4Player Podcast

Thanks to a literal act of god, we are once again down to 3 people this week but the release of the Dead Space remake ensured that there is plenty to dissect. We dive deep into this remake and try our best to figure out it's legacy in comparison to other high-profile remakes. We also discuss the future of Dead Space under the EA Motive banner if this proves to be a success. Brad delivers a hefty Fire Emblem Engage update and Chris emphasizes how good Hi-Fi Rush is following it's surprise release last week. In the second segment, we discuss the recent culling of GAAS (Games as a Service) games and some major industry shakeups at 343 Industries which calls the future of Halo into question.

Amidst travel and hardware issues, a smaller group convened this week to discuss one of the first big gaming weeks of 2023! Brad uses this opportunity to express some positivity for Fire Emblem Engage and explain some common misconceptions about the series. Chris Davis shares his early impressions of Forspoken which seems poised to be one of the first misfires (or at the very least, divisive releases) of the year. But the biggest news of the week comes in the form of a surprise shadow drop from Tango Gameworks! Hi-Fi Rush is a stylish new action game that uses music and rhythm to great effect. It also happens to be the first big surprise of the year.

While we have plenty of actual video games to discuss this week, the recent premiere of 'The Last of Us' on HBO steals the spotlight this week. The show is off to a strong start so we take a minute (or 30) to talk about that first impression and the potential that it holds in the coming weeks (or even years). In the first segment though, we check in with Krispy as he continues to play Tunic (one of our 2022 game of the year contenders) and Chris Davis explains his split feelings on Generation Zero, an open-world FPS that came out in 2018. Nick discusses The Forest and delivers an important update to his Chained Echoes impressions from last week.

With our 'Game of the Year' content behind us, we finally have some time to talk about the games we've been playing in the background for the past few weeks. Nolan introduces Dark and Darker which is currently in development but undergoing Alpha playtests; Despite it's early nature, it seems to have serious potential. Nick finally has a chance to talk about Chained Echoes after weeks of digging into this beautiful throwback to retro JRPGs. On top of that, he finally tore through Chernobylite, a game that has been on his backlog for years. Brad dishes on Citizen Sleeper - a game that could have easily been a GOTY contender had he played it in 2022. In the 2nd segment, we talk shady draft trades and ask the question: When is a game too big to fail critically? Will Starfield fall into the same trap as Cyberpunk 2077?

2023 is going to be a ton of fun here at 4Player! In lieu of our usual "preview show" format, we have opted to create a "Fantasy Critic" league! This works a lot like fantasy football but publishers (players) draft games and points are dictated by their OpenCritic scores. In this episode, Carlos joins us for the initial draft and we take turns filling out the slots in our lineup! The league will consist of 12 games total per person but only 8 are selected in this initial draft. We will re-convene after E3 season to bid on our remaining 4 slots and fill out the rest of our teams. We will also provide monthly updates on the last podcast of every month so we can check in and see where we all stand as these games release.

Another year comes to a close but it's been great! As always, we cap off the year with our annual awards show which gives us a chance to honor a whole bunch of games in over 14 categories! We trimmed some of the fat this year and introduced some new wrinkles which we think make for a leaner (even if it is nearly 4-hours), better show! We hope some of you find the inspiration you need to try some of the games featured on this episode and of course, we hope you will join us in 2023 for another year with a LOT to talk about!

Categories:

• Biggest Regret
• Best Looking Game
• Best New Gameplay Experience
• Best World/Level Design (that isn't Elden Ring)
• Best New Enemy/Boss Fight
• Best New Character
• Best Storytelling
• Best Video Game Moment
• Biggest Surprise
• Biggest Disappointment
• Stubborn Award
• Spotlight Award
• Asterisk Award
• Number 11
• Best Soundtrack

The end of 2022 is looming. In fact, this is our last "regular" show of the year. Krispy and Brad have good things to say about Midnight Suns with some... caveats. Nick and Chris finally have a chance to talk about the divisive nature of The Callisto Protocol and it's potential as a franchise. Chris talks about his time with Potionomics and we catch up with Ed who finished Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and has started up Sifu. In the 2nd segment we talk very early (and potentially misguided) impressions from the Forspoken demo and then we discuss all of the exciting announcements from The Game Awards!

Brace yourselves. Nolan played 50+ hours of Pokemon Scarlet and he's here to tell us why it is both "the best" and "the worst" pokemon game ever made! Brad highlights ASTLIBRA: Revision, a crunchy new action RPG that - as Brad says - "Brings the meat." Nick talks Evil West (not to be confused with Weird West, Blood West, or Hard West) and the group digs a little deeper into the divisive nature of God of War Ragnarok. We also introduce the newly revamped community segment to discuss the Topic of the Week: Is it possible for Nintendo to screw up The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom?

With the launch of God of War Ragnarok, 2022 finally has one of it's biggest AAA releases of the year. With that in mind, we kick things off with the most important questions... Why doesn't Kratos just go somewhere else? Once the big questions are answered, we delve into the nitty gritty to find out how we're feeling about it thus far. Nick provides a quick update (and PSA) on Signalis and talks about his playthrough of the long awaited Somerville. Brad talks about Tactics Ogre Reborn which is an odd duck in that it is the 2nd complete remake of Tactics Ogre; A classic grid-based strategy RPG that launched in the late 90s. All of this is of course against the backdrop of Twitter loudly and swiftly burning to the ground.

For ages, The Steam "wishlist" has given us a way to show interest in a game without committing to it in the moment. Everyone's approach to managing that list is different. On this episode, we comb through our ever-expanding wishlists to pick 3 games that never quite make the cut regardless of how low the price goes or how often they go on sale. To make things interesting, we each commit to buying one of our list by the end of the episode! Listeners will also get bonus tangents regarding fast-food orders and dinosaur fluids (yes you read that right).