Happy Valentine's Day, from IGL Podcast! Hosts Justin, AJ, and Kyle are talking the best titles to play with that special gamer in your life. Three words: Lego Harry Potter.

What says Valentine's Day more than video games with your favorite Player Two?

While some games are clearly better for solo endeavors (Kyle and Final Fantasy have a special relationship for example), there are those special titles that bring people together and even dare we say, inspire love? Who could play Super Smash Bros with a potential mate and not be invigorated with zeal?

IGL hosts also recommend Castle Crashers, the perennial classic Mario Kart, party favorite Super Smash Bros, Lego Harry Potter (aka video game Spanish Fly), dark horse retro game contender, Contra, and more recent entry in the love video game machine, Rocket League.

Castle Crashers is a 2D beat 'em up video game originally for Xbox 360 version which was released in 2008 via Xbox Live Arcade as part of the Xbox Live Summer of Arcade, followed by a PlayStation 3 version in 2010. The game is set in a fictional medieval world with wizards and princesses: a dark wizard steals a mystical gem and captures four princesses. Four knights are charged with the task of rescuing princesses, recovering the jewel, and bringing the wizard to justice. In 2015, developer The Behemoth announced a remastered version of the game for Xbox One.

Lego Harry Potter is such a romantic game choice for lovers, we can hardly keep our pants on. Hollywood ReduXXX indeed. Developed by Traveler's Tales and published by Warner Bros, the game covers the first four films in the Harry Potter series: Sorcerer's Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, and Goblet of Fire. it's available all over the place: on the Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable, Microsoft Windows, OS X and iOS. You can play as most of the main characters from the show - try to make it all the way to the Triwizard Tournament without heavy petting.

Your Hosts:

Justin Gentile AJ Demers Kyle Duncan Graham

Twitter: justin_gentile Twitter: lissaj89 Twitter: kDuncanG

Infinite Grenade Launcher players, Justin and AJ, take on the hottest topics in gaming! This week, we're on fire with Marvel and Square Enix's announcement that they’ve signed a multi-game deal to bring Marvel properties to games, the Apocalypse Now COD style gamer Kickstarter, Sega on Spotify, Zero Dawn for PS4, and more.

Lots of exciting prospects, but we find the Avengers game especially appetizing, considering there has never been an Avengers game basically ever. The last attempt was cancelled, despite a promising concept. Marvel fans have been hungering for a long time for a Rocksteady Arkham style series - let the rogues gallery play!

2017 is the year of Virtual Reality! IGL Podcast levels up with the coolest upcoming releases for VR platforms this winter.

Once a month, IGL Podcast dedicates time to the latest and greatest in VR tech and gaming, and the early part of the new year is looking tasty. Today we're talking about such exciting prospects as Star Trek: Bridge Crew, a new Resident Evil offering, implications for past titles like Fallout, and even a Rock Band VR experience.

It's all compelling - VR takes out the barrier between you and game, immersing you in the environment and even in the mind of the character whose role you are playing. Case in point: Star Trek fans will soon have the opportunity to take command of the star-ship Enterprise on its continuing mission to explore strange, new worlds via Ubisoft’s virtual reality foray into the world of Star Trek.

First revealed at Ubisoft’s E3 2016 conference, the game is an online multiplayer, meaning four players take on the role of your fellow crew with you, working together to pilot the ship, battle Klingons and rescue allies. The captain gets control over the ‘red alert’ alarm, just FYI... Your team must work together in order to successfully complete missions, which is easy to do when playing with friends, but we'll be interested to see when the game is released how well it fares when strangers must work together in the same way in the virtual community.

Similarly, the upcoming Rockband VR lets you even more become the rock star on stage, playing to screaming crowds. Both games take the communal game experience from the confines of your living room into the greater world - and when gamers are interacting as their avatars, they mimic the emotions and movements you do, so it's not altogether without connection. In fact, it's a new kind of connection that allows you to meet people all over the world in a wholly different way. VR!

The game uses the Active Cross Battle system, an action-based real-time battle system instead of using the familiar menu interface. The player selects commands directly mapped to buttons on the controller, such as "Attack", "Defend", "Magic", and "Item". Battles take place within the current environment rather than transitioning to a separate arena, like in previous Final Fantasy Games.

Final Fantasy XV was released on November 29th, for both the Xbox One and the Playstation 4 and was well received by most in the gaming community with some calling it a game for the history books. Even though sales weren’t massive in comparison to games like Call of Duty, this game has something that Call of Duty games just can’t match and that is elegance.

At first the new gameplay and storyline took us back and was a little frustrating to try and wrap our minds around but, after putting in over 24 hours of gameplay into the story, we are absolutely hooked. Which says something about the quality of the game if we kept playing it for that long after our initial reaction to it. For us, Final Fantasy is amazing to look at, the new battle system allows for players to have more control and a real-time feel that makes gameplay feel like it’s progressing at a faster rate and has more story than most game franchises combined.

IGL Podcast returns with the first episode of 2017 with a full lineup! Ready players one, two and three: Justin, AJ, and Kyle take a look at ingenious vehicular soccer game, Rocket League.

Stay tuned to us on Youtube for a NEW Gameplay Thursday this week.

Rocket League, crowd pleaser that it is, was published by Psyonix and first released for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 4 in July 2015, with ports for Xbox One, OS X, Linux released in 2016. Many are just discovering how much fun this title is to pop out at parties - it's an extremely social experience that's easily accessed by any skill level.

The game is most easily described as soccer with rocket-powered [customizable] cars. One to four can play on two teams of jet-packed Hot Wheels to push a ball into their opponent's goal. You can choose single-player or multiplayer mode both locally and online, including, awesomely, cross-platform play between the PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Windows versions, and cross-play between Xbox One and Windows versions. Recent updates to the game turned on the ability to modify core rules and added new game modes such as rocket-powered ice hockey and basketball (!!!).

What child of the 9o's didn't pine for a series of Nintendo-made items yearly at Christmas? This week on IGL Podcast Retro Gaming we're talking the games we most ardently wished Santa would bring for our last episode of the year!

Growing up, Christmas was a magical time for video games, because the chance of getting the coveted console or game your heart desired went up exponentially. Santa loved to bring video games to kids. Some of our highlights include Command and Conquer for the PC, Nintendo and SNES titles like Super Mario 3, Little Nemo, Chrysalis plus wishes for the coming year get very wistful - Kyle dreams of a Bushido Blade game for a current console.

Almost as long as Star Wars has been playing in movie theaters, it has been mesmerizing eyes via video game consoles. This week we welcome a new Star Wars story and IGL Podcast is talking the best of the gaming galaxies far far away in honor of Rogue One.

Look no further than Super Star Wars! Kyle loves to hate this side-scrolling Super NES adaptation of Episode IV. Even though Luke never had to battle a sarlacc pit monster in quicksand on Tatooine, that's how the first level of the game ends and it is delightful.

The N64 had multiple Star Wars entries, including Rogue Squadron (and its sequel) and criterion roleplaying massively sprawling Shadows of the Empire. This game is the precursor to X Box highlight Knights of the Old Republic, where you experience the world of SW firsthand in the game via your character.

Currently, Star Wars: The Old Republic lives as a massively multiplayer online role-playing game that launched in 2011. The sequel to the two Knights of the Old Republic games, The Old Republic is set three hundred years after the original games. Look out for Star Wars Battlefront coming November 17!

The return of IGL Podcast segment Hot Gaming News sizzles this winter season! Hosts Justin and Kyle talk necessary upcoming titles across all platforms, including VR Exclusive Werewolves Within for HTC Vive/Oculus, Dead Rising 4 for Xbox One, and PS4's The Last Guardian.

We're most hopeful about VR Exclusive title, Werewolves Within, which is based on a classic party game and has each player with a VR headset taks on a cartoonish avatar and a secret role to play, then players sit around a campfire trying to guess the wolf in their midst.

RETRO GAMING IS BACK!

Nintendo November continues with a celebration of our favorite classic games including Super Mario Bros for NES, Donkey Kong Country for SNES and Crusin' The World for N64.

This November, our intrepid IGL hosts Justin, AJ, and Kyle are dedicating some air time to the fountainhead from which our first video game love flowed: the good ship Nintendo. If you toured the video game buffet that was the 90's with a Gameboy in your hand, tune in below for a reminder of all the reasons we love those red, black and grey square controllers.

RETRO GAMING IS BACK!

Nintendo November continues with a celebration of our favorite classic games including Super Mario Bros for NES, Donkey Kong Country for SNES and Crusin' The World for N64.

This November, our intrepid IGL hosts Justin, AJ, and Kyle are dedicating some air time to the fountainhead from which our first video game love flowed: the good ship Nintendo. If you toured the video game buffet that was the 90's with a Gameboy in your hand, tune in below for a reminder of all the reasons we love those red, black and grey square controllers.