Vidjagame Apocalypse

Sidekicks? Tag teams? Amateur stuff. This week, Greg Moore and Dave Rudden rejoin us for a look at five games that push you to move and be aware of two characters at the same time, with no help from another player. Then we'll put the pedal to the plastic in Lego 2K Drive, move fast and wreck stuff in Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun and Shinobi Non Grata, get into the raft of announcements from PlayStation Showcase 2023, and hear which Links are your favorite Links.

In Tears of the Kingdom, Link loses an arm but gains a shinier new one that lets him manipulate and fuse matter like a boss, enabling players to create everything from stick-and-rock hammers to functional mechs. That inspired this week's Top 5 about other heroes with cool prosthetic-arm superpowers, for which we're joined by TL Foster. Then we'll get deeper into TotK talk, plus Humanity, Mortal Kombat 1, the scaling-back of Overwatch 2's PVE plans, and your favorite videogame sequels of all time.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is out this week, and it's one of only a few Zelda entries that could really be called sequels, continuing a story started in an earlier game. So this week, Ryan Harig of Zanzeezee podcast joins us to talk about five of our other favorite follow-up Zeldas, after which we'll get into Darkest Dungeon II, Ravenlok, Phil Spencer's Redfall mea culpa, and the most obscure Star Wars facts you know.

The ice planet Hoth was once one of the most ubiquitous levels in Star Wars games, and with more than 50 examples to choose from, some are bound to be kinda weird - so with Chris Baker on board to talk about his upcoming book, "X-Wings, Lightsabers, and Scorpion Vader," we'll take a look at five of the more unusual implementations of Hoth from across videogame history. Then we'll bite into Redfall and get further into Star Wars: Jedi Survivor, talk a bit about the real story behind the Gran Turismo movie, and hear about the times you took a punch to the face.

What if you could wade into a mob of the undead and, rather than being eaten, punch their lights out with your superior brawn? Last week's launch of Dead Island 2 got us thinking, so we re-invited Alex Faciane of Chilluminati and Super Beard Bros back for another appearance so we could talk about games that let you beat up zombies bare-knuckle style. Then we'll get into Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Dead Island 2, Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot Camp, Cassette Beasts, the Street Fighter 6 demo, more Microsoft-Activision news, and the brands you'd want to turn into the next Pokémon Go.

What if all our stories of gods and magic weren't mythology, but sufficiently advanced technology? What if the world, nay, galaxy was seeded full of ancient future tech with a cool mystery to discover? Huh? What then? This week, Alex Faciane of Chilluminati and Super Beard Bros rejoins us to talk about five of our favorite long-dead but highly advanced alien precursors in games, after which we'll get into Minecraft Legends, Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster, reveals from the Nintendo Indies Showcase, and the secondary villains you'd promote to big boss.

This week sees the long-overdue return of erstwhile host Dave "Diamond Dog" Rudden to the show, to talk about five villains who rose from being secondary antagonists to the final boss in later games. Then we'll get into the remake of Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened, Kabaret, Tron: Identity, Ghostwire Tokyo, the Mario movie's huge box-office returns, and the dead gaming trends you'd like to see make a comeback.

"Modern gaming" has been a thing, more or less, for close to 20 years now, and in that time we've seen a lot of hot new features, ideas, and trends become wildly popular and then fade out of fashion — some more quickly than others. With the Resident Evil 4 Remake excising one such feature from its re-imagining of the original, now seems like a good time to revisit an old topic and update it with five more dead modern-gaming trends,, after which we'll get into Dredge, Meet Your Maker, The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog, a mini-review of the Super Mario Bros. movie, and your favorite memories of the 3DS.

Nintendo finally shuttered the 3DS (and Wii U) eShop this week, on the 12th anniversary of the landmark handheld's North American release, so this week we're paying tribute to it with a look at five of the best digital-only exclusives to have disappeared along with the storefront. Then we'll get into Resident Evil 4 Remake, Tchia, Have A Nice Death, new developments in the Microsoft-Activision-Sony saga, and the actors you think lend gravitas to any role.

Last week, the world lost an iconic and unique talent with the passing of Lance Reddick, an actor who - in addition to a number of film and TV roles - lent his voice and face to a handful of videogame characters. This week, we pay tribute by looking at five of them, after which TL Foster of Welcome to the Thing and Live From the Pool House joins us to talk about WWE 2K23, Resident Evil 4 Remake, more drama around Microsoft, Sony, Call of Duty, and Redfall, and your favorite games that started in Early Access.