Vidjagame Apocalypse – Laser Time: Recent Episodes
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Bringing an enemy around to your way of thinking can be a powerful thing – and in games, adding a former nemesis to your ranks can be a lot cooler than offing them. TL Foster joins us to talk about... Read more
Live A Live’s launch this week is a reminder that even if a Japanese game doesn’t come to the US for decades, that doesn’t mean it never will. With localization expert Greg Moore in the guest-host chair, we chat about... Read more
“1980s kids in peril” has been pretty thoroughly mined as a concept by now, and yet relatively few games have tried to recapture the (heavily idealized and romanticized) experience of being a kid in that strange decade — so let’s... Read more
We’re pretty big suckers for Super NES nostalgia, to the point where we decided it’d be a good idea to grab Greg Moore and talk in a non-visual medium about five games that made incredible use of the 16-bit console’s... Read more
We’re at the halfway point of another year, which means it’s time to look back and anoint our five favorite games of 2022’s first six months, with help from TL Foster! Then we’ll get into the Capcom Fighting Collection, Cuphead’s... Read more
One of humanity’s greatest regrets is that we never existed at the same time as dinosaurs, and therefore never got to fight them in a planetwide Thunderdome for control of existence. So instead, we imagine the conflict over and over... Read more
Videogames aren’t always the most welcoming medium for newcomers, and one way they can confuse is through their titles; some series are easy enough to decipher, while others are Byzantine jumbles of numbers and subtitles. With game-industry legend Chris Baker... Read more
If they were to happen in real life, the events of a lot of videogames could leave a person seriously messed up – and yet, videogame protagonists always seem to effortlessly bounce back in time for a new adventure. Every... Read more
Back in the ’80s, Rambo (along with a lot of other action and sci-fi movie franchises) had a huge influence on game developers, and there was a point when the standard uniform for serious arcade action heroes was just a... Read more
Roller Champions is out this week, so to mark the occasion, we decided it’d be as good a time as any to look at five action games starring rough-and-tumble badasses who are strapped into a pair of roller skates the... Read more
This week was sandwiched between an elaborate MultiVersus Trailer and the new Rescue Rangers movie, so naturally our thoughts gravitated toward children’s TV animation — specifically, five of our favorite games based on it — and we invited Jeremy King... Read more
With this week’s release of Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising — a side-scrolling prequel to the upcoming JRPG Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes — we’ve invited Anthony Abatte on for a look at five other times big games gave players a little taste... Read more
Some (mostly older) game consoles launched with generation-defining games packed into the box; others found them a little later down the line. This week, we’ll take a look at five of the best games ever to be added as a... Read more
Dune: Spice Wars hit early access on PC this week, and its based-on-the-movie-based-more-closely-on-the-book status inspired us to invite Ryan Harig of Conspiracy Therapy on for a chat about five games that directly adapted novels and short stories. Then we’ll get... Read more
With The Batman hitting streaming this week, our dormant interest in The Caped Crusader has been rekindled, and we’ve invited Dan Amrich on for a chat about five of the best (non-Arkham) Batman games. Then we’ll get into the Ghostbusters... Read more
Even the best games aren’t flawless; some even have moments that can (almost) derail the whole experience. PNB’s TL Foster joins us this week for a look at five of the most glaring examples, after which we’ll get into Chinatown... Read more
Not only did this week’s launch of Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga pleasantly surprise us — it inspired us to invite Greg Moore on for a Top 5 about lightsabers in non-Star Wars games. Then we’ll mourn E3’s cancellation,... Read more
There’s an argument to be made for videogame graphics being TOO detailed when that detail starts to include rendered, clearly visible buttholes on little dogs, giant pigs, and other things we won’t mention here. But we WILL mention them in... Read more
The reappearance of a certain recurring deceiver in Elden Ring inspired this week’s Top 5, in which we take a look at some of gaming’s most prolific, remorseless, and – inevitably – successful liars ever to repeately pull a metaphorical... Read more
Usually, games based on a popular media franchises let you embody the main characters from movies, TV shows, or books. This week, though, we’ll rope in Brendan “The Crawl” Hesse for a look at five games that cast you as... Read more
WWE 2K22 launches this week, inspiring us to take a look at the way wrestling matches have been represented in non-“sports entertainment” games over the years. Then we’ll dig into Gran Turismo 7, lots more Elden Ring, Sony’s State of... Read more
Elden Ring is here, and we can’t shut up about it! But before we start being unable to shut up, let’s grab Tony Wilson of Framework for a look at five of our favorite open worlds created by Japanese developers.... Read more
Some plot twists are just too good to keep under wraps for long, whether because of a game’s popularity, loose-lipped fans, or sequels that build their lore on formerly secret knowledge. This week, Larry Charles joins us for a look... Read more
Horizon: Forbidden West is out! To celebrate, we’ve invited Anthony Abatte to help us take a look at five games set in post-apocalyptic futures where swords, sorcery, and monsters reign supreme. Then we’ll talk about King of Fighters XV, Infernax,... Read more
Sifu is out this week, and its grow-old-instead-of-dying mechanic inspired us to pull together a top 5 about other games where your character grows up and gets old, with special guest Mike Williams of Fanbyte. Then it’s on to Dying... Read more
Pokémon Legends: Arceus has us thinking about isekai stories – where a hero is unexpectedly dropped into another world or time period, and struggles to get back – so with PNB’s TL Foster on board, let’s talk about five of... Read more
Pokémon Legends: Arceus is out this week, and while it’s not quite an open-world game, there was a point when a lot of people thought it was going to be – so with Leif Johnson on board, let’s take a... Read more
Rainbow Six Extraction is out this week, pitting three players against the mutant Archaeans – and we had so much fun playing it as a trio that we decided to talk about five of our favorite videogame trios (as a... Read more
January is the time for new-year’s resolutions — and what resolution is more popular, more strenuous, and more quickly abandoned than the one to get in shape? This week, we grab PNB’s Robert Beach for a look at five games... Read more
Another new year begins, as we shake off the holiday cobwebs and get back up to speed with a look ahead at five games we’re especially excited to get our hands on in the next 12 months. Will all of... Read more
Our two-part countdown of 2021’s best games concludes this week with our five favorite games of the year, with help from special guests Micah Seff; Steve Guntli and Woody Ciskowski of Wii Universe; Kat Bailey of IGN and Axe of... Read more
It’s time once again to look back on another great year for games and pick our favorites, and this year we’re breaking from tradition: Instead of one gargantuan show to mark the end of the year, we’re splitting our top... Read more
2021 is drawing to a close(!), and all things considered it’s been a pretty great year for videogames. Before we begin our annual GOTY countdown next week, let’s invite Tony Wilson of Framework for a look at five of our... Read more
December is here and the snow is upon (some of) us, so this week, we’re taking a look at games that let us step back from the action, take a deep breath, and nail someone real good with a snowball.... Read more
When is the end not the end? When a hinky-looking credits sequence is interrupted to let you know the game’s not over yet. This week, PNB‘s TL Foster rejoins us to talk about five times games faked us out with... Read more
Happy Black Friday, everybody! With Thanksgiving on our minds this week, we dedicated this week’s Top 5 to cooking minigames in bigger, non-cooking-themed games, after which we’ll wonder at the possibilities of WB’s MultiVersus, delve into a few highly topical... Read more
With this week’s release of the Vaas: Insanity DLC for Far Cry 6, we welcome first-time guest Doug Trein of Basileus Games for a look at five other sequels and expansions that let us embody one of a game’s villains,... Read more
An “unreliable narrator” can mean that a character is withholding information or deceiving you, or it can, in a very literal sense, mean a narrator who just doesn’t have their shit together. Leif Johnson joins us for a look at... Read more
SPONSORED: During the 1-900 number craze of the Nineties, one company provided the vast majority of phone sex. American Telnet was an empire founded by the man who called himself “The Telephone Pimp.” He ran the company “like General Motors”... Read more
Delivering a good, solid kick in a game feels great, especially when it sends your enemies flying helplessly into spikes or off cliffs. This week, the regular VGA crew pays tribute to five of the greatest, meatiest kick attacks ever... Read more
Halloween is almost here, so Anthony Abatte joins us for a look at five times games set aside a chunk of their (non-seasonal) storylines to celebrate Halloween with themed levels or missions! Then we’ll wrap up our final show of... Read more
Ready to face what lurks in the shadows? No? What if you had… a dog? Greg Moore rejoins us this week for a look at five horror games that pit you and a canine partner against unspeakable terrors, after which... Read more
Metroid Dread has launched the franchise in a suspenseful new direction, and given us an excuse to spend this week talking about some of our favorite horror games set in space, with special guest Alex Faciane of Chilluminati and Super... Read more
There’s something inherently eerie about an empty or abandoned hotel – especially if it’s only been abandoned by the living. With Framework‘s Tony Wilson on board for our second week of Spooptober ’21, let’s look at five highly memorable haunted... Read more
Today marks the return of Spooptober, when all of our shows are Halloween-themed for a whole month — but since it’s just getting started, let’s ease in with guest Greg Moore and five games that let you play as a... Read more
Grand Theft Auto V just turned eight last week, just months shy of its launch on a third console generation – so let’s grab PNB’s TL Foster for a look at five other games that just keep coming back, with... Read more
Deathloop is out this week, and we’re excited to talk about it – but first, let’s ease in with some a look at five other top-tier time-loop games that came along since we last covered the topic in episode 250.... Read more
Being normal-sized is cool and all, but what if you could – just for a little bit – get really, enormously huge and just stomp all the monsters or whatever who thought they could push you around? Leif Johnson joins... Read more
With another summer more or less over, this week’s show takes a look at five games that used summer camp – a place alternately associated with freedom, fun, or terror, depending on the context – as a backdrop for adventure... Read more
This week marks 30 years(!) since the North American launch of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System – by our measure, one of the best consoles ever. To celebrate, we invited Tony Wilson of Framework back on to talk about five... Read more
When it comes to crucibles that test the bonds of friendship or family, few burn hotter than the one where you lock yourselves into a moving vehicle for hours and hours and hours. As summer winds down, we’ve invited Tony... Read more
This week has seen an unusual surge in rodent-related media, with star turns for rat swarms in both The Suicide Squad and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. So this week, PNB‘s TL Foster joins us for a look at five games that... Read more
Only a few big-name game developers are generally seen as “auteurs” — creators with authorial control over (and who get most of the credit for) the games they make. Every so often, one of them strikes out on their own... Read more
Neo: The World Ends With You is out this week, giving us the first completely new TWEWY since the DS original, as well as an excuse to revisit Shibuya, one of Tokyo’s coolest neighborhoods. Let’s celebrate with a look at... Read more
With Steam Deck and the OLED Switch vying for preorders last week, now seems like an opportune time to grab Greg Moore for a look back at five handhelds that tried and failed to take on Nintendo, but made us... Read more
Donkey Kong, just like the plumber who debuted alongside him in 1981, has expanded far beyond his arcade roots to appear in everything from racers to rhythm games over the years. To celebrate Kong’s 40th anniversary, let’s take a look... Read more
Wise old men who lurk in caves to dispense advice and magical weapons are a trope as old as time – but as far as games go, their heyday was firmly in the ’80s. So this week, three cave-dwelling old... Read more
We’ve passed the midpoint of the year, so with help from Alex Faciane of Chilluminati and Super Beard Bros, it’s time to look back at five games that did the most to light up our first six months of 2021.... Read more
Any fictional feud that goes on long enough is bound, sooner or later, to be put on hold for an episode where the hero and villain team up to survive or fight a greater enemy. And this week, PNB‘s TL... Read more
E3 came back! Holy crap! And don’t worry, we’ll get deep in the weeds about it on this week’s show, but first we welcome PNB’s Brendan Hesse and take a look at our favorite episodes of Conan O’Brien’s Clueless Gamer,... Read more
We’ve always been great fans of trash pandas at VGA, so when this week’s release of Backbone cast one as a down-on-his-luck detective, we indulged our love of raccoons with a Top 5 about games that let you play as... Read more
This week, we stumbled onto PriceCharting.com – a huge database of purported videogame resale values – and thought it would be fun to invite retro specialists Steve Guntli and Woody Ciskowski (of Ultra 64/Wii Universe) to talk about which (non-sports,... Read more
A few weeks ago, we passed the 26th anniversary of the Sega Saturn’s deeply weird US launch, so Greg Moore joins us in belated celebration to talk about five of the best games that never made it stateside for Sega’s... Read more
There’s much, much more to Resident Evil Village than an internet-breaking giant vampire lady, and we cover just about all of it in our elegant, full-bodied spoilercast. EXCLUSIVE to Laser Time Patrons, the latest, nearly 100-minute episode of Apocalypse Gaiden... Read more
Well, here it is, episode 420 – but we already did games that let you smoke pot 311 episodes ago! So instead, let’s look at celebrities who’ve appeared in videogames and now have their own (legal!) cannabis brands, with help... Read more
Resident Evil Village has its hooks firmly into the whole crew this week, so let’s invite PCMag.com‘s Mike Williams back on to talk about it a whole bunch more (along with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s Wrath of the Druids DLC)! We... Read more
Resident Evil Village is out, and the rampantly fetishized Lady Dimitrescu joins the hallowed ranks of Resident Evil’s iconic, nigh-indestructible “stalker” enemies. So let’s kick off this week’s show with five of the most memorable pursuers from Resident Evils past,... Read more
We’ve just passed two important Mortal Kombat milestones: the 10th anniversary of the franchise-revitalizing Mortal Kombat 9, and the release of a new MK movie that doesn’t suck. To celebrate, Anthony Abatte joins us for a look at five of... Read more
The formerly PlayStation-exclusive MLB The Show is now on Xbox, which is… kinda weird, right? Almost as weird as finding out that developers now owned by Sony used to make games for competing platforms, which is what we’re delving into... Read more
The San Francisco Bay Area is home to two-thirds of the VGA crew (along with a big chunk of the games industry), and it’s been re-created in a handful of games over the years – so now that our episode... Read more
Thankfully, we’re long past the point where every unforgiving game gets compared to Dark Souls. What we’re talking about this week, with special guest Leif Johnson, are our favorite Souls-likes – that is, games that consciously borrow parts of Dark... Read more
The 3DS turned 10 this week, so let’s grab friend of the show Micah Seff and celebrate the revolutionary, unassailable, beloved powerhouse of a handheld… by looking back at five ways it nearly dropped the ball in its first few... Read more
There’s something about the arcade experience that’s tough to capture at home – especially for games that involve ridiculously bespoke hardware that would be impractical to set up in a living room. This week, we welcome back Dan Amrich for... Read more
This week marks one full year since the first shelter-in-place orders went into effect in the US. To mark this dubious occasion, we invited PNB‘s TL Foster on to talk about five of the best games ever to take place... Read more
They may be gray and a little saggy, but there’s a certain kind of elderly man who, like a lobster, only ever seems to grow bigger and tougher with age. This week, we invite Greg Moore to help us pay... Read more
If you haven’t commandeered a car by jumping to it from your own speeding whip, can you really be said to have commandeered it at all? This week, we celebrate five games that let us accomplish the impossibly awesome feat... Read more
Everyone loves a good revenge story, so this week we’re joined by Mike Williams of PCMag to take a look at five of the most gripping stories of single-minded, systematic payback produced by videogames. Then we’ll explore Bravely Default 2,... Read more
With Persona 5 Strikers – the Dynasty Warriors-flavored sequel to the original P5 RPG – out this week, we’re joined by special guest Emmett Watkins of VGU.TV for a look at five sequels that switched to a new genre, forever... Read more
Abrupt heel-turns are always fun, especially in fighting games where a goody-two-shoes hero gives in to the Dark Power within and becomes a corrupted, evil version of themselves (usually with cooler moves). This week, we welcome Anthony Abatte to help... Read more
Los Angeles is the setting of roughly 500% of all motion pictures, and yet relatively few games have tried to turn its sun-baked sprawl into a game world. So this week, let’s grab PNB‘s TL Foster for a look at... Read more
Train levels are a well-worn trope by this point; start at the caboose and fight your way up to the engine, all in a linear, narrow environment that allows for some variety as you move from car to car. As... Read more
With the rebooted Hitman hitting its third installment this week, we’re joined by Tony Wilson of Framework for a look at three other franchises whose reboots were successful enough to spawn sequels and become new trilogies unto themselves. Then we... Read more
Ready to feel old? 2001 was a watershed year for videogames, with powerful 3D consoles and classic games that laid the groundwork for the modern era of gaming. It was also 20 years ago, and all those games are now... Read more
We’re back on our traditional annual bullshit this week, kicking off the new year with a look forward at five games we’re especially excited for in 2021 (assuming they arrive this year). This is one of our shortest shows in... Read more
It’s the end of the worst year in recent memory, but a great year for games – so let’s take one last look back and anoint our 10 favorites! Clocking in at just under 4 hours, this year’s show features... Read more
We really wanted to go with a holiday theme for our last real show of 2020, but in the end, what’s more appropriate to Holiday 2020 than grabbing Greg Moore for a look at how videogames have portrayed the collapse... Read more
2020 has been a terrible year for most things, but a stellar year for games, including a smattering of remakes that took a fresh look at old favorites. As we lead up to our big year-end show on the best... Read more
Cyberpunk 2077 came out hours before we recorded this week’s show, so we don’t have a lot to say about it yet. Luckily, there are tons of cyberpunk videogames not named “Cyberpunk,” so we grabbed Leif Johnson for a look... Read more
This week, we pay overdue tribute to the passing of the PS4 era with help from Gamespot/LaserTime alum Tony Wilson, who’s launching a new video channel called FrameWork, and who helps us look back on five of the best PS4... Read more
With Ready Player Two published this week, we’ve decided to turn the nostalgia dial up to absurd levels by recruiting Greg Moore for a look at five videogames that, one way or another, were about nostalgia for videogames. Then it’s... Read more
We’re coming back to the table this week with clearer impressions of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X – but first, let’s take a look at five of the rare few open-world games that actually re-used their open worlds,... Read more
SPONSORED: Hosted by Taraji P. Henson, Wondery (Dr. Death, Dirty John, The Shrink Next Door) and Universal Music Group present Jacked: Rise of the New Jack Sound… DOWNLOAD The story begins with a keyboard player in the heart of Harlem:... Read more
IT’S NEW-CONSOLE WEEK! We’re super-excited for the debut of the Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5, but before we get to those, let’s grab PNB‘s TL Foster for a look at five times third-party games swept in and stole the... Read more
As November begins and we’re faced with the mystery of who our next President will be, it’s as good a time as any to lose ourselves in the fictional mysteries of our favorite detective games with Octobug developer Eric Bailey.... Read more
We’re closing out Spooptober 2020 with the grimmest, bleakest topic we could think of: horror games set in, around, and within the (sometimes literal) fallout of the Soviet Union. With history buff Jeremy King of Tweakalicious.tv on board, we’ll also... Read more
High school is a breeding ground for all sorts of lifelong fears and anxieties, so of course it’s a perfect setting for otherwordly terror. With friend of the show Micah Seff in attendance, we talk about five games that used... Read more
In what may be our greatest Spooptober episode yet, the inimitable Alex Faciane of Chilluminati Podcast (among other things) joins us for a look at five real(ish) cryptids — creatures people swear they’ve seen but whose existence remains unconfirmed —... Read more
Spooptober continues with a look at the Greek pantheon’s gloomiest god, as Leif Johnson rejoins us to sift through some of Hades’ more memorable videogame appearances. Then we shift to talking about Star Wars Squadrons, Crash 4, Super Mario Bros.... Read more
It’s the start of October, which means we’re switching to horror-focused topics and bad Dracula impressions between now and Halloween! Let’s kick it off with a look at five zombie games that – despite featuring the most cliched enemies imaginable... Read more
Nintendo’s 3DS is officially kaput, so this week we invite Ultra 64‘s Steve Guntli and Woody Ciskowski to help us celebrate nine stellar years of no-glasses 3D with a look at five of our favorite 3DS essentials. Then it’s on... Read more
With Spelunky 2 out this week, we’re rejoined by Experience Points‘ Jorge Albor for a look at five games that started life as freeware projects before moving on to commercial success. Then it’s on to PlayStation 5 news, Paradise Killer,... Read more
Everything we wanted to know about the new Xboxes – price, launch date, existence of the rumored Series S, etc. – has been revealed, but we’re a little distracted by a certain limited-edition compilation with one glaring omission. So distracted... Read more
Do you like collecting comics? Do you enjoy videogames? Do you insist that those two hobbies be about each other? Fiiine. With Marvel’s Avengers out this week, let’s grab PNB’s TL Foster for a look at five games that used... Read more
Weeks like this are enough to make anyone want to retreat into childhood nostalgia – and we’ve delivered a chance to do exactly that, as Greg Moore joins us to talk about five games that let us play as toys... Read more
With the US Postal Service currently under siege, now seemed like a good time to grab friend of the show Leif Johnson and pay tribute to some of gaming’s greatest postal workers, who tirelessly deliver letters and packages that don’t... Read more
Shark Week is here at last, so we invited animal expert Cody Laveau on board for a look at five terrifying sharks who – rather than trying to eat you, as is custom – want nothing more than to be... Read more
Stray, the cat-centric game that made a brief splash during June’s PlayStation 5 showcase (before being upstaged by Bugsnax), inspired us to hunt for other, currently existing games that offer a four-legged cat experience, and we’ll dig into five of... Read more
Carrion slurped its way onto Xbox Game Pass the other week, and its eat-everyone ethos inspired us to take a look at five other amazing games where you deal with enemies mainly by consuming them. Then it’s on to (of... Read more
The sight of crypto-fascist stormtroopers in ominous gasmasks is enough to stir contempt within any rebellious heart, and on this week’s show, we celebrate the return of special guest Dan Amrich with a look at five games that pit you... Read more
Ghost of Tsushima is out now, and its release seemed like a great excuse for us to grab friend of the show Greg Moore and count down five of our favorite samurai simulators. Then it’s on to Bloodstained: Curse of... Read more
The arrival this week of Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 got us thinking about retro-styled games that started out as companion pieces to bigger, more modern spectacles, but quickly became fan favorites and even enduring classics – so we... Read more
We’re halfway through the worst year in recent memory – but as far as videogames go, it hasn’t been half-bad. So this week, let’s take a look back and pick our five favorite games from the past six months, with... Read more
The Last of Us Part II does a lot of things well, but one thing it’s particularly good at is simulating a guitar with a touchpad. So we grabbed Jorge Albor of Experience Points to help us pay tribute with... Read more
The Last of Us Part II is out! And some of the review discourse has (not surprisingly) been about how it makes you do bad things (and also tries to make you feel bad about those things). But that’s nothing... Read more
This week’s show returns to the well from which all RPGs (and, arguably, most modern videogames) spring: Dungeons & Dragons. More specifically five of the best Dungeons & Dragons videogames, which we’ll count down alongside Cicero Holmes of Rivals of... Read more
This week’s been one of the roughest in a rough year, and we couldn’t bring ourselves to put together a normal videogame podcast as if nothing was happening. But canceling the show also felt weird, so instead, PNB‘s TL Foster... Read more
Where would RPG heroes be without the faithful merchants who keep them supplied with magic swords and healing potions? Dead in a ditch, that’s where. This week, we grab Tyler Nagata for a look at five games that flip the... Read more
This week, Vidjagame Apocalypse welcomes PNB’s TL Foster for a good, long look at 5 times pro athletes starred in videogames that were more about punching monsters than playing sports. Then it’s on to swimmer-munching shark nirvana in Maneater, excitement... Read more
This week’s news of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s return as Dutch Schaefer in Predator: Hunting Grounds has us just a little excited, so we roped in PNB’s Kayla Zumbaum for a look at five of the best games ever to let you... Read more
Hang on, this episode isn’t about Candy Crush. With Mother’s Day imminent, we decided to flip genders on the concept of “dad games” – in which a father has to protect or rescue a child – and focus on moms... Read more
We’ve now officially done as many numbered episodes of this show as there are days in a (non-leap) year, so this week, we’re looking at five games whose stories and gameplay are affected by changing seasons over (at least) an... Read more
In this age of games arriving rapidly from Japan, it’s easy to forget that localization used to take a long time – sometimes years. This week, Micah Seff of Perfect World joins us to take a look at games that... Read more
Megacorporations have been popular villains lately, what with being behind the events of three (or four, depending on your feelings toward Tom Nook) major games in as many weeks. So with help from TL Foster of PNB, let’s take a... Read more
Sometimes, the first few minutes of a game are so memorable that they overshadow everything that comes after them, standing out as the first thing you remember about the game for years afterward. This week, we grab TL Foster of... Read more
Remakes and remasters aren’t just a modern-gaming phenomenon – far from it. They’ve been part of gaming since at least the ’80s, and this week, we grab John Brandon of Square Roots to look back at five of our favorite... Read more
This week’s VGA pays tribute to the world’s embattled health-care professionals the only way we know how: By talking about five games that let you play as one, with help from Leif Johnson of MacWorld. Then it’s onward to Doom... Read more
Half the world is on lockdown right now, and the only way through this mess is to band together… by staying separate. But sometimes there’s power in isolation, and we’re here to help you through it with five games that... Read more
Between the third season of the Netflix show and the mobile release of Symphony of the Night, it’s a good time to be a Castlevania fan – so to celebrate, we grabbed friend of the show Greg Moore for a... Read more
Super Tuesday left seemingly everyone angry about politics, so let’s dedicate this week’s show to the only politicians everyone can agree on: the absolute shithouse ones that pop up as major villains in videogames. With Alex Faciane – of Super... Read more
This week’s release of One-Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows was precisely the shoddy excuse we needed to make like SNL’s “J-Pop America Fun Time Now!” and geek out over anime, as we discuss 5 games you might not have... Read more
Platinum Games is a studio known for extreme action and distinctive gameplay, so with Bayonetta and Vanquish out again as 10th Anniversary editions, let’s take a look at some of the most unique gameplay hooks they’ve come up with, with... Read more
Today is Valentine’s Day, so let’s take a look at some of gaming’s most iconic couples, with help from Larry Charles of Striking Distance Studios. We then take a close look at Dreams, Geoff Keighley’s departure from E3, and your... Read more
In honor of Black History Month, TL Foster of PNB podcast joins us this week for a celebration of five of our favorite Black videogame heroes, all of whom took the spotlight in their own games and helped redefine what... Read more
It’s finally time to reveal our picks for the greatest games of the past 10 years! And because we chose the list purely based on our personal preferences, dismissing silly ideas like “importance” or “cultural impact,” we invited USGamer Editor... Read more
Our march through the greatest games of the past 10 years continues this week, as Greg Moore rejoins us to run through five of Chris’ personal picks ahead of next week’s top 10. Then it’s on to a look at... Read more
Our ongoing series on the greatest games of the 2010s continues! After covering five of Mikel’s picks last week, this week’s show focuses on five of Matt’s nominees, with Jorge Albor of Experience Points along for the ride. Then it’s... Read more
This isn’t just our first show of the new year – it’s our first show of a new decade! With that in mind, let’s jump on the 2010s nostalgiawagon and count down our top 25 games of the previous decade,... Read more
It’s time for our seventh annual end-of-year show, in which we invite a rotating panel of guests to help us count down our Top 10 games of the year! This year’s show clocks in at just under 4 hours(!), and... Read more
Who says 2D’s dead? The year-end cavalcade continues as we take a look at five of our favorite retro-styled games to arrive this year, with help from Steve Guntli and Woody Ciskowski of Ultra 64! Then it’s on to Wattam,... Read more
2019 has been a great year for new and original games, and it’s introduced a ton of fresh characters to the gaming canon. This week, Leif Johnson of MacWorld.com joins us to talk about five (OK, six [OK, seven]) new... Read more
PlayStation turned 25 this week! To celebrate, we invited PNB Podcast‘s TL Foster and Kayla Zumbaum to join us for a dive into the past and a look at five much-loved PSOne exclusives that never made the jump to later... Read more
Shenmue 3 is just the latest example of crowdfunding as a way to bring back series and genres long thought dead – or to create new ones. This week, Steve Guntli and Woody Ciskowski of Ultra 64 join us to... Read more
Prequels can be tricky. Fans already know what happens next, so if you wanted to tell the story of doomed heroes on an ill-fated mission, they might be able to guess how it ends before they even start playing. TL... Read more
This week, Jorge Albor of Experience Points Podcast returns as we take a look at five examples of a strange modern gaming trend: semi-interactive sequences that make you stagger, stumble, or crawl helplessly while dramatic things happen around you. We... Read more
Does Death Stranding really represent the arrival of a whole new game genre? To find out, we invited USGamer’s Kat Bailey to tell us about the “strand” genre and to look back at five other games that defied any conventional... Read more
This week straddles the line between October and November, between Halloween and harvest season – and so does our show, with a look at five games that combine elements of farming and horror. Then it’s onward to Outer Worlds and... Read more
Our final show before Halloween sends off October by tackling no less an evil than Satan himself, as we look at five of the best games that let you go toe-to-toe with the Devil. Things then get relaxing as we... Read more
Zombie hordes are a dime a dozen; chances to actually join them, less so. This week, GameXplain/IGN alum Micah Seff rejoins us to talk about games where a hero’s demise turns them into flesh-hungry cannibals (at which point other heroes... Read more
Once-beloved children’s entertainers become blazing nightmare fuel in videogames, where white makeup and red noses are all but synonymous with sadism and murder. While this week’s Laser Time explores evil clowns in wider pop-culture, we’re drilling down to find five... Read more
It’s our first show of October, and tradition dictates spooky content. So join us in welcoming Podouken cohost Adam, who’ll help us navigate through some of the most memorably fun horror-themed games ever to hit arcades. Then it’s on to... Read more
Whether you think of them as “full-motion video,” “FMV,” or “a regrettable trend in game design,” cheesy interactive movies once seemed poised to take over the game industry – and with the help of MacWorld’s Leif Johnson, we brave stilted... Read more
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening makes its adorable comeback this week, so with the help of not one, but two towering guests – Chris Baker and Brett Elston – we dig into five of the best Zelda games that... Read more
The Dreamcast, Sega’s beloved but short-lived final console, just turned 20 in North America this week! To celebrate, Heidi Kemps of gaming.moe joins us for a look at five games that made the best use of the VMU, Dreamcast’s memory... Read more
Everyone loves hippies! Right? Or at least enough to put a few of them in videogames. This week, PNB Podcast’s TL Foster returns for a look at some of the ways games have depicted counterculture dropouts, after which we’ll dig... Read more
Being a Disney animator used to mean you were among the world’s best creators of hand-drawn, 2D animation – an art form that’s lately fallen out of favor in Hollywood. Luckily, there have been a few times that Disney alums... Read more
Localization can be a touchy subject these days, but there was a time when it often meant turning a game into something completely different for foreign audiences. This week, we grab Greg Moore to talk about five classic games that... Read more
This week, we grab Diana Goodman for a high-speed detour to explore five ’70s and ’80s movies that had a profound influence on the early years of gaming, helping shape the then-new medium’s aesthetics and defining its direction for decades... Read more
Cheat codes may largely be a thing of the past, but this week, we’ll look at five cheat codes that became important and iconic enough to earn a place in gaming history – and even to influence its course. Things... Read more
We’re at the tail end of another Shark Week, so let’s capitalize on it by grabbing animal expert Cody Laveau, and taking a look at five games that use sharks to keep you from testing their waters. Then we’ll bite... Read more
When Mikel’s away, the kids will play. Speaking of kids… This week, Matty and Chris are joined by TL Foster to talk all about games that let you play as the kids of some of your favorite videogame heroes. Then... Read more
Some game series run out of ideas and/or steam by their third installment; others hit their stride and shine like never before. With help from GameXplain/IGN alum Micah Seff, we’ll explore that latter group, after which we’ll dig into Dragon... Read more
Hey kids, remember the ’80s? These games sure as hell do, and they want you to know it. With help from MacWorld’s Leif Johnson, we dedicate this week to a look at five modern games that recaptured the neon spirit... Read more
As we head into another 4th of July weekend, we’re joined by veteran writer/editor/videogame person Carolyn Petit (formerly of GameSpot and Feminist Frequency) for a look at five of the greatest games that let you lead your own revolution. Then... Read more
The year’s half-over, and that means that – with help from USGamer Editor in Chief Kat Bailey – it’s time to look back at the past six months and lift up five games as our must-play picks for the first... Read more
We’re back with a full episode full of reactions to E3 news – but first, strap in for a supersubjective, Father’s Day-inspired rundown of some of gaming’s greatest DILFs, with special guest Alaina Yee. Then it’s on to Bloodstained: Ritual... Read more
E3 made a big splash this week, but we were too busy actually being there to record a show about it. We’ll be back with E3 impressions next week; in the meantime, please accept this short, Top 5-only show we... Read more
When a Japanese developer wants to dig up a long-abandoned franchise and market it to westerners, one common tactic is to outsource it to a western developer. Sometimes, especially in the 2000s, this came with a mandate to make the... Read more
Games crib from each other all the time, but sometimes, a new gameplay idea can be a huge hit with fans and still be widely ignored by the industry. With help from John Brandon of Square Roots Podcast, we’ll dig... Read more
Games tend to live in their own conveniently isolated universes, where the rules are different and only one hero’s journey can unfold at a time – but sometimes hidden webs of connective tissue link seemingly separate franchises. With help from... Read more
When wrestlers become actors, the results tend to be either wonderful or laughable – and wrestlers who act in video games are no exception. This week, Larry Niece of Pody Slam! joins us for a look at five standout performances... Read more
Underwater levels have a long history of being terrible, but underwater games? Those are something special. This week, we welcome special guest Cicero Holmes of Spawn On Me and Discovery Debrief as we dive into five of our favorite undersea... Read more
Last weekend, nerd culture was rocked by two huge battles on the big screen and the small one (we’re talking about Avengers: Endgame and Game of Thrones, naturally), so with help from PNB Podcast’s TL Foster, let’s dive into five... Read more
Avengers: Endgame is in theaters this week! What does that have to do with videogames? Plenty, because even if there’s no official tie-in game, Marvel’s Thanos/Infinity Stone arcs have been fueling games since the ’90s. With help from two very... Read more
We don’t usually let real-world tragedy make it into VGA, but the destruction at Notre Dame hit hard for us – and with medieval scholar (and Macworld editor) Leif Johnson joining us this week, we took the opportunity to honor... Read more
Game of Thrones is back this weekend, and if you don’t watch it, too bad! This week starts off with the Top 5 Game of Thrones games, with help from Thirty Twenty Ten’s Diana Goodman, so expect a healthy amount... Read more
Another April Fool’s Day is behind us, and this year brought a few fun, playable surprises our way, either showing up in familiar games or rolling out as entirely new ones. With PC Gamer’s Tyler Wilde in attendance, let’s take... Read more
With Mortal Kombat 11 revealing the return of Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa as (old) Shang Tsung, Jorge Albor of Experience Points rejoins us this week to talk about videogame heroes who’ve aged dramatically over the years, going from young rookies to old... Read more
With GDC in full swing this week, the core VGA cast assembles for a look at games that let you make their worlds visibly worse, twisting the landscape through your own misdeeds, apathy, or sheer force of personality. We then... Read more
With The Division 2 taking players to Washington, D.C., this week, we roped in Gamesradar+’s own Lucas Sullivan for a look at five other games that challenge you to literally fight for control of the White House. Then we switch... Read more
Reboots happen pretty frequently in entertainment; what’s much rarer is the “reboot” that later gets pushed aside so the original story can continue. This week, we’ll look at five of the best (and one of the worst), with help from... Read more
Competing game publishers don’t often let their characters out to play with each other, but when they do, the results are usually fun. This week, we celebrate five surprising crossover cameos in third-party games, with help from friend of the... Read more
When a game’s “bad” ending becomes the canonical one, interesting possibilities arise as its world and heroes continue to unravel. MacWorld’s Leif Johnson joins us this week to look at five sequels shaped by downer endings, after which we’ll plunge... Read more
Another Valentine’s Day has come and gone, so let’s bury it in style with a look at five of the best romances from BioWare games, as chosen by guest star Kayla Zumbaum of PNB Podcast. Things then take an apocalyptic... Read more
Hope everyone had a happy Lunar New Year! To celebrate, we roped in friend of the show Heidi Kemps to help us dig into five games based on one of our favorite works of Chinese fiction, Journey to the West... Read more
This week, we’ll look at five games that gave us a single-serving protagonist, who stuck around just long enough to show us the ropes before stepping aside to make way for the real hero. Then, friend of the show TL... Read more
Wow! We somehow made it to 300 episodes! In keeping with tradition, we do away with our usual format this week and grab friends of the show Brett Elston and Dan Amrich for a heated roundtable discussion to pick the... Read more
When long-running franchises mix it up by swapping in a different protagonist every game, it can be a rare thrill to watch your hero cross paths with their fondly remembered predecessors, for better or worse. We take a look at... Read more
With Onimusha and No More Heroes poised for a long-overdue imminent return next week, we spend this week’s show looking back on once-massive game franchises that have been silent for years, with help from returning guest and GameXplain/IGN alum Micah... Read more
The first week of January is always a slow one, making it an ideal time to reflect on some of the games we’re most excited to play in the next 12 months, with help from MacWorld’s Leif Johnson. For good... Read more
Welcome to our sixth annual end-of-year roundup, when we gather together a bunch of games-industry guests and count down our favorite games of the year. This year’s show is one of our biggest yet, weighting in at a hefty 3.5... Read more
Next week, we’ll count down our picks for the top games of 2018 – but our rules exclude remakes and remasters, and it’s been an amazing year for those. So with help from USGamer’s Nadia Oxford, we’re dedicating this week... Read more
With the holidays looming large and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tying up everyone’s Switches, GameXplain/IGN alum Micah Seff helps us celebrate by talking about five iconic killer toys that come to life and try to murder people. (It makes sense... Read more
Headphones are recommended for this week’s show, in which VGMpire’s own Brett Elston rejoins us to help pay tribute to mind-blowing music from unspectacular games. After that, we move on to Just Cause 4, Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom,... Read more
The holiday season is officially upon us, which means that for one reason or another, a lot of you are statistically likely to get loaded over the next few weeks. If you’d rather watch a game character get sloshed on... Read more
Happy Black Friday! We understand a lot of you might be spending time with family over the long weekend – and sometimes, that time can start to feel like a pressure cooker. Why not blow off some steam by listening... Read more
This week saw the passing of a true legend: the comics-creating, cameo-crushing alliteration aficionado known as Stan Lee. Marvel superfan Chris Baker rejoins us to celebrate Stan’s legacy with a look at his greatest videogame cameos, after which we’ll get... Read more
Have election-week nerves left you wishing you could simply rule with the absolute power of a despotic tyrant? Well, tough, but we’ve got Tim Turi on and we’re talking about our five favorite playable kings, so that’s something. We also... Read more
If you’ve played it, you know Red Dead Redemption 2 gets off to a dramatically slow start – but in that, it’s hardly alone. This week, Scott Butterworth rejoins us to look at five other games that made players wait... Read more
Red Dead Redemption 2 is out today, and if you’re looking at this instead of playing it, it’s probably safe to consider yourself our #1 fan. You’re also about to hear us talk about five classic, horror-tinged games set in... Read more
Pair an unstoppable hunter with one of the most threatening power tools ever devised, and you’ve got a recipe for sheer terror. This week, Jorge Albor of EXP Podcast joins us to talk about hulking, chainsaw-wielding badasses who chased us... Read more
As any toddler can tell you, nothing is more terrifying than a skeleton – except, of course, if they’re on your side. And with MediEvil turning 20(!) this week, Josh Shoup (of wrestling-history podcast Pody Slam, among others) joins to... Read more
Telltale Games may be gone, but it lives on through its legacy of redefining how games told stories, and through our memories of those stories themselves. This week, special guest and former Telltale employee Scott Butterworth joins us to celebrate... Read more
Not everyone can swing a lightsaber or use the Force, and this week, the legendary Chris Baker joins us to talk about five Star Wars games whose heroes got by with little more than blasters and sheer grit. Then it’s... Read more
This month saw the passing of Burt Reynolds, a man who was no stranger to popping up in video games – and in his honor, we decided to spend this week’s Top 5 looking at other celebrities who briefly played... Read more
Spider-Man’s still on our minds this week, and its beautiful re-creation of Manhattan made us nostalgic about other open-world games that re-created New York City’s central island. Comics expert Chris Clow of Comics on Consoles joins as we talk about... Read more
Spider-Man is out on PS4 at last, so this week we’re joined by USgamer‘s Mike Williams, here to talk about his 4.5/5 review. We keep the theme going with a Top 5 about superhero games that weren’t based on comics,... Read more
To mark the end of August and any lingering summer vacations, this week’s show takes a look at five games set largely in schools (just in case you thought games were any escape). What’s more, we’re expanding our scope this... Read more
Tons of games load you down with an arsenal’s worth of guns and gadgets, but sometimes, it’s the one essential tool or weapon you get right from the start that turns out to be the most fun and effective thing... Read more
Summer isn’t over quite yet, so the VGA boys are packing up their board shorts and Hawaiian shirts and taking a vacation to some of our favorite digital destinations — of the tropical variety, that is. This week, Mikel, Matt,... Read more
Meeting a shark in a game isn’t all that uncommon – but when they’re full-on bosses, you’re probably in for something terrifying. This week, animal expert and LaserTime community superstar Cody “CajunCrippler” Laveau joins us to talk about five of... Read more
When some new innovation helps turn a game into a big hit, it tends to spread across the industry like wildfire. Sometimes, these trends stick around to form part of the familiar patchwork of modern vidjagames. We’re not talking about... Read more
This week’s show is short by our standards, but don’t worry – every entry in our Top 5 is a treasure. Specifically, each one is a boss themed around treasure, and Trav “TurboBison” Foster joins Mikel, Matt, and Chris to... Read more
In the past weeks, we’ve seen a few once-minor characters getting their own star turns, from Captain Toad to Far Cry 5’s Nick Rye. Of course, side characters getting their own games is nothing new, and with help from Heidi... Read more
This week, Dan Amrich returns to the show to talk us through something dear to his arcade historian’s heart: a deep dive into pinball games based on popular video games (some of which actually play something like their digital counterparts),... Read more
The recent release of Runner3 reminded us of a strange truth: Charles Martinet, the voice of Mario, has had a long and successful career outside of voicing Nintendo’s favorite plumber. And with help from Alaina Yee, we’ll touch on some... Read more
It’s the end of June, which means it’s time to sit down and take a hard look at the games that came out over the past six months, and pick our five favorites from the madding crowd. Jorge Albor of... Read more
Since nobody else is doing them, and we know how starved you all must be for E3 2018 content, it’s a good thing we’re here with our annual Best of E3 show. We’re doing things a little differently this year.... Read more
By the time you listen this episode, E3 2018 will have come and gone, and we’ll all know a heck of a lot more about this year’s upcoming game releases. That includes one of the biggest games of the year:... Read more
E3 2018 is upon us, and even though the show technically doesn’t start until next week, the hype train has already left the station with a payload full of leaks and new game announcements. But not every game announced at... Read more
What do the new God of War and the YouTube Red series Cobra Kai have in common, other than the fact that they both feature leads with anger management issues? They’re both new entries in franchises we thought we’d moved... Read more
Things get technical in this week’s episode of Vidjagame Apocalypse as Chris and Matty Allen are joined by USGamer.net Editor in Chief Kat Bailey to discuss the top 5 androids in videogames. Inspired by the release of David Cage and... Read more
In this week’s legendary episode of Vidjagame Apocalypse we make like mythbusters and explore some of gaming’s more infamous urban legends, myths, and fan theories. Want to know if all of those vidjagame rumors and crazy stories you used to... Read more
Surprise! We just couldn’t stay away, and while Mikel continues to enjoy his (well-deserved) sabbatical, Chris, Matty Allen, and special guest Trav “TurboBison” Foster are here with a bonus edition of Vidjagame Apocalypse. Prior to his break, Mikel suggested a... Read more
This is it, folks – VGA is going on hiatus, and we’ve cooked up a hell of an episode to tide you over until we come back. In addition to Chris and Mikel, we’ve assembled Brett Elston, Dan Amrich, Anne... Read more
God of War is out this week, taking jaded Greek hipster Kratos on a spree of cultural appropriation through Scandinavia (or something like that). To celebrate the series’ by-all-accounts amazing rebirth, Matthew Allen and Alaina Yee help us dedicate this... Read more
This week, we’re breaking from format even further by trading the Top 5 for a quiz to see who can name gaming’s most famous farty butts. Feel free to play along with special guests Matthew Allen and Nathan Ortega (but... Read more
Who doesn’t like to hear a villain sing about themselves and their evil plans? It’s a time-honored tradition, dating back to some really old thing or other, but it’s a more recent phenomenon in video games. So this week, special... Read more
Ready Player One is in theaters this week, and whatever you think of it, the core idea of being rewarded with actual riches for doing something in a game is a powerful one. So powerful, in fact, that it’s been... Read more
Big news this week – VGA is going on hiatus at the end of April. But we’ve got plenty of shows still to go, starting with this week’s, in which Heidi Kemps and Matthew Allen help us look at five... Read more
Last week’s revival of video games as a political whipping boy brought some bad old memories rushing back – enough, in fact, that we decided to drag special guests Nick Suttner and Matthew Allen into an unexpectedly heavy discussion about... Read more
Plenty of games let you play as multiple heroes, but how many have you switching back and forth between heroes that seriously have it in for each other, pushing you to work against yourself every time your perspective shifts? A... Read more
This week’s big release is Moss, a VR game about a tiny mouse on a quest – so with help from Macworld editor Leif Johnson, let’s take a look at five classic games in which you’re a tiny creature trying... Read more
The Lunar New Year has declared this the Year of the Dog, so let’s celebrate with a Top 5 about our favorite playable dog protagonists (dogtagonists?), with Matthew Allen! We then slip through a wormhole and wind up in a... Read more
VGA’s five-year anniversary was last week, so Henry Gilbert joins us for a belated Top 5 about some of the greatest fifth entries in game franchises ever. We also chat about Dynasty Warriors 9 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Kingdom Hearts... Read more
VGA passes its five-year anniversary with a cough-filled, Shadow of the Colossus-themed episode, in which Matthew Allen joins us to talk about five games that clearly took inspiration from Sony’s classic (and now remade) giant-killer. We then move on to... Read more
Happy Groundhog Day, everybody! This week, Nathan Ortega and Aziz Twaijri join us to talk about heroes stuck in recurring time loops, struggling to change events yet seemingly helpless to escape their fates. We also shift our format around slightly... Read more
Of course we’re gonna yell about Labo, but we’ve also played Dragonball Fighters Z, SOS, the new OK KO game, and special guest Bob Mackey has played over sixty hours of Monster Hunter Worlds! DOWNLOAD RSS | iTunes | Google Play | Stitcher | Facebook | Twitter This show is... Read more
Street Fighter V Arcade Edition is out this week, so our old pal Brett “Brelston” Elston returns to help us talk about its new modes, as well as five fighting games that had some really bizarre modes built in. We... Read more
With Awesome Games Done Quick blasting through mesmerizing speedruns for charity this week, Matthew Allen and Bob Mackey join us to take a look at five games that you can play and beat (or “beat”) in 15 minutes or less... Read more
We’re back and ready to take on a new year, as industry veteran and community member Matthew Allen joins us to look ahead and count down five of the games we’re looking forward to the most in 2018. Then it’s... Read more
It’s time at last for our fifth annual countdown of our favorite games of the year, and this one’s a monster. Clocking in at nearly 3 1/2 hours, this episode’s rotating cast of guest hosts includes Tim Turi, Brett Elston,... Read more
In our second-to-last show of 2017, we’re joined by the legendary Tim Turi for a last-ditch attempt to do something holiday-themed: a look at five of the angriest, most threatening takes on Santa to ever appear in video games. Then... Read more
As 2017 and its new releases begin to wind down, Henry Gilbert rejoins us to start this week’s show with a topic that we somehow didn’t think to do until a listener suggested it: video games that your character can... Read more
Mikel isn’t here this week, and it’s probably because he’s playing Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp on iOS. To commemorate that, we recount the five most important Nintendo franchises that came to other platforms with special guests Matthew Jay and Wes... Read more
Happy Black Friday, everybody! Since we just moved past Thanksgiving, we’re focusing this week on the last thing you probably want to think about right now: more food, this time in the form of our favorite food-themed levels. Joining us... Read more
The Wii U turns 5 this week, about a year after Nintendo first moved to pull the plug on its short-lived system. Oh, but what a short life it was! To celebrate it, we’re joined once again by Bob Mackey... Read more
With Sonic Forces fulfilling countless [Your Name] the Hedgehog fantasies with its character creator this week, erstwhile host Henry Gilbert helps us focus our Top 5 on five other games that let you squeeze a version of yourself into an... Read more
Microsoft ended production of Kinect last week, dealing a final blow to the ill-fated camera peripheral, so we’re dedicating today’s Top 5 to a look back at five of its best games, with help from PCWorld Reviews Editor Alaina Yee.... Read more
This is the biggest release week of the year – big enough, in fact, to hold two separate games that feature Egyptian mummies as plot points. So with help from Matthew Jay, we round out our month of macabre Top... Read more
This week, we switch gears from more generalized spooky topics to a spooky series, as Henry Gilbert rejoins to help us rank our five favorite installments of the legendary Resident Evil franchise. We’ll then suit up for South Park: The... Read more
Happy Friday the 13th! Our monthlong Halloween theme continues this week, as Matthew Jay joins us for an exploration of horror games based on horror movies, some of which might actually surprise you. We also dig into Middle-earth: Shadow of... Read more
It’s the first week of October, which means it’s time to gather around the campfire and start in on an increasingly spooky month of Top 5s. We’ll start off easy, as Heidi Kemps joins us to talk about the spectral... Read more
The SNES Classic is here at last! Will you be able to find one? Only one thing is certain at this point: lots of wishful thinking from fans who aren’t getting exactly what they wanted. We’re no exception, so this... Read more
The first Metroid game in seven years hit last Friday with Samus Returns, so let’s celebrate by taking a look back at our top 5 Metroid games, with help from Brett Elston and Nathan Ortega (who’s also here to plug... Read more
This week’s guest is an especially special one: Walt Williams, co-writer of Star Wars Battlefront II, lead writer of Spec Ops: The Line, and author of games-industry memoir Significant Zero (out Sept. 19!). Inspired by Walt’s stories of youthful thievery,... Read more
You may have already heard this segment on VGA 229, but now you can SEE it! To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Super Mario Kart, a few of the Laser Boys sat down to count down the top 5 games in... Read more
Thanks to absent pun aficionado Dave Rudden, we’re dedicating Episode 230 (tooth hurty, hurr hurr) to gaming’s often-overlooked and frequently vicious dentists, with help from Bob Mackey and Matthew Jay. Then it’s time to pivot and chat about Destiny 2,... Read more
Between this week’s release of Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle and the 25th anniversary of Super Mario Kart, this was a very Mario week – so to celebrate the latter, let’s rank our five favorite Mario Karts, with help from... Read more
Remember earlier this week, when it seemed like the whole world was consumed with eclipse mania? That was enough to inspire this week’s topic, in which VGA vet Henry Gilbert and first-timer Matthew Jay join us to discuss five eclipses... Read more
With Sonic Mania restoring Sega’s mascot to critical success this week, we invite Heidi Kemps (who reviewed Mania for IGN) to join us for a look at our five favorite Sonic spinoff games. Then it’s on to (what else?) Sonic... Read more
Nathan “@kenjisalk” Ortega joins us this week for a dive into five cute and/or silly series that suddenly veered into shooty-shooty-brood-brood-murder territory, for better or worse. Then stay tuned for chat about Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, Lawbreakers, the return of the... Read more
This week, we delve into five games that made time travel and manipulation central parts of their gameplay – and with co-host Chris Antista out, we’ve got double guests with Henry “hEnereyG” Gilbert and Vincent Ingenito to help us sort... Read more
With Miitopia and a new 2DS coming this week, this week’s Top 5 is devoted to Nintendo’s Miis (which have been around for nearly 11 years now) and to the games that let you actually play as them. Then it’s... Read more
Metal Gear turned 30 last week, so we’re devoting the first half of this week’s show to ranking our favorite Metal Gear Solid games, with special help from Henry “hEnereyG” Gilbert. With that out of the way, we move on... Read more
With War for the Planet of the Apes hitting theaters this week, it seemed like as good a time as any to rope in Heidi Kemps of gaming.moe and launch our own exploration of the simian perspective with five games... Read more
Plenty of games like to litter their worlds with hidden items and secrets for you to ferret out, but how many of those actually come with their own self-contained storylines? Quite a few, it turns out – and with the... Read more
It’s the last day of June, so let’s look back on a frankly stellar six months of game releases and pick five of our favorites. (Remember that these are just our opinions, which of course means they now have to... Read more
It’s not unusual for comedians to star in games, frequently as mascots who never shut up, but there was a time when games could sell entirely on the strength of a comedian’s personal star power. Heidi Kemps of gaming.moe joins... Read more
E3 2017 is in the books, and the usual duo of Chris and Dave are joined by Talking Simpsons on Patreon’s Henry Gilbert and Bob Mackey as each dude delivers their top five games of E3! Question of the Week... Read more
We’re on the eve of yet another E3, so now seems like a good time to get Hank “Henry” Gilbert back in the studio to help us talk about some of the most memorable celebrities to have graced the show... Read more
Creepy, quasi-religious cults seem to be all the rage in games this year, with heavy hitters like Horizon: Zero Dawn, Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and now Far Cry 5 using them as major plot points – so this week,... Read more
This week, we finally give recurring guest Bob Mackey a topic fit for his Retronauts chops: ancient arcade games that were “ported” to consoles, but became completely different games in the process. Then it’s time to go aggressively modern with... Read more
Injustice 2 hit this week with more power than a locomotive – and with Sub-Zero as a DLC cast member. So to celebrate, we’ve invited Heidi Kemps of gaming.moe to help us count down our picks for the five best... Read more
We’ve got a bona fide indie developer in our midst this week, as Theresa Duringer of Temple Gates Games joins us to talk about her new mobile adaptation of strategy board game Race for the Galaxy. She also helps us... Read more
With Austin Powers recently turning 20, we undertake a fan suggestion this week and look at five awful, awful games based on Mike Myers movies… with the help of our old pal Dan Amrich, who won the internet this week... Read more
This week sees the release of not one, but two games that mash up popular franchises to create strange and wonderful new hybrids of complementary gameplay – so Henry Gilbert joins the crew to count down a list of five... Read more
This week brings a storm of retro-styled games and revamped re-releases, but before we get to that, Michael Grimm joins us for a look at five games that let you choose paths of (relative) nonviolence, incapacitating and outwitting your enemies... Read more
It’s always fun when someone appears on VGA for the first time, and this week, longtime community member and Anime Streaming Showcase creator Curtis “zabu_san” Stone joins us for a very serious discussion of mascots who habitually carry their partners... Read more
Persona 5 is here at last, and given that the series has always relied heavily on concepts and symbolism from Jungian psychology (among other things), we thought it’d be fun to dig into five games that deliberately used Carl Jung’s... Read more
With at least two of last year’s biggest games getting big-time DLC this week, it seemed like as good a time as any to take a look – with the help of Telltale’s Nathan Ortega – at some of our... Read more
It’s Mass Effect week, so we honor its legacy by starting off with a list of some of the biggest, most important trilogies in gaming – ones that told overarching, three-part stories that stuck in our minds for years afterward.... Read more
Blaster Master Zero’s recent arrival on Switch revived a classic tale of a boy and his frog, so this week we let nostalgia be our guide and put together a list of five of gaming’s greatest green amphibians. We then... Read more
Following the surprise of 2010’s Nier getting a sequel with this week’s release of NieR: Automata, Heidi Kemps rejoins us to talk about five games that were largely ignored at release, only to find an audience years later and come... Read more
The Switch is finally a thing you can conceivably buy in a store, and erstwhile host Henry Gilbert returns this week to tell us about his experience playing Nintendo’s new console for Fandom.com – but first, we start off with... Read more
The release of Halo Wars 2 this week set us a-ponderin’ about other huge franchises that have wandered outside their comfortable genres, usually in strange and beautiful ways — so we begin this week by focusing on five of the... Read more
This episode was recorded in the aftermath of another Valentine’s Day, which we mark the only way we know how: by being miserable bastards and getting spoilery about gaming’s most tragically disastrous romances. With that out of the way, we... Read more
We’ve finally made it to 200 episodes of Vidjagame Apocalypse! Celebrate with us as we throw out our usual format and instead try to debate, cajole, and vote our way to a highly subjective list of the 20 best games... Read more
The release of the throwback-y Double Dragon IV this week pushes us to look back at games that also looked back, despite being modern and not really having an excuse. With TechRadar’s Nick Pino in attendance, we dive into five... Read more
This is the first really big week of 2017 for new releases, with Resident Evil VII and other big AAA games hitting like a proverbial chainsaw to the POV – but before we get to those, Yakuza 0 inspires us... Read more
This week is full of Nintendo Switch news, as Fandom’s Bob Mackey joins us to share his hands-on impression of Nintendo’s newest console and its games – but first, one of this week’s new (re-)releases inspires a Top 5 about... Read more
We’re back in full for a new year, as Fandom’s Henry Gilbert joins us to pray feverishly that 2017 is not a complete slobbering shit-show look ahead to the games slated to come out in 2017 that we’re most excited... Read more
Mikel is out sick recovering from a case of the 2016s, so Chris, Brett, and Dave cook up a quick VGA where they chat up some game deals, discuss their holiday gaming accomplishments, muse about Mass Effect Andromeda’s release date,... Read more
2016 was a big year for Vidjagame Apocalypse, the show about friends who get drunk and make exhaustively researched audio listicles about video games. Thousands of new listeners joined our growing weekly audience, and five shows stood out as their... Read more
2016 has been a shit year. We won’t miss it. But it’s nevertheless given us some amazing games, some of which we’ve been waiting on for years. After a couple of rounds of intense voting, we’ve come up with our... Read more
It’s almost Christmas, so this week, Telltale Games Community Manager Nathan Ortega and Michael Grimm join us to talk about… games where you play as a dad and protect a kid? Really? OK, fine. We then move on to talking... Read more
Dead Rising 4 inspires yet another episode theme, as special guests Henry Gilbert and Wes Green joins us to focus on five playable journalists who keep little more than a camera lens between themselves and danger. Then it’s on to... Read more
It’s our first show of December, which means the holidays are nearly upon us. More to the point, Dead Rising 4’s Christmasy zombie uprising gives us the perfect excuse to – along with Fandom editor Bob Mackey – look at... Read more
Final Fantasy XV is out after a 10-year wait, and we’re celebrating the only way we know how: by looking back at our five favorite games from the series’ 29-year run. Once we’ve finished enraging fans with our wrong opinions,... Read more
It’s Black Friday here in the US, which means that at least some of you are probably already enduring a retail mosh pit to get a few bucks off a new TV. With that heady whiff of capitalism in the... Read more
The Wii turns 10 in North America this week, pushing us to revisit a strange era of dominance built entirely on first-party games – or was it? In spite of its reputation, the Wii had a whole mess of fantastic... Read more
Mikel’s gone. Dave’s gone. This week was not good. Who wants to talk about some goddamn vidjagames????!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh, and the PlayStation 3 is old enough to stop crying like a little baby, and there’s a smaller NES, let’s blarbbity-bluh… Question... Read more
We’re just days away from the 2016 election as of this posting, and “tensions are high” doesn’t seem as appropriate an assessment of the general mood as “chaos reigns.” Still, we try to keep it celebratory, as Henry Gilbert rejoins... Read more
Happy Halloweek, everybody! We’re… actually cutting our Halloween theme short a week early, because we only get one Episode 187, and we’d never forgive ourselves if we didn’t seize the opportunity to reference an ancient Dre/Snoop song by focusing on... Read more
As our month of spookiness continues, Heidi Kemps joins us to tackle one of our most bizarre subjects yet: SHMUPs (or shoot-’em-ups, or arcade-style shooting games) that ventured beyond familiar sci-fi trappings to confront something much darker than aliens and... Read more
Our monthlong spooky theme continues with some of the most understated scares games have given us over the years: mysterious, often unexplained whispers. Sometimes they’re part of the ambient sound, other times they seem to target us directly – but... Read more
It’s the first week of October, which means we’re kicking off a month of supernatural- and horror-themed Top 5s, beginning with a look at immortal, superpowered bloodsuckers who starred in their own games. We then talk about the early releases... Read more
The Nintendo 64’s North American debut happened 20 years ago this week. Because any list of its best games would be dominated by Nintendo titles (and would be utterly predictable), let’s take a slightly less well-trod road and count down... Read more
With the legendary Okami turning 10 in North America this week, Michael Grimm joins us for a look at five cel-shaded games that – partly because of their graphics, and partly because of their forward-thinking design – still hold up... Read more
This is a big week for current-gen remasters of last-gen games, with Bioshock and Dead Rising re-releasing on PS4 and Xbox One, so let’s start with a look at five of the best, most feature-rich remasters to hit current-gen consoles.... Read more
In honor of this week’s episode number, our erstwhile co-host Henry Gilbert (now of Fandom) rejoins the show to talk about games that did a 180 in the minds of the gaming public – that is, games that went from... Read more
After all the recent furor over Metal Gear Survive and Metroid Prime Federation Force, we for some reason decided it’d be a good idea to delve into five other games that turned traditionally single-player series into four-player co-op-fests, sometimes with... Read more
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System celebrated its 25th anniversary this week, so Heidi Kemps of gaming.moe joins the regulars this week to talk about key moments that created huge shockwaves not just for the SNES and Nintendo, but for the... Read more
This week, we enlist Retronauts host Bob Mackey to help us navigate an ancient landscape of games that were based on movies, TV shows, and cartoon characters… until they came to the US, at which point that was all stripped... Read more
We’ve got spaceflight on the brain this week with the release of No Man’s Sky, so before we start in on the game everyone’s talking about, Brett Elston joins us to look back at five of the most iconic spaceships... Read more
Who wouldn’t want to experience dangerous situations as a soft, helpless infant? Inspired by their recent playthrough of Baby’s Day Out, the VGA crew invite Michael Grimm to join this week for a look at games that let you play... Read more
Erstwhile host Henry Gilbert rejoins the show this week, just in time to help us talk about multi-platform games that. for a variety of reasons, were completely different experiences on old-gen consoles. With that out of the way, we move... Read more
Heidi Kemps of gaming.moe joins us fresh off last week’s EVO championships – and with fighting games on everyone’s minds, we take a look at some of the weirdest guest characters ever to grace games about people hitting each other... Read more
Friend of the show Bob Mackey (of Retronauts and USGamer) joins us this week to count down five games that took clear inspiration from an established series, but recaptured what made the originals great instead of being pale imitations. Then... Read more
Michael Grimm returns to the show this week to help us talk about five games that flashed back to their heroes’ childhoods, letting us experience their most important formative memories firsthand. Then it’s on to thoughts on Inside, Furi, and... Read more
We’re at the midpoint of 2016, so it’s time to look back at the last six months and assemble a non-definitive, highly subjective list of our favorite games of the year so far. If you haven’t rage-quit by the end... Read more
A show number with “69” in it only comes around every 100 episodes, so we take full advantage this week, as Michael Grimm joins us for a somewhat NSFW show about games that used the (sometimes-dubious) talents of former and... Read more
With E3 2016 in our rear-view mirror, Dave, Hank, Brett, and special guest Aziz Twaijri count down their favorite games from the big show before breaking down each press conference and seeing how our listener predictions panned out. Question of... Read more
E3 is coming fast, so let’s distract ourselves just a little before the show starts with a Top 5 about (surprisingly competent) games based on “unscripted” television shows about “real” “people” who are “not entertainment lizards in hu-man guise.” The... Read more
In belated tribute to the PS2 “classic” Jaws Unleashed‘s 10th anniversary last week, this episode focuses not on the triumph of being a shark, but the terror of being its victim, with a Top 5 about the most stressful games... Read more
We begin this week’s show by exploring the theater of the mind, with five games that take place entirely in their characters’ heads and/or dreams. We then weigh in on the the Overwatch mania currently driving the internet bonkers, along... Read more
Shadow of the Beast’s arrival on PS4 is a reminder that sometimes, it’s possible to tell a clear, engaging story without any actual dialogue. And that pushed us to spend this week’s Top 5 discussion looking at other games that... Read more
This week’s release of Uncharted 4 is by all accounts a fitting send-off (for now) for one of the most beloved series of the past decade, and so we get all topical with a frank discussion of five iconic roles... Read more
Mikel returns as host this week, and we celebrate by cursing America’s pastime with a list of five baseball-themed games in which you never actually play baseball. We then jump back to the present with a look at Battleborn, before... Read more
Mikel is out meeting the royal family this week, so we have a rare VGA fivesome featuring two special guests from Disney’s ice-skating show; Wes Green and Nathan Miller. The gang drinks in honor of Prince and discuss the best... Read more
Special guest star Heidi Kemps of Gaming.moe rejoins the show this week, just in time for a discussion about our favorite improbably non-Japanese ninjas. Then it’s on to talking about Star Fox Zero and the rumored PlayStation 4.5, after which... Read more
Ratchet & Clank’s arrival this week sparks a Top 5 discussion about that great and rare Ouroboros of modern media: Video games that got turned into movies and TV shows, and then back into games based on those movies and... Read more
Now that Final Fantasy XV finally has a release date 10 years after it was first announced, Gamespot editor Scott Butterworth joins the hosts this week for a look at five other games that had long and troubled development cycles,... Read more
Making a game is often a huge undertaking. Making a successful game all by yourself is a staggering feat, and it’s one that the five creators behind the games in this week’s Top 5 managed to pull off spectacularly. The... Read more
It’s a jock-out lockout this week, as Retronauts host Bob Mackey joins us to take a look at the gawkiest, dorkiest, most pedantic nerd archetypes the games industry has thrown at us over the years. Then it’s on to a... Read more
This week, we delve into those strange and short-lived days when it was considered bold and avant-garde to market cheesy games around the promise of nudity and stick them on consoles. We then return to modernity with a look at... Read more
We get an early jump on St. Patrick’s Day this week, with a hiss-heavy segment celebrating five videogame snakes that Ireland’s patron saint would doubtlessly have run out of the country on a rail. We then snap right back to... Read more
The regular cast settles in this week for a look at five bosses that showed up to challenge fist-themed heroes while packing decidedly non-punchy firearms, often with predictable results. With that out of the way, we shift our focus to... Read more
This week, former Game Informer editor Tim Turi joins us to talk about our favorite prehistoric adventures where sweaty men in loincloths fight dinosaurs. (Appropriately, none of them were made after 1997.) Then we shift slightly to talk about Far... Read more
Ryan J. Hodge, author of Laser Time’s own Play/Write series, joins us for the first time this week to chat about frumpy Soviets, suspiciously unnamed guerrillas and other commies who’ve taken starring roles in games over the years. Then it’s... Read more
Our sesquicentennial episode takes a fond look back at some of the absolute worst voice acting ever to appear in video games, as Heidi Kemps joins us to talk about her upcoming MAGFest panel. Then it’s on to a packed... Read more
With Mikel on vacation, the gang recruits former Nintendo Power editor Chris Hoffman (of the Nintendo-focused Power Pros podcast) to talk about the coolest characters to emerge from the ground. Once we reach the surface, we discuss XCOM 2, Gravity... Read more
Video games have been around since at least the ’70s, but introspective games – ones with a statement to make about how we approach and play games, and what we expect from them – are still relatively rare. With The... Read more
For decades, character designers have kept a hidden ace up their sleeve, one so powerful that they probably feel like hacks for using it, and so rarely do: if you put a cute face on a vaguely rounded shape, the... Read more
Following this week’s first round of sad news, Dan Amrich joins us this week to help pay tribute to David Bowie the only way we know how: by basing a Top 5 around his more notable ventures into gaming. The... Read more
Welcome back for another year of VGA! As has become tradition ’round these parts, we begin the year by looking ahead to five games we’re really excited about. (There isn’t a whole lot that’s been revealed about some of these,... Read more
It’s time for our last show of the year, and we’ve put together a big one. A rotating cast of regular VGA hosts is joined by friends of the show (including Bob Mackey, Heidi Kemps and Chris Watters) to discuss... Read more
Sick of hearing about Star Wars yet? Too bad, because (after a surprise announcement from erstwhile cohost Anne Lewis) we’re making a shameless grab for its coattails with our (admittedly shaky) rundown of our favorite Star Wars games. With that... Read more
Mikel’s back, and he’s bringing special guest hosts Bob Mackey and Heidi Kemps with him! This week, we get into five games that let you not just turn evil, but actually unseat the villain and conquer in their place. (Evil... Read more
Another Mikel-free episode features Hank, Dave, Chris, and Brett discussing the games that bucked the trend and were all-time classics despite releasing in the normally dead month of December. Tyler hops on the show to join in the discussion of... Read more
With Mikel out on assignment, Dave, Hank, Brett, and Chris play hooky and head to the mall! We count down gaming’s most memorable malls before discussing Bloodborne’s new DLC, possible PS2 emulation on the PS4, your favorite Xbox 360 memories,... Read more
With the Xbox 360 turning 10 next week, we’re joined by GameSpot host/writer/producer Chris Watters (here to tell us about his brand new book, The Gamer’s Bucket List) and Brett Elston (in his first VGA appearance as a full-time LaserTime... Read more
This week, we go unabashedly old-school in honor of LaserTime’s newest full-time member, Brett Elston – who couldn’t make it, leaving us to stumble through a frank discussion of grappling hooks and swing physics without him. Then we dig into... Read more
Whether you think of it as your house, headquarters, or simply a comforting save room, having a customizable home base has become a big part of a lot of our favorite games in recent years. As our string of horror-related... Read more
Happy Halloween, everybody! For our final horror-themed episode of October, we’re going for the jugular with a genre feared even by some horror fans: scary games in which your only defense is to run, hide and hope the monsters don’t... Read more
Rick and Morty is a fantastic show, if for no other reason than that it gave us a new use for the word “Cronenberg,” referring to incomprehensible masses of writhing flesh and body horror that look like they just flopped... Read more
Our month of Halloween shows continues with five games about eldritch horrors from beyond the stars, as inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft. Then it’s on to talk about the decidedly less scary Minecraft: Story Mode and Dragon Quest... Read more
We’re big fans of Halloween around these parts, so this week’s show kicks off a full month of horror-themed shows, starting safe and slow with five survival-horror games (seemingly) intended for children. Then it’s time to talk about Transformers: Devastation,... Read more
Bay Area games journo and kusoge* expert Heidi Kemps is our guide this week as we explore a slate of wonderfully bizarre and baffling music and rhythm games, a couple of which never made it to the States. Then we... Read more
This week’s strange will-they-won’t-they narrative about Konami possibly exiting the console-game business perked our ears, and while it looks fairly certain that the publisher doesn’t plan to exit the industry anytime soon, a fond look back at our five favorite... Read more
Lego Dimensions’ voice-acting cast turned out to be an extremely hefty deal this week, with the likes of Michael J. Fox, Alison Brie and Peter Capaldi confirmed as voicing plastic versions of their iconic characters. This naturally turned our minds... Read more
Join us for a celebratory crossover episode with our old friend Brett Elston, who joins us fresh off the 100th episode of VGMpire for a Top 5 about games that pushed the hardware of dying systems to remind us that... Read more
Before Diddy and Cranky Kong, see how the ape’s reboot looked in the early planning stages… If you were in the Play It Loud generation of Super NES owners, Donkey Kong Country holds a special place in your heart. Just... Read more
This week, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain took everyone’s attention by storm. It is, by all accounts, a fantastic finale for the series – or at least the part of the series written by creator Hideo Kojima –... Read more
A new Metal Gear is just a few days away, and the critics can’t shut up about how great it is – but somehow, we manage to restrain ourselves long enough to get out a Top 5 about games with... Read more
As much as the games industry catches flak for being a giant disgusting sequel factory, it has its fair share of great games that – whether by design or by circumstance – never got sequels, and maybe never will. Michael... Read more
They may not be canon and they may not always be happy, but few hidden extras are quite as satisfying to find as secret endings – and this week, we count down five of our favorites. Then it’s on to... Read more
It’s been a great week for fans of retro games – and for GameStop employees, who now have an answer to the eternal question, “Do you have Battletoads?” The release of Rare Replay spurred our spoiled-child brains to talk about... Read more
Seventeen years after its last installment, King’s Quest is back among the living with this week’s release of a new episodic adventure series. Happy as we are to see King Graham back in the thick of it, his return made... Read more
Cars are great and all, but if you really want to get around in style, nothing beats nature’s motorcycle: the noble horse. Especially when you can call them to your side at any time, like the summonable horses in this... Read more
The Evo Championship Series begins today, giving fighting-game fans around the world a chance to feel really inadequate by watching pro competitors at work. Since none of us are going, the best you’ll get is this week’s Top 5 –... Read more
The Predator’s arrival this week in Mortal Kombat X isn’t exactly unprecedented, considering that the skull-collecting alien hunter has been the ultimate crossover star since the ’90s. But he’s not the first Hollywood character to make an appearance in an... Read more
It’s the midpoint of the year, which means it’s time to pick our favorite games of the past six months. Which ones made the cut? Listen as we validate (or invalidate) your opinions, completely forget Troy Baker’s name, and then... Read more
In celebration of a certain shark’s 40th anniversary, the Steven Spielberg classic Jaws was re-released to theaters this week — and because we seize literally any excuse to bring up Jaws games, we’ve created a whole Top 5 around them,... Read more
We countdown the most shocking reveals from E3 2015, then dig into a whole bunch of other wonderful vidjagame news and recaps. Prepare for geekgasms and fanboy rants aplenty! Question of the Week What was your favorite moment from E3?... Read more
With Jurassic World hitting theaters and (LEGO-themed) games, this week seems like a perfect time for an appreciation of our favorite apex predator, the Tyrannosaurus Rex, and its five best appearances as a menacing boss monster. Then there’s some excitable,... Read more
Hatred’s release grabbed headlines and then sort of fizzled out this week, but not before we put together a Top 5 about games that let you live out your worst bully fantasies by indiscriminately murdering innocent civilians. With that out... Read more
The ever-so-controversial Hatred is out this week, and early reviews give the impression that it’s neither as horrible nor as interesting as everyone decided it was after watching a single trailer. But it’s also this week’s highest-profile game release, which... Read more
When advertisers and games come together, the results are usually annoying in-game billboards, awkward insertions of commercial taglines into dialogue, or a set-up for stale jokes about Doritos and Mountain Dew. But once every 100 years (give or take), unholy... Read more
Conventional wisdom holds that handheld versions of multiplatform games are, at best, stripped-down shadows of their console brethren, and best forgotten. Sometimes, conventional wisdom is for idiots. USGamer’s Bob Mackey joins us this week for a Top 5 about handheld... Read more
Two weeks ago, Vidjagame Apocalypse asked its listeners to post and explain the most embarrassing (or best, because not everyone’s willing to bare their souls online) fan art they’d ever created. Because our fans are awesome, the results were predictably... Read more
Sega’s Saturn might have been an underpowered, overpriced mess of a system when it prematurely launched 20 years ago this week — but dammit, it still holds a special place in our hearts, partly because it boasted some truly amazing... Read more
For many Americans, Cinco de Mayo is a grand opportunity to crowd into Mexican restaurants, get drunk, and wear ridiculous hats while not knowing the first thing about what the holiday’s actually about. Now that it’s come and gone, however,... Read more
Our longtime friend Dan Amrich (of Palette-Swap Ninja and Critical Path) joins us this week, and we repay him by making him suffer through counting down five of the loudest, chattiest, most obnoxious cartoon characters ever to headline a platformer.... Read more
It’s the week of 4/20, which means you probably spent most of Monday massaging your temples in anguish as the Internet brayed endless weed jokes and used the word “ganja” unironically. Well, tough, because it’s not over yet — we’re... Read more
Do you often find yourself rooting for the bad guys, sometimes even when they’re not snappier dressers than the heroes? You’re not alone, and a lot of games cater to your dark impulses with the option to play as their... Read more
With David Lynch dropping out (at least temporarily) of the Twin Peaks resurrection over the weekend, the time was ripe for an idea that’s been sitting on our back burner for a while: games that borrowed heavily from the landmark... Read more
San Francisco seems to get destroyed a lot more often than most other cities in fiction, and that includes games – so this week, we take a look at five games that wreaked the most destruction on VGA’s hometown. Then... Read more
Fresh off our playthrough of the dazzling Final Fantasy XV demo, we begin this week’s show by looking at the proud tradition of packing high-profile demos to help sell (and, more often than not, almost completely eclipse) medium-profile games. Then... Read more
Given that St. Patrick’s Day was this week, we opted for the convenient holiday theme and made this episode about the most Irish thing games have to offer: Irish accents, affected by (mostly) non-Irish actors. Then it’s on to some... Read more
GameSpot’s Chris Watters joins us this week to help us talk about our five favorite Metroidvanias (or Castletroids, if you’re the type to worry about infringing on trademarks), but that’s the tip of the iceberg. Part 2 launches into a... Read more
This week, Ray Barnholt of Scroll, No More Whoppers and Retronauts joins us for frank talk about five faintly embarrassing vanity games that recast popular musicians as action heroes (or action-hero enablers). Then we move on to talk about tepid... Read more
Returning to business as usual after last week’s three-hour explodaganza, we’re kicking this week’s show off with a look at five movie-to-game adaptations that, for whatever reason, only ever appeared on PSP. Then it’s on to some talk about Dragonball... Read more
EPISODE 100 IS HERE AT LAST! To congratulate ourselves for actually sticking with a project for this long, we start with a Top 5 in which Chris tries to justify buying a New Nintendo 3DS immediately after dismissing it, switch... Read more
With the exception of maybe Rambo, it’s difficult to think of any characters who’ve been ripped off as frequently as Indiana Jones. (Granted, you could argue Dr. Jones is himself a ripoff, but that’s beside the point.) With rumors of... Read more
Not a lot of comedy sketches get their own video games, and after hearing about the mostly terrible entries in this week’s Top 5, you’ll understand why. With that safely out of the way, it’s on to some chatter about... Read more
In honor of Grim Fandango’s long-overdue return, we decided to base this week’s Top 5 around games influenced (however loosely) by Mexican folklore and its vision of the underworld — and we approach the topic with all the sensitivity and... Read more
Now that we’re in a (still just) brand-new year, we’ve got 11 whole months of cool new games to look forward to, many of which will probably get bumped to next year. Best not to think negatively, though, so this... Read more
We’re back with our first show of 2015! Aaaand it’s about 2014, as Bob Mackey and Michael Grimm join the show to help us talk about our favorite villains of last year. After that, there’s some (very brief) new-release talk,... Read more
Before Mikel, Chris, Tyler, and Dave all left for the holiday break, they attempted to record one last show: a festive holiday special about their Top 5 Santas. It didn’t go as planned. This was the audio file we found... Read more
This week’s show marks our last “real” VGA for 2014, so following last year’s established tradition, we’re going out with a countdown of our 10 favorite games of the year. Which ones will make the cut? After we find out,... Read more
The longer a tie-in game takes to come out after the movie it’s based on, the better it tends to be. By that logic, the five games in this week’s Top 5 — which all adapted movies that came out at least... Read more
Who says games can’t make you cry? As the Bay Area shifts from a yearlong drought to winter monsoon season, it seems like a perfect time to make things awkwardly personal with a Top 5 about the games that made the... Read more
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in America, meaning everyone’s blowing off work so they can gorge themselves while cooped up in pressure-cookers of familial loathing and resentment. We’re no exception, so in honor of the noble sacrifice of the walking-bird (or “turkey”... Read more
Everyone loves “what-if” scenarios, and games are a great way to explore them, particularly when it comes to alternate views of world history. What if, for example, two warring, medieval secret societies had survived to spread their influence across the world?... Read more
The holiday game-release season is in full swing this week, with headliners that include two Assassin’s Creed games – one of which inspired a Top 5 about our favorite interquels. After that, it’s on to a discussion of AC Unity... Read more
Another year brings another Call of Duty, along with another round of jaded gamers rolling their eyes at the silly rah-rah army hero baby game. As anyone who’s played through its slickly realized campaigns can attest, however, there’s more to CoD’s... Read more
It’s Halloween! Well, Halloweek, at least. After a few weeks of spooky Top 5 topics, we dug deep into gaming’s roots for five seriously old-school horror games. Atari 2600 old-school. Terrifying. With that out of the way, it’s on to business... Read more
It’s still October, which means another quasi-spooky episode (spoopisode?), this time about our favorite creepy, horror-infested houses. Then the conversation moves on to this week’s monstrous crop of new releases (including Fantasia: Music Evolved, Bayonetta 2, and Screencheat) and a look... Read more
Continuing with this month’s horror theme, our Top 5 this week focuses on the oft-maligned practice of shoehorning zombies into games that didn’t have them initially — often with spectacular results. Then there’s some fevered discussion of The Evil Within and Borderlands:... Read more
Alien: Isolation’s deviously malicious xenomorph has been getting a lot of (mixed) praise lately, but it’s hardly the first randomized creeper to have chased us through a game. This week, we celebrate five of our favorite relentless, indestructible pursuers, then switch gears... Read more
With Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor out this week and Alien: Isolation about to follow, Mikel resumes hosting duties to talk about five other movie-related games starring relative nobodies. Then there’s some talk about Super Smash Bros., Tyler’s identity gets “borrowed,” and... Read more
On Nintendo’s 125th anniversary, we’re looking at the company’s pre-Donkey Kong output. Also Hyrule Warriors, Disney Infinity, a TGS 2014 wrap-up, the new Oculus, and what we want from the next-gen! Question of the Week What do you want from... Read more
WARNING: Some games don’t truly kick in until after the credits roll. With that in mind, we’re shining a “Light” on Destiny, Disney Infinity 2.0, Microsoft’s Minecraft, handheld wishery and more! Question of the Week What game did you enjoy even... Read more
With video games under attack from every conceivable angle, only VGA has the journalistic fortitude to point the finger at what’s truly put our favorite medium in jeopardy and you won’t believe our findings! Also talking Destiny, fake news, Smash Bros,... Read more
Thanks to Saints Row IV’s just-revealed Gat Out of Hell DLC, we’ve got Lucifer’s infernal realm on the brain. so we’ve devoted this week’s Top 5 to some of the stranger ways everyone’s favorite Lake of Fire has been realized in games.... Read more
The Every Simpsons Ever Marathon has an iron grip on our souls this week, so no, we actually couldn’t think of a better topic for this week’s Top 5 than our favorite Simpsons games. Once that’s out of our system, we move... Read more
We’re about a week late to the party here, but that bad boy of ’90s gaming, the Sega Genesis (or Mega Drive to our international listeners), just celebrated 25 years since its U.S. launch. Somehow, we managed to stop pitying... Read more
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you why this is a sad week. In light of recent events, we hastily, clumsily cobbled together a tribute to beloved comedy icon and fellow gamer Robin Williams for this week’s show by... Read more
Twenty years ago, it was a given that if a movie released between the months of May and September, it’d have a flashy-looking tie-in game on every major console — and actual humans would be excited for it. 1994 was... Read more
No discussion of whether video games are art would be complete without totally ignoring all the ones that feature fart buttons. Good thing we’re not discussing art this week. After a spirited discussion of five games that let you pass... Read more
With Comic-Con in full swing this week, this episode revolves around our favorite games based on comic books… that DON’T FEATURE SUPERHEROES (at least not in a traditional sense). Then, following an unhealthy number of digressions, we lay into Oddworld:... Read more
“Pro Wrestling” doesn’t always mean “beefy dudes in Speedos.” Sometimes it means insultingly gratuitous panty shots, four-armed monsters, and Bart Simpson suplexing Moe Szyslak. This week, we take a look at five of the strangest wrestling games of recent years,... Read more
No matter how monotonous, thankless, or gross a job is, you can bet it’d make a pretty badass video game with just a few conceptual tweaks. Our show this week starts off with five of them, followed by some vague... Read more
What’s the easiest way for a game to put up emotional stakes? Put kids in peril! Hey, it worked for Steven Spielberg. Seriously, though, you want to watch this. Remember when we did a Vidjagame Apocalypse Top 5 about games that put... Read more
We’re just past the halfway point of 2014, which means it’s time to fall back on a lazy topic look back at the past six months of games and collectively pick out our favorites. Also, Tyler and Mikel argue about... Read more
We’ve been teasing this one a long time, and now Anne Lewis at last has the floor to recognize her five favorite (male and female) in-game butts. This is real, people. We’re doing this. Hang on to your butts, etc.... Read more
Another E3 has come and gone. Was it good for you? If not, too bad, because you’re not getting another one until next year. 2014’s show was a lot more grim and dark than it’s been in a while, at... Read more
After last week’s child-endangering double-whammy of Watch Dogs and Among the Sleep, we thought, “Hey, that looks fun,” and decided to focus this week’s Top 5 on games that put kids into life-threatening situations, often for no other reason than... Read more
Watch Dogs is here! Watch Dogs is here! But first, let’s observe Laser Time’s weeklong Block Karty with a quick rundown of five questionable, mascot-themed kart-racing also-rans, none of which starred mustachioed plumbers. Then there’s some talk about new releases... Read more
Far Cry 4’s finally been announced, and even though it’s just concept art of a dude in a Scooby-Doo purple suit at this point, we’re still excited. So excited, in fact, that we hung this week’s Top 5 on the... Read more
When you hit episode 64 of any podcast, there are really only two directions you can go in, topic-wise: something to do with the Nintendo 64, or the iconic Beatles song “When I’m Sixty-Four.” If you’re the kind of person... Read more
Last week saw the release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, a movie reputedly so terrible that it’s actually scoring well below some versions of its terrible tie-in game on Metacritic. Or wait — it turns out that’s actually par for... Read more
What do games really think of their audiences? If their portrayals of gamers are any indication, the sentiment is somewhere between contempt, pity, and outright affection. This week’s show takes a look at five standout examples before moving on to... Read more
This week, the subdued trio of Mikel, Anne, and Dave lead an exploration into the deeper mysteries of games that use nonsensical babbling instead of voice-acting, after which we stumble through a meager field of new releases, a few news... Read more
Too many HD “remakes” these days are content to slap on some sharp new textures and call it a day. Most don’t want to risk the ire of gamers by actually overhauling gameplay or design that worked 20 years ago,... Read more
By listener request (and in lieu of any better ideas), this week’s Top 5 is dedicated gaming’s greatest graffiti artists (or possibly just graffiti-themed games; we seem a little fuzzy on the concept). There’s also lots of talk about Amazon... Read more
Last week’s trailer for the Michael Bay Ninja Turtles movie was an inspiration — specifically, an inspiration for a Top 5 about the worst TMNT games of all time. With that out of the way, we talk about Goat Simulator,... Read more
After decades spent on the technological trash heap, virtual reality’s had a huge resurgence in the past week. Sony unveiled Morpheus, Oculus Rift rolled out its Crystal Cove prototype, and Microsoft revealed it was working on its own headset —... Read more
Inspired by the console-specific weirdness in this week’s release of Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, Episode 56 rolls up with a Top 5 about DLC expansions that threw canon to the wind. Then we continue with some talk about... Read more
Now that Titanfall is presumably eating up everyone’s time on PC and Xbox One, we kick off our fifty-fifth show with what may be our shortest Top 5 yet, about the weirdest mechs we could think of. There’s also some... Read more
In case the title didn’t give it away, this week we honor the arrival of South Park: The Stick of Truth with a Top 5 about other games based on basic-cable TV shows, and somehow manage to mess even that... Read more
The last week of February boasts some notably dark-looking new releases, so we thought we’d add a little color with our five favorite games about bringing dead worlds back to life. Then we unwisely gush about Thief and Castlevania: Lords... Read more
VGA takes another quick trip back to the criminality well this week, with a look at five “heroes” who did hard time and became our favorite video-game convicts. Then we dive right into Earth Defense Force 2025 and Strider, talk... Read more
As athletes compete and hotel rooms disintegrate at the Sochi Olympics, we follow a listener suggestion and take a look back at some of our favorite games about The Games — with the caveat that few of them were ever... Read more
Between last week’s Sly Cooper movie reveal and the incoming release of Thief, February is shaping up to be a very burgle-y month. So let’s kick it off with a celebration of our favorite master thieves, then get giddy about... Read more
With Oscar season finally upon us, there’s no better time to (once again) use Hollywood’s long history with gaming as a creative crutch. This time, we take a look at games positioned as legitimate sequels to movies (whether by design,... Read more
Apropos of nothing, we start off this week’s show with a Top 5 about heroes who have, at best, a tenuous grip on their heads. Then there’s some talk about Broken Age, Banner Saga, and a smattering of last week’s... Read more
The VGA crew limps through another slow January release week the only way we know how: with lots of tangential nonsense. There’s also a Top 5 about costume changes as a major gameplay mechanic, some chat about CES 2014 and... Read more
Aaaand we’re back! VGA returns from its two-week hiatus with an obligatory Top 5 about our most hotly anticipated games. Then we get cheery on bumwine and talk about the booze- and game-related shenanigans we got up to while we’t... Read more
This year isn’t quite finished, but Vidjagame Apocalypse is until January 7, so here’s an extra-long, extra-late countdown of the VGA regulars’ 10 favorite games of 2013! After that, we touch on the meager crop of year-end new releases and... Read more
As the wheezing beast that is 2013 enters its final weeks of life, we’ve come roaring back from hiatus with our Top 5 protagonists who went villain for the sequel, a little bit of talk about new releases (including the... Read more
Has it really been 125 years already? Another Thanksgivukkah is nearly upon us, once again merging Thanksgiving with the first night of Hanukkah in an explosion of festive confusion! This week, we spend plenty of time talking about the Xbox... Read more
We’re stuck between launches as of this writing, with the PS4 (theoretically) in stores and the Xbox One poised to give us a slightly different version of the events of last Friday. What an exciting time to be alive, and... Read more
In just a few days as of this posting, the PlayStation 4 will be a thing you can buy, bringing about the first major generational shift for consoles since the release of the Xbox 360 eight years ago. With “next-gen”... Read more
This week is Call of Duty week, with CoD: Ghosts hitting store shelves ahead of its next-gen launches, but let’s ignore that for the first half of the show. Instead, we’ll talk about our favorite heroes over 40, then chat... Read more
Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is out today, and to mark the occasion, we sit down with a SPECIAL GUEST STAR: Gabe Graziani, senior community developer at Ubisoft and the official face of Assassin’s Creed fandom! But first, Halloween is... Read more
Remember way back when game publishers weren’t interested in locking down their intellectual property, and would hand the franchise keys to any porting house that had two ZX Spectrums to rub together? No? Well, this week’s Top 5 does, as... Read more
This week, Mikel and the rest of the regular VGA crew take a breather, giving special guests Henry Gilbert, Carolyn Gudmundson and Brett Elston exactly the opening they need to stage an impromptu reunion of their old Pokémon Monday podcast... Read more
If you’re not a Pokémon fan*, the biggest release this week is Beyond: Two Souls, the latest beautiful, divisive, interactive game-like thing from developer Quantic Dream and its cackling French overlord, David Cage. In honor of its arrival (and to... Read more
This week, we decided to take a look at some of our favorite, sadly misguided one-off consoles, created mainly by companies who’d dipped their toes into video games once or twice and suddenly thought they could be the next Nintendo.... Read more
Grand Theft Auto has finally become so ingrained in mainstream culture that not only did GTA V break all sales records for all media ever (probably), but it took a torture scene to raise any real controversy this time around.... Read more
It’s all about one specific big release this week, as we begin with a celebration of GTA clones and then dive into a lengthy discussion about Grand Theft Auto V. We also talk about your favorite game tie-ins, and Tyler... Read more
No Top 5 this week — just lots and lots of talk about the cool stuff we saw at PAX Prime. (Big thanks to everyone who came to our meetup at GameWorks!) We also chat about Killzone: Mercenary, Arma III... Read more
Everyone’s back from another successful PAX, and yet this week’s episode was recorded just before PAX. It’s not outdated — it’s a time capsule! A time capsule that focuses on five games disavowed by their own creators (or the creators... Read more
Not a whole lot’s happening during the gap between Gamescom and PAX, and yet we somehow found a way to fill more than 100 minutes with chatter about great actors who slummed it in games, next-gen console release dates, and... Read more
For no other reason than that a listener suggested it, we spend a fat chunk of this week’s episode dissecting five games that changed radically during development, often into (or away from) something that completely defied our expectations — and,... Read more
You can never have too many musical episodes, right? This week, we give a listen to five bands that exist only in their respective games (counting down our favorites as we go). There’s also some talk about Luigis and clown... Read more
With the release of Pikmin 3 this week, it’s high time we paid tribute to the great unsung heroes of gaming: disposable minions. Specifically your disposable minions. We also have a lively discussion about Dragon’s Crown’s extreme stylization, chat a... Read more
Giant city-crushin’ monsters are in right now, so why not devote a show to their greatest appearances in video games (and give kaiju expert Brett Elston a chance to wax nostalgic at the same time)? There’s also some talk of... Read more
Have we really been doing this for 25 straight weeks? Dang! To celebrate being halfway to 50, we spend this episode counting down our top 5 games of 2013 (so far), gushing about Earthbound, recounting your most memorable game deals,... Read more
This week, we pay our respects to five hotly anticipated games that were shut down before ever really seeing the light of day. We also chat about a little iOS oddity called Deus Ex: The Fall (and other new releases,... Read more
Ride to Hell: Retribution is already being hailed by critics as the worst game of 2013, which has been enough to get most outlets to forget about it. Most outlets, however, are not run by masochists for whom the phrase... Read more
Last week was a pretty important one for our LGBT friends; not only was it Pride Week, but the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, clearing the way for gay marriages to be recognized on a federal... Read more
This week’s Vidjagame Apocalypse starts out innocuously enough, with a look at movies based on fake games, but things get heated in the second half, when the crew debates the merits of Microsoft’s decision to roll back its digital rights... Read more
Last week was crazy, but it’s over now, so your exhausted hosts gather before the firelight and trade harrowing stories from the blood-caked trenches. Ha, just kidding — we sit around and complain about video games, just like always! This... Read more
This week we recorded our show before everyone left for E3, so we went light on speculation and instead counted down the most memorable moments from the expo’s past. Also, did you know there are new games coming out while... Read more
In this week’s episode of Vidjagame Apocalypse we start up a suicide prevention hotline. JUST KIDDING. We talk about making people kill themselves in videogames. Good times. We also talk about Remember Me and your reactions to the Xbone. Question... Read more
In this week’s episode we talk about our favorite canine friends and the Xbox One reveal. It’s basically just four people talking about dogs for two hours. Question of the Week What do you think about the Xbox One? Short... Read more
In this week’s episode of Vidjagame Apocalypse we talk about memorable appearances in shitty videogame movies and make speculations about the next Xbox. Yes, we realize the reveal has already happened but when we recorded this, it hadn’t. Question of... Read more
On this week’s episode of Vidjagame Apocalypse we talk about our favorite barren, mutant-infested wastelands. There’s also a little more singing. Apparently we didn’t get enough last week. Question of the Week What’s one moment in a game that made... Read more
Things get musical on this week’s episode of Vidjagame Apocalypse. That’s not a joke. There’s a LOT of singing in this one and we’re not even drunk. Well, not all the way drunk. Maybe a little drunk. We also play... Read more
In this week’s episode of Vidjagame Apocalypse we talk about shitty games we love. These games are simultaneously painful and so much fun. Sorry about the wait, folks. The laptop we edit the show on is seriously fuuuuucked. We’re working... Read more
This week’s episode of Vidjagame Apocalypse is hungry for brains. We talk about zombies, the things hurting the games industry and we delve into the forums. Question of the Week Do you think it would affect your enjoyment of a... Read more
This week’s episode is all about SUPERHEROES. Our Top 5 is all about superheroes. Our new releases section is all about superheroes (well, mostly). Our news is all about superheroes (okay definitely not all but we still talk about them).... Read more
In this week’s episode of Vidjagame Apocalypse we talk Lara Croft wannabes and some sad news. We’re also doing a giveaway! Yay! Question of the Week Which LucasArts game do you have the fondest memories of? Also, what should the... Read more
On this week’s episode of Vidjagame Apocalypse we revisit some of our favorite anxiety-inducing music from games and talk about beloved games from our youth. Sorry this episode is a little late. We ran into a minor technical difficulty. It’s... Read more
We get a little silly in this week’s episode of Vidjagame Apocalypse and talk about BIOSHOCK INFINITE OMG. Episode 8 of Vidjagame Apocalypse is all about our favorite alcoholics with a very healthy helping of BioShock Infinite talk. Don’t worry,... Read more
We are all about bro-love in this week’s episode of Vidjagame Apocalypse. For reals, this episode is about bromance, yo. We discuss our favorite bros with bro-nefits, make waaaaaay too many bro puns and really lose our shit near the... Read more
This week’s episode of Vidjagame Apocalypse is all about one game in a failing series that raised the franchise from perdition to stand tall once more. We talk redemption, a whooooole lot of SimCity, QotW and answer some community questions.... Read more
On this week’s episode of Vidjagame Apocalypse we find ourselves lost on the high seas of tangents. We swear this episode was supposed to be all about pirates. Question of the Week What are your thoughts on microtransactions in games?... Read more
With the Oscars recently done away with, we present a special Top 5 (er, Only 5?) along with some new release talk, PS4 news and a quickie debate. Question of the Week We’re using the same question as last week... Read more
We discuss our favorite narrators, recent releases and Sony rumors. This is a long one. RSS DOWNLOAD
We talk sports, torture, teen wolves, and super secret industry rumors. All the good things in life… DOWNLOAD
You’ve asked for it and here it is. WE’RE GONNA TALK ABOUT GAMES, Y’ALL! The first episode of Vidjagame Apocalypse has arrived to make the Laser Time family a little more complete. Our debut features potty talk, sexy violence and... Read more