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Happy Thursday PC gamers, welcome back to the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast! How are we all this week? If y'all watch the video version of this pod, you'll know that I've discarded the beloved split dye hairdo I've been donning since before my time at PCG (and I've been here for over three years!!) It's quite strange getting rid of something I've spent so long associating as a huge part of my identity, but anyone who's bleached their hair for an extended period of time will know that it does an absolute number on your locks.

Now my hair may change, but you know what doesn't change? War. War never changes. No, I am not sorry for that terrible segue. The Fallout TV series graced our screens last week and you know what? It's actually pretty dang good!

We've brought Chris Livingston on board to chat all things Lucy, Maximus and the Ghoul, as he was fortunate enough to be able to watch the show ahead of its release. Lauren somehow managed to devour the entire thing in a single Sunday, whereas I only got three episodes in by the time we rocked around to recording. I know, I'm slow! The good news is I've finished the whole thing now, which means I'm primed and ready to talk about all the episodes with you lovely folk over on the PC Gamer forums. Go over there to peep our thread about the latest episode and chat with myself and Lauren.

Be warned there are some light spoilers for the show, but Lauren and Chris were lovely enough to not divulge any major story beats for my sake.

You can check out the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast on a whole bunch of podcast platforms:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• YouTube Music
• Pocket Casts
• Podcast Addict
• Castbox
• Amazon Music
• iHeartRadio

And more!

If you prefer some faces to go with your voices, you can also check out the podcast over on YouTube:

Don't forget to check us out over on the PC Gamer forums, too! We'll be checking in every week to see what you lovely lot have to say about each week's episode, and joining in the discussion ourselves.

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Hey PC gamers, welcome back to the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast! Good week so far, I hope? I'm currently sick for the, uh, third time this year. Yeah, I don't know why, the beginning of the year is always a real illness magnet for me. Come May I'll be flying flu-free until 2025, when it'll start all over again. 

I usually try and do a neat clever segue into this week's topic, but my flued-up brain is defeating the teeny tiny part of my brain that's still sorta smart. So this week we're talking all about our white whale games. The games in your genre that are must-plays, touted as the blueprint for which all your favourite games were moulded from, the games that no matter how hard you try you just can't get your head around. 

Maybe you've had That One Game on your backlog for years now. You know the one, the game that you always go "I'm gonna play that today/tomorrow/this weekend/next week" over and over again until it's inevitably been 10 years and you've still barely clocked an hour of playtime. Maybe it's a game you've forced yourself to try and like to no avail.

Whatever your white whale situation is, come join myself and Lauren alongside this week's guest Tyler Colp. We'll be sharing our own white whale gaming stories, and you should totally share yours too. Head over to the PC Gamer forums! We'll have a thread set up for this week's episode. I would love to know which games you're still relentlessly pursuing to this day. Lauren and I will be lurking around in the post too, ready to join the discussion.

You can check out the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast on a whole bunch of podcast platforms:

1. Apple Podcasts
2. Spotify
3. Google Podcasts
4. Stitcher
5. Castbox
6. Amazon Music
7. iHeartRadio
8. Podcast Addict
9. And more!

If you prefer some faces to go with your voices, you can also check out the podcast over on YouTube:

Don't forget to check us out over on the PC Gamer forums, too! We'll be checking in every week to see what you lovely lot have to say about each week's episode, and joining in the discussion ourselves.

RSS Feed | Apple Podcasts | Spotify 

Hiya PC gamers, welcome back to the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast! Hope everyone's week is going well. I've been doing a lot of decluttering lately, which means I've been doing an awful lot of staring at nostalgic possessions. Old teddy bears, school books and photographs have had me doing a lot of reminiscing recently, which make's this week's episode perfectly on-theme.

We're taking a trip down memory lane this week, talking about our childhood as mini-gamers. We're both fortunate enough to have been around games for as long as we can remember, playing both PC and console games since we were wee babies. We'll be talking about our favourite games as a kid, how those tastes have carried over into adulthood and how the way we game now differs. 

We'll be chatting a bit about stuff like edutainment and browser games as well, and while Lauren and I are fairly similar in age our geographical differences make for some interesting discrepancies in how we gamed growing up!

Maybe you've been gaming since the ZX Spectrum, maybe you didn't embrace gaming as a hobby until you were an adult. Whatever your experience with gaming was growing up (or not!) we would love to hear about your own memories. Head over to the PC Gamer forums, we'll have a thread set up for this week's episode. I'm really looking forward to hearing about all of your experiences! Lauren and I will be lurking around in the post too, ready to join the discussion.

You can check out the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast on a whole bunch of podcast platforms:

1. Apple Podcasts
2. Spotify
3. Google Podcasts
4. Stitcher
5. Castbox
6. Amazon Music
7. iHeartRadio
8. Podcast Addict
9. And more!

If you prefer some faces to go with your voices, you can also check out the podcast over on YouTube:

Don't forget to check us out over on the PC Gamer forums, too! We'll be checking in every week to see what you lovely lot have to say about each week's episode, and joining in the discussion ourselves.

RSS Feed | Apple Podcasts | Spotify 

Hey there PC gamers, welcome to this week's episode of the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast! I hope you've all had a fantastic week so far, whether you've been climbing up a cyclops in Dragon's Dogma 2, or having your pawn go around telling everyone you're shagging people in Dragon's Dogma 2, or throwing people off a cliff in Dragon's Dogma 2...

Okay, so it's been a pretty Dragon's Dogma-heavy week for us here at PC Gamer. The sequel to Capcom's 2012 RPG is finally here, and a lot of folk on the team have been playing it. Hopefully you have too, because that's what we're talking about on the podcast this week.

Our Online Editor Fraser Brown was kind enough to sink a ton of hours into it for our Dragon's Dogma 2 review, which makes him the perfect guest to come on and chat about the game with us. We'll be talking about the classes we've been playing, what we like and don't like, and getting way too mad about one specific side quest.

It's a pretty spoiler-free one too, so if you're not too far into the game right now don't fret! You can still listen along to our thoughts as we've all put varying amounts of hours in. Don't forget to pop over to the PC Gamer forums too, where we'll have a thread set up for this week's episode for you all. We'll be popping in there ourselves to join the discussion!

You can check out the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast on a whole bunch of podcast platforms:

1. Apple Podcasts
2. Spotify
3. Google Podcasts
4. Stitcher
5. Castbox
6. Amazon Music
7. iHeartRadio
8. Podcast Addict
9. And more!

If you prefer some faces to go with your voices, you can also check out the podcast over on YouTube:

Don't forget to check us out over on the PC Gamer forums, too! We'll be checking in every week to see what you lovely lot have to say about each week's episode, and joining in the discussion ourselves.

RSS Feed | Apple Podcasts | Spotify 

Greetings goobers, goblins and gamers, welcome back to the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast! How's your week been so far? I am writing this from ~the past~ as I'm actually out of the office this week, enjoying some much-needed time off. Will I currently be doing all my errands I've been putting off, or sitting on my arse playing games? Only future Mollie knows.

If future Mollie is sat on her butt ignoring her responsibilities in favour of videogame pixel people, she's probably doing it from her Steam library. It's just one of the many game launchers vying for our attentions, yet it continues to dominate as most people's preferred choice. But what about the Epics of the world? The Ubisoft Connects, the EA Apps, and won't someone please think of the Amazon Games?

We'll be talking all about PC game launchers, and who better to talk about it with than the man who ranked a whole bunch of 'em earlier this year? Robin Valentine heroically stuffed his PC full of launchers and gave them all a whirl, slapping a percentage on each one. You should absolutely go and read his fantastic launcher ranking ASAP, but don't forget to come back and listen to us talk about it afterwards.

Are you a loyal, diehard Steam user? Perhaps all of the Epic freebies lured you in and now you don't dare use anything else, or you're one of the few who reliably and regularly resyncs their libraries to GOG for the ultimate centralised platform. Whatever you do, we'd love to hear about it. Make sure to head over to the PC Gamer forums, where we'll have a thread set up about this week's episode.

You can check out the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast on a whole bunch of podcast platforms:

1. Apple Podcasts
2. Spotify
3. Google Podcasts
4. Stitcher
5. Castbox
6. Amazon Music
7. iHeartRadio
8. Podcast Addict
9. And more!

If you prefer some faces to go with your voices, you can also check out the podcast over on YouTube:

Don't forget to check us out over on the PC Gamer forums, too! We'll be checking in every week to see what you lovely lot have to say about each week's episode, and joining in the discussion ourselves.

RSS Feed | Apple Podcasts | Spotify 

Happy Thursday PC gamers, welcome back to the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast! Dang, we're officially at episode 52 which means it's been an entire year of the podcast. Well, we actually took a two-week break over December so our anniversary was on March 2, but you know. We won't tell anyone if you won't.

It's been a fantastic year of getting to host this podcast with Lauren. She really is the brains behind this whole operation, and there's no way we could get an episode out to all you lovely folk every week if it wasn't for her. Make sure to drop her a thanks over on the PC Gamer forums on this week's episode thread! Here's to many more episodes in the future, and the two of us cooking up plenty more PC podcasting shenanigans.

With those little celebrations out of the way, it's time for us to put on our wellies and wade into the discourse swamp. The whole "yellow paint on ledges" topic has come back into the spotlight in the last few weeks, so we've brought paint-hater Tyler Wilde along to discuss how we feel about its increasing inclusion in games.

Crate can be broken? Pop some yellow paint on it. Rocks on a cliff can be clambered up? Better throw some paint on there so people know. It's become a frequently-used form of communication in games, but not everyone is a huge fan of it. Just who is going around all these worlds with a paintbrush and a dream? Are there better ways to tackle visual communication in our beloved games? Would we all crumble without a bit of colour telling us where to go and what to do?

A lot of people have opinions about the yellow paint, and I'm sure you do too. After you're done thanking Lauren for all her lovely hard work, don't forget to drop your own thoughts on the debate on the forums. We love to reply to you all and see you joining the discussion!

You can check out the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast on a whole bunch of podcast platforms:

1. Apple Podcasts
2. Spotify
3. Google Podcasts
4. Stitcher
5. Castbox
6. Amazon Music
7. iHeartRadio
8. Podcast Addict
9. And more!

If you prefer some faces to go with your voices, you can also check out the podcast over on YouTube:

Don't forget to check us out over on the PC Gamer forums, too! We'll be checking in every week to see what you lovely lot have to say about each week's episode, and joining in the discussion ourselves.

RSS Feed | Apple Podcasts | Spotify 

Wassup PC gamers, welcome back to the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast. I hope your week has been good so far. It's well and truly flu season for me, and I'm sick for the second time in a month which has cut my gaming time pretty drastically. How am I ever going to ascend past scrub status and git gud?

Well, do I even want to git gud? Is the art of mastering a videogame all it's cracked up to be? That's what we'll be talking about on the podcast this week, and we're joined by competitive shooter aficionado Morgan Park. He once wrote about his experience with getting good at Hunt: Showdown, and how it actually kind of killed the fun for him, making him the perfect guest for this episode.

We'll be talking about the games we've tried to take seriously, what we thought of that process and ultimately, whether we think getting good at a videogame is as fun as it sounds.

Whether you're sweating away in every ranked mode you come across or happily stick to the casual side of your favourite games, we'd love to hear what you think. Pop over to the PC Gamer forums, where we'll have a thread up about this week's episode. You can share your own experiences and thoughts about "gitting gud," and feel free to tell us if we're actually all a bunch of scrubs. I promise I'll only cry a little bit.

You can check out the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast on a whole bunch of podcast platforms:

1. Apple Podcasts
2. Spotify
3. Google Podcasts
4. Stitcher
5. Castbox
6. Amazon Music
7. iHeartRadio
8. Podcast Addict
9. And more!

If you prefer some faces to go with your voices, you can also check out the podcast over on YouTube:

Don't forget to check us out over on the PC Gamer forums, too! We'll be checking in every week to see what you lovely lot have to say about each week's episode, and joining in the discussion ourselves.

RSS Feed | Apple Podcasts | Spotify 

Heya PC gamers, welcome back to the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast! Hope you've all had a great week so far. Please tell me I'm not the only one deep in a Balatro hole this week. That game is taking up every dang lunch break I have! Whenever I tell myself I will play something else, my mouse hovers over the play button for Balatro instead. I'm officially poker-deckbuilding-roguelike-pilled. Phew, try saying that ten times fast.

The triple-threat genre isn't even all that out there anymore. Genres in games have become A Whole Thing. Metroidvania. Soulslike. Survivors. 4X (which I finally found out stands for explore, expand, exploit and exterminate, thanks Google). Sometimes a game can even end up being four or five different things: Roguelite FPS co-op survival crafting anyone?

Myself and Lauren will be talking all things genres this week, bringing along Harvey Randall as our sacrifice to the genre gods. "But wait," I hear you attentive listeners/viewers ask. "Didn't Lauren specifically promise to not fight about genres as part of her New Year's resolution?" Yes, yes she did. Listen, when do any of us stick to those things anyway? It's almost March, we're long past trivial matters like a New Year's resolution. 

You can still definitely bully (affectionate) her about it on the PC Gamer forums though. We'll have a thread going up about this week's episode where you can pop in and share your thoughts with us. We'll be in there too having a chat with you! Feel free to tell us what you think about genres. Do you think they're dumb, cool? Are you a "Wish product page" kinda genre enjoyer, or do you yearn for the purity of a single-genre experience? Make sure to let us know!

You can check out the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast on a whole bunch of podcast platforms:

1. Apple Podcasts
2. Spotify
3. Google Podcasts
4. Stitcher
5. Castbox
6. Amazon Music
7. iHeartRadio
8. Podcast Addict
9. And more!

If you prefer some faces to go with your voices, you can also check out the podcast over on YouTube:

Don't forget to check us out over on the PC Gamer forums, too! We'll be checking in every week to see what you lovely lot have to say about each week's episode, and joining in the discussion ourselves.

RSS Feed | Apple Podcasts | Spotify 

What's up PC gamers? Welcome back to the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast! How has everyone's week been so far? I hope you've been finding plenty of time to play games and do the other things you love outside of general life stresses.

For the 10 or so years they've been around, Steam reviews have been a great source of entertainment to me. Occasionally they help make an informed decision on whether a game should be going into my cart, but most of the time they're a collection of inside jokes, goofy references to the game being reviews and can be genuinely rather funny.

With so many Steam reviews sounding downright silly out of context, they're the perfect fodder to pluck and challenge each other to guess which game is being talked about. So that's exactly what myself and Lauren are doing this week! We've each pulled a handful of Steam reviews for games that appeared in our PC Gamer Top 100 list last year—we had to try and narrow down all the games somehow—and we're making each other figure out where the review came from.

It's a nice chill episode so kick back and maybe try and suss out each one along with us. If you've got some Steam reviews that you still think about years after reading them, head over to the PC Gamer forums and tell us about them. We'll have a thread set up for this week's episode—let us know how many of our reviews you got right and share some of your own.

As always, catch us at the beginning of the episode to see what we've been up to in the last week. We always love getting to share the games we've been playing and other hobbies we've been dabbling in between each episode, so make sure you tune in.

You can check out the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast on a whole bunch of podcast platforms:

1. Apple Podcasts
2. Spotify
3. Google Podcasts
4. Stitcher
5. Castbox
6. Amazon Music
7. iHeartRadio
8. Podcast Addict
9. And more!

If you prefer some faces to go with your voices, you can also check out the podcast over on YouTube:

Don't forget to check us out over on the PC Gamer forums, too! We'll be checking in every week to see what you lovely lot have to say about each week's episode, and joining in the discussion ourselves.

RSS Feed | Apple Podcasts | Spotify 

Hey there PC gamers, welcome back to the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast! I hope everyone's been well this week and battling all the winter nasties going around right now. I've not been so fortunate—most of my week has been spent in bed feeling pretty dang sick. 

I remember when my parents would always say to me: "If you're too sick to go to school, you're too sick to play games!" While teenage me used to laugh at the thought of not being able to stare at a monitor for eight hours while fighting off a virus, adult me has been shriveling away under the covers, unable to stomach even looking at my Steam Deck. On the bright side, I'm several episodes deep into an Angel rewatch. Silver linings and all that.

Thankfully, my illness was kind enough to wait until after I had the opportunity to play a bunch of Steam Next Fest demos. It's a good job, since that's what myself, Lauren and Senior Editor Chris Livingston are chatting about on the pod this week. Steam Next Fests are great, giant dumps of videogame demos to gorge on for a week. An increasing amount seem to stick around once the Fest is over, but a lot of 'em are only live for its duration before disappearing.

With literal hundreds of demos to choose from, the three of us took some time to play the ones that caught our attention. We'll be sharing our faves we've played so far, which ones are releasing soon that you should keep your eye on, as well as ones we're super jazzed to play but haven't quite gotten around to yet. 

We're always down for some recommendations too. If you've been playing some Steam Next Fest demos yourself, head over to the PC Gamer forums and tell us about them. We'll have a thread set up for this week's episode where you can plug your favourite demos and let us know what you thought of the ones we've been enjoying.

Lauren and I have our usual pre-episode catchup too, letting each other know what we've been up to the previous week. Thankfully I had some relatively exciting things going on before I came down with The Plague (okay, it's a cold, but I feel rough!) and Lauren's been up to some neat stuff of her own.

You can check out the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast on a whole bunch of podcast platforms:

1. Apple Podcasts
2. Spotify
3. Google Podcasts
4. Stitcher
5. Castbox
6. Amazon Music
7. iHeartRadio
8. Podcast Addict
9. And more!

If you prefer some faces to go with your voices, you can also check out the podcast over on YouTube:

Don't forget to check us out over on the PC Gamer forums, too! We'll be checking in every week to see what you lovely lot have to say about each week's episode, and joining in the discussion ourselves.