Giant Bomb - great coverage, funny, not problematic. wide range of content, amazing chemistry, two awesome podcasts plus game mess mornings
Jeff Grubb - he brought me over to GB. the man. watch him and GB cover SGF and you’ll get it. man is talented and so charismatic. hes also got a couple more pods on his personal channel with known menace Mitch Minotti
∆honestly cant sing praise for these two enough
Noclip - AMAZING docs, great pod with passionate hosts.
Minnmax - just turned onto them recently after GB had some of them on the couch at SGF. good takes, nice people.
used to be really into spawncast and it’s member’s channels. not as much recently. spawnwave is still great but some of the group is overly negative which can be very grating over time. they do have good chemistry, still catch the pod sometimes. - that being said, spawnwave’s 20 min morning news digests aren’t a bad watch while you’re waking up and getting caffenated in the morning
Nate the Hate & MVG - part of the spawncast but they also do their own pod. Mature discussion of news and industry topics. MVG has a long history in the modding scene and is an active dev. Nate is some sort of insider, he protects his identity but i would imagine he’s in the industry. despite the name, he’s not overly negative.
~~there are def a few more but these are the ones that came to mind immediately. might add more as they come to me ~similar kinda thing but about content more geared towards entertainment i.e. dunkey, thorhighheels might be fun to do in the future
Nextlander - giant bomb made better imo.
There’s never been a better podcast! (I fell off them at first, but I think that was because the world sucked quite a bit right around when they started, and it leaked into their podcast. They’re pretty great now.)
I stuck with Giant Bomb right up until they canned Jeff Gerstmann. Quickly after that, Giant Bomb just felt icky. That said, I couldn’t hang with Jeff’s solo gig – while he’s still a threat, he sorely needs a co-host(s).
I got into GB a bit after when Gertsmann got canned because i enjoyed Grubb and his takes/personality so much. I realize when an outfit has been going for a while like they have a regime change/ almost total personnel change would feel weird af
Same.
now do u say this about current GB or their more well known previous iterations? ive only been into them since their main hosts/people being Jan, Grubb, Bakalar and Ryckert. Tam and Lucy from gamespot are frequent collaborators along with Mike Minotti.
if you’re not familiar with their current crew i suggest giving em another look, they crack me up and bring a ton of personality to the table.
From what I know, nextlander is former GB people. I’ll definitely check it out, i have lots of drive/work/gaming time to consume pods
When I bailed right after JeffG left, there were personalities I liked, and some I did not.
Also, since it was a complete dice roll who’d actually be on a given podcast: some were great; some not so much.
And more often than not, their podcasts were populated by randos not even on the crew.
I’m in the UK, so some of this might be UK centric:
Podcasts
- Digital Foundry Weekly, Weekly podcast discussing gaming news/hardware etc (If you know DF you know what this is)
- The Crate and Crowbar, PCGamerUK used to have a podcast and these guys move to this. Few friends talking about games and it’s decent (not overly technical or in depth, more just mates chatting).
- IGN UK Podcast, absolutely love the personalities on this, it seems more like some mates chatting with a bit of structure (less like the IGN ethos of pushing as much out as possible).
- VGC, Again a few mates chatting about games, good production values and I value their opinions.
RSS feeds
- Eurogamer.net features, similar to DF, but they cover decent articles about games.
- Uppercut - Features, doesn’t post often but has well thought out articles about games and they’re a joy to read.
- Polygon - Feature, interesting articles about films/games. I don’t read them all just ones interesting or relevant to me.
- Rock Paper Shotgun features, PC Gaming articles that explores interesting questions about newer/popular games.
- IGN Feed, All the feeds above are features where it’s not just regurgitated news that spams your feed, they’re well thought out. Well IGN isn’t features, it’s just gaming news. I hardly read the artcles, just scroll the titles.
first off, beautiful formatting! Jeff Grubb of current Giant Bomb has Andy Robinson from VGC on his morning show pretty frequently, I enjoy him. I do catch DF content and pods time to time as well.
I’ve never set up an RSS feed but might look into it, something to scroll on the can/ when i have a few mins of downtime would be nice. google’s served articles arent cutting it. Left the thing that previously filled this gap behind a few months ago.
Definitely setup RSS. Can just keep everything in one place. Lemmy, YouTube and Mastodon also support RSS feeds
A bit related but do you like using RSS? I’ve never used it before because it never seemed like it was worth setting up. Do you recommend it/ is it worth it?
Yes I love it.
Pick all your favourite news/content/podcasts/youtube and set them up in an RSS app.
Then it’s all in one place, no visiting multiple apps/websites. It’s just there ready to go. You can then easily keep track of what you’ve read, haven’t read and saved.
Remap Radio
Nextlander
Jesse Cox has 5 Minute Gaming News that lists news into little bite-sized chunks that I can handle every weekday. Used to love Jesse on the Cooptional and Cox n Crendor podcasts so I like listening to him.
Also every Friday Crendor is featured on the Cren Minute where he talks about whatever he wants and its the most redundant and hilarious thing to me.
And shoutouts to Lyle Wrath’s hilarious Pregame Discharge show where he lays out the news in an extreme and absurd way. Used to be weekly but now kind of forced to be monthly after Destructoid dropped it.
Nice to see Jesse mentioned. I love his entire sphere of friends.
I listen to The Besties and Into the Aether, mostly because their tastes align with mine a lot of the time.
I listen to the besties and triple click
Games are entertainment, and so I get my news coverage from people who I find entertaining. This means I’ll take biased, opinionated ranting if it’s funny-enough. So mostly Yahtzee.
I get my Serious News about municipal politics.
100%, personality goes a lot way.
which is why im so partial to the current incarnation of giant bomb. i didn’t follow them in theur bigger days so i had no preconceived notion of what GB should be, i just followed jeff grubb to it when he moved there from gamesbeat. super charistmatic dude, funny as hell, great takes, goes out of his way to help signal boost other games media people.
the chemistry the gb crew has is magic and they all have great and distinct tastes in games. plus they do stupid shows like blight club where they pick awful games for each other to beat like bubsy 3d, sonic 06, robocop for xbox and heckle each other/ laugh at each other’s misfortunes
Podcast wise: Rebel FM, though after all these years it’s more just to catch up with them than the actual talking points, but always enjoyable.
For deep dives into specific games Cane & Rinse (full disclosure I have met and consider friends some of the guys involved).
For Indie Games, The Sausage Factory by Chris O’Regan, which these days is hosted by Cane And Rinse is a great way to hear directly from the game devs themselves.
It’s been many years and I’ve found very few outlets that consistently resonate with me.
In terms of review quality, I think the best one is Easy Allies (formed by folks who used to work at GameTrailers). They match video clips with a well-written script and professional narration so perfectly. You can tell they haven’t just thoroughly played the game under review, but they know its history among the genre. But IMO they focus too much on console, where I’m PC-only.
I’m also a Linux gamer now. Gaming On Linux and Boiling Steam are good for that, but I’m open to more.
I still go back and listen through the original Arrow Pointing Down/Giant Bombcast up until Ryan’s passing. The age of the content makes it downright historically interesting now for their commentary on game releases.
The chemistry of those guys (Vinny and Brad included) is still untouchable, no one can rein Jeff in and play off him as well as Ryan did, and Ryan is by far my favorite person to ever grace that website and podcast, and rightfully so as it was his child with Jeff. Rest in peace.
Remap Radio is basically the only podcast I listen to now
Still looking for good written coverage, though
Minnmax - Some former Game Informer peeps pulled a Nextlander and it’s been great. For anyone checking it out for the first time now, usually Ben Hansen is the host, but he’s away for a time on paternity leave.
ben is back now! minnmax is awesome
FPS: Friends Per Second and the SkillUp channel in general. I also keep up to date with AngryJoeShow and his reviews/news videos.
I’d agree - SkillUp’s channel (including FPS), and Digital Foundry’s DF Weekly covers pretty much all my gaming needs with their content.
I honestly don’t watch or listen to stuff about gaming. I just read my RSS feeds about upcoming games and pirate them and if I like them, I buy.
Can’t comment on news, but the friends per second podcast has been my go to
