Popzara Podcast

As we've mentioned a few times, not every game has to be the pinnacle of innovation or offer hundreds of hours of gameplay to be good. Let's not get it twisted, we're not encouraging offering players less value for their money, but there's something to be said for inexpensive titles with a limited scope that effectively do what they're aiming to do.

We're trapped in an endless cycle of remakes and remasters and that's bad for the industry for some reason! Despair! Okay, now that you're done despairing, let's think about this in a more rational way - sometimes it's just fine to take a classic game and spice it up for a contemporary landscape. Something like Square Enix's Live A Live is a great example of exactly this.

For all the talk about innovation, it's not always the uninhibited good it's made out to be. Sure, sometimes it's great to do something new! The Internet is a wonderful example of this.

For all the talk about how we've decided that video games are art, the actual gameplay aspect of games remains lightning that can be difficult to capture in a bottle. It's been decades since we've seen the industry take off, but it remains tough to really nail down what makes a game enjoyable to interact with rather than just being a movie by another name.

It’s important to remember that most series change over time. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; the people that love the series grow along with it, and to keep them invested, some things need to evolve.

I’m a huge fan of this little video game series called Ace Attorney. You might have heard of it; a plucky rookie lawyer named Phoenix Wright is tasked with defending the seemingly undefendable in court, and you must gather evidence and figure out how to use it in court to prove your client’s innocence.

Unfunny, cliched comedies are the easiest breed of bad movies to not be upset with. They don’t insult any high art form, they don’t take themselves too seriously anyway, and they might even have one or two moments worth chuckling about.

It’s The State of Gaming Podcast, Popzara’s in-depth look at what’s shaking up the gaming landscape delivered on a monthly basis. Our hosts Cory Galliher and Nate Evans guide you through the best, worst, and everything else making headlines and headway in the world of interactive entertainment.

The biggest games of the month include: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Super Mario RPG, Star Ocean: The Second Story R, Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, RoboCop: Rogue City, WarioWare: Move It!, and Persona 5 Tactica.

Other notables include: Hogwarts Legacy (Switch), Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion Remastered, The Last Faith, Flashback 2, Naruto X Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections, Teardown, Thirsty Suitors, and Sanabi.

Circana remains the gaming industry’s best snapshot of what’s moving and shaking up both physical and digital retail shelves across the country. All estimates are for entertainment purposes only. Total sales of new gaming hardware and software topped $4.036 billion, a five percent drop from last year.

On the Top Twenty software charts Sony’s Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 swung to the top spot, while Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. Wonder bopped its way to second. Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Mirage debuted high in third, Sega’s Sonic Superstars spun into ninth, Konami’s Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 snuck into twelfth, Microsoft’s Forza Motorsport raced into seventeenth, and CI Games’ Lords of the Fallen rounded out at twentieth.

Also notable is that Nintendo’s Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is missing from the charts for the first time since debuting in 2017 – and becoming the Switch’s all time best-selling game.

But there’s more! Valve Announces a welcome upgrade to their popular portable with the Steam Deck OLED! Speaking of Valve, come celebrate 25 years of Gordon Freeman and his crowbar as Half-Life hit the quarter-century milestone! Loved The Super Mario Bros. Movie and wanted more theatrical Nintendo? Then get ready for a live-action The Legend of Zelda movie! Netflix’s stop-motion animation Pokémon Concierge series gets a gorgeous looking trailer! Best get on those Black Friday deals before the frenzy is over! Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Resurrection Walk is billed as the first Lincoln Lawyer novel since 2020’s The Law of Innocence, but the seventh official entry in Michael Connelly’s Mickey Haller series is very much a joint Haller/Harry Bosch adventure, and a good one at that. Connelly has become increasingly more comfortable vertically expanding his shared universe in recent times, perhaps a nod to the Hollywood-ization of his oeuvre across platforms and media, though his newest heroine, Renée Ballard, plays only a peripheral role here.

I tend to watch all kinds of movies out there, most of them being of the action or adventure variety. Every so often I try to check out some on the drama side, namely those dealing with families and the joy and pain they share.

The last collection, sorry, Treasury of Pearls Before Swine comics was 2021’s Pearls Awaits the Tide, a celebration of sorts for cartoonist Stephan Pastis’ enjoying its twentieth anniversary of survival as a dying medium (comic strips) published via a dying medium (newspapers), reprinted though a surprisingly resilient medium (paperback books). It arrived smack dab in the middle of the world-shuttering Covid-19 pandemic.

Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers finds an exquisite balance between charming and depressing. Set in 1970 at a New England boarding school for privileged rich kids to get into even richer universities, we follow Paul Hunham (Paul Giamati) a professor of ancient civilizations at Barton Academy and Angus (Dominic Sessa), one of his students “held over” during the Christmas holiday.

If you take two things I like and mash them together, chances are you'll get something I like even more. This tends to apply more to video games than foods, though.

As someone who writes both as a side gig and a day job, let me be the first to inform all non-writers that there's different kinds of writing. No, not every journalist or technical writer has the urge to write the "next great American novel.

Ah, for the good old days, back when the games industry was good! Remember when you had to go out to seedy arcades full of drunks and creeps, where you'd pay a quarter every time you wanted to play games designed to make you lose often and pay more quarters? It's way better than today, where you can get an unheard-of amount of gaming fun for free. Well, if you want to taste the aged flavor of times long past once again, Yu Suzuki's brainchild Air Twister is here to make it happen for you after a brief stint in Apple Land.