Abject Suffering

Balan Wonderworld is so infamous that sometimes you wonder if it could actually ever be that bad. Chat, it’s very bad. It ranks right behind chronically mistreating his workers on the list of worst things Yuji Naka has ever done. It’s so bad that we remain on topic for the whole episode.

Portal didn’t invent the story about the banal cruelty of corporate super science, but it sure did it better than Whiplash. You play a weasel who has a rabbit chained to you, hopping and bopping to try to escape from a laboratory. And while it promises sweet grappling hook action, all it delivers is disappointment. We also talk about Gary’s evolving battle with, and respect for, the Tree of Heaven.

We understand why you all voted for Flix and Chill 2: Millennials in our episode poll. Look at that title. Little did you know that it’s also a viciously uninteresting adventure game in the guise of a dating sim. Millennials are strange birds, we are led to believe. Also, Kaye invents a fun new game to play with your friends.

The Powerpuff Girls was a fine cartoon. It hit a lot of people at the right age, and its groovy 90s aesthetic was instantly iconic. So it probably deserved a better game than this, a very sloppy brawler and asset hunt. We also talk about the differing legacies of Nicktoons and Cartoon Network classics, how sometimes a cat is a cartoon in real life, and ways to integrate a Venture Bros.-ass TV phone into your daily life.

Riddick Bowe Boxing, known as “Chavez” in some regions, is actually a very good boxing game for the Super Nintendo. So we return to the old topics of boxing in general, how quick and brutal real fights can be, Kaye’s dwindling number of pockets for pocket sand, and the bizarreness of “free use” pornography.