Thumbstick Athletes

Dan, Eric and Will give their first impressions for Anthem,the newest looter shooter from Legendary developer BioWare.  It's definitely a gamble for them, to inject classic BioWare storytelling into a genre that's generally suffered from poor stories.  During Nibblebits, the Pokemon Sword and Shield reveal is discussed.  Eric talks about Apex Legends during "What We Played" and Will played some FarCry New Dawn.

Dan and Corey cover the Disney/Square Enix RPG that has been many years in the making.  Did all that time in development serve the game well?  During "What We Played" Corey played Civ 6's newest expansion Gathering Storm and Dan spent quite a bit of time playing Valkyria Chronicles 4.

Dan, Will and Corey discuss the newest Chucklefish release Wargroove....the spiritual successor to Advance Wars now on PC and Switch.  Also covered this week was Nintendo's Jam packed Direct from February 13, 2019...complete with some details on Mario Maker 2, Fire Emblem: Three Houses and the remaster for Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening.

Again in lieu of an Anthem beta episode, we decide to do something different at the last moment.  This time we reach way back, revisiting some of the Thumbies awards from the previous years.  Thanks again to Corey for creating the Thumbies master list!  During "What We Played" Dan and Will give some early Wargroove impressions.

It was a snowy mess last week here in Upstate NY, this week it's miserably frigid and windy...so we figured it was a good time to cover our favorite snow/winter experiences in games.  Made better by the fact that they can be experienced from the warmth and comfort of our couches.  Lots to cover this week in Nibblebits, with Metriod Prime 4 being scrapped and restarted and Metro Exodus exiting Steam.  What We Played has some more AC Odyssey talk, first impressions of Kingdom Hearts 3 and the Anthem Beta.

Dan and Will welcome Val on this week to discuss the latest Wii U game ported to the Nintendo Switch in New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe.  Another solid Nintendo game that should be experienced by the much larger group of Switch owners and not just the few, but proud Wii U owners. 

Dan and Will cover all the games (AAA mostly) coming out this year with real actual release dates.  Sure, plenty more will be coming out and some that we cover here may even see last minute delays.  But before we get into our main topic, Val comes on to get us caught up on her experiences with Rookie Camp games from November and December.  Also EA is still very poorly handling the Star Wars franchise and we gush some more about Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

This week we kick off our 2019 gaming coverage with a predictions episode....what new hardware will we see?  Unannounced games?  Then Dan talks about all he's played since we've had a regular episode, which includes Pokemon Let's GO Pikachu, Spyro Reignited Trilogy and Red Dead Redemption 2.  There's also some fairly big news stories that we cover, like Bungie and Activision splitting up and The Division 2 skipping a Steam release for the Epic Games Store.

Dan, Eric, Corey and Will change the format a bit for this year's Thumbies and discuss live which games they want for the winner of each category. 

Dan takes blurbs from episodes on Octopath Traveler, Life is Strange 2, Monster Hunter World and of course Red Dead Redemption 2 for this year's second half recap leading up to the Thumbies.

We cover the newest Pokemon games for this week's episode, which Will has played a lot of and Dan....watched on YouTube.  (Thanks ZackScottGames!)  It's a lovely remaster of the originals with some new mechanics thrown in.  During "What We Played" we of course talk some more Smash Bros. Ultimate!

Smash is here, and Dan, Corey, Eric and Will relate their experiences with it after spending most of the weekend together playing it.  We also cover some of the announcements from The Game Awards and Eric talks about Fallout 76.

Two and a half years after release, Pokemon GO has morphed into a pretty good AR mobile game.  Dan and Will cover some of the new features added since launch and why now is a good time to pick it back up.

We have another "Just the News" main segment, where we cover gaming's hottest news, and also some boring news too.  No nibblebits this week, since the entire main segment was news....and during "What We Played" Will talks more Spyro Reignited Trilogy.

Dan and Will hash out how this year's Thumbies Awards will go down...the categories, the format.....and who will be invited.  During "What We Played" Will talks more Spyro Reignited Trilogy.

Will covers the complete remaster of one of our favorite games of all time in Spyro The Dragon and it's subsequent sequels.  Find out if it holds up to our modern day scrutiny.  We also cover the nominees for this year's Game Awards.

For this week we cover the over the top backlash against the Smash Ultimate full roster reveal and announcement of Diablo Immortal.  Everyone needs to just chill a bit!  During "What We Played" Will talks about his brief experience with Red Dead Redemption 2 and Dan tries a little Destiny 2.

Eric and Corey return this week to talk about Rockstar's newest masterpiece in Red Dead Redemption 2, which some have called the greatest western of all time.  High praise....but it may just live up to it.  We also give Will's thoughts on the last Smash Direct before the release of Smash Brothers Ultimate, and Val recaps the games she played for Rookie Camp in October.

We relive the old days with one of the best strategy games of all time, AoE2.  It was one of the first games Will ever played, and one of the first online games Dan played with friends.

Eric and Will cover the single-player-campaign-less new Call of Duty game, Black Ops 4.  Yep, they got it again.  And against all odds, Dan's internet cut out twice, but both within a few minutes of each other meaning only one interruption!  Eric also updates us on what he's  been playing the past few weeks.