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What makes for the perfect final exam level or boss in a game? Is it a grand tour of mechanics and enemies? Is it a boss rush meant to demonstrate how powerful you’ve become? Or is it a test of your understanding of how the game works, with some new intuitive leaps thrown in? Don’t read anything into how that was worded. You need to listen to find out. We also read your responses to October’s games: Cultic, Stone of Madness, and Silent Hill: Townfall. November’s Games: Shining Force The Incident at Galley House 007: First Light (Premium) December’s Game: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Sorry about the meows! And the hammering. And, honestly, a pretty high proportion of the things that we said.

You might be surprised to learn that we don’t hate Sonic R. It controls awkwardly and was clearly rushed out the door, but the idea of a Sonic racing game isn’t inherently bad. They even made some fun explorable courses to go along with it. But you don’t know about that, you just know about the bizarre soundtrack.

This week, we say “so long, Seattle!” and give our own final thoughts on the Dead Man’s Switch campaign before reading what you have to say about this, the least-loved of the Shadowrun Returns trilogy. Thank you to Darrin Michelson for our art this season, and to Gwen Static for the music!

Season 5 wraps up with a bang as Kim gives the finger guns and completes her transformation into Slippin’ Kimmy… set on staying with Jimmy and ruining Howard’s life. Speaking of ruined lives, uh oh Nacho! And Lalo’s not doing great either.

It might be hard to believe, but we found a Silent Hill game that Gary likes slightly more than Kaye. Townfall is another side game in the Silent Hill international tour, taking place on a Scottish island where something horrible has happened and our protagonist Simon must figure out how he’s involved. It’s first person, it relies on outmoded stealth elements, and has some extremely memorable imagery. And if the series continues in this direction, that would be… fine?

With apologies to Billie Jean King.

Ubisoft looked at Nintendogs and decided “hey, we could mess that up.” The result was the Petz series, where you adopt an animal and train it to fight for you, but not in a Pokémon way. Some talk about cat fur coat patterns determining personalities turns to a more existential talk of easy and superficial ways people use things like astrology and the MBTI to put themselves into boxes.

Shadowrun Returns ends with a whimper as we finish of Jessica and bring the insect threat to its knees with the use of our special mold shotguns. Now, we just have to decide what to do with her. Also discussed: More bugs! How we’d improve the final mission, and the game in general. What juicy North American content do we lose out upon by moving the series abroad? Thank you to Darrin Michelson for our art this season, and to Gwen Static for the music!

The cash is in the bag, and the bag is in the courthouse. Lalo walks free and Jimmy gives him a made-up story about what happened in the desert. But the desert follows Jimmy home as he struggles to process the carnage he saw, and Lalo outsmarts Gus’s entire operation before making it Jimmy and Kim’s problem. The uninterrupted 16 minute final scene is one of the tensest stretches of this show, so come listen to us gush about it.

Kaye, Ben, Dennis, and Jala talk about Car Park Capital, Order fo the Sinking Star, Eronoctosis, and much more! The Grind: Ben: Unnamed exploitative mobile game. UFO 50 (Party House, Avianos). RYB. Order of the Sinking Star. Jala: Eronoctosis: Put Yourself Together. Thekku Island. Dennis: Star Wars: Galactic Racer. Kaye: Car Park Capital. The Multiplayer: Video game phrases that have entered your everyday speech. The End Boss: No Man’s Sky is getting a full mobile port. VR Chat community creators revolt against AI. Jay and Silent Bob are starring in an Animal Crossing clone? Custom shop recreates the Street Fighter bonus round car.

Second verse, nearly the same as the first! Stone of Madness’s second and notionally longer campaign, “The Gate of St. Jerome” starts out with a promise that it will be spookier and more intriguing than the prior chapter. Engravings left by an engineer gone mad talk of horrible thing beneath the abbey, but it turns out you’re doing more of the same things, and learning more of the same things you did last time. Highlighted Project: Wow Okay Cool and their album “If This is Where it Got Us, What Good Is It?”.

It’s a classic Duckfeed knock-down drag-out cage match as we disagree about whether or not the Resident Evil movie is good! It’s not in dispute that Zach Cregger has made a very strong adaptation of Resident Evil, capturing a spirit of the games that has eluded previous directors who took a shot. However, the movie’s choice to stay locked on a lone man who’s mostly talking to himself becomes a point of contention.

Sometimes ghosts!

Shinobi for the PlayStation 2 isn’t a bad game. In fact, Kaye knows that she’s bringing a backdoor WOFF! pick to the show. However, it’s janky and it’s overly difficult because it’s from an era before character action was solved. When we run out of stuff to say about Shinobi, we start brainstorming business ideas to make use of a loophole to get infinite free wood chips… or at least how to use them to inflict them on your enemies.