4player Podcast

It's not often that we focus our attention on the specifics of game development. With that in mind, our latest bonus episode is inspired by Brad's recent love affair with "PsychOdyssey" the exceptional Docuseries that chronicled the development of Psychonauts 2 at Double Fine! That's right, we run through our personal Top 3 lists of the games that we wish would inspire a similar DEEP dive. Answers range from bizarre (Blaseball) to fascinating (Fable) and everything in between.

After a rather unexpected tangent involving coffee creamer, we kick the show off this week with the Playstation handheld that is rumored to be in development. It's been a light news week but we find plenty to chew on thanks to some additional developments related to the future of Resident Evil. Nolan makes his return this week so he and Nick talk about their time with DREDGE; A Lovecraftian fishing game that is sure to be a standout Indie game for the year. Brad finally talks about Wild Hearts - game that has challenged his Monster Hunter programming but is shaping up to be a worthy relative to the beloved hunting franchise.

We brought the SPICE this week. Brad opens the show with a dramatic trade proposal during our weekly Fantasy Critic update and the wheels finally came off E3 2023 which has now been cancelled. We discuss the fate of the industry institution and then switch gears to talk about something a bit more positive... Nintendo gave us a brief glimpse of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and the game looks amazing. After the break, we take our first deep dive into the Resident Evil 4 remake and Nick goes to bat for Horizon: Call of the Mountain which, despite struggling hardware sales, manages to be a powerful VR experience.

It has been quite the week in the games industry and it's got everybody feelin spicy! We've got a bevy of big point updates for our Fantasy Critic and some big headlines including a rumored release window for Spider-Man 2 and the acquisition of Night Dive Studios by Atari! But all of that pales in comparison to the dust kicked up by the recent Redfall preview coverage which continues to be one of the most divisive but compelling games on the horizon. In the second segment, we manage to find conflict in Tchia despite it being the most wholesome and delightful games of the year thus far. Krispy takes us on a journey through the Diablo IV beta and Chris Davis claims that Exoprimal could be a potential sleeper hit for the year after his time with the beta.

It's a week full of noteworthy demos. In impressions we talk about our first hands-on impressions of the new Resident Evil 4 demo and our expectations for how the obvious changes will be applied across the full release. Brad also talks about the surprisingly charming demo of Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon. Before all that though, we deliver another Fantasy Critic update, run through the Naughty Dog heavy headlines for the week, and deliver some final thoughts on The Last of Us now that the first season has run it's course on HBO.

We're mixing things up a bit by introducing an updated "News" segment and swapping the placement of the weekly discussion topic and impressions. With that in mind, we deliver a spicy update to our ongoing Fantasy Critic adventure and run down the juiciest headlines from the past week including an Elden Ring DLC announcement, Suicide Squad delayed, and the details regarding the upcoming XBox & Starfield showcases. We then turn our attention to a hot topic surging through the industry and our discord: the legacy of the term "JRPG" and the potential harm it is doing to the industry. In the 2nd segment, Brad talks Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty and Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania. Chris Davis discusses his playthrough of Metroid Prime Remastered which also happens to be his 1st time playing the game.

Our first surprise twist of the year has landed... Mortal Kombat 12 is real! Proving once and for all that Chris Davis was right! In other news, Nick is smitten over Atomic Heart and is convinced that it is destined to be his 2023 underdog. Brad breaks down Theatrhythm Final Bar Line and explains how it compares to other entries in the series and other music & rhythm games in general. The group also delves into Like a Dragon: Ishin which is the latest entry in the recently rebranded Yakuza series. In the second segment, Nick gives his early impressions of the Playstation VR 2 headset and it's only true launch title, Horizon: Call of the Mountain.

In our first Top 3 list of the year, we discuss the games that got away. The games that we booted up, enjoyed, and then never completed despite enjoying them thoroughly. Sometimes a game gets moved to the back burner and is forgotten despite our intentions to the contrary. To make things interesting, we treated this as a committment to return to the games on our list in 2023 in an effort to right these wrongs.

This week we dig into two big events at opposite ends of the industry. On one hand, Nintendo just had one of their biggest Nintendo Direct events in recent memory so with that in mind, we devoted the first segment to breaking down all the big announcements including the release date for Pikmin 4, Metroid Prime Remastered (another Shadow Drop!), and the next big trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom! In the second segment, we highlight a handful of games that are currently available as demos for Steam Next Fest including System Shock, Planet of Lana, Shadows of Doubt, and more!

Thanks to a literal act of god, we are once again down to 3 people this week but the release of the Dead Space remake ensured that there is plenty to dissect. We dive deep into this remake and try our best to figure out it's legacy in comparison to other high-profile remakes. We also discuss the future of Dead Space under the EA Motive banner if this proves to be a success. Brad delivers a hefty Fire Emblem Engage update and Chris emphasizes how good Hi-Fi Rush is following it's surprise release last week. In the second segment, we discuss the recent culling of GAAS (Games as a Service) games and some major industry shakeups at 343 Industries which calls the future of Halo into question.

Amidst travel and hardware issues, a smaller group convened this week to discuss one of the first big gaming weeks of 2023! Brad uses this opportunity to express some positivity for Fire Emblem Engage and explain some common misconceptions about the series. Chris Davis shares his early impressions of Forspoken which seems poised to be one of the first misfires (or at the very least, divisive releases) of the year. But the biggest news of the week comes in the form of a surprise shadow drop from Tango Gameworks! Hi-Fi Rush is a stylish new action game that uses music and rhythm to great effect. It also happens to be the first big surprise of the year.

While we have plenty of actual video games to discuss this week, the recent premiere of 'The Last of Us' on HBO steals the spotlight this week. The show is off to a strong start so we take a minute (or 30) to talk about that first impression and the potential that it holds in the coming weeks (or even years). In the first segment though, we check in with Krispy as he continues to play Tunic (one of our 2022 game of the year contenders) and Chris Davis explains his split feelings on Generation Zero, an open-world FPS that came out in 2018. Nick discusses The Forest and delivers an important update to his Chained Echoes impressions from last week.

With our 'Game of the Year' content behind us, we finally have some time to talk about the games we've been playing in the background for the past few weeks. Nolan introduces Dark and Darker which is currently in development but undergoing Alpha playtests; Despite it's early nature, it seems to have serious potential. Nick finally has a chance to talk about Chained Echoes after weeks of digging into this beautiful throwback to retro JRPGs. On top of that, he finally tore through Chernobylite, a game that has been on his backlog for years. Brad dishes on Citizen Sleeper - a game that could have easily been a GOTY contender had he played it in 2022. In the 2nd segment, we talk shady draft trades and ask the question: When is a game too big to fail critically? Will Starfield fall into the same trap as Cyberpunk 2077?

2023 is going to be a ton of fun here at 4Player! In lieu of our usual "preview show" format, we have opted to create a "Fantasy Critic" league! This works a lot like fantasy football but publishers (players) draft games and points are dictated by their OpenCritic scores. In this episode, Carlos joins us for the initial draft and we take turns filling out the slots in our lineup! The league will consist of 12 games total per person but only 8 are selected in this initial draft. We will re-convene after E3 season to bid on our remaining 4 slots and fill out the rest of our teams. We will also provide monthly updates on the last podcast of every month so we can check in and see where we all stand as these games release.

Another year comes to a close but it's been great! As always, we cap off the year with our annual awards show which gives us a chance to honor a whole bunch of games in over 14 categories! We trimmed some of the fat this year and introduced some new wrinkles which we think make for a leaner (even if it is nearly 4-hours), better show! We hope some of you find the inspiration you need to try some of the games featured on this episode and of course, we hope you will join us in 2023 for another year with a LOT to talk about! Categories: Biggest Regret Best Looking Game Best New Gameplay Experience Best World/Level Design (that isn't Elden Ring) Best New Enemy/Boss Fight Best New Character Best Storytelling Best Video Game Moment Biggest Surprise Biggest Disappointment Stubborn Award Spotlight Award Asterisk Award Number 11 Best Soundtrack

The end of 2022 is looming. In fact, this is our last "regular" show of the year. Krispy and Brad have good things to say about Midnight Suns with some... caveats. Nick and Chris finally have a chance to talk about the divisive nature of The Callisto Protocol and it's potential as a franchise. Chris talks about his time with Potionomics and we catch up with Ed who finished Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and has started up Sifu. In the 2nd segment we talk very early (and potentially misguided) impressions from the Forspoken demo and then we discuss all of the exciting announcements from The Game Awards!

Brace yourselves. Nolan played 50+ hours of Pokemon Scarlet and he's here to tell us why it is both "the best" and "the worst" pokemon game ever made! Brad highlights ASTLIBRA: Revision, a crunchy new action RPG that - as Brad says - "Brings the meat." Nick talks Evil West (not to be confused with Weird West, Blood West, or Hard West) and the group digs a little deeper into the divisive nature of God of War Ragnarok. We also introduce the newly revamped community segment to discuss the Topic of the Week: Is it possible for Nintendo to screw up The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom?

With the launch of God of War Ragnarok, 2022 finally has one of it's biggest AAA releases of the year. With that in mind, we kick things off with the most important questions... Why doesn't Kratos just go somewhere else? Once the big questions are answered, we delve into the nitty gritty to find out how we're feeling about it thus far. Nick provides a quick update (and PSA) on Signalis and talks about his playthrough of the long awaited Somerville. Brad talks about Tactics Ogre Reborn which is an odd duck in that it is the 2nd complete remake of Tactics Ogre; A classic grid-based strategy RPG that launched in the late 90s. All of this is of course against the backdrop of Twitter loudly and swiftly burning to the ground.

For ages, The Steam "wishlist" has given us a way to show interest in a game without committing to it in the moment. Everyone's approach to managing that list is different. On this episode, we comb through our ever-expanding wishlists to pick 3 games that never quite make the cut regardless of how low the price goes or how often they go on sale. To make things interesting, we each commit to buying one of our list by the end of the episode! Listeners will also get bonus tangents regarding fast-food orders and dinosaur fluids (yes you read that right).

Krispy returns to the show this week to finally dive deep into Gotham Knights and the take away is not as grim as you might expect! Meanwhile, Brad has dabbled in Bayonetta 3 but is impressed enough by the approach that he is eager to see what else the game has to offer. Nick showers Signalis in praise for walking a fine line between faithful love-letter and refreshing iteration while Chris Davis has less than great things to say about the Shadows of Rose DLC for Resident Evil Village. We also cover the new PSVR2 launch details and Nibellions sudden retirement from Twitter and the gaming industry at large.