Waypoint Radio

A specter is haunting Waypoint Radio—the specter of BioShock Infinite . That game’s influences are all over Atomic Heart , whose Russian origins (and sex robots) are its own discourse. After the break, we touch base on the ongoing Activision Blizzard acquisition, and the surprising raises across some of Japan’s larger gaming companies. Elsewhere, Rob’s reviewed Company of Heroes 3 , and Patrick is...

Happy new VR headset to all who celebrate, though mostly Patrick, who’s reviewed Sony’s PlayStation VR2. Elsewhere, Rob’s murdering and tending gardens in Like a Dragon: Ishin , Ren’s checking back in with the perhaps too brutal Darkest Dungeon 2 , and all of us were happy for the big boy to show up in the latest episode of The Last of Us . Before we jet, Patrick weighs in on beating Dead Space ,...

Patrick’s gone, time for 5-star runtimes about tactics, cover and concealment mechanics, and a game taking up Rob’s time, Broken Arrow . Then, Cado and Ren are having the cyber-noir time of their lives Shadows of Doubt , a detective game mashing up procedural generation with voxels. Later, Rob and Patrick have a joint conversation with the creative directors of the original Dead Space and its new...

Austin Walker joins Rob and Patrick to preview the upcoming Super Bowl and the ways it could go catastrophically wrong for Austin, ponder how many buffalo wings are too many buffalo wings, and discover Austin’s history with the Eagles is more complicated than family. And because we can’t help ourselves, we end up chatting a bit about the recent media layoffs, Waypoint+, and Waypoint’s Ongoing Game...

A Nintendo Direct made just for us?! Beyond a lengthy breakdown of the new Zelda trailer, we talk at length about the coverage of Hogwarts Legacy and the notion of accountability. After the break, Rob’s spending his “bachelor” time catching up on The Last of Us , so we spoil the first four episodes, discussing violence as storytelling and the endless delight of Pedro Pascal. Finally, a quick light...

My Turn has proved unpredictable, so it’s only natural that Patrick ended this cycle on The Green Knight, the 2021 film starring Dev Patel as pre-knighthood Gawain of the mythical roundtable of Camelot. The Green Knight is rife with actions turned into symbolism, otherworldly visuals, and a sense that magic and nature are one in the same. And ext time, it’s YOUR turn. Stay tuned for a poll! Hosted...

Rob’s parking garage is falling apart thanks to a cold snap, but still found another way to experience weather in Against the Storm , a roguelite city builder with beaver people. Ren’s checked out Your Only Move is Hustle , a turn-based fighting game that plays like an old stickfight animation, and Patrick’s bopping beats in Rhythm Sprout. Naturally, Rob’s found yet another way to talk tanks, than...

E3 is apparently happening, but some of the biggest companies aren’t attending, an unannounced Titanfall game got canceled, and 343 Industries is apparently starting from scratch. But don’t worry, we cut through the doom and gloom to bring you a special interview with John Johanas, director of the colorful upbeat rhythm action game Hi Fi Rush , about making music games and how Zwan (??) ended up o...

Winter’s usually slow, but not now—we’ve got games! Ren’s checking out Freelancer , a chaotic roguelike mode added to the Hitman world, and Rob is returning to his established love of tall ships with Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts . Cado’s checked out a preview for the Like a Dragon: Ishin remake and might just need to play the rest of the Yakuza games. After the break, Patrick dives into the late...

Today’s episode is extra meaty, in more ways than one, with Rob and Patrick discussing how good it feels to turn a space zombie into chunks in the Dead Space remake. Then, Ren has stories from the end of the world in Season , an emotional game about memories. Later, we reflect on the Xbox Developer Direct, which gave us new looks at Redfall , and dropped Patrick’s early GOTY contender, Hi-Fi Rush...

Rob’s got contractors coming, and we discuss solutions for his too-much-everything problem. Patrick’s finished A Plague Tale: Requiem, and what starts as a wrap up delves into needing to spoil the ending in every way possible. Then, we have a special interview from Patrick, where he talked to several devs behind the Dead Space remake about their history with horror and what defines “violence” in D...

The Bears are not back—they’re actually eliminated from the playoffs and have the first pick in the draft. But Rob, Patrick, and the Sports! podcast have returned with the NFL playoffs in full swing to discuss the tragedy of Damar Hamlin, what we misunderstand about football’s relationship to violence, the joy of watching aging men fail to be elite athletes, and more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.co...

Another round of layoffs has hit tech and gaming companies, the largest being Microsoft firing 10,000 employees this week. We discuss the cycles of yearly cuts in both games and tech and the underlying systems and practices that fuel the seemingly unending churn of labor being undervalued and peoples lives being upended. After the break, Rob’s disappointed to find that life on the high seas is a b...

Waypoint is going back to the fridge for more olive, and in this case olives are minutes of Andrei Tarkovsky movies! Ren's choice is Nostalghia, which has been called one of Tarkovsky's most personal films. Join us as we discuss time, memory, and the strange physics of carrying a lit candle across bodies of water. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s 2023, which means we’re finally doing the Last Podcast of 2022! Last year, we asked listeners for Game of the Year Categories and y’all responded in droves…but our top ten list podcast went a little long. (C’mon, that never happens!) Learn which games we went goblin mode for, our favorite under 10 hours, what everyone’s favorite little guy in the margins of Pentiment was, the games we swear w...

This week on waypoint! Rob's back and better than ever (for now), and so of course we get to hear about how much COVID sucks. Speaking of things sucking, Ren leads us on a look at Wizards of the Coast updating their Open Gaming License, the agreement that allowed games like Pathfinder to exist when D&D 4th edition shit the bed, which Wizards is basically threatening to undo in a 1.1 update. Pa...

We’re emerging from our holiday cocoons! Join Patrick, Ren, and Cado as they talk through the holidays and the things they did (or wished they did). Then, a special interview from Rob: last time Josh Sawyer was on to talk Pentiment, Rob found out they had the same college professor. Now, we’ve invited that professor, Dr. Edmund Kern, alongside Dr. Winston Black, Josh’s classmate who consulted on P...

2022 is over, so what better way to send the longest year in history with the longest podcast of the year! Rob, Ren, Patrick, and Cado have gathered around their podcast mics to hash out their favorite games of 2022! Did Cado number their list? Who put Elden Ring the highest? How many narrative bangers are on Ren’s list? Listen to find out the answers to these questions and more! Hosted on Acast....

This is a re-release of a Waypoint After Dark episode from the early days of Waypoint+. You can get ad free pods and more exclusives at Waypointplus.com Join Austin, Rob, and Patrick as they celebrate a successful first week of Waypoint Plus and answer all your questions about the service, their upcoming E3 plans, and more! Please note: This episode was recorded live on  twitch.tv/waypoint ,...

As was foretold in ages long past, four tarnished have gathered around a lost grace to finally talk about how busted Moonveil is. Austin Walker joins Ren, Patrick, and Cado for this special Elden Ring spoiler cast, where we talk about what was arguably one of 2022’s biggest games, and we don’t just mean map size. We talk through our headcanons, favorite ashes, narrative stylings, and more! Hosted...

This is a re-release of our exclusive Waypoint+ podcast, Waypoint After Dark. You can subscribe to Waypoint + at www.waypointplus.com Welcome dear listener to the first episode in our new series: Waypoint After Dark. Tonight we're joined by Rob Zacny, Austin Walker, and Patrick Klepek as they explain how we got here, reminisce over the past 5 years at Waypoint, and talk through that one time they...

It’s the holiday season and we here at Waypoint are giving y’all our first gift! We’ve had the chance to interview Robert Ashley, creator of one of the seminal video game podcasts: A Life Well Wasted. After nearly a decade, he’s releasing a new episode and we’re here to ask how it feels to return to a project after so long, how the podcast got started in the first place, and how being online has c...

Last week the FTC surprised everyone when they actually took action towards stopping the Microsoft/Activision merger. So much so that Rob had to reach out to an expert to get into the nitty gritty about what this really means. He interviewed Matt Stoller, author of “Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy,” and they discussed the history of monopolies in the US, and how Micr...

It’s finally here, the biggest release of 2022, a game decades in the making: Dwarf Fortress is finally released! Cado’s been checking the game out and is finding it much easier to parse after trying once back in 2008. Then we break the news that much to our surprise the FTC has actually filed a lawsuit to block the Microsoft/Activision merger. After the break, we check in with Patrick’s end of ye...

Patrick and Cado welcome Ren back to the land of the living this week as she’s finally destroyed all the Covid in her body. Which is great timing because they both needed someone to explain the recent drama between Nintendo, licensed and unlicensed Smash Bros tournaments and one particularly over zealous CEO. Then Ren tells us of her time exploding heads with magic abilities in Warhammer 40k: Dark...