The Crate and Crowbar

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Episode 393: The Horse Bows to No Master Feb 25, 2022

Show notes

Chris and Marsh define irrelevance by recording a podcast hours before the release of the biggest game of the year so far, and instead discuss Destiny 2’s Witch Queen expansion, brutalist physics puzzler ABRISS, Total War: Warhammer 3, how much whomp you can put in a bog, and more.

Destiny 2‘s shaggy dog story about a ball and the horse that loved him (or does he?) finds its apogee in the latest expansion: The Witch Queen.
ABRISS, a physics-based puzzler about disassembling buildings entirely made out of greebles.
Total War: Warhammer 3‘s battles aren’t the most articulate, but give us a wibble-snoot and all is forgiven.

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.

Castlevania: A Lock-in at the Crate and Crowbar Feb 18, 2022

Show notes

Jamie and Alex take a trip up the castellated spires and lethal staircases of the Castlevania series. We cover both the bonkers camp of the Symphony Of The Night-likes, and also the lethal twitching of the 8 & 16 bit games on Old Nintendos. Yes in that order, as this is a very personal and deeply non-definitive take on the series as experienced by British lads who came very, very late to the party. Learn the difference between house music and techno. Find out where Jamie had his GBA stolen and what it had to do with his parents divorce, and then take a long ride to Epping with Alex, perhaps never to return.

Games Discussed:
Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin
Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night
Castlevania
Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest
Castlevania 3
Super Castlevania 4
Castlevania: Rondo Of Blood
Exit Music: I Am The Wind from The Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night, feat Kenny Gee (not really).

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 392: Floating Knife Guy, I Like Him! Feb 11, 2022

Show notes

Tom S and Marsh discuss the underwhelming goon-kicking reward loop of Dying Light 2, the high-calibre clobbering but confusing structure of Sifu, and the many ways of being stuck in Expeditions: Rome.

Dying Light 2: Staaaaaay Human is an expansive parkour game with comically wonko interpersonal drama and surprisingly crap combat.
Hybrid tactics/strategy RPG Expeditions: Rome is many games in one, and some are good!
Not actually going to link the studio’s new endeavour, because blockchain is for chumps.
Kung-fu roguelike Sifu brilliantly captures the choreographed man-punching of martial arts movies. More will be said upon this matter in due course!
If you want to be reminded why the past is bad and should be left alone: Bloodborne PSX is a supremely impressive attempt to recreate Bloodborne within the limitations of old hardware that also make it extraordinarily annoying to experience.

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.

The Matrix and its Sequels: A Lock-In at the Crate and Crowbar Feb 04, 2022

Show notes

Jamie, Graham and Chris get lost in the desert of the real for three and half hours. Join them as they discuss the several Matrices, velcro, dads, bad squids, comedy French Dracula bastards, whether Geoff Keighley is real, whether films themselves exist, the “vocabulary of power”, the emotional logistics of sofas, 5D aeroplanes – and more! For three and half hours! I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it.

Spoiler warning: the gang talk about the plot points of the first three films pretty liberally from the outset, but somehow don’t get into Matrix Resurrections until 1 hour, 8 minutes and 40 seconds in. The show-notes below also contain spoilers.
Content warning: discussion of the films’ imagery relating to suicide
The Matrices are, in order:
The Matrix
The Matrix Reloaded
The Matrix Revolutions
The Matrix Resurrections
Side projects of note:
The videogames, Enter the Matrix, Path of Neo, The Matrix Online
The animation, The Animatrix
The Matrix films were conceived and directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowskis, with the exception of the fourth film, for which Lilly did not return, and was co-written by David Mitchell and Aleksander Hemon. Screenwriter Zak Penn (mentioned on the podcast for producing the screenplay for Warner Bros that would eventually lead Lana Wachowski to grudgingly return to the franchise) is not credited as a writer on the final script.
Important casting for the first three films:
Keanu Reeves as Neo / Thomas Anderson
Carrie-Ann Moss as Trinity
Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus
Jada Pinkett Smith as Niobe
Joe Pantoliano as Cypher
Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith
Lambert Wilson as The Merovingian, aka “comedy French Dracula bastard”
Monica Bellucci as Persephone
Harry Lennix as Commander Lock, aka “Captain Grumpy”
Important casting in The Matrix Resurrections that might count as SPOILERS:
Jonathan Groff as Agent Smith
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Morpheus and sorta also Agent Smith
Jessica Henwick as Bugs
Neil Patrick Harris as The Analyst
Priyanka Chopra Jonas as Sati
Some other things that get namechecked:
Skins – Jamie wrote it! It was very good
Kiss Me First
Last of the Summer Wine
Definitely real human man Geoff Keighley
Carrie-Ann Moss is great as a ruthless lawyer in Jessica Jones
Keanu returns to another iconic Keanu role in Bill and Ted Face the Music
Keanu is also good in Cyberpunk 2077
The Last Jedi trod a similarly controversial line regarding fan expectation. It’s one of those Star Wars films, if you’ve heard of them
Bound: what the Wachowski’s did first. It’s a horny-as-hell crime film!
Spider-Man: Far From Home is an interesting parallel for the introspection and nostalgia of Resurrections
Leap of faiths are a significant motif lifted from Open Your Eyes, later remade as Vanilla Sky
Sense8, the Wachowski’s Netflix sci-fi series about pansexual kung-fu psychics

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 391: You Can’t Jostle the Ghost Clump Jan 28, 2022

Show notes

Graham, Alex and Marsh revel in the dopamine hit of spook-’em-shmup, Vampire Survivors, grumble about Halo Infinite, cultivate occult vegetables in Strange Horticulture and use children as ammunition in Fuga: Melodies of Steel.

Starting out strong, it’s Robotron with Ghosts and Upgrades, aka, Vampire Survivors. And why not? Also playable in your browser.
There may actually too much Halo: Infinite. If only they could have warned us somehow – say, in the title.
Confoundingly unmysterious plant puzzler Strange Horticulture
Namechecked: recent mystery games with young buff versions of famous detectives: Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One and the badly titled Agatha Christie – Hercule Poirot: The First Cases which, according to this dev diary has invented a new moustache.
Tank tactics trapped in an insipid anime about dog nazis: it’s the also-terribly-titled Fuga: Melodies of Steel, which is part of the “Little Tail Bronx” series, of which there are four, including Solatorobo: Red The Hunter on Nintendo DS. Thanks, Wikipedia.
That’s it! No more mediocrity for you until you finish your plate!

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 390: Premonitions of an Aftertaste Jan 21, 2022

Show notes

Chris, Alex and Marsh are inconvenienced, entertainingly, by Monster Hunter Rise, marvel at Spider-Man’s well-considered nodes, sniff in trepidation at Book of Travels, and bop skeletons in VR weapon-waggler Legendary Tales.

Hear us shiver and quack our opinions about the Microsoft buyout of Activision Blizzard in this seamlessly integrated addendum to the main pod.
Nathan Brown’s newsletter does good industry analysis.
Packed full of bullshit: it’s Monster Hunter Rise, a game where things go up and things go down.
Peter Parker teaches us about Norman forts, somehow, in Spider-Man Remastered (part of the Miles Morales Ultimate Edition bundle).
Please play Sunshine Heavy Industries, a spaceship-building optimisation challenge that is very jolly indeed.
Mysterious to the point of unintelligible sort-of-MMO, Book of Travels sure be pretty.
The best skellie-bopping to be had in Sweatyman Gogglevision: Legendary Tales.

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.

James Bond 2006-2021: A Lock-In at the Crate and Crowbar Jan 14, 2022

Show notes

Tom S and Marsh don a tux, down a martini and inexplicably detonate a telescope array as they look back at Daniel Craig’s 15 years in the role of James Bond. Does the blue-eyed man-slab manage to escape the deadly traps laid by the series’ own outdated idiom? Which of the films would they happily consign to a shark tank? And what would they do if they were in charge of 007?

Expect spoilers throughout! We synopsise the films before discussing them, so if you haven’t seen them in a while, this may be enough to jog your memory.

Alan Moore’s brilliant comic The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen has an especially excoriating version of James Bond as an amoral agent of the state.
Casino Royale (2006)
Directed by Martin Campbell (Edge of Darkness, Edge of Darkness 2010, GoldenEye)
Screenplay by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (Plunkett & Macleane, The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day, Johnny English & credits on all Craig-era Bonds) and Paul Haggis (Crash as director, Million Dollar Baby as writer
Letters from Iwo Jima as writer, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 as co-writer!)
Starring Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Jeffrey Wright, Judi Dench,
Cinematography by Phil Méheux (The Long Good Friday, Edge of Darkness 2010, GoldenEye)
Edited by Stuart Baird (Lethal Weapon, Demolition Man, Edge of Darkness 2010)
Quantum of Solace (2008)
Directed by Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland, World War Z)
Written by Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade
Starring Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Giancarlo Giannini, Jeffrey Wright, Judi Dench
Cinematography by Roberto Schaefer (Best in Show, Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland)
Edited by Matt Chesse (Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland), Richard Pearson (The Bourne Supremacy, United 93, Iron Man 2)
Skyfall (2012)
Directed by Sam Mendes (lots of theatre, lots of TV Shakespeare, American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Jarhead, Revolutionary Road, 1917)
Written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, John Logan (Any Given Sunday, Gladiator, The Aviator, Hugo)
Starring Daniel Craig, Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Bérénice Marlohe, Albert Finney, Judi Dench
Cinematography by Roger Deakins (Coen brothers films, Shawshank Redemption, Sam Mendes films)
Edited by Stuart Baird, Kate Baird
Gangs of London, and specifically episode 5, does the Home-Alone-with-guns-in-a-dilapidated-rural-mansion thing even better
Line of Duty is a twisty British drama about an anti-corruption unit which may be total bollocks but sounds dead clever, or at least very confusing.
Spectre (2015)
Directed by Sam Mendes
Screenplay by John Logan, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Jez Butterworth (theatre: Jerusalem, Edge of Tomorrow, Ford v Ferrari, Untitled fifth Indiana Jones film)
Story by John Logan, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade
Starring Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Léa Seydoux, Andrew Scott, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Dave Bautista, Monica Bellucci, Ralph Fiennes
Cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema (Let the Right One In, The Fighter, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Interstellar, Dunkirk, Ad Astra, Tenet)
Edited by Lee Smith (Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Batman Begins and the majority of subsequent Nolan films, The Way Back, 1917)
No Time to Die (2021)
Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga (Sin nombre, Jane Eyre, Beasts of No Nation, It as writer, True Detective Season 1)
Screenplay by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Cary Joji Fukunaga, Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag, Killing Eve, Untitled fifth Indiana Jones film)
Story by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Cary Joji Fukunaga
Starring Daniel Craig, Rami Malek, Léa Seydoux, Lashana Lynch, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Jeffrey Wright, Christoph Waltz, Ralph Fiennes
Cinematography by Linus Sandgren (American Hustle, Joy, La La Land, First Man)
Edited by Elliot Graham (Steve Jobs, Molly’s Game, Captain Marvel), Tom Cross (Whiplash, Joy, La La Land, First Man)
Don Draper is a character in Mad Men, and a suave douchebag who slowly becomes a hollowed-out, despicable wreck across the course of the show.
Walter White is a character in Breaking Bad, and a hapless, somewhat downtrodden everyman who becomes a monstrous, amoral terror across the course of the show.
Vince Gilligan is the showrunner for Breaking Bad.
Utopia is a weird 2013-14 British TV series dealing in surreal conspiracy and ghastly hyperviolence. Great theme-tune, too!
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a John le Carre spy novel set in the 1970s and adapted multiple times for film and TV.

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 389: Jumping Through The Bubble Jan 07, 2022

Show notes

Marsh and Graham come together to drop children into lava in New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, destroy buildings in Teardown Part Two, infect entire populations in WorldBox, and for a change of pace, construct some lovely spaceships in Sunshine Heavy Industries. Also discussed: the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, Community, and why you should never go back to anything.

Voting begins today for the Crate & Crowbar community’s Game Of The Year awards. If you’d like to join in, you can visit the happy microsite, built by lovely community member Kane.
We like The Back Page podcast, by friends Matthew Castle and Samuel Roberts, and reference their recent episode on Lord Of The Rings games. Do the LOTR films hold up? Does anything?
New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe on Nintendo Switch has helped Graham turn his son into a gamer boy. He regrets dropping him in lava.
Halo Infinite goes a bit binfinite in its last third, says Marsh.
Teardown‘s “Part Two” update rounds off the campaign for the smash-and-grab ’em up, but mostly by adding novelty-led levels and messy robots that fail to satisfy like the initial heists.
Sunshine Heavy Industries is spaceship building game and the opposite of Hardspace: Shipbreaker.
WorldBox is a god game without objectives, where you’re given bundle of toys with which to help or hurt (and infect) tiny pixel people.

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 388: Exponential Dog Management Dec 17, 2021

Show notes

Alex, Tom F and Chris present Our Caveats About The Games of the Year. Among the games at least partially endorsed are: The Ascent, Chicory, Valheim, Hitman III, Deathloop, Metroid Dread, Halo Infinite, Life is Strange: True Colors and Chivalry 2. Happy holidays, and see you in 2022!

This is a pod about the games that came out in 2021 – so let’s start with the games that didn’t come out in 2021 that we played anyway!
Tom’s been anaesthetising himself with Slay the Spire, and socialising Graham with Supreme Commander
Alex’s has continued to fiddle with his MiSTer. He’s insatiable. You’d think getting a dog would have helped.
Chris played Cyberpunk 2077 and is thankful for the absence of Huge Beams.
Now moving logically on to the games of the year of someone not even on the podcast. The Ascent – a play-above-you game where you are a little-man-run-and-jump. Tom S likes it, but not that much. GOTY!
Tom F, the Present Tom, liked Chicory (from the makers of Wandersong) – a wholesome game about a dog who paints the world, and which touches on darker subjects of self-worth and depression.
Greg Lobanov is Chicory’s designer and Alexis is the artist and animator. Talented folks.
Open-world survival building game, Valheim came out this year, somehow, and was briefly and intensely enjoyed by Chris and Alex.
Hitman III, the boringly good, hugely generous assassination sandbox beloved of Masters of Stealth: Tom F and Chris.
Chris enjoyed the action spectacle of Deathloop as much as the acrobatic stabby delights of any Arcane game. Tom F not so much, but was still obsessed with it for a time!
Normal game coming out the normal way: Alex says Metroid Dread feels great in motion but a little incoherent in its geography and brutalising boss-battles.
Plomking past the ick, Halo Infinite inherits the robust combat mechanics of past Halo games and adds a grappling hook, bananas for marines and ice-cream for dinner. Everyone likes it.
Beautiful mood-piece, Life is Strange: True Colors is a game about sensing people’s pain and healing them. Tom F makes it sound dead good.
The simple pleasures of medieval ultraviolence are captured well in the exuberantly silly Chivalry 2. Chris like to be yelling-man-fall-in-hole.
Honourable mentions: Demon’s Souls, Guardians of the Galaxy, Psychonauts 2, Rift Wizard, Olija, Ynglet, Slipways, Far Cry 6, Subnautica: Below Zero, The Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye DLC, Griftlands, Inscryption, Resident Evil: Village, Splitgate, Forza Horizon 5, Super Auto Pets.
And that.
And that?

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 387: Brutal Cup Of Tea Dec 10, 2021

Show notes

Welcome to the Alex And Tom Experience, in which Tom slides across the visually gorgeous but mechanically sparse Solar Ash and Alex descends into the visually sparse but mechanically delightful Dungeon Encounters. Also discussed: Returnal, Demon’s Souls, Radiohead and The Matrix.

Radiohead’s Kid A Mnesia virtual museum/experience is neat, but also covered in QR codes that link to the band’s merch store.
The Matrix is also getting an “experience” which is going to change all of gaming.
Whatever it is, hopefully it’s better than the ambitious but naff Enter The Matrix. Alex can’t dig out the article he referenced on its development being a car crash, however.
Solar Ash, from the creators of Hyper Light Drifter, is gorgeous but frustrating and empty.
Dungeon Encounters is visually sparse but cleverly designed and brilliant to play. Here is a referenced interview with its smart creators, Hiroyuki Ito and Hiroaki Kato.
Alex and Tom both got PlayStation 5s. Tom has been playing Housemarque’s roguelike shooter Returnal, and dreading the return the starting pistol after each death.
Both have also been admiring the lovely flagstones in the Demon’s Souls remake.

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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