Video game narratives have so much potential. Through this interactive medium, we are often able to forge our own version of a story with the power of player choice. But despite so many games providing us with options, we are often left creating not the story we want, but the one that fits in line with predetermined binary extremes.

The moment a game rewards you with good or evil points, you start to decide which of the two moralities you want to base all future decisions on. This is because we have been trained to assume that there are far greater benefits from leaning to one side than finding a happy middle ground. Sadly, this assumption is usually correct.

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The music intensifies as all other sound becomes a damp whisper. A single gunshot is fired and a beloved character slowly falls to the ground while their comrades yell out in shock. What an emotional scene! Or at least, it would be if it weren’t for the fact that the character in question already received about a thousand bullet wounds earlier in a gameplay segment.

This is a problem that plagues many gaming narratives. Story is often governed by a very different set of rules than gameplay, resulting in some very awkward and even comical moments in what should be distressing scenes. Because of the interactive nature of games, it’s difficult to avoid these pitfalls. Yet, some games manage to handle it a cut above the rest.

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Prepare to cross “helping in the fight against cancer” off of your life’s To-Do list. The American Cancer Society is hoping to raise $10,000 by April 29th and they have no intention of leaving your generosity unrewarded. Far from it, in fact!

By making a donation as low as $10, you can receive not one, but three full length Songs for the Cure albums in digital form. Bump your donation up to $15 or more and you’ll even get physical copies of all three albums.

You might be wondering what all this has to do with video games. As it turns out, the over 40 artists involved with the albums include a number of Indie Game composers, OverClocked ReMix veterans, and even some musicians from bigger titles. (more…)

The Barrel Roll crew returns this week with their hundred-and-third showstravaganza. The guys took a week off for the first time ever while Jonah and his wife were busy having a million babies.

This week, Jesse gives us the details on The Last Story (Japanese Import) and Goldeneye for the Wii. Adam fills us in on why he couldn’t get his head around Mass Effect 2 while Jonah weeps softly in the background. He also talks about Bionic Commando ReArmed 2, which picks us right back up again. Jonah fills us in on the wizard-filled Magicka and also reports his pile of shame progress in the original Assassin’s Creed.

In the news we discuss all the Final Fantasy related news that’s been coming out, NGP details and much more. All this plus new games this (and last) week on episode 103 of “Barrel Roll! A Video Game Podcast”.

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On a very special one-hundred-and-second episode of ‘Barrel Roll! A Video Game Podcast’, Jonah is still here with no babies to show us at all. Is he making the whole thing up? How long can he keep up this charade? You’ll have to listen to find out!

Oh, and I guess we also talk about video games. Square-Enix released a whole bunch of Final Fantasy stuff and Nintendo dropped a metric crap-ton of Nintendo 3DS details. Also, Wes returns with his take on Little Big Planet 2 and The Last Express, Jesse writes about himself in the third person while playing more Monster Hunter Portable 3rd and Dragon Quest IX, Jonah tries to convince us he’s having a baby while playing Assassin’s Creed and Mass Effect 2, and Adam… well… he just listens.

All this and more on our fantastical podtacular showstravaganza.

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2010 has come and gone. We’ve narrowly avoided drowning in the deep sea of game releases and now we’re here to tell you which games stood out among all the chaos. We polled our rag-tag group of writers on their top ten GOTY choices, then fed the results into a magical formula to decide what we collectively deem “the hottest of jams.”

The best of the best. The cream of the crop. Ten games to rule them all. Is the suspense killing you yet?

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On a very special eightieth episode of “Barrel Roll! A Video Game Podcast”, Jonah and Jesse come together with only one common goal: To not break the streak of having posted a new Barrel Roll episode every week since the show’s inception.

Crazy stuff has been going down in the real world, so the guys keep things on topic and as concise as possible this time around.

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"You furry little maniacs! You blew it up!"

On a very special seventy-eight episode of the podshow “Barrel Roll! A Video Game Podcast”, we learn the dark truth about this supposedly “new” planet we found ourselves on. Oh sure, all signs pointed to the defeat of The Empire thousands of years before, but a planet where humans evolved from Ewoks? Pure madness.

That is, until we found it. The last remaining vestige of a world now destroyed. The cursed statue that showed the world was not what we once thought it was. It was our beloved Endor the whole time.

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Back in my younger days, I swore by genre definitions. I had a very clear idea in mind of what I thought classified a game into each genre. Any deviation from those rules outlined in my head required a subgenre. But as time marched on, I’ve come to realize how incredibly ridiculous all this is.

While genres are a nice way to quickly identify what to expect from a game, I’ve run into quite a few issues with the concept. For one, different people classify genres differently. There’s also the issue of the increasing trend of blending genres. And what about the literal names themselves? Some of them just don’t make sense any more.
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On a very special seventy-fifth episode of Barrel Roll! A Video Game Podcast, the crew teams up with The Burger Kids King Club for a regal good time. It is up to them to defeat the evil forces of Team Edward Potter and the Vampire’s Werewolf in a battle royal for the ages. Will their secret combined power of the double rainbow be enough?

Also, video games. Also, hot jams. Possibly jellies.

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