It’s that time of year again! Sales abound, games and new consoles wrapped and quietly sitting under many a tree, and awards handed out. This is when we look back on the year of games behind us, pick up anything we missed at a probably substantial discount (except Red Dead Redemption 2 which isn’t getting cheaper for a loooong time), and look forward to the games ahead. Oh and at long last, our pact and pledge to not buy any games for an entire year is nearly at an end! Can you believe it? How did it go, you ask? Well it went a whole lot better for Josh than Elliot or Stevo, that’s pretty clear. Pro-tip: don’t enter into a pact with Josh that limits gaming.

So in that spirit, we talk about the games we’re looking forward to! If you recall one of our loopholes to the pact was gifting games to one another on traditional gift-giving days. And with the biggest one of the year just around the corner, and even though it’s only a week before the end of the pact, we are ready for some gaming! So we discuss our Christmas wishlists as well as some of the games we did manage to play since the last episode. And then of course, we give our takes on The Game Awards.

Josh and Stevo start us off with a little-known game from a tiny struggling studio, Red Dead Redemption 2! Yep, Stevo got it as a birthday gift and Josh  got it cause he has no respect for pacts. But nonetheless, they’ve got great things to say about it with their spoiler-free overview.

Stevo follows up with the recent indie hit, The Messenger, developed by Sabotage. If you’ve played Ninja Gaiden, this game will take you back. Next, Stevo played Dead Cells, the rogue-like/platformer hit that came out earlier this year by Motion Twin. This is one Josh and Elliot are dying to play so we’re all living vicariously through Stevo on this one. And lastly, to complete his Switch indie trifecta, Stevo rounds us out with Into the Breach. This game was developed by Subset Games, who you might remember from FTL fame, and they really did it again here if Stevo is to be believed.

Elliot played a couple games as well! As the only one of the hosts who didn’t play Red Dead Redemption 2, he had to plug his ears and dig into whatever could distract him. First off, he talked about Hidden Agenda by Supermassive Games, the choose-your-own-adventure interactive multiplayer group party game. How’s that for a summary? He played with a few friends and they… weren’t too excited about it, but Stevo maintains that it’s a great time with friends. Next, he played the mobile gatcha game Dragalia Lost, by Nintendo. He’s not usually a gatcha game guy, but found himself having a great time with it.

And to round things out we have a discussion about the The Game Awards 2018, which just aired a couple weeks ago. Did the winners deserve to win? Were the trailers worth the hype? Did the violinists put some clothes on? So many questions and so many answers. Almost as many as there were game streaming awards, which seems to be a thing now.

That should do it for episode 34! Stay tuned in two weeks for our live, in-person recording of episode 35! It’s a rare treat that we’re all able to get together to record and the holidays tends to be when that happens. In the meantime, come join in on the discussion! Leave a comment, tweet us at @rbpcast, or shoot us an email at questions@ratherbecast.com and we’ll talk about it on the next episode. You can also check out our Twitch stream at twitch.tv/ratherbeplaying. See you all in two weeks!

Topics Discussed:

Red Dead Redemption 2
The Messenger
Dead Cells
Into the Breach
Dragalia Lost
Hidden Agenda

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Rather Be Playing

34: I Need Onions!

Rather Be Playing 34: I Need Onions!

That’s right, you’re not hallucinating: we do love Super Smash Bros Ultimate. And also, there is a brand new (old) episode of Rather Be Playing on your podcast app! Why new (old)? Well this is an episode we recorded way back in December! The three of us were actually together in the same room for a rare moment. Needless to say it has been a really busy January and half of February. But we’re still here and have no intention of going anywhere anytime soon! If you’re still subscribed to the cast, thank you so much. We’ll get back on track and make it up to you with some fresh new episodes very shortly.

While it’s been almost two months since we recorded this, not a ton has changed in the world. So it mostly still holds up. It’s also our end of the year celebration episode, and it’s before our #NoNewGames2018 pledge ended, so it is kinda timeless in the same way disco is. We think you should be able to hop in and feel right at home.

As for the episode itself, we celebrate the amazing year 2018 turned out to be. We take our victory laps as we look back on the games we finished and the backlog space we cleared. We also talk about recent purchases and near-future plans. Super Smash Bros Ultimate is one we couldn’t ignore and we are loving it, if you couldn’t guess from the episode title. We also talked a bit about Overcooked 2 and Red Dead Redemption 2, plus a ton more as we gush about the 2018 games we finished and loved.

Going forward you’ll start seeing regular episodes again. Just bear with us as we clean out some cobwebs and freshen things up a bit. In the meantime, come join in on the discussion! Leave a comment, tweet us at @rbpcast, or shoot us an email at questions@ratherbecast.com and we’ll talk about it on the next episode. You can also check out our Twitch stream at twitch.tv/ratherbeplaying. See you all in (hopefully) two weeks!

Topics Discussed:

Super Smash Bros Ultimate
God of War
Overcooked 2
Red Dead Redemption 2

Subscribe:

iTunes: bit.ly/rbp-itunes
Spotify: bit.ly/rbp-spotify
YouTube: http://bit.ly/rbp-youtube
Google Play: bit.ly/rbp-google
RSS: bit.ly/rbp-feed

Music credit:
Masashi Hamauzu. “The Yaschas Massif.” Final Fantasy XIII Original Soundtrack, Square Enix, 2010.

35: I Love Smash

Rather Be Playing 35: I Love Smash

Join Josh, Elliot, and Stevo every two weeks as they work through their endless backlogs three classic games at a time.