The Crate and Crowbar

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Episode 309: The Meta-Porridge Cascade Scenario Jan 24, 2020

Show notes

Alex and Marsh take a jaunty journey into the depths of Hades and wander the Streets of Rogue. The RNs are very much G’d, gorillas freed and the roguelikes liked, to varying degrees. Also: patch note heresies and our favourite offal.

The Half-Lifes… Half-Lives?… They’re freeeee!
Some of the Half-Life: Alyx team answered questions on Reddit.
Does The Witcher’s success presage a wave of sexploitative videogame adaptations?
Unity’s short film, Heretic. Very cool. Not anything to do with games or making games, though, is it? Maybe they’ll release a 7-minute feature in which a techno-owl explains why their in-house version control solution is completely boned.
Ninja Theory’s Dreadnought Diary.
Hades: the god, the place and the game. It’s well anabatic. Great fish.
Streets of Rogue arranges its oats in many unique ways, but after a short while… maybe it needs some pecans? Couple of strawberries. Lush.
Yosser might?
How long is too long to maroon your family on an island?
Factorio will make you its slave. A very smart slave, with great bragging rights.
Can AI Dungeon write show notes for us, plz?
Resurrect Dig Dug II!
Squid or Bung?
Candy Crush was made by King, for the record.
Look at all the garbage inventory I drew for Sir, You Are Being Hunted.

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 308: What Happened To Sonic Dogs? Jan 17, 2020

Show notes

Tom, Chris and Marsh gather to reopen Black Mesa’s final chapters, vie to become the ultimate Tom in Slay The Spire, hoover up all the flavour text in Pillars of Eternity: Deadfire and ride the rhythm of Sayonara Wild Hearts.

Let’s put this at the top: this year’s C&C Community GOTY is now online! Go vote in the only meaningful act of democracy you will ever experience again.
Kane is the best and deserves all the goats.
Go back to Black Mesa, and its final chapters in Xen, and tell me what I should feel.
A new front of inter-Tom warfare opens up as the fourth and final (?) character for Slay The Spire gets released. Go have a nap, devs. Maybe a relaxing bath. Get some Lush in, innit. Bit of Radio 4. Lovely.
Catch a very big man and be slightly dismayed at the size and number of crowded pubs in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire.
Vicariously re-experience the unfathomable hinterland of youth and/or prefigure the crisis of 30-something thinkpiece writers in Sayonara Wild Hearts.
Simogo – it’s true, they’re S w e d e s!
Star Citizen: the definition of development bardo. Maybe?
Very gribbly. Definitely a gribble. Unknowable, irrelevant interior.
Moderately gribbly. Could, if collected with many similar creature, be a gribble. And yet: it yearns, longs, dreams. A noble spirit trapped in ignoble flesh.
Negligibly gribbly. Not a gribble. A pristine embodiment of a perfect soul.
Gorogoa. It’s a gorra gorra gaffs.
Toilet Puncher’s Infinite Surrender
The Shard. Didn’t there be a fox in there?
Pip traps Tom in a knock knock joke at 1:32:25.
Our D&D pods
C&C Descends into a Total Fuckshow: Dark Souls Edition
C&C Descends into a Total Fuckshow: Bloodborne Edition
A Bloodborne friend we hardly knew – but will remember forever.
Breakers of at least four walls: Eternal Darkness and Banjo-Kazooie: Buts & Bolts
MACLUNKEY!
Jason Schreier is very good at telling the stories behind game dev.

A damning indictment of my algorithm.

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 307: Walloping Heidis Dec 21, 2019

Show notes

It’s the end of the year! Pip, Marsh, Alex, Chris and a hologram of Tom Francis gather on a big sofa to discuss their favourite games of the year. Featuring Sekiro, Baba is You, Red Dead Redemption 2, Disco Elysium, Outer Wilds and more!

This’ll be our last podcast of the year – we’ll be back in January! If you like, you also have the option of watching this podcast on YouTube – view our faces! Watch us sit! Regard the takes!

Apologies to Tom, from me, Chris. I did not realise that I was occluding his entire form with my body. He’s there, honest. You’ll get to see him sometimes.

Here’s the short longlist of games discussed in this pod:

Baba is You
Total War: Warhammer 2
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
Far Cry: New Dawn
Red Dead Redemption 2
Sea of Thieves (relatedly, here’s a Twitter thread full of Pip’s lovely screenshots!)
Heaven’s Vault
Outer Wilds
Disco Elysium
Noita
Unity of Command II
Teamfight Tactics
Slay The Spire (obviously)
Untitled Goose Game
A Short Hike
Kind Words

The list is singular, the games are plural.

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 watch (!) 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 306: They’re All A Skeleton’s Uncle, At The End Of The Day Dec 13, 2019

Show notes

Alex and Chris discuss Resident Evil 3 and Twin Peaks VR before setting a course straight for the heart of men-in-helmets-land: Phoenix Point, Halo: Reach, and a little Destiny 2: Season of Dawn.

Also featuring: the true pillars of any hero’s journey, the retroactive bigtown crisis, the vital importance of denying yourself the dream gnome, and meditations on how to tell when a wizard is not a wizard and why that wizard can’t be you.

They’ve only gone and done another Resident Evil, and quickly, too!
Enter the world of the iconic locations of the big trombone of Twin Peaks VR.
Chris reports back from the front lines of the Crab War in Phoenix Point.
Halo: Reach: clunky, merely ganky, or a product of its time? Alex’s verdict: delicious.
In Destiny 2: Season of Dawn, the Mercury Man’s Magic Washing Machine just gotta keep on turnin’.

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 305: Tom Clancy’s Questions From Questions Dec 06, 2019

Show notes

Tom, Marsh and two-thirds of a bottle of whiskey consider the fate of Valley of the Gods, indulge in Russo-phobic whack-a-mole in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and ponder space, loss and buttons in Still There.

Campo Santo’s Valley of the Gods is now officially on hold as its creators move onto other projects at Valve.
But not everyone had a wheelie desk to wheel away, as Duncan Fyfe’s plangent tweets make plain.
Death Stranding’s landscape is not the product of Avalanche’s proprietary engine – but of Guerilla Game’s proprietary Decima engine!
Gradually stab a Russian man in the leg with screwdrivers in the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Grim stuff!
No bang with the podge man, though.
John Walker’s new website is called Buried Treasure! I probably should have said that out loud on the podcast. Anyway. It’s nice!
Still There: sad man in space simulator / point & click.
Nice man telling you about wine and pigs: Sam Neill.
Disco Elysium is still great. I shouldn’t have save-scummed. I should have plunged screaming into the unfolding shambles man tragedy.
Is Jack Ryan bad? It’s probably bad.
Rainbow Six Siege is great, but we yearn for the breach-‘n’-clear co-ops of Clancy games of yore.
You can play Halo Reach on PC!
Terrifyingly good sound design in The Hunt: Showdown.
Scary Norse game Apsulov: End of Gods.
Tim Hutching’s LARP A Crow Funeral
Jason Rohrer‘s GDC talk from 2018: “2014 vs. 2018: The Shape of Financial Success Before and After the Indiepocalypse”
Tom’s review of Star Wars: Bog Standard Jedi.
Homer Simpson’s rendition of Born Under a Bad Sign. A classic.

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 304: Zero Dark Flirty Nov 30, 2019

Show notes

Alex, Chris and Marsh take on the Pied Poper in A Plague Tale: Innocence, pootle across the Sea of Thieves, burp their way through Sigma Theory: Global Cold War and leave a faint but distinctly colonic whiff of Dota in their wake.

BUY BUY BUY
And people did – specifically they went and bought all the Valve VR goggles. Bought ’em right up.
Throw rats at popes in A Plague Tale: Innocence. Top tier charnel house tunnel effluent. 7/10.
“Settlers with zombies” is the elevator pitch for They Are Billions but perhaps it’s just not a very big elevator.
Frostpunk gives its city-building game a big final purpose much more successfully.
Spy management game Sigma Theory: Global Cold War – really neat premise, maybe let down by spreading its sim too thin.
Hello, I would like a one-way ticket to Hornengrad, please.
A point of comparison regarding the empowerment that comes from a learning curve: Unity of Command II
Powerful ass news in Death Stranding.
Co-op pirate game Sea of Thieves has got different ropes, it’s got bailing and analogue collaborative treasure-hunting. What more do you want? To not be on the terrible Windows Store. That’s what I want.
Dota: Underlords – it’s sure got a lot of stuff in it.
Dragon Age: Origins also had a lot of stuff in it. Here’s an email I sent at the time I reviewed it: “Dragon Age is not nearly the worst game I’ve played, but it’s certainly the game that I have liked least that I have played longest.”
Dota 2 is allegedly a game of some sort. Ridiculous! Never heard of it!
Sin Vega‘s excellent Eliza review. “We’ve all known a man we pitied but couldn’t trust.” Youch. Also mentioned: Nate Crowley, Nic Reuben, Alice O’Connor, Cass Marshal, Jason Schrier.
The heartbreaking parrot may in fact be Alex, the subject of a thirty-year experiment.
You can’t fuck Vangelis. Sorry, it’s just a fact.
If you are a bee, please get in touch with your taxonomies.
Here’s the German documentary about “silver gamers” and a link to the team itself.

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 303: The Liquid Beard Conundrum Nov 22, 2019

Show notes

Tom, Chris, Alex and Marsh rejoice in the return of Half-Life, coo at the UI of Unity of Command II, marvel at the muddle of Death Stranding and spark up our Good Hot Swords in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

This episode is brought to you in association with The People’s Lidl Rum David Bowie Orchestra.

Half-Life: Alyx! HOLY SHIT!
Half-Life 2 was released in 2004, as Alex said. What a wise and ancient creature he is.
Tom F has actually playtested Half-Life: Alyx and somehow didn’t tell anybody in an act of superhuman discretion.
Geoff Keighley’s interview with some of the Half-Life: Alyx team! Robin Walker’s beard is nice, isn’t it? Velvety.
Incredibly clean-looking, supply-line-focused strategy game Unity of Command II. The UI is the bees knees.
It was designed by Tomislav Uzelac – who is not Polish but Croation. He did make AMP though! Blimey!
Unpicking Kojima’s wank dream, Death Stranding: camp from a different dimension.
It’s not actually a very spoilery talk – but Tom does pick up on some big themes that are probably improved if the delivery of them is unknown to the player. If you want to skip it, we start talking more generally about the game at 43:47
The Mandalorian: a bold return to the aesthetic of the western or samurai movie for an internet-telly show in which BEEP is BEEP.
Ad Astra was directed by James Gray.
Other films we mention that I can’t be bothered to link: Chris Nolan’s The Dark Knight and Dunkirk, Michael Mann’s Heat.
Middle-distanceman Broodman Sad-Dad, Mark Rylance is a fabulous actor. He was very sad about plague and Henry VIII’s roving peen in Wolf Hall and did a lot of melancholic rumination. The book is absooooluuuutely aaaamaaaazing, with one of the most richly drawn protagonists committed to paper.
Get this man a full bowl of M&M’s and clean hair.
Much chat there is about Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. I know I gripe a lot, but I like it. I mean, it might not have the optimal wookie-tech but its Good Hot Sword makes it a great 6/10.
FINE. It’s a 7.
Or an 8. But you can keep the fuckin’ ponchos, alright?
Cosmic treasure Werner Herzog.
Why are we talking about birds now? Why is any of this happening?
Garth Merenghi’s Dark Place is v good and I miss it.
Oh christ, please end.

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 302: Steve Algorithm Does It Again Nov 15, 2019

Show notes

Alex, Chris and Marsh provide only the most deletable content as they marvel at the obscene indulgence of Death Stranding, tumble through infinity in Manifold Garden and test the limits of dark ecstasy in Lust From Beyond: Prologue.

Don’t open with the genital shoggoth.

Brian David Gilbert has made a Hideo Kojima name generator. That’s a generator that creates names of the kind that Hideo Kojima gives his characters, not a one that creates Hideo Kojima’s own name – that’s just Hideo Kojima, you big silly dingdong!
Please enjoy falling over hillocks as Deadstrandman America Bridgesman in Hideo Kojima’s Hideo Kojima game, Death Stranding, a metaphor for Iceland and Twitter by Hideo Kojima and, evidently, mostly for Hideo Kojima, too.
Wow there’s more poo discussion in this episode than I remembered. Sorry everyone.
Actually, not sorry at all. Here’s a pictoral guide to poo that I drew years ago, an awful gift from me to you, Show Notes Reader.
The Ladder Scene from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
Maclunkey!
Manifold Garden, a post-Witness puzzler set inside a massive fractal cheese dream.
Plunge into the slick, gaping orifice of Lust From Beyond: Prologue, a slightly naff horror game with explicit NPC orgies.
It’s inspired by the art of H R Geiger and Zdzisław Beksiński.
Tag ur fractured self in Disco Elysium.
Can YOU tolerate Apelegs’ bad eggs?
Pip will dismantle everything you hold dear in the Star Wars: Rebellion boardgame.
Dev tip: like all pod-nonsense, if you repeat the words “Tactical Breach Wizards” in front of a mirror three times, it becomes a real game. This is how all games are born.
Braid is a puzzle platformer and also a paean to self-absorbed sad boys.
Untitled Goose Game is a game about being a horrible goose and also a paean to being horrible goose.
The Talos Principle is a game about lasers and existential questions.
Chris made a compass for charting the varied, but uniformly regrettable, kinds of game journalist.

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 301: Good Talkie Bad Walkie Nov 01, 2019

Show notes

Marsh is joined by artist John Roberts to sleuth through Jenny LeClue: Detectivu, unpick the mysteries of Tangle Tower and expose deceptions in Telling Lies. Also: class war and Photoshop brushes.

Fallout 1st is undergoing a proletariat revolution.
EA’s stuff is back on Steam now. Cool?
The Steam Library has been revamped. Hm.
Detectiving and choosiness abounds in Jenny LeClue: Detectivu.
Tangle Tower – a follow-up to Detective Grimoire by SFB Games.
Also, not mentioned in the pod, but the excellent character designs are by Catherine Unger.
Telling Lies – a follow-up to Sam Barlow’s Her Story.
Chris Morris’s new film is The Day Shall Come
This American Life had an episode which Morris used as partial inspiration for his film.
John just isn’t thrilled by The Outer Worlds.
Netflix has a new trailer for The Witcher TV series and, yes, it has a bathtub in it.
Hope’s article on Hideo Kojima and Andy Warhol.
John Ruskin, notable art critic, powerful mutton chop energy.
Games for ailing PCs: Into The Breach, Slay The Spire, Six Ages and ye olde PC games like Baldur’s Gate and the early Fallouts.
Goblin Punch. I don’t really understand what this is, but there’s a lot of it. Someone’s thought about goblins a lot.
Too Like The Lightning is the sci-fi novel that our listener thinks Chris will like. Maybe you will, too?
Here’s that Genesys Mass Effect Mod.
Big Robot’s game The Signal from Tolva has some cool lore for roleplaying.
Paul Scott Canavan – awesome artist, fine purveyor of brushes.

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 300: Frightened Of The Ur-Teen Oct 25, 2019

Show notes

Marsh, Alex, Chris, both Toms and (occasionally Pip) assemble for the dawn of the podcast’s third century. Featuring Outer Worlds, more Disco Elysium, Radio Commander, Teamfight Tactics and more.

Plus: the rise of Norman Buffus, British Public Transport Elysium, an extremely long conversation about pants, books, the cursed Beeb, and some vital Tom Francis news.

Does nobody else have a house hat?

Hideo Kojima’s best friend Conan O’Brien is here, and you’re an otter now.
Alex’s BBC Radio 4 bit can be listened to here, starting at around 28:20. Here is the studio, laden with Objects of Power.
Tom S delivers his most medium take yet on The Outer Worlds.
We’re all still having them big thoughts about Disco Elysium.
Alex has been dabbling with Radio Commander.
Pip looks ahead with trepidation to Teamfight Tactics’ Rise of the Elements update.
Favourite books!

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
Dune by Frank Herbert
Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Beloved by Toni Morrison

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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