Thumbstick Athletes

The 20-teens are almost and it's time to decide on the Thumbstick Athletes Podcast's game of the decade.  We've been doing this since summer of 2011, so we've also been a Pod for most of the games we're talking about here.  First we go through and name our individual GotD, and use that as a starter for the ultimate TSA Podcast GotD.

Up this week, a game from EA that's not a sports game or shooter....and it happens to be a Star Wars game.  Typically this spells disaster, but Fallen Order appears to be a bit of a victory for EA.  (Thank you Respawn!)  Eric and Corey play the first Star Wars game from EA that doesn't stink and relate their experiences with it.

Later in the episode we cover The Game Awards nominees, Halo Reach on PC, more Pokemon Sword and Shield, and LOTS of other things!

The first mainline Pokemon entry has finally reached the Nintendo Switch, so find out our thoughts on some of the additions (and subtractions) to the series.  Will is the resident Pokemon expert and played a TON over the past two weeks, so he has some good perspective on the new games.

Later on in the episode Dan talks a little about his vacation and GOG Galaxy 2.0 beta.

The Luigi's Mansion series is back, after what seems like a really long time, with Luigi's Mansion 3.  Our reluctant hero Luigi is tasked with saving his friends from the clutches of the The Last Resort hotel.  Dan is the only one that has played it to this point, so you hear his thoughts on the matter!

As for the rest of the episode, we talk about some of the XO19 announcements, The Outer Worlds, and Hearthstone Battlegrounds.

For clarification purposes, this episode is about The Outer Worlds, developed by Obsidian and is a Fallout, Borderlands, and Mass Effect-esque RPG.  It's defined by it's interesting characters and entertaining dialogue and quest options, which mostly outshine some of the game's negatives.  Yes, Outer Worlds...not Outer Wilds.

Later in the episode we discuss our Extra Life stream, (you can still donate by the way) the Pokemon leaks and Luigi's Mansion 3

In addition to talking about the full release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare we also talk about the mobile version of the game, Call of Duty Mobile, which is quite good.  For Modern Warfare, you pretty much know what you're getting...a polished shooter with a huge playerbase and excellent competitive online.  Plus it seems the campaign is quite good also!

We also briefly touch on The Outer Worlds, the Borderlands/Fallout New Vegas-esque game from Obsidian that also rather excellent!

Yikes...Bethesda has really stepped in it again with the announcement of Fallout 1st, a subscription to a game you already have to buy that's kind of expensive and doesn't seem to get you that much.  At least that's our take, but we use it as an opportunity to talk about some of the other great videogame subscription services like GamePass, Uplay+ and PS Now.

In other news, The Last of Us 2 was delayed, Shroud leaves Twitch for Mixer, Will played a lot of Persona 5 and Dan played a lot of Fortnite!

This episode is somewhat out of character for us, as we're all getting old and not keeping up with what the kids are playing nowadays...but something about the way Fortnite was taken down for a few days sucked us right in. 

We have our annual fall games preview for this week's episode...a few weeks later than usual.  At least with recording it this late, we have fewer games to cover, and there seems to be fewer releases in general this fall.  We have some heavy hitters like Call of Duty and Pokemon Sword and Shield, but other than that it more minor stuff and ports or remasters.  Our wallets will thank us!

Other than that, we talked about our return to Extra Life this year, Persona 5, Link's Awakening, Untitled Goose Game and more!

Thanks to Idaho Jake for this suggestion a few weeks ago, where we (and members of the chat) answer 50 gaming related questions.  Some examples are:

If you had to marry the last videogame character, who would it be?

Has a game's storyline ever made you cry?

What's your favorite game series of all time?

There's 47 other good questions there and we got tons of good answers from the chat!  Thanks to everyone who pitched in!

Since that was most of the episode, we only had a little to talk about for the other segments...Will talked a bit about Persona 5 and Astral Chain and Dan talked a little Mario Kart Tour and a tiny bit of Link's Awakening.