Thumbstick Athletes

Up this week, a game from EA that's not a sports game or shooter....and it happens to be a Star Wars game.  Typically this spells disaster, but Fallen Order appears to be a bit of a victory for EA.  (Thank you Respawn!)  Eric and Corey play the first Star Wars game from EA that doesn't stink and relate their experiences with it.   Later in the episode we cover The Game Awards nominees, Halo Reach on PC, more Pokemon Sword and Shield, and LOTS of other things!

The first mainline Pokemon entry has finally reached the Nintendo Switch, so find out our thoughts on some of the additions (and subtractions) to the series.  Will is the resident Pokemon expert and played a TON over the past two weeks, so he has some good perspective on the new games.   Later on in the episode Dan talks a little about his vacation and GOG Galaxy 2.0 beta.

The Luigi's Mansion series is back, after what seems like a really long time, with Luigi's Mansion 3.  Our reluctant hero Luigi is tasked with saving his friends from the clutches of the The Last Resort hotel.  Dan is the only one that has played it to this point, so you hear his thoughts on the matter! As for the rest of the episode, we talk about some of the XO19 announcements, The Outer Worlds, and Hearthstone Battlegrounds.

For clarification purposes, this episode is about The Outer Worlds, developed by Obsidian and is a Fallout, Borderlands, and Mass Effect-esque RPG.  It's defined by it's interesting characters and entertaining dialogue and quest options, which mostly outshine some of the game's negatives.  Yes, Outer Worlds...not Outer Wilds.   Later in the episode we discuss our Extra Life stream, (you can still donate by the way) the Pokemon leaks and Luigi's Mansion 3

In addition to talking about the full release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare we also talk about the mobile version of the game, Call of Duty Mobile, which is quite good.  For Modern Warfare, you pretty much know what you're getting...a polished shooter with a huge playerbase and excellent competitive online.  Plus it seems the campaign is quite good also! We also briefly touch on The Outer Worlds, the Borderlands/Fallout New Vegas-esque game from Obsidian that also rather excellent!

Yikes...Bethesda has really stepped in it again with the announcement of Fallout 1st, a subscription to a game you already have to buy that's kind of expensive and doesn't seem to get you that much.  At least that's our take, but we use it as an opportunity to talk about some of the other great videogame subscription services like GamePass, Uplay+ and PS Now.   In other news, The Last of Us 2 was delayed, Shroud leaves Twitch for Mixer, Will played a lot of Persona 5 and Dan played a lot of Fortnite!

This episode is somewhat out of character for us, as we're all getting old and not keeping up with what the kids are playing nowadays...but something about the way Fortnite was taken down for a few days sucked us right in. 

We have our annual fall games preview for this week's episode...a few weeks later than usual.  At least with recording it this late, we have fewer games to cover, and there seems to be fewer releases in general this fall.  We have some heavy hitters like Call of Duty and Pokemon Sword and Shield, but other than that it more minor stuff and ports or remasters.  Our wallets will thank us!   Other than that, we talked about our return to Extra Life this year, Persona 5, Link's Awakening, Untitled Goose Game and more!

Thanks to Idaho Jake for this suggestion a few weeks ago, where we (and members of the chat) answer 50 gaming related questions.  Some examples are: If you had to marry the last videogame character, who would it be?   Has a game's storyline ever made you cry?   What's your favorite game series of all time?   There's 47 other good questions there and we got tons of good answers from the chat!  Thanks to everyone who pitched in!   Since that was most of the episode, we only had a little to talk about for the other segments...Will talked a bit about Persona 5 and Astral Chain and Dan talked a little Mario Kart Tour and a tiny bit of Link's Awakening.    

This week's episode brings us back to the old days, as the remake of Link's Awakening brings up some surprisingly powerful memories.  Nintendo did such a great job of balancing the classic feel of the game while modernizing it, a tricky task for such a beloved game!   Later in the episode Corey talks about seeing Doug Stanhope perform stand up comedy, and Dan played Untitled Goose Game and Mario Kart Tour for his week.

Borderlands 3 is finally out after what seems like forever...and also all the Thumbstick Athletes are all on the same episode after what seems like forever.  Corey and Eric played some Borderlands 3, and even together!  The good news is that it's more Borderlands, so you can kind of guess what that means, but they also threw in a few neat new modes for players to try.  Now it just needs to make it's way to Steam so Dan can be happy again.   Later on in the episode, Eric talks about his experiences with Gears 5 Horde mode and the Athletes decide that Link's Awakening will be next week's topic!

Dan and Corey invite Shane and Brian onto the show this week to talk some Gears 5.  We say early impressions because we all mostly dabbled in the various modes Gears 5 has, since there's quite a few and it really is a complete package.  And to think we all played it mostly for free on Gamepass.   During "What We Played" Shane and Brian talk about Remnant: From the Ashes and Greedfall, while Dan talks a little more about Astral Chain.

Dan, Corey and Eric (Rephyr) played a fair amount of WoW Classic last week and discuss what the draw is for a game as antiquated as Vanilla WoW is at this point.  What's the draw?  Why is it so popular?   During "What We Played" Dan played a couple of new games in Astral Chain and Pokemon Masters.

Since this is a spoiler filled episode, where we discuss some of the significant happenings in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, we moved the main segment to the end of the episode....so feel free to listen up until I give the warning towards the end!    Other than Black Eagles spoilers, we discuss some Gamescom news, Gears POP! and and at the VERY end of the episode, our plans for WoW Classic!

With a last minute change of plans, we decide to cover the games we're most likely getting this fall, Like Pokemon Sword and Shield, the new Call of Duty and The Outer Wilds.  We also took the opportunity to make a rough schedule on when we'll be doing an episode on the games we're getting, all the way through the end of November.   During "What We Played" we of course talked more Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Dan played Pokemon Uranium.

It's episode #420...so yeah, we cover the use of drugs in games.  From the burning of the marijuana fields in Far Cry 3 to downing some skooma in Skyrim, we talk about the surpisingly few games that have actual drug use in them.   Later on we of course cover Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Corey relates his experiences with Cultist Simulator and SteamWorld Dig 2.

The newest Fire Emblem, Three Houses is FINALLY out and it does not disappoint!  It's seriously oozing with content, and all really excellent content, making for a much deeper and more connected experience than we've had in awhile.    Outside of that we talked a little more Super Mario Maker 2 and Dr. Mario World during what we played!

With Fire Emblem: Three Houses just a night away, we decided it was a good time to revisit our favorite titles from this underutilized genre.  Yes....we do have Final Fantasy Tactics on the list.  Shut up about it, there are other games on the list too!

Since last week's episode was a semi-annual recap of the year's most important games, we didn't get a chance to cover some of the important news in gaming like we usually do.  We made up for it this week with an entire main segment devoted to the most breaking gaming headlines...like the Switch Lite, Fire Emblem and Pokemon Sword and Shield news, and Ubisoft's new UPlay+ service.   During "What We Played" there is some more Super Mario Maker 2 talk, as well as first impressions of Dr. Mario World.

Time for the annual Mid year recap...a refresher for some of the games we've covered earlier in the year.  This year we have excerpts from our episodes on Wargroove, Kingdom Hearts 3, Devil May Cry 5, Sekiro, and Fell Seal. No nibblebits, feedback or "What We Played" for this week...but we'll get caught up on all that when we return to live episodes next week!