Watch Out for Fireballs! (Duckfeed.tv)

The final game of the epic Quintet Quartet. Full episode available exclusively to our patrons at patreon.com/duckfeedtv

This weirdo episode talks about a smattering of old and new golf games. The full episode then goes onto discuss Mario Golf Advance Tour. Join us on patreon to hear the whole shebang!

Our discussion of Breath of the Wild continues as we talk about the main quest of the game, and its side quests. Special thanks again to John Hurst for being a guest on this episode, and for his continued support.

Why does the sun go on shining? Why does the sea rush to shore? Don't they know it's the end of the world because you don't love me anymore? We begin our discussion of Fallout 4 with beefy generalities and discussion of the first act of the game. Fallout 4 is a big beautiful mess that's simultaneously a bad Fallout game and the best Bethesda game. On the balance, we're more into how its crafting, exploration, and settlement management systems tie together than we're turned off by a truly dogshit character build and dialogue system. Join us, as we make our case.

Fly me to the moon and let me play Bayonetta, a crazy over-the-top character action game that is unabashedly all about style. This is a Patreon backer requested episode, and we were super happy to visit Platinum's breakout hit. Bayonetta is a very important character to the recent history of video games, inspiring both affection and controversy. Listen in to hear us talk about her first adventure, and hit on the points where it stumbles (I'm looking at you, motorcycle and missile levels).

Let's just do something with rocket launchers again.

To the center of the moon, to the center of the series, and into the slog. Final Fantasy IV: The After Years takes a strange turn in its back half... a turn that isn't discussed very often because nobody really talks about The After Years. So, join us for the last few chapters of this wildly misguided game.

Gary Butterfield and Kole Ross stomp through Dead Space. Resident Evil 4 changed games forever. Especially horror games. Pretty soon it wasn't acceptable for a scary game to sacrifice mechanical sophistication for atmosphere. While the world waited for Resident Evil 5, which would carry the idea further, EA came through with Dead Space. The world and story are science fiction cliches, but the aiming based gameplay loop is incredibly satisfying. But does it hold together enough to make re-entry? Listen to find out.

Special thanks to Neasa! Kole and Gary surmount one of the most critically acclaimed indies in recent memory. This masocore platformer has tons of heart, some hidden, and extremely precise gamefeel that make it two great tastes. Do they taste great together? Find out.

Gary Butterfield and Kole Ross capture the hearts of PRGE by talking about Pokémon Yellow. This is our Portland Retro Gaming Expo live show for 2016, where we talk about Pokémon Yellow, and Gen1 Pokémon in general. The game is an archaic drag mechanically, but it has the fundamental core that Nintendo would polish to a shine over the years. And boy-oh-boy, that personality! Thanks so much to everyone who came out and joined us at PRGE this year. We look forward to seeing you again.

Wow, maybe Capitalism is bad, actually? In this gorgeously present point-and-click adventure game, you must solve the mystery of who murdered hope.

I just know I'm going to need those full heal elixirs for the end boss. Right?

Gary Butterfield and Kole Ross read your responses to Nox.

The idea of casual games is basically fake, and it's harmful because it leads to inclusive games being dismissed. Kole and Gary look at one of the titans of the "casual" gaming world and find that it packs tons of charm and more depth than it gets credit for.

The Trauma Center series is one of the more interesting things to come out of Nintendo's love affair with strange control schemes in the DS and Wii era. These "surgery simulators" end up playing more like a cross between a light gun shooter and Rock Band, as you cut into your patients and use a number of surgical tools to solve their problems and keep them alive. Less successful is the wrapping story, about impossibly young doctors and medical terrorists who inject people with lung bugs. Thanks, Tara, for executive producing this episode!

Propulsive and immediately visually arresting, Sayonara Wild Hearts is a unique action rhythm hybrid that aims to be inviting to new players. Also, Queen Latifah is there.

We welcome Legend of Grimrock II to the pantheon of masterpieces we've covered for the show. It's a throwback to retro dungeon crawlers with tense combat and ingenious puzzles. It's light on story, but heavy on atmosphere, and consistently good throughout. People who like when we gush about good games will like this episode a lot.

Hong Kong is revealing some deeper truths to our group of Shadowrunners, as we search for the truth about what happened to Raymond Black and try to learn what's amiss with the Walled City. We pick up in the middle section of the game, as we're taking on jobs to keep the lights on and give Auntie Cheng time to work. Shadowrun: Hong Kong continues to be a delightful short story collection of fun, tactical missions that uses its setting to great effect.

It's a soulslike. It's moe. It's a moe soulslike.

I don't get it. It's just the same game over and over and over and over and over and over

Special thanks to Geri Khan for producing this one! Kole and Gary take a rare trip to the Genesis to discuss one of the best games the run'n'gun genre has to offer. Loads of charm and creativity make this one of the best games on the system. Listen in!

What terrifies the soul of man? Bright lights? Loud noises? Light gun games? Why not all three? Join us as we explore the horrors that game developers crafted to send chills down our spines in a bright room with lots of company. Games Covered: *Splatterhouse *Ghouls ‘n Ghosts *CarnEvil *Zombie Revenge *Dark Escape 4D *Luigi’s Mansion Arcade *Left 4 Dead: Survivors

Before listening to this episode, please complete this towers of Hanoi puzzle. Upcoming WOFF Games: May: * Satisfactory (w/ Ben Merkle) * Resident Evil 6 * Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies June: * The Last Door: Season 2 * Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge (w/ Brayton Cameron) * Lost Kingdoms

This is a special live episode about the best Donkey Kong game, Donkey Kong for the Game Boy. The game begins as a faithful recreation of the Donkey Kong arcade levels, but after that, the roof flies off and the walls fall away... revealing a puzzle platformer with over 100 levels. This game also expands Mario's move set in an important way. Really? Just go play it. Huge thanks to everyone who came out to see us at the Midwest Gaming Classic 2018!

CAT MARIO. Thanks Joelle!

Have you ever wonder what it would be like to be a pilot who also had to juggle? That's the kind of hard hitting question Hammerfight tries to answer.

This week we sit down to talk about the most innovative shooter we've played in years. Our unnamed protagonist receives a weird program called superhot.exe, and when he launches it he connects to a very strange first person shooter where time only moves when the player moves. As we (and he) play this game, the hooks set in, and a larger conspiracy reveals itself. SUPERHOT is a small game with a big impact, a massive indie success that takes the FPS genre and upends it by breaking it down into component parts and changing the way they move. It's absolutely worth your time. We also talk a bit about the related works SUPERHOT VR and SUPERHOT: Mind Control Delete.

It's rare to be surprised by a sci fi twist, and this AAA action adventure genuinely surprises. Throw in some engaging combat and not even an electronic T-Rex sized barrel of bloat can hold it back. Thanks Doug!

We read your responses to May's games, and we talk about how AAA games get romance wrong.

On this month's Dispatch episode, we talk about Spoilers. Why don't they bother us? What benefit scan strategically spoiling things for yourself bring? What's a sensible spoiler policy for podcasts like ours? We also answer your questions, read your responses to No One Lives Forever, Uncharted Waters 2: New Horizons, and Marathon 2: Durandal.

The story of NieR continues as we build out our party and explore more modes of play. The doldrums of the previous episode give way to some minor delight. The Forest of Myth shows us a text adventure with a cool conceptual hook, while the Haunted Manor is a Resident Evil pastiche. Then we have to do it all again. This episode covers NieR up through the Forest of Myth, after the time jump.

Listen, there's a lot to talk about here. You could talk about how we've been doing this show for a decade, or about how Sonic exemplifies the tension between freeform arcade gameplay and the slower, more exploratory form of platformers that would ultimately win out in the end, but the real story here is that I need you to imagine a screenshot of a notes app post where I apologize for mixing up the seed drill and the cotton gin in this episode. Big thanks to Gwen Static for this awesome remix of the theme song!

This game reminds me of a puzzle. About 120 of them, to be exact. You could be forgiven for thinking that Professor Layton existed before his debut game on the Nintendo DS. The whole series has such a strong aesthetic and vibe that it feels like a European cartoon that you just never heard about. But no, this was created whole cloth as a way to adapt a series of Japanese brain teaser books into video game form. While the story beats are ludicrous, and not all of the puzzles work, it's hard to be entirely mad at this quaint and amusing DS game. Thanks to William for executive producing this episode!

We answer your questions, read your responses to August's games, and spend some time talking about the sorts of places that show up in games, and what we'd like to see more of, before announcing our slate for the best month of the year, October.

TEENS! TEENS! TEENS! No, it's not some sort of horrible chant, it's what we're killin. Hop in. Until Dawn showed how you can take steady principles of narrative adventure games such as The Walking Dead, or, shudder, Indigo Prophecy, and evolve them into something new and fun on its own. Very fun performances, a twisty plot, and appropriate interactivity make this one of, if not the, best "interactive movie" in games. Give it a listen! Thank you to Dr. When!

Are games too long? 500 hours? What does that mean, Dying Light 2? Also, we answer your questions and read your responses to January's games before announcing February's CROP.

We round out puzzle month with the ultimate "puzzle" game, so elemental that you can't imagine it not existing. Alexy Pajitnov and a crew of colleagues in the USSR birthed the game, and it followed a long and complicated trail to becoming a worldwide phenomenon. This episode relates that story, talks about how Tetris has changed over the years, and looks at some recent excellent Tetris games.

No game makes you WANT to like it as much as Psychonauts. Raz is a great character, the counselors at his psychic summer camp are top notch, and the aesthetic is excellent. The problems begin with the play, since the game only shows a passing interest in being an enjoyable 3D platformer. So Doublefine's premiere effort is endlessly charming, but also a pretty big disappointment. Listen in to hear us be even more conflicted.

I know we ask for the asks, but the asks just don't stop coming. Upcoming Games: March: * Hammerfight * INDIKA * Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven April: * Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (Rerun) * Rygar * The Suffering

Do you know how many candy bars I'd have to sell to raise 20,000 GP!?!? We left Part 1 of our Baldur's Gate II coverage with an outrageous mandate... to raise a ton of money to get information about where our soul (and sister) were taken. But Athkatla is a dirty and greedy city, so there's plenty of work to do. This episode covers most of Chapter 2, except for the content at Trademeet. We kind of ran out of steam. Next episode should take us through the Underdark.

This is the second and final part of our Disco Elysium coverage, picking up roughly with day two of the investigation and going full-tilt into learning not just the cause of the murder, but also what's really happening in this world politically, spiritually, and emotionally. I don't want to spend a lot of time heaping sugar on the game in this post, because we do a lot of that in the episode, but it can't be overstated how special this game is.

Create, evolve and live the power fantasy of being a world killing disease. Guest Ending is a piece of fan music for Gary's novel Atomic! Music by Swordquest (https://soundcloud.com/swordquest)

We traveled to the Midwest Gaming Classic once again, this time to talk about what we're broadly calling "creative games". The headliner is Mario Paint, but the idea of games that let you either make games, or make art, goes way back. So we talk about the history, talk about how this articulates, and try to answer the question: Why is using games to make art so fun?

It's impossible to talk about some games objectively. Castlevania 2 has a lot of problems but unbeatable atmosphere for the NES, and the best soundtrack in the series (fight me), makes that go down oh so smooth. Let's get to collectin' ribs! We'd also like to direct your attention to the Totally Trans Podcast Network (https://totallytrans.buzzsprout.com) which is an ongoing podcast about the search for the trans media canon.

The Stanley Parable is a short game with a lot to say about games. You play as Stanley, an office worker with a pointless job who finds himself being ordered around by an omniscient narrator. By deciding whether or not to obey him, you stumble into stories that critique and explore the nature of choice in games, and choice in real life. Because this is primarily a comedy game, we recommend playing the Stanley Parable before listening to this episode, because we will ruin the jokes for you.

Metroidvanias are pretty common, but games that aim to ape the original Metroid are few and far between. Axiom Verge is a 2015 indie game with a distinct glitchy NES aesthetic and some pretty great powerups. It also has some problems with its combat and main character. You can't take away the beauty of those sprite designs or that music, however.

Kranky Kratos takes his vengeance quest to a brand new pantheon: the pantheon of fatherhood. Kole and Gary take an axe to the skull of this 2018 prestige game, and by take an axe to the skull, I mean we give a careful, considered look to this very good but still flawed cinematic game. This is just the preview! Join us at patreon.com/duckfeedtv for the full episode, and dozens more.

The story is in the telling, and who cares if you stretch or fib a little bit? That's the conceit at the center of Call of Juarez: Gunslinger that raises it above its predecessors. It also raises it above its own gameplay, which is firmly in the "arcadey shooter" category. It's stylish as all hell, and it bends to fit the narration in exciting and entertaining ways. A few times during the episode, we decry that Gunslinger was pulled from digital stores. In the time between when we recorded the episode and its release, it was recently re-listed after Techland bought the publishing rights. So go grab it and see what's up!

This episode is a quick announcement to let you know that the way you get Duckfeed's premium content is changing. Patreon now offers individual feeds of all of our backer-only shows. This gives you control over what your podcast player downloads, and what you ultimately listen to. Since Patreon itself has this feature, we will no longer be using the individual show feeds on Fireside for our premium content. Those feeds will no longer be updated. Here's what you need to do: You will now need to subscribe to each show you want to listen to individually through Patreon. The process is very simple, just go to the Membership tab on our Patreon page. I've also created a detailed guide for you in the pinned post on our Patreon page. (https://www.patreon.com/posts/122629571) The delivery of public episodes isn't changing at this time. (So to get both the public and premium episodes of Watch Out for Fireballs!, you will need to subscribe to both the feed provided on Patreon and the public feed on watchoutforfireballs.com. I apologize for this duplication, there just isn't a way to handle it better at the moment). Very little else is changing at the moment. You will still get email notifications about every episode we post, regardless of what shows you subscribe to. If you miss the combined feed of all of our shows, what we called the firehose, we're sorry that it went away. You can recreate the effect either by using an RSS feed combiner service, or using features in the podcast app you already use to group shows together into one list of episodes. This feature is called Stations in Apple Podcasts, Overcast calls it Smart Playlists, Podcast Addict calls it Playlists. Pocketcasts doesn't have an option for this as far as I know. Patreon's multi-show RSS feature is still in testing, and there may be hiccups. This is also just one of many changes Patreon is making to make podcasting on their platform better for everyone, so expect more features in the near future. If you have any feedback about the experience, please write at info@duckfeed.tv. To sweeten the pot if this change makes you want to back us for the first time, or to become a patron again, use the code MULTIFEED (all one word) to get 20% off the first month of a new subscription.

How can a movie also be a game? The sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror tries to answer that with the experimental Bandersnatch, which weirdly feels archaic in many ways even as it tries to break storytelling boundaries. There is some neat stuff in here, but does it add up to anything more than cheap twists?

We're big fans of Deus Ex, so there's joy in covering more of the series on the show. Human Revolution came out to a split reaction, which is to be expected. How can you please Deus Ex fans? We're a small sample size, but in our opinion, this is how you please Deus Ex fans. The story is smaller in scale and the jank has been polished away, but this is a fun immersive sim with an engrossing story and a beautiful aesthetic. So we're on board. This episode is about the Director's Cut version of the game, so we talk about the improved boss fights and the Missing Link DLC. This is a preview of a full premium episode that is available to our patrons. Find the full audio here. (https://www.patreon.com/posts/woff-257-deus-ex-31553602)

Gary Butterfield and Kole Ross read your responses to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

Let's travel down memory lane and explore some of greatest non-hits of the WOFF Catalog.

Skald - n. a composer and reciter of poems honoring heroes and their deeds. While you can't recruit a Skald in your party, oddly, you can hone and craft a party of heroes in this updated retro-style Blobber. It wants to introduce you to a genre that's generally unfriendly to newcomers. Full episode available exclusively to our patrons at patreon.com/duckfeedtv

This is a special announcement about a few important policy things, and a few big changes to our Patreon campaign. It's all good stuff. Please direct your attention to the public post on Patreon for the full text of the announcement (www.patreon.com/posts/duckfeed-state-7001000), and pose all of your questions as comments on that post. Thanks!

The title seems redundant, but it's better than saying "Batman, the NES game. The one made by SunSoft. For the first movie, kinda." This might be the hardest game we've done for the show, but we might also have lost track. This is a compact little platformer that is certainly of its era, but it's also a rare great licensed game. Borrowing elements from several other platformers, Ninja Gaiden most noticeably, SunSoft created a challenging and technical Batman game when mediocrity would have sold.

No role-playing today, kids! Just time for that sweet tappa-tappa. Grind for gear, slay some jellied cubes, and enjoy killing some time in this Diablo-clone with a Dungeons and Dragons skin.

Gary Butterfield and Kole Ross flip out about SSX Tricky. This episode is our recital: to talk about to talk about how important SSX Tricky is in the pantheon of extreme sports games. For their second outing, EA Sports BIG totally nailed the combination of racing systems and trick systems, creating a game that is satisfyingly fast and technical. But lest you think this will be a 100% glowing episode, we have some very harsh words for the terrible cast of characters.

Hey! It's our preview episode on 2014's Wolfenstein Reboot/Sequel/Whatever, The New Order. This is just the preview episode. To hear the entire thing, join us at patreon.com/duckfeedtv

Kole and Gary finally tackle the FPS that set the standard, not only for the genre, but for cinematic and narrative games to this day. To hear the whole thing, join us at patreon.com/duckfeedtv

This week go back to basics by starting up a brutal one-man factory farm in Stardew Valley. This indie successor to Harvest Moon is a phenomenon, with tons of people succumbing to the wide variety of tasks and its charming aesthetic. In fact, the combination of all of the elements is so much greater than the sum of its parts that it manages to make us enjoy certain gameplay elements we wouldn't like in other games. Listen in to hear about life on the farm, or in the mines, or on the docks, or... Thanks, Zack!

Folks, this is, as one might say, a good ass game. Kole and Gary discuss this FPS throwback that incorporates modern design sensibilities and a host of diverse influences. GET DUSK.

This week's episode is a Dispatch, where we answer your questions and talk about your requested topic... namely, is it harmful to consider a game's value solely as a function of its length versus its cost? Additionally, we read your responses to February's games, and announce April's titles!

We continue Desperation Month with Frostpunk, a city building sim where things start bad and only get worse. It's the late 19th century and the world is quickly freezing. Humanity's last chance is to huddle around generators in the north, making moral compromises to survive the cold and the scarcity it brings. Frostpunk is an amazing strategy sim game with A+ theming, and it's sure to make you feel like garbage.

This is a big dispatch episode, where we spend a good deal of time on your questions before talking about why games shouldn't try to be movies. We then turn our attention to your responses to June's games.

Thanks David! This goofy episode on this ambitious, but somewhat tedious, SNES era simulation game was a balm to record on election day, and we hope it's a balm for you to hear. Follow Joao as he travels from Ibiza to Allentown in search of Atlantis.

Do you have what it takes to survive the streets of Night City? After all was said and done, what kind of game did Cyberpunk 2077 end up being? We loved the Witcher 3 and have been eyeing this one for a while. Come for the aesthetics, stay for the graphics, be astounded by some strange design choices. It's a huge game, so there's plenty to like.

This week's premium episode takes us to the biggest DLC pack for Fallout 4, Far Harbor. A missing person's case brings us to an island torn in three pieces, split among factions who can barely tolerate each other, with a buried secret that might bring the whole place tumbling down. This DLC is the best story content in Fallout 4 by far, and it's go a great horror atmosphere that we couldn't wait to talk about.

This week we play the opinionated magnum opus of an opinionated creator. The Witness, created by Jonathan Blow, attempts to use puzzles and geometry to change the way you see the world, and create an engine for repeating the "a-ha!" moment over and over again. It ties one hand behind its back by communicating its mechanics in an entirely nonverbal fashion. Does it succeed at its lofty goals? Listen in to find out. Thanks, Simon!

Let's hear what you think about Ikaruga, Jamestown, The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone, and The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of the Wild! What a month.

Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones is the first entry in this long-running series that we've covered. It's a tactical RPG set in a medieval world, and this particular game has a lot of oddball features that would eventually become mainstays in the series. However, does it all stand up?

This week, we continue our coverage of Dragon Age 2 by moving on to Chapter 2. Hawke and company have hit it big after three years of living in Kirkwall, but the city's problems are only getting worse. We spend this chapter navigating a difficult political and ethical conflict with the Qunari, whose presence is causing even more unrest than Kirkwall is used to.

What was Bungie up to before they bounced back with Halo? Marathon, another sci-fi shooter that was a foundational game for Macintosh gamers. Its graphics were well ahead of the times, and the story is intricate even by today's standards... but we find it a little tough to swallow, given how the antiquated level and encounter design makes the game a bit of a struggle to play. This episode is a preview of a premium release. You can hear the whole thing by backing us at Patreon. (http://patreon.com/duckfeedtv)

Gary Butterfield and Kole Ross lose their minds re: Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. Welcome, Stranger, to a macabre world of undescribable cosmic horror. Feel how insignificant you are when face with non-euclidian angles and strange beasts. Don’t ask too many questions, though, and certainly don’t forget to lock your hotel door. Mwahahaha…

It's the best, most fascinating game you should never play. Pathologic is the definition of a cult classic game. Its adherents will swear by it, while everyone else bounces off. There's a good reason for that: it's one of the best-written games we've covered for the show, and every mechanic is designed to be as unfriendly as possible. For this episode, we follow the Bachelor's route. Daniil Dankovsky is a thanatologist, one who studies death. He's called to a mysterious village on the Russian steppe, which is soon struck by a violent plague that seems to be evil incarnate. Come listen, even if you don't intend to play the game. We'd like to extend a huge thanks to Matt Carney for executive producing this episode through our Patreon.

Who wouldn't want to explore the off-limits areas of an amusement park? Okay, what if I told you it was a haunted amusement park. Crow Country is a bite-sized dopamine capsule of a horror game. A wonderful showcase of what makes the genre fun. Run, don't walk, to play it. Unlock the full episode at patreon.com/duckfeedtv

Like sands through the hourglass, everything ages. But because time is an ocean in a storm, not a river, some things age better than others, even within the same game. Kole and Gary talk about this well regarded classic and figure out which parts are delicious and which are past their sell-by date.

Places! How do you get there? What are you thinking when you do it? We have to get to point B!

Note: You're stuck indoors due to the coronavirus pandemic, so we're unlocking some of our favorite premium content from 2019 so you have more stuff to entertain yourself with. Take care and be safe. Let's get ready to horny! Stuart Gordon looked at a seven page Lovecraft story about seeing extradimensional beings, and said "I can make a movie out of that." The result is From Beyond, where overactive pineal glands enable shapeshifting and confer BDSM fascinations. It needs to be seen to be believed.

We're unabashed in our love of Maniac Mansion and other early LucasArts adventure games. So it shouldn't be a surprise that we jumped all over the Thimbleweed Park Kickstarter when it was announced. And we were right to do so, because Ron Gilbert, Gary Winnick, and company have made something truly great in Thimbleweed Park. It feels right at home with those older games, but has a level of complexity and care that makes it feel very modern too. It's a delight to talk about something so special.

Gary Butterfield and Kole Ross shine some daylight on Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. Being a vampire is tough. You’re doomed to an eternity of walking the Earth as a cursed living corpse, and most of those millennia will be spent running errands for your social betters. Bloodlines is a rare game in a rare genre, notorious for its troubled development and lauded for its great writing. Does it live up to its many-coloned name?

Unfortunately, they found a darker dungeon.

Do games stand up to editing the same way other works do? How is editing used in games? Could they stand more editing? The obvious Duckfeed answer is "yeah." Hear us explain why! And answer your questions, read your responses to June's games, and generally goof it up.

Boy, I wonder if they're gonna defeat the evil.

Ain't no co-op like A Way Out co-op because A Way Out co-op is mandatory. Back in 2013, Hazelight Studios developed a charming and affecting experimental adventure game called Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Five years later, it wanted to continue exploring its pet theme of togetherness, so it created A Way Out. Following the lead of games like Heavy Rain and Until Dawn, it's a cinematic adventure game with one major gimmick: you must play it with someone else. The story is told in split-screen, and makes heavy use of prison and crime movie cliches to show how two convicts, Leo and Vincent, escape from prison and get revenge on a mutual enemy. It's an extremely funny game, but there's one problem... it's not supposed to be funny.

We talked about arcades almost six years ago, and a lot has happened since then. So it's time to go back. For this episode, we each played three games and prepared to talk about them. Spanning several eras and genres, we wanted to learn why arcade games are different and talk about how their design differs from home games. Here are the titles we discuss: TRON. Dig Dug. Captain America and the Avengers. Spider-Man: The Video Game. Area 51. Aliens: Extermination.

Hitman 2016 is a tremendous game. It's shockingly generous in scope, rewarding curiosity and ingenuity. Agent 47 heads to exotic locales to kill exotically, and we're here for it. This episode is a preview of the full premium episode. To hear the entire thing, join us on Patreon! (https://www.patreon.com/posts/watch-out-for-26886888)

Kole and Gary answer your questions, discuss what makes a good tutorial, read your responses to March's games, and announce May!

We originally intended for our live episode at Portland Retro Gaming Expo 2018 to be about Super Smash Bros. Melee. However, we figured something out... we don't like playing Smash Bros. competitively. This led us down a rabbit hole that ultimately made us change our plans... What does it mean to play games wrong. Is it even possible? Is that a real or fake idea? So we turned the episode into an editorial, talking about different ways to play games wrong, and giving a few examples of our favorite games to break.

Gary Butterfield and Kole Ross read your responses to Shadow of Destiny / Shadow of Memories.

Gary Butterfield and Kole Ross jump right into Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. The Mushroom Kingdom is in peril. The princess is missing, Bowser has been kicked out his home by a dimension-hopping blacksmith, and the Star Road has been destroyed. It’s up to Mario, a cloud prince who thinks he’s a frog, and a star-powered doll to set everything right.

Capoeira.

This game really bugs us. Listen in to find out why... or read this short summary. Earth Defense Force as a series gets a lot of credit for its quirkiness and cheesiness. That praise is earned, but it doesn't paper over repetitive and mediocre gameplay. The Ravagers are back again, and they've brought Giant Insects, spiders, lizards, and all kinds of nasties with them. It's up to the united Earth Defense Force to fight them off, once and for all. Over and over again. With very little difference between the missions. Forever.

It turns out we can only play on Medium graphics settings. Is there any meat on these memetic bones? Find out on this week's WOFF where the boys contemplate the nature of a crysis. Get the unlocked version of this episode and many more by subscribing to our Patreon. (https://www.patreon.com/duckfeedtv)

We read your prompts, and your responses to April's games, and discuss what we think separates good lore from bad lore.

We had intended to make this month's topic VR, but instead we said almost everything we wanted to say during the Half-Life: Alyx episode. So, instead, we take even more of your questions before reading your thoughts about Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, SUPERHOT, and Half-Life: Alyx. This episode's highlighted project is Waystar Corncob (https://dennisalison.podbean.com), a podcast that's about both I Think You Should Leave and Succession. And Gary was on a recent episode!

Thank you Abe! It's time to circle strafe the Monstrous Manual with Heretic! This Doom Clone has a lot of subtle improvements that make it more than just Doom with Wands. Listen in to find out more!

Wow, a Resident Evil 4 remake. What will they think of next? Unlock the full version of this episode by becoming a member of our Patreon at patreon.com/duckfeedtv

What's the worst musician that could hijack your brain? Honestly, you could probably do a lot worse than Johnny Silverhand.

What better way to end 2020 than to talk about fail states? We also answer your questions and read your responses to December's games, as well as announce what we're doing in February.