What’s the point of recommendations if they’re games you’d play anyway? None. The entire exercise becomes performative validation rather than genuine discovery. Grumpy Old Gamer Season 2 launches with a format designed to create accountability through discomfort—each host picks two games under £10 specifically chosen to push others outside established preferences. The verdict arrives in Episode 10 determining whether “Tim’s suggestions were terrible and Al’s suggestions fucking awesome” or vice versa. The structure works because...
How do you introduce someone to Warhammer 40,000’s decades of accumulated lore without crushing them under the weight of 40 years of fictional history? Two approaches exist at opposite ends of the accessibility spectrum. The shallow end is Boltgun—a boomer shooter where you play a Space Marine shooting Chaos heretics without needing to know what a Space Marine, Chaos, or heretic means. Press play, shoot things, enjoy the over-the-top grimdark aesthetic without Wikipedia research. The...
What has Tekken changed since 1999’s Tekken Tag Tournament? Graphics, mostly. The core remains identical—pick a character, beat your opponent unconscious through timed combos and strategic blocking. The 27-year gap between Al’s last Tekken experience and Tekken 7’s recommendation involves better textures, higher polygon counts, and online matchmaking replacing local multiplayer controller swapping. The gameplay, character archetypes, and fundamental appeal of “beat the fuck out of people” remains unchanged. This isn’t a criticism. This is...
How do you recommend a Ubisoft game whilst maintaining the “Fuck Ubisoft” position? Carefully, with caveats, and by leading with “Fuck Ubisoft and all that, but Far Cry 5 is a pretty decent game.” This is cognitive dissonance made into a recommendation format. The official Grumpy Old Gamer position on Ubisoft remains hostile following Assassin’s...
Which game won Game of the Year in 2025? Depends who you ask. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won The Game Awards GOTY on December 11th, breaking the record with nine total awards. Then it won Indie Game Awards GOTY on December 18th. Then it got stripped of the Indie awards two days later because Sandfall...
How many hours does it take to justify warning someone they’ll never return from a game recommendation? 6,000 hours, apparently. That’s how long Al has played Stellaris—one of the best 4X games ever made and simultaneously one of gaming’s most effective social life deletion tools. Tim recommended it to Ian anyway. The immediate response was...
Al, Ian, and Tim kick off season two by recommending games outside each other’s comfort zones—from Montana cult shooters to 6,000-hour space empire black holes—then immediately worry Ian will disappear into Stellaris forever. https://gog.fm/listen This season premiere establishes a new format where each host recommends two games the others wouldn’t normally play, with reviews coming...
I didn’t expect to love Space Marine 2. I’m a Warhammer 40K fanatic. I’ve obsessed over the lore for years and run multiple 40K gaming websites including 40kgames.com and GrimdarkFuture.tv. I played some of the original Space Marine in 2011 but didn’t finish it—third-person shooters aren’t usually my genre. When Space Marine 2 launched in...
What’s the problem when you own 700 games on Steam, received 500 free games from Epic, subscribe to three different services providing instant access to hundreds more, and still complain that gaming is shit? You don’t have a problem. You have embarrassment of riches that previous gaming generations would have considered impossible fantasy. The “backlog”...
What happens when you “purchase” a game but the publisher can revoke access whenever they want? You didn’t purchase anything. You licensed temporary access that publisher controls completely. This arrangement benefits publishers who can shut down servers, revoke licences, and eliminate products from your library without compensation or recourse. The asymmetric relationship where you pay full price for temporary access...
When did you last stop to appreciate that your friend on Xbox, your mate on PlayStation, and you on PC can all play the same game together simultaneously? Probably never, because the achievement happened so recently and works so seamlessly that it feels like it was always possible. However, cross-platform play represents revolutionary shift in gaming that would have been...
After 10 episodes examining predatory monetisation, abandonware, exploitative early access, and corporate consolidation, what’s the verdict on whether gaming is shit? It isn’t. We were wrong in episode one. The confession is uncomfortable because it undermines 10 weeks of critical analysis, but honesty requires acknowledging that gaming’s benefits—unprecedented choice, cross-platform accessibility, and consumer protections—far outweigh the negatives. Yes, microtransactions are...
How can you spend entire podcast season criticizing a publisher whilst actively paying them monthly subscription fees? You can’t. It’s indefensible hypocrisy that exposes the gap between stated principles and actual consumer behaviour. Both hosts subscribe to EA Plus despite spending 10 episodes condemning Electronic Arts for predatory practices, exploitative monetisation, and prioritising shareholder value over quality. The subscription fees...
Al, Tim, and Ian reflect on 10 episodes of grumpy gaming discourse, confronting their own hypocrisy about EA subscriptions, debating whether they’re edgy contrarians or legitimate critics, and reluctantly admitting gaming might actually be pretty good now. https://grumpyoldgamer.com/listen This season finale episode revisits the core question from episode one—is gaming shit now?—after 10 weeks of examining industry practices, nostalgia, and...
When does legitimate concern about cheating cross the line into racist toxicity that poisons entire communities? Broken Arrow, a real-time tactics game similar to Wargame and World in Conflict, launched with significant cheating problems. The developers’ homegrown anti-cheat solution wasn’t effective. Competitive balance was fundamentally broken. Players identified patterns where certain accounts demonstrated suspicious behaviour including impossible reaction times, perfect...
How does the creative lead behind Grand Theft Auto 5—the most financially successful entertainment product ever created—release a new game that achieves complete obscurity within weeks of launch? Leslie Benzies served as president of Rockstar North during development of Grand Theft Auto 5, GTA Online, and Red Dead Redemption. His credits represent some of gaming’s most successful and critically acclaimed...
When did gaming stop being about joy and start being about obligation? Dawn of War Definitive Edition answers this by taking you back to 2004 when games were power fantasies providing escape from mundane reality rather than second jobs demanding daily engagement. The remaster doesn’t just update graphics and fix compatibility issues. It reminds you what gaming felt like before...
What’s the perfect setting for Ubisoft’s first male East Asian Assassin’s Creed protagonist? Feudal Japan. Samurai, ninjas, honour codes, beautiful landscapes, rich history. The setting practically writes itself. Ubisoft had never made Assassin’s Creed game with male East Asian lead despite having female Chinese protagonist in Chronicles and spanning settings across Europe, Middle East, Americas, and Caribbean. Japan was obvious...
The console war ended while everyone was watching Microsoft put Halo on PlayStation. God of War ships on PC. Spider-Man runs on Steam. Forza Horizon 5 launched on PS5 in spring 2025. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle came to PlayStation months after Xbox release. The exclusives that defined platform competition for three decades disappeared because development costs exploded and...
Why does Doom Guy, dressed as medieval knight riding mechanical dragon while shooting demons with minigun, need backstory explaining his motivations? He doesn’t. The premise explains itself. Demons exist. Doom Guy kills them. The appeal is shooting demons with increasingly powerful weapons while metal soundtrack plays. Adding plot about why demons invaded or what Doom Guy thinks about the situation...
Ian, Al, and Tim review 2025’s gaming landscape, from digging literal holes to EA’s $15 billion Saudi sale, debating whether Doom needs a story, why Assassin’s Creed Shadows sparked controversy, and completely forgetting the Switch 2 existed. https://grumpyoldgamer.com/listen This episode surveys the gaming year 2025, covering standout titles like Tempest Rising’s Command & Conquer throwback and Battlefield 6’s refreshing FPS...
