The Crate and Crowbar

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. Fire-extinguisher-head-bonk-sim, Hitman 3 is out! Disney’s Lucasgames’ Arts Films Games: there’s a Ubisoft Star War [...]

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. Ogle Dead End [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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. Suffer the many newses beamed from Geoff Keighley’s Laser Cage. Bioware had trailers for new Dragon Age and Mass Effect projects, both offering [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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. IO Interactive are making a Bond game! Appreciate the pandering of The Pathless. It’s a bit like Journey and Shadow of the Colossus. Admire the shining spires [...]

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. You can play the demo of Neurocracy right now. Follow Joannes and the project itself on Twitter and watch out for a release of Neurocracy [...]

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. Codies got bought by TakeTwo for approximately 10 times as much as we would have [...]

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. Graham’s review of the same. The [...]

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? Oculus requires a Facebook account and [...]

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. Cool Congresswoman AOC’s Twitch-topping stream. PC Gamer’s article on the mainstreaming and word-of-mouthing of PC gaming. Stream-beloved backstabber, A...

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! The torrid Golden Axed tale. Gwen Frey‘s Lab Rat is [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

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. Bethesda’s acquisition by the Big Green Giant. Spelunky 2. Welcome to the only show note you’ll need for [...]

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. Is this the best [...]

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! Ubisoft Forward’s livestream and Yves Guillemot’s apology. Geoff Keighley was not impressed. For the love of God, Ubisoft, DO NOT BAIT HIS DISPLEASURE! Has [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 Island and Hex are the Daniel Mullins Games games which precede the recently unveiled [...]

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 [...]