Our attention is split three ways this week, all thanks to Anno 2205. Jake sits in his island city patiently awaiting the new Super Mario Maker update. Nick spends his time on the moon, never sleeping, launching missiles until there's nothing left to nuke. Spaff sits alone in the arctic, huddled for warmth. Meanwhile, buried deep beneath the earth in a recently unearthed fortress of his own design, Chris sits down in a barber chair. "Give me an Erich Schaefer," he says. His barber knows exactly what he means.

Mister Neighbor has something great in store for you this week, once he's changed into some comfortable shoes. All he has to do is walk out of frame and suddenly you're somewhere new. You hope Mister Neighbor takes you to the factory to show you how the machines put together your favorite things, but it could be anywhere. Maybe you're on a spaceship, traveling from port to port trying to broadside a merchant ship. Maybe you're still falling down that infinite pit of blackness you find you return to in quiet moments. Maybe you're on hold forever with technical support. When you tell your mom about Mister Neighbor, she looks concerned, and tells you that's not his name.

When walking through a place you've walked many times before, you see a small hole in the ground, decide to climb in, and now you're falling forever and ever and ever, unable to stop, unable to return to the life you had before you found the hole. This is the video game Downwell and this is Chris Remo's life after finding the video game Downwell. Elsewhere, Nick Breckon has gained control of an aircraft carrier.

Not so long ago, on a night not unlike this very night, the people braved the sewers of rats, donned their nice masks, and celebrated the first Dishonored Halloween. You should have been there. Now, three years later, Dishonored Halloween's gone corporate—a sold-out shell of itself that's not even about the same things.

Using this custom-built glimmering console of knobs and sliders, we have calibrated the podcast to be perfectly suited to your taste. The sliders have also been tuned to provide you with incredibly fat bass, a catchy counter-melody, and a breathtaking view. The view initially featured twelve cavemen stabbing a mammoth to death with a bunch of spears, and some possible hints at greater lore, but we turned that off with one of the knobs.

An era ends as we say goodbye to Danielle "Junior Mints" Riendeau, who is off to New York for love and (somehow) lower rent. We are saying goodbye to Danielle in three ways: by talking about the new Cities Skylines expansion and its improved offerings in poop flow management, by playing hours of else Heart.Break() as a symbolic gesture based on the name alone, and by starting a new podcast you'll hear more about in the coming months.

This week we deal in fear. Danielle (who is fearless) finds a new horror game love in SOMA, Nick's time with Metal Gear Solid V comes to the confusing and bleak end he feared was there all along, and Jake is feared lost, last seen entering a ghost house of his own creation. Chris fears a hedgehog made entirely of pinky fingers, and we think that's fair.

If this description seems brief, if we're hard to get ahold of right now, the answer is very simple and not that inexplicable: We can't stop playing Super Mario Maker or Metal Gear Solid V. There's only one thing that will make us stop, and it's an opportunity to talk about them on this podcast.

Roughly 50 percent of this podcast is about Metal Gear Solid V, but we somehow manage to sneak in a tidbit here and there about our time with Satellite Reign and completing Lara Croft GO, Danielle's adventures with a real live clown, and a surprise-filled bag of candy for the video game baby.

Get carried away on our balloon of delight as we dive into Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, a game that stirs up memories of something we loved dearly, long ago. Then, we'll let you in on the "Sad Space Dads" craze that has taken the gaming world by storm. If that isn't enough, stick with us for the time Chris and Nick chatted with Jeff Goldblum about Thomas Pynchon novels.