Thumbstick Athletes

We finally get to Ghost of Tsushima this week, with Corey, Will and Tito all having played it at various lengths.  And apologies for the spotty audio at the beginning...we've been having internet hiccups lately which disrupted some of the beginning of this episode.  Not to worry though, after a few minutes it clears right up.  

Anyway, Ghost of Tsushima is great and Dan looks forward to it's release on PC someday!  Later on in the episode we talk some more Paper Mario: The Origami King, some of Obsidian's game announcements, and Will's ever changing living arrangement!

It's Corey and Dan for this week's episode, and Dan's newborn makes his debut during the first part of it!  Not to worry though, he only grumped a little bit during the beginning before we got down to brass tacks.  We talked a bit about Paper Mario and it's role a a successor to Super Mario RPG, and it's place in Nintendo's lineup...along with the game itself.  During nibblebits we discussed the Xbox Games Showcase along with Halo Infinite and some of the other announcements made all while lamenting the loss of E3.  And for "What We Played" a bit more AC Odyssey, and Dan started A Plague Tale: Innocence.

And it's time yet again for our mid year recap, where I play a little excerpt from some of the bigger releases to come out this year.  Keep in mind however, that we're unable to cover every release since we only cover games we buy.  It's also been a fairly lean first half, with the only games being covered this episode being DBZ Kakarot, Animal Crossing: New Horizons (twice), Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Minecraft Dungeons.  Slim pickings indeed!

Dan and Tito talk this week about the latest Naughty Dog release in The Last of Us 2....even though Dan hasn't played it!  Not to worry though, he's watching a Let's Play on YouTube to at least experience the story.  Other than that we talk about the Dr Disrespect Twitch ban, another TSA Pod family birth, and oh yeah...we played some videogames.

Oh boy, some heavy hitting news to cover this week...like the PokeMOBA announcement we've been waiting for called Pokemon Unite, Mixer closing down and partnering with Facebook Gaming, and the purging of some predatory people in the gaming industry.  We cover some other stuff, but those were the biggest and most interesting stories from the week.

During "What We Played" Will talks about his first few hours of Persona 4 Golden, and yes....we talk about AC Odyssey some more.  Sue me.

Tito joins us this week to talk about the new indie release Deep Rock Galactic...a game with drinking, mining, space faring dwarves.  It's extremely well rated and rightfully so, it seems!  Just watching some gameplay alone was mesmerizing.

During Nibblebits we cover some of the announcements from EA Play, the New Pokemon Snap, and Cyberpunk 2077's delay.

What We Played features some talk of Season 3 of Fortnite, Persona 4 Golden, Outer Wilds, and of course some Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

The PlayStation 5 reveal was finally held earlier today and there seems to be mixed feelings on it.  Lots of cool games for sure, including the INCREDIBLE looking Horizon 2: Forbidden West.  There were also some sweet-looking Indie games like Kena: Bridge of Spirits and Stray.  Plus we got to see a box!  We were worried for a second that we wouldn't....but no details on pricing or an actual release date.

Not too much to cover outside of all that, and we gush more about Assassin's Creed Odyseey AGAIN this week....but it's so worth it!

Dan and Will sit down and hash out a ranking of the mainline Super Mario Bros. games, from the OG Super Mario Bros. to the more recent Super Mario Maker 2.  Where does Mario Odyssey fit in all this?  Or Super Mario 3?  Where does your favorite Mario game fit?

Later on in the episode we talk about the Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning announcement and Dan played a tiny bit of Valorant.

Minecraft Dungeons among other things.

The gang is all here for this week's episode, and we're covering a game that came out almost two years ago!  In all fairness, Assassin's Creed Odyssey is quite the game...one that Will has been trying to get us to play for awhile now.  With AC Valhalla on it's way shortly here we figured it would be a good time to finally give Odyssey the credit it deserves for being such a great game.  

Later in the episode we get to hear Corey's thoughts on the Final Fantasy 7 Remake finally and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 is getting a remake!