Podshowdown

After a slightly-less-bad-than-last-time delay, Podshowdown 11 has arrived and, surprise surprise, it's all about games. Andrew and Mike discuss the year of 2018 and the games which have come out, the games which have not been released yet, and everything in between. Andrew's just a bit more positive while Mike's felt the year's a little stale compared to the bountiful bonanza of 2017, but there's still gobs of good stuff to go around, especially in this generous year full of re-releases. Gotta make the Wii-U obsolete by the next E3! Mike also obsessed over his beloved Yakuza series and convinces Andrew to give it a try. And you should too, unless you're below seventeen! It's an M-rated game after all, wouldn't want the ESRB police busting up our little organization here.

Here we go again with episode ten, the Podshowdown continues to live despite editing troubles giving great gratuitous grief. Let's forget all about the agony of actually making podcasts with a retrospective trip to the movies! Andrew and Mike discuss the myriad of movies that have come out between when this episode and episode nine was recorded, spanning nearly a year gap recounting a fairly fruitful year for legitimate cinema. Get Out, Logan Lucky, Blade Runner 2049, and a whole host of others come into the course of conversation, and if they missed your favorite, too bad because there were really a freaking lot of movies in this span of time! That even includes the latest releases from a certain Marvel Studios, where the guys transition into ranking the whole dang series all the way up to Infinity War. Spoilers - Nobody likes Thor: The Dark World. We also planned to cover all the games we didn't get to, but movies were more than enough for one episode, so the games will have to wait for the future. And the

Number nine and feeling... fine?! Oh lordy, huge apologies to our fans, if we have any left or have had any to begin with, but PSD went on an unexpected hiatus for nearly a year due to various factors. One of those factors being this is the largest episode we will probably ever do, just fifty seconds short of two whole hours. Andrew and Mike talk various years and types of cartoons with their good bud Matty Jay, choosing their picks for the "Cartoon Draft," presumably who they would pick to compete in some sort of dorky fictional league. Many animated shows worth talking about are talked about, and we reminisce about the good times we've had with them, as well as the occasional bad times associated with them getting cancelled too early or ran on too long and got stupid. Have fun with it, and please go tell everyone you know that Podshowdown is back, and we're going to try to make it last a lot longer than eight lousy episodes. That's a goal, if not a guarantee!

It's taken awhile for a bit of a short episode, but some video games take less than two hours to beat that score high marks on various game review sites. So a podcast that takes less than forty minutes to listen to should theoretically earn good review on various podcast review sites. Those exist, right? It's even a podcast all about games, so if some sort of Rotten Critic or Metatomatoes wants to give us a boost, it's all appropriate. Andrew, Mike, and Brendalf give brief summaries on their expectations for all games yet to be released for the middle third of the year... as guessed in April. Editor Andrew does his best Pop-Up Video impression and chimes in with post-sale results on all the games that have come out, and even one or two that haven't yet. And pay no mind to the Best In Show result calling back to the hot take on An American Werewolf in London from last episode. We totally didn't take one really long episode and divide into two like Richard Lester did when he produced The Four Musketeers. What?

Like the continued improbably existence of the live-action Transformers films, Podshowdown still exists! Mike and Andrew's awesome Irish pal Brendalf joins in for a Hot Takes session, cult eighties film style! Which sacred cow of a film offended you the most to hear taken down a peg? Write in with an indignant email. Mike and Bren attempt to crack the list of the top ten best-grossing movies in the year of 2017... well, up to April, anyway. Inside baseball: This one took a really long time to edit, but anyway. *cough* The boys then discuss their opinions for each movie they've seen so far this year... once again, up to April. Although Bren hasn't seen any 2017 film yet, so Andrew and Mike get into what they have seen and the various degrees to which they liked them. Special not-guest: John C. Reilly as a Muppet. Enjoy this movie-centric PSD and get ready for another episode real soon, because wow, it's been awhile. Don't call it a comeback, we've been here for months!

The wait may have been long, but here comes the sixth PSD, or should we say the Switch PSD? Andrew vents a bit about computer failures and college scheduling errors before he launches into a full-on hands-on lights-on Switchcast, talking about all the games he's gotten so far and how pleased he is with it overall. This ain't no Virtual Boy, no sirree. While Mike doesn't have a Switch, he does have a news story of Bob Dylan finally claiming his Nobel Prize, leading to a debate on whether or not he deserved said prize at all. (Disclaimer: Andrew appreciates Dylan as a songwriter, but hates his voice.) However, the recording gods tell Mike to quit trolling Andrew with all the Dylan-isms, so it's onto the every-five-episodes Hall of Fame nominations! Or it would have been on episode five, but Oscar chat with Aziz was too juicy, so here it is now on the sixth, where the guys nominate their all-time number one video games in the history of forever. Spoiler: They're both threes! Andrew gets to talk about a

It's five alive on the Podshowdown here, or rather, it's just three alive on this show, but that's still one more than usual! Andrew and Mike are joined by their good friend Aziz, a forthright film nerd and fan of the Oscars. He lurves (sic) the Oscars so much that he explains how much they mean to him and dangitall to the naysayers who dismiss it as just another awards ceremony. SPOILER: There's a good chance his persuasive argument might have won him this episode, not just because he's the guest... but that's also probably true. The guys discuss a recent film Andrew's seen: Ed Wood, the biopic on the 20th century's most ambitiously bad filmmaker, and as Mike argues, the best thing both Tim Burton and Johnny Depp have ever done. Seriously, watch it if you haven't yet. It happens to land in Mike's personal top ten film list, which he rambles about alongside several honorable mentions. Keeping in continuity with a prior episode, Raiders of the Lost Ark was demoted to the HM pile. It ends with an Aziz-style qui

The Podshowdown's still alive, so if you've been eagerly awaiting our next episode, then I hope you like the Switch! If not, download it anyway since we need the hits. Andrew got to play the Switch firsthand on a press tour, and his personal favorite game might sound disarming! Mike then assigns Andrew to watch the fantastic Tim Burton-directed biopic Ed Wood and the latter assigns the former to play some Boktai, Kojima's quirky vampire-em-up with an actual solar panel in the cart. Then Mike gets best in show since Andrew didn't really give him much to do, because consolation prizes are rad. We're up to four and we'll try for four more, hopefully in a shorter amount of time!

Indiana Jones! Raiders of the Lost Ark! Andrew watched it! He thought it was pretty good! Not his favorite ever, but he gives an honest look at the ups and not-so-ups of Spielberg's first homage to pulp fiction (and not the Tarantino film). Afterward is the big focus on the arguable comeback of Capcom's survival zombo series, Resident Evil 7. Mike thinks it could be a Game of the Year mark, but all the changes it makes in the name of horror haven't really impressed Andrew. Vote now on what you think! Or... wait, there's no voting feature. Yet. Don't hold them to that. They roll into ranking the RE series from 1 to 6, and just 1 to 6 without any Code Veronicas or Zeroes or what have you. They happen to agree with two-thirds of them, but you can disagree with all of them! After all that RE jabber, they end with an exchange of Hot Takes involving sitcoms and Ken Levine. It's for you, it's for me, it's episode three!

Andrew and Mike waste no time extolling the virtues of Robocop, Mike's favorite movie ever and one of the best Andrew's seen lately. It's violent, satirical, and not for the kids, everything a movie should be. Since Andrew needs to see more movies, Mike assigns him a personal favorite, Raiders of the Lost Ark, that movie with the guy who has the whip and those really bad people and the box that makes everyone's heads explode. Next, on the newly-established game music show "Juke It Out," Andrew plays four of his favorite tunes to which Mike fails to guess the linking theme between them. Finally, friend of the show Brendalf travels all the way from Ireland to challenge the two with a quiz that conjoins a certain pink hero with e-cigarettes. It's bold, it's new, it's episode two!

Andrew and Mike come out swinging with their opinions on the Nintendo Switch and Star Wars: Rogue One! As the latest of their respective series, these two affable yet opinionated nerds have differing stances on how they honor their names. It ends with the two ranking the announced Switch games and where Rogue One fits into the entire Star Wars series. Does one of the guys actually rate RO higher than one of the original trilogy?! Stay tuned for sacrilege on the inaugural Podshowdown launch!