PixlBit

That's cool! I'll try to give it a listen. I guess you know you have made it as a podcaster when you start guesting on other podcasts lol.

I played RE4 on the GameCube when it first came out and I was not expecting the chainsaw decapitation! I had never experienced something like that in a game before. I remember thinking it was weird that you couldn't move and shoot at the same time but it did work really well to up the tension.

Yay for Extreme-G3!

I never played SSX and SSX3 was a cool idea. All the courses were part of the same mountain and you could actually go from the top of the mountain all the way down to the bottom if you wanted but in practice, in my opinion, that led to the "course" parts to be less over the top and the bits that connected everything were kind of dull. For me the sweet spot of the series is the second game, SSX Tricky. We rented that from Blockbuster for the GameCube and I ran out and bought it afterwards because it was so fun. The levels were distinct and self-contained and oh so replayable. Crazy stuff all over the place and the characters were zany and fun too. That's the game I would look for if I were you.

It stinks that Raven Software is now just a cog in the CoD machine. Looking at their list of games, they did use other companies' IPs pretty regularly, like Star Wars and X-Men. Looks like they have not made an original game since Singularity in 2010.

I have one of those Maximo games but I think it's the first. I have not played it.

I haven't heard of that Star Trek Voyager game but it sounds fun! I always like hearing about the games devs made before they became well-known.

The idea of Hextreme Void sounds cool—roguelike Breakout could totally work!—but yeah, what a lousy implementation. I guess that's what Ball x Pit is but I haven't even watched video of that game, so I'm not sure.

The thought of putting over 200 hours into a single game is almost painful, though I'm glad to hear that AC Shadows is a good game! That seems to be the general concensus. I know that for me, my gaming time really dropped once I started having kids but began to climb again when I got a Switch (especially when I got a Lite that was just for me). But still, 40 hours is probably the max I can manage on a game in a month, and that's only if it cannibalizing all other leisure time activities. Playing Ys VIII did that to me last year but I think that was the only game I put that kind of attention into. I have a bunch of games that I never get around to starting just because I know how long they are 

I've heard that Ys Origin is very hard and it sounds like that's your experience too!

Just remember that Sticker Star isn't really an RPG like the earlier Paper Mario games. It's an adventure game with (superfluous) RPG battles. I think it's a good game as long as your expectations going in line up with reality.

The Extreme G games blew my mind on the N64. It was so fast! I remember the first one had a battle mode, too, that totally missed the point of the game. It wasn't fun to slowly slink around trying to line up shots on the other players. I'm pretty sure the devs ditched that for the second game.

The third game came out on the GameCube and was quite fun as well. Eventually you could upgrade your bike enough to break the sound barrier and it had the coolest visual effect where the whole screen rippled and the sound damped out. Really great A/V design. Later F-Zero GX came out and did the whole fast racing thing even better but I do have a soft spot in my heart for the Extreme G series.

As much as I love the Metroid Prime games—and I really do—I hope they try some new things with the franchise rather than rehashing past successes like this.