So Very Wrong About Games
A podcast about all manner of hobby games by Mike Walker and Mark Bigney. Bad games don't go easy on you, so we don't go easy on them. Thorough analysis via reviews, news, and discussion of topics in gaming. We take context seriously, we value your time, and we're not into hype. Just because games are fun doesn't mean we can't take them seriously, and just because we take them seriously doesn't mean we can't have fun.
151
#230: Mosaic: A Story of Civilization
We encourage elaborate deception in this week's episode. Go on designers, up your game. While we can't accept anything from you in terms of gifts or donations, you can totally fool us. Stack yourselves three deep in a trenchcoat! Pretend to be...
67 min
152
#229: Efficiency Euros
Fatal Fury 3's subtitle was Road to the Final Victory, ironic given that there were then four more Fatal Fury titles (the first's subtitle was The King of Fighters, which is its own huge delightful kettle of fish). While Fatal Fury Special (the actual...
55 min
153
#228: It's a Wonderful World/Kingdom
Not every game needs to be four huge boxes full of other boxes and plastic. Some can be delightfully simple games... with boxes that are too big due to crowdfunding. Other games could be underappreciated Reiner Knizia classics brought to a new...
62 min
154
#227: Done with CMON?
I met a gamer from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of plastic
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor...
70 min
155
#226: Space Station Phoenix
The Smart Car was truly out-of-the-box thinking. "Why do passenger cars all have to be the way they are?" asked some clever group of designers, and designed the minimalistic teensy Smart Car. Of course, the challenges posed by manufacturing the little...
72 min
156
#225: Carnegie
There was a time you could just stroll in a big box store in the United States and just buy a miniatures skirmish game that was actually pretty good. Sure, it didn't have analog movement or anything, but it used true line of sight and had amazing...
58 min
157
#224: Does the Industry Demand Too Much?
Times are bad. Children no longer listen to their elders and everyone is running a Kickstarter. When I started this hobby I had no idea I would get a crash course in international shipping and logistics. Back in the day you might have had a friend in...
73 min
158
#223: Stroganov
Much talk of animals this week, what with wombats and mass animal harvesting in Stroganov. Mark's experience was that despite covering many hot-button issues in his medical ethics classes, the one that invariably produced the most voluble emotional...
60 min
159
#222: Fumbling towards a New Normal
We celebrate the release of a palindrome episode with the glorious news of the return of SHUX, the Shut Up & Sit Down Expo. Perhaps more relevantly, SVWAG are invited guests! Both Mark and Walker will be in Vancouver from September 30th to October...
64 min
160
#221: Sakura Arms
It's a weird little thematic disconnect when you're not sure who or what your avatar in-game is. Perhaps we have swallowed corporate personhood so fully that we can easily accept playing as a corporation but balk a little at an amorphous group of...
67 min
161
#220: Dice Realms
Enjoy the works of Thomas Lehmann while you can! Despite the lack of player interaction of Dice Realms, Mr. Lehmann has violated local, provincial, and federal law by not supplying a solo mode. International treaty has also been flouted by the absence...
65 min
162
#219: Guards of Atlantis II
Mark had to reign himself in considerably this week, what with the song temptations of the Talking Heads followed by his favourite torch song teased by Welcome to the Moon. He also tried to workshop a Gourds of Atlantis joke, but responses were--to...
64 min
163
#218: Golem
The dam has burst, and the flow of large player-count games rushes without signs of abating. We are willing to be sufficiently foolhardy to gather in larger groups, so the demand for 6+ player games has skyrocketed; and with it, the chance to return...
53 min
164
#217: Let's Get on the Same Page
Walker yearns for a universal grammar, a sort of iconograhic Esperanto. That is a bridge too far for Mark, but they nonetheless find common ground on certain time terms and certain graphical conventions. They may be alone, of course, but they would...
69 min
165
#216: Not Applicable Bravo
After a purgatorial thirteen months, Mark will be released from his Cain-like wanderings and allowed to repatriate to Kingston where he will get to be home. He figures that if Immanuel Kant got to be world famous before the age of global...
54 min
166
#215: David Thompson
Multi-Deck System Games! Canadian content! Kevin Bacon! So many digressions in an episode packed with so much culture it couldn't even fit in one of Vin Diesel's muscle shirts. We do, however, focus on games long enough to rhetorically ask--with...
85 min
167
#214: Perseverance: Castaway Chronicles
On Mark's drive across Canada (the first time), he stopped in Drumheller, Alberta for some dinosaur tourism. It has a truly impressive nodosaur specimen. The nodosaur is a close relative of the ankylosaur, a key difference being the former's lack of a...
81 min
168
#213: Omnibus Questions Charlie Bravo
We received a number of questions of a more personal nature which we have decided not to address. This is only partially out of a sense of privacy. Rather, we are firmly of the editorial position that the show is best when we focus on games, rather...
67 min
169
#212: Omnibus Questions Charlie Alpha
Inquiring minds demand to know, and we, your humble servants, must perforce answer. Mark resists the urge to elaborate on Kant and Macross! Walker resists the siren call of nineties hip hop! Such feats of iron will are the least of what our curious...
78 min
170
#211: Hidden Trackable Information
I wanna be where the patients are
I wanna see, wanna see 'em coughin'
Buildin' your wings, you don't get too far
Clients are required for billing, charging
Up where they sneeze, up where they shudder
Up where they stay all day just to suffer...
77 min
171
#210: El Grande
Preparation is important. We very carefully do our advance research here at SVWAG, but occasionally mild errors do creep in. For this week, Mark studiously crafted notes and observations on such issues as four octave vocal ranges, Nickelodeon...
80 min
172
#209: End Conditions
A tragedy of consuming media or goods is that sometimes, regardless of how diligent you are, you cannot keep up with new releases. The creators you love might keep putting out new products, and even a casual enthusiast of a given medium might be...
73 min
173
#208: Agricola
Yes, we are but slaves to the new releases, which is why we are reviewing a fifteen-year-old game. "But that's impossible!" you reply, "No one was alive back then!" Records are scant, but there is a rich oral tradition that people have been playing...
62 min
174
#207: Miniatures
Kids in the Hall reviewing Great Western Trail:
"What's the point of what we do?"
"Sorry, I don't follow you."
"Well, I mean, we travel 250,000 light years across the universe, abduct cows, probe them, and release them."
"Yeah, and?"
"Well,...
68 min
175
#206: Not Applicable
Let us not, as the saying goes, hold the perfect in opposition to the good. We here at SVWAG always encourage the lowering of standards, which the hosts tend to do by their very presences--dragging down the average of any group of which they are a...
57 min