Vidjagame Apocalypse

Creepy, quasi-religious cults seem to be all the rage in games this year, with heavy hitters like Horizon: Zero Dawn, Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and now Far Cry 5 using them as major plot points - so this week, erstwhile hosts Brett Elston and Henry Gilbert rejoin the show for a look at five of gaming's most unsettling and influential cults. Then it's time to dive into Star Trek: Bridge Crew, Frid...

This week, we finally give recurring guest Bob Mackey a topic fit for his Retronauts chops: ancient arcade games that were "ported" to consoles, but became completely different games in the process. Then it's time to go aggressively modern with Rime, Friday the 13th, Far Cry 5, Red Dead Redemption 2's delay, and the characters you'd love to shove into fighting games.

Injustice 2 hit this week with more power than a locomotive - and with Sub-Zero as a DLC cast member. So to celebrate, we've invited Heidi Kemps of gaming.moe to help us count down our picks for the five best guest characters in fighting games. Then it's time to dig into Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Injustice 2 (of course), rampant speculation about Zelda on mobile, the Rap Rabbit Kick...

We've got a bona fide indie developer in our midst this week, as Theresa Duringer of Temple Gates Games joins us to talk about her new mobile adaptation of strategy board game Race for the Galaxy. She also helps us talk about five games that began as fan projects or unofficial mods, only to earn the eventual blessing and/or backing of the companies whose work they were celebrating. Then it's onwar...

With Austin Powers recently turning 20, we undertake a fan suggestion this week and look at five awful, awful games based on Mike Myers movies... with the help of our old pal Dan Amrich, who won the internet this week by co-creating the stellar Star Wars/Beatles mashup album known as Princess Leia's Stolen Death Star Plans. Then it's time for a spirited discussion about Prey, Call of Duty: WWII, D...

This week sees the release of not one, but two games that mash up popular franchises to create strange and wonderful new hybrids of complementary gameplay - so Henry Gilbert joins the crew to count down a list of five other games that merged existing gameplay formulas to create new crossover adventures. We then switch gears to Puyo Puyo Tetris, Dragon Quest Heroes II, What Remains of Edith Finch,...

This week brings a storm of retro-styled games and revamped re-releases, but before we get to that, Michael Grimm joins us for a look at five games that let you choose paths of (relative) nonviolence, incapacitating and outwitting your enemies instead of straight-up killing them. Then it's time to dig into Full Throttle Remastered, Telltale's Guardians of the Galaxy, the Disney Afternoon Collectio...

It's always fun when someone appears on VGA for the first time, and this week, longtime community member and Anime Streaming Showcase creator Curtis "zabu_san" Stone joins us for a very serious discussion of mascots who habitually carry their partners around on their backs, operating in a state of perpetual symbiosis that you probably thought was totally normal for animals or elves or whatever. Th...

Persona 5 is here at last, and given that the series has always relied heavily on concepts and symbolism from Jungian psychology (among other things), we thought it'd be fun to dig into five games that deliberately used Carl Jung's ideas to create vibrant, dreamlike stories filled with sinister Shadows. Things then get less esoteric as we look at Persona 5 itself (with help from host emeritus Henr...

With at least two of last year's biggest games getting big-time DLC this week, it seemed like as good a time as any to take a look - with the help of Telltale's Nathan Ortega - at some of our favorite DLC expansions of all time. More than downloadable extras, these added new stories to amazing games and sometimes even improved the overall experience - and once we're done getting nostalgic about th...

It's Mass Effect week, so we honor its legacy by starting off with a list of some of the biggest, most important trilogies in gaming - ones that told overarching, three-part stories that stuck in our minds for years afterward. Then it's time to finally dig into Mass Effect: Andromeda, Zero Escape: The Nonary Games, the unexpected return of the Floigan Bros., and your favorite Mass Effect romances.

Blaster Master Zero's recent arrival on Switch revived a classic tale of a boy and his frog, so this week we let nostalgia be our guide and put together a list of five of gaming's greatest green amphibians. We then move on to Danganronpa 1-2 Reload, Switch sales, the upcoming Steven Universe RPG, and the sleeper games you've either recently discovered, or wish others would.

Following the surprise of 2010's Nier getting a sequel with this week's release of NieR: Automata, Heidi Kemps rejoins us to talk about five games that were largely ignored at release, only to find an audience years later and come surging back to popularity. Then it's on to extended Zelda: Breath of the Wild/Switch discussion, Ghost Recon Wildlands, Disc Jam, Oculus Rift's price drop, and your fav...

The Switch is finally a thing you can conceivably buy in a store, and erstwhile host Henry Gilbert returns this week to tell us about his experience playing Nintendo's new console for Fandom.com - but first, we start off with a highly contentious list of five of the best non-Mario/Zelda launch games from Nintendo's past. Then we dig into Horizon: Zero Dawn, River City Ransom: Underground, Legend o...

The release of Halo Wars 2 this week set us a-ponderin' about other huge franchises that have wandered outside their comfortable genres, usually in strange and beautiful ways — so we begin this week by focusing on five of the strangest departures ever to come out of a major game series. Then it's on to Halo Wars 2 and Night in the Woods, after which we talk about Switch download sizes, Fallout 4 i...

This episode was recorded in the aftermath of another Valentine's Day, which we mark the only way we know how: by being miserable bastards and getting spoilery about gaming's most tragically disastrous romances. With that out of the way, we dig into For Honor and Sniper Elite 4, talk about E3 getting bigger and earlier, and (finally!) take a stroll through your favorite games of all time.

We've finally made it to 200 episodes of Vidjagame Apocalypse! Join us as we celebrate by throwing out our usual format and instead try to debate, cajole, and vote our way to a highly subjective list of the 20 best games of all time, starting from the 10 respective favorites of Mikel Reparaz, Chris Antista, Dave Rudden, and Brett Elston, and ending with a vague sense that democracy is just the wor...

The release of the throwback-y Double Dragon IV this week pushes us to look back at games that also looked back, despite being modern and not really having an excuse. With TechRadar's Nick Pino in attendance, we dive into five deliberately retro sequels before snickering at the swinging dicks of Conan Exiles, getting excited for Fire Emblem Heroes, mourning the passing of Namco's founder, and talk...

This is the first really big week of 2017 for new releases, with Resident Evil VII hitting like a proverbial chainsaw to the POV - but before we get to those, Yakuza 0 inspires us to talk about our top 5 crime lords, with help from Michael Grimm. Then Brett Elston joins us (briefly) to talk RE7 from an insider's perspective, after which there's excited chatter about Kingdom Hearts 2.8, Nefarious,...

This week is full of Nintendo Switch news, as Fandom's Bob Mackey joins us to share his hands-on impression of Nintendo's newest console and its games - but first, one of this week's new (re-)releases inspires a Top 5 about games that featured stealing the bodies of your enemies as their main gameplay hook. Then it's on to Gravity Rush 2 (which Bob also reviewed), tons and tons of Switch talk, and...

We're back in full for a new year, as Fandom's Henry Gilbert joins us to look ahead to the games slated to come out in 2017 that we're most excited for. With that out of the way, we move on to Scalebound's cancellation, some idle speculation and excitement from before the Switch press conference happened, and (finally!) your favorite games of 2016.  

2016 has been a shit year. We won't miss it. But it's nevertheless given us some amazing games, some of which we've been waiting on for years. After a couple of rounds of intense voting, we've come up with our 10 favorites, and assembled an all-star cast of hosts to talk about them, including Bob Mackey, Henry Gilbert, Nathan Ortega, Michael Grimm, and Brett Elston in addition to the regular crew....

It's almost Christmas, so this week, Telltale Games Community Manager Nathan Ortega and Michael Grimm join us to talk about... games where you play as a dad and protect a kid? Really? OK, fine. We then move on to talking about The Walking Dead: A New Frontier, Overwatch's surprisingly divisive character development, Nintendo Switch tech specs, and the Nintendo franchises you'd like to see come to...

Dead Rising 4 inspires yet another episode theme, as special guests Henry "Fandom Dot Com" Gilbert and Wes Green joins us to focus on five playable journalists who keep little more than a camera lens between themselves and danger. Then it's on to Telltale's fifth Batman episode, Super Mario Run, Hitman and Overwatch adding holiday content, and the game-character holiday ornaments you'd be proud to...

It's our first show of December, which means the holidays are nearly upon us. More to the point, Dead Rising 4's Christmasy zombie uprising gives us the perfect excuse to - along with Fandom editor Bob Mackey - look at games in which the annual gift-giving holiday is not only threatened, but totes wrecked. We then talk about THe Last Guardian, Dead Rising 4, The Last of Us Part 2, Marvel vs Capcom...