Bears In Games - Super Slash Greek Heroes

Rise of the Argonauts, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and Muscle March all get their chance to show off the biggest, burliest, and Greekiest of musclemen in this episode of Bears In Games!

First: Rise of the Argonauts! You think a game set in the Greek era with huge and muscular bearish guys would be easy to do an episode on. Hm. Nope. Mostly I just gripe about the terrible writing and pacing of the cutscenes. The game itself, when there is combat, actually plays nicely. Combat is fun, and the combos work well. Hercules is hot - really hot - but that doesn't save the game from being mostly mind numbing. That's too bad. Also: it breaks! Twice!

Then we have the Batman. Or is it just Batman? After a brief aside in which I mourn the loss of Siren: Blood Curse from my PS3 hard drive, I plow ahead to check out Rocksteady's Batman: Arkham Asylum. Yep, Batman's pretty beefy in this game. But that doesn't make Batman a bear, does it? We take a brief trip through Batman's history to see where and when he can be considered bearish. Other topics come up too, like: I would make a terrible superhero, Bane is sometimes super hot, and lobotomized musclebears, hot or not?

Finally, we close out with the straightest game of all time! After sitting on my Wii's SD card for nearly a month, I break out my copy of Muscle March and record - live - my first five minutes of playing it. It's quite something. The mechanics are quite simple, it just reads the up and down tilt sensors in the Wiimote. But! Muscle men! Thongs! Bears! Gaiety! An opening which looks like a weird mashup of Cho Aniki and Katamari Damacy!

Bears In Games Best Of 2009

You take the good, you take the bad, you talk about bears for a while, and there you have... the Bears In Games Best Of 2009 Awards! Featuring Our Fantastic Returning Guest Hosts Robbie, from Japan, and Max from Gamesters.ca!

The ground rules for this podcast was that we actually purchased and played the games which we bitch about. This narrows the playing field somewhat, except for Johnny, who has a very flexible idea of what is worth purchasing if it costs under $20. We start with the part that everyone loves... the Worst of 2009. What pissed us off? What annoyed us? What makes downright lazy game design? Contenders include Tomb Raider Underworld, Silent Hill: Homecoming, the original PlayStation Resident Evil, and more! We then move on to the Bear Awards, where we discuss the hottest bears to come out in 2009, as well as our most secret, shameful choices. There may be some Rufus discussed. And, as you can guess, Zangief makes a triumphant comeback. Finally, we talk about our choices for Game of the Year! You may be shocked! You may be stunned!

Bears In Games - The Gayest 16-Bit Games Of All Time (That Aren't Cho Aniki)

Just what is the gayest 16-bit game of all time? CHO ANIKI! But, that's a bit of a foregone conclusion. And at BearsInGames, we like betting on the underdogs. So we're counting down the top five gayest games during the wonderful era that brought us the Blast Processing of the Sega Genesis, the Mode 7 scaling and rotation of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and the... Johnny Turboness... of the Turbografx-16! Watch in awe as we look at beefcake Boris Vallejo paintings, chubby bear giants in metal briefs, bear thugs with crotches the size of cantaloupes, rescuing Madonna during her Like a Virgin phase, the precursor to Soul Calibur, bad 90s press junket commercials with far too many crotch shots, secret passages into XXL London, the single gayest secret character of any game ever, and the best sprite-based animation you've ever seen! Plus even more Haggar!