Vidjagame Apocalypse

Following the surprise of 2010's Nier getting a sequel with this week's release of NieR: Automata, Heidi Kemps rejoins us to talk about five games that were largely ignored at release, only to find an audience years later and come surging back to popularity. Then it's on to extended Zelda: Breath of the Wild/Switch discussion, Ghost Recon Wildlands, Disc Jam, Oculus Rift's price drop, and your favorite launch games of all time.

The Switch is finally a thing you can conceivably buy in a store, and erstwhile host Henry Gilbert returns this week to tell us about his experience playing Nintendo's new console for Fandom.com - but first, we start off with a highly contentious list of five of the best non-Mario/Zelda launch games from Nintendo's past. Then we dig into Horizon: Zero Dawn, River City Ransom: Underground, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the secret lyrics to Mario's theme song, and your oldest consoles that still work.

The release of Halo Wars 2 this week set us a-ponderin' about other huge franchises that have wandered outside their comfortable genres, usually in strange and beautiful ways — so we begin this week by focusing on five of the strangest departures ever to come out of a major game series. Then it's on to Halo Wars 2 and Night in the Woods, after which we talk about Switch download sizes, Fallout 4 in VR, and the game characters you think should like each other... THAT WAY.

This episode was recorded in the aftermath of another Valentine's Day, which we mark the only way we know how: by being miserable bastards and getting spoilery about gaming's most tragically disastrous romances. With that out of the way, we dig into For Honor and Sniper Elite 4, talk about E3 getting bigger and earlier, and (finally!) take a stroll through your favorite games of all time.

We've finally made it to 200 episodes of Vidjagame Apocalypse! Join us as we celebrate by throwing out our usual format and instead try to debate, cajole, and vote our way to a highly subjective list of the 20 best games of all time, starting from the 10 respective favorites of Mikel Reparaz, Chris Antista, Dave Rudden, and Brett Elston, and ending with a vague sense that democracy is just the worst.