PPR Presents Play Play: Dark Souls III

he Ringed City expansion just dropped for Dark Souls III, and it reminded us that we’re still hunting through the kingdom of Lothric for those tasty souls. Dark Souls III is considered to be the best of the best from Hidetaka Miyazaki, as it reinvents some of the familiar combat dynamics around the Blooborne engine in the framework of the Souls franchise into a sequel that still has players hooked on it to this day.

Andrew has made it no secret that he hates these types of games, but he said what the hell, and decided to pull up seat alongside Georgie, swinging around ancient blades against nightmare demons until they died—a lot.

Mail us at our new email Mailbag@presspauseradio.com, leave a voicemail at 469-PPR-TALK, and be sure to stop by at our Forums if you haven’t already registered and post your thoughts about the show. Finally, make sure to rate and subscribe to us on iTunes and YouTube, follow us on Twitch page and Twitter, and finally take part in our Facebook and Steam group!

PPR Presents Play Play: Mass Effect: Andromeda

he Mass Effect Trilogy is one of the most beloved properties to have ever graced the last decade of gaming—regardless of how you may feel about the third entry of the series.

It isn’t too surprising that we would be treated to a new generation of the series, taking place in an entirely new galaxy, and led by a brand new hero named Ryder. Mass Effect: Andromeda is an exciting opportunity for the franchise to pick back up again after the debacle of the Mass Effect 3, but unfortunately, it’s an opportunity that BioWare really fumbles up on.

George and Andrew take to the helm to address some of the concerns we have the sequel, and whether or not it’s worth checking out in this new Play Play of Mass Effect: Andromeda.

Mail us at our new email Mailbag@presspauseradio.com, leave a voicemail at 469-PPR-TALK, and be sure to stop by at our Forums if you haven’t already registered and post your thoughts about the show. Finally, make sure to rate and subscribe to us on iTunes and YouTube, follow us on Twitch page and Twitter, and finally take part in our Facebook and Steam group!

PPR Presents Play Play: Yooka-Laylee

t was almost twenty years ago that a bear and bird captured the heart of nearly every cartridge-based gamer around—and that reverence for Banjo-Kazooie lives on to this day.

So much so that there’s been a noticeable void in the collectable platformer genre for the current generation that seems to be reserved for anything that’s 8-bit or 16-bit when it comes to retro tributes. Luckily, a group of ex Rare developers saw that gap, and decided to form their studio named Playtonic Games, crowd sourcing interest for a next-generation collectathon titled Yooka-Laylee, and man did that thing make a whole lot of money the moment it hit the internet—people were famished of this kind of adventure.

Well, the wait’s over, the game’s here, and while it might be George’s favorite game of 2017 so far, there are some problems that Ser and him just can’t help but address; here’s our Play Play for Yooka-Laylee.

Mail us at our new email Mailbag@presspauseradio.com, leave a voicemail at 469-PPR-TALK, and be sure to stop by at our Forums if you haven’t already registered and post your thoughts about the show. Finally, make sure to rate and subscribe to us on iTunes and YouTube, follow us on Twitch page and Twitter, and finally take part in our Facebook and Steam group!

QCF: Night in the Woods

o matter how old you are, there’s always going to be this unspoken acceptance between you and the friends you makes; an acceptance of who’s going to stay for the long haul, and who’s going to be a memory, if anything at all. Some of the key elements that define the human condition are ones that’re fundamentally tied to the concept of loneliness and the effects that it has on people.

This leads to a misinterpretation that the relationships we form are done from out of mutual interests and similarities, glossing over the fact that mutual hatreds and fears have a lot to do with who interact with and trust on a daily basis.

There aren’t a lot of experiences that I can think of that have evoked these ugly truths quite like Night in the Woods by Finji. The tagline of the game tells its players that at the end of everything, you have to try to hold onto anything, setting a tone that consistently sticks it to you the further you dive in. The messages and themes offered in the adventure side-scroller are poignant in their relatability to the hardships of youth in modern Americana, and struggle with mental health issues that stem from the experience.

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QCF: Owlboy

he concept of “living to fight another day” has always been a strange perspective, and easily one of the most endearing when it comes to the human condition, and this underdog theme has only resonated with me more and more as I got older—it never stopped being so captivating to me.

As much as I want to believe that I identify with that try-hard sentiment though, the reality is that I would immediately weigh in on the option of cutting my losses before I ever considered staying and finishing what may end up being a losing fight. I kick myself every time I stray towards the mindset, but the realist in me can’t help but eek out some semblance of control over which hill I choose to die on, and which I don’t. It’s this weird struggle to describe, and one that I’ve never really seen explored in great detail within most narratives we consume in modern day media.

That is, until I booted up D-Pad Studio’s Owl Boy; a game starring an introverted hero who’s only wish is to do what he thinks is right in spite of his personal flaws, and the flaws of everyone else around him for that matter. Hidden in this surprisingly charming platformer is a tale that’s deceptively rich with character and heart like none that I’ve seen in quite some time.

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QCF: Batman: A Telltale Series Episode 3: A New World Order

fter two roller-coaster paced episodes in, the story of the Dark Knight fight against the Children of Arkham finally begins to hit familiar territory for the character, and how Telltale handles that is certainly, interesting; Episode 3 starts to hit the kind of story beats you’d expect out of Batman, but the shakeups are beginning to stumble a bit.

Bruce Wayne’s more prominent role in the story has definitely made the premise of Telltale’s spin on Batman more intriguing, but Episode 3 of the series works to unfold the unyielding glamour of the hero into something more human than normally associated with the figure that is Batman; it’s a little jarring, but nonetheless, still interesting.

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QCF: Skylanders Imaginators

t some point, I think we all knew that this “Toys to life craze” was going to hit its peak much like the way Guitar Hero did around the sixth of seventh iteration—as much as we all want to deny it, we knew.

Skylanders Imaginators is a testament to that; a sequel that that promises an ambitious premise, and fails to deliver on anything more than just another Skylanders game, and that’s when the game doesn’t return to some gross old habits the series worked hard to break either.

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PPR 102

ver hear the saying when you were young that it’s no fun to stay in the same place for too long because there’s a whole world out there waiting for you? Especially when you were told to go outside more, and to play video games? Funny to think back on that now that the last few generations of games have been able to give that same sort of rush all from within the comfort of your own home.

And even then it isn’t always comforting when we have to spend the next 10 real world minutes to get to some dumb vantage point.

This week on Press Pause Radio, we’ve finally gotten the opportunity to embark on the next instalment in The Legend of Zelda series, and the experience has been nothing short of magical. It got us thinking about the current climate of the open-world genre in gaming, and how much more we’re seeing them in the current wave of software.

We also talk about Lego Dimensions, Dollar stores, Horizon Zero Dawn, CW’s Riverdale, Destiny, Mass Effect 3, Night In the Woods, Super Bomberman R, our impressions of the Nintendo Switch and more—nothing short of being a packed episode from us per usual!

Mail us at our new email Mailbag@presspauseradio.com, leave a voicemail at 469-PPR-TALK, and be sure to stop by at our Forums if you haven’t already registered and post your thoughts about the show. Finally, make sure to rate and subscribe to us on iTunes and YouTube, follow us on Twitch page and Twitter, and finally take part in our Facebook and Steam group!

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