Sometimes, the story behind a movie is more interesting than the movie itself, and that is certainly the case with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Release in 2001 after 4 years of production, it was the first full-length feature film to feature photorealistic computer graphics, and it certainly shows. It manages to simultaneously look modern and dated, but all of the effort was certainly not worth the cost in the long run, having nearly bankrupted Squaresoft due to its failure at the box offi...
Apr 21, 2020•1 hr 48 min•Season 1Ep. 24
Final Fantasy VII Remake is up there with... well, the last Final Fantasy game released, on my list of games I can't believe are actually out and playable right now. It's been a very, very long road for seminal RPG of the PlayStation era. This game's existence has been talked about since the PlayStation 2 era, first glimpsed as a tech demo prior to the release of PlayStation 3, and finally announced as officially being in development for PlayStation 4 at E3 2015, earning Sony's presser the lovin...
Apr 17, 2020•2 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 46
Sony just can't get enough of teasing everyone about what's coming with the PlayStation 5. First we get some Wired articles, then we get a tech deep dive with Mark Cerny in front of a green screen, and now on a random Tuesday we get our first look at the controller that will come in the box: the DualSense. Though, when you consider the sweeping changes that this new gamepad will introduce it makes sense to give it some time in the limelight. We break down all of the things you need to know about...
Apr 10, 2020•1 hr 32 min•Season 1Ep. 45
In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale is the big budget spectacular that we've always wanted from Uwe Boll, and boy does it deliver. This is Lord of the Rings with no direction, terrible writing, and standard Boll insanity. The main characters name is Farmer. Ray Liota plays a dark mage and clearly does not want to be here. I don't think Bert Reynolds even knows where he is. The "orcs" are basically putties from Power Rangers. Ninjas show up in the epic mid-film battle. This is easily on...
Apr 07, 2020•1 hr 29 min•Season 1Ep. 23
There's no one in the video game industry quite as good as running his own name through the mud as Randy Pitchford, the CEO of Gearbox, creators of the hit Borderlands franchise. How big of a hit you ask? Well, it's a billion dollar brand according to Gearbox's owner, Take Two, who announced not long ago that Borderlands 3 is the best selling game of the franchise! Well that must mean that the developers of the game, who work for lower-than-standard wages in favor of earning big bonuses based on...
Apr 03, 2020•1 hr 49 min•Season 1Ep. 44
It's time to rip and tear all over again this week as Doom Eternal releases to the masses. While Travis and Andrew offer their early impressions of the highly-anticipated follow-up to 2016's best shooter, Ethan dives into Hell for the very first time as he plays catch-up with Doom (2016). Nintendo decided this was as good a time as any to announce a ton of news in the form of their Nintendo Direct Mini, covering more of what to expect from the first Pokemon Sword and Shield expansion, some unexp...
Mar 27, 2020•1 hr 47 min•Season 1Ep. 43
Timothy Olyphant puts on the suit and tie of the silent assassin, Agent 47... wait, did I say silent assassin? What I meant was super loud, run and gun, bombastic assassin, Agent 47. Hitman (2007) kind of works as a brain-dead action flick if you don't think too hard about the source material, since after the first 15 minutes everything kind of goes to shit. But those 15 minutes aren't too shabby! But before we get into all of that, Travis continues his Hannibal Lecter kick with Silence of the L...
Mar 24, 2020•1 hr 48 min•Season 1Ep. 22
The world of games steps up just in time to save us from ourselves this week as social distancing (and remote recording!) ensues with the arrival of Animal Crossing: New Horizons and DOOM Eternal today, and Persona 5 Royal to come in just 10 days time. We've got a review round-up of these three titles and, hint hint, they're all incredible. The news cycle begins just a day after we recorded last week's episode, where it was announced that E3 2020 has been officially cancelled. While this is sign...
Mar 20, 2020•2 hr 26 min•Season 1Ep. 42
Before we're all inevitably thrust into an absolutely killer amount of high quality games to play starting with Doom Eternal next week, the gang continues to play a bit of catch up with all of the killer games that are already available. Judgment has been on Travis's mind for months now, it being the latest IP from Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, best known for their world-renowned Yakuza series. While being incredibly similar in format to the Yakuza franchise, Judgment takes players on a different journe...
Mar 13, 2020•1 hr 39 min•Season 1Ep. 41
Back when we said we were going to watch every video game movie I think we sort of just forgot Uwe Boll existed because there's no way we would have agreed to do this if we knew then what we know now. We watched Postal this week. We talk about it at the end of the episode. Before that we do something much nicer, which is have Travis share his thoughts on Parasite and season 2 of Hannibal, listen to Drew's defense of Jojo Rabbit, and dig into Knives Out again now that Ethan has caught up with it....
Mar 10, 2020•1 hr 16 min•Season 1Ep. 21
As everyone predicted last week, the organizers of the Game Developers Conference held in San Francisco have officially announced that the event would be postponed due to ongoing concerns over coronavirus. Many of the biggest names in the industry had already canceled their appearances, making it clear that most attendees had already decided it was in their best interest to stay home. It's not all doom and gloom though, as this week also saw the long-awaited demo for Final Fantasy VII Remake, an...
Mar 06, 2020•1 hr 47 min•Season 1Ep. 40
Microsoft has seen an uphill battle these past seven years with Xbox One, there's no doubt about that. But at each opportunity Team Green has done their best to answer to one group since Phil Spencer took the reigns of Xbox, the players. Through initiatives like the Backwards Compatibility program, Game Pass and xCloud, to offering Elite Controllers to the hardest of the hardcore and the Adaptive Controller to dramatically improve accessibility for everyone, they've earned an incredible amount o...
Feb 28, 2020•2 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 39
Move over Mr. Nintendo, there's a blue blur in town and he's here to eat chili dogs and crush it at the box office, and he's all out of chili dogs.
Feb 25, 2020•1 hr 16 min•Season 1Ep. 20
Media Molecule, one of Sony's most intriguing first-party studios, finally released the long in development "Dreams" out of early access and onto store shelves on Valentine's Day. Unlike the usual software you purchase for PlayStation 4, Dreams isn't a game, but a user-generated content creation suite that happens to let you *make* games, among other things. Best known as the creators of the LittleBigPlanet series, the team isn't new to creating experiences that leverage its community to create,...
Feb 21, 2020•1 hr 40 min•Season 1Ep. 38
When you choose to play a game, the exchange being made is usually fairly simple; you trade some of your time in exchange for entertainment, be it in the form of a run and gun shooter, a tricky puzzle to be solved, a world to explore or a story to experience. Just like some films or albums or other works of art, however, some games can ask a bit more of you. They require a bit more in exchange for what they can share in return. Death Stranding fits this bill, on paper offering only what at times...
Feb 14, 2020•1 hr 55 min•Season 1Ep. 37
Alice is back and she's got super cool psychic powers to fight the new super zombies and bird zombies and new characters that do nothing are introduced and by the way we're headed to Alaska. Watch the film! - https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/resident-evil-extinction
Feb 11, 2020•33 min•Season 1Ep. 19
Take Two and Rockstar Games dropped a bombshell on the industry this week when it was announced that Dan Houser, one of the co-founders and creative vice president of the studio behind Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, would be leaving the company next month. With Dan being such an enormously important person within the company, writing and producing nearly every single major release since the studios inception, it begs the question: what will this prestigious studio look like in the com...
Feb 07, 2020•1 hr 56 min•Season 1Ep. 36
We're only going to say this once, but we're talking about Kingdom Hearts this week and there's nothing you can do about it. Travis and Ethan got all up in the first and only DLC for Kingdom Hearts III, Re:Mind, and opinions vary wildly from "meh" to "oh my god, this is amazing, these are tears of joy right now". But hasn't that always been the story surrounding this franchise? Saving everyone's hearts from everlasting darkness isn't all that's going on this week though, as the rumor mill keeps ...
Jan 31, 2020•2 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 35
Dead or Alive answers the deepest of video game film adaptation questions: what if Street Fighter, but bewbs? Watch the film! - https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/d-o-a-mort-ou-vif
Jan 28, 2020•34 min•Season 1Ep. 18
Ubisoft has been around longer than most game companies, developing and publishing its own titles since 1986 on early personal computers. Three decades in such a young industry requires change and adaptation to survive and thrive where so many others have failed and disappeared into obscurity. Lately though, it seems like they may have fallen into complacency, happy with a formerly tried and true formula that hit a wall with a couple of under-performing, AAA titles that seemed to fit the rubric ...
Jan 24, 2020•2 hr 14 min•Season 1Ep. 34
This week, Sony went ahead and tore off the band-aid when they announced they would not be attending E3 for the second year in a row. Shh, shh, I know it stings at the moment, but now the healing can begin. And you better heal up tougher than before, because Sony will not be the last to abandon the outdated expo as it struggles to find its identity in the influencer age. Microsoft is having a bit of an identity crisis of their own as they reveal that their next generation console, Xbox Series X,...
Jan 17, 2020•1 hr 25 min•Season 1Ep. 33
What we've got right here is just a good ol' fashioned horror flick that happens to be based on a video game. Pyramid Head gonna give it to ya. And spoilers, Sean Bean doesn't die! It's worth watching just for that. Watch the film! - https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/silent-hill
Jan 14, 2020•38 min•Season 1Ep. 17
As we enter 2020, it's really starting to set in that we are on the brink of a new generation of consoles. And the closer we get to the release of these machines, the more people begin itching for any piece of information they can get. How fast is it going to be? How much will they cost? What will they be able to do? And when we are so thirsty for new information, it can be hard not to drink just about anything offered to us. There's a lot we already know about PlayStation 5 from system architec...
Jan 10, 2020•1 hr 53 min•Season 1Ep. 32
The Witcher is having quite the good reception in recent weeks. Its Netflix series is one of the most popular shows on the platform for 2019. The Witcher 3 has seen a significant bump in player interest, breaking its launch week concurrent player count on Steam, an unprecedented feat for a AAA-game in its fifth year. And to top it off, the series' author has come to a new agreement with CD Projekt Red that could lead to a fourth game in the series. Not too bad for the White Wolf if we do say so ...
Jan 03, 2020•1 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 31
Ethan poses a question this episode: When should you just... not? We may never know, but one thing is for sure, when something doesn't need doing, Uwe Boll steps in to do it anyway.
Dec 31, 2019•33 min•Season 1Ep. 16
Way back in May 2019, three guys got together and recorded what they thought would be the very first episode of a podcast. Little did they know, thanks to the power of time travel and editing, they were actually recording their 30th. This is a special episode from the archives where Andrew, Ethan and Travis got together and talked about how they got into video games and the biggest moments for them along the way. No news this week, just good ol' fashioned conversation. We hope you enjoyed Absent...
Dec 27, 2019•2 hr 21 min•Season 1Ep. 30
The Game Awards have come and gone, and with them, a host of surprising winners and a slew of new game announcements. As you have no likely seen from this weeks artwork, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice from From Software takes home the gold as 2019's Game of the Year, and you can probably guess who amongst us is most excited about that. More surprising than the winners though are some of the big announcements, such as the reveal of Microsoft's Project Scarlett's true face and the first PlayStation 5 l...
Dec 20, 2019•2 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 29
A team of Marines are sent on a search-and-destroy mission to a research facility on Mars where something has attacked the personnel that work there. But these demons better get ready, cus they're about to smell what The Rock is cookin'. Watch the film! - https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/doom
Dec 17, 2019•36 min•Season 1Ep. 15
Just last night, Microsoft revealed the final form of their Project Scarlett console: Xbox Series X. But we aren't talking about that this episode, because we recorded this two days before The Game Awards! The news cycle makes fools of us all. But aside from the shape of the box and its name, we basically knew all there was to know about the next-gen system already, and even a bit about its little brother. The system that may well end up being the Xbox Series S, codename Lockhart, is still very ...
Dec 13, 2019•1 hr 43 min•Ep. 28
On December 3rd, 1994, the PlayStation home video game console launched in Japan. After a failed partnership with Nintendo, Sony's release of the PlayStation did what many thought was impossible when it supplanted its would-be partner as the market leader in the video game industry. Over the years the brand has seen many successes, and a few failures, all the while cementing its legacy in the pantheon of gaming. The gang takes a moment to celebrate the little grey box before jumping into another...
Dec 06, 2019•1 hr 42 min•Ep. 27
