Girl Mode

Major FF7 Rebirth spoilers throughout! Explicit spoilers for Chapter 13 and beyond from 30:00 to 1:10:00! Oooh, we’ve got an exciting one for you this week as we’re joined by very special guest Jade King, lead features editor of TheGamer! This episode is a Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth spectacular, wherein we get deep on its narrative highs and lows, talk an awful lot about Advent Children, and spoil th...

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth reviews are out in the wild, so we can finally talk about (some of) our experiences with this fascinating, incredibly uneven game. We’re saving most of our thoughts for next week, so this week is safe for people wanting to avoid spoilers. But before we get to that, we’re talking Shadow of the Erdtree, Nintendo Direct, and more Unicorn Overlord! Timestamps (01:00) RIP Flaco,...

This week, we’re running through a whole lot of games, since Robin was too busy sleeping on Willa’s couch to record last week. First, we cover the most anticipated game of all: Foamstars. Then a demo for a little game called Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth came out, and both of our hosts attended an exciting preview recently, but only one did so well she broke the game. We end with a whole lot of news, on...

This week, it’s been too long since we recorded to remember what we talked about. I think it was…video games? That’s right, it was State of Play! The Short Message was pretty bad. Zenless Zone Zero has cute anime girls. Some other stuff probably happened, too. Judging by the links in our text thread I guess we talk about Persona 3 Reload, Suicide Squad, and Bayonetta. Enjoy! Mentioned this week Pe...

It’s been a pretty fucked up week for the games industry, so we’re starting with a lament for lost jobs and our grim outlook on how things are only going to get worse. Then we talk about Nier Reincarnation being deleted imminently and what it says about games preservation. We eventually move to cheerier territory by talking about what games we’ve been playing, including a couple Nier games, Final...

Zoe’s taking some time off so this week Robin is talking to Willa Rowe, who’s apparently a new writer at Kotaku . Good for her. After making a bunch of predictions for the upcoming year (which neither of us came up with minutes before recording started), we catch up with the latest FFXIV Fan Fest, share our first shaky steps into Vana’diel, and try to figure out what we really want in a Metroidvan...

In the last episode, we witnessed the amazing premonitory powers of Willa's girlfriend Zoe, so we're giving her control of the podcast this week out of a mixture of respect and fear. With Willa temporarily banished to the shadow realm, Zoe shares some of her favorite recent games with Robin, talks about the forgotten games of her youth, plays a round of "is this game ugly," and ends with her predi...

We’re easing into the new year, first by pretty much just reprising an article we already wrote about our most anticipated games of 2024. Then, we discuss how our “gamer resolutions” for 2023 went and talk about what we want to change in the coming year. Finally, we revisit Willa and Zoe’s predictions for 2023 in gaming and see how they both did! Timestamps (01:40) Our most anticipated games of 20...

The moment you’ve been waiting for all year is here: it’s the second annual Girl Mode Awards! Tune in to gaming’s most illustrious awards show as we crown the winner of this year’s Most Exhausting Discourse, the Best Game That’s Just Mid, the coveted Most Realistic Trees, and more incredibly important honors. This episode also caps off 2023 for Girl Mode, so we just want to say thank you to everyo...

We’ve spent the past few weeks playing some of the year’s most fascinating games, and now we’re making it your problem! Our annual game exchange is now officially annual because we’ve done it twice. This year, we played Slay the Princess and The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, two games about choice, fate, and women with the power to destroy the universe.  Heads up: We spoil the hell out of both gam...

Alas, The Game Awards returned this week, and this time it was worse than ever. Tune in to hear the world record for how many times a human has said the word “frustrating” in an hour, plus some suggestions for shows you can watch that won’t fill you with fury.  Timestamps (00:30) Boy howdy The Game Awards was a nightmare (45:30) What else have Willa and Robin been up to? Mentioned this week:...

We're back from our week off with a giant-size return to the world of the X-Men. This time we tackle the dark ages known as the 1990s, when the X-Men took a detour from political allegory to the more business-friendly world of utter schlock. Join us as we catch up on what’s new in the lives of our old friends, our old friends’ clones, alternate dimension versions of our old friends, our old friend...

In the spirit of the games industry itself, today's episode is a completely unnecessary remaster. We took a break from recording this week, so we're filling the gap with a re-release of our very first episode, but this time run through some fancy filters to make it actually listenable! We'll be back with a regular episode next time! Until then, we hope you enjoy this proof that we are actually get...

Listen this week as we have a normal, friendly conversation and never once shout at each other or cause trouble. We're following up last week's Game Awards predictions with the Official Girl Mode ballot in yet another installment of why Willa and Robin should be in charge of all games media. Mentioned this week: Towards a Free Palestine game jam Press Start's Final Fantasy X episode Follow us wher...

The day before the Game Awards nominees were announced, the Girl Mode council convened to make our own predictions about what would be on the ballot. Tune in to witness our amazing powers of prophecy and/or deductive reasoning. But first, we tackle our complicated feelings on the state of games media, as a new Defector of video games sprung up in the middle of another week of layoffs and shutdowns...

It's Girl Mode's first anniversary! We're celebrating by making our listeners come up with this week's topic, aka, answering listener questions. Tune in as we discuss our dream game mechanics, video games as short films, why we refuse to git gud, and our growing obsession with Final Fantasy XI. Thanks so much to everyone who sent us questions and everyone who's listened to us! It means a lot and w...

We spent the week catching up on some of the best games of the year in the lead-up to the Game Awards. Tune in to hear about some of the best games you might have overlooked of 2023, plus our thoughts on why graphics don't actually need to get any better. We stand for a free Palestine, and against the occupation, oppression, and genocide perpetrated against its people. Please consider donating or...

With spooky season in full swing, we decided to watch some of the "best" "horror" movies of all time this week. We may not be able to remember almost anything that happens in the Resident Evil movies, but we do have strong opinions about all of Milla Jovovich's haircuts. No timestamps this week. It's all Resident Evil, babes! Music Street Food by FASSounds Donate to Medical Aid for Palestinians to...

We've been playing an absurd number of demos this week, thanks to the return of the Steam Next Fest! Tune in to sample our tasting menu of games, including at least one we'll probably both be talking about obsessively for quite some time. Then, TV critic Willa Rowe stops by with her fall anime preview. Mentioned this week Way too many things so you're just going to have to listen to the episode &l...

We're confronting the mortifying ordeal of being known this week by discussing multiplayer games. What do we want from multiplayer, which games are better with an audience, and can you believe Willa didn't tell Zoe she was a fucking cop? Then, it's an extended segment on what we've been doing this week, since Robin can't shut up about her time as a cute little bug. (00:45) The really old books cin...

You're not gonna believe this, but a conversation about a AAA action game leads into an extended lament for the state of the games industry in this episode. That's bookended by Willa failing to show sufficient respect for Dragon's Dogma 2, some really good Pokemon art, and Robin sharing good news on this show for once in her fucking life. Timestamps (00:30) Quokka Talk/Willa's new coworker (05:30)...

This week, we start with Dragon's Dogma, Yakuza, and other updates from the games marketing event extended universe. Then we catch up with all the news we straightup forgot about last week, namely Unity fucking everyone over and Microsoft using court filings as a venue for legal exhibitionism. Timestamps (00:20) Rain (the video game) inspired by rain (the weather phenomenon) (02:00) Even more show...

Nintendo and Sony both bombarded us with promotional materials this week, so we're covering the Nintendo Direct and Sony State of Play. Then we talk about how much we love Armored Core 6, which we played only a few hours of before recording and it's all we can think about. Timestamps (01:00) Swordfighter Peach Appreciation Society (16:45) Willa fixes FF7 Rebirth (32:20) We're fully mech pilled Men...

This week's theme is "Robin and Willa have been too busy to talk so we're catching up now." We share what games we've been enjoying and not enjoying lately, Willa turns out not to be a very good detective, and Robin absolutely fails to guess Zoe's Baldur's Gate 3 companion tier list. No timestamps this week because we talk about too much and I'm very busy :) Mentioned this week Willa on Assassin's...

We're keeping it (relatively) short this week for purely thematic reasons and not because we're both tired and busy. Inspired by Sea of Stars' fishing, we talk about our favorite and least favorite minigames, including one that threatens to break up Girl Mode. (1:00) What if we put a game inside of a game (14:00) Willa decides to end Robin's life (20:10) Blitzball, Gwent, and even more minigames (...