The Casual Hour

This Week on The Casual Hour... We’re on the cusp of E3 talk, but until then, we’ve got other things to talk about: Like games we’ve always meant to finish. Assassin’s Creed, GTA, Final Fantasy, we’ve got all the hits…we just haven’t hit the credits. Meanwhile, Chase is continuing with Destiny and Super Mega Baseball, Johnny’s wrapped up God of War and started some previews of Dark Souls Remastere...

This Week on The Casual Hour... Well, we actually did it. 100 episodes (maybe even a handful of decent ones!) And we’ve got something special for this episode: The full cast back is together! Johnny, Chase and Bobby too. And we’re going to be rolling this way going forward. Listen to us argue with, chide and talk over each other — just like old times — as we wonder how the hell we got here. Oh, an...

This Week on The Casual Hour... Like the old saying goes, April showers bring May…video games? Sure, why not? We’ve got a bevy of games to talk through in our May preview, but how many of them will make the cut into our top picks? Meanwhile, Bobby’s been gaming on the go while he was out town with Chrono Trigger and Owlboy, and has been mainlining God of War and Swords of Ditto when he has been ho...

This Week on The Casual Hour... Pierce Courchaine joins Bobby and Chase as we talk about Sega and M2’s announcement of Sega Ages, a number of classic Sega titles being ported over to the Switch this summer. That’s reason enough for us to chat about a few of our favorite hidden gems from the Genesis. Pierce also gives us a look at a couple of the demos he played at PAX East, Chase is digging into h...

This Week on The Casual Hour... This week’s show consists of Chase Koeneke, Johnny Amizich, Hoagie the pug and Sylvia the cat as we talk about the best of the best(or at least our personal favorites) in the realm of video game adaptations. What franchises made successful jumps from games to other media? Find out on this edition of The Casual Hour. Let’s Talk! We love fan mail, send us some! ...

This Week on The Casual Hour... Save Your Coins’ Zach Fleeman returns to the show as we talk about some deep cuts from our lists of favorite(but not necessarily good) licensed games. Meanwhile, Chase and Bobby are still whittling away at Ni No Kuni II, Bobby is puzzling around his iOS devices with Starman and Zach playing through Shadow of the Colossus again, but this time he’s playing the PS4 rem...

This Week on The Casual Hour... Bobby and Chase are still deep into Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom Also, Chase caved and purchased not one, but two different sports games (NBA2K18 and MLB The Show 18) while Bobby continues to punish himself with Far Cry 5. But since we called April a relatively slow month for games last episode, we thought we’d talk about a few of the games we’re resolving to rea...

This Week on The Casual Hour... We look ahead to the low quantity but high quality games of April and also look back on the biggest successes and busts of March. Bobby’s been walking the plank in Sea of Thieves, exploring Montana in Far Cry 5 and cruising around Paradise City in Burnout Paradise Remastered. Chase is playing an old racing game too, 2010’s Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit. And both guys...

This Week on The Casual Hour... Bobby’s gone, so Chase and Johnny are dialing up the sports talk with some of our favorite sports video games. But before that we have to dive into the recent Nintendo Nindies Direct (which might have been a better overall Direct than last week’s big one…) Chase is beside himself about Mark of the Ninja coming to the Switch, as well as a new Banner Saga and more. We...

This Week on The Casual Hour... We wish the Nintendo Switch a happy birthday and go over our thoughts and feelings on the one-year-old console (and looking at every other gaming site, we weren’t the only ones with that idea.) We also look ahead to what’s on the horizon for the Switch, as well as detail a few longshot dreams of ours for Nintendo’s newest console. Outside of our little birthday part...

This Week on The Casual Hour... We look forward to near-future game releases in our March preview (and we reflect on February’s crop of titles, some more fondly than others.) Chase is still deep into Alto’s Odyssey, but found time to finish February PS+ game, Rime. Meanwhile, Bobby’s been checking out a pair of pixel-based games, Owlboy and Crossing Souls. All that and another impromptu discussion...

This Week on The Casual Hour... Bobby’s back this week and we have a lot to catch up on. Chase has wrapped up Shadow of the Colossus, Bobby’s “finished” Monster Hunter World and both guys went on the emotional rollercoaster of Florence. We’ve also been hitting the slopes of the newly released Alto’s Odyssey. All that and more on this truly hour-long edition of The Casual Hour! Let’s Talk! We love...

This Week on The Casual Hour... Co-founder of some lame podcast called The Casual Hour, Johnny Amizich, returns home to guest host on…The Casual Hour? It’s only weird for a minute, and then we get right back into the swing of things. Johnny’s been AWOL for months, and he’s got a veritable mountain of games to talk about including Pushmo, Super Mario Odyssey, Celeste and Monster Hunter. Meanwhile C...

This Week on The Casual Hour... We’re joined by The Short Game’s Raygan Kelly and Nate Heininger as we talk about, well, short games (kind of the whole point in bringing them on,) those palate cleansers packed to the brim with creativity and innovation. From Oregon Trail to space Oregon Trail, we cover the gamut of games that respect your time while pushing the envelope. Plus, Chase gives some upd...

This Week on The Casual Hour... We debut a new recurring segment as we look forward to the games of February, a month of remakes, ports and adaptations that somehow still have us excited. But we can’t look too far ahead, for there are a ton of new releases we’re plugging away on. Bobby got his monster hunting license, much to Chase’s dismay. Chase is in anime heaven with Dragon Ball FighterZ and w...

This Week on The Casual Hour... We’re styling and profiling as we talk about our favorite games with style. What is style exactly? Well, we try to construct a bit of a working definition. Meanwhile Bobby’s awkwardly flails around in gang beasts, Chase is confused by Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker’s Memory and we both discuss the feeling of beating our first Destiny raid. All that and more on...

This Week on The Casual Hour... We bring on our first guest of 2018, Zach Fleeman . Zach’s a YouTuber/streamer and is just launching his new series, Save Your Coins , where he looks for the hidden gems among the bevy of cheap and free games available on Steam. But for today’s episode, we’re not so interested in cheap games, but rather the best games. Specifically, we’re talking about our favorite...

This Week on The Casual Hour... We break down all the announcements from Nintendo’s stealth Direct Mini (and Chase laments the lack of Fire Emblem information). Despite the “mini” nature, there was a lot to unpack here, along with a few fun surprises. Meanwhile on the game-playing front, Chase has finished Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, which has made room on his plate for….Fire Emblem: Awakening...

This Week on The Casual Hour...  For our first episode of 2018, Bobby and Chase make their annual gaming New Year’s resolutions. Chase has dubbed this year “Strateg18” and has made a list of all the great turn-based strategy games, new and old, he intends to play. Meanwhile Bobby resolves not to pre-order any games this year…despite already having pre-ordered God of War. He says he has an exc...

This Week on The Casual Hour... Bobby and Chase are recovering after our GOTY shows, playing a number of games we just wanted to play instead of playing the games we felt obligated to. On a recent trip to see his cousin, Bobby got introduced to the wonders of VR and liked the small taste of it he experienced with SUPERHOT VR and PlayStation Worlds (Chase remains skeptical). Bobby also parachutes i...

This Week on The Casual Hour...  It’s all come down to this: Bobby and Chase detail their respective top 10 games of 2017 (and as a bonus, we’ll even read a few from some dude named Johnny.) Everything is on the table. Is Bobby’s list really as predictable as it seems? How many Fire Emblems made Chase’s list? What is everyone’s #1? Listen in and learn on this GOTY edition of The Casual Hour!...

This Week on The Casual Hour...  Live from Chase’s sixth floor apartment, it’s the Casual Hour’s 2nd Annual Game of the Year show (polite applause). This year, we’ve mixed it up a little with some superlative categories so we can recognize the accomplishments of the games we loved this year (even if some of them didn’t quite crack our top 10 lists). What game was the biggest surprise? Which g...

This Week on The Casual Hour...  It’s our last GOTY cram session as Chase gets acquainted with Wolfenstein 2, Pyre and Doki Doki Literature Club while Bobby wraps up Golf Story and digs into a pair of Ubisoft open worlds in Assassin’s Creed: Origins and Ghost Recon: Wildlands. Let’s Talk! We love fan mail, send us some! thecasualhour@gmail.com   You can follow our show on Twitter at: @th...

This Week on The Casual Hour... With outrage from players over Star Wars Battlefront 2 fresh in their minds, Chase and Bobby hold a State of the Video Game Union to discuss how we got to our current microtransaction, loot box, games-as-a-service situation. And what can we do as players to combat potentially shady or consumer-unfriendly business practices? Let’s Talk! We love fan mail, send us some...

This Week on The Casual Hour...  Bobby bought one of those newfangled Xbox One X machines and Chase demands to know why. Meanwhile, Chase has finally gotten a taste of Horizon Zero Dawn and though he’s late to the party, his enthusiasm attempts to make up for that.  Let’s Talk! We love fan mail, send us some! thecasualhour@gmail.com   You can follow our show on Twitter at: @thecasua...