Claim OwnershipGlixel Podcast
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Join John Davison, Simon Cox, Rachel Weber and Miguel Lopez from Glixel – the new games site from the makers of Rolling Stone – as they talk about the biggest video games stories of the week.
32 Episodes
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We've seen SO many games this week – so in the space of just one hour, we each try and narrow things down to a small handful of games that really stayed with us. Everything from big blockbusters like God of War to indies like Donut County and The Artful Escape or Miguel's favorite – Sea of Thieves. We're joined by our writers Luke Winkie and Steven T. Wright for this episode, so there are six of us to listen to.
John enthuses about Call of Duty: WWII, Miguel recounts his experiences as a pirate in Skull & Bones, Simon realizes he actually really likes Shadow of War – in part thanks to the accents – and Luke describes his time with the new Monster Hunter. Also some updates on Assassin's Creed Origins, That's You, Ashen, Destiny 2, The Artful Escape and a bunch of other stuff.
Luke enthuses about Mario + Rabbids, John and Miguel give their impressions of Super Mario Odyssey and Rachel fills us in on Doom VFR, Fallout 4 VR and her playthrough of the Wolfenstein 2 demo.
There's a lot to go over since last night's podcast, and tonight the usual crew is joined by our writer Luke Winkie. In a little over an hour we tackle Bethesda's quick 40 minute showcase that included VR versions of Doom and Fallout 4 as well as a glimpse of Link in Skyrim and a brand new Wolfenstein game. Then we hit Ubisoft's phenomenal lineup, with everything from the surprising Mario + Rabbids game, the beautiful Assassin's Creed Origins, climaxing with the (new) reveal of Beyond Good & Evil 2. Then we work our way through Sony's lineup, which included DLC for Horizon Zero Dawn, a new look at God of War, and a lengthy look at Insomniac's stunning Spider-Man game.
42 Xbox games at E3 – 22 of them are some flavor of "exclusive" for Xbox One (although Microsoft's interpretation of that word might be different than yours) – we go through the whole list on the second of our daily podcasts from E3 2017.
We got to play Star Wars Battlefront 2, Need for Speed Payback, A Way Out and more at Electronic Arts' big pre-E3 shindig in Los Angeles today. We talk about our impressions of each, and particularly how impressed we were with the co-op only A Way Out.
Following last week's E3 predictions show, this week we dig into the challenges faced by Microsoft this year. If the big stories are going to be PlayStation's dominance and the quality of Nintendo's Switch lineup – how can the Xbox stand out? What games does it need to reveal? What could it possibly do? Absent a new Halo, what would it take to completely reinvigorate the way we all look at the Xbox?
In the first of two episodes ahead of E3, we ponder the biggest, most exciting announcements that will happen at the show. Will Electronic Arts show anything unexpected? Will the next Red Dead Redemption 2 trailer show up at the Sony media event? What will Microsoft show to wow us on the Scorpio? For that matter...what will Scorpio end up being called? Will Nintendo repeat their performance last year, and end up "winning" E3 by just showing a small number of superb games that stand out from the dour, post-apocalyptic, war-obsessed shooters being peddled by everyone else?
This week we're joined by special guest Ryan O'Donnell from Area 5 to talk about the biggest announcement of the week: Destiny 2. Bungie showed a huge amount of the game this week, and Miguel was in Los Angeles at the showcase to see it live and get his hands on the game. He shares his impressions of the single player, PvP and strikes, plus we dig into whether the PC version is potentially held back by the console-based roots of the series.
With Microsoft finally releasing the specs for its upcoming Xbox Scorpio super-console, we dig into what it might mean for games in the year ahead and speculate on when we might see the new console, how much it might cost, and whether virtual reality support was a major consideration as it was for Sony with the PS4 Pro.
The first trailer for Destiny 2 dropped earlier this week, and despite not showing any gameplay at all, there's plenty to learn from what little it showed. Significantly, it leans hard into jokier style thanks to Nathan Fillion's Cayde-6 that seems unlikely to be the representative of the tone of the final game.
We also dig into the best games of 20 years ago, and remember Bungie's Ghost In The Shell-alike Oni, which was published by Rockstar back in 2001.
On this week's podcast (episode 22 for those of you keeping count) John, Simon, Rachel and Miguel ponder what the future might hold for the Mass Effect series after the poor reception Andromeda received this week. While there's a good chance it has sold very well, the fact that it has a Metacritic score of just 74 and a user rating that's even lower has to mean the studio is taking a long hard look at whatever it does next. Later, Simon and Miguel argue over Simon's wishes to see a future Zelda game with more realistic, higher-fidelity visuals
In just a few short days we'll all have the pleasure of playing Mass Effect Andromeda and complaining about its weird animation and oddly scripted story, but for now you'll just have to make do with us moaning about it for 20 minutes. After we suck all the fun out of one game you're looking forward to playing, we move on to trying to pin down the dichotomy that is Ghost Recon Wildlands. On one hand it's a brilliantly realized sandbox shooter, and on the other its a clumsy attempt at tackling contemporary geopolitics. Could they have done it better? Finally, Miguel enlightens us on his latest obsession: the Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures game.
With Simon out sick, this week we're joined by Area 5's Ryan O'Donnell to really dig into what we love most about the breathtaking The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Prepare yourself for a full-on blast of unbridled enthusiasm. Before we do that and put Rachel to sleep though, John walks us through the next batch of PlayStation VR games (including Starblood Arena, the awesome-sounding Descent-style multiplayer shooter) and we talk about how Ghost Recon Wildlands reminds us of the Far Cry games.
Between the four of us, we definitely have some mixed feelings about the Switch so far. We're all in agreement that Zelda is an incredible achievement, and probably one of the best games that Nintendo has ever made, but we definitely have some misgivings about the device itself – both the hardware (especially the Joy-Cons, which are an acquired taste) and the system software. For all the advancements we've seen on PC, mobile and other consoles (including some of Nintendo's own) there's a lot about the Switch that feels incredibly out of date.
Also on this episode – a special piece of exclusive #content – the first ever audio unboxing of a Nintendo Switch, freshly delivered by the UPS guy.
We manage to talk about the completely brilliant PlayStation 4-exclusive Horizon Zero Dawn for over an hour without really spoiling anything major. At least we hope so. Much as we were desperate to talk about some of the major story beats and crazy sci-fi reveals from later in the game, Rachel kept us in check with an air horn.
We talk about the big news story of the week – as first reported by the Wall Street Journal – PewDiePie, AKA Felix Kjellberg – the most successful YouTube personality in the world – being dropped by Disney subsidiary Maker Studios after he released videos duping semi-clueless contractors from the online task marketplace Fiverr into brandishing a sign that read "death to all Jews," and paid a guy to dress up like Jesus and expunge Hitler of his sins.
Then, to lighten the mood, Rachel tells us all about Arkane's upcoming "Dishonored in space" game, Prey.
John and Simon desperately wanted to tell you about Horizon Zero Dawn, but they're not really allowed to until next week. That certainly didn't stop them from trying though.
After we so confidently predicted on last week's podcast that Destiny 2 couldn't possibly be released this year, Activision went and announced that the game would be out before the end of the year. We talk about this, what the next "traditional combat' Call of Duty from Sledgehammer Games might be, and ponder what the three virtual reality games that Valve has said it's making might be (our bet: something Portal.) Later in the show, we discuss the fact that this year's big gaming expo E3 2017 will be open to the public for the first time, with 15,000 tickets going on sale on Monday. What can you expect if you're lucky enough to score a ticket? Could it possibly be worth the $250 asking price?
In Keith Stuart's story about the importance of Mass Effect: Andromeda for us this week, he posits that "we’re seeing an exodus in the 'triple A' blockbuster sector, away from scripted experiences toward sprawling open-world adventures, where the plot is secondary to world-exploration, sub-quests, item collection and player-generated narratives." We explore this in light of the games we've played so far this year, and question whether more and more games will follow the likes of Ubisoft's For Honor where the relationships formed with other players are ultimately more important than those provided by a story. We also tackle Resident Evil 7's scary moments, Hitman's enduring appeal, and our excitement for Guerrilla Games' upcoming Horizon Zero Dawn.
Will Rachel be as grumpy about the Switch as she was last week? Has John changed his mind about it again? What did Miguel think of Halo Wars 2 when he played it? If Simon hates horror games so much, how is Rachel going to get him to play Resident Evil 7 on a livestream next week? Is Ghost Recon Wildlands something really special? What's a "gacha" mechanic? All these questions answered and more.
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