Thumbstick Athletes

Looking back on the library of the Gamecube, there were some absolute gems available for the system.  Not to say anything of Super Smash Bros. Melee which is still played competitively....and the controller still being perfect for Smash to this day.  During "What We Played" Will played a some more Far Cry, including but not limited to New Dawn and Dan tried a little Crackdown 3.

Dan, Eric and Will give their first impressions for Anthem,the newest looter shooter from Legendary developer BioWare.  It's definitely a gamble for them, to inject classic BioWare storytelling into a genre that's generally suffered from poor stories.  During Nibblebits, the Pokemon Sword and Shield reveal is discussed.  Eric talks about Apex Legends during "What We Played" and Will played some FarCry New Dawn.

Dan and Corey cover the Disney/Square Enix RPG that has been many years in the making.  Did all that time in development serve the game well?  During "What We Played" Corey played Civ 6's newest expansion Gathering Storm and Dan spent quite a bit of time playing Valkyria Chronicles 4.

Dan, Will and Corey discuss the newest Chucklefish release Wargroove....the spiritual successor to Advance Wars now on PC and Switch.  Also covered this week was Nintendo's Jam packed Direct from February 13, 2019...complete with some details on Mario Maker 2, Fire Emblem: Three Houses and the remaster for Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening.

Again in lieu of an Anthem beta episode, we decide to do something different at the last moment.  This time we reach way back, revisiting some of the Thumbies awards from the previous years.  Thanks again to Corey for creating the Thumbies master list!  During "What We Played" Dan and Will give some early Wargroove impressions.

It was a snowy mess last week here in Upstate NY, this week it's miserably frigid and windy...so we figured it was a good time to cover our favorite snow/winter experiences in games.  Made better by the fact that they can be experienced from the warmth and comfort of our couches.  Lots to cover this week in Nibblebits, with Metriod Prime 4 being scrapped and restarted and Metro Exodus exiting Steam.  What We Played has some more AC Odyssey talk, first impressions of Kingdom Hearts 3 and the Anthem Beta.

Dan and Will welcome Val on this week to discuss the latest Wii U game ported to the Nintendo Switch in New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe.  Another solid Nintendo game that should be experienced by the much larger group of Switch owners and not just the few, but proud Wii U owners. 

Dan and Will cover all the games (AAA mostly) coming out this year with real actual release dates.  Sure, plenty more will be coming out and some that we cover here may even see last minute delays.  But before we get into our main topic, Val comes on to get us caught up on her experiences with Rookie Camp games from November and December.  Also EA is still very poorly handling the Star Wars franchise and we gush some more about Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

This week we kick off our 2019 gaming coverage with a predictions episode....what new hardware will we see?  Unannounced games?  Then Dan talks about all he's played since we've had a regular episode, which includes Pokemon Let's GO Pikachu, Spyro Reignited Trilogy and Red Dead Redemption 2.  There's also some fairly big news stories that we cover, like Bungie and Activision splitting up and The Division 2 skipping a Steam release for the Epic Games Store.

Dan, Eric, Corey and Will change the format a bit for this year's Thumbies and discuss live which games they want for the winner of each category.