Alex, Tom S and Graham minotalk and cyclopine about the forthcoming Total War Saga: Troy, delight in the hikes and hot bilge of Death Stranding and feel all kinds of 7/10 about Ghosts of Tsushima. Here’s that story on testing seeds for impossibility in Slay The Spire . Mentioned as Alex’s spire-alike of choice: Monster Train Sing, O Goddess, of the mild pique at Total War Saga: Troy ‘s compromise between history and myth. Stuff piss bombs into the whale to make the ghosts go away in Hideo Kojima...
Jul 24, 2020•37 min
Chris, Tom S and Marsh pore over the Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx, soar over the Hyper Scape, chew over Rocket Arena, simply cannot get over Call of Duty: Warzone, and gush over, er, chess. “Not a new game but a good one.” You heard it here first. Geoff Keighley’s illuminating and partially accurate docu-app: Half Life: Alyx – Final Hours . Behold! The Ubisoft Forward stream . But I actually got more from Matt Castle’s video on Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and this clip of dialogue from Watch Do...
Jul 17, 2020•1 hr 22 min
Alex, Rich McC and Marsh attempt to master the remastered Red Alert, get decked online in WWII-themed collectable card game KARDS and prepare to try self-professed Dark Souls homage Mortal Shell. Valorant. Skins. Expensive. Boring . Do better, News. The Ubisoft longboat is very leaky: the latest vid of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. You can play Command & Conquer: Red Alert as part of the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection . WW2 card game: KARDS . Why is it capitalised? Does it stand fo...
Jul 10, 2020•1 hr 36 min
Pip and Chris return for another deep dive (!) into the state of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. We delve into the diving discourse, discuss the various quandaries of lategame life, and assemble our wishlists for the future of the game. You can find this bonus episode on YouTube , and our intro music is, as ever, Clambake by The Mandibles . For what it’s worth, that’s a raspberry being blown at the beginning of this recording. A raspberry....
Jul 08, 2020•1 hr 18 min
Graham, Tom F and Chris aim their laser-like takes to dismantle the zen pleasures of Hardspace: Shipbreaker, the tawdry traumas of The Last of Us Part II, the chaotic bird-butt coop of KeyWe and the narrative clunk of Cloudpunk. Do a physics on men, shelves and concrete, in this throwback shooter: Trepang2 . Do a physics on spaceships and sometimes, accidentally, yourself, in fab extraterrestrial scrapyard game Hardspace: Shipbreaker . Do a psychology on dogs in finger-wagging misery-box The Las...
Jul 03, 2020•1 hr 51 min
Alex, Tom S and Marsh swelter and sweat through a discussion of ecstatic automation in Satisfactory, the didactic bleakness of The Last of Us Part II, the long view of Humankind and dire straits in Desperados III. Cherish your mucky factory in Satisfactory . The Last of Us Part II sounds unplayably horrible to me, but I am tempted by its exquisite ropes. The Sumerians have already won this timeline. Sorry. Play Humankind and see if you can do better – when it’s out, next year. Despair and deligh...
Jun 26, 2020•1 hr 23 min
Chris, Alex and Marsh ponder penguin chicanery, Destiny’s destiny, dialogue-by-card-deck in Signs of the Sojourner, conversation-as-combat in Griftlands, redeem Mass Effect: Andromeda, resist scratching tingles and rejoice at Desperados III. What is shape? Shape is crime. What is going on with Aiball / Penguin Cretins? Gamesindustry.biz have talked about it here . A Monster’s Expedition – the game our Pip worked on – has a demo out! Lovely! Be a bally and do a rolly in Stanley Kubrick’s Tiny Win...
Jun 19, 2020•1 hr 44 min
Alex, Tom F and Graham muse on the eternal E3 news, marvel at itchio’s BLM bundle, lament pyromantic stealth game Wildfire, adore deck-builder Monster Train and flail further in Half-Life: Alyx. IGN’s eternal E3 . The Escapist’s indie stream . Sony’s PS5 stream . I found it unconscionably boring, to my surprise and dismay. Undaunted: The Heretic One is, you know, the Heretic one. And Trepang2 is the FEAR one. The incredible Black Lives Matter bundle. John Walker has been doing a good job of pick...
Jun 12, 2020•2 hr 6 min
Tom S, Chris and Marsh try to fathom the bloody ways of Stoneshard, bloody the fathoms in Maneater, embrace doldrums in Sludge Life, bang the old drum for Fez, make other things go bang in Receiver 2, and probe wholes, holes and souls in The Witness. At the beginning of this episode we express our support for the Black Lives Matter movement and Black and minority communities throughout the US and across the world who are protesting racial injustice. We understand the responsibility that we have ...
Jun 05, 2020•2 hr 20 min
Sorry for the pops and crackles on this one! Alex and Marsh are joined by special and exceedingly distant guest, Rich McCormick, to discuss Noclip’s Arkane documentary, space thriller Observation and space driller Deep Rock Galactic. Wholesome Direct – not just a showcase of games about frogs wearing Nike Air Jordans. Noclip’s fabulous Arkane documentary and moustache extravaganza. Roleplay the solar system’s bumbliest AI in Observation . Hide yourself with beards in Deep Rock Galactic . Robo-sh...
May 29, 2020•1 hr 33 min
Alex, Chris and Marsh gather to be confounded by Crucible, the first foray into videogames by billionaire devourer of iguana flesh, Jeff Bezos, and admire acrobatic aerial shmup Jet Lancer. Crucible is out! Should Crucible be out? HMM. Whither the edgy boys go? They go to be a sharkborg. Fly, fly, up and away in Jet Lancer . It’s very cool. And it’s a bit like Luftrausers. Except it isn’t like Luftrausers? Which is also very cool. Deep Rock Galactic is a game we will play, myself while involunta...
May 22, 2020•1 hr 13 min
Tom F and Alex are joined by special guests and storied devs Soren Johnson and (at the end) Leyla Johnson – CEO and president of Mohawk Games, respectively – to talk about Old World, an historical, epic strategy game. And polygamy. You can get in on Old World’s Early Access phase via the Epic Games store ! Follow Soren Johnson and Leyla Johnson on Twitter! “Almost everything I do is a mistake.” You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel . If you have a question for a futur...
May 15, 2020
Tom S, Chris and Marsh lay themselves bare to discuss the Xbox showcase, sample the tasty-tasty-tasty open world comfort food of Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, unspool tubes in Filament and eye-roll at time-gribblies in Close to the Sun. The XBOX XERIEX X is coming and, if anyone notices, they will be able to play some of these forthcoming multiplatform games with improved loading times! Watch the entire e-event here . Or watch individual trailers:… We’re trying very hard to make ASS MEAD happen. ...
May 08, 2020•1 hr 56 min
More Animal Crossing with Pip and Chris! We talk island design, the pleasures and pitfalls of meeting your inexplicably naked heroes, put Blathers on trial for art crime, and consider the ups and downs of multiplayer island life. You can find this bonus episode on YouTube , and our intro music is, as ever, Clambake by The Mandibles . That thread about Blathers’ misdeeds by Max Chesnokov can be found here , and you can check out Stan’s custom island railway while you’re at it....
May 03, 2020•1 hr 44 min
Alex, Tom F and Graham e-gather to e-give their e-takes on the Assassin’s Creed reveal, get kicked right in the breach phase, courtesy of XCOM: Chimera Squad, and amp up the wide-men of Gears Tactics. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla has been announced. Watch the Vikings raid and pillage – but in a good way – in the trailer . Tom F unloads his feelings on the face-kicking of XCOM: Chimera Squad . Upgrade your bellows in the unexpectedly excellent Gears Tactics . Kentucky Route Zero . Or you can watch a...
May 01, 2020•1 hr 58 min
Tom S, Chris and Marsh evade the Gull Squad to bring you takes on the trousers of tactics spin-off XCOM: Chimera Squad, tubestation construction sim StationFlow and kraken-based illusory-victory machine Magic: The Gathering Arena. This isn’t relevant to show, but I think it’s important to say at the top of this that Tom would absolutely destroy Samuel Pepys in a fight. Delete gulls so we can be free to touch our faces again – using the power of Nvidia RTX Voice! Watch a Games Lad bang things wit...
Apr 24, 2020•1 hr 37 min
Tom F and Marsh are joined by the mellifluous voice of Graham Smith to have weird wives in Sigma Theory, poke fingers into Half-Life: Alyx’s fungal bird beaks and enjoy Valorant in the brief twilight that heralds our inevitable obsolescence. A new game from Firaxis comes out next week! It’s XCOM: Chimera Squad , aka Tactical Breach Lizards. What a wicky wild wild, wicky wicky wild, wicky wild, wicky wicky wild wild wild world we live in. Soren Johnson has announced his new 4X game: The Wilder Ol...
Apr 17, 2020•2 hr 12 min
Alex, Chris and both Toms (!) reach across timezones to discuss sunny getaways in Hitman 2, fraught getaways in Ori and the Will of the Wisps, and more. I’m going to be honest with you. It was very hot in my office when we recorded this episode, so I opened the window a crack. I didn’t realise that this would apparently invite an entire flock of seagulls onto the podcast. We’ve made progress with the echo issue but replaced it with infinite birds. Sorry. Just imagine you’re outside. Remember tha...
Apr 10, 2020•1 hr 56 min
Hello! Again! We’ve done another one of these! Chris and Pip cross the egg event horizon as they check in on island life, two weeks later. You can find this bonus episode on YouTube , if you like. As ever, our intro music is Clambake by The Mandibles . Some show notes! Here’s the website that lets you prepare Animal Crossing art in a browser. Nico directs our attention to this explanation of one aspect of AC’s tremendous localisation. The listener towns we check out are Zed Fang’s Terror , Teamb...
Apr 07, 2020•1 hr 16 min
Alex, Marsh, Chris and Tom Senior discuss the most topical games of the age, including but not limited to The Room VR, Call of Duty for some reason, hunting in Red Dead 2, and Mount & Blade: Bannerlord. We’re still getting used to this new remote recording setup, and we’ll be looking to invest in some decent desk mics to even out the sound quality in future episodes. Thank you for bearing with us! Tom is spending his days inside PS VR, chiefly The Room VR , Blood and Truth and, for some reas...
Apr 03, 2020•1 hr 52 min
Marsh, Chris and Alex attempt our first remote pod to discuss AI-augmented game development and the various verbs of Doom Eternal. This is a shorter pod than usual as we get used to a new way of recording – but we’re going to do our best to continue to deliver hot pods every week. We hope you’re staying well! Washyerhandseverybody. Here’s that interview with Google’s Erin Hoffman-John about game creation using machine learning. Who will reach the end of Mike Cook’s Takeshi’s Castle with their di...
Mar 27, 2020•1 hr 13 min
Hello! In this special mini-pod, Pip and Chris share their experiences of Animal Crossing: New Horizons while playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons. No spoilers, unless you didn’t know about the time that Chris killed his husband and fled to an island retreat with the family silver. Things are tough all over, and so we thought we’d record this in order to share a game that’s been a genuine source of happiness for us – and for many others – over the last couple of days. You can also listen on You...
Mar 22, 2020•1 hr 1 min
Chris, Marsh and a moth get drippy then descend into the underworld of Iris And The Giant, adjudicate on the latest Destiny drama and order a 14-inch stuffed-crust Warzone. The crust is stuffed with guns. Bane of trans-pacific trade and the NBA: Geoff Keighley . Wash your hands to be spared his wrath. Alan Hazelden has announced a new game which Pip – our very own Pip! – has written. A Monster’s Expedition (Through Human Exhibitions) . John Walker said nice things about it ! Dolorous CCG Iris An...
Mar 13, 2020•2 hr
Chris and Alex discuss some actual games news and bury themselves kneck-deep in Dark Future and World of Horror – just in time for a special report from salty ocean correspondent Pip! Plus: voice controls, work-life balance, the hot panic of an embarassing gaming moment, our go-to grunts, and other emanations from this bumper episode of The Shame Edition. Bar-ney, nooo-ooo-oooo! Do go watch Larian’s ace Baldur’s Gate 3 demo from PAX East. Here’s the first video in Valve’s series of Half-Life: Al...
Mar 06, 2020•2 hr 7 min
Alex, Chris and Marsh endure the first episode of Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet, but only barely, punch towers with mechadongs in Besiege, beat bad bots in resuscitated coop shooter Generation Zero and get bandy-legged in The Suicide of Rachael Foster. “It’s a real Bront.” We sat stony-faced through videogame-dev-set sitcom Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet but YMMV. Kerbal Space Programme for Skaven: Besiege ! You can in fact pit your monstrous pneumatic dongs against one another. There’s a whole Y...
Feb 28, 2020•2 hr 3 min
Alex and Marsh grudgingly drag themselves from the swamp to chat about spry roguelike platformer ScourgeBringer, palpate the unctuous parts of The Good Time Garden and feel ways about things in plangent poke-a-story Florence. Gentle nature-walk / insect stridulation simulator, Hunt: Showdown now has a PvE onboarding tutorial for new players. That’s nice! Red Dead Redemption 2 has over 200 species of animal! But not enough bells, frankly. Imagine Celeste , add a bit of Gungeon and you got yoursel...
Feb 21, 2020•1 hr 13 min
Alex, Chris and Marsh bear witness to the spherical design crimes of Battlefront II, sweat bricks in formidable hell-Tetris game, Schwerkraftprojektionsgerät, and return to their happy place, the cursed murder-swamp of Hunt: Showdown. No one needs to own this many maglites. GeForce Now game streaming thing is out… now! But what is it and why is it? The most definitively nonplussed takes abound. It’s a bit like Stadia , which is Google’s similar attempt to answer a question that maybe no one is a...
Feb 07, 2020•2 hr 30 min
Tom S, Chris and Marsh seek the Creature in the Well, guiltily juggle men in Dynasty Warriors 8, revisit the roots of the RTS in Warcraft 3: Reforged, crave decapitation in Mordau and assess the early access jank of Warhammer Underworlds: Online. “Stay off the tracks.” What’s that emerging from the frigid tundra of January? Is it…? Could it be… news? Holy fuck! Torchlight Frontiers has morphed into Torchlight 3, shedding its F2P plans along the way . Innocent children’s entertainment: Thomas The...
Jan 31, 2020•1 hr 37 min
Alex and Marsh take a jaunty journey into the depths of Hades and wander the Streets of Rogue. The RNs are very much G’d, gorillas freed and the roguelikes liked, to varying degrees. Also: patch note heresies and our favourite offal. The Half-Lifes… Half-Lives?… They’re freeeee! Some of the Half-Life: Alyx team answered questions on Reddit. Does The Witcher’s success presage a wave of sexploitative videogame adaptations? Unity’s short film, Heretic . Very cool. Not anything to do with games or m...
Jan 24, 2020•1 hr 28 min
Tom, Chris and Marsh gather to reopen Black Mesa’s final chapters, vie to become the ultimate Tom in Slay The Spire, hoover up all the flavour text in Pillars of Eternity: Deadfire and ride the rhythm of Sayonara Wild Hearts. Let’s put this at the top: this year’s C&C Community GOTY is now online! Go vote in the only meaningful act of democracy you will ever experience again. Kane is the best and deserves all the goats. Go back to Black Mesa , and its final chapters in Xen, and tell me what ...
Jan 17, 2020•2 hr 14 min
