Abject Suffering

An episode where, admittedly, neither of us can remember a specific aspect of the Heroes of Might and Magic universe... but it doesn't matter, because this is actually just King's Bounty! So you can't trick us with your lies.

This is actually a good game, but we couldn't pass up the opportunity to talk about Forbidden Cubes. If you're familiar with this, it's probably because of a demo disk that came with your PlayStation, or from buying the PlayStation Classic mini-console. Its austere, frankly creepy presentation wraps up a satisfying puzzle game that gives us plenty of geometry-based digression material.

This week we talk about an experimental indie adventure game that seems fine, we just weren't in the mood for it at the time. So we talk about proper marshmallows, letting 'er rip, and pepper spray.

Troma decided to take the disgusting and disturbing Toxic Avenger series and adapt it... for kids! What we got was a one season animated show that was a weak stab at Captain Planet, but at least it resulted in some neat toys. Oh, and some very bad video games.

This week has us looking at a fun little indie game about a young girl trying to use her dolls to figure out how people have sex. It's a very small project, made over three days for a game jam, but it's a fun springboard into a few conversations about sex and insecurity.

The good news is that this episode doesn't get as gross as you'd expect. This is a modern-ish remake of a storied German franchise where you start and run an pay toilet empire. Which isn't a terrible idea, even if the execution stinks.

Remember when conspiracy theories were fun? It feels like a long time ago. It's also strange to look back at old video game controversies and realize how quaint they are. Case in point, 2004's "JFK Reloaded" caused an outcry because of its subject matter. Is it tasteless to recreate the assassination of a beloved U.S. president? We personally don't think so, and you can listen to hear us make our...

There was no reason for them to digitize this simple dice game, but they did it anyway, and gave it one crackerjack title. We talk about road trip memories, rural fair competitions, and generally vibe about how great and horrifying pigs can be.

Do you have fond memories of this? Sorry! It's pretty bad! We talk about the misguided gimmick (a cartridge with a solar light sensor) that looms large over a stealth RPG that was already pretty bad. Games will need to get up much earlier in the morning if they want to make us go outside.

Knuckles' Chaotix is the only game that could possibly embody the sheer awkwardness of the Sega 32X. It stars Knuckles and his shitty friends as they attempt to stop Dr. Robotnik from doing something I guess. The problem is, Knuckles is bound to his co-op partner by a stretchy energy band, which makes doing "Sonic" stuff impossible. But they still expect you to do Sonic stuff.

A divine agent has gone rogue, taking the sacred texts with him and throwing the whole world into chaos. It's up to you to find him and stop the crisis in the most mind-numbing way possible. Also, we talk about that time a car crashed into Gary's house at 3am.

Dried fruit almost had a home in the NES in this mediocre platformer published by Capcom. The problem is, the popular California Raisins commercials, where sentient fruit performed Motown classics, cost more to produce than they generated in sales. So the California Raisins went away, and this game didn't see the light of day until recently.

And the award for "most obscure Lovecraft game adaptation" goes to... This thing. It's actually not that bad, though! While this is our first Hidden Object game, the genre was extremely popular with casual gamers for a while. And this seems like a good one, eschewing most of the pixel hunting for a basic point-and-click adventure setup. We honestly thought this would be worse.

Back around the turn of the millennium, before social media forever changed what the word "celebrity" meant, "Celebrity Death Match" was a staple of the late night MTV lineup. It was an exceedingly violent claymation show where different celebrities wrestled to the death, often with "jokes" that mostly just made fun of women. They made a game out of this, and we made an episode out that game, whic...

This game is nothing, but it's also a reminder of a forgotten era of Windows 3.1 aesthetics and production values. We know basically nothing about jets, so instead we invent the character of Periodicles and talk about the Torso Killer.

Timecop was created out of necessity once someone realized "Time" and "Crime" rhymed. Jean-Claude Van Damme took a break between railing miles of coke to act as an enforcer for an agency trying to stop people from using time travel to get rich. Then they made a really bad game out of it.

This cinematic game for the NES is slightly divisive between us, as it awkwardly fumbles to be Rainbow 6 before Rainbow 6 was possible on hardware.

Torque may or may not have killed his wife and child, and now he's in a haunted prison with plenty of time to sort himself out... in between monster attacks. This honestly isn't a terrible game, but it's just outrageous enough to talk about here.

This week we talk about Warlocked, the tiny RTS that kind of could. That's right... they made a real time strategy game for the Game Boy Color and it actually works, although it doesn't feel like your usual strategy game. We also talk about a horrifying video involving a toilet.

To celebrate episode 400 of Abject Suffering, we dip into some Steam crapware, based entirely on its funny name. Last of Ass has nothing to do with The Last of Us, instead being a low-effort take on Slender: The Pages meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre. You're trapped on the land of some goddamn cannibals, and you need to sneak around to get the parts you need to fix your car. That's it.

We believe that Guilty Gear is a good series that just isn't for us. We don't really go in for hyper-stylized, chaotic fighting games like this. What everyone can agree on, we think, is that Guilty Gear Isuka is a very bad entry in that series. In an attempt to add some gimmicks to the series, the developers break the design conventions that make 2D fighters work, making for a uniquely unpleasant...

They killed Marlow Briggs on the wrong day with the wrong scythe. So an ancient Incan god king has revived him as a spirit of vengeance, Captain Planet-like! This game is actually competent, so we spend time talking about how the only reasonable way to spend money if you're a billionaire is to restore your hometown to exactly the way it was when you were ten.

Truth time: Buffy is a blind spot for us. Both of us were watching different things in the 90s, and sometimes it's just too hard to go back to something from that era if you don't have any nostalgia for it. This first Buffy game is an anemic GBC brawler, so instead we talk about our newest supernatural villain: the incompetent Frankenstein.

William Shatner's magnum opus spans nine books, a theatrical release, a television show, and several TV movies, and you probably only know it from an offhand joke on the Simpsons. It's cyberpunk without the punk, where a digital drug named Tek is the scourge of the streets. In the game, you play as a Tek addict turned narc agent who has to hunt down dealers in awkward first person shooter combat....

Eternam is a very strange adventure game. Taking cues from Westworld, you play as Don Jonz, who won a vacation package to a fantasy planet, only to learn that his arch rival is working some kind of scheme there. Decent jokes and horrifying faces abound!