There was something disturbingly familiar about the episode before me. The description was all pretty fonts. "You are in a Podcast, Bastard Sword." The truth was a burning green crack through my brain. Listener analytics hanging in the air, glimpsed out of the corner of my eye. Endless repetition of the act of recording, time slowing down as I fumbled for the right words. The paranoid feel of someone editing my every sentence.

I was in a podcast. Funny as hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of.

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We're in the anime mech battle zone, hell yeah. We both had some reservations coming into 13 Sentinels, which were promptly proven wrong because this is a total banger of a game. Part JRPG, part visual novel, part tactical mech strategy game, part brain-bending convoluted sci-fi time travel, all bizarrely compelling. It's good stuff!

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If we honour our part of the vow, promise me you'll be my consort. We've finally finished our first playthroughs of Shadow of the Erdtree, and we have thoughts. A lot of thoughts, in fact! In this episode, we give a little bit of our general impressions and a lot of our impressions of the storylines and the (surprisingly huge) lore implications of what happens with Miquella, Leda, and, of course, our main man Igon. Thanks for listening and please be sure to let us know what you think!

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Sometimes games just don't make the impact they should have, either getting overlooked entirely or obtaining "cult classic" status. Those are what we talked about this week, a small selection of some of our favorite under-the-radar games. They're not underrated, mind you - everyone who has played these generally loves them - but they just don't get the attention we feel like they deserved. Drew talks about Hypnospace Outlaw, an awesome early internet simulator/detective game, and Spec Ops: The Line, a surprisingly heady deconstruction of military shooters. Josh brings Risk of Rain 2, a mechanically-rich roguelike shooter, and XCom 2, a deep and phenomenal tactical RTS.

Editor’s Note from Josh: We finally fixed my audio! Also, in my segment about Xcom 2, I mistakenly said The Spokesman was voiced by Peter Cullen (Optimus Prime). It’s actually Jon Bailey of Honest Trailers fame. He also does a great Optimus Prime voice, hence the confusion.

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Those stripped of the Grace of Gold shall all meet death, In the embrace of Messmer's flame. It finally happened! The new Elden Ring DLC has us so hyped we had to jump on a quick call to discuss it for a bit. We're both taking out time with the (full-game-sized) DLC but we already have some opinions we wanted to share, and started to scratch at a little bit of the lore and the theming. There will definitely be more coverage of this as we continue to push through and poke at the edges, so stay tuned and DON'T SPOIL ANYTHING OKAY (and also ps thanks for listening we love you)

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It's a festival... of games! In the summer! This week, we skim through some of the more exciting games shown off during the barrage of forwards, directs, and not-E3s over the past couple weeks (side note: this was recorded prior to the Nintendo direct so we didn't get to talk about that sweet, sweet Metroid Prime 4 action). Some of the highlights were the expected-but-still-pretty-neat Doom: The Dark Ages, the unexpected-and-very-neat Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and the Star Wars: Outlaws gameplay showcase that certainly was a thing that existed. Thanks for listening!

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Ooooooooohhh Elden Ring. In the leadup to Shadow of the Erdtree, we decided to look back at every game in the Soulsborne series (and rank them from "worst" to best. It gets pretty contentious at times - this is like picking a least-favorite child to both of us, but unfortunately the content gods demand content so someone has to be sacrificed. We went with every FromSoft game from Demon Souls up through Elden Ring, with an obligatory Kings Field mention because we are handsome and smart and wish to impress the internet by letting you know that we have heard those words used together before (did it work? Do you think we are handsome and smart and cool? Please?).

Thanks for listening!

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Katana Zero!? This week, we talk about the rumors about a totally speculative new Doom game that definitely hasn't been revealed since we recorded, we talk about Project Zomboid and the concept of "forever games," and we talk about Katana Zero, one of our favorite games of recent years, indie or otherwise. We also do some deep lore speculation and figure out how it could possibly share a universe with Animal Well, which seems exceedingly likely.

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