Director Fumeto Ueda has been hailed by many as somewhat of an auteur of the gaming landscape. A creative whose style embraces minimalist desolation. Known best for his work on Shadow of the Colossus, Ueda's directorial debut took place in 2001 with Ico, a boy-meets-girl action-adventure released for the PlayStation 2. Born with horns in a small village, Ico was seen as a great misfortune and was locked away in an eerie castle across the sea. Just as Ico settled in to his stony tomb, an earthqua...
Jun 19, 2025•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 131
Third person cover based shooters were all the rage in the late 2000s. Unveiled in 2003 in Killswitch and later popularised with Gears of War, they became an essential part of most third person action games. Coming in 2010, Vanquish sought to revolutionise this paradigm by giving the player an omnidirectional slide boost to move around the battlefield in an attempt to energise its plodding pacing. And, broadly speaking, it was a resounding success. People loved the faster pace, the bullet time, ...
May 23, 2025•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 130
Video games usually place you in the role of the plucky adventurer. You are the wizard, the warrior, or the rogue, and it's your duty (and often destiny) to save the world. On your journey, one of the most important things to do is to acquire more powerful gear to make your character stronger. But who exactly are you buying that gear from? Enter: Recettear. First released in 2007 (and later 2010 in a global english localisation), Reccetear places you in the role of an 8 year old girl tasked with...
Apr 25, 2025•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 129
In 1998 Bioware changed the gaming landscape with Baldur’s Gate, a Dungeons and Dragons inspired adventure. Taking cues from second edition D&D and the many stories written about it, Bioware wrote a low level adventure that jammed everything they could find inside it. They attempted to copy mage spells directly from the manual, and even added in famous characters like Drizzt. It was exactly what the fans had been waiting for. Not only were they able to see everything come to life, the game u...
Mar 20, 2025•2 hr 46 min•Ep. 128
The Ace Attorney games were an insane success, far beyond what Capcom could have predicted. After 4 mainline games in the series though, it was time for something new, and creator Shu Takumi refused to do anything normal. With a desire to explore characters in a far deeper way than was possible with Ace Attorney, he decided the only way to go about this was to have the main character be a ghost. Whether that made sense or not, in 2010 we finally saw the release of Ghost Trick, a game that is so ...
Feb 11, 2025•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 127
Space Sims used to be a vibrant and well populated genre. Back in the 90s they command shelf real estate, right next to the latest and greatest RTS and Point and Click Adventure games. Coming at the tail end of this era was Tachyon: The Fringe, released in 2000 by Novalogic games, well known for their regular flight sims and the Delta Force series. You play as Jake Logan, a freelancing mercenary, who quickly gets caught up in the midst of a fight for independence. A megacorporation has been give...
Jan 20, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 126
With another year done and dusted, Pat and James crack open another batch of listener questions. After curveballs like Killer 7 and Deadly Premonition , these should be a breeze. Right ..? On this episode, we discuss: What are the best - and worst - smelling video game levels? Can you tell us the story of how y’all met and decided to start this podcast? Was the fear of Baldur’s Gate 2 something you both developed as children? Or did you just become cowards as grown men? We answer these questions...
Dec 29, 2024•2 hr 55 min•Ep. 125
But can it run Crysis? This was the motto that surrounded every single PC build for literal years after the release of the game in 2007. Crytek were not satisfied with what they had achieved with Far Cry in 2004, and decided to push graphical hardware to its absolute limits with their brand new and shiny game. And boy, did they succeed, with a poorly optimised but breathtakingly gorgeous game. Even better, there was an entire video game attached to this graphical showcase, promising open ended t...
Sep 09, 2024•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 124
After their magnum opus that was Resident Evil 1, Capcom were not going to sit on their heels. Coming out just two years after the first in 1998, Resident Evil 2 sought to have everything the original had and much, much more. It connected its two character’s stories in far more meaningful ways, increased the size of each player's inventory (and their respectives arsenals) and had more cinematic and explosive moments to show the player. And boy did it do well! It received universal critical accla...
Jul 30, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 123
The Legend of Zelda is perhaps the most iconic video game series of all time. Boasting 19 mainline entries, and an endless swathe of critical acclaim and awards, it's hard to find someone who hasn’t at least heard of the action/adventure story of Link and Zelda. It all began back in 1986 with the release of the first game for the Famicom in Japan. The game begins immediately with an open ended structure, giving the player multiple paths to follow, and an open world to explore. You explore and fi...
Jul 08, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 122
Killer7 is one weird game. Developed in tandem by Grasshopper Manufacture and Capcom and first released in 2005, its very existence as a game defies description. Within moments of starting, you’re placed into a world with talking bondage ghosts, a TV channel that drains your blood, and abstract puzzles that would fit right into Resident Evil. Combine this with a cinematic third person slow rail shooter and you might have just a taste of what Killer7 is all about, but the truth is that you’re jus...
Jun 21, 2024•2 hr 20 min•Ep. 121
System Shock 2 is considered by many to be the finest immersive sim ever made. Released in 1999 in a coventure by Looking Glass Studios and Irrational Games, it sought to combine the classic 3D dungeon crawling of the original with pen and paper inspired RPG systems. While resource management and exploration were still a key part of the experience, you were now restricted in what you could initially do by those RPG stats - and it was only towards the end game that your character would feel truly...
Jun 03, 2024•1 hr 55 min•Ep. 120
Over the years, we’ve played games from pretty much every genre under the sun, but there is one that is notably missing - the racing sim. We’ve dabbled with arcade racers like Burnout 3, and have played several kart racers - Diddy Kong and F-Zero GX to name a couple. But this is the first time we’re trying to learn how to actually drive a racing card under somewhat realistic conditions. And what better game to start with than the highly lauded Gran Turismo 4? It boasts hundreds of hours of gamep...
May 06, 2024•1 hr 34 min•Ep. 119
Hitman: Blood Money, first released in 2006 by Eidos, is considered by many to be the best Hitman game ever made. After the first few games played around with novel ideas and concepts to mixed success, Blood Money honed in on the formulae of specific, small and dense environments filled with ‘accidental’ scripted opportunities to murder your target. Gone are the long and slow walking through the linear levels of Silent Assassin. You no longer have the weird and confusing systems of Codename: 47,...
Apr 08, 2024•1 hr 39 min•Ep. 118
Final Fantasy VII is a landmark title not only for the JRPG genre, but for all video games. First released in 1997 and developed by Square, it took the format of the previous games and brought them to life with 3D models and environments. Featuring an ambitious and creative setting, a complicated plot with intrigue and a seemingly deep and engaging combat system, the game seemed to be firing on all cylinders. Critics and fans alike adored the game to pieces, and even today there are legion's of ...
Mar 11, 2024•2 hr 43 min•Ep. 117
Rain World is a game that was released to very mixed reviews. With a whopping 59 on Metacritic, it was panned for its controls, difficulty, tedium and general obtuseness. But take a gander at the community reviews and you get a very different picture. The thing is, Rain World can at times be all the things that its critics hate so much that they give it a lower score than your generic AAA Ubisoft game that comes out every 6 months. It controls nothing like Mario. It kills you frequently and unca...
Jan 22, 2024•2 hr 15 min•Ep. 116
It's that time of year again! For most of our episodes, our format is identical - we play a game, then discuss and review it. Once a year, however, we take a break from the format at christmas time for our Mailbag episodes. These are some of our favourite episodes to do - we take a break from the norm for some offbeat discussion about games both old and new. Thank you to everyone who submitted questions on our discord server . As always, having you all to listen is exactly what makes the show wo...
Jan 01, 2024•2 hr 33 min•Ep. 115
Ensemble Studios blew the world away with Age of Empires way back in 1997. It took a different approach to the RTS formulae than Westwood or Blizzard, and was rewarded heavily for it. Being able to advance your entire civilization's technology level was a heady drug, and balancing the varied needs of your economy with a well rounded army was strategically engaging. After releasing a sequel and pumping out a couple of expansions they decided to try to add something genuinely new to the formulae. ...
Dec 11, 2023•1 hr 34 min•Ep. 114
Blood, first released in 1997 by Monolith Studios, was the middle child of the big three Build Engine games, sandwiched in between Duke 3D and Shadow Warrior. Its combination of gory horror-inspired visuals combined with action filled FPS gameplay was a huge hit at the time of release, but has slowly faded in many people’s memories. Both Quake and Half Life loom larger in most people’s memories than Blood, and the question must be asked: why? Is there a good reason that Blood has become one of t...
Nov 13, 2023•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 113
Metal Gear Solid 2 was easily the most hotly anticipated game for the Playstation 2. The first game had blown everyone away, and the jaw-dropping graphics of previews combined with the quality of the animation in cutscenes seemed almost too good to be true. Luckily for fans everywhere, MGS 2 appeared to live up to its wild expectations, getting almost universally glowing reviews. It seemed that MGS 2 had expanded upon the first game in every single way, including having an even more convoluted s...
Oct 23, 2023•2 hr 11 min•Ep. 112
Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 was a staple of many people’s PC desktop screens back in the early 2000s. Nestled in between the big hitters like Warcraft 3 and Diablo 2 you would find this odd game that straddled the line between simulation and video game. Developed by Infogrames Interactive, it saw Chris Sawyer continue the work he put into the first game, with more rides and tools to tweak your park to whatever specifications you desired. Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 features over a hundred attractions, a p...
Oct 02, 2023•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 111
It feels like Metal Gear Solid barely needs an introduction. First released in 1998 for the playstation, it launched Hideo Kojima into the western spotlight and has been credited as a foundational game in the stealth genre. It combined a cinematic presentation with a larger than life cast of villains that somehow never broke through how seriously the game seemed to take itself. There was an attention to detail here that blew people’s minds upon release, not only in the level of interactivity but...
Aug 28, 2023•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 110
In the 90’s turn based strategy and tactics games were everywhere, but by the turn of the millennium the RTS genre was stealing its thunder. So it was a surprise to most when in 2001 Advance Wars seemingly came out of nowhere and presented a tight and refined dose of tactics to the Western world. Its jovial and enthusiastic tone won over a lot of people, but what really stood out was just how robust its systems seemed to be, promising deep tactical options far beyond what first met the eye. Adva...
Aug 07, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 109
Power fantasies are the norm for video games. We play them to blow off steam, to escape into another world where we can let our worries drop away. But Pulse Entertainment wanted to do things a little differently when they developed Bad Mojo in 1996. They wanted to put the player in the little brown shell of a cockroach. You play as Roger Samms, who, on the verge of embezzling a million dollars, gets transformed into a roach. You crawl around the disgusting tenancy where you live, feebly pushing ...
Jul 17, 2023•58 min•Ep. 108
Luigi’s Mansion was the cornerstone of the Nintendo Gamecube’s launch in 2001. It sold more copies than any other launch title, received positive critical acclaim, and occupied prime place in every promo gaming machine in gaming and electronic shops everywhere. The game promised a charming take on a haunted mansion, quite unlike Resident Evil that had come before it. You take control of Luigi, searching for Mario after he goes missing when he supposedly wins a free mansion. You don’t have much t...
Jun 26, 2023•54 min•Ep. 107
Unreal was the Crysis of its time. It pushed PCs to their absolute limits, with its advanced shader effects and enormous levels. It featured AI that was far beyond the stilted and simplistic enemies that people were used to. It built an alien world that managed to straddle the line between the more abstract early era shooter and what the build engine games were doing. And it was all wrapped up in a succinct 10 hour campaign, that eschewed genre staples like door keys and fodder enemies. Unreal s...
Jun 05, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 106
When Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers first released in 1993, it was not a crack commercial hit. It did however instantly earn itself widespread critical acclaim, with reviewers praising its dark and disturbing story, foreboding atmosphere, and incredible voice acting. The game brought the setting of 90’s Louisiana to life, with all the colonial baggage and real life voodoo history integrated into every little crevice of its world. But can Gabriel Knight truly get over the ultimate sin of bei...
May 18, 2023•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 105
Arkane Studios was founded with a dream: to create a sequel to the highly revered grandfather of immersive sims Ultima Underworld . Unfortunately for them, they couldn’t quite secure the rights to the IP, and instead decided to make a game that was evocative of the original in every way. Enter Arx Fatalis , a game that was released to widespread critical acclaim, but unfortunately for Arkane suffered commercially. It wasn’t until the far more action orientated release of Dark Messiah of Might an...
Apr 26, 2023•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 104
Puzzles are like crack cocaine for their very special audience. Whether it be a crossword, a logic problem, or even a riddle, unravelling them shoots a heavy dose of endorphins directly to the brain. It is therefore no surprise that Professor Layton and the Curious Village was such a resounding success upon release, taking advantage of the portability of the 3DS before smartphones were a given for the general populace. Combining a charming and relaxed atmosphere with an onslaught of different pu...
Apr 03, 2023•1 hr•Ep. 103
Relic Entertainment has a long history of innovating in the RTS space. Both Company of Heroes and Dawn of War are much beloved and respected titles that could hold their heads high even when compared to other goliaths like Warcraft, Red Alert or Age of Empires. But in many ways it was their very first game as a company that pushed the conventions in a weirder direction than anything else. This debut title was called Homeworld. Homeworld is an RTS set in true three dimensional space, with fleets ...
Mar 16, 2023•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 102
