We jumped into an ocean but landed in a puddle at the following link.

Sea Of Thieves is the worst kind of game. The kind that show an amazing amount of potential, but already released into the wild. The game didn’t need more time, it just needed more to it. There’s a few hours of fun on the surface and then there’s nothing. Sailing a ship with friends is fun, but it only lasts so long when you’re doing the same thing over and over again without any kind of significant reward for doing it. There is no progression in the game. Not the kind of progression to keep you going further and further with it. It’s a shallow as they come, but it holds so much promise. It has one or two really good things nailed down but it isn’t enough to carry the game. It isn’t enough to justify the full price (we HIGHLY recommend the Game Pass option). With more, this might have been something special. Hell, with more, I have used the game pass but promptly gone out and bought a copy if it held onto me, but it doesn’t. The game’s a giant bag of air with a few chips at the bottom. But it could have been so much more.

Next week’s episode may or may not be your cup of tea. Or grog. Or mead. Whatever, we’re playing DnD live on the air for the very first time (as well as the first time for some of us on the show). We’re not sure how well it will go, but that’s the fun in experimenting. We hope it works. We hope you like it. And if it doesn’t or if you don’t, we hope you’ll come back the week after for our usual show format.

But we really hope it works AND you like it. Because it’s honestly been fun week after week of learning new things about DnD and we hope that fun will translate over the air for all of you.

We found out dice rolling can be really loud at the following link.

Stepping back into Burnout Paradise was like watching a favorite movie you hadn’t seen in a long time. Some of it felt fresh, but all of it was fondly remembered. It did nothing but bring a smile to my face and was amazing to see the world from the beginning again. This isn’t anything like the remaster for Shadow Of The Colossus. This is a low effort polish on a not-near-as-old game like that was and, really, the Shadow remaster set a bar I don’t think we’ll ever see again except from the same company who did that one.

But I don’t care. It’s put the Burnout game back in the heads of gamers who played it and those who missed it. It’s getting people talking about Burnout again and I really hope EA is listening because it’s been 10 years. Make another one already and drop that stupid obsession with your Need For Speed franchise.

We’ve got a longer segment at the end here talking about our DnD episode. We rolled dice for our stats (it got loud, sorry) and talked more about the creation of our characters. We also spent about an hour or so off-air after the show going over more of it and getting everything hammered out. Next week, we’ll get a taste of the story our GameMaster has crafted for us and the week following that (March 31st), we’ll have our first ever live Dungeons & Dragons game on the air!

We’re explaining it like we’re five at the following link.

Date’s set. We’re aiming for March 31st as to when we’ll do our DnD episode. Beginning with this episode, we’ll devote a segment of the show as our build up to that episode so you can see and hear us progress through the stages of doing something like this. This episodes segment comes near the end where we try to get a grasp on the idea of character creation. It’s…a slow process.

Meanwhile, in the video gaming world, this past week I returned to a game I’d only ever played at industry shows but never did dive into it when it released. And I loved every bit of it. And this week will see me return to a game I’ve always loved but I haven’t REALLY touched in ten years.

Sometimes revisiting the past doesn’t hold up to what you remember. But that’s okay. It doesn’t have to change your memories of the past. Those are still yours and yours as you remember them. So keep that in mind if something feels different a second time around. Doesn’t mean it has to ruin your memory of the first time.

We’re rolling for initiative at the following link.

Doing something you’ve never done before can be scary and fun and so many other things at the same time. However, this isn’t one of those times. It’s all fun and exciting. There’s nothing scary about it. You’ll hear this in the first segment of the show how an idea usually comes together for us – instantaneous, it would seem.

So, here’s the thing, we stumbled upon the idea of doing a live D&D session on the air. Two of us on the show know what this involved and two of us on the show have no idea what will happen. So that (we hope) will be actually entertaining to listen to over the radio and watch on Twitch/YouTube.

Experimentation is a lot of fun when doing things like this. We’ve done music only episodes before and those work cause, well…radio, right? But this is totally going outside of the norm I think for something on FM broadcast radio and it might work, and it might not, but we’ve gotta try and see what happens. If it doesn’t work, then whatever, we tried and there – it exists at out attempt to do something different. If we actually pull it off well enough, we could make it a regular and ongoing thing and it totally opens the door for new experiments to try. Playing a boardgame on the radio might not sound like it’ll work, but radio is nothing but theater of the mind anyway so if we can be descriptive and imaginative enough with it – I think we can pull it off.

You’ll find out when we do.

We’re saying it for the last time at the following link.

Actually, we’re not. We know it won’t be the last time we have to say that video games don’t cause violence, because we knew that the last time we had to say it. The cycle repeats over and over again. It’s always a conversation worth having, but it’s also a conversation that will never end, apparently. We don’t expect our few minutes of it at the end of this episode to sway anyone’s opinion on the matter, but we do hope it’ll give you an idea of where we stand on it, though that was probably already well apparent to most of you.

Outside of that, I’m still collecting Steelbooks and RJ is still hunting monsters. Hopefully we’ll find out next week what Matt’s been up to.

Finally, a congratulations to Nate. He’s been away from the show for awhile but still keeps us up to date on things. He spent his time away getting engaged, actually.

One quest ends and another begins.

We’re unwrapping our booster packs at the following link.

I never did catch on the to card game craze that happened in the early days of the genre. I don’t know why. I knew people that played it or saw it being played but it never grabbed hold of me. No one ever sat me down and showed me the ropes of it and that even extends to modern CCG’s and virtual CCG’s. I still, to this day, have no idea how to play Hearthstone. Or GWENT, or any of them. I can play all manner of card games with traditional playing cards, but not the CCG’s.

I’m hoping to change that.

What hasn’t changed is the games I’ve played. Still hunting monsters in a world. But I’ve been having an itch to get back into Civilization. I’ve talked about this before but that’s a game that needs a considerable length of time ahead of it with nothing on my plate. Because “just one more turn” becomes 100 more turns and hours fly by in minutes. You think I’m exaggerating and making a joke, but that is rock hard solid truth and nowhere near a joke, I assure you.

What is a joke, is how I ever thought I would want to play a realistic medieval RPG like Kingdom Come, but here we are.

We played 13 hours and only finished the prologue at the following link.

This may read like a review, but it’s not. The last time I played Shadow Of The Colossus was when it released – on my birthday in 2005. That was it. I never went back and replayed it and I haven’t even started on the “remaster” that was released this week. By the way, we tend to think of these video game remasters as being a few touch ups to display on larger and higher definition screens with other quality of life improvements, but this particular remaster was built from the ground up to do all of that and has now set the bar on how remasters should aspire to be – just to make that clear.

Anyway, Shadow Of The Colossus is a game that I hold very dear and I think a lot of other gamers do as well and they all have their reasons. It’s a phenomenal game with nothing but boss battles. That’s it. There’s 16 of them in total and that’s all you do. Go out and bring down the Colossus one by one. It’s just you, them, your horse, and a massive wide open land to explore. No other inhabitants besides a few birds here and there. And maybe that’s the appeal to me…the connection. The isolation and solitude of that and there’s very little in the way of dialogue because it is just you and these giant beings. There’s a story being told as well, and I refuse to spoil that here, but the ending of the game is less to do with the story told and more to do with the journey getting there. It’s…complicated to tell without spoiling. And, it’s a feat most games would have trouble reaching and I’m not so sure anyone else has tried it before because of what publishers feel that we, as gamers, need. But they aren’t looking at what we need, they are looking at what we’ll pay for and what we’ll keep coming back for again and again.

Because they don’t want us to pick up a game in 2005 only to play it a single time and never return. And yet this game still remains top of mind when it comes to some of our most cherished experiences in gaming.

We’re not saying he cheated, but he probably cheated at the following link.

Destiny 2 is now out of my system. It’s likely out of most of our systems at this point. Now replaced, for me, with Monster Hunter World. The hook was finally found and the skinner box is in full effect of keeping me there – for the time being. There’s other games soon, of course. That Shadow Of The Colossus remake is on the way this week and it’s been rebuilt from the ground up. It won’t be the same as going through it the first time, but it’s nice to have (and comes with a beautiful steelbook). Then God Of War hits later on (again with a steelbook…see a pattern here?) and that’ll take some time to run through the story but it has no lasting value on me. I don’t really want to talk about FarCry 5, but that’s soon too and while I have no desire to play it, I’ll have it on day one (stupid steelbook addiction).

My point here is that I’m no longer locked down to what Destiny 2 was doing to me and I’m free to roam the gaming grounds in search of new experiences and stories and I’m extremely happy about that. I’m looking forward at what’s to come, more so now, because I don’t have to add to the statement “I’ll play it” with “when I’m finished with my weeklys with Destiny 2”.

The cycle is broken (until May when they release new content).

We may finally find out what Matt has played at the following link.

Monster Hunter World just might be finding a way to win me over. It damn sure didn’t with customizing my cat companion, though that would do it for almost anyone else, but the mechanics of the game may be finding a hold somewhere in my head. It isn’t there yet, but last night after this show I played a little bit and I think some of it may be setting in for me. We’ll see if it continues as I play more.

From time to time I like to dip my toes into the waters of the unknown as far as gaming is concerned. The Monster Hunter games have been around for a long time but they’ve never struck me as something I wanted to play. This new entry in the franchise had the fortune of releasing when there was nothing else to hold my attention for weeks before or weeks after. And currently, it’s what everyone else is talking about so I’m a bit sucked in. Also, it has a steelbook (don’t judge me).

Sometimes going out of your comfort zone doesn’t work. I’ve tried Final Fantasy a few times and gave Dragon Age a few tries as well. No luck with either, but I tried. Monster Hunter World looks like it might actually be a success for me, however. Time will tell, but it’s promising, at least.

Here’s hoping you venture outside of your norm from time to time and find something you enjoy that you never thought you would. It’s a rewarding experience.

For the 500th time you can listen to the show at the following link.

I had a lot written here but it basically comes down to this:

Thank You