Hey All, * * This week we talk about the Game Awards that went for 3 hours. * * (Really? I mean who can watch corporate masturbation for THAT long?) * * There’s a lot of games we think are very deserving and a lot of games we think are not very deserving. We also talk about some of our favourite games for this year. * * Josh really liked Witcher 3, Duelyst, Stardew Valley and other games that let him listen to podcasts or music while he played. He’s dull like that. * * Paul liked a Podcast called The Cleaning of John Doehttps://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-cleaning-of-john-doe-true-crime/id1298179135?mt=2 . He’s still been spending his life playing Assassins Creed Origins (and NOT buying any MTX) * * We also note a very interesting feature of the Game Awards but to find out what that is, you’ll have to listen. * * As always, Paul can be found @paulomalley, Josh can be found @zugai and at his other podcasthttps://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/podculture-plays-d-d/id1317528754?mt=2 * * Feel free to drop us a line [email protected]. Keep Rolling!

Hey All, this episode we talk about whether there should be any games that shouldn't be allowed out into the wild. We also agree that we need to disagree. So we're going to work on that. Paul has been enjoying more of Assassins Creed Origins and Josh has been enjoying Valley a game about running and jumping. Are we enjoying ourselves? Quite a bit. You can find us @paulomalley @zugai or email us at [email protected] Keep rolling!

Hey all,

As always we want to thank Gavin Dunne for his music. The man is the patron saint of podcast music needers and you can go and buy his music. Just look up Miracle of sound.

Well it seems like the loot crate boom of 2017 might be coming to a wonderful end.

We can only hope.

It’s pretty obvious what we spoke about this week.

But we also talk about some great games!

Paul has been playing a sweet little indie game called Assassin's Creed Origins. He’s quite fond of it. My own experience with the series has been somewhat lacking. Who knows if I ever finish the Witcher 3 I might have to have another look at the series. Is Ezio still in it?

I’ve been playing Kingdoms! Which is a great little 2d side scrolling game about building your kingdom and defending against monsters at night. It’s a great little way to use your time and very satisfying.

We also talk about the X.B.O.X and how having a powerful console is the way to go.

Also, I am doing another podcast! If you like DnD come check out podculture plays DnD:http://nerdythingspod.com/podcast/podculture-plays-dd-episode-1-cast-detect-evil-on-the-dm/

As always you can hit us up @paulomalley @zugai and [email protected]

Kep rolling!

Hey all,

We’ve been away/sick the last week so we’ve now had time to catch up with each other.

This week we talk about the fact that The Witness is not worth your time. Neither is Borderlands 2.

Paul has been kicking it old school with OG Xbox Backwards Compatibility and spending time with Star Wars: KOTOR and Fuzion Frenzy as well as enjoying the awesome free Stranger Things game on Mobile.

Also, Fantasy Flight games are no launching into video games. What does this mean? Are we excited?

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/10/26/tabletop-publisher-fantasy-flight-games-has-opened-a-digital-studio/

WoW is going to be opening vanilla servers after years and years of people asking for it. Neither of us are very excited:

https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/11/blizzard-announces-world-of-warcraft-classic/

And which common things in games would we be okay without? Mainly anything that gets in the way of fun.

Thanks all and feel free to contact us on [email protected] or @zugai or @paulomalley on twitter.

Hi All,

As always, a huge thanks to Gavin, the Miracle of Sound Dunne, who done the music we use for our intro!

This week we’re glad to have Paul back in town. It’s great to have him back from Japan.

This week we bang on more than a little about lootboxes as the UK government says that they have already taken steps:

UK government answer loot box questions | Rock, Paper, Shotgun

But really what they are saying is that they don’t want to have to worry about it. And if you buy Vermintide 2 you won’t have to worry about lootboxes at all, according to them at least:

Vermintide 2 will not sell loot boxes, developer confirms | PC Gamer

My opinion? They deserve extra credit for that. A lot of it.

In even more nefarious news, Activision has found a way to make microtransactions even worse:

Activision patent matchmaking system pushing microtransactions | Rock, Paper, Shotgun

There is nothing about this that is okay. Not a thing. RPS does joke about whether gamers should form some kind of collective to patent the worst gaming practises they can consider. Maybe not a terrible idea.

Our big question of the week concerns indie games:

Are indie games too cheap? | PC Gamer

Without getting too much into spoilers, we’re not completely sure. My follow up idea is that much of the problem also comes from a lack of QA with Steam or other online distribution services where dodgy devs could release a product for a few $’s make some quick sales and then bugger off. This of course erodes trust in the indie game sector and brings down the percieved value.

How does one fix that? No idea.

What have we been playing?

Cuphead, which Paul thinks is great!

Guild of Dungeoneering, which Josh is still enjoying!

Overgrowth, which is not worth your time, unless you got it in a bundle and had no idea!

As always, we can be reached at @paulomalley and @zugai and also [email protected]

Keep rolling!

Hi there all, we're so happy to be allowed to use Gavin Dunne's music for our podcast. If you could buy some of his music that'd be amazing! We have ourselves a good talk about why Shadow of War should be allowed to fail. And neither of us EVER advocate using the Pirate Bay to go and download it illegally because pay to win games like that are the scourge of the industry and should be put down mercifully. But we WOULD advocate that you go and buy the original Shadow of Mordor, maybe even for a friend because it was a good game and you can get it pretty cheap. In fact, why not buy it for 2 friends? We also have a talk about Offworld Trading Co and why it is a better game than Galactic Civilisations 3. Which is a re-skin of an older game, Galactic Civilisations 2. We do however kind of like Sins of a Solar Empire, or at least some of its design. Should you ask us questions at [email protected]? Ask and find out!

Hey everyone, this week Paul is away in China and so I am recording with Ethan! We have a jolly good chat about games athat are a lot of fun and some that we think are just wastes of time. What do we like? Ethan likes TW:WH2 and wrote about it here: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/527421-played-some-total-war-warhammer-2-the-twoening I am enjoying Offworld trading co. and Caveblazers! Again! There's a new Dungeons game coming out this week and Ethan might play it! https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/10/05/dungeons-3-release-date/#more-482597 There's a new game coming from the people that made Stardew Valley, and Ethan probably won't play it! (I might) https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/10/05/spellbound-relationships/#more-482331 Also, should Bethesda maybe not have asked for America to be Nazi free again? https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/10/bethesda-defends-wolfenstein-2-for-being-a-wolfenstein-game/ Let us know what you think! @zugai

Hello all and welcome to our latest podcast.

We shall be always and completely grateful to Gavin Dunne AKA the Miracle of Sound for the use of his music.

Unlike last week, both of us are in great health this time, so we were able to record! And we’ve been playing things!

Before we get into any games stuff, I’d like to point out that I was on another podcast this week!

http://www.talking.fail/631added

I’ve mainly been playing Psychonauts and quite a lot of Caveblazers. CB’s is great and great value for a tenner:

http://www.rupeck.com/caveblazers

I usually don’t go in for roguelikes, but I quite like this one.

Paul has been playing a lot of Back to Bed, or how to get Zoolander down for a nap:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/308040/Back_to_Bed/

He likes it quite a bit, but thinks you should wait for a Steam sale.

He does however think you should stop whatever you are doing and buy Oxenfree and Cuphead straight away:

Oxenfree on Steam

Buy Cuphead - Microsoft Store

We also covered the recent legal goings on with Pewdiepie and the creators of Firewatch:

https://www.polygon.com/2017/9/12/16295412/pewdiepie-campo-santo-firewatch-dmca-legal-abuse

On a related note:

https://www.polygon.com/2017/9/29/16384236/youtube-nintendo-livestream-monetization

Nintendo has decided that it is restricting livestreaming. Bold idea. I don’t think it’s going to be their best decision.

On a more personal note, we do sometimes like to boil a frog, and by that I mean, convince people to listen to the music we like:

http://static.echonest.com/BoilTheFrog/?src=Michael%20Buble&dest=Sabaton

We can of course, be found @paulomalley and @zugai and also at [email protected]

Keep rolling!

Hey all,

Damn what a week. Lucky for us we have the wonderful stylings of Mr Gavin Dunne to help our podcast with his music.

Heaps of new stuff to look at his week. Let’s get into it!

Do you like trains? This game looks like what would happen if you had an infinite amount of children train playsets around:

https://www.excalibur-publishing.com/collections/indie/products/tracks-the-train-set-game

In some ways it reminds me of Mini Metro, though MM is far more minimalistic.

Don’t like trains? How about spaceships?

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/shortest-trip-to-earth#/

I like the look of this one. If you liked FTL or anything else in space, chances are you would like this.

What if your spaceships had steampunk cowboy robots? That would be cool. But what if they were miners?

http://imageform.se/game/steamworld-dig-2/

I loved the original of this game and I loved even more Steamworld Heist.

And unlike all the others, this one has nothing to do with any form of transport, but everything to do with art and myth, the cornerstones of culture.

http://www.okami-game.com/

And yes, I do know how to say it Sam.

We also talk about Psychonauts, and the latest controversy around the question as to whether lootboxes are a form of gambling that need regulation.

Counter-Strike skin gambling: site owners settle with FTC after social media endorsement disclosures | Rock, Paper, Shotgun

It Is Time That We Start Referring to Loot Boxes as Gambling : Games

It Is Time That We Start Calling Loot Boxes Slot Machines

Galapagos syndrome hits Japan's mobile game industry- Nikkei Asian Review

As always, we are available @paulomalley @zugai and [email protected]

Keep rolling!

Hey there sweet things!

We’re poppin’ along to The Miracle of Sound who gave us permission to use his music for free.

What a guy.

This week we’ve been playing quite a few games, some more salacious than others! Mainly because each of us bought some games from the HUmble Bundles!

Paul purchased:

Humble Hunie Sakura Bundle (pay what you want and help charity)

And is not a total deviant. Seriously. From what he says Huniepop is well, quite an uplifting experience.

Josh purchased:

Humble Jumbo Bundle 9 (pay what you want and help charity)

And is having fun teaching a toddler to destroy the landscape. And in game with Human Fall Flat!

We have a discussion about This:

Cuphead Reignites the "Game Journalists Should Be Good at Games" Debate - GameRevolution

Given that neither of us plays games for a living we’d have to say that really we’re not sure, but it would help if journalists who report on games would most likely have better things to say if they at least have a passable level of ability. To at least get past the tutorial.

The Witcher is as a series is now 10 years old!

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-09-04-who's-who-in-the-witcher's-wonderful-10-year-anniversary-video

Nostalgia is one thing, but being pleasant is quite another. It follows the tone of Blood and wine. Geralt pretty well retires and only goes out to hunt monsters when he feels like it. It’s a good send off for a character and I’m not sure how many other characters it would work with. Probably not Gordon Freeman.

Paul likes fighting games and tells us all about this blast from the past eing the first game to pioneer a way for the PC Master Race to dally with the commoners:

Killer Instinct on Steam to support cross-play with Xbox One and Windows 10 | Windows Central

As always we can be reached on twitter @zugai and @paulomalley and [email protected]!

Keep rolling!