Abject Suffering
661 episodes — Page 1 of 14
Abject Suffering 661: Titenic
Abject Suffering 660: Xenophage Alien Bloodsport
Abject Suffering 659: Sunset Riders
Abject Suffering 658: Bioforge
Abject Suffering 657: White Van Racer
Ep 656Abject Suffering 656: Haven: Call of the King
E<html><p>Haven: Call of the King is a PS2 platformer that doesn’t want you to think it’s a platformer. It wants you to think it’s anything and everything all at once. That’s why they don’t want you to call it a “platformer”, they want you to call it a “FreeFormer”. Which is… hey listen, we’re really sorry about this one, a lot of the episode is dedicated to trying to figure out how to get Gary a wheelbarrow. We fucked it up. Give us a chance again next week.</p></html>
Ep 655Abject Suffering 655: AAAHH!! Real Monsters
E<html><p>Nickelodeon was at the height of their powers in the 90s when they decided to start throwing more and more Nicktoons down the chute. This led to them trying to capture the grotesquery of Ren &amp; Stimpy without any of its transgression. Thus, Aaahh!!! Real Monsters was born, a show about monsters who live in a dump trying to learn to scare humans. This predated Monsters, Inc. by several years, but still feels derivative of that movie!</p></html>
Ep 654Abject Suffering 654: Amazon Trail
E<html><p>The Oregon Trail is a simple game, but it’s timeless. The Amazon trail is complicated and involves time traveling magic panthers, and nobody has thought about it in thirty years. There’s a lesson there. Additionally, there are lessons in hiring contractors to fix your bathroom, and lessons about how the Liar’s Dividend has made public defecators of us all.</p></html>
Ep 653Abject Suffering 653: Special Report
E<html><p>This is a sequel episode to Abject Suffering 619: Wild Woody.</p><p>Look, we totally intended to record an episode about a video game. But sometimes you’re at a discount grocery store and you stumble across the deal of a lifetime. How many lives could you change with $100?</p></html>
Ep 652Abject Suffering 652: McDonalds Changeables Game Experience
E<html><p>It’s time for another McDonald’s episode because they released a new game on the sly when they brought back the Changeables Happy Meal Toys. You know, those little toys that are like Transformers but the “disguise” form is food that scientists labored over to make sure you’d eat it forever.</p><p><a href="https://chg30296.happymealdigital.com/" target="_blank">This game is basically nothing</a>, a little Flash-like web game platformer. But this new toy drop has wildly expanded the McDonald’s cosmology, and that must be addressed.</p></html>
Ep 651Abject Suffering 651: Twisted Metal: Small Brawl
E<html><p>Look out! It's tiny Sweettooth! He's going to run us over in his tiny car!</p></html>
Ep 650Abject Suffering 650: Donkey Kong 3
E<html><p>This episode is about a Donkey Kong sequel that's about a man who kills bugs. Kaye also talks about schlepping her cats across the country and Gary uses a bathroom in a haunted house.</p></html>
Ep 649Abject Suffering 649: Dangerous Dave's Risky Rescues
E<html><p>The Dangerous Dave games are a series of PC platformers that acted as a precursor to Commander Keen, except with a redneck aesthetic and hyperviolence. This entry is hard, but not terrible, so we talk about how modern Helltimes have rendered thinking about having superpowers unpalatable.</p></html>
Ep 648Abject Suffering 648: Beast Wars: Transformers
<html><p>Beast Wars: Transformers is an ugly show, and the PlayStation game based on it is even uglier. It’s a little bleak to consider that the cheap animation of the 80s cartoon is the best that these robots would ever look. So instead, Gary proposes a new sex move called “Trick or Treat”, and we work out the logistics of how to pull it off.</p></html>
Ep 647Abject Suffering 647: Bad Dudes
E<html><p>It’s honestly weird that we haven’t already covered the NES version of Bad Dudes, a game with an infamous intro and horribly choppy handling. So Kaye brings it as her vanity pick, and we talk about how bad times have also made ALL of us into Bad Dudes.</p></html>
Ep 646Abject Suffering 646: Friday Night Funkin'
E<html><p>Friday Night Funkin’, a rhythm game credited with keeping Newgrounds relevant in the 2020s, is actually pretty good. The music works better than the visuals, and the fan community is really… enthusiastic… but there’s not much to hate here. So instead we talk about Gary’s trip to San Francisco, where he got mindfreaked.</p></html>
Ep 645Abject Suffering 645: Love is... in Bloom: The Flower Shop Garden
E<html><p>Love Is… is a very sad and weird comic strip about naked eight year olds who are married and like being really bossy about what is and isn’t love. The game is nothing, but we cannot bring ourselves to stop diving into the comic’s archive to boggle at what was once (and apparently still is?) acceptable.</p></html>
Ep 644Abject Suffering 644: Minority Report: Everybody Runs
E<html><p>Minority Report: Everybody Runs is a licensed tie in game to a movie where ladies lay eggs that tell the future. Since this is a perfect fit for us, we talk about what precog powers would do to our lives, and Kaye talks about preparing for her upcoming move.</p></html>
Ep 643Abject Suffering 643: Biker Mice from Mars
E<html><p>The Biker Mice from Mars was an also-ran in the Turtles boom of the early nineties. Its premise was exactly what the title implies, and it relied on the idea of bikers being a lot cooler than they actually are. But given any chance to talk about the Turtles, we dig into the missed potential in not focusing on the TEENAGE part of TMNT.</p></html>
Ep 642Abject Suffering 642: Panic!
E<html><p>Panic! isn’t really a game, it’s a mouse training program with some context-free visual gags. Faced with the possibility that disliking this makes us sticks in the mud, we talk about why this presentation is a disservice to the very necessary emotion of whimsy.</p></html>
Ep 641Abject Suffering 641: Satan Santa
E<html><p>We’ve done most of the major Christmas-themed games, so we had to dig deep and find some of the worst slop Steam could provide. Satan Santa is an asset flip game that makes generous use of AI in its text and marketing materials. A demon has replaced Santa and a kid needs to walk really slow about it.</p></html>
Ep 640Abject Suffering 640: Rock n' Roll Racing
E<html><p>Rock n’ Roll Racing is a game that people love. It’s pog monsters doing combat racing from an irritating isometric perspective, set to SNES chiptune renditions of classic rock songs. For what it is, it’s hard to find too much to complain about… so we talk about Gary’s ongoing crisis of whether or not he should become best friends with his dentist.</p></html>
Ep 639Abject Suffering 639: Palace of Deceit: The Dragon's Plight
E<html><p>Everyone has to start somewhere. For Cliff Blezinski, starting meant making a pale imitation of Shadowgate called Palace of Deceit: The Dragon’s Plight. Playing it is a master class in what makes Shadowgate good. But you can’t be too hard on the kid for it, he was sixteen. Be hard on him for the things he said and did later.</p></html>
Ep 638Abject Suffering 638: Gamer Simulator
E<html><p>Gamer Simulator is an unfinished piece of slopware available on Steam that doesn’t really simulate being a gamer, as much as it simulates being under a geas that makes it so you can only derive sustenance from powerups you find in video games. And when you’re done eating virtual hamburgers, you can learn about the cruelest reality television shows of all time.</p></html>
Ep 637Abject Suffering 637: Pagemaster
<html><p>At the twilight of Macauley Culkin’s first act, he released a trio of flops that included the movie The Pagemaster, a combination live action and animated film where he plays an awful little nerd who learns confidence by going into books. Because it was 1994, they made a ton of very bad and loose platformers based on this stinker of a property. We talk a little bit about those before digressing onto “Knights and Warriors”, a syndicated television show whose premise was “American Gladiators, but evil.”</p></html>
Ep 636Abject Suffering 636: Spore Hero Arena
E<html><p>The kids today don’t know the cautionary tale of Spore, Will Wright’s big gamble on a universal god sim that absolutely didn’t pay off. And even fewer kids know about the avalanche of Spore shovelware that followed EA taking a bath on the main game. It’s so fitting for a game about evolutionary viability to drown in its own ooze.</p></html>
Ep 635Abject Suffering 635: Action Man: Operation Extreme
E<html><p>We thought there would be meat on something called “Action Man”, but then we found out that it’s just a re-badging of what we in America know as G.I. Joe. Which is disappointing. While we wait to talk about these exciting “Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles” next week, we also discuss the Free Willy animated series, and try to decode why kids everywhere are saying “6-7”.</p></html>
Ep 634Abject Suffering 634: Franko: The Crazy Revenge
E<html><p>Franko: The Crazy Revenge is a very bad shooter that, because of regrettable economic and political conditions, became the Polish gaming industry’s crown jewel for a little bit. And though the game is bad, it does have a very funny and sleazy energy about it. We end the episode by taking a moment to talk about the horrors of Granny’s Daycare.</p></html>
Ep 633Abject Suffering 633: Extreme Sprint 3010
E<html><p>I don’t believe we’ve covered a game from Lithuania on the network… until now. Extreme Sprint 3010 is a literal Running Man game, if running man was about dumpy little guys ambling lazily toward the camera. We also talk about War-Torn Portland, and Gary’s fascination with the show and phrase “Farmer Wants a Wife”.</p></html>
Ep 632Abject Suffering 632: Blue Stinger
E<html><p>Blue Stinger has the call to take you to Dinosaur Island and not have you fight any actual dinosaurs, and this is the least of its sins. From the same developer as Illbleed, it’s one of the many Resident Evil clones that history forgot, slightly bolstered by the fact that it was exclusive to the Dreamcast, which is a wounded baby bird that must be protected at all costs.</p><p>We also talk about hiring private investigators to arrange love matches for GameFAQs contributors, and examine the anatomy of a Goro.</p></html>
Ep 631Abject Suffering 631: Bigfoot
E<html><p>Bigfoot is, unfortunately, not about big hairy cryptids. Instead, it’s about monster trucks, which we are very bored of… until we make one of the most profound 180s in podcasting history.</p></html>
Ep 630Abject Suffering 630: Yo Noid! 2
E<html><p>Yo Noid! 2 is a comedy game that expands on the adventures of the Noid as he hops and bops to fight for his continuing relevance. It’s a fine platformer, but boy is the story and humor dated at this point! We also talk about Hatsune Miku, whether or not Tablet is bread, and expression vs. performance.</p></html>
Ep 629Abject Suffering 629: Gumby vs. The Astrobots
<html><p>Finally a very old piece of media that Gary and Kaye can agree on: Gumby. He’s a psychedelic little shapeshifter who hasn’t been relevant since the sixties, and he has but one single video game about him.</p></html>
Ep 628Abject Suffering 628: Quarantine
E<html><p>Quarantine ends up being a very bad Doom clone, but instead of DoomGuy, you’re DoomCar, and you can only see five feet in front of you. And its snarl of lore is just too boring to pick apart. So instead we ask… what was the deal with the Three Tenors, and do you think you could take them in a fight?</p></html>
Ep 627Abject Suffering 627: Cowboy Kid
E<html><p>This reskin of a Goemon game is kind of fun and interesting, despite its problems. But the discovery of Cowboy Kid's amazing American cover art leads us into a deep well of appreciating the Gay Cowboy trope as a celebration of having fun with the guys. <a href="https://youtu.be/6X9tBHX_Fl4?si=yDC0laaEK6otvaoY" target="_blank">The "Life at the Outpost" video is required viewing.</a></p></html>
Ep 626Abject Suffering 626: Todd's Adventures in Slime World
E<html><p>Todd hates slime. He hates it when things get goopy. So he went to a planet full of it to exact his revenge. We, however, are indifferent to slime, and also think this game isn't too terribly bad. So we talk about the dead-end economics of the slime-content, and carousels for some reason.</p></html>
Ep 625Abject Suffering 625: Garbage Pail Kids: Mad Mike and the Quest for Stale Gum
E<html><p>Garbage Pail Kids: Mad Mike and the Quest for Stale Gum advertises itself as a lost NES adaptation of the Garbage Pail kids line of collectible trading cards. In reality, it’s a modern game made by talented devs who make games for NES hardware. And it’s pretty fine! But there are so many Garbage Pail kids to talk about, so we spend most of our time camping out on them.</p><p>Want 204 bonus episodes of this show? <a href="http://patreon.com/duckfeedtv" target="_blank">Just become a $5 member of our Patreon!</a></p><p>To suggest a game for polls or randomizations, <a href="https://www.notion.so/1659c222a87e806c87bbc8b80df2b393?pvs=21" target="_blank">just use our Suggestion Machine</a>!</p></html>
Ep 624Abject Suffering 624: Gender Wars
E<html><p>It’s hard to think of a more damning indictment of the state of the world in 2025 than the fact that a cheap RTS developed to shock people with gender stereotypes in 1996 is really tame in comparison to what happens today. What happens in this game is by no means good, but it plays in tropes that are so outdated as to be cartoonish. Tim HomeImprovement would tell it to get better material.</p><p>Want 204 bonus episodes of this show? <a href="http://patreon.com/duckfeedtv" target="_blank">Just become a $5 member of our Patreon!</a></p><p>To suggest a game for polls or randomizations, <a href="https://www.notion.so/1659c222a87e806c87bbc8b80df2b393?pvs=21" target="_blank">just use our Suggestion Machine</a>!</p></html>
Ep 623Abject Suffering 623: Virtuoso
E<html><p>You are a rock and roll musician who fights creatures in virtual reality! You embody rock'n'roll in every way except the music. What's more, you received a job offer from Uganda!</p></html>
Ep 622Abject Suffering 622: Dynamite Dux
E<html><p>Dynamite Dux is a forgotten Sega arcade beat-em-up with a profoundly cursed aura. Play five minutes of it and tell me this game isn’t haunted to hell and back. Then, come with us as we talk about the raunchy easter egg that took people 30 years to uncover.</p></html>
Ep 621Abject Suffering 621: Superman (NES)
E<html><p>Are you ready for an episode about a notoriously derided Superman game hosted by two people who don’t really care for or know about Superman, and haven’t seen that new movie everyone’s raving about? We hope so!</p></html>
Ep 620Abject Suffering 620: Troddlers
E<html><p>Picking games to cover on Abject Suffering is hard. We don’t like hitting ones that have been talked to death. So sometimes we just grab something with a name that calls out to us. What’s a Troddler? What does a Troddler mean for my life? We never would have guessed that Troddlers, a game nobody has heard of, might actually be a pretty fun puzzle game. Color us shocked!</p></html>
Ep 619Abject Suffering 619: Wild Woody
E<html><p>Wild Woody is a swan-song for a system nobody owned, built around a power fantasy nobody has ever had. Who wants to be a pencil? So we introduce a much more tempting fantasy… How many hot dogs could you be trusted with?</p></html>
Ep 618Abject Suffering 618: Arachnophobia
E<html><p>Arachnophobia is now mostly forgotten, but it was once a beloved one-off horror comedy movie about extremely virile spiders overtaking a small town. Then they made a game out of it, and it was very boring! So we talk about Brian Wilson’s obsession with “Short’nin’ Bread” instead.</p></html>
Ep 617Abject Suffering 617: Mega Man Soccer
E<html><p>We don’t know anything about soccer, but we DO know things about Mega Man. Unfortunately, this game leans more on the soccer side of the equation. So we default back to the last time either of us played sports: in gym class. We also talk about our recent trips to festivals, both Renaissance and Pride.</p></html>
Ep 616Abject Suffering 616: Bug!
E<html><p>To prove just how dead in the water Sega was in the mid-1990s, they bet big on Bug!, a very slow 2.5D platformer that began life as a Sonic game. The Sega Saturn was a system in search of an identity, and boy howdy, Bug! did not provide it.</p></html>
Ep 615Abject Suffering 615: Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six
E<html><p>Have we talked about Spider-Man more than any other superhero on this show? Maybe Batman is up there. And Gary has definitely shoehorned “Turn Off the Dark” into more episodes than is necessary. But this is the first time we’ve really camped out on the Sinister Six, one of the more incoherent supervillain groups of all time. Also, take a look at Spider-Man’s sprites for this game. He’s so schlubby!</p></html>
Ep 614Abject Suffering 614: Black Eyed Peas Experience
E<html><p>Folks, Gary chose to harm all of us by picking this game for Abject Suffering. Part of the shovelware dance game craze of about fifteen years ago, the Black Eyed Peas Experience ranks pretty low on the list of things we’ve covered. And that list is long.</p></html>
Ep 613Abject Suffering 613: Guardian War
E<html><p>Covering Guardian War right after Paperboy 64 is a one-two punch of some of the most hideous games we’ve played. But looking past its shoddy veneer, Guardian War is kind of interesting, if insufficient. Of all of the 3DO games we’ve played, this is the one that’s most like an actual video game… being a kind of over-the-shoulder tactics RPG.</p><p>Gary also underwent a harrowing medical experience, so we had to talk about that too.</p></html>
Ep 612Abject Suffering 612: Paperboy 64
E<html><p>Would you believe that the Paperboy game for the N64 would be one of the ugliest things we’ve covered for this show? It seems like that would be hard to accomplish, given the competition, but this game’s spindly polygonal horrors are genuinely unnerving.</p></html>