The Punished Podcast

What were the best video games of 2024? I need answers! I didn’t play that many games from the year (my life was very hectic!), and I want to know what to prioritize in my backlog. I turned to the contributors of The Punished Backlog and invited everyone to sign up for a speed-dating-like session with me to share one of their favorite games on the podcast.

This episode features about a dozen writers (myself included!) and their picks. Each mini-interview is about five to 10 minutes long. In each, I ask for a description of the game, what the writer loved most about it, and who else might enjoy it.

At the end, I include a LONG honorable mention list trying to recap every game anyone on our site liked in our Best of 2024 coverage, and I also got just a little emo at the end reflecting on my four years at the Punished Backlog! Hope y’all enjoy, and happy new year!

– Amanda Tien, Editor

Check out the latest episode below. A reminder that you can listen here, download the MP3 file, or catch us wherever you get your podcasts. Happy listening!

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The songs below, aside from the opener and outro, are all inserted before their corresponding features!

Explore the rest of our Best of 2024 coverage.

The post The Punished Podcast: Episode 12 – The Best Games of 2024 (Speed Dating Style) appeared first on The Punished Backlog.

We used an audio medium to talk about a visual one—art styles in video games! Was this a mistake? Only you’ll be able to decide when we start discussing the hands of Final Fantasy characters as an example of evolutions in graphical fidelity!

In all seriousness, this fun episode of The Punished Podcast has us reflecting on why and how visuals shape our impression of video games, what art styles have longer staying power, which games are the most beautiful, and if Toon Link is better than Twilight Princess Link.

12/13/2024 Update: I meant to talk about Okami! Re-pushing the audio to include it

– Amanda Tien, Editor

Check out the latest episode below. A reminder that you can listen here, download the MP3 file, or catch us wherever you get your podcasts. Happy listening!

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Amanda Tien | David Silbert | Kei Isobe | Sam Martinelli | Vaughn Hunt | Zack Gulinello

“Let’s discuss video game visuals. While any video game experience centers on play and control, visuals and visual design have always been an essential pillar to the medium. After all, the main way companies build hype and excitement for a game is through visual media: trailers, screenshots, gameplay demonstrations, etc. But what exactly do players want visually from their games?

To some extent, graphical fidelity vs. art direction has been a subject of discourse for decades, but now that upgrades to hyper-realistic graphics are getting smaller and smaller and AAA budgets keep ballooning, the nature of that discourse seems to be changing. It’s also worth noting that we’ve seen somewhat of an indie game revolution over the past decade-plus, where smaller studios—most of which are unable to produce graphical fidelity on par with their AAA counterparts—are forced to be more creative and intentional with their visual design.

So to start, let’s go around and describe what we think makes a game look ‘good,’ and whether you think fidelity matters more or less than style…“

The post The Punished Podcast: Episode 11 – Visual Art Styles appeared first on The Punished Backlog.

As the summer comes to a close, let’s reflect on some exciting video game announcements! In Episode 10 of The Punished Podcast, we discuss everything that excited us from giant publishers and indie studios alike. We also did waiver wire pickups for our Fantasy Gaming league, which is a fun way to stay in the loop about what’s hot and what’s (unfortunately for me, as you’ll find out) not.

There’s a lot to look forward to this fall, starting with this Thursday’s release! As Sam says in the podcast, “The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is the Zelda game I’ve wanted for 15 years.”

Check out the latest episode below. A reminder that you can listen here, download the MP3 file, or catch us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Happy listening!

(Please note: This episode was recorded on August 15, 2024, prior to the releases of Star Wars Outlaws, Black Myth: Wukong, Astro Bot, The Plucky Squire, and Frostpunk 2.)

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Timestamps:

Here’s an excerpt from our discussion:

We highlighted the following titles:

Listen to the episode for the spice of our picks and updated scores from our Fantasy Gaming series. Below is a snapshot of where our teams were at heading into the episode. Releases with a red X indicate games that have been officially delayed (or, in the case of Hades II, that didn’t qualify for a Metacritic score in 2024).

If you want to see what we picked, click the reveal below.

And, if you want to see the lay of the land as of 9/23/2024, click this next reveal.

The post The Punished Podcast: Episode 10 – Fall 2024 Preview appeared first on The Punished Backlog.

Ah, downloadable content, better known as DLC. It’s such a modern expectation in today’s gaming landscape that it’s an active surprise when a studio says it won’t release add-ons (no matter how badly we want it). Across games big and small, indie and giant, live service and single-player, DLC is everywhere.

But what’s the history of DLC, and how has it shaped current trends? What makes a piece of DLC worth it? When (and why) does it work, and when does it really not? Four writers from The Punished Backlog joined me to discuss these questions and much more. Join us for a DLC power-hour discussion!

Check out the latest episode below. A reminder that you can listen here, download the MP3 file, or catch us wherever you get your podcasts. Happy listening!

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Amanda Tien | Zack Gulinello | Allison McDaniel | Anthony Franklin II | Joe Chivers

Alan Wake 2, Apex Legends, Baldur’s Gate 3*, Battle Chef Brigade, Brink, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, Control, Cult of the Lamb, Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course, Deadpool, Deathloop, Eastwards, Fallout 4: Far Harbor, Fallout New Vegas: Dead Money, Horizon Zero Dawn: Frozen Wilds, Hades, Halo, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Madden, MarioKart 8, Marvel Snap, Mass Effect 3: Citadel**, MLB: The Show 24, NBA 2K Series, Splatoon, The Sims 1 through 4, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Stardew Valley***, The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine, Yakuza 0, Zoo Tycoon

* We have an entire podcast episode about Baldur’s Gate 3!
** If you want to hear Amanda talk more about Mass Effect 3: Citadel, check out Episode 7 of our podcast and skip to 02:43:50. 
*** Check out our recent conversation on everybody’s favorite farming sim as we aimed to answer the question, “Why is Stardew Valley so good?!”

Let us know in the comments!

The post The Punished Podcast: Episode 9 – DLC appeared first on The Punished Backlog.

Welcome back to The Punished Podcast! In this episode of your favorite gaming podcast, we share our thoughts on 2024 thus far—including GOTY frontrunners, biggest disappointments, and more.

Later on, David walks us through the latest update for our Fantasy Gaming league. Amanda brings us home with a hot take that may or may not be absolutely scalding. Only one way to find out!

Check out the latest episode below. A reminder that you can listen here, download the MP3 file, or catch us wherever you get your podcasts. Happy listening!

Note: This episode was recorded on April 6, 2024.

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Sam Martinelli | David Silbert | Amanda Tien

The post The Punished Podcast: Episode 8 – 2024 Vibe Check appeared first on The Punished Backlog.

Baldur’s Gate 3 won Game of the Year at last year’s Game Awards, and for good reason. Here at The Punished Backlog, the game made many of our own Best of 2023 lists, to the point that we just had to talk about it!

On the latest episode of The Punished Podcast, we explore the game’s relationship with tabletop D&D, and discuss our favorite characters, little magical moments, strengths and weaknesses, the gorgeous Patch 5 epilogue, those wild side quests, and much, much more. 

As I explain in the episode’s intro, we encountered some technical and scheduling issues and had to record audio across multiple sessions. The end result? A mega, three-hour episode! If you loved playing a hundred (or more) hours of Baldur’s Gate 3, hopefully you’ll enjoy hundreds of minutes of our spoilercast discussion. 

Spoiler warning: This episode is spoiler-heavy, but this post is not in case you’d like to read the excerpts below. 

Content warning: This episode has swearing and often delves into NSFW content. 

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Amanda Tien | Joe Chivers | Kei Isobe | Ben Rashkovich 

By panelist: 

By topic: 

Kei: “I think gimmick bosses in tabletops can always be a little weird. In real life, you have to telegraph it so hard to get your players to behave in a certain way that it’s not always conducive to the nature and experience of tabletop games. But in a video game, it comes across a little bit better.”

Ben: “One beautiful thing of Act 1 and Act 2, that Act 3 doesn’t really do, is that they set stuff up is that the payoff is in your imagination. What happened to the mushroom people? We don’t know! That’s just part of the world. But everything in Act 3, they’re constantly closing the loop, it’s a checklist… There’s not as much wonder or surprise… But when replaying the game, as a Dark Urge, you think you know what it is in Act 1, and yet it’s amazing the ways it can still surprise you.”  

Joe: “My three favorite characters were Astarion, Gale, and Karlach. Karlach, to me, is the most positive vibes person in the whole team. She’s great. I think we could all have someone like her in our lives. Astarion, potentially, has one of the most fleshed-out backstories in the game. It’s hard, it’s difficult… that dude’s been through a lot. And I like his personality. He reminds me of Reaver in Fable 2, what a flirt of a man that he is. And I think with Gale, he started off a bit full of himself. It’s easy to write him off as a wizard that believes he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, which probably hasn’t been invented in Baldur’s Gate anyway. But I think once you get to know him, and give him the chance to be vulnerable with you, he gets a lot more interesting.”   

Ben: “The epilogue was extremely emotional for me because A) of how much time and energy I put into playing the game, and what the game meant to me who has been a lifelong D&D player, and B) because I thought that for all the jankiness of Act 3, it was such a love letter, and the Epilogue is the closest we got to the developers talking directly to us. I felt like I was in a room with Larian developers, and I felt so emotional. I was so grateful to them. I was so happy that they could receive my gratitude, and I felt their gratitude. It felt like we were in conversation.” 

Amanda: “The epilogue shows so much love… When there’s something like the epilogue to Baldur’s Gate 3 or that anniversary video for The Witcher 3, I have a moment where I feel like I’m a part of this. They are seeing me, and I am seeing them. I know how much this game must’ve been a part of their lives, and they’ve made something that’s a part of my life. 

I think, as someone who strives to create art of any kind that is meaningful, even a video game blog post, we hope that our work resonates with someone. That no matter how fleeting, or if it’s short or long, you hope that it means something to someone the way that it meant something to you. Being able to find that connection…  Art is this unique thing that can exist separately from you, it is a third separate body between you and this other person, and yet it is something that you are both experiencing and you are both connecting and it matters to both of you. 

And so those moments that you’re describing, like that Baldur’s Gate 3 epilogue, are rare places where you can feel the planes colliding and overlapping. It’s a fuzzy space, and it feels magical.”

Ben: “That totally crystallizes some of my thoughts. I was reflecting on how the goodbye trope is a trope in video games that you can’t really get in other mediums. Probably because, I imagine, video games are the kinds of art you spend the most time in. You don’t spend 200 hours with a painting or a movie. And I’m thinking of games like Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, or Sea of Stars—they’re mostly RPGs—but there are these thin places, a part where the walls come down just a little. The fiction, you see through it a little bit. It doesn’t ruin the immersion, it makes it deeper. And it’s such a special thing, and I think it’s something that Baldur’s Gate 3 has done better than any other game I’ve ever played.” 

Amanda: “Yes, the goodbye party is this opportunity to kick back and celebrate, as you would hope to with any friends. And I think it speaks to a real-life experience that we all have as people, where you realize that the time that you have together is ending, and it is precious and beautiful. The time that you’ve had together means so much, but also that, in the time to come, there will be new adventures. It’s bittersweet. 

And for a video game, where you’ve spent hundreds of hours talking to these other, “not-real” people, but you have made bonds with, that you’ve made choices together… [It’s a medium of art] that probably feels the most like life in that way. You’re active. You’re not passive in the way that you watch a movie or a television show. You’re making choices, you’re talking to them, you’re encouraging them to be their best selves. It’s a space where you’ve put yourself into the game, because the game has allowed you to do so. And you recognize and appreciate the work that someone has done to make that possible.” 

Update: March 22, 2024 — RIP the idea of DLC or Baldur’s Gate 4! A few days after we pushed this episode live, the leads of Larian shared at Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2024 that they do not plan to make any DLC or make a sequel. You can read more about that news in this piece at Polygon.

The post The Punished Podcast: Episode 7 – Baldur’s Gate 3 appeared first on The Punished Backlog.

The Pokémon franchise turns 28 this month (and 25 in North America, specifically)! The Punished Podcast crew celebrates Pikachu and co. with this 90-minute episode. 

For episode 6 of The Punished Podcast, we chat about all things Pokémon. We discuss the strengths of the classic video game formula, reflect on our favorite ‘mon, debate innovations over the years, and share fond memories. And, of course, we had to talk about Palworld, a game that’s made news for being “Pokémon with guns.” 

Whether you’re a longtime fan of the series or a casual player, a parent or a child, you’ll find something that resonates with you in this super-Lightning-Bolt-charged episode of the podcast. 

MP3 Download | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

Some excerpts from our conversation:

The post The Punished Podcast: Episode 6 – Pokémon appeared first on The Punished Backlog.

Welcome to the first Punished Podcast of the new year! The Backlog crew is back and better than ever, and we’re excited to show you what we’ve been cooking up.

For episode 5 of The Punished Podcast, we’re taking a look ahead at 2024 in gaming—and running it back with our annual Fantasy Gaming draft.

Will Sam go back-to-back this year? What’s up with Hollow Knight: Silksong, and will Amanda strike out on it, yet again? Will David finally draft a decent team?

Take a listen and gauge for yourself.

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(Note: We recorded this podcast on January 6, 2024, before the releases of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Tekken 8, and Persona 3 Reload. This podcast also predates Microsoft’s “Direct”-like showcase, which saw Hellblade II, Avowed, and MachineGames’ Indiana Jones and the Great Circle all get 2024 release windows.

You’re hearing our thoughts and analysis before ANY of the above occurred—so keep that in mind while listening!)

Want the Sparknotes version of our Fantasy Gaming draft? Here’s a quick play-by-play:

Take a gander at our three contenders, now that the dust has settled. As a reminder, we’ll likely revisit these teams midway through the year in the form of a “waiver wire pick-up” draft.

We got silly with the team names this year. Hopefully, they give you a chuckle!

As mentioned before, we recorded this podcast before a bunch of January games hit storefronts. Here’s the current leaderboard, taking into account those releases (expect more commentary in a future article):

Last on the podcast, but certainly not least, was our Punished Hall of Fame segment. This episode, Sam Martinelli nominated The Legend of Zelda—the entire franchise.

Do we need to argue for its inclusion? If ever there was a series that merits the highest honor we can provide, it’s this one. Zelda defined most of our childhoods, and its sheer variety—from time-traveling escapades in Majora’s Mask to cel-shaded seafaring in The Wind Waker—never seems to taper.

Yes, the franchise has the occasional dud (I’m looking at you, Spirit Tracks). But the bad pales in comparison to the good—and even then, the bad here is arguably better than most franchises in their prime.

Here’s to you, Zelda. It’s been nearly 40 years since you graced our Nintendo consoles, and we’re looking forward to another 40 more.

The post The Punished Podcast: Episode 5 – 2024 Gaming Preview appeared first on The Punished Backlog.

Happy Holidays! Episode 4 of The Punished Podcast marks our final episode of the year, but fret not—we have an awesome show in store for you.

To close out the year, we brought five of our writers together to reflect on the good, the bad, and the ugly of 2023. Which games wowed us? Which games punked us? What are we excited to play in 2024? Listen along as we tell all.

For the latter portion of the podcast, our editorial team reconvened to tally up the final scores for our 2023 Fantasy Gaming league. Despite a competitive draft (and some smart waiver wire pick-ups), in the end, there could only be one victor. Get the full play-by-play in this month’s episode.

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Allison — 4.5 out of 5

David — 4 out of 5

Kei — 4.5 out of 5

Jason — 4.5 out of 5

Sam — 4.5 out of 5

Curious how this year’s Fantasy Gaming league panned out? Read up on the highlights below:

December 2022

Our editorial team gathered to preview the upcoming year's gaming slate. We took turns, snake order, assembling a team of six gaming releases. The goal: End the year with the highest average Metacritic score.

Only the top four games from each team would count toward the average, meaning we could draft with our hearts and swing for the fences. So, we did. Check out the full 2023 Fantasy Gaming draft here.

By the end of the draft, we were left with three contenders:

January 2023 to June 2023

For six months, our gladiators battled it out for goodness and glory. Each month brought new gaming releases—and with them, the promise of green Metacritic scores, universal acclaim, and more points for the Fantasy Gaming leaderboard.

We won't dig up the past, but if you want the full blow-by-blow, you don't need pay-per-view. Catch the full recap by reading each of our H1 2023 Fantasy Gaming updates:

• Fantasy Gaming Update: Jan 2023 – Fire Emblem and Dead Space Kick Off the Competition!
• Fantasy Gaming Update: March 2023 – Resident Evil 4 Retakes Its Crown
• Fantasy Gaming Update: April 2023 – Jedi: Survivor Soars, Redfall Stinks
• Fantasy Gaming Update: June 2023 – Zelda, Street Fighter, Final Fantasy, and More!

June 2023

By the end of June, the Fantasy landscape was well-established. Team Amanda had seen a massive dub in May with the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, but also a massive dud in Arkhane Studios' Redfall. Team Sam enjoyed two strong performances thanks to Resident Evil 4 (2023) and Street Fighter VI. And Team David, despite some decent releases, suffered two major game delays.

As the summer set in, the leading horses were creating some distance from the pack.

July 2023

Then, we decided to shake things up. In July, we hosted a one-time Fantasy Gaming "waiver wires pick-up." The rules were simple: Each team could drop two games and replace them with another two. With Summer Games Fest at our backs, there was a gluttony of fresh releases ready to be added. Naturally, we took advantage. Check out our full 2023 waiver wire adventures here.

With our waiver wire completed, we entered the second half of 2023 with revamped teams—and renewed fires.

December 2023

This was it. After months of releases, we reconvened for one last hurrah. If you haven't already listened, we highly recommend you scroll up to the top of this article and give our podcast a listen.

Still here? That's cool too. Here's the final leaderboard (and our newly crowned Fantasy Gaming winner):

In 3rd, with an average top four of 87.8 (and an overall average of 86.5)... Team David!

In 2nd, with an average top four of 91.3 (and an overall average of 73.5)... Team Amanda!

And in 1st, with an average top four of 91.3 (and, critically, an overall average of 88.7)... Team Sam!!!

That's right, folks! We had to go to a tie-breaker to decide the final winner.

Thanks so much for tuning into Fantasy Gaming these past 12 months. We've had a blast playing, and we hope to do it again soon!

The post The Punished Podcast: Episode 4 – Best of 2023 Recap appeared first on The Punished Backlog.

Welcome back to The Punished Podcast! In this episode, we talk about the gaming phenomena that inspired this site’s very name: the backlog. 

You’ve got games to play, and so do we. Listen along as we discuss what’s in our current backlogs, the challenges to getting through that stack of games, and tips for newcomers looking to break into the hobby. Plus, hear our reactions to a spicy take from the site’s newest contributor, Zack Gulinello!

MP3 Download | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

Here’s a brief summary of our strategies for managing the backlog: 

We discuss a wide range of games, new and old. In alphabetical order, here are some that dominated our conversation (and haunt our free time):

The post The Punished Podcast: Episode 3 – The Backlog appeared first on The Punished Backlog.