Gallup finding all sorts of polling questions they can retire now. First Presidential approval ratings and now this.

They are incapable of putting out a bad track.

Minish Cap gets ignored too often when talking Zelda. Really, a lot of those installments on portable systems were quite charming.

DA2 is definitely a bit underrated both because of what you mentioned, the cultural bullshit was heating up and it landed right in it, but also the love affair gamers were having at the time with open worlds. Like you said, it’s a little limited and repetitive in the level design, but the story is tight, it’s cool to see choices and their effects years later and the characters are very well done. The ending, unfortunately, suffers from typical BioWare downfall where no matter what you do, you basically have to fight every boss because they’ll all turn on you no matter who you ally yourself with. I definitely prefer it to Inquisition, which like you say, feels like an empty MMO, and Veilguard, which feels like it was written by Wattpad authors.

I really like the Paragon-Renegade in ME1 because it doesn’t feel like good-evil like so many dialogue systems did in that time. You could definitely be a renegade and be more of a “we get the job done because the alternative is extinction” type of hero rather than just cartoonishly evil like you ended up in KoTOR for example. Sadly, the sequels basically took the easy way out and made Renegade kind of sadist and evil.

For me, this year I played a few games:

• Metaphor: ReFantazio - It was fine. I was hoping with the team behind Persona being free of Persona’s focus on high school students, they could do something more mature and interesting. But no, even in a completely made up secondary world, we still are kids saving the universe or whatever. It’s fine, but it really didn’t feel that that much of a step forward. And the requirement to keep the Persona-like visual novel gameplay with epic fantasy’s much bigger scope meant having to invent reasons your character can teleport and other things like that. It just really felt like a mess of different things crammed together. Only recommended for the biggest of Persona fans.

• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - This game ruled. Everyone that hyped this was correct. From the absolute gut punch of an opening, to the great, Mario RPG-like battle system to the character work (actual adults with actual adult feelings!), it just worked. Rare game that everyone talks about and they were right.

• Last Defense Academy - Guilty pleasure. Definitely nice to have Kodaka back in full sicko mode making a visual novel where nothing is sacred. The gameplay is fine, if you like tactics RPG battle systems, you’ll find enough to enjoy here. What I found best about this was that almost every gameplay mechanic had in game lore and story attached to it. There’s a tendency for mechanics and story to be a little separated (why doesn’t Cloud just use a Phoenix Down?) in games, and this game is whip smart about how it makes the two meet. Seeing choices actually matter and all the branching paths to lead to all 100 endings was also well executed.

My kid enjoys it. Weird to release the last episode on Christmas when he’s busy with gifts and family, but we’ll get to it eventually. It seems to make less sense than even most Adventure Time stuff does (which we’ve watched all of it together because he’s a fan of all of it), but it’s certainly not bad by any stretch. Just occasionally more interested in some larger story beats and set pieces than it is in the connective tissue between them.

Some of the specific beats also seem to be done more to reference other works (the second to last episode had a bunch of Nausica of the Valley of the Wind, for example), than to make sense narratively, but there’s still good character beats and it’s saying some nice things anyway.

I’d rather have him into something like this than rotting his brain with YouTube or TikTok like some of his classmates definitely are. He’s at the age where he’s “learning” things from media and so things like Hunter not taking advantage of a tipsy Fionna are good for him to see. He also said out of no where “Huntress Wizard is cool. She’s powerful and has cool abilities. I can see why Finn likes her.” So, hopefully that means I don’t have a manosphere dork on my hands haha

Depending on your timeline, you may want to wait for the M5. It’s just around the corner according to some recent leaks.

OK, I am honestly impressed by how much this rocks. You guys sound great. I’m more of a hardcore guy, but I still stopped listening to The Armed to listen to this whole thing. Putting you in my regular rotation for the time being.

Good shoutout on Duskpunk. Really wish the dev would put it on GOG or someplace with no DRM.

I enjoyed it a lot. I wasn’t really looking for challenge, I was looking for vibes and it delivers that really well. It’s more of a visual novel than an RPG, and that’s fine imo.

I think you put the wrong link in, the article is about Fortnite.

It’s cool how we basically made everyone’s lives worse for about ten months and then tried to undo it. Same with all the tariffs suddenly cut when they realized that it was increasing grocery prices.

I ran a years long Shadowrun campaign and in between sessions, I’d post news stories, forum conversations and other little scenes the players would have access to that showed how the greater world was taking in their actions. I’d use it to slip in foreshadowing or clues on perhaps people they should hit up for information, stuff like that. Highly recommend this not only as something fun for the players, but also good creative writing exercises to take on different modes of writing.

I’ll put it in the same account I have my DOGE dividend.

D&D is always a safe bet because it’s by far the most normie and famous. With newbies, it’s tough to go wrong because they kind of “get” what’s supposed to happen with it.

But if you do want to branch out, one system I like is Monster of the Week, which has a sort of base ruleset that have been then put into a variety of settings. The base Monster of the Week is modeled a bit after Buffy the Vampire and various urban fantasy works that have followed, you don’t really have a class so much so as a character archetype. There’s a Slayer, like Buffy, but there’s also a Meddling Kid, like Scooby-Doo, and a bunch of other things like that. Part of character creation is to go around the table and decide how everyone knows each other and that’s based on the character’s archetype.

The actual mechanics are pretty straightforward. You basically have like half a dozen things you can do on your turn called “Basic Moves” and then some archetypes get a few more. So, your players can have a cheat sheet in front of them of what they can “do” and it helps keep things streamlined. The dice is just 2d6, so might be less intimidating than having to figure out the odds on a d20 versus a d4 kind of thing.

And the Monster of the Week setting specifically is pretty light hearted. So you don’t have to worry about asking for some ultra-serious engagement from some people just getting their feet wet. One of the main actions is literally called “Kick Some Ass” and that’s just how you say I’m going to do a combat action. Everyone can kind of treat it as extreme camp of a CW show or if they want to get a bit more serious, take it all the way to something like Supernatural or whatever.

I love the first one of these so much. Incredible dumb guy energy. Can’t wait for more. Definitely going to bring it to my bad movie night.

I’ve had this album on daily listen status since it dropped. I miss their older, more punk sound a little bit, but they’re just so good and I appreciate bands that grow and try new things.

KoA definitely had me for a bit, but eventually it started feeling like what it was: an MMO that was converted into a single player game. But yeah, it’s much better than it had any right to be considering its back story of being made by a studio headed by a former baseball player that somehow swindled the state of Rhode Island.

Tecmo Secret of the Stars had dated graphics, an incredibly bad translation, really generic story and a bit of old school grind to boot.

But I really enjoyed that you had two parties that you swapped between, each of them could go through colored gates the other couldn’t, and it also had a town building aspect that at the time was not as common in console games especially. I think the fact that I was only able to play this by finding it at a local rental place, no store in my area ever seemed to actually sell it, made it feel more special than it actually was. But I got this one from the rental store multiple times since no nearby stores actually sold it. At least not near Christmas or my birthday, which were the only times my parents would even entertain spending what little money we had on video games.

Maybe this is just me, but if I’m less than two years out from super intelligence to solve cancer, I don’t think I’m pivoting into a porn company.