10. Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty

This was a hard one for me and putting it into text is even harder. Because I love Wo Long. The core of the game is both its greatest strength and weakness at the same time. Wo Long feels really good to play. Being able to parry every single hit in the game turns every fight into a learning experience. Learn the pattern, parry every hit, and counter. It feels incredible when it’s at its best, but unrewarding and boring when you’ve gotten a handle on the systems. It’s why I’m sad that I came away feeling almost nothing after most stages. The first boss requires you to learn the mechanics, and then Lu Bu, the first time you fight him, requires you to master them, and gives you what might be my favorite boss fight in action game history. 

It rules.

It rules so much and it makes the rest of the game around it suffer in comparison. The highs of the game are so high, but for the most part, it’s a forgettable slog with only a few standout levels that really don’t capture the magic that Nioh had for me. It also does the towering house sized boss thing that Team Ninja games have always done and good god it’s absolutely miserable every time one of those comes up. Just utterly terrible boss fights that really take away from the experience of the game and I would rather have 20 more of the piss-easy one-attempt bosses that made up 90% of the game than any of these. Even at higher difficulty, the game felt easy, which led to me to eventually fall off completely. I’m really glad for my first experience, but the more time that passes, the further it’s just kinda flopped down my list and made my subsequent time just poking at mostly mediocre DLC offerings feel unrewarding and led to it almost losing its place completely on my list. I know this all sounds really negative, but I do still think this is a great starting point for Team Ninja action games that you can use to branch out into much better games like Stranger of Paradise and Nioh 2.

9. Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker

That’s right, it’s back in the list. After last year I really had to take a step back and reevaluate my place with the game. I was completely raid-pilled and burned myself out completely. I was getting ready to just uninstall and be done with it, but I decided to do something I’d never thought of doing before: try new things. Lo and behold, it worked. Fishing became like my side activity while I edit podcasts, and instead of FFXIV being the main game I played in my free time, it became something of a side game. I’d raid with friends in what was a solid final tier, but I mostly just poked at a lot of the stuff I had neglected before in favor of raiding. Suddenly, the game was fun again, and I was in a much better place in my relationship to the game. Now when I raid, it’s pretty much only to learn new fights, or help other people clear them. It’s nice to be in a good space with Final Fantasy again, it’s nice to be excited for the new expansion, and I really hope this feeling continues.

8. Game of The Generation Nioh 2

I’M SORRY I PUT ANOTHER 200 HOURS INTO IT I CAN STOP ANYTIME I WANT I SWEAR.

7. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin

I enjoyed Stranger of Paradise in my initial playthrough, but I never went back to it for the DLC until this year after I finished Wo Long. Well, I finally went back in and polished off all of the DLC that I’d missed out on and yeah, this game is fantastic. The game flow feels so good when you get going, and the added jobs make the complete package a stellar game. I like the stage design a ton, and the DLC offerings led to some really fun fights that left me on the edge of my seat, and felt incredibly rewarding when I finally finished it all off. Just a fantastic action game from start to finish with DLC that added a lot to the package and genuinely felt really awesome. 

I’m still disappointed that it’s all locked behind the CHAOS difficulty when the initial campaign offered a story difficulty, but their attempt to mitigate that actually might have made it worse. They just give you a set of armor that reduces your XP gain by 30%, but makes you invulnerable, and that’s just kinda stupid. Even if I were playing on easy, I still want to play the game. Like yes, it lets you experience the last bits of the story it’s telling, but removing all the challenges in a game like this when there was already a well-balanced “story” difficulty is just a mistake. There are a lot of other issues with the way the DLC was designed, but the overall feel and experience of finishing off the story gave me a really good feeling with some incredibly rewarding fights against classic bosses like Omega and Gilgamesh. It’s always nice to hear Jack tell people to shut the fuck up mid-monologue.

6. Spider-Man 2

There aren’t many open-world games that nail traversal, but I’ll be damned if they didn’t absolutely kill it with this one. A fantastic-playing game from start to finish, and while the narrative left a little to be desired at points, as an overall story it was comic books as hell and something I enjoyed. It felt like a contained event comic with each part being in a different book, and I can vibe with that. You had the Miles issues and the Peter issues and the stuff in between really just felt like filler you’d see depending on who you were controlling. I played most of the open-world stuff as Miles so I felt like I got a whole lot more from him than most of my friends who spent more of their time as Peter. It was interesting seeing people talk about how nothing of a character Miles was whereas I was, having a relatively even experience. I’m not saying their criticism is invalid; when I think about it, yeah, a lot of that critique is a pretty good read on the overall flow of the narrative making Peter feel more important, but it really worked for me in the end as a good passing of the torch.

5. Octopath Traveller 2

Imagine a company taking every single criticism of a game and addressing all of that for the sequel. I would’ve never expected Square Enix to be that company. I came into this expecting, well, not much, and it ended up being at the top of my list for a significant chunk of my year. I still absolutely love the battle system of this game and with all the little tweaks and new characters, this is miles ahead of the first game. Just an absolutely fantastic time with a good story, great characters, good puzzle gimmicks, and just a far more streamlined experience had me put a metric ton of time in the game and I’m sure it would be higher on this list if I had completely finished it. Who knows, maybe it will make a return next year when I really dig back in to finish.

4. Baldur’s Gate 3

I thought for sure when I finished my first playthrough that this would be top 2. No way anything could take it over. So many great moments, so many great characters, so many things I just really kept coming back to. I took 10 characters through the first 2 chapters and each gave me a completely different experience. I thought that was so cool. Something you really can only do with a game like this. But then something happened, it just kind of lost its spark. Maybe it was just that I burned myself out, or maybe it was all the updates that in the end, felt like they made it a bit less interesting of a game. I still really love what I got out of it, but I also feel like the more I go back, the less I want to keep going back.

3. Coral Island

I’m going to give this game some real flack despite it being near the top of my list for the year. I put 100+ hours into an unfinished farming sim that felt that way. I’ve appreciated the constant updates and bug fixes, but the game still did not feel like a 1.0 version. Having an entire mermaid kingdom with no real interactions felt bad, and I’m extremely excited for 1.1, but as something being called a 1.0 build? It should not have been called that, because Coral Island is still not in a state where that label fits. That being said, what is here is absolutely stellar. The ability to change the speed of the daily timer is a must-have in games like this, same with the ability to have monsters only attack on aggro if you just aren’t feeling like you want to do combat. The daily grind gameplay loop is very satisfying thanks to the aforementioned ability to change the daily timer. No plans for the day? You can just speed up the timer, do your daily chores, and it’s the next day in 5 minutes. You want to explore the dungeon? Cut the timer speed in half so you can guarantee you can at least get to the next floor checkpoint. It’s such a nice change that it really takes the pressure off of the daily grind which is part of why I can’t play Stardew Valley without significant mods to make some of those quality of life changes that Coral Island has out of the box. Plus, now that they’ve fixed the absolute disaster that was the console release, this is worth buying for any fan of these kinds of games

2. Alan Wake 2

Remedy Games has been trying to nail the gameplay mixed with live action stuff for a very long time now. Every game they’ve made since Max Payne has been a mix of mediums and it’s been really cool to watch them grow. They came close with Control, but this is where they really perfected it. You can show everyone “We Sing” and they will be blown away by the way the band movements lead you in the right direction in really cool ways, as every screen has something to watch. But it’s not even the best part of the game. That’s what’s wild. You can show someone one thing to get them to play, but there are things that come later which blow it out of the water. Just a simply incredible experience from start to finish, and one I can’t wait to go back to for more.

1. WitchSpring R

Game of the Year for me is always about comfort. Sometimes it’s about fun, but sometimes it’s just something hitting at the right place at the right time to give you exactly what you need. That’s what happened with Witchspring R when my friends Zesh and Nico just wouldn’t stop talking about this game. Telling me I needed to play it. I’d peek into a stream and see him reacting to things completely out of context and just think it’s a cute game but whatever. But they pushed, and they pushed, and so I added it to the list of intros I was going to try for the 24 hour stream. I was interested from what I had seen, but some of the other games held much more appeal to me from the way they were made. I mean this was a remake of a South Korean phone game. There is no way this is going to be good right? 

Then I started and I was hooked. I just skipped past the 2 other games I had planned for the rest of my segment and kept playing. It bled right into my next stream and suddenly I had thrown Octopath Traveller 2 off of my stream plans and it was all Witchspring. I mean how can you not love a game about a character named Pieberry who named herself that because the only memories she had were that she loved Pie and Strawberries. It’s adorable. From just a surface level of description it sounds like the most generic JRPG you could ever play. In the first few hours, the thing that kept me going was just a really fun battle system with rewarding progression, but the story was just kind of in the back of my mind. It set up mysteries that I wanted answers to because I thought it would be a cute and wholesome time…

And then you leave the woods. The game continues to be charming, introducing tons of characters both good and back who all have unique and interesting characters. You make friends, your friends stab you in the back and you keep moving on. Suddenly the thing keeping me going isn’t the fact that it’s cute, it’s that I’m in the role of the most optimistic person imaginable and terrible things are happening all around her. I was hooked and the game did not let go until I finished. Long 10 hour sessions of just needing to know what would happen next. Would Pieberry find her mother and find out who she truly is? Would any of the people who had betrayed her in the name of the Pope have a face turn? What is even going on? Oh god why am I crying, how dare this game make me cry from genuine feelings, it’s supposed to be a cute game about a girl named Pieberry who loves pie and strawberries. 

I really don’t think I’ve played a game with such near perfect pacing until now. It’s designed with an amount of side content that never wears out its welcome, and there wasn’t a single part that I could look back on and say “Hey, they should really have cut this out” or “Hey, they really should have expanded this a bit.” So many games will add optional bosses, and this one does that, but at no point did I feel like I was having to grind anything to get to that point. There was a little bit of going back to areas to get a few materials for upgrades I wanted, but even then, finishing 100% of the game, crafting every single upgrade, took me less time than one zone of some games today. And I’m not saying that’s bad, it’s just this was the exact kind of time sink that I needed last year, The kind of thing I could play through when I was constantly traveling from convention to convention across both sides of the country. It’s not often a game makes you feel rewarded for the entirety of your time, but this one where every second of my playtime felt like it meant something, like I was always progressing something and that’s why it’s my Game of the Year. I may never come back now that I’ve finished the hard mode DLC they added, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t leave its mark in my memory more than anything else I played.

The post Lorelai’s Top 10 Games of 2023 appeared first on Gamesline.

Happy Pokémon Day, You Freaks

The latest Pokémon Presents happened on the 27th, with most of the shown updates focusing on mobile titles.

• Pokémon Go will get a crossover event with the latest season of the anime to coincide with its release outside Japan.
• Pokémon Sleep adds the Legendary Beasts to the roster of napping monsters, starting with Raikou in March, with Entei and Suicune coming later.
• Pokémon Masters will add two new pairs: Silver and Shiny Mega Tyranitar and Geeta and Glimmora, plus reruns of older powerful characters and a new photo editor.
• Pokémon Cafe Remix gives the Paldean starters new outfits, new chances to add either Koraidon or Miraidon to your cafe, and the ability to collect Gimmighoul coins for a chance to get Gimmighoul and Gholdengo on your team.
• Pokémon Unite adds Miraidon to its roster, with Falinks and Ceruledge debuting in the coming months.

The final two announcements were the big ones: First, Pokémon TCG Online game gets a new mobile client. They swear it is not going to be NFT-related.

Finally, the next mainline Pokémon title, Pokémon Legends: Z-A, was announced. Players return to Generation 6’s Kalos region for a game supposedly all set in Lumiose City, X/Y‘s central hub. Mega Evolution will also return. Z-A is scheduled to launch in 2025.

So Back to the Bad

Playstation plans to lay off around 900 people. These cuts include staff at Naughty Dog, Insomniac, Guerilla Games, and the complete shuttering of their London studio. Firesprite, another subsidiary of Playstation that saw cuts, cancelled the production of live service Twisted Metal game.

EA has also laid off a large swath of their employees: five percent of their workforce in total. Battlefield studio Ridgeline Games folded into another Battlefield focused team, Ripple Effect, and a rumored Mandalorian game from Respawn was cancelled.

Embracer Group continues to shed weight across their properties. Saber Interactive, developers of the continuously in question Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake, reportedly will be sold to private investors for $500 million. There is also talk that Gearbox will be sold as well, with an official announcement due in the coming days. Gearbox recently shifted focus purely to Borderlands games, with a fourth mainline entry and a sequel to Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands still in development.

Maybe Some Good?

Toys for Bob, previously downsized by Microsoft after the Activision acquisition, is going independent. No reports on what this fully entails, but they are attempting to keep an active relationship with Microsoft, potentially meaning they will continue to work on Crash, Spyro, and potentially Tony Hawk titles.

Alan Wake creators Remedy have acquired full control of…Control. The studio purchased the rights to the franchise from 505 Games ahead of the eventual sequel that is still in development. as well as another project codenamed “Condor“, which is a multiplayer PvE spin-off of Control.

In other news…

Stardew Valley also has its own anniversary to celebrate, and ConcernedApe confirm that a 1.6 update to the PC version of the game will be coming March 16.

Critical Role is holding a public open beta playtest of their tabletop roleplaying game, Daggerheart, and playtest packets will be available on March 12.

Terminator: Survivors, an open-world survival game, is set to release this fall.

Nintendo sues the creators of Yuzu, a popular Switch emulator. While emulators have been proven to be legal, Nintendo’s case focuses on Yuzu’s circumvention of Switch game encryption as well as promotion of piracy, as the emulator’s Patreon saw a doubling of profits once Tears of the Kingdom leaked online.

Jen Cohn, the voice actor for Overwatch character Pharah, came under hot water when she called for Palestine to be “freed from Hamas” on a livestream. Her statement, which sidelines the very real genocide being perpetrated by Israel, has led to Overwatch fans calling for the character’s recasting.

The post The Bulletin: Zygarde Finally Has A Game appeared first on Gamesline.

It’s a long one this week as special guest LumberJackson joins John and Maverick to talk about the week in games. John’s been playing Alan Wake, the new Pokémon Scarlett/Violet DLC, and Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising while Jackson has experienced Half-Life for the first time. Maverick had a big one with Spider-Man 2, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, God Of War: Ragnarok: Valhalla, and the original version of Yakuza.

In the news, The Last of Us 2‘s Multiplayer was cancelled, Insomniac was hacked with a whole bunch of stuff leaking, and A24 is making a Death Stranding movie. We go over everything from the Game Awards, the controversy around Jerard the Completionist, the layoffs at Hasbro, and E3 officially dying. The team also goes over Twitch’s ToS changes that lasted for a single day and the wild story of The Day Before.

You can find Jackson on twitter @LumberJack2on and follow him on twitch at LumberJackson.

You can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on Twitter @TheGamesline, @john_michonski, and @MaverickDrifter.

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show! If you want to send in questions send them to our ask box at gamesline.tumblr.com/ask.

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or directly to our RSS feed.

Edited by Lorelai

The post The Gamesline Podcast Ep. 28: Wrap It Up w/ LumberJackson @LumberJack2on appeared first on Gamesline.

I was meditating a bit on the concept of The Game Awards, of course never from a place of actually taking them seriously at all, but more from just how absurd they have been and always will be. Do you remember the Shick Hydrobot? 

Do you remember, back in 2007, when instead of presenting the awards via envelopes, they painted the winning games on women’s bodies for some godforsaken reason? I’m not linking that, or showing it to you, but I will say if you ever want a truly horrendous photo, you can buy it for an incredible price over at Getty Images)

Obviously things have come a long way since either of these events, but at the same time…they really haven’t. There’s been discourse about games like Dave the Diver being featured under the indie category, which is understandable, but what really gets me is things like “Games for Impact”, and what the hell that even means, as well as the various categories related to influencers and esports. It’s not that these groups shouldn’t be represented somewhere –at least for the esports players– but I’m not really sure how I’m supposed to personally judge the merits of a Counter Strike player versus a Call of Duty or League of Legends player. They’re very different games and skill sets! It’s like if I had to pick between a basketball player and a baseball player for my favorite guy! It’s just silly!

I don’t know if there’s a good iteration of The Game Awards, some other game award shows can come closer to a broader sense of understanding what it means to celebrate art, but you know, maybe there doesn’t have to be a better option, maybe these things just suck inherently.

Anyways, here’s my Three Gaming Awards of this week:

Most Confusing Narrative Throughline: Spider-Man 2

I really liked Spider-Man 2 overall, it’s a game that proves you can in fact do something with the spectacle and budget that a AAA gaming experience affords, and also reaffirms that everything is better when you add in The Symbiote. There’s a really satisfying flow to the movement that perfectly evokes the feeling of what being Spider-Man is like, and also demonstrates what open-world games should be fixated on; the means of actually traversing these vast expanses in an interesting and fun way. I remember when I played Death Stranding, I was fascinated by how important the core gameplay of moving your body was to the overall experience; you didn’t just walk around to do something, walking around was already doing something in-of-itself. Spider-Man 2 is the exact opposite of Death Stranding in more than one way, but it still captures that idea that the movement shouldn’t just be the basic thing you put in and add onto in a throwaway sense, but that the means of navigation should be the first building block in the process of exploring how you want someone to engage with your world. I’m not saying every game should let you swoop around a gigantic New York and climb on every nook and cranny or anything, and I understand feature creep and focus to a deeper degree than most, but I think there is something to be said for interrogating even the most minute aspects of your gameplay, and how it will service your vision.

That said, the story for this one is a great example of the type of pitfalls and issues that any AAA game made will inevitably run into. It’s not that it’s wholly bad or anything, there are great performances from characters like Harry Osborne, and the novelty of going all fully yaoi-brained for the Peter/Harry ship is something I cannot help but respect. Instead, it’s more that there isn’t really a coherent procession for the events that transpire, and the ludonarrative disconnect between the types of scenarios the game necessitates, and what would actually make sense for the world-state is an incredible gulf. While I understand the desire to move away from things like “Spider-Cop”, creating a world where like, Kraven is firebombing New York City (New York City!!!) nonstop with an entire army and no one seems to really do anything about it other than Spider-Man, is kind of insane! I’m not saying I need to see some false idol of a cop show up and lose to keep my superhero story grounded, but you’re telling me you’re gonna start power-scaling to the point where you’re pulling in Scream and using magic Dr. Strange portals and everyone’s walking around NYC and going to concerts and playing basketball games!!!!!?? There’s a Symbiote in your city your shit is about to explode!

There’s a lot of high points when it comes to set piece design but ultimately, you can tell that this was a story cut up and adjusted overtime, with things thrown in and out haphazardly. With reports of things like Miles’ Symbiote arc reportedly cut, a lot of the weird goings on suddenly make a lot more sense. Game development is always going to be hectic, especially at as large a scale as a Marvel game made by a Sony first-party developer, but I still dare to dream of a better production cycle where we don’t end up with a bizarre narrative where Peter Parker is training bees to kill every rat in NYC (???) and Miles Morales’ biggest concern in life is finishing a 500 word essay.

Most Restarted Game Award: Ender Lilies

I actually like Ender Lilies a great deal, so it might seem insane when I tell you I have restarted this game 5 times over the last year and a half. It’s not because I hit a wall of difficulty, or got fed up with a particularly tedious sequence or anything, far from it. Instead, it’s because everytime I get a little ways in, some other game comes out and distracts me, and since I have Ender Lilies on PC, it’s very easy for me to cull as a woman who spends more time bed-bound than not.

If you’ve never heard of Ender Lilies, it’s a Metroidvania published by Japanese studio Binary Haze Interactive, that spent a little time in early access before fully releasing in the summer of 2021. You play as a small girl in a decidedly Soulsian world full of monsters and undead, who has the ability to purify said creatures and use them as weapons or a means of navigation across her hellish world. Like I said with The Last Faith last week, I appreciate any Metroidvania that’s willing to go a bit further with the concept of combat than its colleagues, and Ender Lilies’ concept of a non-violent main character who instead summons others to handle the macabre is a novel approach enough to have me be fully onboard. 

The strongest point of Ender Lilies is easily it’s presentation, with a combination of beautiful 2D art that’s reminiscent of Vanillaware’s more storybook sensibilities, and a fantastic mostly piano driven soundtrack that was composed in collaboration with indie artist Mili (most known for her work on Project Moon games such as Library of Ruina). Just as I said Spider-Man 2’s means of exploring its world was a success because of how good it feels, Ender Lilies elicits a similar sensation in cultivating a world that feels worth exploring. What’s going on in this world? What is this “Rain of Death” everyone is mentioning? What was this place like before all this went so wrong? These questions are common in games, and really in any form of media, but what makes them compelling is how they’re presented, and the way you feel as you make your way to their solutions. 

Since the first time I played Ender Lilies, I’ve had one song in particular lodged into my brain, and I think of it often. The quiet piano, the sounds of rain, the haunting intermittent hums of Cassie Wei punctuating every refrain. It’s a really fascinating game, and I’m praying to god I can actually defeat my attention span this time.

The Hype Award: Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth Demo

My wife finished playing through Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name this past week before she left on a work trip, so that meant that I got to dive into the post-credits demo for her over the internet and man, man. 

I loved Yakuza : Like a Dragon (Yakuza 7) when it came out a few years back, and while I knew how much I loved it, this demo really drove it into my soul just how deeply it resonated with me. Ichiban is the perfect protagonist, and having him exist alongside series regular Kazuma Kiryu, rather than replacing him, is a beautiful way to actually meld the past and the present into one cohesive and interesting “now”. I understand why so many narratives involve the “passing of the torch” moment, but to me what’s more beautiful is making a narrative where the old aren’t forgotten, and instead work alongside the young to continue making a better today. 

Setting the game in Hawaii is a fantastic change of pace for the series as well. I’ve always appreciated the frugality of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio when it came to the locales of the Yakuza series, but it’s really cool to see them not only step outside the established few districts that have made up the series’ past, but also leave behind the entire country and metropolitan vibe. There’s something deeply unsettling about walking into a convenience store and seeing the more familiar American-style layout, rather than the Tokyo-style that permeated the Yakuza of old, but I’m kind of here for it? I’m especially here for just how packed every aspect of this game is from top to bottom in terms of gameplay systems, gameplay ideas, story concepts, and just, the general everything? The game is called Infinite Wealth and Jesus Christ does it really embody that concept. 

When you walk down the street you can wave to random people, which makes them your friend (the game pops up a tutorial that basically says “who knows what will happen!” and I’m dying to know what that means). If you walk past a coffee shop, you might get into a conversation with one of your party members like you did in Yakuza 7, but this time you unlock a slot called “favorite drink” on that character’s Bond Bingo Board, which grants bonus stats or items to you. Hop on a trolley to take a scenic ride around the island, and get roped into playing Sicko Snap, an entire game mode based off of Pokémon Snap where you take pictures of buff men in masquerade masks who are causing all sorts of ruckus around town. Go out into the ocean and your entire party will immediately don swimsuits and start foraging around underwater for bottles to recycle, while carefully avoiding speed boats that will just run you over without a care in the world. You can press down on the d-pad to make everyone get on a line of customizable segways and just fucking rocket around. 

That’s like, half of the things I did in that demo. I didn’t even mention the turn-based combat that feels better than ever! I didn’t even mention the actual narrative that you go through pitting Ichiban and Kiryu (who has Persona 4 hair now) up against a corrupt cop named Roman, and a Hawaiian gang leader voiced by Jojo’s Dio Brando! This doesn’t even include the entire goddamn Animal Crossing game they teased at TGS that exists somewhere in all this! I’m just so flabbergasted and blown away by everything Infinite Wealth had to offer that I’m honestly still overwhelmed! 

I am dying to get my hands on the game when it fully comes out on January 28th, but honestly I’m glad I got to have this delightful little sojourn in the interim. There’s always been much to do about spoilers when it comes to discussing and engaging with media, but I personally have never minded it. To me, what makes a work compelling is seeing how all of these parts coexist with one another to form a cohesive whole. I love being given a random sliver like….1/5th of the way through a story to just sort of try and figure out; it makes me more excited for when I actually get a chance to see where it’s all going. I remember thinking for a long time with regards to one of my favorite games, Final Fantasy XIV, that anyone who got in on the game later missed out on a chance to spend time between story threads meditating and pondering on what pieces we had, and making up a possibility inside our heads, and that’s how I feel when I get to see something like this demo. I’m left wondering and thinking things that a trailer would only partially stimulate. It’s not better or worse than remaining fully ignorant, just different, and it’s a difference of experience I’ve come to appreciate.

The post Rose’s Routine 12/7 appeared first on Gamesline.

We spend far too much time talking about Peter Griffin on this episode.

John and Rose did speak on other topics, however. The controversy over Street Fighter 6‘s costume DLC’s cost, Destiny‘s patronizing microtransaction, the reveal of Wapeach, and the continued creation of Resident Evil remakes. Plus, John is obsessed with his Analogue Pocket still, and Rose has plenty to say about Alan Wake 2, Spider-Man 2, Like a Dragon Gaiden, and The Last Faith.

You can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on Twitter @TheGamesline, @john_michonski, and @horngal.

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show!

If you want to send in questions send them to our ask box at gamesline.tumblr.com/ask.

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Edited by Lorelai

The post The Gamesline Podcast Episode 27: Peter Has Arrived appeared first on Gamesline.

It’s time! Spencer is back on the pod to join John in talking about the week in games. John’s been playing more Fate/Samurai Remnant and Spider-Man 2 while Spencer has been living in the Pathologic games and Starfield. In the news, Microsoft is bricking third party peripherals and Nintendo patents are showing what the next Switch might be. Bungie was hit with a bunch of layoffs and then they talk about all the announcements coming out of Blizzcon.

We also celebrated the entire weekend with a marathon stream for Extra Life. Please help us reach our goal of $300 by hitting up our donation page.

You can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on Twitter @TheGamesline, @john_michonski, @MaverickDrifter, and @fkasocks.

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show! If you want to send in questions send them to our ask box at gamesline.tumblr.com/ask.

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or directly to our RSS feed.

Edited by Lorelai

The post The Gamesline Podcast Ep. 23: Goated With the Sauce appeared first on Gamesline.