The Pitch

We've narrowed down some of our distaste for certain popular games, especially from the past: they were made for kids. And kids' media can be sublime! But what makes a piece of kids' media, game or not, good or bad? What turns us off? How do they approach issues of ethics or morality? How much do they condescend?

We also answer your questions and read your responses to September's games: BugSnax, Metal Gear Solid V, and Carrion.

October's games are:

• Devotion
• Strangeland
• The Evil Within 2

November's games are:

• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
• Superhot
• Half-Life: Alyx

This week's highlighted creator is an upcoming experimental RPG called Purgatory Dungeoneer, which you can wishlist on Steam today.

If you are a marginalized creator (non-cis, non-straight, non-white) you can submit your project for highlighting by emailing [email protected]

Support Watch Out for Fireballs!

No one in the world needs to be told that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is an important movie, but sometimes you need to be reminded that it's a good movie. A van full of teens is on a roadtrip into the vast empty stretches of Texas, and they find themselves wrapped up in the murderous affairs of a family of cannibals... and their mute hatchetman Leatherface. And you'll never guess what weapon he uses.

It was a great deal of fun to look back at an undeniable classic and find that it holds up and is still incredibly spooky. Give it a shot if you haven't already.

Everything To Guppy is a weekly comedy/gaming podcast that releases four 15-minute episodes in a single hour-long chunk every Tuesday for reasons that seemed good at the time. Gary Butterfield (Watch Out For Fireballs) and William Hughes (The A.V. Club) attempt to analyze every single item, boss, character, and concept in the rogue-lite video game The Binding Of Isaac. They manage to pull it off only slightly less than 50 percent of the time.

People love incremental and idle games. Kole's ambivalent. Gary hates them. Somehow this turned into an extremely on-topic mini-WOFF! about the genre at large, with Cookie Clicker as the starting off point. Welcome to Hell!

Edit: There was a problem with the first version of this that is fixed now. If you hear overlapping audio at the start you can delete and re-download. I apologize for the error! - K

This week we pick up on the road above Sellia, to the cliffs above to save the poor girl Millicent at the behest of the strange sage Gowry. Then, we proceed northward beyond the giant skull to Greyoll's Dragonbarrow, a slightly less-blighted portion of Caelid, which is now a sanctuary for the remannts of Dragonkind in the Lands Between.

Welcome to the introduction! In this episode we take an opportunity to introduce ourselves, the show, and how we plan to approach Breaking Bad with our commentary. We also describe our own histories with the show, and give a rundown of how Breaking Bad got picked up, along with an introduction to the main cast. It's an eventful episode, to be sure.

New episodes release every other Saturday, so we will be back next time with the Pilot.

We would like to thank Gwen Static for composing our theme song, and Trent Peters for creating our great podcast art.

When a baby is on a girder, you KNOW Gary Butterfield is on the scene. This unreleased prototype of a Lemmings-like game where you play as an angel stopping a baby from crawling into calamity is actually not terrible, just bizarre. Also bizarre? The movie "Baby's Day Out" was popular enough in India to warrant three different adaptations in different languages... including one named, and we're not kidding "James Bond". 

Kole, Ben, Dennis, and David talk about Rocksmith+, Fallout 76 Expeditions: The Pitt, Timberborn, and much more!

• David: Fallout 76 Expeditions: The Pitt. Destiny 2.
• Kole: Steam Deck impressions. Vampire Survivors. Skinwalker Hunt. Rocksmith+.
• Dennis: XCOM 2. Opus Magnum.
• Ben: Fall Guys. Timberborn. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge.

• Think of a favorite video game franchise. What is one change to that franchise that would make you drop it like a sack of bricks? (Apart from the creators being hateful in some way; take that as read.)

• Sim Nimby won’t let you play Sim City.
• Grand Theft Auto 6 hack seems like a disaster.
• Resident Evil 8 DLC will end the Winters story line.
• New GeForce graphics cards will add ray tracing to Portal.

How far can an excellent premise carry a game? Looks like it's more than 2 hours but less than 5. Carrion has an unbeatable premise, a hall of fame premise, and aesthetics to back it up. Why on earth is it not more fun to play? Listen and find out!

Everything To Guppy is a weekly comedy/gaming podcast that releases four 15-minute episodes in a single hour-long chunk every Tuesday for reasons that seemed good at the time. Gary Butterfield (Watch Out For Fireballs) and William Hughes (The A.V. Club) attempt to analyze every single item, boss, character, and concept in the rogue-lite video game The Binding Of Isaac. They manage to pull it off only slightly less than 50 percent of the time.