Thumbstick Athletes

Just a tad over two weeks until the new consoles come out, so we do a quick and dirty comparison of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.  

The first episode on our current recording schedule of Sunday morning....Dan and Will cover the best titles released on the PS4 in it's lifetime now that most of the heavy hitters have come out.  If you've listened to us for any amount of time, you can probably guess some of the games that were on our lists...but also Dan hasn't owned a PS4 for a lot the generation.

We're back from our brief hiatus with some heavy hitting news on the new consoles....we've got release dates for both the PS5 and the Xbox Series X along with prices, launch titles, and PlayStation's answer for Xbox Gamepass.  We also hit a few other topics like Microsoft's acquisition of Zenimax, WoW Shadowlands delay, and the new Smash Bros character. During "What We Played" we talk about our experiences with Spellbreak and Super Mario 3D All Stars.  Lots to cover!

This week we cover Ubisoft's "Nintendo Direct" style event called Ubisoft Forward...where they gave some updates on released games, showed more from Immortals Fenyx Rising and announced Riders Republic.  It was a good event, jam packed with neat things.  We also FINALLY got some info on the releases for the Xbox Series X and S including a release date and price.   During Nibblebits Nintendo drops a bombshell announcement out of nowhere for Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity....and we're super excited for it.

Quality over quantity would definitely describe this year's fall games lineup...with not too many games coming out.  The ones that are though...heavy hitters like Cyberpunk 2077, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Watch Dogs Legion and the surprise of the day, Super Mario 3D All Stars!  We also cover a few of the other things announced during today's surprise Nintendo Direct, like the Super Mario 3D World port, Mario Kart Live Home Circuit and Super Mario All Stars on the SNES app for Switch Online.  

With E3 cancelled this year in favor of smaller and more piecemeal gaming announcements, it's nice to have Gamescom to look forward to!  Geoff Keighley again this year hosted an event called "Gamescom Opening Night Live" where he made some new game reveals, had developers announce updates to current games, and gave us a little bit of the E3 hype we've desperately been looking for.  Some of the stuff we recap is Season 2 of Fall Guys, World of Warcraft Shadowlands, Star Wars Squadrons, and Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond...among other things of course! Later on we talk about Will's new PC, Fall Guys cheaters, Fortnite Season 4, Horizon Zero Dawn on PC, and Will's adventures over the past two weeks.

In light of the crazy attention Fall Guys has been getting lately, we figured it would be a good time to dive into what makes it so interesting.  In addition to just talking about our thoughts for Fall Guys, we also offer up some tips on how to run the gauntlet and earn your first crown...so you don't end up like TimTheTatman and the be target of the Fall Guys twitter jokes.   Then during nibblebits we revisit the Epic/Apple lovers spat, and Corey played UnderMine on Xbox Gamepass.

Corey went and did it again....and dug up yet another indie gem that everyone needs to play stat!  This time it's Littlewood, where the battle against good and evil is already won, and our intrepid hero has to now....build a community.  It looks legitimately great and I look forward to playing!  Later on in nibblebits we talk about the Halo Infinite delay, the Apple/Epic spat over Fortnite, and Dan played The Touryst for this week's episode. 

Will up and decided to buy everything for a brand spanking new gaming rig earlier in the week so we took it as an opportunity to talk about the selection process and had a discussion on the different parts involved in a gaming PC.  During Nibblebits we talk about Nintendo's soaring profits from the COVID 19 gaming boom, and during What We Played we covered some Animal Crossing New Horizons, Paper Mario The Origami King, and of course a little bit of Ghost of Tsushima.

We finally get to Ghost of Tsushima this week, with Corey, Will and Tito all having played it at various lengths.  And apologies for the spotty audio at the beginning...we've been having internet hiccups lately which disrupted some of the beginning of this episode.  Not to worry though, after a few minutes it clears right up.   Anyway, Ghost of Tsushima is great and Dan looks forward to it's release on PC someday!  Later on in the episode we talk some more Paper Mario: The Origami King, some of Obsidian's game announcements, and Will's ever changing living arrangement!

It's Corey and Dan for this week's episode, and Dan's newborn makes his debut during the first part of it!  Not to worry though, he only grumped a little bit during the beginning before we got down to brass tacks.  We talked a bit about Paper Mario and it's role a a successor to Super Mario RPG, and it's place in Nintendo's lineup...along with the game itself.  During nibblebits we discussed the Xbox Games Showcase along with Halo Infinite and some of the other announcements made all while lamenting the loss of E3.  And for "What We Played" a bit more AC Odyssey, and Dan started A Plague Tale: Innocence.

And it's time yet again for our mid year recap, where I play a little excerpt from some of the bigger releases to come out this year.  Keep in mind however, that we're unable to cover every release since we only cover games we buy.  It's also been a fairly lean first half, with the only games being covered this episode being DBZ Kakarot, Animal Crossing: New Horizons (twice), Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Minecraft Dungeons.  Slim pickings indeed!

Dan and Tito talk this week about the latest Naughty Dog release in The Last of Us 2....even though Dan hasn't played it!  Not to worry though, he's watching a Let's Play on YouTube to at least experience the story.  Other than that we talk about the Dr Disrespect Twitch ban, another TSA Pod family birth, and oh yeah...we played some videogames.

Oh boy, some heavy hitting news to cover this week...like the PokeMOBA announcement we've been waiting for called Pokemon Unite, Mixer closing down and partnering with Facebook Gaming, and the purging of some predatory people in the gaming industry.  We cover some other stuff, but those were the biggest and most interesting stories from the week. During "What We Played" Will talks about his first few hours of Persona 4 Golden, and yes....we talk about AC Odyssey some more.  Sue me.

Tito joins us this week to talk about the new indie release Deep Rock Galactic...a game with drinking, mining, space faring dwarves.  It's extremely well rated and rightfully so, it seems!  Just watching some gameplay alone was mesmerizing. During Nibblebits we cover some of the announcements from EA Play, the New Pokemon Snap, and Cyberpunk 2077's delay. What We Played features some talk of Season 3 of Fortnite, Persona 4 Golden, Outer Wilds, and of course some Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

The PlayStation 5 reveal was finally held earlier today and there seems to be mixed feelings on it.  Lots of cool games for sure, including the INCREDIBLE looking Horizon 2: Forbidden West.  There were also some sweet-looking Indie games like Kena: Bridge of Spirits and Stray.  Plus we got to see a box!  We were worried for a second that we wouldn't....but no details on pricing or an actual release date. Not too much to cover outside of all that, and we gush more about Assassin's Creed Odyseey AGAIN this week....but it's so worth it!   

Dan and Will sit down and hash out a ranking of the mainline Super Mario Bros. games, from the OG Super Mario Bros. to the more recent Super Mario Maker 2.  Where does Mario Odyssey fit in all this?  Or Super Mario 3?  Where does your favorite Mario game fit? Later on in the episode we talk about the Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning announcement and Dan played a tiny bit of Valorant.

Minecraft Dungeons among other things.

The gang is all here for this week's episode, and we're covering a game that came out almost two years ago!  In all fairness, Assassin's Creed Odyssey is quite the game...one that Will has been trying to get us to play for awhile now.  With AC Valhalla on it's way shortly here we figured it would be a good time to finally give Odyssey the credit it deserves for being such a great game.   Later in the episode we get to hear Corey's thoughts on the Final Fantasy 7 Remake finally and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 is getting a remake!

We're coming fairly close to our "Best of X" console episode with a only a few systems left to cover.  Though now that I'm thinking about it....I don't believe we're covered any handheld systems.  YAY! More episode ideas!  This generation more than any others had TONS of multiplatform games, and console exclusives that also made their way to PC, so we took care to mention that when applicable. In nibbllebits we cover Nintendo's surprise Paper Mario Origami King announcement and the Ghosts of Tsushima gameplay released by Sony today.  Also Assassin's Creed Odyssey is great!