PPR 162

s we all leave the holiday behind and officially ring in 2026, or whatever the hell George was calling it (we think it was the "Düo-Dusé"). We thought it would be neat to look at the holiday season under a lens, and think about the “comfort games” that come with the season.

Think about all of the arguments or justifications you’ve heard for whether or not a film or album is a Xmas-coded production? Like, beyond all of the Die Hard or The Thin Man shitposts, there are pieces of media that folks just associate with the holidays, even when they’re not centrally focused on the jolly time—and some choice picks that don’t even do that much.

We all assign these arbitrary associations between literature and film around yuletides and such, so why not video games too? To ensure we really get some spirit out of this topic, we’ve asked some wonderful folks to appear on the episode, and give us their thoughts on the matter, as well as the games that they associate with the season of giving. Join Andrew and George as they have the pleasure of inviting Emily and Kate of No Small Games, and Rick of Pixel Project Radio to ham it up over this silly little query on what we all like to enjoy on our screens during a heart-warming and arguably anaphylactic event every year in December.

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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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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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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