Vidjagame Apocalypse

This week saw the return of Saints Row after a nine-year hiatus (or five, if you count Agents of Mayhem), so we're honoring its hero's journey from so-so GTA-like to ridiculous fantasy with a Top 5 about game series that ran out of fucks and to embraced absurdity. Then TL Foster joins us to talk about not just the new Saints Row but Midnight Fight Express, Gamescom announcements, and your favorite fictional sports.

Madden's out this week, but it's been a big week for games about made-up sports as well, what with Rollerdrome and Rumbleverse busting onto the scene with their improbable competitions. So let's take a look at five other games entirely about sports that would be difficult if not impossible to re-create in real life, after which we'll get into Cult of the Lamb, NFL Blitz getting a censored Arcade1Up release, and the games you've restarted the most without ever finishing.

Light-gun games have all but disappeared from relevance, but there was a time when they were everywhere — and in those days, it was possible for some real gems to be overlooked. Dan Amrich joins us for a look back at five light-gun shooters that deserve another, closer look, after which we'll get into Pac-Man live-action movie news, EVO 2022 announcements, Splatoon 3 reveals, and your all-time favorite videogame weapons.

With this week's release of Frogun and its titular talking weapon, we welcome back Tony Wilson of Framework for a chat about five of our other favorite talking implements of destruction. Then it's on to Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Hooked on You: A Dead By Daylight Dating Sim, Grand Theft Auto 6 rumors, and your favorite videogame villains to play as.

Bringing an enemy around to your way of thinking can be a powerful thing - and in games, adding a former nemesis to your ranks can be a lot cooler than offing them. TL Foster joins us to talk about five of our favorite examples, after which we'll dig into Live A Live, highlights from the Annapurna Interactive Showcase, and the games you wanted badly enough to import.

Live A Live's launch this week is a reminder that even if a Japanese game doesn't come to the US for decades, it doesn't mean it never will. With localization expert Greg Moore in the guest-host chair, we chat about five games that took ages to get English releases, after which we sharpen our claws on Stray and MultiVersus, speculate about John Romero's new shooter, and get into the weeds with your childhood anecdotes that kids today just wouldn't understand.

"1980s kids in peril" has been pretty thoroughly mined as a concept by now, and yet relatively few games have tried to recapture the (heavily idealized and romanticized) experience of being a kid in that strange decade - so let's grab Leif Johnson and talk about five of them! Then we'll get into Monster Hunter Rise's Sunbreak expansion, Last Call BBS, Robocop's new game announcement, and your earliest memories of being wowed by games.

We're pretty big suckers for Super NES nostalgia, to the point where we decided it'd be a good idea to grab Greg Moore and talk in a non-visual medium about five games that made incredible use of the 16-bit console's most striking visual effect. Then we'll talk more about Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course, the Skull and Bones reveal, and your favorite games of 2022 so far.

We're at the halfway point of another year, which means it's time to look back and anoint our five favorite games of 2022's first six months, with help from TL Foster! Then we'll get into the Capcom Fighting Collection, Cuphead's Delicious Last Course, more Neon White discourse, Nintendo Direct news, and your favorite videogame dinosaur moments!

One of humanity's greatest regrets is that we never existed at the same time as dinosaurs, and therefore never got to fight them in a planetwide Thunderdome for control of existence. So instead, we imagine the conflict over and over in videogames. This week, Chris picks out five of the best games to feature human-on-dinosaur violence, after which we'll get into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge, Neon White, news about Final Fantasy VII Remake and Dragon's Dogma sequels, and your favorite multi-version games.