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Captian Martin Walker is not up to the task. Dubai is in ruins, and things just get worse from there. This is a military shooter about military shooters, and it's lauded for its story while its play is dismissed. But we're here to tell you: the play is fine!

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We hear your thoughts on our Desperation Month games, and talk about what the deal is with gamers.

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I said don't just stand there. Come in!

The Zone is a strange place with wondrous promises. It's full of atmosphere and lead, as bands of Stalkers and mutants fight over its strange artifacts, hoping they don't get torn apart by pockets of anomalous physics. Loosely based off of a famous Russian novel and film, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl caps off our Desperation month. Though you quickly get over the resource curve and find your Zone-legs, it remains a demanding shooter throughout... until it gets too demanding, but you probably expected that from a PC game of this vintage.

We continue Desperation Month with Frostpunk, a city building sim where things start bad and only get worse. It's the late 19th century and the world is quickly freezing. Humanity's last chance is to huddle around generators in the north, making moral compromises to survive the cold and the scarcity it brings. Frostpunk is an amazing strategy sim game with A+ theming, and it's sure to make you feel like garbage.

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We begin Desperation Month with a very unusual sim game. You are a checkpoint worker in a fictional communist country, forced to decide the fates of immigrants as the rules change every day. It's a bleak and stressful game that forces you to contort yourself into monstrous shapes, tugging at you with incentives and survival. It's unique and powerful, even if it isn't strictly fun.

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Gary and Kole take your questions, and chat about Video Game Violence before reading your thoughts on SMB2, Pyre, and Bioshock Infinite.

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Let the circle be broken.

SuperGiant is a studio we really love. We've covered both Bastion and Transistor on this show, so when William Rouse executive-produced an episode about Pyre it was a wonderful chance to complete the SuperGiant collection. And while there is plenty to love about Pyre's world, visual design, and music, we felt that the fantasy basketball came up a little short. Listen in to learn the specifics on why we felt the way we did, and give the game a shot to see if it lands the same for you.

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Super Mario Bros. 2 is unfairly ignored, either because of its provenance or because it's not a trailblazer like its predecessor, or as finely tuned as its successor. But it deserves credit for being ambitious, weird, and serving as the springboard for a lot of the great things we love about Mario games. So come along and listen to our case for why this might be the best of the NES Mario games.

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Gary and Kole answer your questions, talk about difficulty in games, and then read your responses to River City Ransom, Owlboy and FFX.

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Matthew sticks around to talk about the remainder of Final Fantasy X, which includes some fantastic boss fights, neat imagery, and questionable story beats. We also touch briefly on the absurd optional content this game has to offer to the most patient among us.

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This is the first of two episodes about Final Fantasy X, a watershed game for Square that acts as a bridge between old and new for the series. Tidus is swept away into a strange world by an eldritch monstrosity. He finds new friends and ends up on a pilgrimage to rid the world of that same monstrosity.

This episode covers the generalities and the first third of the game, up through Operation Mi'hen.

Special thanks to our guest and backer Matthew Campbell for picking this game and offering his insight!

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Owlboy is a visually beautiful indie platformer with a killer soundtrack. It's a labor of love, and you can see that in every masterfully drawn piece of spritework. It's unfortunate that the aesthetics are attached to flat gameplay and story. It's a shame that it never fully explores its own mechanics, because the inventive boss fights show some high highs. Listen in to learn more, and hear some of that sweet music.

Big thanks to Mike Suskie for backing us and requesting this episode!

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Gary and Kole dig into this NES classic, and our first time covering a Kunio-Kun game. Alex's girlfriend has been kidnapped by Slick, so we have to punch, kick, and pipe our way across River City and its gangs. This is a fun game that's stymied a bit by antiquated progression mechanics, but it feels too damn good in your hands to hold that against it too much.

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This episode concludes our coverage of the main game of Baldur's Gate II. Our party emerges from the Underdark and gathers some help for its final assault, which takes them far afield of the prime material plane. Then we conclude with your listener responses about this beloved CRPG.

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Links:

• Lying Cat | Saga Wiki | FANDOM powered by Wikia

• August Derleth - Wikipedia

• Doobie Brothers - China Grove 1974 - YouTube

This third episode of our Baldur's Gate II coverage takes us away from the free-wheeling open-ended climes of Chapter 2 and puts us on the story's rails, as we get on Irenicus' trail and follow him to a Wizard Asylum and finally into the iconic Underdark. There's some fantastic content to be covered here, and they even made the Sahuagin interesting!

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Do you know how many candy bars I'd have to sell to raise 20,000 GP!?!? We left Part 1 of our Baldur's Gate II coverage with an outrageous mandate... to raise a ton of money to get information about where our soul (and sister) were taken. But Athkatla is a dirty and greedy city, so there's plenty of work to do.

This episode covers most of Chapter 2, except for the content at Trademeet. We kind of ran out of steam. Next episode should take us through the Underdark.

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Lots of folks have waited very patiently for us to get around to covering Baldur's Gate II. It's a very well-regarded classic game, and it fits in well with our love for all things Dungeons and Dragons. So this month, we are doing a four part series. This first episode is all about systems an generalities, which are meaty enough (it's 2nd Edition, after all).

Here's our plan for the rest of the coverage:

• Part 2: Chapter 2 (Side Quests around Amn)

• Part 3: Chapter 3, 4, and 5

• Part 4: Chapter 6 and 7, and listener responses

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Links:

• Fear of a Black Hat - Theatrical Trailer - YouTube

We hear what you think of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, and The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine.

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Our Witcher 3 saga draws to a close as we talk about Geralt's extracurricular activities in Toussaint.

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The world of the Witcher 3 is almost completely dark and grim, where moral ambiguity reigns supreme. So it's strange for Geralt's tale to end in Toussaint, which is picturesque and relatively calm... except for the murders. It's also a land of chivalric values that seem nice at first but are actually pretty backwards.

This massive expansion sees Geralt working with an old friend to hunt down the Beast of Beauclaire, a vampire who is murdering nobles. However, things get wildly out of hand as palace intrigue takes hold.

Blood and Wine is not uniformly good, nor is it as singularly brilliant as Hearts of Stone. But it's a good farewell.

This episode covers the main quest, while next week's episode will feature all of the side content.

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Links:

• The Coup - "The Magic Clap" - YouTube

• Se7en (1995) Official Trailer - Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman Movie HD - YouTube

We originally intended for our live episode at Portland Retro Gaming Expo 2018 to be about Super Smash Bros. Melee. However, we figured something out... we don't like playing Smash Bros. competitively. This led us down a rabbit hole that ultimately made us change our plans... What does it mean to play games wrong. Is it even possible? Is that a real or fake idea?

So we turned the episode into an editorial, talking about different ways to play games wrong, and giving a few examples of our favorite games to break.

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This very special WOFF is brought to you by the Atomic! Kickstarter backers.

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Watch out! Behind you! You'll hear that a lot in Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, a game from Ninja Theory that goes all in on the gimmick of using 3D sound to approximate audio hallucinations. We talk through this remarkable "AAA indie game", which has a young woman venturing into the Norse underworld to rescue the soul of the one she loves. Unfortunately, not everthing is fantastic here, since there's a bunch of nonsense filler in the game.

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Let's hear your responses to Night in the Woods, and the other indie horror games we did in October!

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Mumblecore playdates with a tinge of existential, cosmic dread. That's a succinct summation of Night in the Woods, the capstone for our indie horror month. This is a beautiful, charming game that goes to great lengths to endear you to its cast. It sensitively and deftly portrays issues of mental illness, poverty, and faith. We just wish it didn't have structural problems, because they result in the game hiding its light under a bushel. Let me hang with Germ Warfare, please!

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As we continue Indie Horror Month, we're excited to do something a little different. There are so many great little experimental horror games that wouldn't bear a full episode, but are worth talking about. So we gathered up a bunch of micro-horror games and created a special episode about them. They are:

• IMSCARED

• Haunted Cities, vol. 1 and vol. 2

• Lost Constellation

• My Father's Long Long Legs

And that's all. Don't stick around to the end of the episode because there's nothing more. Nosiree.

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Hi! This was supposed to be a surprise for our seventh anniversary, but things didn't go as planned. Some of you already heard about it, but for some of you it will be news: we recorded a new episode about Mega Man X. It was the very first game we covered for Watch Out for Fireballs!, and we wanted to go back and look at again all these years later. Turns out it's still an A+ masterpiece, and completely essential.

Thank you very much for all of your love and support. It's been a great seven years, we have no plans on stopping, and we might even do more of these revisits in the future. Umbasa! - Kole

You can run and you can hide... and not much else. That's something Frictional learned in making Penumbra: Overture, a strange predecessor to their more widely acclaimed Amnesia: The Dark Descent. You play as Phillip, a professor who follows in the footsteps of his presumed-dead father and ends up in a heap of trouble in an Arctic mine. Come hear what makes this strange indie horror game so foundational to modern horror games.

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Links:

• List of Notable SCP games | SCP - Containment Breach Wiki | FANDOM powered by Wikia

• H.R. Giger At Home - Superego - YouTube

Let's hear your responses to Quest for Glory II, Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, and not Gabriel Knight 3!

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We love the Gabriel Knight series, but Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned is the kind of game only a parent could love. It follows Knight's adventures in France as he tries to solve a kidnapping case that involves the Holy Grail and a set of vampires called "The Night Visitors".

What makes Gabriel Knight 3 such a dicey proposition to play is its questionable presentation. Sierra forced Jane Jensen and her team to make the game fully 3D, which they were neither equipped to accomplish, nor comfortable doing. So it's a technical nightmare that plays very awkwardly, and it gets in its own way. The highs remain quite high, since this series uniquely captures the feeling of being a detective investigating a case. It's just... very difficult to recommend.

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Links:

• How Sierra and a Disgraced Cop Made the Most Reactionary Game of the 90s - Waypoint

Callahan's Place is a very special bar, where flawed people from across space and time gather to share their pain and be healed. This makes for a very strange basis for a video game, but Legend managed to pull it off. Though the puzzles aren't always great, Callahan's skates by with a lot by being laugh-out-loud hilarious and unusually humane. Seriously, this is wayyy up there.

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This month's theme is "Auteur Adventure Games", and we decided to open it with a beloved game by Corey and Lori Ann Cole. Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire continues our hero's journey as he heads to the Arabian-inspired realm of Shapeir. The Coles had a specific vision for how to combine adventure games and role playing, and also had a very specific kind of light and humorous voice. Large parts of this game are a mess, but it's a very interesting specimen to look at closely.

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Four episodes, two hacky slashy games, lots of thoughts. It's time to hear your responses to God of War and NieR!

Also, we announce the upcoming games. September sees Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire, Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, and Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned. October is Indie horror month... There's a patron poll for the first episode, the second episode will be a special about Micro Horror games, and the final episode is about Night in the Woods.

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It's inarguable that God of War is an important game, but is it still fun to play? No, not really, but it has its moments. It came late in the PS2 lifecycle and took inspiration from character action games like Devil May Cry, but it added a sense of brutality that launched a fleet of clones.

The problem is, the God of War you remember didn't start wtih the first game. No, it became the setpiece-heavy boss-a-thon with God of War II. The original features far more hallways, and almost no bosses, but lays down a solid technical framework for what would come.

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Links:

• Spawn(1997)- Shootout Scene[HD] - YouTube

• American Airlines Admirals Club Installs Two-Way Mirror For Members To Enjoy Misery Of Passengers In Gate Waiting Area

This episode concludes our coverage of NieR, as we talk about the endgame of Route A, and cover everything from Routes B, C, and D. NieR has thoroughly worn out its welcome at this point, even if there is some good stuff to be found in the tricks it plays. So come listen, and hear the specifics of our criticisms.

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The story of NieR continues as we build out our party and explore more modes of play. The doldrums of the previous episode give way to some minor delight. The Forest of Myth shows us a text adventure with a cool conceptual hook, while the Haunted Manor is a Resident Evil pastiche. Then we have to do it all again.

This episode covers NieR up through the Forest of Myth, after the time jump.

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Take a look, it's in a book. NieR released with a resounding thud in 2010, neither selling well nor pleasing critics. But since then, it's become a cult classic for people who like experimental narrative and varied play. Nier is a father who is desperately searching for a cure for his daughter's terminal illness. Yonah has the Black Scrawl, and a prophecy about a pair of magical books might be her salvation.

The problem is, the game isn't very fun to play, and while there is some really neat narrative stuff going on (with some very likeable and memorable characters), the juice might not be worth the squeeze.

This first episode covers the generalities of the game, and we go up through Nier's adventure in Facade.

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What do you think of The Sims 3, Donkey Kong '94, and Pathologic? Tune in to find out!

Includes bonus responses for Earth Defense Force 4.1.

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It's the best, most fascinating game you should never play. Pathologic is the definition of a cult classic game. Its adherents will swear by it, while everyone else bounces off. There's a good reason for that: it's one of the best-written games we've covered for the show, and every mechanic is designed to be as unfriendly as possible. For this episode, we follow the Bachelor's route. Daniil Dankovsky is a thanatologist, one who studies death. He's called to a mysterious village on the Russian steppe, which is soon struck by a violent plague that seems to be evil incarnate. Come listen, even if you don't intend to play the game.

We'd like to extend a huge thanks to Matt Carney for executive producing this episode through our Patreon.

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This is a special live episode about the best Donkey Kong game, Donkey Kong for the Game Boy. The game begins as a faithful recreation of the Donkey Kong arcade levels, but after that, the roof flies off and the walls fall away... revealing a puzzle platformer with over 100 levels. This game also expands Mario's move set in an important way.

Really? Just go play it.

Huge thanks to everyone who came out to see us at the Midwest Gaming Classic 2018!

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Do you think life is a game? The Sims, writ large, is a massive series that nobody really talks about as a game. It feels like it exists over in a separate category with MMOs and other perpetual games. But its huge success has hidden the fact that it's incredibly important, and also very very fun. We specifically picked the Sims 3 because of its quality of life improvements, but this episode touches on all of the main Sims games at least a little bit.

This episode is very different from our usual releases. It's almost all generalities and mechanics, but there's lots of anecdotes and weird stories at the end.

Thanks for helping us get to episode 200!

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Links:

• Drew Carey | The Sims Wiki | FANDOM powered by Wikia

• The Creepy, Surreal Apocalypse of The Sims Online

• Winchester Mystery House by amariswiccan - The Exchange - Community - The Sims 3

• Kole Ross on Twitter: "For the upcoming Watch Out for Fireballs! about The Sims 3 (Episode 200!), I wanted to take on a big building project. So I decided to make the mansion and cast from Maniac Mansion. Read the thread!… https://t.co/nAB9pJO86p"

Let's hear what you think of A Way Out, Magicka, and Earth Defense Force 4.1. There aren't very many responses this time, so we hit some belated responses and Just Funnin' as well.

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This game really bugs us. Listen in to find out why... or read this short summary. Earth Defense Force as a series gets a lot of credit for its quirkiness and cheesiness. That praise is earned, but it doesn't paper over repetitive and mediocre gameplay.

The Ravagers are back again, and they've brought Giant Insects, spiders, lizards, and all kinds of nasties with them. It's up to the united Earth Defense Force to fight them off, once and for all. Over and over again. With very little difference between the missions. Forever.

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Links:

• Rampage 2:Universal Tour Intro Playstation One - YouTube

• GeoGuessr - Let's explore the world!

• The Avalanches - 'Frontier Psychiatrist' - YouTube

• Ballz 3D (SNES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete - YouTube

• The World's Biggest Wasp | Bite, Sting, Kill - YouTube

This week, Gary and Kole conjure up some mixed praise for Magicka, a student project turned indie darling. But here's the hangup: while the core idea of this game is unlike anything we've seen before, its execution falls flat at almost every turn. The writing and humor don't add much to the proceedings, and the game is still a technical mess seven years after its release.

So, yeah, the mixture leans pretty heavily toward the negative. Someone make a better game out of this core idea!

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Links:

• Andrew W. K.- I Get Wet - YouTube

• Some Borderlands 2 Humor - YouTube

• Mr Show Taint - YouTube

• Iron Maiden - Run To The Hills - YouTube

• P4 Chapter 2 The Sword Gram and the Dragon Fafnir - YouTube

Ain't no co-op like A Way Out co-op because A Way Out co-op is mandatory. Back in 2013, Hazelight Studios developed a charming and affecting experimental adventure game called Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Five years later, it wanted to continue exploring its pet theme of togetherness, so it created A Way Out.

Following the lead of games like Heavy Rain and Until Dawn, it's a cinematic adventure game with one major gimmick: you must play it with someone else. The story is told in split-screen, and makes heavy use of prison and crime movie cliches to show how two convicts, Leo and Vincent, escape from prison and get revenge on a mutual enemy. It's an extremely funny game, but there's one problem... it's not supposed to be funny.

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Links:

• PS4 - Until Dawn Trailer - YouTube

• The Shawshank Redemption - Trailer - (1994) - HQ - YouTube

• The Boy Official Trailer #1 (2016) - Lauren Cohan Horror Movie HD - YouTube

• The Manhole - Wikipedia

• Casino Royale Movie CLIP - Parkour Chase (2006) HD - YouTube

• Point Break Skydiving scene - YouTube

Let's hear what you think about Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, Doom 2016, Bayonetta, and Arcades!

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We talked about arcades almost six years ago, and a lot has happened since then. So it's time to go back. For this episode, we each played three games and prepared to talk about them. Spanning several eras and genres, we wanted to learn why arcade games are different and talk about how their design differs from home games. Here are the titles we discuss: TRON. Dig Dug. Captain America and the Avengers. Spider-Man: The Video Game. Area 51. Aliens: Extermination.

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Links:

• Special When Lit Trailer - YouTube

• Ultimate Retropie Joystick Controller

• Panic Park - Wikipedia

• DeadMalls.com: Forest Fair Mall / Cincinnati Mills / Cincinnati Mall: Cincinnati, OH

• Watch Out for Fireballs! Episode 31: Arcades

• Dig Dug - Wikipedia

• Tron (video game) - Wikipedia

• Spider-Man: The Video Game - Wikipedia

• Captain America and The Avengers - Wikipedia

• Area 51 (1995 video game) - Wikipedia

• Aliens: Extermination | Xenopedia | FANDOM powered by Wikia

Fly me to the moon and let me play Bayonetta, a crazy over-the-top character action game that is unabashedly all about style. This is a Patreon backer requested episode, and we were super happy to visit Platinum's breakout hit. Bayonetta is a very important character to the recent history of video games, inspiring both affection and controversy. Listen in to hear us talk about her first adventure, and hit on the points where it stumbles (I'm looking at you, motorcycle and missile levels).

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Links:

• GXTalks: GX3 • Day 1 - Bayo Studies: Year One - A Deeper Look at the Bayonetta Series - YouTube

• WildCat-Ratatat - YouTube

• Bullet Witch XBOX 360 Trailer - YouTube

• Achewood § July 2, 2007

• Bayonetta: Bloody Fate (2013) anime movie - YouTube

• Fatboy Slim - Weapon Of Choice - YouTube

• Language of flowers - Wikipedia

• Enochian - Wikipedia

• Omega Red - Wikipedia

• Burglekutt | Willow Wiki | FANDOM powered by Wikia

• Peter Francis Geraci Law. Bankruptcy Attorneys in Chicago, Milwaukee, Indianapolis and their surrounding communities | Peter Francis Geraci Law | Bankruptcy Attorneys | Infotapes

• From Lara Croft to Bayonetta: what is a 'strong female character'? | Games | The Guardian

The winner of our remakes/reboots poll is all about ripping/tearing. The 2016 version of Doom, neé DOOM 4, is all about pace and rhythm. It's also all about gleefully tapping into the spirit of mayhem found in the early entries of this series, and updating it for modern play sensibilities. The result is one of the best-designed games we've played for the show.

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Links:

• Watch Out for Fireballs! Episode 110: Doom II: Hell on Earth

• DOOM: Behind The Music Part 1 - YouTube

• RAGE Debut Trailer - YouTube

• How Does The New DOOM Compare to Previous Dooms? [Huge Spoilers] - YouTube

• How to keep players engaged (without being evil) | Game Maker's Toolkit - YouTube