We're sans Nathan on this week's Aftermath Hours, so Riley, Luke, and Isaiah intend to talk about a lot of topics, but mostly we can’t keep ourselves from talking about Clair Obscur, which everyone but me has finished. But we all agree that I'm far from having the missed the boat, and that there's still plenty of people out there who want to talk about games even once their launch hype dies down.
We start by talking about two stories Aftermath ran this week: one in favor of parrying in video games, and one against. Those stories kicked off a flurry of discourse on social media, which we found mostly to be in good fun. We talk about how different those kinds of conversations feel now that we’re at Aftermath instead of a larger site, and ponder what it is about Clair Obscur's parrying system that kicked off everybody's parrying opinions in the first place.
Then, we discuss this week’s layoffs at Electronic Arts, which follow on the heels of other layoffs at Electronic Arts. We wonder why several companies have run into trouble with licensed games, and we talk about the challenge of getting players excited about Marvel games when the MCU is facing its own uphill battle.
Last, we talk about what games we’re playing lately. Luke goes through a lot of games he didn’t like before landing on one he did, 9 Kings. I lament not playing Clair Obscur faster, so then we talk about that game a whole bunch more, and we debate whether it can ever be “too late” to talk about a video game. Working in games journalism sometimes skews our perspective about what it means to be part of the conversation around a game, but we all agree that Aftermath gives us a chance to talk about games at a pace that's more similar to regular players instead of people who do this for a living.
To close, we answer some mailbag questions about the best wrestling moves, what we’d do if we were CEO of EA, and who we trust to give us game recommendations.
You can find this week's episode below and on Spotify, Apple, or wherever else you prefer to listen to podcasts. If you like what you hear, please make sure to leave a review so more people will give us the reins to major companies; we think we've proven we can handle it.
