The Crate and Crowbar

Latest Episodes:

Episode 353: Shadow Of The Segue Vampire Dec 19, 2020

Show notes

Graham, Tom S, Chris, Tom F, Alex and Marsh pile into the electronic telephone booth for our Game of the Year episode. Many things are discussed, some of which are even games that came out this year.

Here’s the whole lot of them. Don’t read ahead if you want to rubberneck at the beautiful carnage of Chris’s protracted segue car-crash, the true game of 2020.
Teardown
Hunt: Showdown
Monster Train
Death Stranding
Wide Ocean Big Jacket
Destiny 2
Gears Tactics
Paradise Killer
World of Horror
The Last of Us Part II
Desperados III
Hades
Half-Life: Alyx
Horizon Zero Dawn
Hardspace: Shipbreaker
Star Wars: Squadrons
Ghost of Tsushima
Ori and the Will of the Wisps
Warzone
Spelunky 2
A Monster’s Expedition
Stay safe and have a lovely holiday. See you in 2021!

You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us at questions@crateandcrowbar.com or tweet us @crateandcrowbar. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Episode 352: The Late-Capitalist Scream Dec 14, 2020

Show notes

Chris, Tom S and Marsh dial in to the eZone to digichat about obvious replicant Geoff Keighley’s latest data-dump, before opening up our brainchips to irrecoverable corruption by the Cyberpunk 2077 discourse.

Suffer the many newses beamed from Geoff Keighley’s Laser Cage.
Bioware had trailers for new Dragon Age and Mass Effect projects, both offering a homeopathic density of information – though little does this impede our speculation!
Disco Elysium is getting full voice-acting: which will be cool if it’s good and good if it’s cool.
They’re making another Perfect Dark. LOL!
Back4Blood does surprisingly little for us.
Whereas Darktide, which is more or less the same thing, is TICKLE CENTRAL.
Cyberpunk 2077.
Rob Fahey’s article on CDProjekt’s stock market shenanigans and their impact on the development of Cyberpunk.
Tom refers to Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy.
Jesus Christ this quiz really outstays its welcome. Sorry everyone. Sorry.
Sorry.
The quiz stings were composed from the following free sounds from the excellent freesound.org: “Correct Answer / That’s Right”, “correct.mp3” and “Vomiting on the ground – Remixed”.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Episode 351: Tell Me I’m Bad And Special Dec 04, 2020

Show notes

Chris, Alex and Marsh arrive belatedly at the zeitgeist of September 2018 with a helluva yikes. Like gazpacho soup, enjoy these takes cold: World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth and Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

Fortnite done some big numbers. But are they that big? Yes, but imagine the concurrents if you had to feed buses of children into the slavering maw of Dot Cotton.
Mask of the Rose is the new game from Failbetter, the devs behind Fallen London. It’s a visual novel romance set in the same sinister world.
Hit the colonial apologia bullseye in World of Warcraft.
Acknowledge the badness of raiding before raiding ever harder still in Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
Teardown is a really good game that knows precisely what it needs to be. But do its players always know that?
Does Not Commute is a previous game by the Teardown dev.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Episode 350: Mangonels All The Way Down Nov 27, 2020

Show notes

Chris, Graham and Alex heed the wisdom of the Time-ramisu and peer into the future of mecha strategy game Phantom Brigade, the alternative past of tactics game Möbius Front ’83, and an eternity of Destiny 2.

The Golden Joysticks happened again and proved to be an exacting measure of how people who voted in this thing voted.
Only a dad could forgive horizontal Iron Man but, alas, he doesn’t have time to play that Avengers game.
Squeenix are switching to work-from-home indefinitely.
Loosey-goosey simultaneous turnbased mecha heat management strategy game, Phantom Brigade.
Hex-based tactics game with a pulpy 80s military-mystery theme, Möbius Front ’83.
Destiny 2‘s continuing reinvention / self-cannibalism does some things to recapture the quiet dignity of the original space nonsense, but also unleashes the occasional potent guff of fomo.
For whom does the mangonel toll? Will you go to mangon-‘ell or mangon-‘eaven? How much nell could a mango nell if mango could nell mangos? Are these questions answered in this Age of Empires 2 exploit video? Not on your mangonelly.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Episode 349: Meat Credits Nov 20, 2020

Show notes

Graham, Tom S and Marsh gather to caress eagles in pretty action adventure The Pathless, and return to 9th century England to malign herons in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla.

IO Interactive are making a Bond game!
Appreciate the pandering of The Pathless.
It’s a bit like Journey and Shadow of the Colossus.
Admire the shining spires of Orpington (maybe) in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla.
Chill out to the stress of Super Hexagon.
Shoot weak points as gruesome therapy in Killer7.
Spin plates (with an increasing sense of zen) in City Skylines.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Interview: Joannes Truyens on Neurocracy Nov 17, 2020

Show notes

Alex and Marsh chat to Joannes Truyens, writer-designer of Neurocracy – a game about near-future conspiracies, pandemics, surveillance, cybernetics and tuna – that you unravel by exploring a fictional Wikipedia.

You can play the demo of Neurocracy right now. Follow Joannes and the project itself on Twitter and watch out for a release of Neurocracy in spring next year!

You can listen to this interview on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Episode 348: Explode Or Die Nov 13, 2020

Show notes

All the Toms join Marsh to be obliterated by the pitiless ocean, leaving only a flotsam of Elcor facts as a sign of their passing. Also discussed: Watch Dogs’ cockerney spider bots and the fine flails of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla.

Codies got bought by TakeTwo for approximately 10 times as much as we would have guessed they were worth.
DoNotEat did a good video about why Elon Musk’s Loop concept is a bucket of cold piss.
Bioware are remastering the Masses Effect and are making another one.
The Mountain Goats lovely song about a horrible deck and a related card.
Become one of the many faces of the Coffin Puncher in Watch Dogs Legion
Wild Mountain Thyme’s trailer does for Irish accents what Dick Van Dyke did for Cockney.
Raid an England that never was in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla.
You could get both by subbing to Ubisoft+, play them until you’re bored and then cancel the subscription.
Welcome to Nanobee’s. Have you eaten here before? Try the explosions.
Teardown just got better and better the more I played. Gimme a lawnmower, tho.
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton is a good pairing with The Return of the Obra Dinn.
I got the name wrong for his subsequent naval novel. It’s: The Devil and the Dark Water.
Perdido Street Station by China Mieville is a fine accompaniment to Anachronox, maybe?
The Final Empire is the first novel in the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson, and complements Dishonored rather well.
Other good reads: Dune by Frank Herbert, Exhalation by Ted Chiang, and From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell
Ubisoft and Google. You heard it here first and maybe last.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Episode 347: Sunk Plank Fallacy Nov 06, 2020

Show notes

Graham, Alex, Tom F and Marsh turn up the Plancks to Max in the highly-destructible thievery sandbox Teardown, avoid bisection in the deadly arenas of Disc Room and bring birds to political ruin in woodland strategy game Root.

Kill your solution-carcasses in the very defenestrationy blast-your-own-escape-route thievery sandbox Teardown.
Graham’s review of the same.
The ingenious Teardown car-theft solution that Graham references.
Watch your fingers in pure peril-avoidance game Disc Room.
Shank a mouse in complex asymmetric digi-boardgame Root.
Bang your head to the Rotational megamix.
The fast travel is wanting in the occult Miami-alike island murder mystery Paradise Killer.
Watch Dogs Legion is a game set in London but not, sadly, on its tube trains.
Rock Paper Shotgun have a very good podcast about PC games and aquatic pet care.
Spooky funny podcast This Paranormal Life.
Rock Paper Shotgun alumnus Brendy has a fun podcast called Hey Lesson that uses games as the jumping-off point to talk to mega-boffins about various things.
David Dimbleby’s look back at the second Iraq war: The Fault Line.
David Tenant does a podcast with a somethin’ else and no mystery production word salad with nice celeb chums.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Episode 346: Room Temperature Poo-Eggs Oct 30, 2020

Show notes

Chris and Marsh climb atop one another, together forming the shape of a much larger podcasting lobster, to discuss social spook surveyor game Phasmophobia, probe the pachinko-like possibilities of roguelike Ring of Pain and return to the Warzone.

Lot of news this week. More puking than normal too. COINCIDENCE?
Oculus requires a Facebook account and if you delete your Facebook account it deletes your games. BLAAAARP.
Facebook streaming is – for now – mostly about F2P games for yer da. BLAAAARP.
Jason Rubin’s interview with The Verge explains a bit more. They don’t need to lock you into your cell because YOU ARE ALREADY IN PRISON. BLAAAARP.
Ubisoft Connect is Ubisoft’s new swipe at the Steam hegemony. Will it last?
Watch_Dogs: Legion is out. We hadn’t played it yet at time of recording.
Assassin’s Creed is coming to Netflix as a live action series.
Cyberpunk’s delayed again. BLAAAARP.
The 3D tour of Blue Lick Rd, Kentucky. HELL-BLAAAARP.
NYT’s Guess The Voter By Their Fridge. Marvel at the number of cold, no-poo eggs.
Finally, the games we’ve been playing!
Phasmophobia! Better in VR!
Card-based roguelike Ring of Pain.
Warzone‘s Halloween mode is boss.
Rainbow 6 Siege’s Halloween mode has gone Full Felt Jacket.
Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan and the episode where this was previously discussed, certainly no more coherently than now.
Our amazing new quiz stings were composed from the following free sounds from the excellent freesound.org: “Correct Answer / That’s Right”, “correct.mp3” and “Vomiting on the ground – Remixed”.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Episode 345: Haunted By Damon Albarn Oct 23, 2020

Show notes

Graham, Alex and Marsh waggle wands in alchemical roguelike Noita, boggle minds in fractal-palace puzzler Manifold Garden, solve crimes in tech-occult mystery Lucifer Within Us and probe private parts in nosy ghost adventure I Am Dead.

Cool Congresswoman AOC’s Twitch-topping stream.
PC Gamer’s article on the mainstreaming and word-of-mouthing of PC gaming.
Stream-beloved backstabber, Among Us.
Collaboratively developed fantasy baseball game: Blaseball
Cave-diving witch-based roguelike Noita.
Fabulous fractal mind-bender, Manifold Garden.
Susanna Clark’s Piranesi is a fascinating book that you should read rather than read about.
Techno-occult detective game and bane of BritPop, Lucifer Within Us.
Do a fox be in there? Nourishing and wholesome looking-inside-things game I Am Dead.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

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