islands and get into amazing adventures and stuff. The fact that that was apparently a dud for Obsidian has always frustrated me because it’s a great game. So if I’d stuck a few more percentage points on there, I might have, you know, helped alleviate that a bit. You leave journalism with the man who killed Deadfire. Do you think, Andy, as well, that there was a big genre renaissance that happened with some of these 90s PC genres that kind of died out at a certain point and people just stopped appreciating those things? Is that what happened to Deadfire, do you think? Or was it just they’d had one massive long RPG and kind of got out of their systems the first time? What do you reckon the reason was there? Yeah, I think the fact that it looked, because they’ve purposefully tried to match the aesthetic of those old Infinity Engine late 90s games, you know, the pre-rendered backgrounds are done in the same style. So at a glance, it probably looked less flashy and new as Divinity, which was very much taking the crown for the CRPG isometric type game. So there’s probably an element of it looked old fashioned. The fact that it’s a sequel and people probably thought, well, I didn’t play, I don’t have 80 hours to play the first Pillars of Eternity, so I won’t bother with the second one. Maybe that, like maybe they should have just called it Pillars of Eternity Deadfire and not put a two on it. This probably, I think a lot of things conspired against it. But I’d say to anyone who likes deep, reactive, well written RPGs with cool settings and like those kind of quests that start off like a simple task and spiral into something a lot more complex, which is like a very witcher kind of quest design just to play Pillars too, because it’s got all of that. What’s the big prison island that you did that breakdown of? Yeah, that’s great. That’s Fort Deadlight, which is like a, yeah, I interviewed the guy who designed that and it’s kind of like a, it’s almost like a Hitman level. You’re sort of trapped on this this fort, a pirate fort in the middle of the ocean. There’s no way off it and you’re trapped in it and you’ve got to kill the leader, the pirate leader. And he’s obviously surrounded by his entire, every pirate, you know, now do well and his army is hanging around him. So you’ve got to, you can do sort of Hitman-y, you know, set a rig, a chandelier fall on his head and all that sort of get him drunk and push him off a ledge. So it’s like a, yeah, and that’s just, it could easily be a whole, if someone did an indie game that was just Fort Deadlight and it was different ways to kill this pirate lord, it’d do really well, but it’s just one quest out of 30 amazing quests. So it’s worth playing just for that. Did you get a chance to chat to Josh Sawyer about Pentament, Andy, before, before you, before leaving the role, or did you, did that not come up as an opportunity? Yeah, yeah, did I, before the first wave of previews, Gamescom previews, when I, I just emailed the, Obsidian directly, the head of comms and said, can I talk to Josh about it? Just cause, you know, I wanted to, you know, shine a bit of a spotlight on it because it was an interesting game, but I wouldn’t, we’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a self-serving element of, I just want to talk to Josh, so I really like him. So yeah, that was, that was good. Okay, cool. So yeah, what’s the second to last one? Resident Evil 3 remake, which was fairly recently, I gave 58. It should, another one I should have given way lower. I think it was too kind to that, way too kind. That’s got a bit of a reaction. Interesting. I think it’s because we’ve got some people on our Discord who really like it. And I got to say, like, I think when it’s a bit more, I played it quite a long time after I played Resident Evil 2 remake. And so as something to blast through in a weekend, it wasn’t overtly offensive. I’m really curious to hear what your take is on why this is disappointing. Is this as a fan of the original or it versus the 2 remake? But like, what are you kind of, what disappoints you about it? Well, I think the one, I had a few issues, but one was that the first encounter with the nemesis is great. Like it has a, you know, a sense of being a dynamic kind of presence appearing at the worst possible time. And you have to react to it. And it felt really tense and scary. But after that, I thought that was going to be the whole game. It was going to be you versus this AI, you know, this nemesis with cool, interesting AI. But really after that encounter, it’s just a load of boss fights, scripted boss fights. And then this, the game just seems to descend into a lot of quite ropey action set pieces. And they even kind of removed some of the reactivity of the zombies. Like I loved in the two remake, like shooting a leg off and watching them slump to the ground or an arm drop off and topple down some stairs. Whereas three seem to take all the reactivity out of the zombies. I think maybe as a result of there being more of them, because of the city setting and maybe the engine couldn’t handle having all these, you know, reactive zombie bodies. So it just felt like a really big step back in a lot of ways. Um, too much, too much shooting. Like there’s that bit in the hospital where you’re just like, you know, it’s like a siege and you’re just shooting millions of zombies, um, with a machine gun. I don’t know. I just felt like it really, it’s quite a hollow experience. Like the presentation initially fooled me into thinking it was, you know, something a bit more akin to the Resi 2 remake, which I loved. I think I might have given that 90 something for PC Gamer, but yeah, really, really disappointed me that Resi 3 remake. And I thought it was like very short and didn’t, yeah, I felt like 50. It was a bit, a bit much. I’d probably drop it 10 points and give it 48. No, like that’s a good, that’s a good explanation. I think it, it’s like an apples to apples comparison. It is like, it’s worse in so many ways. Like, I also think it’s got kind of like a bit of a kind of like, sort of almost cone of disappointment element to it where it starts. Like, I really loved the intro in that apartment where you’re playing as Jill. I think it’s in first person briefly. And then you get the sense that everything’s a bit fucked up outside. And then she looks in the mirror and it becomes, it just sets a kind of spooky tone that it doesn’t really follow through on. And then when you’re going through the city streets, I think it looks, you know, as nice as the Resident Evil 2 remake does, in terms of bringing that setting to life. But then, yeah, the hospital is a bit more like, oh, it’s another one of these fucking the hunters or whatever they are just jumping out of you and you wasting a load of ammo to take it down. It’s not it’s not that scary. And it goes on for ages. So, yeah, I kind of get it. It does feel like there is a bit of a reassessment of it, though. I definitely see, like, a few people championing this after the fact. That’s why when you originally said it, I was like, is he going to say lower or higher? Because some people have returned to it by, like, I must admit, whenever I hear someone championing Resident Evil 3 remake as being, like, better than the 2 remake, it always has that slight air of, like, Alien 3 is the secret best alien. Where I’m like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know you’re talking to me. Yeah, as I said it, I was like, this is a terrible metaphor for this particular audience. Well, I love Alien 3, but I would never claim it to be the secret best alien. The original Alien is the best. Yeah. Don’t be too mean about Alien 3. Yeah. No, I’m probably just making the three connection and I’m very lazy like that. I might have to actually rewatch that on the new TV in blistering 4K. I can really see those bold sweaty men’s heads and those incredible detail. Yeah, I can really see Julian Glover’s crags like in unprecedented detail. Yeah, that’s good. I’m curious, Andy, has this dimmed your enthusiasm for the Resi 4 remake at all? Where are you at with that one? I’ve got no enthusiasm for that because I love Resi 4 and I don’t feel like we can add anything to it. I don’t think it’s like such an art. I really love the art style of Resi 4. I feel like more polygons and glistening sweat, you know, shaders won’t make it any better. I don’t know why it exists really, but I will play it and I bet it looks beautiful, but it’s just that a remake, I don’t think needs to exist. I don’t think any of the remakes have necessarily made any particular stretch of any of the games like better. Like some of them have kind of captured the spirit of them, but they’ve definitely made some of the sections worse. And my fear is like, like I thought Resident Evil 2 remake was like front loaded with like the very best stuff. And I thought the second half of it wasn’t quite as strong. And, you know, they’ve shown off the village siege from 4, which looks really shiny and very kind of kinetic and exciting. But I do have like a real fondness for like all of Resident Evil 4. And I’d be sad if they’ve like taken an axe to like the any of the castle stuff. That’s based on nothing at all. But I feel like they did streamline a little bit in 2, and I wouldn’t want them to do the same here. I think the other thing there is like, there’s like in theory, just is triple the amount of assets to make for Resident Evil 4 remakes than there is for Resident Evil 2 remake. Because it’s just, it’s just such a lot going on in that second half of the game that I think people forget about. So you do get the castle, but then you get to the regenerators and like that island. And then, yeah, it just, it just, it’s like there’s loads and loads of stuff for them to make. And it’s like, are you going to make all of this stuff? It’s quite a tall order. So yeah, I guess we’ll see. Okay, what’s your last one, Andy? So I gave another PC Gamer one. These are all PC Gamer ones, basically. I gave Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture 69. And that’s another one like SOMER, I feel like I was, I should have maybe, you know, nudged up by another 10 points because it’s another one that lingers in my mind quite a lot. And I think the presentation and the environment design is like really top tier, incredible stuff like that, that, that town and the surroundings and the country pubs and the caravan park and all that. It’s just, it’s just an incredible bit of, you know, world building and atmosphere. And if the story is again really haunting and like, I don’t think I’d replay it purely for the, there’s a scene in the caravan park where you’re in like a school hall and you hear like the sort of echoing voices of all these kids that were like put on a play to try and like, you know, distract them from the fact that the world’s ending and you sort of hear the echoes of that. I just found it really, really harrowing and unpleasant. So I probably won’t play again because of that. But again, I feel like 69 was probably a bit harsh on it. I think and functionally, it’s quite a, it’s just a, you know, you just slowly walk around a village, ghosts. It’s not a very fun game to play. So maybe that’s what coloured the score. But I feel like in hindsight, I should have been a bit kinder to it. It may be also arrived when there was a tiny bit of walking some fatigue. Like, I think it’s like it’s slightly later on in that genre’s lifespan is before Edith Finch comes out, of course, which is like the, you know, kind of like the last word on that genre in a lot of ways. And not to say that no one else should make any. But do you think that’s does anything in that, Andy, that maybe we’re just not as bothered by that point? Yeah, I think it I mean, walking some has been kind of is not as much of a derogatory term at the moment. But maybe when that came out, it was yet to become a way of just describing a game about walking around, being told a story. And the fact that it’s so incredibly slow, like there was a button you could hold to like walk slightly faster. Like why even have that button? It was like you went from a slow shuffle to a stroll. Yeah, I thought that isn’t a good. It’s not a good game. That’s not a game. But just that world building in that, the melancholy tone of it all just really got under my skin. And I do think about it quite a lot. Yeah, I think it succeeds on its own terms as a bit of world building personally, like even if the story I didn’t totally click with, I don’t really understand what was going on, to be honest. But like the just as like a place that I hadn’t seen that was underrepresented in games generally, like the British countryside was kind of up there. Matthew, sorry to say something. I was just going to say, yeah, it was so fucking slow. It’s not a very useful take. It was so slow that I could see buildings that I was meant to explore and I thought, can I really be asked to walk over there? Because I’ll have to walk back and I just don’t know if I can bring myself, which is kind of the opposite of how you should be feeling about that world. I thought it was a real drag, this game, personally, and that really overshadowed it for me. 69 too high for you, then? Yeah, I would have gone lower. I think it’s quite funny that this ended up with the nice score of all the different games. Although I’m pretty sure I used 69 a few times as well. So yeah, I think it was also like a pretty just out of nowhere PC port of a PS4 game. So I can see why we weren’t massively into it. This did also lead to that very good feature though, where Phil reviewed the pub in it, having worked in a pub. That was good. Yeah, good feature. Great soundtrack as well. Yeah, very good. So that was your last one, right? Yeah, that’s it. I was going to ask you a bit about Max Payne 3 actually. Like, had you ever, because I know you gave that a slightly lower score than some other outlets. Is that right? Because I just remember the shitty email you got from that guy, which I think you talked about before a few times. But have you ever revisited it and changed your mind about it? We played the PC version a few months ago and were pretty blown away by the difference between mouse and keyboard versus a pad, for example. Yeah, well, the amusing thing about that email where I got a lot of abuse thrown at me is that I gave it 86%. That was a good score. Yeah, I liked it. Oh, I thought you gave it like crazy low. No, no, that’s why that email was so funny because he really went, you know, yeah, yeah, off the rails based on a high score. Like I really actually really liked it. And I did revisit it maybe like three years ago. And I think it’s just a brilliant, like one of the best kind of cover based linear shooters because Rockstar just took that format of a cover based run through corridor shooting people just threw all the money in the world at it. And it really shows like the lavishness and all the explosive particle effects and Max’s jacket wrinkling when he runs and all that. That’s just like a big expensive movie. I love it. I can’t believe it. Yeah, I’m glad to hear it. I’m sorry for misrepresenting you. Death threat over 86. That’s ridiculous. That’s why you got to leave Games Media eventually. Just the people, the readers, you have to stop interacting with them at a certain point and get on with your life. Well, did you know I emailed that guy back 10 years later? Yeah, 10 years later, I emailed him and sent him a screen grab. I’m going, just wondering how you felt about this. And he said, oh, sorry, man, I was an annoying little kid back then. So it’s got a happy ending. Are you best mates now? Yeah, he’s my best man. Oh, that’s amazing. It’ll be funny if you email back in like 10 more years and went, no, actually, I changed my mind, Max Payne 3 is shit. Okay, good. All right. So yeah, Andy, I’m very best of luck in your next role. And cheers for coming on and talking about your games media history. I’m sure if you ever do have any more takes in you that you want to sort of launder for content, we’ll be glad to have you back. So where can people find you on social media? Yeah, just on Twitter at Ultra Billion. All my stuff is there, including a link to my Alien Isolation book. If you’re into that game and you want a whole book about it, then you can pre-order it. You’re mastered on. Did you give any of the other ones a go, Andy? I was on a high for a bit, but it’s the slowest app ever made. Also, it’s apparently ridded with security flaws. So I’ll just stick with Twitter while the boat’s still floating. Same, brother. Matthew, where can people find you on social media? At MrBazzill UnderscorePesto. I’m Samuel W. Roberts. The podcast is Back Page Pod on Twitter. patreon.com/backpagepod if you’d like the two additional podcasts a month. We’ll be back next week with a new episode. Goodbye. Goodbye.