TR-49 is a great start to the year - all the chewy brainfood you'd expect from Inkle, but in more of a traditional puzzle/mystery format. So type in MC-26 and listen to this and heaps of other game recommendations from late 2025.

My little sister told me that everyone in her antenatal group were exchanging their pre-birthing checklists/prep and one guy had just made a list of all the Warhammer he wanted to paint before the big day.

Just huge, huge relief that Fable looks as good as it does. The world, the combat, the giant Ayoade corpse, the life sim buried at the heart of it (I expect to spend many hours blacksmithing garden forks to earn a down payment on a hovel)... looks like they nailed it.

When you go to stroke your cat without your glasses on and realise it's just a bundled up dressing gown.

Slightly baffled by reviews calling Industry S4 the best yet. Still good, but after a couple of episodes feels really unmoored after the events at the end of S3. The old money world of the Mucks feels so far removed from the industry that hooked me in the first place.

The Traitors is the only live TV I've watched in probably a decade, and the advert before it goes right ahead and spoils The Night Manager S2 (which we are taking at our own pace). Just a weird flashback to viewing habits being set by broadcaster and having to keep in step with them.

Tick off your Traitors bingo card: "why am I being kept here?" The ego of it!

Colleague asked me to bring in Zelda amiibos to get the new Animal Crossing unlocks, leading to a very nervous walk home where I pray I don't get involved in an altercation or crime, leading to the moment I empty my pockets at the police station, revealing keys, wallet and Daruk, Goron Champion.

The most irritating Traitors logic is that a banished faithful is automatically right somehow. Every faithful is wrong most of the time - they just need to look at their own track records to understand the shakiness of that thinking.

🥲 Been a good few weeks of TV.

The Lowdown (on Disney+) is pretty amazing. Every character is a total gem - you'd swear it was based on a series of novel, it has such an established richness to the world.

What the hell is Titanium Court?

Great to see (but unsurprising, if you've played them) IGF love for Promise Mascot Agency and Type Help.

Marty Supremely Long.

Digging into some detective games I missed last year. Standout is The Case of the Worst Day Ever, which uses the Golden Idol format for comic, non-murder scenarios - but despite the jovial tone, it's a proper challenge. Dense with info to parse. A case about dog food properly broke me.

Pray for the one dad legging it around Southbank lighting all those London fireworks with that little taper that comes in the box.

If I'm on the character select screen for The Long Walk, no way I'm picking the diarrhoea guy.

This was a good one. Worried it was going to solve itself a little, but ended up being much cleverer than I thought (as the best ones always are). I like it when you can work out 50% of what is going on, to get that hit of smugness, but can still grin when the main trick is revealed.

I've been waiting my whole life for this prompt

Brutal cliffhangers in Culinary Class Wars this season.

Lovely to see the podcast get a little nod in The Guardian's Going Out/Staying In list this week.

Found the top ten list tricky this year - there's a huge pool of excellent things I'd fill out 20-11 with. We skipped honourable mentions (the episode was long enough as is) but would have shown some love for Old Skies, Strange Jigsaws, Chronoquartz, The Drifter, Mario Kart World and Bionic Bay.

Got to show a little love for The Roottrees are Dead and Old Skies.

Brad Pitt flitting between all those driving disciplines in F1 had big Forza Horizon energy. Bring on the sequel where he races a hovercraft.

You know it's going to be a good one when A) there's a floorplan on page one, and B) the floorplan looks like *that*.

Katharine knocks it out of the park once again with this year's Christmas card.

On the second watch I think Wake Up Dead Man might be my favourite of the three - has some real character substance to go with the fun of the mystery. The scene with Bridget Everett on the phone is just so excellently done. Lovely bit of acting.

I'm probably reaching for a cameo that isn't there, but is that Hugh Grant singing a couple of seconds of Cats in Wake Up Dead Man?

I adore Culinary Class Wars, but do wonder if the second round black spoon vs white spoons blind taste test is truly legit - like, they could easily eliminate all the black spoons by mistake and nuke the format.

Finally getting round to @fireproofgames.com's Ghost Town on PSVR2 - perfectly judged level of spookiness for a wuss like me, with the added treat of all those tactile levers, cranks and switches they do so well.

3+ hours of game of the year chat - some surprises, a few minor upsets and (hopefully) heaps of recommendations to mop up over the Christmas holiday.

This is secretly my favourite episode we do every year - awards feel like an NGamer Christmas issue feature and I love having our pals from the year drop in with their picks. A good reminder of the nice community around the pod.

Kirby Air Riders is such a looker and those swirling grind rail shots are a great pitch for a Switch 2-powered Kid Icarus Uprising.

It's indulgent, but I'm reposting this thread again because it made me chuckle so much. Current favourite: Blake Manor.

Not had a chance to listen yet, but the pairing of the picks episode and the resulting GOTY episode always makes for some of the most boisterous and entertaining games podcasting of the year.

Our Discorders answered the question, 'what if the games of 2025 were Simpsons stills?' Judge the results for yourself.

That's Metroid Prime 4 done. In a series with some notoriously thin characters, Sylux is a next-level nobody. Way more egregious than any of the companions.

Steam gets me

Holy shit: Culinary Class Wars S2 just dropped. Greatest reality contest of all time.

Lucy is always a great guest and this was a fun topic to dig into.

Having a go-to recommendation is so much harder for books than games, I find. Personal tastes are trickier to gauge, and my reading habits are... probably more niche than most. The one I do tend to fall back on, though, is "Strange Beasts of China" by Yan Ge. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/d...

When the saxophone kicks in this track it melted my brain. @barrytopping.com is a wizard. youtu.be/G4YBoXQmzUs?...

Orbitals, Ontos, TankRat, Solasta 2... whatever they're feeding them over at Kepler it's working.

I don't think it's getting better than the energy shift from Street Fighter cast to the Hello Games lot.

Got my companion for some Game Awards watching.

No shade on the things up for best music at Game Awards, but for me none of them come close to Lumines Arise, Promise Mascot Agency or Birdcage - three absolutely astonishing soundtracks. Imagine those played on stage at the awards. Krysta Youngs just blasting your ears off.

Was hoping Bits & Bops to scratch that Rhythm Tengoku itch, but it doesn't have visual wit or the killer tunes to pull it off.

Podcast: The Car. Listener @campbell64.bsky.social crossed The Back Page with iRacing. The results? Cursed yet magnificent.

Nintendo's sound teams at their playful best (again) in #Bananza. The Fractones sing along with any of the game's music you choose, and better yet the SFX are in the currently playing chord's root note, so you can spend hours punching along. (Sound on) #Nintendo #DonkeyKong #VideoGameMusic

Best thing Bath ever did was voting this asshole out.