The Crate and Crowbar

Alex and Tom Senior soak in the drippings of the rich in beautiful topdown shooter The Ascent, descend further into bullet hell via several classic shmups, and relax to the heavenly harp of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Plus, discussion of Call Of Duty’s Double Agent mode, and Tom’s back on the chess. Call Of Duty is [...]

It’s all hands on deck – Steam Deck, that is – as Alex, Tom F and Graham gather to discuss Valve’s latest foray into hardware territory. Plus, Tom explains the comforts of roguelike deckbuilder Roguebook, and Alex uncovers the mysterious city of (people who might be turned into) gold in The Forgotten City. Also discussed: [...]

Chris and Tom S gather under the watchful eye of a seagull and discuss the car horror of Beware, the stuck-to-a-toilet horror of Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne HD Remaster, and the geometric horror of sorting rectangles in Tetris Effect. Also discussed: in what year we’d happily be trapped, our best and least liked noises, [...]

Alex and Graham discuss 2D platformers… with a twist! Graham punts himself through the magnetic levels of Super Magbot while Alex swims in the inky droplets of Ynglet. Plus, lizard tummies are rubbed in Little Witch In The Woods, and Quake’s 25th anniversary is celebrated via the medium of envying Robert Yang’s talent. To finish, [...]

Marsh, Tom S and Chris look back over the week of E3 announcements, from Giancarlo Esposito’s opinion of dictators, to the reveal of Peter Quiff in Guardians Of The Galaxy, to the onslaught of Left 4 Deadlikes. Also discussed: several dozen other E3 reveals, plus Tom’s new computer ennui, and Chris’s fondness for Chivalry 2. [...]

There’s a logjam down the River Take and Chris and Alex join Tom F to help clear it, smashing through Monster Train, Overboard!, Slipways, Unexplored 2, Necromunda: Hired Gun, Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, Subnautica Below Zero, and Griftlands. Where the river meets the sea, Chris and Alex drown some old games they once loved. Chris [...]

Chris and Graham challenge Valheim’s developers to stop over-hyping ponies, launch Far Cry 6 opinions like missiles from a Katyusha backpack, and definitively answer why people like Warhammer via the turn-based strategy of Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Storm Ground. Valheim’s developers bought a pony. An incredible flex, but why must they call it a horse?Valheim [...]

Alex, Tom S and Graham walk towards the light and enter the hot, sweaty, concrete podspace. Inside they discuss strobing, IGF-nominated art game Kristallijn, the lovingly recreated concrete formwork of Control, and the tiny tug-of-war strategy of Warpips. A Take-Two earnings call revealed GTA5 has sold over 145 million copies.The metaverse is already here, says [...]

Tom S, Chris and Marsh return to the camp castle carnage of Resident Evil Village and form a merry band to rob from the rich and give to the winch in Hood: Outlaws & Legends. Plus: all the latest Branagh news in BranaghWatch. Feel emotions about space in Mass Effect, which is back, legendarily. Stadia’s [...]

Alex, Graham and Tom S salivate over Epic v Apple goss, ponder IGF noms, wander Resident Evil Village, batter Bydos in R-Type Final 2, boggle polys in The Catacombs of Solaris Revisited and brave uwu in Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion. A synopsis of the Epic v Apple suit so far. David Rosen of Wolfire [...]

Graham, Chris and Marsh scout the fractal spaces of Yedoma Globula, snoop on the neighbours in The Flower Collectors, bend extra dimensions in Portal Reloaded, abruptly retopologise in Warzone and poke a post-patch Cyberpunk. Please buy Blood Cotillion and our other stuff! Wolfire games is launching an anti-trust suit against Steam. Official Playstation Magazine is [...]

Tom S, Alex and Marsh are generated by an algorithm to assemble words about fan-made Metroid game Prime 2D, digiperson creator Metahuman, hellish refresh Diablo II: Resurrected, weirdo retro Mr. Do! and cosmic metaphor Genesis Noir. A new trailer for Skin Deep by Brendon Chung (aka Blendo Games). It’s systemic-y Die Hard in Space! Brendon [...]

Tom F, Chris, Alex and Graham debate values of Cuno in Disco Elysium: The Final Cut, hit weak-spots in Boomerang X, are underwhelmed by the underworld of Paradise Lost, somehow tolerate the lore of Ghostrunner and forget the name of Trials of Fire. There’s another one of those games that they do. This one is [...]

Heim! In this mini-pod, Pip and Chris have a chat about their experience of paddling their way towards Valheim’s (current) endgame. Beware! There’s an open discussion of the game’s contents, and that means potential spoilers. On the way we discuss the myriad ‘heim crimes of Philippa Warr, the myriad ways in which Chris stands to [...]

Graham and Marsh enjoy the after-hours delights of shortform curiosity-shopping experience Dépanneur Nocturne and imagine popping Sonic like a balloon in Puyo Puyo Tetris 2. CDProjekt released a company strategy video. Many insights therein. Mexican stand-off generator Subrosa is out in Early Access… again? Still? Shoulda called it Doublecrossy Road. Evocative night-time tchotchke-acquisition simulator Dépanneur [...]

Tom S and Marsh face ghosts and goats in idiosyncratic alpine horror game Mundaun, smash demons apart like satanic pinatas in Doom Eternal, take a swing at Mortal Kombat 11 and murder murders in the latest Hunt: Showdown event. Jim Rossignol and Marsh have together written a one-shot table-top RPG, called Night of the Hogmen. [...]

Tom F, Alex and Graham brawl through dungeons in Curse of the Dead Gods, use vegetables as truncheons in Bloodroots, scavenge for luncheons in Windbound and Valheim, and destroy dry stone walls without compunction in Forza Horizon 4. Stylish and impactful dungeon brawler, Curse of the Dead Gods – but its curse management innovation feels [...]

Tom S, Graham and Marsh put on their luckiest killing slippers and put the shoe into JRPGs Dragon Quest XI and Bravely Default 2. Plus, recursive first-person puzzler Maquette, the valblue of subs, and a sorry end in the football cul-de-sac. First person puzzler where things are big and small and you are in them [...]

Alex, Tom F, Chris and Marsh colonise the skies in Airborne Kingdom, recolonise the lands of Loop Hero, overheat colonists in Terraforming Mars and perforate colons in brutal duelling sim Hellish Quart. Also the soviet miserablism of HROT. Kiss kiss! Doomed libertarian expedition, Artifact, has finally eaten the last of its own shoes and will [...]

Alex, Tom S and Graham push right in the wordless storyworld of Voyage, bash chitin in the bullet hell of Mushihimesama and gush over affectionate genre-hopping satire Lair of the Clockwork God. If you feel you’ve been harmed by the discussion of pizza in this podcast, please contact our Culinary Crime Office on 1800-DONT-AT-ME. Anthem, [...]

Both Toms, Graham and Marsh defy death in timeloop horror House, deal death in globetrotting trilogy Hitman, dodge death in smart shmup Bezier and become death in Death Crown. Also: streamlined space strat Slipways and the joy of City Guesser. It’s reverse-Hitman: House. Reverse-reverse-Hitman: 360 Hitman / Hitman III / Hitman 8 / World of [...]

Chris, Alex and Marsh boot up modern games made for ye olde machines (Micro Mages, Nox Archaist and Tanglewood), put the boot into baddies in Shady Knight, woodchip birdies in Journey to the Savage Planet and chop wood in Nordic survival hit Valheim. Marty O’Donnell primes his Plangent Hero Horn for the return of Six [...]

Graham, Tom S, Alex and Chris numb themselves with Hexceed and Dungeon & Puzzles; inexplicably return to Syberia; defy the predictions of Gods Will Fall; hop, skip and jump through Olija; and holiday in Hitman III. Stadia shutters its game-making efforts. “Google was a terrible place to make games. Imagine Amazon, but under-resourced.” Oof. A [...]

Tom S, Chris and Marsh sink into the obliviating waters of Hades and World of Warcraft, gun gribblies in Soulsian sleeper hit Remnant: From the Ashes, blindly steer a nation in Suzerain and snap critters in Penko Park’s kooky safari. Fire-extinguisher-head-bonk-sim, Hitman 3 is out! Disney’s Lucasgames’ Arts Films Games: there’s a Ubisoft Star War [...]

Toms F and S are joined by Alex to discuss Monster Train’s forthcoming factions, go full dork over emulation widget MiSTer and be disappointed by England – in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, too! Ha! Ha! Ha! Cyberpunk 2077’s developers have conceded the existence of linear time, but not much else, in their roadmap. Ogle Dead End [...]

Bonus episode! Tom chats to top games critic and lovely person Christian Donlan in a meandering discussion about Star Trek, old Mario games, classic sci-fi films, Rogue, and much more. And then Christian’s cat makes an appearance, which just makes everything even better. The main C&C pod shall resume service shortly! Also another film ‘n [...]

Tom and Jamie gathered many weeks ago to record a whole new meandering chat through our film and TV obsessions of the moment! With Christmas just around the corner, Tom has finally found the time to publish this one as a hopefully fun bonus episode for the holiday season. 2020 is ending; hooray! We hope [...]

Graham, Tom S, Chris, Tom F, Alex and Marsh pile into the electronic telephone booth for our Game of the Year episode. Many things are discussed, some of which are even games that came out this year. Here’s the whole lot of them. Don’t read ahead if you want to rubberneck at the beautiful carnage [...]

Chris, Tom S and Marsh dial in to the eZone to digichat about obvious replicant Geoff Keighley’s latest data-dump, before opening up our brainchips to irrecoverable corruption by the Cyberpunk 2077 discourse. Suffer the many newses beamed from Geoff Keighley’s Laser Cage. Bioware had trailers for new Dragon Age and Mass Effect projects, both offering [...]

Chris, Alex and Marsh arrive belatedly at the zeitgeist of September 2018 with a helluva yikes. Like gazpacho soup, enjoy these takes cold: World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Fortnite done some big numbers. But are they that big? Yes, but imagine the concurrents if you had to feed [...]

Chris, Graham and Alex heed the wisdom of the Time-ramisu and peer into the future of mecha strategy game Phantom Brigade, the alternative past of tactics game Möbius Front ’83, and an eternity of Destiny 2. The Golden Joysticks happened again and proved to be an exacting measure of how people who voted in this [...]

Graham, Tom S and Marsh gather to caress eagles in pretty action adventure The Pathless, and return to 9th century England to malign herons in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. IO Interactive are making a Bond game! Appreciate the pandering of The Pathless. It’s a bit like Journey and Shadow of the Colossus. Admire the shining spires [...]

Alex and Marsh chat to Joannes Truyens, writer-designer of Neurocracy – a game about near-future conspiracies, pandemics, surveillance, cybernetics and tuna – that you unravel by exploring a fictional Wikipedia. You can play the demo of Neurocracy right now. Follow Joannes and the project itself on Twitter and watch out for a release of Neurocracy [...]

All the Toms join Marsh to be obliterated by the pitiless ocean, leaving only a flotsam of Elcor facts as a sign of their passing. Also discussed: Watch Dogs’ cockerney spider bots and the fine flails of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. Codies got bought by TakeTwo for approximately 10 times as much as we would have [...]

Graham, Alex, Tom F and Marsh turn up the Plancks to Max in the highly-destructible thievery sandbox Teardown, avoid bisection in the deadly arenas of Disc Room and bring birds to political ruin in woodland strategy game Root. Kill your solution-carcasses in the very defenestrationy blast-your-own-escape-route thievery sandbox Teardown. Graham’s review of the same. The [...]

Chris and Marsh climb atop one another, together forming the shape of a much larger podcasting lobster, to discuss social spook surveyor game Phasmophobia, probe the pachinko-like possibilities of roguelike Ring of Pain and return to the Warzone. Lot of news this week. More puking than normal too. COINCIDENCE? Oculus requires a Facebook account and [...]

Graham, Alex and Marsh waggle wands in alchemical roguelike Noita, boggle minds in fractal-palace puzzler Manifold Garden, solve crimes in tech-occult mystery Lucifer Within Us and probe private parts in nosy ghost adventure I Am Dead. Cool Congresswoman AOC’s Twitch-topping stream. PC Gamer’s article on the mainstreaming and word-of-mouthing of PC gaming. Stream-beloved backstabber, Among [...]

Alex and Tom F relive the fragtastic heyday of the FPS with Quake mod Arcane Dimensions, and die, with varying degrees of annoyance, at the hands of three different roguelikes: Noita, Spelunky 2 and Hades. Voxel-physics-destruction game Teardown is out on the 29th of October! The torrid Golden Axed tale. Gwen Frey‘s Lab Rat is [...]

Graham, Tom S and Chris launch a lifetime of fandom directly at the modest target area of Star Wars: Squadrons, setting off a chain reaction of space-spooge. Also: Zelda meets gacha in Genshin Impact. Baldur’s Gate 3 has entered early access. It’s quite crashy at the moment, but you can befriend a walking brain. You’ll [...]

Tom S, Chris and Marsh vibrate with the excitement of an imminent Star Wars game release while trying to talk about Necromunda: Underhive Wars, budget co-op spookathon Phasmophobia and impressively reprehensible VR stabber Blade And Sorcery. Listen to Tom Senior’s excellent TV and film spin-off podcast with Jamie Brittain, professional smart telly-man: Monday Or Soon [...]

Welcome to a new experiment from the Crate and Crowbar! We love games, but we’re also huge fans of films and television, especially in these Covid times, so we decided to start a podcast about all that. Tom Senior joins TV writer Jamie Brittain for a whiplash tour of the shows we’re watching right now. [...]

Graham, Tom F and Marsh debate the merits of moon moles in Spelunky 2. That’s it. That’s the only game we need this week. But also: Bethesda’s acquisition, our favourite videogame banks, and multiplayer that isn’t multiplayer. Bethesda’s acquisition by the Big Green Giant. Spelunky 2. Welcome to the only show note you’ll need for [...]

Alex, Tom F and Marsh island-hop in peerless push-block puzzler A Monster’s Expedition, island-cop in murder mystery Paradise Killer, and Ireland-top in medieval wife-finding interface, Crusader Kings III. Plus! Hadean Lands and Defense of the Oasis. Enjoy the agony of U-turning marketing executives as a result of the Sony’s PS5 showcase. Is this the best [...]

Graham, Tom S and Chris pick apart the latest Ubisoft Forward like carrion on road-kill, before swooping on, beaks bloodied, to devour Mafia: Definitive Edition, Marvel’s Avengers and Mortal Shell. Mmm-mm! Ubisoft Forward’s livestream and Yves Guillemot’s apology. Geoff Keighley was not impressed. For the love of God, Ubisoft, DO NOT BAIT HIS DISPLEASURE! Has [...]

Tom F, Chris and Marsh offer late takes on the quickly cooling Gamescom starch bomb, ferry frogs to the great beyond in Spiritfarer and nitpick the nitpicking, and other ape antics, in epic evolution yarn, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey. Gamescom was put in the microwave for 6 minutes and served without butter. Tom Clancy’s Elite [...]

Chris, Tom F and Marsh ogle the inter-corporate fisticuffs of Epic v Apple, boggle at the buffs of roguelike shooter Risk of Rain 2, make bassist assumptions in identity puzzler Family and fear ducks in Microsoft Flight Simulator. It’s Tim vs Tim! Chris Plante has a good summary and analysis of the Epic/Apple lawsuit in [...]

Alex, Chris and Marsh dispute the tutes of Horizon: Zero Dawn, unpack throwback hack-n-slash Book of Demons, wibble beans in Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout and quibble shtick in meta point-n-click There Is No Game, before returning to our briny home. Pony Island and Hex are the Daniel Mullins Games games which precede the recently unveiled [...]

Tom F, Alex and Marsh gather to discuss Obsidian’s backyard survival game Grounded, go postal, in a very tranquil way, in Thousand Threads, sink into a fug of nostalgia for Halo 3, toot flutes and avoid parps in Ghosts of Tsushima and briefly descend into Hades. Dana Schwartz’s tweet about Reddit user NoNoNo_OhOhOh’s post about [...]

Tom S, Graham and Marsh congeal into a mass of gnashing mouths to chew over indie creature feature Carrion, disrespect the lore in Star Wars: Battlefront II and smash many glass men in the expandalone Superhot: Mind Control Delete. We talk about the Xbox Showcase. You can watch the full stream here, and, because I [...]

Alex, Tom S and Graham minotalk and cyclopine about the forthcoming Total War Saga: Troy, delight in the hikes and hot bilge of Death Stranding and feel all kinds of 7/10 about Ghosts of Tsushima. Here’s that story on testing seeds for impossibility in Slay The Spire. Mentioned as Alex’s spire-alike of choice: Monster Train [...]