A group of friends who work in the games industry meet up once a week to talk about PC games over a drink. “Off-the-cuff” is a polite way to say “unprofessional”, right?
Tom S, Jamie and Marsh gather, like a drift of dead leaves, to discuss some seasonally spooky games: Alan Wake 2 and Mouthwashing. Also mentioned: Arco and Grunn.
Painshill Park. The crystal grotto is closed on Mondays.
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 via the Questions sub-channel on our Discord or email it to questions@crateandcrowbar.com. 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 437: Orb, Orb Never Changes
Sep 28, 2024
Marsh, Jamie and Chris convene to navigate the bouncy balls of Peglin, the less bouncy but surprisingly solid shooty-bangs of Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2, before failing to enjoy UFO 50 as much as they probably should.
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 look for the newly added questions forum on our discord. 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.
Jamie kindly permits Marsh to talk about Gold Teeth, the tabletop roleplaying game he’s Kickstarting, which is just an excuse to ramble at length about roleplaying games more broadly with excellent chums Jim Rossignol and Chris Lackey.
Gold Teeth! It’s a game of piracy and occult horror!
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 436: The Silence Of The Winnies
Sep 13, 2024
Chris, Jamie and Marsh return to explain where the hell they’ve been, before launching into discussions of effervescent pie-em-up comedy game Thank Goodness You’re Here, following that with some entirely unbiased discussion of glorious turn based tactics game Tactical Breach Wizards. We also discuss cosmetic etiquette in the grimdark future hellwarscape of Warhammer: Space Marine 2, as well as briefly wandering betwixt the fireboys, electro-crocs and Spidermans of Shunt: Hoedown Hunt Showdown.
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 435: The Most Liminal You Can Be Is a Flume
May 17, 2024
Jamie and Marsh reel from Microsoft’s latest layoffs, mismanage time in Hades 2, paddle in the uncanny, chlorinated waters of Pools, devour the bite-sized city-building triumphs of Against the Storm, and indulge their flaws in The Thaumaturge.
Nathan Brown’s Hit Points newsletter which I incorrectly namechecked as Bullet Points. Look, there are only so many pithy game-related analogies to go around, ok?
Hades 2, the much anticipated ARPG sequel – perhaps not ideal for the time-poor?
Destiny 2 is unintelligible at this point, but the guns still go bang.
Animal Well is a pixelart indie Metroidvania with notes of Fez and Cocoon.
Knytt and Within a Deep Forest are two excellent pixelart indie Metroidvania’s from yesteryear. You can find them in Nifflas’s archive here.
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 434: Epilogue Blowin’ In
May 10, 2024
Jamie and Alex show their cards in deck-builders Balatro and Cobalt Core (poker- and space-flavoured respectively), before descending into the chaotic, cavernous depths of Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor and finally wrangling Dead Red Redemption 2 into completion.
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 433: In the Right Lighting, That’s Chaucer, Baby
Mar 01, 2024
Chris and Marsh discuss disappointing children’s entertainment, disappointing sales figures, anti-mnemonic naming choices, the rulebreaking delight of card game Balatro, the dishonourable cheeses of Honor Mode in Baldur’s Gate 3, and return once more to Night Country.
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.
Fargo Vs. True Detective – A Lock-in at the Crate and Crowbar
Feb 25, 2024
Jamie and Marsh discuss the latest seasons of Fargo and True Detective, two anthology shows about troubling crimes and the yet more troubled cops who investigate them.
Fargo was originally a film by the Coen Brothers, and was adapted to TV by Noah Hawley, who is also known for the show Legion.
Also mentioned: Happy Valley, a superb crime show of a similar form, set in Yorkshire.
The first season of True Detective was written by Nic Pizzolatto and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga. The latest is written and directed by Issa López.
Fargo Season 5 cast: Juno Temple – Dot Richa Moorjani – Indira Olmstead Jennifer Jason leigh – Lorraine Lyon Jon Hamm – Roy Tillman Lamorne Morris – Witt Farr Joe Keery – Gator Sam Spruell – Ole Munch Sienna King – Scotty David Foley – Danish Graves David Rysdahl – Wayne Lyons
True Detective Season 4 cast: Jodie Foster – Liz Danvers Kali Reis – Evangeline Navarro Fiona Shaw – Rose Aguineau Finn Bennett – Peter Prior John Hawkes – Hank Prior Isabella LaBlanc – Leah Danvers Chris Eccleston – Ted Connelly
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 432: A Scathing Review of the Rosetta Stone
Feb 16, 2024
Join Jamie and Chris as they join Past Jamie for a solo pod about train-sets and low-key terror in the demo deluge of Steam Next Fest. Then they return to the present, which is also now the past, to discuss smushing bugs in the name of Super Earth in Helldivers 2.
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 431: Between a Ballsack and a Tardigrade
Jan 26, 2024
Tom F joins Marsh to make the biggest sticks in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, become the stick in Pacific island adventure Tchia, stick to walls in Jusant and stick it to space pirates in timeloop deckbuilder Cobalt Core.
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 430: The High-Dingus Scenario
Jan 12, 2024
Marsh and Chris celebrate the new year by poking the wound in our psychic gestalt. Also: are AI tools ethical? Yeah, we solve that one. 100%. Bosh. Done. Also also: space whale visual novel South Scrimshaw, team shooter The Finals, Robocop: Rogue City, mystery game This Bed We Made, Pentiment and Cocoon.
Alex’s COVID-recovery blogpost. He wouldn’t need to oxygenate his blood if he was a real man.
South Scrimshaw Part One: a sci-fi visual novel written in the style of a nature documentary about alien whales. It’s excellent!
The Finals is a very sweaty place for dinguses and a thrillingly dynamic shooter.
Robocop: Rogue City is a 6.5/10 shooter which is a huge credit to its producers.
This Bed We Made is a mystery game in which you play a cleaner in a hotel.
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 429: Sickos for Polish
Dec 22, 2023
Chris, Jamie and Marsh reminisce on the year that was, the teeth they lost, oceans they regret leaving, algorithms that have failed them and, very eventually, the games they played. Bold takes on Baldur’s Gate, Dave the Diver, Cult of the Lamb [sexy], Witchfire and Chants of Sennaar.
Games of the year we give barely more than a namecheck to: Cocoon, Destiny 2, Jedi Survivor, Vampire Survivors, Hunt: Showdown
Baldur’s Gate 3: game of the year or… game of the decade?!
Cult of the Lamb, a cartoon action roguelike soon to feature sex, by popular demand.
Dave the Diver, a multi-genre sushi experience.
Witchfire, an early access spooky shooter set in the witch era, but with more ACOG sights.
Tallboys making a game about a tall boy: Militsioner
The historical triumphs and ellisions of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey VS a short holiday to off-season Athens.
Chants of Sennaar, a terrific linguistic puzzle game.
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 428: Chaotic Evil Steamed Hams
Nov 17, 2023
Jamie and Marsh voyage into their deepest nightmare – a metatextual commentary on the subjective nature of storytelling – and shine a light on Alan Wake 2, then decide to incarcerate their dying, plaque-filled brains in the philosophical puzzle islands of The Talos Principle 2.
Lovely Mike Cook’s lovely talk at the Roguelike Celebration, encouraging people to experiment with making the very rules of games themselves procedural.
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 427: The Worst Seven Dwarves You Can Conceive
Oct 30, 2023
Tom S and Jamie don spandex and fling themselves into the uncynical optimism of Spider-Man 2, recall Tom Hardy’s come-hither Mr Tumble, return to both an up-res’d and a remade Resident Evil 4, and finish with a snifter of Super Mario Bros. Wonder.
You don’t want to find yourself in that kind of posse.
It took every fibre of maturity and decency I possess not to title this episode “The Pussy Posse”.
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 426: On a Spiritual Level, Nothing Matters
Oct 13, 2023
Tom S and Marsh switch their feet for tank tracks, and every other part of their body for bazookas, in Armored Core VI, suffer orb separation anxiety in Cocoon, enjoy to the janky return to Night City in Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, and stab through Baghdad in Assassin’s Creed: Mirage.
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 425: Real Chads ********** to Ambient Nightmares
Sep 29, 2023
Tom F, Jamie and Marsh pause time to queue up their synchronised takes on peerless piratical stealth game, Shadow Gambit, enjoy the sights of Baldur’s Gate biggest Big Town, curtly dismiss Starfield, and triumphantly reinvade Stroggos in a revamped Quake 2.
So, Unity absolutely shit the bed.
Godot and GameMaker are also available.
Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is a superb real-time-with-pause stealth game by the sadly and abruptly shuttered studio Mimimi.
Baldur’s Gate’s final act is worth waiting for, if your machine can run it now.
Starfield. Oh boy.
Quake 2’s remaster by Nightdive gives a new lease of life to an almost-classic but Machine Games’ new campaign for, Heart of the Machine, is transcendent.
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 424: Shamblesman’s Terrible Holiday
Aug 11, 2023
Tom S, Jamie and Marsh roll up to Baldur’s Gate 3, a distressingly horny roleplaying masterpiece, discover the cancel culture of The Wonderful 101, and use demons like yo-yos in Astral Chain.
Baldur’s Gate 3, a CRPG classic in the making, and one of the sluttiest games ever made
D&D roleplay podcasts: The Adventure Zone, Dungeons and Daddies, Rude Tales of Magic
The Monte Cook roleplaying game Jamie is trying to remember is Predation (though Numenera is also great!)
The Wonderful 101 is Platinum’s cartoon superhero combo brawler, touted as the spiritual sequel to Viewtiful Joe
Astral Chain is Platinum’s game about cops versus demons
Vanquish is Platinum’s slidey robot shooter
Transformers: Devastation is Platinum’s surprising foray into a true trash licence
Platinum Games also had a hand in Final Fantasy 16 and Nier Automata
Madworld was Platinum’s first game and promised a catalogue of hyperviolent Wii games that never arrived, possibly because it wasn’t very good
Bayonetta is Platinum’s masterpiece and I totally don’t get it, sorry
DmC was Ninja Theory’s take on the Devil May Cry series
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 423: He Loves to Juice a Rag
Aug 05, 2023
Chris, Tom S and Marsh immolate dogs in the fields and fields and fields of Final Fantasy 16, plunder the pseudo-Yarnhams and battle-Narnias of Remnant 2, and step into the frame of Viewfinder, but remain puzzlingly unpuzzled.
Final Fantasy 16’s coverage so far has hidden its kaijus beneath a very large bushel, and a very large Clive.
Souls-inspired shooter sequel Remnant 2 has striking Bloodbornisms and Anar Londo moments aplenty in its grab-bag of genres. Plus: a dog.
Firstperson puzzler Viewfinder’s mutable (and mute-able) world is a thrilling central conceit, but leaves its potential unjuiced.
Also referenced: Portal, Portal 2, Manifold Garden and Diablo IV.
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 422: Bottomfully Endful
Jul 21, 2023
Chris, Alex and Marsh creak, rasp and seep from their respective tombs to bewail the passing of the years on this, the 10th anniversary of the podcast. Plus: fulton fun in Mr Sun’s Hatbox, killer crocs in Hunt: Showdown, démodé dipsticks in Max Payne 3 and a terrible quiz.
Best games of the last decade?
The Outer Wilds
Slay The Spire
Hunt: Showdown
Disco Elysium
Bloodborne
Hitman
Max Payne 3: from the time when real men were bald, drunk and sad, and games were fucking full of them.
Spelunking, base-building mash-up: Mr Sun’s Hat Box
Diablo IV is very OK.
Hunt: Showdown’s new boss compels a return to the swamp that lives forever in our hearts.
Wizardry-style JRPG, Labyrinth of Galleria: The Moon Society
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 421: Pat the Yak
Jul 14, 2023
Jamie and Marsh journey into the distant past in the hopes of forging an alternate timeline where the episode’s prologue makes sense. In doing so, they ponder the dark Drakes of Uncharted 4, the deranged doubts of LA Noire and the dream dogs of Bloodborne.
Outlander references clearly do not possess the anticipated levels of cultural resonance.
Uncharted 4 is a game about being frustratingly reasonable with friends and family, admiring broaches, and mowing down bazillions of enemies in stunning locations.
LA Noire is a game about shouting unexpectedly at little old ladies, who may be lying, but are not lying in quite the right way.
Bloodborne is a game of sick delirium and celestial terror that is somehow a lovely place to go back to.
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 420: Don’t Mind My Abominable Horde of Darkness
Jun 23, 2023
Jamie, Tom S and Marsh emerge from a morass of pod-opposites to deliver belated takes on Not E3, chicken sandwiches, grimdark clicker game Diablo IV and the latest season of Chess.
Nick Cage has been turned into Dead by Daylight DLC
Assassin’s Creed: Mirage
Starfield
Citizen Sleeper 2
Star Wars: Outlaws
Baby Steps
Kunitsu-Gami: Path Of The Goddess
South of Midnight
World of Horror
Jusant
Cocoon
Oxenfree 2
Fable
Lies of P
Embracer Group are excited to close down the studios they just bought so they can refocus on milking Lord of the Rings.
And the guy Tom wishes he’d mentioned – John Bartholomew. The most chilled Chess. He sips a cup of decaff coffee, has great games, and teaches good chess
The chess photo in our Youtube thumbnail is by Dipesh Shrestha.
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 418: Lawless Sausage-Craft
May 19, 2023
Chris, Jamie and Marsh commit goblin puzzlecrimes in the high-altitude sandbox of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of a Kingdom, and exchange gems for beards in the thoroughly-explained yurts of Jedi: Survivor.
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 417: The Sweat Trajectory
May 12, 2023
Marsh and Jamie’s treason finally consigns them to Darkest Dungeon 2, where they lament what Jedi Survivor means for Marsh’s wallet, unpick The Spider of Lanka’s web of intrigue, have a cold shower in Shadows of Doubt and plunge headfirst into Thumper VR.
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 416: Puke or Bees
Apr 28, 2023
Chris and Marsh gather, along with unwelcome centipedes and a man who knows about doors, to discuss the cosy horror of fishing game Dredge, the most annoying hand of Marvel Snap and why STAR WARS Jedi: Fallen Order is crunchy like a biscuit but tastes like yoghurt.
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.
TEETH – A Roleplaying Game: A Lock-in at the Crate and Crowbar
Apr 19, 2023
Marsh is joined by game dev and writer Jim Rossignol to discuss the grotesque tabletop roleplaying game they have made together. It’s called TEETH, it’s about occult criminality in a cursed corner of 18th century England, and it’s Kickstarting right now!
We list STALKER, Hound of the Baskervilles, Buffy, Hunt: Showdown, Blackadder, League of Gentlemen and Jane Austen as being among TEETH’s influences.
Sathnam Sanghera’s revelatory Empireland informed some of the revolutionary aspects of the game.
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 415: Null and Void Dance Mat
Apr 13, 2023
In which Tom Senior and Jamie Brittain convene in the past to talk about a lot of games to be released in the next year or so, and beyond! Part 2 hopefully to be recorded soon!
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 414: Bob Never Made It To The Tournament
Feb 17, 2023
It’s a laid-back one this week as Jamie and Tom S convene to admire the gentle art of booting a panda through a wall in Tekken 7. There’s more spectacular booting to be had in DmC: Devil May Cry and the stompy Dead Space remake, but can any of this compare to the thrill of an old console whirring up a CD Rom to play a 10-second cutscene in 1997? Join us for additional nostalgia, open world discussion, sad dads in space, and more.
Hit random on the character select screen and enjoy the consistently entertaining nonsense of Tekken 7.
The IP-mangling Warner Brothers brawler we couldn’t quite recall is Multiversus.
Soul Calibur 6 is also good fun, and has lots of bonkers customisation.
We mention Street Fighter 3: Third Strike, available on PC as part of the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary package. Here’s the extraordinary Justin vs. Daigo parry sequence from Evo 2004.
Tom is still trying to get halfway good at Guilty Gear: Strive. Bring back Bedman!
Below is difficult, mysterious, and has great music.
The venerable sad dad in space tradition continues with the intriguing Deliver Us Mars.
What makes a good remake? Dead Space and Final Fantasy 7 get a mention, before we reminisce about the days when tiny cutscenes felt like an incredible reward.
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 413: Smart-Bomb Nugget Destruction
Jan 27, 2023
Separate children, Jamie and Chris, de-schism to become a single mass with opinions on lying down, class-traitor sandwich praxis, the tragic dynamics of a friendship defined by Sonic/Batman, the Steam Deck, Hi-Fi RUSH, Burnhouse Lane and Marvel Snap.
Why not pair The Sonic Movie with the lavish mediocrity of Death on the Nile? There are many reasons. So many.
X-Men: the full-fat theatre kids of Marvel.
Hi-Fi RUSH is a rhythm-action combo-brawler that has dropped out of nowhere from Evil Within developer, Tango Gameworks.
Reality TV: A Lock-in at the Crate and Crowbar
Jan 20, 2023
Tom S and Marsh climb into a big bin of telly trash and wallow in the sugary delights of nutrient-free reality TV from Big Brother through Bake-Off to The Traitors.
Episode 412: Miserable Abomination Poet Improves Any Bar
Jan 13, 2023
Jamie, Tom S and Marsh press the electric brain’s hot-take button to generate plausible opinions on proc-gen classic Dwarf Fortress, Marvel deck-builder-tactics mash-up Midnight Suns, animated medieval manuscript mystery Pentiment, and genealogical rogue-lite Rogue Legacy 2.
The triumphant Steam release of modern classic Dwarf Fortress has graphics now, and, maybe surprisingly, that really matters.
Confusing turnbased-tactics / card-game chimaera Midnight Suns might actually be a low-key dog-smashing classic.
Gotham Knights is not a low-key classic but a slightly botched DC goon-pummeler.
Pentiment is a terrific encapsulation of medieval life, art and belief, elegantly enclosed in a murder mystery, itself enclosed by a slightly unknowable interactive space.
Rogue Legacy 2 is an excellent evolution of the rogue-lite platformer where each run is enacted by successive heroic generations.
Episode 411: Geo-Specific Chicken Experience
Nov 25, 2022
Chris and Marsh wash away their Mayonnaise Sins only to commit the far worse crime of liking parts of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Also: the pokable pencils of A Little to the Left and suspicious horses in Roadwarden.
Windosill is a poke-them-nicely puzzle game from 2009 available on PC and, now, Switch.
Do we really need to link Wordle and the NYT crossword? I shall NOT!!
Roadwarden: a super-promising text-based RPG about negotiating the border between the wilderness and the settled parts of a fantasy peninsula. And palfreys.
Jamie and Marsh drive a jeep through the questionable exoticism of Uncharted: Lost Legacy and peevishly waddle about in the ambiguous middle distance of Somerville.
Matinee adventure expandalone, Uncharted: Lost Legacy, is part of the Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection (can you have a “collection” which comprises just two items?) on Steam.
Cinematic sidescroller Somerville is a tour-de-force of vibes and a brutal lesson in the importance of UX.
Inside, by contrast, is an exemplar – as well as being beautiful, horrible and mad.
The Far games are lovely tactile sidescrollers in which you maintain the working of boats.
Ep 409: Licking Praxis From The Walls Of Frome
Nov 12, 2022
Jamie and Tom Senior convene to talk Marvel Snap, God Of War, and assorted other nonsense. Listen as two increasingly old men get misty eyed about Ataris and Amigas for the very first time on the internet – doze off to the sweets sounds of a 40 year old game.
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.
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.
The State of Marvel 2022: A Lock-in at the Crate and Crowbar
Nov 04, 2022
Would-be body-doubles for Rocket Raccoon, Chris and Marsh talk through the MCU thus far, where it’s going, pop music that is also a building, multiversal eels and erotically-charged neck injuries.
Episode 408: Detective Bird-Thing and the Murder in Hell
Oct 28, 2022
Tom F and Marsh rescue a marriage with magnets in It Takes Two, accurately identify horrible verbs in The Case of the Golden Idol, fail to impress girls with our animal handling in I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, and get nostalgic about gibs in Cultic.
Episode 407: Yes! I Am The Dog-Popper!
Oct 21, 2022
Chris and Marsh galavant gleefully through the ponds of low-key collect-em-up Paradise Marsh, plunge their wounded hands into the sticky holes of firstperson horror-puzzler Scorn, and pop poxwalkers in co-op shooter Darktide.
Have a delightful time collecting cool beetles and talking to psychopathic French star-spiders in Paradise Marsh.
Have a horrible time, in a good way, mostly, in the gribbly Giger penis palaces of Scorn.
Make heads explode in Fatshark’s Left 40K Dead, Darktide.
Jamie and Marsh summon nightmarish first person arena shmup Hyper Demon, wreck noobs in hellish children’s maths game Numbots, rip and tear demons in throwback shooter Prodeus and discover exactly as much of The Evil Within 2 as their souls can bear.
Hyper Demon is a sequel of sorts to Devil Daggers, both brilliant shmups and an assault on the retina.
Numbots is a cynically gamified learning tool. Cheeky/evil!
Prodeus is a retro shooter that uses all kinds of perversely fancy tricks to ape more primitive tech.
The Evil Within 2 is a survival horror game from Shinji Mikami and at least some of it is worth playing.
Episode 405: A Morning Constitutional on Fart Planet
Sep 16, 2022
Jamie and Marsh strike from the shadows in retro stealth game Gloomwood, mount horrible dogs in No Man’s Sky, flip pixel puzzles in Taiji, enjoy courtly nudity in Crusader Kings 3 and question creepy nudity in Immortality.
Superb Early Access first-person stealth-em-up in the vein of Thief: Gloomwood
Enjoy the carefully tuned atonal honks of No Man’s Sky
Clever pixel-art puzzle-island in the style of The Witness: Taiji
Episode 404: Sticky Goop, the Safest Fireball
Sep 10, 2022
In which Tom Senior and Jamie Brittain convene to report back on their recent exploits in Multiversus, chat in an entirely spoiler free way about Immortality, jabber about, and then speculate on what divine revelations might be about to occur to Tom Senior, Cyborg Boy after his recent appointment with one of them high Bath pavements.
Sorry for the slight audio issues on this ep, Jamie was broadcasting from a very rainy conservatory, and to be honest it’s a flippin’ miracle he sounds as good as he does.
Multiversus, the free to play sensation sweeping the nation, an unexpected gem.
Tom breaking his shoulder on one of them high Bath pavements isn’t a game, but it is very funny, though of course we are mostly just relieved he is okay and back to men paintin’. Content warning though, Tom breaking his shoulder, and tripping balls in hospital.
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Marsh and Chris bestow their tepid devotions upon Last Call BBS, Cult of the Lamb, and Hard West 2. Plus: the momentary return of questions, emanating – as they ever have – from questions.
Quiverin’ Marsh has been tinkering with Zachtronics’ Last Call BBS.
…which leads us to speculate coquettishly about Alex and his MiSTer. If you’d like to tug upon your own, you can find instructions here.
Chris has collided with a fog barrier in Cult of the Lamb, a game he otherwise esteems!
Marsh has pooled his action points that he might root and toot all over Hard West 2.
True Crime: A Lock-in at the Crate and Crowbar
Aug 12, 2022
Marsh, Tom F and Graham study the evidence for and against true crime dramas and documentaries. Join us in the accusing parlour as we interrogate The Staircase (both documentary and drama), Sophie: A Murder In West Cork, The Unsolved Murder Of Beverly Lynn Smith, The Investigation and The Murders At Starved Rock. We consider the ethics of making and watching stories about real tragedies, discuss whether it’s OK to draw conclusions from true crime media, and solve justice once and for all. Spoilers throughout.
Making A Murderer popularised true crime on Netflix, though we have issues with it.
Errol Morris’s 1988 film The Thin Blue Line is a true crime documentary that served to exonerate an innocent man.
The Staircase is a French-produced documentary, originally released in 2004 and updated with new episodes in 2013 and 2018, about the trial of Michael Peterson for the murder of his wife, Kathleen Peterson. It’s now available to stream on Netflix US and UK.
The Staircase is also the name of a 2022 HBO miniseries about the same events, starring Colin Firth and Toni Collette. It’s streaming on HBO Max and Sky Atlantic.
The Investigation is a 2020 Danish drama about the murder of Kim Wall, currently streaming on HBO Max.
The Murders At Starved Rock is an HBO documentary about the 1961 murder of three women, the conviction of Chester Weger, and the unanswered questions which remain.
Episode 402: Can a Game Give You Toxoplasmosis?
Jul 29, 2022
In this Accidental Annapurna Special, Alex and Chris discuss the joy of driving big boats in FAR: Changing Tides, and the wanton nature of animal games, as reflected by the latest big animal game, Stray. You know, the cat game!
Also! News on Pip’s new game she’s doing called Flock, and Alex tells the unhappy tale of how his dog came to steal his pitta bread.
Alex might be going gently mad without his family, but at least he has his dog-friend Roddy.
Pip’s done a new game! It’s called Flock and it’s being developed by Hollow Ponds and published by Annapurna Interactive. Hey, watch the trailer, even if it has no Pip-words.
And while you’re at it, why not check all the Hollow Ponds games, which are all very different but share Big Charm.
Alex has been playing Okomotive’s latest take on the “go from left to right” genre, FAR: Changing Tides. Drive an big boat! Hoist an sail! Fire an engine!
Both Chris and Alex have been playing the cat game, Stray. But is it really a cat game?
Untitled Goose Game remains both untitled and the pinnacle of animal games.
But Outer Wilds remains the pinnacle of high-ambition, high-concept indie games.
Could it be true? That we’re sitting at the end of a decade of animal games? Nearly! Goat Simulator was first released in April 2014.
Ghost of Tsushima is a pretty and smoooooth game that is ripe for grazing.
Weird how a cat brings focus to the emerging nature of games on subscription programmes like PlayStation Plus Mega But Not Ultimate and Xbox Game Pass!!!
Because in contrast with Stray, Injustice 2 probs isn’t an ideal subscription game, unless you covet Batman gloves???
Episode 401: Urgent Things To Motorbikes
Jul 15, 2022
Join Jamie Brittain and Alex Wiltshire on the muggy spectrum, where we discuss the shrinking spaces of Elden Ring, the very Xbox 360 thrills of Geometry Wars and Halo 3, and briefly touch on the ludicrous joys of Dmc.
Also! We find out what the guy over Jamie’s back gate is up to, discover how many times Alex’s daughter has completed Breath Of The Wild, and learn why 2007 was a terrible year for Jamie’s mental health, but an excellent year for Grolsch, Lambert & Butler and overlooked sports games.
Hail satan! American video game retail titan Gamestop is getting into NFTs just in time.
Take a leaf from Michael Owen’s book, and simply make NFTS that won’t lose value.
Elden Ring, remains very good indeed, even if you forsake the Outer Git Gud and summon spuriously through the back half. The Comet Azure build is very silly, and very fun.
Is Elden Ring better than Breath Of The Wild? Quite possibly!
Red Dead Redemption 2 is a gorgeous mediation on horse testicle shrinkage, and possibly other stuff too.
Jamie calls Destiny 2 Density 2 in his head, every single time, and now you have to as well.
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved is excellent.
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 is also excellent, even if the 2 should be before the colon, not after.
Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions has the number in the right place but is otherwise considered a bit of a mess by fans, though it’s probably still dead good.
Backgammon has a doubling cube which is basically the precursor to the smartbomb in Retro Evolved in so many entirely cogent ways.
Halo 3 has them good singing monks and a sense of narrative brevity.
Crestfallen Warrior simulator Skyrim.
Rockstar Table Tennis ruined my life, but my god, it was so worth it! (Aside: it was not worth it.)
Devil May Cry: Dmc is really excellent, the right kind of bad taste.
Tabletop Roleplaying Games: A Lock-in at the Crate and Crowbar
Jul 08, 2022
Storied dungeon master Jim Rossignol joins Marsh to talk about the joy of pretending to be scoundrels, goblins and doomed spacemen, and why you should venture beyond the vast borders of Dungeons & Dragons to do so. Discussed: Blades in the Dark, Agon, Mothership, Symbaroum, Numenera, DIE & more!
Our own RPG setting and system: Teeth! We’ve released three modules so far: Night of the Hogmen, Blood Cotillion and Stranger & Stranger
The Teeth newsletter will keep you updated on our progress towards the full-setting kickstarter and also make you more attractive and powerful as a human being.
Episode 400: Tina Turner’s Tuna Turtles
Jul 01, 2022
Pip, Tom F, Chris and Marsh gather to discuss the oldest recipe, what windows are and whether objects are real. Also! Videogames: The Wild at Heart, Citizen Sleeper, Norco and Hellsinger. Also also: the return of Questions from Questions and, thrice-also, a quiz.
Mad God: A Lock-in at the Crate and Crowbar
Jun 24, 2022
Jamie and Marsh climb into their effluent splattered diving-bell and plunge into the bowels, literal and metaphorical, of Mad God, the wildly deranged, deeply harrowing stop-motion masterpiece from animation legend Phil Tippett. Bon appetit!
Mad God has been released on Shudder, a horror streaming service.
Phil Tippett’s credits include Star Wars (including the AT-AT battle on Hoth, Robocop, Tremors 2, Jurassic Park, Starship Troopers and the astonishingly silly-sounding Virus.
Potential influences or comparative works:
The films of Andrei Tarkovsky
Horrendous mud-slathered pseudo-medieval madness: Hard to be a God
Powerfully grim war film: Come and See
Bill Plimpton’s films
Beautiful documentary about catharsis and obsession: Marwencol
Jan Švankmajer’s films, Little Otik and Alice
Other references we make:
Michael Haneke’s Funny Games
Dante’s Inferno (not the videogame)
Low’s album, Double Negative
Matthew Barney’s epic Cremaster cycle is “a self-enclosed aesthetic system consisting of five feature-length films”. Well!
Other things on Shudder you can watch with a temporary sub: White Girl, The Babadook, A Field in England, Ginger Snaps, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, REC, ABCs of Death, VHS 94, Possum and… Heathers???
Episode 399: No Gribblies in the Slick Future
Jun 17, 2022
Jamie and Marsh discuss the highlights, or rather the extensive mid-range tones, of the E3 week that wasn’t, delight in Next Fest’s demos for Old Skies and Agent 64: Spies Never Die, and usher in the doom of humankind in Shadows of Forbidden Gods.
Geoff Keighley’s twitching automaton presents Summer GameFest aka Keigh-3. Enjoy it to the exact degree that Keighley permits, and no more.
Everything Everywhere All at Once: A Lock-In at the Crate and Crowbar
Jun 10, 2022
Jamie, Chris and Marsh dive into the kaleidoscopic weirdness of Everything Everywhere All at Once. Join us as we discuss it in the context of such cultural touchstones as Christopher Nolan’s Fart Clock, musical instruments designed to make children faint, and Crysis 2.
Lots of spoilers, almost from the outset, and even in the cast list below! You should see the film first.
Directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert
The cast!
Michelle Yeoh – Evelyn
Ke Huy Quan – Waymond
Stephanie Hsu – Joy / Jobu Tupaki
James Hong – Gong Gong
Jamie Lee Curtis – Deirdre Beaubeirdre
Tallie Medel – Becky Sregor
Brian Le – An Incredibly Good Sport
Randy Newman – Raccacoonie
Stuff we reference:
The Matrix Resurrections
In the Mood for Love
Christopher Nolan’s films: Tenet, The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar
Episode 398: A Serpentine Poo in the Theatre of the Mind
Jun 03, 2022
Chris and Marsh mull over videogame fictions on TV, reject the inhumanity of space capitalism in Citizen Sleeper, embrace the inhumanity of space capitalism in Dune: Spice Wars, bounce off Dracula’s digs in V Rising, and get their Sokob-on in Jelly Is Sticky.
Sony says its creating TV series based on Horizon, God of War and Gran Turismo.
Sorry that I come across as a bit of a Sammy in this section. I don’t think these will definitely be bad, I just feel we need more telly that is made primarily because it promises to be good telly in its own right rather than because it will bring in an audience from elsewhere.
“But it’s just another war!”
Master Chief’s canon misfires in the weird Halo TV series
Citizen Sleeper is a superb narrative RPG about a sad robot, trying to make a life on a shattered space station as their body fails and bounty hunters close in.
Dune: Spice Wars is a good realtime grand strategy game that necessarily but perhaps disappointingly offers a more consistent and predictable level playing field than the fiction presents.
V Rising is like an isometric bloodsucking Valheim. But perhaps it needs a Renfield to do the monkeywork?
Jelly Is Sticky is an excellent Sokoban puzzle game about different kinds of jelly and its various levels of stickiness.
Roguelikes: A Lock-in at the Crate and Crowbar
May 27, 2022
Graham, Jamie and Alex delight in being terrible at traditional roguelikes. Recklessly quaff an unidentified potion, dodge the snapping maw of an ASCII eel, and join us as we plunge into the unknown, die horribly, and rise again.
This is a pod about the more closely related descendents of Rogue! E.g…
Brogue! The Community Edition is found here and is necessary for playing the same seed that Jamie and Alex have been dying in: 27052022. Enjoy!
But this is NOT a pod about roguelite or distantly related games, even though they may carry on concepts of repetition or permadeath, e.g. Slay the Spire, Into the Breach, Hoplite or Michael Brough’s games like Cinco Paus. Sorry, those games.
Episode 397: Lethal Barry’s Super Speed Wings
May 20, 2022
Tom S is joined by Jamie and, I believe, a blackbird to chat formative gaming experiences, co-op caving in Deep Rock Galactic, oddly named leggings in Injustice 2 and the many delights of the Steam Deck.
Jamie cut his teeth on games like SpaceQuest and Monkey Island.
Defunct game mag of yesteryear: PC Zone.
It rubs the lotion Spelunky on its skin or else it gets the hose again.
The Binding of Isaac – melding compulsive roguelike session game with dark psychological themes.
Chris likes the screaming meatboys of medieval melee Mordhau.
Jamie and Tom have been playing the co-op space-dwarf bug-blaster Deep Rock Galactic, accurately pitched as “Minecraft and Left 4 Dead smashed together”.
Vermintide and Chivalry 2 are games cut from a similar blood-soaked cloth.
Hunt: Showdown is a very stressful co-op FPS about shitty cowboys and cursed swamps.
Tom has fallen off the Space Horse of Destiny 2.
Injustice 2, the DC comics beat-em-up from the makers of Mortal Kombat.
Some of Tom’s favourite fighters are found in the Guilty Gear series.
Valve’s chunky handheld: the Steam Deck!
Some games Jamie’s been playing on his Steam Deck: Darkest Dungeon, The Binding of Isaac, Noita, Jupiter Hell, Sniper Elite 4, Spelunky, Elden Ring.
The suspend function makes it easy to garrote people during your lunch-break. What a convenience!
The Batman: A Lock-in at the Crate and Crowbar
May 13, 2022
Graham, Tom S and Marsh have somehow found the time to watch, then rewatch and even discuss The Batman, the recent bladder-bursting film directed by Matt Reeves and starring Robert Pattinson.
Obviously, we spoil the film. Don’t listen or read below if you have yet to see the film and wish any of its surprises preserved.
Who’s in this film then, eh?
Robert Pattinson as The Battinson
Zoe Kravitz as Catwoman
Paul Dano as Riddler
Colin Farrel as Penguin, amazingly
Peter Saarsgard as the DA Glen Gonnasplode
John Turturro as Carmine Falcone
Jeffrey Wright as Jim Gordon
Con O’Neill as Pete 2, with his wonderfully distinct voice
Barry Keoghan as Unnamed Arkham Prisoner who is obviously the Joker
Batcomics mentioned: Frank Miller’s supermacho libertarian fantasies, and The Court of Owls.
Other Batfilms briefly discussed:
The 90s continuity courtesy of Tim Burton and then Joel Schumacher: Batman (1989), Batman Returns (1992), Batman Forever (1995), Batman & Robin (1997)
The Christopher Nolan era: Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008), The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
The Snyderverse: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), Justice League (2017), Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)
And, tangentially, if we must, Joker (2019)
David Fincher’s excellent serial killer films – Se7en and Zodiac – clearly lend a lot to both the feel and content of this film.
Episode 396: The Fisher-Price Squirt ‘N’ Dash
May 06, 2022
Tom S, Chris and Marsh gather to discuss wedding whoopsies, monkey winkies, Weird West’s wonkiness, Nobody Saves the World’s classy class combos and Bloodhunt’s world of darkness warzoné.
Congrats to Tom S and Emma! May your union be unmarked by further calamity.
Embracer Group acquire Eidos, associated studios and their IP from Square Enix for a mere $300m.
Raiders of the Lost Ark still stands up. You know what else stands up?
Severance: A Lock-in at the Crate and Crowbar
Apr 24, 2022
In which Jamie Brittain, Tom Francis and Alex Wiltshire convene to discuss the excellent Apple Plus existential workplace comedy drama Severance. All spoilers are off from the start with this one! But it’s great, so you should def watch it!
Severance is on Apple Plus
Meta employees are called ‘Metamates’, ewwww.
Escape at Dannemora is another excellent Ben Stiller helmed show.
The Outlaws is the disappointing show with Walken in Bristol.
Licorice Pizza: A Lock-in at the Crate and Crowbar
Apr 01, 2022
Jamie and Marsh enthuse about Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, Licorice Pizza – an energetic and uplifting tale of an eccentric romance set against the backdrop of 70s LA. Watch it, it’s fab.
Alana Haim’s entire actual family as Alana’s family
John Michael Higgins as Jerry
Skyler Gisondo as Lance (also seen in the excellent Righteous Gemstones)
John C Reilly as Fred Gwynne, playing Herman Munster
Harriet Sansen Harris as the talent scout
Sean Penn as Jack Holden, based on William Holden
Tom Waits as Rex Blau, based on Mark Robson
Bradley Cooper as Jon Peters, a real-life hairdresser, hollywood mogul and, apparently, maniac who wanted Superman to fight a giant spider
George Dicaprio
Benny Safdie as Joel Wachs, and one part of the Safdie Brothers – who are not, as per Adam Sandler’s tremendous acceptance speech, homeless rabbis.
Maya Rudolph has a cameo during one of the casting calls. She’s a tremendous actor who should be in more things, not necessarily shitting herself each time – but she is very good at that, as Bridesmaids attests.
Licorice Pizza draws from some of the life experience of Gary Goetzman, former child actor, waterbed salesman and co-founder of Tom Hanks’ production company.
Other films and filmmakers we mention:
PTA’s previous films: Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, Inherent Vice, The Master, Phantom Thread
Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
The Safdie brothers’ Good Time and Uncut Gems are panic attacks masquerading as films. They’re excellent. They should have both been in our Top 50 probably. Apols!
Mank is a film saturated in nostalgia and reverence for an era that is inaccessible without a lot of shared knowledge.
Wes Anderson and Edgar Wright also get name-checked for their playful cutting and framing which I find increasingly insufferable.
Tom S, Alex and Marsh graft themselves into a singular mass of thrashing limbs and return to Elden Ring’s shattered land, get lost in the knot of Tunic’s shortcuts and enjoy the drizzle of Gran Turismo 7.
Be wary of lore, in short, hole ahead: Elden Ring.
The 50 Best Films Since the Millennium: A Lock-in at the Crate and Crowbar
Mar 18, 2022
Jamie and Marsh compile a list of 50 movies, released across the last 22 years, which are dead good. Are they the deadest good? Decide for yourself! They certainly contain all manner of blood-drinking, cow-kissing, custard-selling, marmalade-making, bestiality, incest and murder.
Episode 394: A Strong Track Record of Freaky Dogs
Mar 11, 2022
Chris, Tom S and Marsh deliver the world’s very first takes that anyone has ever had about Elden Ring. Salute the skill of Bumbo, fear the knife-eagle’s fire-bollock, regret the crafting system and wonder, “Why is it always behind?”
Are show notes even necessary for this episode? Elden Ring is the new game from From Software, at least partially attributable to Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R. R. Martin. From Software also made Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls II, Dark Souls III, Bloodborne and Sekiro – games which share many hallmarks with Elden Ring. But Elden Ring’s got a horsey.
Rebecca and Brighton Rock: A Lock-in at the Crate and Crowbar
Mar 04, 2022
Jamie offers Marsh a cinematic serving suggestion: a pairing of Hitchcock’s classic 1940 adaptation of Rebecca with the 1948 version of Brighton Rock starring Richard Attenborough. Discussed: hauntings, Hell and the occult origins of beef tea.
George Sanders as Jack Favell, Rebecca’s first cousin and lover
Florence Bates as Mrs. Edythe Van Hopper, employer of the second Mrs. de Winter
Du Maurier’s novel is available for free in this typo-ridden pdf and elsewhere as scans.
The battle between producer David O. Selznick and director Alfred Hitchcock for control over the picture is described in this half-hour documentary on Youtube.
Rebecca has recently been re-adapted by Ben Wheatley, starring Lily James, Armie Hammer and Kristin Scott Thomas. It’s on Netflix. It has its moments and star turns, but the epilogue deserves to be scuttled off the Cornish coast.
Anne of Green Gables is a novel which offers a redemptive arc to an austere matronly figure.
Episode 393: The Horse Bows to No Master
Feb 25, 2022
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.
Castlevania: A Lock-in at the Crate and Crowbar
Feb 18, 2022
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).
Episode 392: Floating Knife Guy, I Like Him!
Feb 11, 2022
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 Matrix and its Sequels: A Lock-In at the Crate and Crowbar
Feb 04, 2022
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
Episode 391: You Can’t Jostle the Ghost Clump
Jan 28, 2022
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.
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!
Episode 390: Premonitions of an Aftertaste
Jan 21, 2022
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.
James Bond 2006-2021: A Lock-In at the Crate and Crowbar
Jan 14, 2022
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.
Episode 389: Jumping Through The Bubble
Jan 07, 2022
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.
Episode 388: Exponential Dog Management
Dec 17, 2021
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.
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.
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.
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.
Midnight Mass: A Lock-In at The Crate and Crowbar
Dec 03, 2021
Jamie and Chris catch the last ferry to The Crock Pot for an extended, episode by episode recap of Mike Flanagan’s big themed, warm hearted Netflix horror show, Midnight Mass. Meet Steve and find out what His Deal is, learn about the redemptive power of hats, and listen as we lengthily monologue on the efficacy of digging a hole in the face of certain death.
This is a show we both really loved, which is deeply spoilable, so we talk in spoiler free generalities first and then at 23:35 go buck wild and fling all such restraint into the fire. But if you’re even halfway interested in this show, def go and watch it first! It’s very good…
Hill House, Bly Manor, Gerald’s Game are other Mike Flanagan things.
The Turn of The Screw by Henry James and The Haunting Of Hill House are both incredible books, and foundational texts in a certain kind of rich, ambiguous, literary fiction flavoured horror.
Six Feet Under and Twin Peaks The Return gave me chills which multiplied, somewhat.
23:35 – Spoiler Wall! Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here
Music: Raccoon City PD Entrance Hall Music from Resident Evil 2.
Doom metal heroes Candlemass, are, it must be said, insanely camp.
Legion is another show Noah Linklater is very good in.
Manderlay or Dogville were those Lars Von Trier movies Jamie was trying to remember.
Ricky Gervais and James Delingpole, what a shower of twatitude. The article Shall Not Be Linked, but is easy to find should you wish to subject yourself to some terrible journalism and superb self-owning.
Sean Of The Dead: “we’re not using the Z word!”
The movie I was trying to remember was Guillermo Del Toro’s superb directorial debut ‘Cronos’, which I’m confident Flanagan has seen and is likely quoting a bit here.
True Detective series 3 really does have the greatest old age makeup I’ve even seen, used to extraordinary effect on the the already extraordinary face of Mahershala Ali
Lord Of The Flies is a book you read in school by William Golding.
Exterminate All The Brutes is brilliant, it’s on HBO Max in the US and NowTV in the UK, I can’t recommend it enough.
“Nearer, My God, to Thee” is a 19th-century Christian hymn by Sarah Flower Adams, which retells the story of Jacob’s dream. “So he came to a certain place and stayed there all night, because the sun had set. And he took one of the stones of that place and put it at his head, and he lay down in that place to sleep. Then he dreamed, and behold, a ladder was set up on the earth, and its top reached to heaven; and there the angels of God were ascending and descending on it…”
It’s most famously the song played when the Titanic went down in the actual event, and to a lesser extent, the movie. Have you heard Gavin Briars beautiful ‘Sinking Of The Titanic’? It basically imagines what would have happened if the quartet kept playing even once they were swallowed up by the ocean, and transforms the strains of the hymn into spacious, ambient, haunting joys.
Episode 386: When You’re a Rocket and You Live in a House
Nov 26, 2021
Tom S, Chris and Marsh discuss roly-poly science-mysticism in Exo One, unpick the odd decisions of Halo Infinite’s meta, get trapped in the batshit progression trench of Battlefield 2042 and become a good-time wombat in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.
Sorry again for the occasional pops on Chris’s audio. We thought we’d fixed it in the soundcheck, but it returned!
Become a ball and enjoy the thought of humanity’s legacy being ground to nothing by glaciers in Exo One.
Halo Infinite rekindles the fire of a classic, but makes a muddle of the meta.
Battlefield 2042 sounds like a mess in which fun moments can be had.
Deep Space Nine: A Lock-In at The Crate and Crowbar
Nov 19, 2021
Tom F and Marsh are joined and gently corralled by expert telly-brain Jamie Brittain to discuss the beloved Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Is it the greatest of all Treks? (Yes.) And why? And has the art that made it great been lost?
Let’s begin these show notes as the series itself does: with its iconic theme tune. Sing along everyone! Doop-a-dee-do, bee doop-a-dee. Doop-a-dee-do, be doople-oo doo be-dee. Doop-a-dee-do, bee doop-a-diiii, be doople-oo-do-do do-do be-dee.
If you want to refresh your memory in advance of this pod, the main episodes to watch are
1.1 – Emissary
1.18 – Duet
2.14 – Whispers
6.19 – In the Pale Moonlight
Other episodes are listed below in the order we mention them, alongside mini-synopses.
And here are the actors, characters and their roles, which we mention:
Avery Brooks – Capt. Benjamin Sisko – bereaved starfleet bossman and top bollocker on the station, accidentally finds himself “emissary” to some godlike beings who live in a nearby wormhole
Rene Auberjonois – Odo – shapeshifting “gel-weirdo” and head of non-Starfleet station security, of a species that is worshipped as gods by enemies of the Dominion, the enemies of the Federation
Alexander Siddig – Doctor Julian Bashir – genetically modified top doc and, briefly, lothario
Colm Meaney – Chief Miles O’Brien – head of engineering, good at darts, less so acting
Rosalind Chao – Keiko O’Brien – school teacher. Not a fan of amorous clones
Nana Visitor – Major Kira – top Bajoran on the station, former militia-member of a people who until recently were under brutal Cardassian occupation
Armin Shimerman – Quark – Ferengi barman and comedy character, somehow not awful
Terry Farrell – Lt. Cmdr. Jadzia Dax – science officer, sort of, who has a symbiote in her which carries the memories of its previous hosts
Michael Dorn – Lt. Cmdr. Worf – very un-Klingon Klingon, prune-juice enthusiast and oddly prudish sex-symbol
Tony Todd – Kurn – Worf’s brother, shamed and ostracised by Worf’s Starfleet allegiance
Tony Todd, again – Old Jake Sisko – Benjamin Sisko’s son, but old now because time
Andrew Robinson – Garak – ship tailor and slippery Cardassian spy
Marc Alaimo – Gul Dukat – former station boss under Cardassian occupation and brilliantly realised bellend
Louise Fletcher – Kai Winn Adami – Bajoran spiritual leader and power-hungry monster who oozes sanctimony
The West Wing, political drama with a similar serialised/syndicated blend and doop-a-dee-do bee doop-a-dee theme tune
6.02 – Rocks and Shoals – the gang offer medical assistance to their enemy and (shock!) get betrayed
7.21 – When it Rains – the gang discover something about Odo (among other things!) Babylon 5 – contemporary space station drama with heavy serialisation
The horrifying flying jellyfish feature in Operation: Annihilate (episode 1.29) of the original Star Trek
1.18 – Duet – a Cardassian arrives on the station with a disease he could only have contracted while
3.24 – Shakaar – Kira must talk down former fellow resistance fighters from starting a civil conflict (while O’Brien plays darts)
Episode 385: Everything Is Okay And You’re A Car
Nov 12, 2021
Alex and Chris talk a moderate amount about two games that talk a lot: Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy and its heroic banterboxes, and Forza Horizon 5 and its lovebombing festival of wheels. Also discussed: the newly announced SteamWorld, the latest Mass Effect tease, and Elden Ring.
Apologies for some stuttering on Chris’s audio track during parts of the episode.
Dune: A Lock-In at The Crate and Crowbar
Nov 05, 2021
Chris, Tom and Marsh stick their hands in the hot-take box and withdraw spicy and/or arid opinions on Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Dune, the seminal Fortnite emote. Great Whomps, Giger Babies and Very Expository Wives… this is only the beginning!
Alex and Marsh wander a cursed corner of England to shamelessly plug Marsh’s latest RPG venture, Stranger & Stranger, attempt to card-shark their way out of a cabin in Inscryption and hop, lightly, through hardcore roguelike Rift Wizard.
Every Fast & Furious Movie: A Lock-In at The Crate and Crowbar
Oct 22, 2021
Marsh and Graham perform an act of self-sacrifice and of public service, by inviting all ten Fast And The Furious movies into the Crate And Crowbar, locking the doors, and setting the building alight. Yes! We discuss the entire Fast Saga, including the Dominic Toretto ennealogy and spin-off Hobbs & Shaw.
As explained last week, this is the first in our new fortnightly series of lock-ins, in which we discuss a topic – whether game, TV show, movie, or mistake – in great detail. We categorise this episode under “mistake.”
It feels worth noting at this point that backers are currently not charged for lock-ins.
Episode 383: Charlie’s Chocolate Origins
Oct 15, 2021
Chris and Alex gather to put tshirts on an alligator in Far Cry 6 and flat caps on cat men in Splitgate. Also discussed: Chalomet, Crowe, weirs, Deathloop, and the future of the pod.
Timothy Chalomet’s Wonka origin movie is sadly just called Wonka.
Episode 382: Not Much Time For Tootling
Oct 08, 2021
Marsh, Chris and Tom S journey through the Moebius-inspired deserts of Sable, bash through the skeleton-filled dungeons of Diablo 2 Resurrected, and call for mother in the little adventures of Battlefield 2042. To close, they trade little kisses with the film adaptation of The Green Knight.
Sable is a beautiful, thoughtfully constructed adventure about the three verbs: map, climb and hoverbike.
Diablo 2 Resurrected released and is a great game, as per the original, but it could do more to explain to players why it’s fun.
Battlefield 2042 has had some open betas ahead of its November release, and it’s been teeing up cool explosions for Chris.
The Green Knight is a much-delayed adaptation of the 14th century poem starring Dev Patel.
The discussion of the film gets spoilery, but there’s a warning before diving into the muck (and other fluids).
Episode 381: Weird Acid From My Horn Sphincter
Sep 24, 2021
The traveller returns! Marsh, Alex and Tom F reunite to spin a tapestry about the swinging spider platformer Webbed, to swath the tactical satisfaction of WH40k: Battlesector in silk, and to suck the liquidised Deathloop through their mouth orifices. Also discussed: Marvel’s Midnight Suns, Tights In Fight Spaces, and Darth Maul naked in a shower.
Marvel’s Midnight Suns is a new turn-based strategy game from the designer of XCOM, but with superheroes, cards and a lot of knockback.
Fights In Tight Spaces is another turn-based game with cards, but it’s not fully out yet like we said, it’s still in early access.
Alex and Tom S gather to discuss the surprising amount of PC news to emerge from this week’s PlayStation event, before moving on to the musical weaponry of roguelikelike shmup Beat Blast and the newly portable RPG with good teleportation, Divinity: Original Sin 2. Also discussed: progress in shmup Mushihimesama, ruining games with mods, a strange cat, and Keanu Reeves’ one good face.
Episode 379: Tech LARPers vs. Cyber Pope
Sep 04, 2021
Alex, Tom S and Graham retreat from the terrible non-fungible present into the comforting embrace of the past, with the sequel to cult classic Psychonauts, the recent remaster and expansion of Quake, and the last great real-time strategy game, Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. Also discussed: a good boy, our hoarding instincts, and Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X.
Psychonauts 2 is out! It’s a fantastic world to explore, blessed with the forgettable platforming we crave.
Bethesda celebrated the 25th anniversary of Quake by announcing and releasing a remaster which makes it prettier and includes a new expansion and Quake 64.
Tom S and Chris gather to discuss the everyone-gets-an-F22 convenience apocalypse of Project Wingman, the flippy martial arts of Marvel’s Avengers: War For Wakanda, and the rise of civilization in the Civ-like Humankind. Also discussed: jackets in Cyberpunk, Among Us in Fortnite, and school plays in trouble.
Cyberpunk 2077 received a new patch which added exactly what the troubled RPG shooter needed: two new jackets. And not a lot else.
Chris has a secret love for videos of school plays going wrong, and provided good reasons why.
Episode 377: Incredible Overdesigned Cyberpunk Bong
Aug 06, 2021
Alex and Tom Senior soak in the drippings of the rich in beautiful topdown shooter The Ascent, descend further into bullet hell via several classic shmups, and relax to the heavenly harp of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Plus, discussion of Call Of Duty’s Double Agent mode, and Tom’s back on the chess.
Call Of Duty is getting an Among Us-style mode called Double Agent, in which some players will be team killers and bellends. Not sure what the mode is about, though.
The Ascent is a stunning cyberpunk RPG shooter from new British studio Neon Giant.
Alex has been persevering with Mushihimesama, the bullet hell shmup. He discussed it at greater length in episode 359.
Tom has been soothed and delighted by the pacing and harps of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD on the Switch.
Do you know anything about playing lightgun games on modern PCs? Tom wants to hear from you, as prepares to buy a Sinden lightgun. He’d probably like to hear from you if you know more about British actor Donald Sinden, too.
It’s all hands on deck – Steam Deck, that is – as Alex, Tom F and Graham gather to discuss Valve’s latest foray into hardware territory. Plus, Tom explains the comforts of roguelike deckbuilder Roguebook, and Alex uncovers the mysterious city of (people who might be turned into) gold in The Forgotten City. Also discussed: Wildermyth, Neurocracy, and why Day Of The Tentacle and point-and-click adventures are good actually.
Valve announced the Steam Deck, a handheld gaming PC that runs every game on Steam. It’s the power of a thousand owls in the palm of your hand.
Roguebook is a new roguelike deckbuilder from Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield and the developers of Faeria.
Chris and Tom S gather under the watchful eye of a seagull and discuss the car horror of Beware, the stuck-to-a-toilet horror of Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne HD Remaster, and the geometric horror of sorting rectangles in Tetris Effect. Also discussed: in what year we’d happily be trapped, our best and least liked noises, and Léa Seydoux Kart Racing.
Beware, beware, be a very wary bear driver of a car in horror sim Beware. There was a new trailer this past week which prompted Chris to play the old demo.
Episode 374: Uncomfortable About My Organs
Jun 25, 2021
Alex and Graham discuss 2D platformers… with a twist! Graham punts himself through the magnetic levels of Super Magbot while Alex swims in the inky droplets of Ynglet. Plus, lizard tummies are rubbed in Little Witch In The Woods, and Quake’s 25th anniversary is celebrated via the medium of envying Robert Yang’s talent. To finish, Graham pitches Alex a game about scooping people’s insides out.
Episode 373: Gary Barlow’s Space Crusade
Jun 19, 2021
Marsh, Tom S and Chris look back over the week of E3 announcements, from Giancarlo Esposito’s opinion of dictators, to the reveal of Peter Quiff in Guardians Of The Galaxy, to the onslaught of Left 4 Deadlikes. Also discussed: several dozen other E3 reveals, plus Tom’s new computer ennui, and Chris’s fondness for Chivalry 2.
Episode 372: A Very Feral AutoDog To You
Jun 05, 2021
There’s a logjam down the River Take and Chris and Alex join Tom F to help clear it, smashing through Monster Train, Overboard!, Slipways, Unexplored 2, Necromunda: Hired Gun, Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, Subnautica Below Zero, and Griftlands. Where the river meets the sea, Chris and Alex drown some old games they once loved.
Chris has been playing Monster Train, for you but not himself.
God hates you in Overboard!, a mystery game in which you are the murderer from the makers of 80 Days.
Slipways is a microstrategy game about constructing trade empires in space, released this week.
Unexplored 2 is a roguelike RPG that’s procedurally generated from top to bottom. Alex spoke to its developer many years ago about the design of Unexplored 1.
Chris continues his exploration of alright Warhammer games with the profoundly ’90s Necromunda: Hired Guns.
Episode 371: Tarnish This Pony’s Big Day
May 29, 2021
Chris and Graham challenge Valheim’s developers to stop over-hyping ponies, launch Far Cry 6 opinions like missiles from a Katyusha backpack, and definitively answer why people like Warhammer via the turn-based strategy of Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Storm Ground.
Valheim’s developers bought a pony. An incredible flex, but why must they call it a horse?
Valheim has also sold quite a lot of copies – 6.8 million, to be exact. Ignore that Graham said 6.2m on the pod.
Alex, Tom S and Graham walk towards the light and enter the hot, sweaty, concrete podspace. Inside they discuss strobing, IGF-nominated art game Kristallijn, the lovingly recreated concrete formwork of Control, and the tiny tug-of-war strategy of Warpips.
Episode 369: Release The Crank-Snapper
May 15, 2021
Tom S, Chris and Marsh return to the camp castle carnage of Resident Evil Village and form a merry band to rob from the rich and give to the winch in Hood: Outlaws & Legends. Plus: all the latest Branagh news in BranaghWatch.
Feel emotions about space in Mass Effect, which is back, legendarily.
Stadia’s alive and well says man definitely not collecting stimulus cheques on behalf of Stadia.
Alex, Graham and Tom S salivate over Epic v Apple goss, ponder IGF noms, wander Resident Evil Village, batter Bydos in R-Type Final 2, boggle polys in The Catacombs of Solaris Revisited and brave uwu in Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion.
Graham, Chris and Marsh scout the fractal spaces of Yedoma Globula, snoop on the neighbours in The Flower Collectors, bend extra dimensions in Portal Reloaded, abruptly retopologise in Warzone and poke a post-patch Cyberpunk.
Rear Window The Game – Or Is It? Such questions you may ask of detective game The Flower Collectors
Private Eye VR seems to have dropped off the radar. The website domain is for sale and there has been no news for about 4 years. However, the dev behind it, Slacker Games, were still making up their tax returns until this year, so they aren’t completely defunct. You can find some old trailers for the game here – though it seems to focus much more on the wheelchair-bound aspects than specifically on the observation of neighbourhood events.
Play with time, but not really at all, in standalone fan mod, Portal Reloaded.
Tom S, Alex and Marsh are generated by an algorithm to assemble words about fan-made Metroid game Prime 2D, digiperson creator Metahuman, hellish refresh Diablo II: Resurrected, weirdo retro Mr. Do! and cosmic metaphor Genesis Noir.
A new trailer for Skin Deep by Brendon Chung (aka Blendo Games). It’s systemic-y Die Hard in Space!
Tom F, Chris, Alex and Graham debate values of Cuno in Disco Elysium: The Final Cut, hit weak-spots in Boomerang X, are underwhelmed by the underworld of Paradise Lost, somehow tolerate the lore of Ghostrunner and forget the name of Trials of Fire.
There’s another one of those games that they do. This one is Oxenfree 2. The first one had a radio and you could talk over people.
Epic’s hi-fi answer to Roblox elicits the full spectrum of reaction from cynicism to ambivalence. That be Core.
Epic have also busied themselves by releasing their digi-person creator tool, Metahuman. Like a character select screen without all the tedious baggage of a game attached. Marvellous!
Please replace my face with a LOD-mesh from the cloud.
Get your spritzers ready for the Witcher 3 mod which uses AI trained on existing voice-acting to generate new lines.
Valheim: A Lock-In at The Crate and Crowbar
Apr 02, 2021
Heim! In this mini-pod, Pip and Chris have a chat about their experience of paddling their way towards Valheim’s (current) endgame. Beware! There’s an open discussion of the game’s contents, and that means potential spoilers.
On the way we discuss the myriad ‘heim crimes of Philippa Warr, the myriad ways in which Chris stands to improve as a person, and the one weird trick – vikings hate it! – that’ll get Pip killed one hundred percent of the time. Heim.
Episode 364: Sword Croutons From The Sword Soup
Apr 02, 2021
Graham and Marsh enjoy the after-hours delights of shortform curiosity-shopping experience Dépanneur Nocturne and imagine popping Sonic like a balloon in Puyo Puyo Tetris 2.
Graham offers these minor corrections to his description of The Living Mountain: it’s less than 100 pages, not a little over 200, and it was written in the ’40s and then published in the ’70s. Here’s an article he wrote about it back in 2014!
Episode 363: The Most Corrupt Dog Names Known To Man
Mar 26, 2021
Tom S and Marsh face ghosts and goats in idiosyncratic alpine horror game Mundaun, smash demons apart like satanic pinatas in Doom Eternal, take a swing at Mortal Kombat 11 and murder murders in the latest Hunt: Showdown event.
Sign-up to our newsletter, which will keep you abreast of forthcoming one-shots, as well as Teeth, the larger setting we are building up to, and contain other musings on the world of roleplaying.
This was revealed too late to influence our discussion, but, actually, I do rather wish I could own Kim Kitsuragi’s orange pilot jacket, albeit with the impossible prerequisite that I’d look good in it.
Episode 362: The Carrot-Shaped Hole In My Life
Mar 19, 2021
Tom F, Alex and Graham brawl through dungeons in Curse of the Dead Gods, use vegetables as truncheons in Bloodroots, scavenge for luncheons in Windbound and Valheim, and destroy dry stone walls without compunction in Forza Horizon 4.
Stylish and impactful dungeon brawler, Curse of the Dead Gods – but its curse management innovation feels a bit gunky.
Top-down one-hit-kill massacre featuring a beardy woodsman, Bloodroots. They should have called it Lumberjerk.
Gorgeous island-hopping survival game Windbound. Great mantling.
Crafty Viking game du jour: Valheim. Polished and smooth!
Tom S, Graham and Marsh put on their luckiest killing slippers and put the shoe into JRPGs Dragon Quest XI and Bravely Default 2. Plus, recursive first-person puzzler Maquette, the valblue of subs, and a sorry end in the football cul-de-sac.
First person puzzler where things are big and small and you are in them and outside of them: Maquette.
First person puzzler where things can big and small depending on your perspective and it turns out there’s nothing terribly interesting about this: Superliminal
First person puzzler where the world repeats infinitely and this is continuously wondrous: Manifold Garden
Alex, Tom F, Chris and Marsh colonise the skies in Airborne Kingdom, recolonise the lands of Loop Hero, overheat colonists in Terraforming Mars and perforate colons in brutal duelling sim Hellish Quart. Also the soviet miserablism of HROT. Kiss kiss!
Doomed libertarian expedition, Artifact, has finally eaten the last of its own shoes and will now go lie down in the snow forever.
Space wizard dress-up asset grind, Destiny 2, has had one of its modes nuked because of ingenious match-fixing.
Chess game with only two choices per move: Lazy Chess.
Episode 359: The Least Nourishing Bant
Feb 26, 2021
Alex, Tom S and Graham push right in the wordless storyworld of Voyage, bash chitin in the bullet hell of Mushihimesama and gush over affectionate genre-hopping satire Lair of the Clockwork God.
If you feel you’ve been harmed by the discussion of pizza in this podcast, please contact our Culinary Crime Office on 1800-DONT-AT-ME.
Episode 358: A Messy Appendage That Can’t Ever Satisfy Itself
Feb 19, 2021
Both Toms, Graham and Marsh defy death in timeloop horror House, deal death in globetrotting trilogy Hitman, dodge death in smart shmup Bezier and become death in Death Crown. Also: streamlined space strat Slipways and the joy of City Guesser.
Episode 357: A Trite, Shapeless Opinion Of Indeterminate Size
Feb 12, 2021
Chris, Alex and Marsh boot up modern games made for ye olde machines (Micro Mages, Nox Archaist and Tanglewood), put the boot into baddies in Shady Knight, woodchip birdies in Journey to the Savage Planet and chop wood in Nordic survival hit Valheim.
Marty O’Donnell primes his Plangent Hero Horn for the return of Six Days in Fallujah.
Episode 356: Maggots, Leggings, Wizards… Diablo!
Feb 05, 2021
Graham, Tom S, Alex and Chris numb themselves with Hexceed and Dungeon & Puzzles; inexplicably return to Syberia; defy the predictions of Gods Will Fall; hop, skip and jump through Olija; and holiday in Hitman III.
Visit the C&C Community’s 2020 Game of the Year hot take repository. Many thanks to Kane, as always, for this amazing thing, and the community at large for being just deeply lovely.
Episode 355: Climb Up A Wookie And Sync
Jan 22, 2021
Tom S, Chris and Marsh sink into the obliviating waters of Hades and World of Warcraft, gun gribblies in Soulsian sleeper hit Remnant: From the Ashes, blindly steer a nation in Suzerain and snap critters in Penko Park’s kooky safari.
Episode 354: All That Goddamn Scooching
Jan 15, 2021
Toms F and S are joined by Alex to discuss Monster Train’s forthcoming factions, go full dork over emulation widget MiSTer and be disappointed by England – in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, too! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Cyberpunk 2077’s developers have conceded the existence of linear time, but not much else, in their roadmap.
A C&C Chat with Christian Donlan: Ram Yourself Into an Emu Until It Kills You
Jan 12, 2021
Bonus episode! Tom chats to top games critic and lovely person Christian Donlan in a meandering discussion about Star Trek, old Mario games, classic sci-fi films, Rogue, and much more. And then Christian’s cat makes an appearance, which just makes everything even better.
The main C&C pod shall resume service shortly! Also another film ‘n telly pod with Jamie Brittain is in the works. Also I, Tom, having dropped the third-person pretence only moments into writing this intro, will politely nag Christian to do another one of these when he has time. Hope you all enjoy!
Show notes!
Tom has been playing a lot of Mario Galaxy, Sunshine, and Mario 64 on Switch. Which one is the best though?
We got into a lot of fun tangents early. Films mentioned: 2001 A Space Odyssey, Rush, Blade Runner, Nice Guys, Les Mis.
Remember cinemas? BFI constantly sponsor reruns of classic films in the UK – worth a follow.
Rogue is on Steam, kind of, purists might want to hunt for the unchanged original version.
Christian revisited Rogue in 2020 and wrote this great piece about it. I love articles that make me immediately want to download a game and chase the same experience.
ToeJam and Earl is just Rogue – discuss.
Special shout-out to Christian’s cat, making a sadly brief audio cameo.
Christian intelligently references Orson Wells’ Moby Dick stage show.
BUT THEN Tom gets carried away and tangentially references Wells’ War of the Worlds radio show because he listened to it recently and got excited.
Modern Rogue descendants (there are so, so many more) – Spelunky, Hades, and Below (not so good).
The title of the next Stereophonics album: “Just Enough Suffering to Make it Worthwhile”
Diablo: “Hitting skeletons and getting loot”. The perfect five-word elevator pitch.
Tom dives into the wankthought hole(tm} with reflections on the psychology of dungeons, or at least the gloom and delight of descending to terrible depths and emerging into sunlight as an effective device.
The Silent Cartographer – Halo, Blighttown, Half-Life Alyx, and so many more games do this, and it’s great.
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.
The Crate and Crowbar Film and TV Pod 002: The Evil Influence of Disco Dancers
Dec 23, 2020
Tom and Jamie gathered many weeks ago to record a whole new meandering chat through our film and TV obsessions of the moment! With Christmas just around the corner, Tom has finally found the time to publish this one as a hopefully fun bonus episode for the holiday season. 2020 is ending; hooray! We hope you all get to enjoy some quality films and telly with a beverage of your choice over the break.
Many thanks to Jamie for the following in-depth show notes. You can find the pod on the Crate and Crowbar podcast feed, or a downloadable version right here.
What We’ve Been Watching
2:20
– Elena of Avalor (Disney
Plus)
Since recording this, Jamie has realised that Elena Of Avalor actually does have a movie length special to kick it off which outlines the plot, which is ‘hidden’ behind a different tab on Disney Plus. And also, the show was just cancelled, RIP, it’s a really well made, well written show.
Frozen remains amazing. Frozen 2 is a bit of a mess (but the songs still slap).
The new one Ducktales has David Tennant as Uncle Scrooge. The old Ducktales still has an amazing theme song but feels a bit much. Here’s the Finnish language version with the lyrics interpreted in English. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhSdSzSqLys
Hey Duggee is a kids show about a dog Scout Master that is also one of the funniest things on tv.
Adventure Time is a fantastic kids show for adults.
The very good Bojack Horseman (Netflix) gets a quick mention here, but it deserves further discussion.
Below Deck (Netflix) is a reality show set on a massive boat, which is Horny Blue Peter about poor quality ironing and beautiful idiots falling out.
Modern
reality TV, or, in a loaded and amusing phrase that Jamie has just in
this pod introduced me to – STRUCTURED REALITY: Below Deck, TOWIE,
Love Island, Geordie/Jersey Shore.
For the behind-the-scenes drama exploring the aspirational psychopathy of being a producer on one of these shows: UnREAL: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3314218/
Othello is by William Shakespeare. There are several film versions, including versions by Kenneth Branaugh and Orson Wells. Jamie’s favourite is of course 2001’s ‘O’ starring Julia Stiles and Josh Hartnett.
Love At First Sight was a dark voyage into the bleakest passions of awful people.
The Incredible Hulk. S2 Episode: Alice in Disco Land. Jamie’s description and the title sells the episode more than I ever could here. Here is the disco version of the ending theme, for your health: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDTqATFcvyc
Shows about lonely men arriving in a place to solve a self contained scenario and then leaves (still sad): The Lone Ranger. The Fugitive. Quantum Leap, Sliders. 14th-century Middle English chivalric romance Sir Gawain And The Green Knight.
The deep sadness of the 70s: The French Connection, Taxi Driver. Nasty endings are cathartic sometimes aren’t they? But perhaps not in 2020.
The lingering rot of the Vietnam war infected North American drama for years. If the monster that lives inside you doesn’t get you, the Military-industrial Complex will. The Rambo films chart US pop culture’s absurd path from introspection back to celebratory jingoism.
If you had to chart the many plotlines of Dark S1 on a graph it would end up being a massive, meaningless knot. Season 2 is sharper, more focused, and much better. Sadly, you have to slog through S1 to understand what the heck is going on. S3 is a well-made mess.
Formula 1 racing is an extraordinary spectacle. The cars are indeed very fast.
Darts, a spectacle on two levels – sport and pissup. Sid Waddell: “When Alexander of Macedonia was 33, he cried salt tears because there were no more worlds to conquer… Bristow’s only 27.”
Govan Ghost Story: Written by Jamie’s dad in 1989, he thinks it’s pretty great if he does say so himself, also features an excellent score by Scottish pop heroes The Blue Nile) AND Robert Carlyle’s uncredited first onscreen appearance as a distant, speechless, unmoving figure in the background of one shot:
Modern TV is often very safe, but I May Destroy You really, really isn’t. Better representation in tv is still a long way away, with anyone who isn’t a straight white man struggling to be heard.
Edge Of Darkness is an amazing voyage into grief and mystery. Please don’t watch the film.
Since we’re alone now, the show Jamie didn’t want to speak no more of was the atrocious Drama Life.
Bob Peck was also in Jurassic Park being eaten by intelligent female dinosaurs.
Thunderbirds/Joe 90/Stingray/Captain Scarlet
Spectacle, playground inspiration, freakish real hands.
Tom was Virgil, pilot of Thunderbird 2, specialising in demolition, heavy lifting and logistics, so that checks out.
Kyrano was the name of the the Tracy’s racistly portrayed Manservant, who The Hood was able to physically invade and find out International Recue’s Plans. It says a lot, not all of it good, about Jamie that he saw himself as him. But there was a lot going on in that show.
Team America and Borat are both very fucking funny, FYI. Borat 2 is out now and…well. Yeah.
GBH by Alan Bleasdale is an extraordinary show about authority,
politics, anxiety and fear. It doesn’t really fit into any easily
described genre, but describes a world that feels pretty similar to
the one we find ourselves in now. Michael Palin’s speech, could
have been written yesterday:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX9llMV9qGc
Brazil is Terry Gilliam’s best film, fight Jamie.
1:18 Spoilers Ahoy!
I’m Thinking Of Ending Things
Charlie Kaufman has written some amazing scripts: Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine.
I’m Thinking of Ending Things is based on a book of the same name written by Iain Reid. I think the film handles the subject matter more sensitively, even though the film is enormous and – for much of the second half – literally too dark to be able to quite see the actors’ performances.
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.
Merry Christmas erryone!
Episode 353: Shadow Of The Segue Vampire
Dec 19, 2020
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.
Episode 352: The Late-Capitalist Scream
Dec 14, 2020
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.
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!
Episode 351: Tell Me I’m Bad And Special
Dec 04, 2020
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.
Episode 350: Mangonels All The Way Down
Nov 27, 2020
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.
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.
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.
Interview: Joannes Truyens on Neurocracy
Nov 17, 2020
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Episode 346: Room Temperature Poo-Eggs
Oct 30, 2020
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?
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.
Alex and Tom F relive the fragtastic heyday of the FPS with Quake mod Arcane Dimensions, and die, with varying degrees of annoyance, at the hands of three different roguelikes: Noita, Spelunky 2 and Hades.
Voxel-physics-destruction game Teardown is out on the 29th of October!
Noita is out of Early Access! Feels kinda similar to how it did a year ago, honestly. It was good a year ago, of course, but a lot of the systems still feel opaque.
Episode 343: I Will Be The Biggest Whale
Oct 09, 2020
Graham, Tom S and Chris launch a lifetime of fandom directly at the modest target area of Star Wars: Squadrons, setting off a chain reaction of space-spooge. Also: Zelda meets gacha in Genshin Impact.
Baldur’s Gate 3 has entered early access. It’s quite crashy at the moment, but you can befriend a walking brain. You’ll know in your heart whether to install it now or wait a year.
Steam’s Autumn Festival has ripened and tumbled from the tree. Will it be a mighty payload of fructose or dispense a mouthful of wasps?
Genshin Impact is Very Zelda. But if you’re gonna steal, steal from the Breathst! Is that a pun? Very almost! For some reason, you have to get it from their site, via a bespoke launcher, rather than via Steam.
Please. Please. Feed Chris all the space microtransactions to sustain Star Wars: Squadrons. He’ll buy a Frisk Funko Pop if necessary. Anything.
Episode 342: Referendum On The Addendum To The Recommendum
Oct 02, 2020
Tom S, Chris and Marsh vibrate with the excitement of an imminent Star Wars game release while trying to talk about Necromunda: Underhive Wars, budget co-op spookathon Phasmophobia and impressively reprehensible VR stabber Blade And Sorcery.
Listen to Tom Senior’s excellent TV and film spin-off podcast with Jamie Brittain, professional smart telly-man: Monday Or Soon
The Crate and Crowbar Film and TV Pod 001: No-one Told Karl Marx About Vents
Sep 26, 2020
Welcome to a new experiment from the Crate and Crowbar! We love games, but we’re also huge fans of films and television, especially in these Covid times, so we decided to start a podcast about all that. Tom Senior joins TV writer Jamie Brittain for a whiplash tour of the shows we’re watching right now. In spite of everything going on in the world, TV is amazing at the moment, and deserves to be celebrated.
As this continues we’re planning to touch on every genre and mode of TV we can find, from HBO dramas to soap operas, reality TV, and sports coverage. We’ve tried to put in spoiler warnings as required, but it’s worth noting that DEVS in particular shines if you go in completely cold. Now all that’s said, here are the show notes for episode 001.
“We’ve made some shady cakes.” STOP BAKING FOR THE MAFIA.
What if you took the Great British Bake Off, ripped its soul out, and instead staged a cold blooded lizard war waged by people who no longer take joy from sweet treats? You get Creme de la Creme and Bake Off: The Professionals.
A Serious Man is quietly one of the Coens’ best. Jamie would like you to know that the thing he says about the villains in your life appearing at the door with Manischewitz wine is a reference to the rich and textured Jewish theming of the film A Serious Man, rather than a piece of horrifying anti-Semitism.
Phew! We covered plenty of ground in this one, and we’ll cover plenty more soon. Email any feedback to crateandcrowbar@gmail.com. You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. Head to the ‘telly and books’ channel for film ‘n TV chat.
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, visit our Crate and Crowbar Patreon page. As mentioned in the pod, we only charge Patrons for the core C&C videogame pods, but those donations support the main pod and allow us to do spinoffs like this. Thansferlissenin!
Episode 341: Always Burrowing, No Chill
Sep 25, 2020
Graham, Tom F and Marsh debate the merits of moon moles in Spelunky 2. That’s it. That’s the only game we need this week. But also: Bethesda’s acquisition, our favourite videogame banks, and multiplayer that isn’t multiplayer.
Alex, Tom F and Marsh island-hop in peerless push-block puzzler A Monster’s Expedition, island-cop in murder mystery Paradise Killer, and Ireland-top in medieval wife-finding interface, Crusader Kings III. Plus! Hadean Lands and Defense of the Oasis.
Enjoy the agony of U-turning marketing executives as a result of the Sony’s PS5 showcase.
Episode 339: A Much Bigger Series Of Apologies
Sep 11, 2020
Graham, Tom S and Chris pick apart the latest Ubisoft Forward like carrion on road-kill, before swooping on, beaks bloodied, to devour Mafia: Definitive Edition, Marvel’s Avengers and Mortal Shell. Mmm-mm!
Geoff Keighley was not impressed. For the love of God, Ubisoft, DO NOT BAIT HIS DISPLEASURE! Has not 2020 already demonstrated the devastating power of his wrath?
Tom F, Chris and Marsh offer late takes on the quickly cooling Gamescom starch bomb, ferry frogs to the great beyond in Spiritfarer and nitpick the nitpicking, and other ape antics, in epic evolution yarn, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey.
Gamescom was put in the microwave for 6 minutes and served without butter.
Tom Clancy’s Elite Squad is half a potato, stamping on a human face, forever.
Episode 337: When Life Gives You Krakens
Aug 21, 2020
Chris, Tom F and Marsh ogle the inter-corporate fisticuffs of Epic v Apple, boggle at the buffs of roguelike shooter Risk of Rain 2, make bassist assumptions in identity puzzler Family and fear ducks in Microsoft Flight Simulator.
It’s Tim vs Tim! Chris Plante has a good summary and analysis of the Epic/Apple lawsuit in his newsletter.
Dim Tanglell? Who he? We will never know or care again, hopefully.
Episode 336: Hurled Into The Fuzzy Bracket
Aug 14, 2020
Alex, Chris and Marsh dispute the tutes of Horizon: Zero Dawn, unpack throwback hack-n-slash Book of Demons, wibble beans in Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout and quibble shtick in meta point-n-click There Is No Game, before returning to our briny home.
Pony Canyon appears to be a Japanese publisher of music, games and anime. It is not the thing we talk about, but it is, apparently, irresistible to say.
Atomic Heart is a gorgeously arted Don’t Be Beaten Up By A Robot game.
Tom F, Alex and Marsh gather to discuss Obsidian’s backyard survival game Grounded, go postal, in a very tranquil way, in Thousand Threads, sink into a fug of nostalgia for Halo 3, toot flutes and avoid parps in Ghosts of Tsushima and briefly descend into Hades.
Dana Schwartz’s tweet about Reddit user NoNoNo_OhOhOh’s post about John Boyne’s novel’s deseparate SEO Zelda calamity.
Enjoy, or decry, miniature multiplayer makework in survival game Grounded.
“Just get yourself a small metal spoon, sit back and relax” in pretty open world postal game Thousand Threads.
Episode 334: The Milkshakes Of Biscuit Planet
Jul 31, 2020
Tom S, Graham and Marsh congeal into a mass of gnashing mouths to chew over indie creature feature Carrion, disrespect the lore in Star Wars: Battlefront II and smash many glass men in the expandalone Superhot: Mind Control Delete.
We talk about the Xbox Showcase. You can watch the full stream here, and, because I am very lazy, here is Rock Paper Shotgun’s nicely curated list of all the games revealed therein, some of which we talk about.
The recording mangled the bit where I say the nickname of Halo Infinite’s art director: it’s Sparth. He’s terribly good.
Here’s Jason Schreier’s scoop on the nixed King Arthur game that was helmed by Mike Laidlaw.
Become the meatball marinara in metroidvania creature feature Carrion.
Take out your millennial insecticidal angst in the fan service nonsense kaleidoscope which is Star Wars: Battlefront II.
Alex, Tom S and Graham minotalk and cyclopine about the forthcoming Total War Saga: Troy, delight in the hikes and hot bilge of Death Stranding and feel all kinds of 7/10 about Ghosts of Tsushima.
Episode 332: Nutted To Death By Guy Fieri’s Helicopter
Jul 17, 2020
Chris, Tom S and Marsh pore over the Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx, soar over the Hyper Scape, chew over Rocket Arena, simply cannot get over Call of Duty: Warzone, and gush over, er, chess. “Not a new game but a good one.” You heard it here first.
A video demonstrating some top-tier titting, from Chris and niceman podfriend Paul Scott Canavan: The Big Honking Death… starring Truck Straddler and Paul Muad’Gib.
Episode 331: How Do You Like Them Aethels?
Jul 10, 2020
Alex, Rich McC and Marsh attempt to master the remastered Red Alert, get decked online in WWII-themed collectable card game KARDS and prepare to try self-professed Dark Souls homage Mortal Shell.
Valorant. Skins. Expensive. Boring. Do better, News.
The Ubisoft longboat is very leaky: the latest vid of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
Animal Crossing: Technically We Could Leave But We’re Still Locked In At The Crate and Crowbar
Jul 08, 2020
Pip and Chris return for another deep dive (!) into the state of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. We delve into the diving discourse, discuss the various quandaries of lategame life, and assemble our wishlists for the future of the game.
For what it’s worth, that’s a raspberry being blown at the beginning of this recording. A raspberry.
Episode 330: The Ghost Town of Sad Dogs
Jul 03, 2020
Graham, Tom F and Chris aim their laser-like takes to dismantle the zen pleasures of Hardspace: Shipbreaker, the tawdry traumas of The Last of Us Part II, the chaotic bird-butt coop of KeyWe and the narrative clunk of Cloudpunk.
Do a physics on men, shelves and concrete, in this throwback shooter: Trepang2.
Do a physics on spaceships and sometimes, accidentally, yourself, in fab extraterrestrial scrapyard game Hardspace: Shipbreaker.
Alex, Tom S and Marsh swelter and sweat through a discussion of ecstatic automation in Satisfactory, the didactic bleakness of The Last of Us Part II, the long view of Humankind and dire straits in Desperados III.
Episode 328: There’s No Cream For What I Got
Jun 19, 2020
Chris, Alex and Marsh ponder penguin chicanery, Destiny’s destiny, dialogue-by-card-deck in Signs of the Sojourner, conversation-as-combat in Griftlands, redeem Mass Effect: Andromeda, resist scratching tingles and rejoice at Desperados III.
Episode 327: In Defence Of The Village People
Jun 12, 2020
Alex, Tom F and Graham muse on the eternal E3 news, marvel at itchio’s BLM bundle, lament pyromantic stealth game Wildfire, adore deck-builder Monster Train and flail further in Half-Life: Alyx.
Episode 326: The Noble Truth Of Nature’s Chainsaw
Jun 05, 2020
Tom S, Chris and Marsh try to fathom the bloody ways of Stoneshard, bloody the fathoms in Maneater, embrace doldrums in Sludge Life, bang the old drum for Fez, make other things go bang in Receiver 2, and probe wholes, holes and souls in The Witness.
At the beginning of this episode we express our support for the Black Lives Matter movement and Black and minority communities throughout the US and across the world who are protesting racial injustice.
We understand the responsibility that we have as people with privilege to educate ourselves, and to contribute our time and resources to combatting racism and discrimination in our day to day lives and in the industry to which we contribute.
We are taking some immediate action in the form of charitable donations to Black Lives Matter and the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust. We are also investigating ways that we can use the podcast to support worthy causes in the future.
Below you’ll find a list of antiracism resources and organisations. If you can, we’d love it if you offered them your attention and support.
If you are a parent and you’re looking for anti-racist books appropriate for children, EmbraceRace has a list which is available here.
Elle Osili-Wood wrote a comprehensive Twitter thread with additional resources, charity links, and advice on action that can be taken by both white people and people of color, in the US, UK and elsewhere.
This is by no means a comprehensive list! We’re very happy to make additions or amendments based on your feedback: feel free to contact us at contact [at] crateandrowbar [dot] com.
Sorry for the pops and crackles on this one! Alex and Marsh are joined by special and exceedingly distant guest, Rich McCormick, to discuss Noclip’s Arkane documentary, space thriller Observation and space driller Deep Rock Galactic.
Wholesome Direct – not just a showcase of games about frogs wearing Nike Air Jordans.
Episode 324: The Lumpy Beast In Your Love Trousers
May 22, 2020
Alex, Chris and Marsh gather to be confounded by Crucible, the first foray into videogames by billionaire devourer of iguana flesh, Jeff Bezos, and admire acrobatic aerial shmup Jet Lancer.
Whither the edgy boys go? They go to be a sharkborg.
Fly, fly, up and away in Jet Lancer. It’s very cool. And it’s a bit like Luftrausers.
Except it isn’t like Luftrausers? Which is also very cool.
Deep Rock Galactic is a game we will play, myself while involuntarily imagining bulging spandex.
Heaven’s Vault: a game about archaeology and language that was rendered subjectively infuriating by its stumbling, wayward intrusion into the third dimension.
Episode 323: Pro-Castration, Anti-Incest
May 15, 2020
Tom F and Alex are joined by special guests and storied devs Soren Johnson and (at the end) Leyla Johnson – CEO and president of Mohawk Games, respectively – to talk about Old World, an historical, epic strategy game. And polygamy.
Episode 322: I’ve Seen A Racoon-Man So I’ve Had A Good Time Tonight
May 08, 2020
Tom S, Chris and Marsh lay themselves bare to discuss the Xbox showcase, sample the tasty-tasty-tasty open world comfort food of Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, unspool tubes in Filament and eye-roll at time-gribblies in Close to the Sun.
The XBOX XERIEX X is coming and, if anyone notices, they will be able to play some of these forthcoming multiplatform games with improved loading times! Watch the entire e-event here.
Meanwhile, in the BezoVerse, Amazon’s hero shooter, Crucible has been further revealed – a bit – and looks faintly like its design was led by metrics. But we’ll find out on 20th May.
Animal Crossing: Yep, Still Locked In At The Crate and Crowbar
May 03, 2020
More Animal Crossing with Pip and Chris! We talk island design, the pleasures and pitfalls of meeting your inexplicably naked heroes, put Blathers on trial for art crime, and consider the ups and downs of multiplayer island life.
That thread about Blathers’ misdeeds by Max Chesnokov can be found here, and you can check out Stan’s custom island railway while you’re at it.
Episode 321: Free Violence, All The Time
May 01, 2020
Alex, Tom F and Graham e-gather to e-give their e-takes on the Assassin’s Creed reveal, get kicked right in the breach phase, courtesy of XCOM: Chimera Squad, and amp up the wide-men of Gears Tactics.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla has been announced. Watch the Vikings raid and pillage – but in a good way – in the trailer.
Tom S, Chris and Marsh evade the Gull Squad to bring you takes on the trousers of tactics spin-off XCOM: Chimera Squad, tubestation construction sim StationFlow and kraken-based illusory-victory machine Magic: The Gathering Arena.
This isn’t relevant to show, but I think it’s important to say at the top of this that Tom would absolutely destroy Samuel Pepys in a fight.
Delete gulls so we can be free to touch our faces again – using the power of Nvidia RTX Voice! Watch a Games Lad bang things with a hammer silently. You can download it here. You can use it even if you don’t have an RTX card by following these instructions, assuming Microsoft decides you can edit a text file on your own computer for which you are the sole user and administrator.
Robert Yang’s forensic investigation into the authorship of seminal Counter-Strike level fy_iceworld (which was and is bullshit). And its preceding article digs into the game’s continuing legacy (of bullshit).
XCOM: Chimera Squad. Why do the snake wear trousers? As a symbol of their epantsipation.
Find your own Escalator Fuck-it Threshold in zen spatial engineering sim StationFlow.
Where does the poo go?
A Game Chris Has Found Pleasant In This Strange Time: Hitman 2
Wired’s article on maybe-just-as-terrible-as-everything-else investment opportunity: Magic cards
Tim Harford has good facts about Mars Bars and macroeconomics.
Nice and good art people: Paul and Leesha – behold their sky sharks! Their ligers!
Here are some JRPGs that have shaped Tom into the 17th-century-diarist-suplexing bad boy that he is today: the Persona series, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6 and the newly reconstituted 7 (currently only on PS4). Also: Lost Odyssey, Tales of Symphonia and Eternal Sonata.
Adumbric is a good word.
Games, both video and tabletop in flavour, with interesting win conditions Cosmic Encounter, Solium Infernum (which now only seems to be available through this sketchy-looking site), Blood on the Clocktower and Blades in the Dark.
Tom F and Marsh are joined by the mellifluous voice of Graham Smith to have weird wives in Sigma Theory, poke fingers into Half-Life: Alyx’s fungal bird beaks and enjoy Valorant in the brief twilight that heralds our inevitable obsolescence.
A new game from Firaxis comes out next week! It’s XCOM: Chimera Squad, aka Tactical Breach Lizards.
What a wicky wild wild, wicky wicky wild, wicky wild, wicky wicky wild wild wild world we live in.
Soren Johnson has announced his new 4X game: The Wilder Olds. Wait. Older Wilds? Old World.
Jon Blow is working on, and streaming, an unannounced a game. I was going to say, “Can ya tell what it is yet?” like Rolf Harris, then remembered that he’s a sex criminal and now I’m sad.
Valve’s reportedly superlative attempt to redefine the VR waggle-space for people who have large houses, empty rooms, no cats, 20-20 vision, an imperviousness to vertigo, a spare £1000 and who just love to sweat: Half-Life: Alyx. Sounds great.
Episode 318: Manipulated By The Baby Owl
Apr 10, 2020
Alex, Chris and both Toms (!) reach across timezones to discuss sunny getaways in Hitman 2, fraught getaways in Ori and the Will of the Wisps, and more.
I’m going to be honest with you. It was very hot in my office when we recorded this episode, so I opened the window a crack. I didn’t realise that this would apparently invite an entire flock of seagulls onto the podcast. We’ve made progress with the echo issue but replaced it with infinite birds. Sorry. Just imagine you’re outside. Remember that? Feels like glass.
Tom F’s been off on a tropical holiday in Hitman 2‘s Maldives DLC.
Alex, Marsh, Chris and Tom Senior discuss the most topical games of the age, including but not limited to The Room VR, Call of Duty for some reason, hunting in Red Dead 2, and Mount & Blade: Bannerlord.
We’re still getting used to this new remote recording setup, and we’ll be looking to invest in some decent desk mics to even out the sound quality in future episodes. Thank you for bearing with us!
Tom is spending his days inside PS VR, chiefly The Room VR, Blood and Truth and, for some reason, James Cameron’s Avatar.
Episode 316: Procedural Up The Bajacksie
Mar 27, 2020
Marsh, Chris and Alex attempt our first remote pod to discuss AI-augmented game development and the various verbs of Doom Eternal.
This is a shorter pod than usual as we get used to a new way of recording – but we’re going to do our best to continue to deliver hot pods every week. We hope you’re staying well! Washyerhandseverybody.
Here’s that interview with Google’s Erin Hoffman-John about game creation using machine learning. Who will reach the end of Mike Cook’s Takeshi’s Castle with their dignity intact?
We’ve all been running and jumpiung and shooting and finding and chainsawing and flaming and grenading and glory-killing and collecting Funkos in Doom Eternal.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons: A Lock-In At The Crate and Crowbar
Mar 22, 2020
Hello! In this special mini-pod, Pip and Chris share their experiences of Animal Crossing: New Horizons while playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons. No spoilers, unless you didn’t know about the time that Chris killed his husband and fled to an island retreat with the family silver.
Things are tough all over, and so we thought we’d record this in order to share a game that’s been a genuine source of happiness for us – and for many others – over the last couple of days. You can also listen on YouTube, and our intro music is (as ever) Clambake by The Mandibles.
There was no podcast last week due to a combination of deadlines and coronavirus stress. We fully intend to keep producing C&C podcasts in the coming weeks and months, but the exact hows and whens are still being figured out. Given that we can’t record together, it’s likely that we’ll do some combination of VOIP and the sorts of one-person mini-pods that we’ve produced from time to time. Thanks for bearing with us.
We hope you’re staying safe! Keep those hands clean and those takes medium.
Episode 315: Thanks, Bearnaldo
Mar 13, 2020
Chris, Marsh and a moth get drippy then descend into the underworld of Iris And The Giant, adjudicate on the latest Destiny drama and order a 14-inch stuffed-crust Warzone. The crust is stuffed with guns.
Bane of trans-pacific trade and the NBA: Geoff Keighley. Wash your hands to be spared his wrath.
Sadly, it turns out there is already an app called Tudr, and it’s a knowledge-sharing platform for college students and not a 16th century doomed wife solicitation sim.
The Color Out of Space: wiccan teens versus unfathomable cosmic terror! It’s good says Chris.
The Longing is a game that pointedly takes a boringly long time to play. Is that an interesting thing to do? Hmm.
“Time is interesting, man,” says Chris, so I guess the answer is yes.
Braid is a great puzzle game that exhaustively explores the use and manipulation of time.
A coda to the moth drama: as I released our friend into the uncertain night, another immediately entered, bringing the final score to Marsh 0, Insect-Tea Coalition 3
Chris and Alex discuss some actual games news and bury themselves kneck-deep in Dark Future and World of Horror – just in time for a special report from salty ocean correspondent Pip!
Plus: voice controls, work-life balance, the hot panic of an embarassing gaming moment, our go-to grunts, and other emanations from this bumper episode of The Shame Edition.
The other roadlike that we couldn’t remember the name of is Convoy.
Chris is very very into World of Horror, and is sorry for turning into a such a pseud on the pod. A pseud-o-pod, if you will. This is a joke. I’m sorry. Marsh tries very hard with these show notes, and I feel the need to do the same. Is it going well? It’s not.
Pip has become a lone wanderer of the Sea of Thieves, a fisherperson nonpareil, and the victim of a sequence of leech crimes.
It’s time for Kane’s ace GOTY 2019 website, corraling as it does the aggregate good taste of the Crate & Crowbar community. Honk!
A few nights ago I had a nightmare about these shownotes. I dreamed that it was necessary to provide a timestamp and detailed explanation for every joke on the podcast. I haven’t done this. Please don’t make me do this.
Alex, Chris and Marsh endure the first episode of Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet, but only barely, punch towers with mechadongs in Besiege, beat bad bots in resuscitated coop shooter Generation Zero and get bandy-legged in The Suicide of Rachael Foster.
You can in fact pit your monstrous pneumatic dongs against one another. There’s a whole Youtube Channel set up to facilitate Robot Wars-style tournaments, as described here by PCGamer!
Pod friend / bayou-based father-figure Jim Rossignol’s review of wondrous murderswamp Hunt: Showdown.
Alex and Marsh grudgingly drag themselves from the swamp to chat about spry roguelike platformer ScourgeBringer, palpate the unctuous parts of The Good Time Garden and feel ways about things in plangent poke-a-story Florence.
Gentle nature-walk / insect stridulation simulator, Hunt: Showdown now has a PvE onboarding tutorial for new players. That’s nice!
Red Dead Redemption 2 has over 200 species of animal! But not enough bells, frankly.
Episode 311: Appreciate me, Hunt-Daddy!
Feb 07, 2020
Alex, Chris and Marsh bear witness to the spherical design crimes of Battlefront II, sweat bricks in formidable hell-Tetris game, Schwerkraftprojektionsgerät, and return to their happy place, the cursed murder-swamp of Hunt: Showdown.
No one needs to own this many maglites.
GeForce Now game streaming thing is out… now! But what is it and why is it? The most definitively nonplussed takes abound.
It’s a bit like Stadia, which is Google’s similar attempt to answer a question that maybe no one is actually asking.
A voice echoing from a distant age of game industry folly: Cliffy B opines on the reasons for Lawbreaker’s failure, revealing himself to be a soul of an almost plangent innocence, and also completely and very obviously wrong.
Dan Houser has left Rockstar and will now ride off into the sunset, pursued by a bear.
“I like the noises and sounds” – the highest of praise for the canonically cavalier Battlefront II.
Stephen Lavelle’s multi-directional Tetris game: Schwerkraftprojektionsgerät. It sounds too hard for me, but apparently it gets Alex’s pendulum swinging.
Hunt: Showdown – has any surplus disemboweled horse asset been recycled into a more perfect form? No.
The interviewer with the name we dare not mangle: John Szczepaniak
Consume Chris’s paeon to Roombas in text-based multiplayer simulator hackmud.
You should not, and blessedly cannot, consume Chris’s horny AVP mods.
Third mage lucky: the correct name of the Eagles’ song, used for the theme-tune to the BBC’s Hitchhiker’ Guide to the Galaxy, is Journey of the Sorceror
Pour one out for A Year of Rain, Daedalic’s unloved RTS.
I don’t even know what point I was trying to make during this conversation. The falldown juice had begun to take hold.
Episode 310: Always The Ball, Never The Paddle
Jan 31, 2020
Tom S, Chris and Marsh seek the Creature in the Well, guiltily juggle men in Dynasty Warriors 8, revisit the roots of the RTS in Warcraft 3: Reforged, crave decapitation in Mordau and assess the early access jank of Warhammer Underworlds: Online.
“Stay off the tracks.”
What’s that emerging from the frigid tundra of January? Is it…? Could it be… news? Holy fuck!
Episode 309: The Meta-Porridge Cascade Scenario
Jan 24, 2020
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.
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.
Episode 308: What Happened To Sonic Dogs?
Jan 17, 2020
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.
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.
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.
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
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:
Episode 306: They’re All A Skeleton’s Uncle, At The End Of The Day
Dec 13, 2019
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.
Episode 305: Tom Clancy’s Questions From Questions
Dec 06, 2019
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!
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.
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.
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!
Episode 303: The Liquid Beard Conundrum
Nov 22, 2019
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.
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.
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.
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?
Episode 302: Steve Algorithm Does It Again
Nov 15, 2019
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.
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.
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.
Episode 300: Frightened Of The Ur-Teen
Oct 25, 2019
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.
Episode 299: Sid Meier’s Colonial Supermarket Sweep
Oct 18, 2019
Chris and Marsh get the comms horn for Fortnite’s spectacular server shutdown, eat the wave of FOMO in Destiny 2 and unleash their inner twat upon Disco Elysium. Also: house rules for goblins.
Fortnite Chapter 2 is a marketing coup and some sort of game, too, I guess.
Episode 298: Metabrain Says Calm The Hell Up
Oct 11, 2019
Toms Francis and Senior join Marsh to discuss dismissive dad death in Indivisible and lobby for gun-lobbing in both Borderlands 3 and John Wick Hex. Also: why PCs are awful and no one should build them.
Borderlands 3: mindfulness and wellbeing edition. The character’s name is Amara, not Samara. We regret this error but do not wish to be corrected about this or any of our other many grievous failings. Thank you for your understanding at this time.
Why doesn’t Gordon just join a techbro start-up? Friend of podcast and AI researcher Mike Cook takes apart a dismayingly credulous Wired article about the exodus from physics academia to Silicon Valley.
Episode 297: Buried in My Own Plastic Blood
Oct 04, 2019
Tom F, Alex and Marsh discuss the voxely promise of Teardown and existential terror of Microsoft Flight Simulator, return to Destiny redux, play some holes in What the Golf? and get nailed by every pixel in Noita.
Throw things at dinosaurs in Cricket Through the Ages. Currently part of Apple Arcade, but it might easily come to PC too. It’s by Free Lives, who also made Broforce.
Stadia is Google’s game streaming thingamy, and it knows exactly what kind of a piece of shit you are.
Episode 296: It’s Like There’s A Whole Other Goose In My Car
Sep 28, 2019
Tom F and Chris break into the pod chamber to discuss the latest wave of gaming subscription programmes, the pipe edge situations of Overland, and some game about a goose you probably haven’t heard of.
Chris, Tom S and Marsh discuss The Hunt: Showdown, Nocked! True Tales of Robin Hood and Astral Chain. Plus things that tinkle and jangle, things that waggle to make friars happy and things that should be renamed, remade and covered with moons.
Disco Elysium has a new, kinda baffling trailer and a release date of October 15. You’re a detective and you… and… Well. You’re a detective.
You scream, I scream, we all scream for beast cream. Get your beast cream freshly curdled from the fly-blown teat of The Hunt: Showdown. Served in a waffle cone.
Nocked! True Tales of Robin Hood is a text adventure with a LYING SUBTITLE and some light, almost arbitrary resource management. You can’t shag the bear.
Here are two definite humans who want to talk to you about Nintendo’s motion controller and absolutely won’t lead you into a black subdimensional pond where your flesh springs off you like snapped elastic.
Astral Chain is a game about being a good cop, ice cream (NOT beast cream) and smashing the shit out of space demons. It’s not on PC, but it almost certainly will be in, ooh, ten years?
Project Hospital is a management game that friend-of-pod Kane says is better than Two Point Hospital and has top quality NPC phone usage, which is what everyone wants, really.
Shadow of the Colossus also got remade and was good. Clash of Heroes got remade for PC and its new art sucked a dingo’s wanger and that is NOT a good thing but a BAD thing.
Come back Fable 2! But not to the Windows Store.
Bad Names: don’t do them. Name crimes of yore include: Giants: Citizen Kabuto, Omnikron: Nomad Soul and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. More recently: skateboarding game Session and Lovecraftian Epic Store exclusive Conarium.
Nier Automata’s lead designer has the right idea. Moons for everyone!
Normal Karl Pilkington’s The Witness, The Outer Wilds, The Return of the Obra Dinn and Ori and the Blind Forest all involve coloured shapes. Some pleasing. Some make Chris unhappy! All of them are better than Brexit.
Tom F and Alex are joined by special guest Mike Cook: AI researcher, indie dev, and friend of the podcast. We get into AI judging games, combining games, designing games, and failing to understand what’s so good about walls. Also discussed: long Cebs in The International, dialogue style in A Short Hike, gossip in Fire Emblem, and why Tom never knows the world’s about to end.
Chris, Tom F and Alex discuss Dicey Dungeons, Jupiter Hell, Exanima and Fire Emblem. Plus: arguably the worst way of categorising games we’ve ever come up with, and that’s saying something.
I’m sorry, but for physics reasons I need you to cradle me and lower me to the earth.
We’ve all been playing Dicey Dungeons, including Pip, who worked on the game. There’s yer disclaimer!
Alex has been adjusting to the various speeds of Jupiter Hell, the spiritual successor to DRL.
Chris would like to tell a long story about a time when he fell over, and also in Exanima.
Chris, Pip and Tom F briefly return to autobattlers before discussing A Short Hike, Stones of Solace, Islanders, and the faults of a variety of algorithms.
All this, just so that an otter can say well done.
Episode 288: Space Ghost In A Donkey Costume
Jul 12, 2019
Autobattlers agogo. Pip and Chris take some time out from their busy wizard management schedule to discuss Valve’s Steam Lab before delivering the definitive verdict on the world’s array of autochesses.
The Steam Labs page has all of the info you need about Valve’s disparate attempts to replace me and everyone I know with a robot.
Episode 287: Fantasy Carpark Ballista Drift
Jul 05, 2019
Tom F, Chris and John discuss the cutthroat business of wizard cards, the biting bureaucracy of Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and the travails of high finance in Hitman 2 New York.
Here’s a picture of a gem that might belong to a new, free, Slay The Spire character.
Chris, Tom F and Alex revisit Life is Strange, consider time’s cooldown in Touhou Luna Nights, chew noisily on Dota Underlords, and fling themselves over Shape of the World.
I’ve activated the four rocks… show me the staircase.
Here’s the blog post by Ashly Burch that Tom mentions. Note: this post vividly describes grief and bereavement – and as a far less significant caveat, includes some major plot details for Life is Strange.
Episode 285: Kleng! The Rollerskating Delivery Boy
Jun 14, 2019
Pip, Chris and Tom F dive into a big pile of E3 nonsense followed by a big pile of questions nonsense, considering the noun-circle ramifications of both.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons! If you’re cross that we spend a bunch of time talking about a Nintendo game that won’t come out on PC, just imagine that this is a tangent about Pip’s actually life, because it might as well be.
Episode 284: Reasons For Declaring War On House Cats
Jun 07, 2019
Chris, Tom F and Alex attempt to predict Thursday’s news on Wednesday, again, and mostly fail, again. After that: SteamWorld Quest, Void Bastards, The Outer Wilds!
Destiny 2 is going free to play, coming to Steam and Stadia, and getting cross-save functionality.
Pricing details for Stadia have been revealed and are entirely contrary to Chris’ predictions.
Tom F, Alex and Chris convene last Wednesday to discuss ‘computer games’, including but not limited to Void Bastards, Observation, Druidstone, and Mordhau.
I feel compelled to perform my military responsibilities in the modern time.
Early access sky MMO Worlds Adrift is shutting down.
Alex and the Toms gather to discuss what they have been playing on their personal computers this week. We didn’t record in our usual studio for this one, but the audio quality will return to normal soon!
Episode 280: Old Sins Of The Sordid Asp
Apr 26, 2019
Chris, Tom S and Alex chat a little bit of Sekiro, some Ascension, a smooth slice of The Room, and a dash of Katana ZERO.
Plus: meditations on the byzantine pizza meta, Rama Tycoon, the completely predictable fate of action dad, and our rebranding as the internet’s premier cutlery conspiracy resource.
We say that we’re not going to return to Sekiro, but then immediately do. Sorry!
Alex is enjoying the venerable Ascension, prompting both Chris and Tom to remember how much they like Ascension.
On the subject of Heaven’s Vault – the issue with a forced-feeling dialogue choice that Tom describes was actually a bug that was found and fixed as we were recording this episode.
Episode 277: Anyway, Here’s Blight Town
Mar 29, 2019
Alex, Chris and Tom S discuss a brief spate of late-March game announcements before getting into Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. That’s it. It’s mostly Sekiro.
We’re very keen to avoid Sekiro spoilers in this episode, but we do talk about themes and mechanics and, in one case, a few details about different environments – but not much! Less than you’d see in the game’s trailer, as it happens.
Plus: PC gaming tech advice up to and including why an owl shouldn’t officiate your wedding, meditations on the value of this entire accursed enterprise, grunting sounds, SONC HEDG regret, and more.
It’s a low-hanging flute, but that doesn’t mean we can’t toot it for 45 minutes.
Chris, Pip and Alex celebrate IGF winners and huff deep on Google’s big ol’ cloud. Plus: a little Call of Duty, a little Devil May Cry, assorted nonsense beyond.
Don’t die yet, we haven’t finished the pyramid’s ass.
Here’s the IGF & GDCA Awards stream in full – the show begins about 25 minutes in, including Meg Jayanth’s opening speech.
The IGF’s finalists and winners page has all of the finalists AND winners and links to the games what they do.
Google Stadia. Future of gaming IS NOT BOX, we are told. Might be BIG NICE CLOUD.
Episode 275: Don’t Gild The Scissors Ghost
Mar 15, 2019
Tom F, Chris and Alex chat Dwarf Fortress news, franchise developments, a little Far Cry, Hypnospace Outlaw, Devil May Cry 5, and Baba Is You.
Plus: getting whacked with the bollard brush, the half time cutlery switch, the sensesno.cool quadrilogy, how snake feel, a magic leap for mankind, and more. Where’s my fucking money, Paddington?
‘Anser’ is the genus of waterfowl. We didn’t know this. Please don’t write in, even though we told you to.
Tom’s Tactical Breach Wizards now has a Steam page and video!
Here are Dwarf Fortress’ Steam and Itch.io listings. When it out? In the past! When it done? Who know????
Elijah Wood did make some VR games and Ubisoft DID make a VR eagle game but this things may or may not be connected, I don’t know, what do you want from me.
Chris, Alex and both Toms chat Far Cry: New Dawn, DiRT Rally 2.0, Star Trek Online (?) and then just say the word ‘Dune’ over and over for a while.
Plus: don’t talk to me until I’ve got my bow, Ubisoft spade tax, Sir Walter Rally, Alex takes Poland, illicit Terran jambalaya, and so on. These are the voyages, I suppose.
Alex, Tom S and Chris discuss Blizzard and then say nice things about Apex Legends, Resident Evil 2, and Devil May Cry 5.
Plus: The Fraudulent Rustling of the Horse Boy II: Redeem This, the adventures of Gordon Fremen, middleware war among the stars, and our winter survival tips and tricks.
Episode 271: No Heroes, No Darlings, Only Chesses
Feb 08, 2019
In this mini-episode, Chris, Alex and Pip discuss Apex Legends and Dota Auto Chess.
Sorry for the shorter episodes lately! We’ve been really busy. Patreon backers should note that they’re not being charged at the moment. Thanks for being backers, though! We very much appreciate it.
Chris, Tom F, Alex and perhaps others dramatise assorted games industry dramas, discuss the anti-cheat ramifications of Dean Leaner, and explore death in a variety of warzones.
Plus: Destiny 2 in 2019, Fortune-299, Slay The Spire modding, our community GOTY vote and more!
In the event that our summation of the Improbable/Unity business didn’t make any sense – and why would it – here’s a recap. The Improbable blog post that didn’t make any sense is this one.
Episode 267: It’s Worse When The Abyss Doesn’t Text Back
Dec 21, 2018
The whole gang convenes (sort of) to look back at our games of 2018 while navigating some sort of terrible segue purgatory.
As discussed in this episode, the Crate & Crowbar Discord community is currently conducting its own GOTY vote! You can find out more – and cast your votes – right here.
Games discussed:
Subnautica
Far Cry 5
Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey
The Return of the Obra Dinn
Into The Breach
Slay The Spire
Artifact
Frostpunk
Battletech
Warhammer: Vermintide II
Monster Hunter: World
Megaquarium
The Haunted Island, A Frog Detective Game
Yoku’s Island Express
Donut County
Chuchel
Destiny 2: Forsaken
Madden NFL 19
Hitman 2
Prey: Mooncrash
Forza Horizon 4
Final Fantasy XII
Far: Lone Sails
Dead Cells
We’re now off to take our end-of-year break! The podcast will return in early January, along with a brand new C&C Dungeons & Dragons adventure. See you then, everyone! Happy new year!
Episode 263: He Failed His Shaving Throw
Nov 23, 2018
Chris, Tom F and Alex convene to talk Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus, Artifact, and Hitman 2. Then Chris, Tom F, Alex and Pip convene to talk, er, foxes? Or something.
Episode 260: Wands And Tanks All The Way Down
Oct 31, 2018
Tom joins Zack Johnson and Kevin Simmons from Video Games Hot Dog to discuss the games of Fantastic Arcade. Spelunky 2! Noita! Samurai Gunn 2! Additional games besides these!
Note: Patreon backers won’t be charged for this episode.
Episode 258: The Tragedy Of Protagonistus The Extreme
Oct 19, 2018
Both Toms and Chris dig into this week’s developing Rockstar story and then share stories from Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, because all we’ve done for two weeks is kick people off boats.
Chris and Alex are both doing stuff at EGX. Alex is talking to the Disco Elysium chaps on the main stage at 1pm on Friday. Chris is doing UNANNOUNCED OTHER STUFF on Friday and Saturday.
Episode 250: Close Your Eyes And Grind For Boltor
Aug 17, 2018
It all goes a bit wrong as Chris, Tom, Tom and Alex return from a week off to talk Red Dead and Doom news, EXAPUNKS, Warframe, Unavowed and Monster Hunter.
Plus: Horse Up Displays, 90s FPS ASMR, Resident Evil 2 by The B-52s, why it’s good when the spaceships do it, sensible missiles, the Mamma Mia cinematic universe, and Kerbal Space Program Royale.
Episode 247: Throwing Pebbles At A Leopard For Fifteen Years
Jul 20, 2018
Chris, Alex and both Toms celebrate the 5th anniversary of the podcast with gin and a digression to The David Cage. Plus: more Mooncrash, Yoku’s Island Express, Warhammer 40K: Gladius, and Objects In Space.
That’s for my nan! And her house!
Tom F’s further explorations of Prey: Mooncrash reveal a few rough edges.
Episode 246: Tough On Rogues, Tough On The Causes Of Rogues
Jul 13, 2018
Chris and Pip discuss The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit, The Sims 4: Seasons, and lots more. This is definitely episode 246, and not, as Chris says, episode 247.
Episode 244: Impenetrable, Like A Creme Egg
Jun 29, 2018
Chris, Tom, Tom and Alex contend with Guilty Gear Xrd, Lumines Remastered, Sword With Sauce, Jurassic World: Evolution, a bit of Vamypr, and get in deep with Big Scorsese.
Pip and the Toms discuss a surprising amount of news, most of it Steamy, then share thoughts on Jurassic World Evolution, Cryptark, Fortnite, and Assassin’s Creed: Origins.
Chris has been hard at work on the wordy side of hackmud 2.0, which is going live next week and will be 25% off when you read this.
Steam now lets you follow developers, but there’s no general link for that, so gosh we’ll just have to pick a developer at random and link their page.
How much have you spent on Steam in your life? No, wrong, it’s this much.
Jurassic World Evolution: a game you could play if you want to deal with a security department that are almost certainly dinosaurs wearing human uniforms.
Cryptark‘s a good idea but much too hard but full of promise but so frustrating but dammit I’m playing it again.
Budget Cuts is finally out and, appropriately, 10% off. It’s that VR game that’s good.
Chris, Tom F and John R chat Far: Lone Sails, Dicey Dungeons, Totally Accurate Battlegrounds and a bit of Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire.
Plus: the secret handshakes shared by the kin of the brood-sergeant, top chuffin’, the Haddaway collab we’ve been waiting for, our hottest takes of 2013, an endless sense of Bluth, the Ferris Bueller Escalation Protocol, and Christina Aguilera’s ult.
Hitman 2 has actually been announced with a trailer, now, rendering our speculation a bit pointless. Sorry!
Pip, Chris and Alex consider the pre-E3 videogame news wasteland, revisit City of Brass, clean up House Flipper, and consider Idle Champions and the specific anxieties of the clicker genre.
Plus: tragedy as volcanic death comes to Emmerdale.
Episode 239: Bad Men And Their Funfairs
May 25, 2018
Chris, Pip, Tom S and Alex dig deep to yield icy cold takes on Call of Duty: Blops Four, ‘Bio-Shock’, A Quiet Sleep, and assorted nonsense.
Plus: the importance of Little Boots on the ground, the medium’s most lootable subcultures, whether it was or wasn’t all yellow, whether two Ayn Rands do indeed make an Ayn Right, and clampin’ yer old student.
Chris, Pip, Tom F and – for one night only – Marsh (!) discuss Atomic Heart, more Far Cryin’, more Spire Slayin’, SpyParty, Murderous Pursuits, and City of Brass.
Also: feeling nothing about sunsets, playing with orbs, holding for a moment in the hope position, the struggle of games to be effectively didactic, the history of the IGF, maximal train journey encumbrance limit livin’, and the magic of Paper Samples Day.
Live from Rezzed! Chris, Tom F, Graham and Alex discuss their games of the show, and also Crusader Kings II. Plus: real live questions!
Note: we’re still waiting to get the footage of this episode back from the Rezzed guys, so the YouTube version will be a little later than usual. Sorry!
Here’s a PC Gamer article about Introversion’s latest, Order of Magnitude.
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.
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.
Chats at Rezzed: Hannah Flynn on Sunless Skies
Apr 20, 2018
Chris talks to Hannah Flynn from Failbetter about Sunless Skies, life in game development, reaching broader audiences, the myriad flaws of Zoolander 2, and more.
This is the last in our series of chats from Rezzed – hope you’ve enjoyed them! Find out more about Sunless Skies here, and find this episode on YouTube here. As ever, thanks to our Patreon backers.
Chats at Rezzed: Robert Kurvitz on Disco Elysium
Apr 18, 2018
At Rezzed we sat down with Disco Elysium design and writing lead Robert Kurvitz to discuss entering the games industry as an artist, the complexities of RPG design, politics, and disco.
Chats at Rezzed: Julian Gollop and David Kaye on Phoenix Point
Apr 17, 2018
Surprise! While we were at Rezzed we recorded a series of short, informal chats with interesting gamespeople. In this first episode, Chris and Alex sit down with X-COM creator Julian Gollop and Snapshot Games co-founder David Kaye to talk Phoenix Point.
You can find out more about Phoenix Point on the game’s official site and, if you prefer, listen to this episode on YouTube. The Crate & Crowbar is supported by our Patreon backers – for more about how that works, click here.
Episode 234: Handspeed
Apr 13, 2018
Chris, Alex and Tom S consider the end of SteamSpy, Radical Heights, Jalopy, All Walls Must Fall, and Tom’s daily Slay The Spire tendency.
Plus: too much rum, wonky grammar lessons, and the low hop of the robots.
SteamSpy announces its inability to continue operating via tweet.
Tom F, Chris and Alex discuss Far Cry 5 (again), Superhot VR, and Minit. Then, a chat about Into The Breach is followed by questions from questions calamity.
Plus: the mystery of the third Tom, the lamentable sacking of the sex helicopter, and – what comes, dangling upon a string? Toot toot, it’s the low-hanging flute!
Tom and Alex dig deeper into their thoughts re: Far Cry 5, its buddies, and its sex helicopter.
Chris and Pip gather in GDC week to discuss basically no news from GDC, many short games you should play, and space mistakes you shouldn’t make in Scavenger SV-4.
Plus: a showcase of Pip’s ability to remember a grudge from four years ago, but not a song from last week.
Tom, Tom and Chris discuss a range of ways in which one might fail upwards, from Into The Breach to Phoenix Point to the spooky bayou of Hunt: Showdown.
Plus: my dog ate Hunt The Freeman, accent quandries, questionable etymology, and a sad dearth of whale colour options.
Episode 227: A Unified Theory Of Terrapins
Feb 23, 2018
Pip, Alex and Tom F are back to once again tackle the tough topic of turtle taxonomy. Also games about Garys (Legendary Gary), games by Garys (Abandon Ship), and it would round this out nicely if the other two games related to Garys but they don’t. Cypher and Fe.
Also, we’re doing a live show at Rezzed! It’ll be recorded but if you do want to come along, it’s 4.30pm on the Saturday. You’ll need a Rezzed ticket for that day.
Pip, Tom F and Alex discuss knowing your enemy in Slay the Spire, dabbling In Other Waters, Dear Esther Live, and turning your tentacles into chickens and bees in Octogeddon.
Tom S and Chris are joined by Alex Wiltshire to discuss Into The Breach’s imminent release, why it’s okay to hunt monsters if they’re bastards, RPG combat design and more.
Plus: a brief return to Subnautica and further musings on the ocean willies therein; the secret missing element to Subnautica’s survival formula; toxicity, Dota 2, PUBG, sport, and why the internet is bad perhaps.
Tom F, Chris and John R discuss… ‘computer games’. Including but not limited to Iconoclasts, Celeste, Subnautica and Slay The Spire.
Plus: wrench size considerations, creating modes for Bennett Foddy (to hurt him), and that thing where Chris says ‘I’m not going to go deep on this’ and then does that.
Join Pip under the sea as she heroically embarks on a one-Pip Subnautica special. Featuring the sounds (and underwater bellows) of the game itself.
Apologies for the shaky schedule of late: we’ve had extensive holiday-and-illness-related scheduling problems over the last couple of weeks. Expect regular service to resume next week, and Patreon backers should note that they won’t be charged for anything short of a full pod.
Pip’s been playing Subnautica. You might be able to tell.
Dark Souls. Is it news? Chris and Pip ponder this and other subjects, including Subnautica’s imminent release, Paladins’ imminent Battlegrounds mode, and Bennett Foddy’s imminent Getting Over It.
C&C D&D: The Miracle At Grey Home, Part 4
Dec 25, 2017
All things must end. Or must they? Yes. But sometimes: no. That’s right: it’s the final part of THE MIRACLE AT GREY HOME!
You can listen this episode on YouTube here. If you’ve taken the time to listen to the entirety of this nonsense, thank you: we hope you enjoyed it. We’ll be back in the new year with the medium to hot takes you’re used to, along with more Miniatures Monthly, Little Grey Cells, Bloodborne, and so on. Merry Christmas!
C&C D&D: The Miracle At Grey Home, Part 3
Dec 24, 2017
Confrontation leads to new adventure as Chris attempts to write… a spoiler-free description of part three of C&C D&D!
You can listen this episode on YouTube here. Tune in tomorrow for the FINALE of THE MIRACLE AT GREY HOME. I mean, it’s only Christmas. You don’t have anything else to do, right?
C&C D&D: The Miracle At Grey Home, Part 1
Dec 22, 2017
It’s time for something a little different. In the run-up to Christmas, we’ll be posting our first-ever Dungeons & Dragons live play podcast: a magical mystery murder adventure called THE MIRACLE AT GREY HOME. This is part one.
Expect part two tomorrow, part three after that, and so on. You can listen on YouTube if you prefer, or receive your MP3s via the regular C&C podcast feed.
THE MIRACLE AT GREY HOME is an adventure that Chris wrote, played using D&D 5e rules. Our characters began life at level 1 in a warm-up session, and begin this adventure at level 2. This is Chris’ first time DMing 5th edition D&D, so don’t be surprised if he gets the rules wrong. If you’re the sort of person who gets annoyed when people get the rules wrong: Chris says sorry. In the third person, apparently.
Episode 220: Between Space And Space Space
Dec 22, 2017
Chris, Tom and Pip came here to round up our games of the year and eat praline chocolates… and we’ve got a whole lot of praline chocolates. Also, Pip hates pralines.
This is the last regular C&C episode of 2017! As such, you might want to check out the YouTube version: it’s that time again when we do a video of our faces and mouth parts doing the podcast! Look at them flap!
Episode 219: Everybody’s Gone To A Party
Dec 15, 2017
Get ready for a visceral Christmas experience as Chris, by himself, talks about Hello Neighbour and Hellblade. By himself.
This is, needless to say, a bit of a stopgap episode before we gather for this year’s annual roundup special. As such, Patreon backers will not be charged for it.
There’s a lot more C&C coming over the course of the next week. Hold on for our D&D special, Miniatures Monthly, Bloodborne, a video podcast special, and so on.
If nothing else, I hope you find some use for this episode as a kind of bearded man videogames ASMR experience. Or something.
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. We’re sorry that Patreon’s recently-announced changes may result in you being charged more: as we say in this episode, we’re going to see what happens over the next few days and then start considering alternatives, and we completely understand if the extra processing fee means you’re unable to continue your support.
Episode 218: In The Aftermath Of The Asset Wars
Dec 08, 2017
Chris, Tom F and John Roberts discuss indie news, Seven: The Days Long Gone, Destiny 2’s first expansion, Sorcery!, Shadowhand, and more.
‘More’ in this case includes the opportunity horse, the verb ‘to suchet’, a bit of Warhammer, the changes to Patreon, our upcoming Christmas specials, and so on.
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. We’re sorry that Patreon’s recently-announced changes may result in you being charged more: as we say in this episode, we’re going to see what happens over the next few days and then start considering alternatives, and we completely understand if the extra processing fee means you’re unable to continue your support.
Episode 217: Sean Bean’s Luxury Resources
Dec 01, 2017
Chris and Tom S discuss Destiny 2 changes, Civ VI’s new expansion, the horizontal lifestyle enabled by the Steam Link, and all of the things that Chris likes about Battlefront II.
Plus: the cultural benefits of expending one (1) Sean Bean, why you probably should try to fight a crocodile, games-as-toys, C&C D&D, returning to the early noughties, and why we’re all Bossk sometimes.
Tom F is joined by Zack and Kevin from Asymmetric for a Crate & Crowbar/Videogames Hotdog crossover episode recorded at Fantastic Arcade in Austin, Texas.
Discussed: the explosive appeal of Untitled Goose Game, Wilmot’s Warehouse, Bennett Foddy’s Getting Over It, Minute, Into The Breach, and loads more. It’s all in the shownotes below.
Patreon backers will not be charged for this episode. It’s a bit of a departure from normal podcast procedure, and we didn’t want to risk double-charging people who back both The Crate & Crowbar and Videogames Hotdog. So we’re not charging at all!
Episode 215: Eye For An Eye, Finger For A Guy
Nov 16, 2017
Chris and both Toms dig into the Battlefront II microtransactions thing, momentarily become a film podcast while talking about Injustice 2, and rewind back to Shadwen for a chat about parenthood.
Plus: a voice from the past returns, the importance of the trudge AND the squeak, Superman’s uncanny lips, and Ian M. Banks’ Play of the Game.
Here’s a weird thing: we originally thought this week’s episode was going to have to go up on Saturday. It’s not! It’s out on Thursday! That means that the intro doesn’t make a lot of sense! Unless you’re listening to it after Saturday! Thanks! Sorry! Bye!
Here’s Chris’ tweet about the BBC News front page.
Episode 214: The End of Reliable Horse Delivery
Nov 10, 2017
Tom, Chris and Alex have medium takes on Call of Duty: World War II, Assassin’s Creed: Origins, Dota 2 Turbo, and the industry’s latest travails.
Plus: getting the better of Satan, hopes for a hairy new Hitman, co-op jobs, Tuesday, impressing kids with chicken, bud motivation, and more.
Chris talks a bit about Dota 2 in this episode! If you’re one of the people who hate it when this happens, skip from 1:21:20 to 1:34:50. There are also spoilers for quite old PlayStation game Shadow of the Colossus from 1:50:25 to 1:51:20.
Episode 213: Auto Camel, Psychic Eagle
Nov 03, 2017
Chris, Tom F and John Roberts discuss Spelunky 2, Dota 2’s update, Wolfenstein II, Divinity: Original Sin, Assassin’s Creed: Origins, and other oranges besides.
Plus: the faulty UX of life, dancemat Tinder, internet things forever lost to time, and diminishing takeout returns.
Episode 211: An Etch A Sketch’s Dream Of Itself
Oct 20, 2017
Chris, Pip and Tom discuss the new Zachtronics game, the closure of Visceral, A Mortician’s Tale, Shadow of War, and more.
Plus: Babe Runner: Pig In The City, the midpoint between The Raid and Watership Down, hot cauliflower facts, inadvisable waffle digressions, and some videogame questions maybe? Jury’s out on that one.
Here’s the trailer for Zachtronics’ very pretty Opus Magnum.
Team Fortress 2’s new update comes with the first new animated short in ages.
Overgrowth is out! Chris didn’t know that Overgrowth wasn’t out.
The closure of Visceral means an end to Amy Hennig and co’s Star Wars project.
Episode 210: It’s Captain Flippin’ Good
Oct 13, 2017
Chris, Tom and Tom discuss the 10 year anniversary of The Orange Box, Universal Paperclips, Middle-earth (TM) Shadow of War, and EVE Valkyrie: Warzone.
Plus: explaining your game in fifty words or less, Chris’ worst idea, games fit for an Oxbridge application, rum, and more.
Chris and the Toms discuss Assassin’s Creed: Oranges, Divinity: Oranges Sin 2, and the hunt for a missing crate of origins. Also: Cuphead’s accessibility, Skaven’s terrifying ‘shitty rats anywhere’ power in Total War: Warhammer 2, and Battlegrounds’ Chinese review bomb.
Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds has had 70,000 Steam reviews in the last 30 days and its score is now officially ‘Mixed’.
Cuphead’s brutal but you’ll probably buy it anyway because a) it’s gorgeous and b) everyone else did.
Episode 208: Sid Meier Is Not A Pirate
Sep 29, 2017
Pip, Tom F, and some refreshing glasses of gin and tonic assemble to reflect upon the release of Heat Signature before moving on to other hip and happening PC games of the moment, including: XCOM 2: War of the Chosen and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.
Also! Your questions regarding community controversies and one of like a million reasons why Facebook is bullshit. We’re on a single mic again this week, but hopefully some post processing magic means it sounds okay.
What happened when a man signed emails using a female name for two weeks, at HuffPo.
Jeff Kaplan’s interview at Eurogamer regarding toxicity in Overwatch. and the resources required to combat shitty behaviour online.
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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.
Tom, Chris and Tom gather on the eve of Heat Signature’s release to talk Divinity: Original Sin 2, which they haven’t actually played, and Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, which they have.
Plus: character name conventions, systems with character, the secrets of a Twitter drafts folder, and the number of action points consumed by making love and listening to Death From Above in the same turn.
Heat Signature is out! Tom has made an entire game again! Congratulations, Tom!
Hackmud is one year old today! Chris has written a puzzle event again!
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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.
Talking about charity in games is another excuse to link to roBurky’s Sims 3 diary, Alice and Kev.
The episode of Star Trek: Deep Space 9 that Tom is trying to remember the name of is, indeed, Whispers.
Pip’s article about neuroscience and game skill is going up later today, and will be added to these show notes when it is..
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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.
Chris and Pip convene in a post-Tom world to discuss PUBG’s popularity, new Life is Strange, and Absolver. Also Chris says he won’t talk about Destiny 2, and then does.
We’ve skipped the questions section this week due to our (temporarily) reduced headcount – we’d like to dig into them properly when we’ve got at least one more Tom. If you’ve sent a question in the last week, don’t fret: we’ve received it.
Chris really loves Destiny 2, guys, like, a lot a lot.
For a few more post-pod thoughts on Destiny 2’s microtransaction drama, see this Twitter thread.
Absolver has also won Chris’ heart. He’s having a big month. And writing this in the third person.
Alexis Kennedy’s Cultist Simulator has been Kickstarted up real nice.
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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.
Notorious hobbledehoys Pip, Tom F and Tom S gather to discuss gaming matters of the day, including the plot of Half-Life 2: Episode 3, XCOM 2: War of the Chosen, Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth, Destiny 2, Dead Cells and bums.
Plus! Your questions and finest game name substitutions. Show notes:
Before Quern, there was the game Tom S could not remember the name of. It’s Valley.
Games to learn controllers with: Batman: Arkham challenge rooms, Crypt of the Necrodancer (though you need to do some rebinding to get it working, details in this FAQ), Portal.
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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.
The game for people who are blind that Chris is trying to think of is Three Monkeys, whose site appears to be down. However, it’s listed in this article about the same subject.
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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 202: Shoot Toast At My Face, Table Neighbour
Aug 18, 2017
Pip, Chris and Tom discuss No Man’s Sky’s latest update, 868-HACK’s latest expansion, and The Long Dark’s latest aurorae. Plus middle names, questions, and wat.
Here is Kane’s comprehensive list of games where the words ‘dark’ and ‘space’ have been replaced with ‘dork’ and ‘spice’, a fabulous use of time.
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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 201: The Seven Gun And Knife People You’ll Meet In Heaven
Aug 11, 2017
Chris, Tom and Tom discuss Artifact, the Dota 2 International, Hellblade, Shadow Tactics, The Shrouded Isle, Lawbreakers and more.
Please note: we discuss the recent Hellblade debate, including some mechanical spoilers, from around the 28 minute mark to the 49 minute mark. After that, there’s a less-potentially-spoilery chat about the game itself.
Here are links to our last two Christmas episodes: 2015 and 2016.
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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 200: You Think I’m A Lake, But I’m Just A Bunch More Sand
Aug 04, 2017
Pip, Chris, Tom and Tom celebrate 200 episodes the only way they know how: by doing another episode. Featuring The Long Dark, Tacoma, ducks, rum and time.
Plus: looking forward to Guild Wars 2’s next expansion, the future of esports and VR and dancing and stuff as experienced at ChinaJoy, hastily abandoned segue ambitions, meditations upon the nature of change, meditations upon the nature of Captain Morgan’s, Pyre, Blernsball, ducks, the price of Tom Francis, Tom Francis’ strangest noise, Shepard’s gummiest rusks, and Babe: Pip In The City.
It’s a long one, folks. It’s also rather a drunk one. Thank you for supporting us for 200 episodes! Sorry that you had to support us for 200 episodes.
Let’s remember episode 1, particularly all the names for this podcast we didn’t use.
Dota 2’s International 2017 begins this week. Here’s the official feed. Valve say they’re doing new newbie-friendly stuff, but it doesn’t look like it’s available yet.
Telling Lies is Sam Barlow’s spiritual successor to Her Story.
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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 199: The Sum of Everything is Quern
Jul 29, 2017
Two Toms and a Pip gather to discuss the death of everything, Unity’s rep, Pyre, Walden, and QUERN.
Also, mad clunking noises! We had to record on a table with the old mic this week, so apologies for the dip in sound quality. Normal services will resume shortly.
Show notes:
Contrary to what we thought on the podcast this week, MS Paint lives! MS are just moving it to their store as a free app.
Episode 198: Crying On The Shoulder Of A Ryan
Jul 21, 2017
Chris and Tom S are joined by PC Gamer editor-in-chief Samuel Roberts to discuss The Sexy Brutale, GTA Online and open world co-op. Then, suddenly, Pip!
Plus: CBeebies on fire near the Sennheiser Gate, pulling out of Everything, old Dota grudges, the mysteries of the Sweaty Brutale, and an encounter with Kelvin in The David Cage.
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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.
Pip, Tom and Chris discuss VR, Hollow Knight, Slime Rancher, a little PUBG, esports, whether or not we should have more wine, and puns.
Plus: quadges from quadges, bodily censure, the 7/10 fallacy, and loads more. Be summoned by the hot takes bell, be repelled by the heady tang of fresh plort.
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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.
Tom has failed to extract the Dark Horse from a mine in West of Loathing.
Chris has been playing Everspace, which is by Rockfish, the other dev whose name we forgot.
Here is the Soyuz Chair weightlessness experience.
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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 195: Adjusted Columbo’s Rubberbanding Radius
Jun 30, 2017
Chris, Tom, Tom and secret Pip discuss Steam sales, Diablo III’s Necromancer, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, and more.
Plus: meditations on the question of review-bombing, how the radishes are doing, assorted crime, and an extended discussion of Poirot for some reason. Looks like meat’s back on the prix fixe, boys.
Find out about Chelsea Saunders’ garden-mowing game on her twitter.
Enjoy our spotty misremembering of this Murder on the Orient Express trailer, which neither features the Imagine Dragons song we think it does nor the number of dubstep womps that Chris thinks there is.
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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 194: If All You Have Is A Bone Store, Every Problem Looks Like An Ossuary
Jun 23, 2017
Pip, Tom, Chris and Tom discuss mod drama, patch note etiquette, Dead Cells, Tekken 7, Nex Machina, and Dota 2’s co-op update.
Plus: mangled metaphor, the worst names for things, time management, allergies, and more.
Apologies for the dip in sound quality this episode: as we explain at the beginning, Britain’s heat wave rendered our regular recording room very uncomfortable. Normal service resumes next week!
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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 193: So Much For The Tolerant Elf
Jun 16, 2017
Tom, Chris and Tom talk their way through a gigantic pile of E3 announcements, including expansions for Dishonored 2 and XCOM 2, Shadow of War, and assorted pirates.
Plus loads more: see the show notes below for a full list of games and their associated trailers.
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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.
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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.
Chris, Pip and the Toms cannot resist chiming in on Far Cry 5 one last time, but move swiftly on to Tom S’s impressions of Destiny 2 on PC, Tom F’s of Caveblazers and Legacy of the Void, and Chris and Pip’s differing feelings on the much-changed Dota 2.
We hadn’t seen the actual trailer for Far Cry 5 last week, we have now. Here’s the piece about applying the Outpost’s design philosophy to the main game.
Tom S has played Destiny 2 and his preview is in the new issue of PC Gamer. You can also watch a Strike with commentary from PCG’s Tim and James.
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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.
Prey: A Lock-In at The Crate and Crowbar
May 26, 2017
Just in time for the weekend! Chris, Tom F and John R discuss the successes and failings of Arkane’s beautifully-designed sci-fi horror being-a-cup simulator. Needless to say, this one-off special episode is completely rammed with spoilers from the outset. If you haven’t played Prey all the way through to the end – and past the credits – come back and listen when you have.
You can also listen to this episode on YouTube. Intro music is a mix of The Crate and Crowbar’s traditional Clambake by The Mandibles and Everything Is Going To Be Okay from Mick Gordon’s excellent Prey score.
Chris, Tom F and Tokyo 42 creators Sean and Maciek discuss Tokyo 42, game secrets, Far Cry 5, Offworld Trading Company, Forts, Edith Finch and loads more.
As is said at the beginning of this episode, we hit our first serious technical problems while recording this week. As such there are a few gaps and one section that cuts off abruptly – we’ve done what we can to salvage the vast majority of the hot hot takes we spent so long extruding from our faces, but there were a few casualties. Sorry! We’ve figured out what went wrong, so hopefully it won’t happen again.
Tokyo 42! It’s out next week. There’s a cat in it.
Here’s the trailer for Redline, an influence on Tokyo 42.
There is probably more information about Far Cry 5 on this website now than there is when I am writing this.
Tom has returned to Offworld Trading Company, a game about running a company that trades things, offworld.
Exanima’s dynamic combat feels like a successor to Die By The Sword. (Tom F’s note: this is the same game I was thinking of with the boring-sounding title, because it used to be called Sui Generis)
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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.
Chris has been playing Endless Space 2. A lot of the technical issues he reports have been patched since the time of recording – check out his review for PC Gamer for a more up to date take.
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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 188: West, Aft, South And Down
May 12, 2017
Chris, Tom F, Tom S, and bonus Pip discuss Prey! Lots of Prey. Lots o’ Prey. Also: Risk of Rain, Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry rumours, gimbal lock, and fascinating regional WASD.
Give that toaster an extension cable.
Hopoo Games’ Risk of Rain 2 translates a 2D roguelike to all three dimensions.
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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 187: The Contenxt of Bundvr Chegg
May 05, 2017
Chris, Tom F, Alex and a modicum of Pip discuss Prey, Exo One, Dawn of War III, and What Remains of Edith Finch. Two hours of actual podcast: one bonus hour that we will never speak of again.
Also: increasingly poor startup pitches, missing swans, goblins, pro StarCraft, walking simulator naming conventions, too much rum, and more. Rum.
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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.
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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.
Chris and Tom released episode three of Miniatures Monthly this week. If you’re into tiny plastic people, give ‘er a listen.
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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 how that works, click here.
Chris and a full complement of Toms discuss new developments in Overwatch and Minecraft as well as Bayonetta, The Signal From Tolva, and a little bit of Mass Effect: Andromeda.
Plus: stealin’ guys, the death of Eggman, moon resistance, poor broccoli timing, robot road manners, game dreams, the Andromeda question, and rum. And wine.
Tom’s game, Heat Signature, benefits from the attention of many Johns.
Here’s Wes Fenlon’s immersive sim roundtable with Tom and a few friends, including Warren Spector, Harvey Smith, and Steve Gaynor.
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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 how that works, click here.
Live at Rezzed 2017! Pip, Chris and Graham talk about the games they’ve seen and played at the show and then field questions from REAL PEOPLE.
There are some audio issues with this episode due to the unavoidable consequences of trying to get three allegedly-competent people to speak to both each other and a handheld microphone at the same time. Sorry! As a consequence, we won’t be charging our Patreon backers for this episode. We are immensely grateful to all of you, however, and to everybody who came along to the recording in person.
Right at the end of the pod, the audio cuts out as Chris says “FIFA: The Journey”. Just in case you were wondering.
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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 how that works, click here.
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also 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 how that works, click here.
Horizon Zero Dawn: A Lock-In at The Crate and Crowbar
Mar 29, 2017
A little bonus pod for you this week: Tom F dials in from Seattle with an hour of his thoughts on free-roaming robot dinosaur adventure Horizon: Zero Dawn. Tom will be returning to the podcast proper very soon.
You can listen to this episode on YouTube, if you prefer. Music, as ever, is from Clambake by The Mandibles. In London? Find out more about this week’s live podcast at Rezzed right here.
WALLOPING HOWDY and welcome to episode 181, in which Pip, Chris and Tom S gather to very carefully not spoil Mass Effect: Andromeda, Future Unfolding and Nier: Automata.
THEN, questions! What would truly advanced AI do to games? Football clubs running esports teams? Best cats in games? What is co-op? Plus, another grudge! Keep ‘em coming, folks.
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like.
Episode 180: ‘Til I See Marianne Despawn
Mar 17, 2017
Pip, Tom and Chris discuss Dawn of War III, No Man’s Sky, Mass Effect: Andromeda and other space things besides.
Plus: things that are more than a feeling, the joy of jumping, delicious salt, the golden frog of shoes, and our most joyous walloping howdies. Also, Pip remembers some lore.
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like.
Episode 179: Tom Clancy’s Club Penguin
Mar 10, 2017
Chris, Pip and Alex recap GDC, find various uses for a Steam Link and double-tap Ghost Recon: Wildlands.
Plus! Our favourite history podcasts, goat-bonking Bloodbowl 2 action, the world circa 2003 and 2016 and the question of whether Ed Sheeran looks like all games journalists or whether all games journalists look like Ed Sheeran.
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. If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, you can do so here. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like.
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, a game that definitely has a big rock cutting tool
