Watch Out For Fireballs!

Let us walk the path. This episode about the excellent Witcher 3 covers the first half of the main quest, up until the departure to Skellige.

Welcome to the big show. And we mean big. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the largest, densest game we've covered on Watch Out for Fireballs!. In fact, there's so much going on here that we're dividing the coverage up into four episodes, with this first installment being two hours dedicated solely to the mechanics and generalities of the game. Don't worry if you've never played a Witcher game before, or read a Witcher book. The Witcher 3 is excellent and self-contained enough to warrant your serious attention. Here's the rough schedule of how we're going to break the episodes down. This might be subject to change. Basics Prologue, Velen, Novigrad Skellige, Endgame, Contracts Secondary Quests Listener Responses

November turned out to be a bit of a club banger, with three big, good, and otherwise important games. Let's find out what the listeners thought of Transistor, Thimbleweed Park, and ActRaiser.

A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Kole and Gary talk about Actraiser, an early SNES game that mashes up two disparate gameplay modes. On one hand, you have some Castlevania-like platforming. On the other, you've got a simulation god game where you fight demons and watch your kingdom grow. How do they work together? How does everything fit? Does it hold up?

We're unabashed in our love of Maniac Mansion and other early LucasArts adventure games. So it shouldn't be a surprise that we jumped all over the Thimbleweed Park Kickstarter when it was announced. And we were right to do so, because Ron Gilbert, Gary Winnick, and company have made something truly great in Thimbleweed Park. It feels right at home with those older games, but has a level of complexity and care that makes it feel very modern too. It's a delight to talk about something so special.

Gary and Kole load up Transistor and break their way through it, having a very good time in the process. Transistor is still new enough to be a little controversial. People came to it from Bastion, the previous Supergiant game, and didn't know what to make of its semi-turn-based combat and technical aesthetic. If you can reconfigure your expectations, you'll find a game that allows for an absurd degree of player expression through combat verbs. Also, it's an incredibly touching love story. Gonna be honest, this is the most we've gushed about a game in a long time. Huge thanks to Jon C. Bird for executive producing this episode!

We found a filthy notebook full of people's thoughts on the Resident Evil games we covered. Let us peer within.

Resident Evil month rounds out with a very new, very good game. Something has twisted the Bakers. Ethan Winters just wants to rescue his missing wife, but he's welcomed into the family instead. Resident Evil 7 is a radical departure for the series, moving gameplay to the first person perspective. However, in a lot of ways it's a return to form. Claustrophobic and dreadful, RE7 is the reboot this series desperately needed.

Undead outbreaks are a family affair in this canonical follow-up to the story of Resident Evil 2. Claire Redfield has declared war on the Umbrella Corporation, but she has also gotten in over her head. Trapped in the twisted world of Alfred Ashford, the scion of one of the founding families of Umbrella, she has to work with her brother to escape and set things right. Problem is, this is a very sloppy Resident Evil game. Listen in to find out how.

Resident Evil month begins with a bang, just like Nemesis does. Capcom was in a weird spot. They were developing several Resident Evil games at the same time, trying to make hay of a popular series while also preparing for the next generation of consoles. From that shuffle came what might be the most mechanically sound classic Resident Evil game. Nemesis is rich with ideas and also kind to the player, introducing a dodge mechanic and ammo crafting to make the game empowering while keeping it challenging. Guys, Nemesis is great.

Tune your bat radios to our bat frequency to hear your bat thoughts.

Our discussion of Batman: Arkham Asylum continues (and concludes). Next week, we'll hear your responses to the games we covered during Bat Month!

Bat month continues with the reinvigoration of the franchise. This episode covers generalities and the first major area. Batman had languished in mediocrity for almost two decades before Rocksteady brought it back from the brink. Arkham Asylum is remarkable not just for how influential it is, but for how well it works as a Batman simulator. Rocksteady would go on to perfect the formula with Arkham City, but their work began here... with a story about the Joker, his strong clowns, and the inmates running the asylum.

The title seems redundant, but it's better than saying "Batman, the NES game. The one made by SunSoft. For the first movie, kinda." This might be the hardest game we've done for the show, but we might also have lost track. This is a compact little platformer that is certainly of its era, but it's also a rare great licensed game. Borrowing elements from several other platformers, Ninja Gaiden most noticeably, SunSoft created a challenging and technical Batman game when mediocrity would have sold.

This is the first of our monthly listener response episodes under the new model, gathering your thoughts on the Final Fantasy IV saga. Up next in September, we have Bat Month. Which means the Batman NES game, and Batman: Arkahm Asylum. October brings us Resident Evil month, featuring Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, Resident Evil: Code Veronica, and Resident Evil 7.

To the center of the moon, to the center of the series, and into the slog. Final Fantasy IV: The After Years takes a strange turn in its back half... a turn that isn't discussed very often because nobody really talks about The After Years. So, join us for the last few chapters of this wildly misguided game.

An unloved sequel to a beloved game makes for some rough play, as the FF4 formula wears out its welcome. While Takashi Tokita was working to update Final Fantasy IV for the Nintendo DS, he felt a longing to return to the Blue Planet and revisit the story of Cecil and the gang. What resulted was a strange plan: to release a sequel to an almost 20 year old game in episodic installments on Japanese mobile phones. By the time it arrived in America, nobody quite knew what to make of it, and neither do we.

Picking up at Troia and the Tower of Zot, Gary and Kole conclude their discussion of the main game of Final Fantasy IV. The next episode will cover the first several chapters of The After Years.

It's a classic RPG that established many of the norms for a huge series. Does it hold up to modern scrutiny? This episode covers the generalities, and the events of the game up through Cecil's trial at Mt. Ordeals. Final Fantasy IV was released in America for the SNES in 1991 as "Final Fantasy II", just a short year after the first Final Fantasy reached our shores. Timed to coincide with the release of a new system, it takes advantage of some of the new technologies that were freshly available at the time. The added scope was used to create a sweeping, narrative focused game that put broadly sketched characters and melodrama to the forefront. This decision came at the expense of some of the systems complexity of previous entries, marking Square's new priorities for RPGs as vehicles for story. This first episode covers the portion of the game where Cecil, our main character, is working as a Dark Knight in the employ of Baron. Unsettled by his king's increasing militancy, Cecil abandons his kingdom after decidi

Gary Butterfield and Kole Ross read your responses to Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty in this final extrasode.