Explore every episode of the podcast The Crate and Crowbar

Jamie and Marsh reel from Microsoft’s latest layoffs, mismanage time in Hades 2, paddle in the uncanny, chlorinated waters of Pools, devour the bite-sized city-building triumphs of Against the Storm, and indulge their flaws in The Thaumaturge. The last lay offs of 2024. Thankfully there won’t be any more of those! Phew!! Nathan Brown’s Hit [...]

Jamie and Alex show their cards in deck-builders Balatro and Cobalt Core (poker- and space-flavoured respectively), before descending into the chaotic, cavernous depths of Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor and finally wrangling Dead Red Redemption 2 into completion. Balatro Cobalt Core Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor Red Dead Redemption 2 You can hang out with us and [...]

Tom S and Marsh switch their feet for tank tracks, and every other part of their body for bazookas, in Armored Core VI, suffer orb separation anxiety in Cocoon, enjoy to the janky return to Night City in Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, and stab through Baghdad in Assassin’s Creed: Mirage. It’s the rockets you don’t [...]

Chris, Alex and Marsh boot up modern games made for ye olde machines (Micro Mages, Nox Archaist and Tanglewood), put the boot into baddies in Shady Knight, woodchip birdies in Journey to the Savage Planet and chop wood in Nordic survival hit Valheim. Marty O’Donnell primes his Plangent Hero Horn for the return of Six [...]

Graham, Tom S, Alex and Chris numb themselves with Hexceed and Dungeon & Puzzles; inexplicably return to Syberia; defy the predictions of Gods Will Fall; hop, skip and jump through Olija; and holiday in Hitman III. Stadia shutters its game-making efforts. “Google was a terrible place to make games. Imagine Amazon, but under-resourced.” Oof. A [...]

Tom S, Chris and Marsh sink into the obliviating waters of Hades and World of Warcraft, gun gribblies in Soulsian sleeper hit Remnant: From the Ashes, blindly steer a nation in Suzerain and snap critters in Penko Park’s kooky safari. Fire-extinguisher-head-bonk-sim, Hitman 3 is out! Disney’s Lucasgames’ Arts Films Games: there’s a Ubisoft Star War [...]

Toms F and S are joined by Alex to discuss Monster Train’s forthcoming factions, go full dork over emulation widget MiSTer and be disappointed by England – in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, too! Ha! Ha! Ha! Cyberpunk 2077’s developers have conceded the existence of linear time, but not much else, in their roadmap. Ogle Dead End [...]

Bonus episode! Tom chats to top games critic and lovely person Christian Donlan in a meandering discussion about Star Trek, old Mario games, classic sci-fi films, Rogue, and much more. And then Christian’s cat makes an appearance, which just makes everything even better. The main C&C pod shall resume service shortly! Also another film ‘n [...]

Tom and Jamie gathered many weeks ago to record a whole new meandering chat through our film and TV obsessions of the moment! With Christmas just around the corner, Tom has finally found the time to publish this one as a hopefully fun bonus episode for the holiday season. 2020 is ending; hooray! We hope [...]

Graham, Tom S, Chris, Tom F, Alex and Marsh pile into the electronic telephone booth for our Game of the Year episode. Many things are discussed, some of which are even games that came out this year. Here’s the whole lot of them. Don’t read ahead if you want to rubberneck at the beautiful carnage [...]

Chris, Tom S and Marsh dial in to the eZone to digichat about obvious replicant Geoff Keighley’s latest data-dump, before opening up our brainchips to irrecoverable corruption by the Cyberpunk 2077 discourse. Suffer the many newses beamed from Geoff Keighley’s Laser Cage. Bioware had trailers for new Dragon Age and Mass Effect projects, both offering [...]

Chris, Alex and Marsh arrive belatedly at the zeitgeist of September 2018 with a helluva yikes. Like gazpacho soup, enjoy these takes cold: World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Fortnite done some big numbers. But are they that big? Yes, but imagine the concurrents if you had to feed [...]

Chris, Graham and Alex heed the wisdom of the Time-ramisu and peer into the future of mecha strategy game Phantom Brigade, the alternative past of tactics game Möbius Front ’83, and an eternity of Destiny 2. The Golden Joysticks happened again and proved to be an exacting measure of how people who voted in this [...]

Tom F, Jamie and Marsh pause time to queue up their synchronised takes on peerless piratical stealth game, Shadow Gambit, enjoy the sights of Baldur’s Gate biggest Big Town, curtly dismiss Starfield, and triumphantly reinvade Stroggos in a revamped Quake 2. So, Unity absolutely shit the bed. Godot and GameMaker are also available. Shadow Gambit: [...]

Graham, Tom S and Marsh gather to caress eagles in pretty action adventure The Pathless, and return to 9th century England to malign herons in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. IO Interactive are making a Bond game! Appreciate the pandering of The Pathless. It’s a bit like Journey and Shadow of the Colossus. Admire the shining spires [...]

Alex and Marsh chat to Joannes Truyens, writer-designer of Neurocracy – a game about near-future conspiracies, pandemics, surveillance, cybernetics and tuna – that you unravel by exploring a fictional Wikipedia. You can play the demo of Neurocracy right now. Follow Joannes and the project itself on Twitter and watch out for a release of Neurocracy [...]

All the Toms join Marsh to be obliterated by the pitiless ocean, leaving only a flotsam of Elcor facts as a sign of their passing. Also discussed: Watch Dogs’ cockerney spider bots and the fine flails of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. Codies got bought by TakeTwo for approximately 10 times as much as we would have [...]

Graham, Alex, Tom F and Marsh turn up the Plancks to Max in the highly-destructible thievery sandbox Teardown, avoid bisection in the deadly arenas of Disc Room and bring birds to political ruin in woodland strategy game Root. Kill your solution-carcasses in the very defenestrationy blast-your-own-escape-route thievery sandbox Teardown. Graham’s review of the same. The [...]

Chris and Marsh climb atop one another, together forming the shape of a much larger podcasting lobster, to discuss social spook surveyor game Phasmophobia, probe the pachinko-like possibilities of roguelike Ring of Pain and return to the Warzone. Lot of news this week. More puking than normal too. COINCIDENCE? Oculus requires a Facebook account and [...]

Graham, Alex and Marsh waggle wands in alchemical roguelike Noita, boggle minds in fractal-palace puzzler Manifold Garden, solve crimes in tech-occult mystery Lucifer Within Us and probe private parts in nosy ghost adventure I Am Dead. Cool Congresswoman AOC’s Twitch-topping stream. PC Gamer’s article on the mainstreaming and word-of-mouthing of PC gaming. Stream-beloved backstabber, Among [...]

Alex and Tom F relive the fragtastic heyday of the FPS with Quake mod Arcane Dimensions, and die, with varying degrees of annoyance, at the hands of three different roguelikes: Noita, Spelunky 2 and Hades. Voxel-physics-destruction game Teardown is out on the 29th of October! The torrid Golden Axed tale. Gwen Frey‘s Lab Rat is [...]

Graham, Tom S and Chris launch a lifetime of fandom directly at the modest target area of Star Wars: Squadrons, setting off a chain reaction of space-spooge. Also: Zelda meets gacha in Genshin Impact. Baldur’s Gate 3 has entered early access. It’s quite crashy at the moment, but you can befriend a walking brain. You’ll [...]

Tom S, Chris and Marsh vibrate with the excitement of an imminent Star Wars game release while trying to talk about Necromunda: Underhive Wars, budget co-op spookathon Phasmophobia and impressively reprehensible VR stabber Blade And Sorcery. Listen to Tom Senior’s excellent TV and film spin-off podcast with Jamie Brittain, professional smart telly-man: Monday Or Soon [...]

Welcome to a new experiment from the Crate and Crowbar! We love games, but we’re also huge fans of films and television, especially in these Covid times, so we decided to start a podcast about all that. Tom Senior joins TV writer Jamie Brittain for a whiplash tour of the shows we’re watching right now. [...]

Tom S, Jamie and Marsh roll up to Baldur’s Gate 3, a distressingly horny roleplaying masterpiece, discover the cancel culture of The Wonderful 101, and use demons like yo-yos in Astral Chain. Baldur’s Gate 3, a CRPG classic in the making, and one of the sluttiest games ever made D&D roleplay podcasts: The Adventure Zone, [...]

Graham, Tom F and Marsh debate the merits of moon moles in Spelunky 2. That’s it. That’s the only game we need this week. But also: Bethesda’s acquisition, our favourite videogame banks, and multiplayer that isn’t multiplayer. Bethesda’s acquisition by the Big Green Giant. Spelunky 2. Welcome to the only show note you’ll need for [...]

Alex, Tom F and Marsh island-hop in peerless push-block puzzler A Monster’s Expedition, island-cop in murder mystery Paradise Killer, and Ireland-top in medieval wife-finding interface, Crusader Kings III. Plus! Hadean Lands and Defense of the Oasis. Enjoy the agony of U-turning marketing executives as a result of the Sony’s PS5 showcase. Is this the best [...]

Graham, Tom S and Chris pick apart the latest Ubisoft Forward like carrion on road-kill, before swooping on, beaks bloodied, to devour Mafia: Definitive Edition, Marvel’s Avengers and Mortal Shell. Mmm-mm! Ubisoft Forward’s livestream and Yves Guillemot’s apology. Geoff Keighley was not impressed. For the love of God, Ubisoft, DO NOT BAIT HIS DISPLEASURE! Has [...]

Tom F, Chris and Marsh offer late takes on the quickly cooling Gamescom starch bomb, ferry frogs to the great beyond in Spiritfarer and nitpick the nitpicking, and other ape antics, in epic evolution yarn, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey. Gamescom was put in the microwave for 6 minutes and served without butter. Tom Clancy’s Elite [...]

Chris, Tom F and Marsh ogle the inter-corporate fisticuffs of Epic v Apple, boggle at the buffs of roguelike shooter Risk of Rain 2, make bassist assumptions in identity puzzler Family and fear ducks in Microsoft Flight Simulator. It’s Tim vs Tim! Chris Plante has a good summary and analysis of the Epic/Apple lawsuit in [...]

Alex, Chris and Marsh dispute the tutes of Horizon: Zero Dawn, unpack throwback hack-n-slash Book of Demons, wibble beans in Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout and quibble shtick in meta point-n-click There Is No Game, before returning to our briny home. Pony Island and Hex are the Daniel Mullins Games games which precede the recently unveiled [...]

Tom F, Alex and Marsh gather to discuss Obsidian’s backyard survival game Grounded, go postal, in a very tranquil way, in Thousand Threads, sink into a fug of nostalgia for Halo 3, toot flutes and avoid parps in Ghosts of Tsushima and briefly descend into Hades. Dana Schwartz’s tweet about Reddit user NoNoNo_OhOhOh’s post about [...]

Tom S, Graham and Marsh congeal into a mass of gnashing mouths to chew over indie creature feature Carrion, disrespect the lore in Star Wars: Battlefront II and smash many glass men in the expandalone Superhot: Mind Control Delete. We talk about the Xbox Showcase. You can watch the full stream here, and, because I [...]

Alex, Tom S and Graham minotalk and cyclopine about the forthcoming Total War Saga: Troy, delight in the hikes and hot bilge of Death Stranding and feel all kinds of 7/10 about Ghosts of Tsushima. Here’s that story on testing seeds for impossibility in Slay The Spire. Mentioned as Alex’s spire-alike of choice: Monster Train [...]

Chris, Tom S and Marsh pore over the Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx, soar over the Hyper Scape, chew over Rocket Arena, simply cannot get over Call of Duty: Warzone, and gush over, er, chess. “Not a new game but a good one.” You heard it here first. Geoff Keighley’s illuminating and partially accurate docu-app: [...]

Chris, Tom S and Marsh immolate dogs in the fields and fields and fields of Final Fantasy 16, plunder the pseudo-Yarnhams and battle-Narnias of Remnant 2, and step into the frame of Viewfinder, but remain puzzlingly unpuzzled. Final Fantasy 16’s coverage so far has hidden its kaijus beneath a very large bushel, and a very [...]

Alex, Rich McC and Marsh attempt to master the remastered Red Alert, get decked online in WWII-themed collectable card game KARDS and prepare to try self-professed Dark Souls homage Mortal Shell. Valorant. Skins. Expensive. Boring. Do better, News. The Ubisoft longboat is very leaky: the latest vid of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. You can play Command [...]

Pip and Chris return for another deep dive (!) into the state of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. We delve into the diving discourse, discuss the various quandaries of lategame life, and assemble our wishlists for the future of the game. You can find this bonus episode on YouTube, and our intro music is, as ever, [...]

Graham, Tom F and Chris aim their laser-like takes to dismantle the zen pleasures of Hardspace: Shipbreaker, the tawdry traumas of The Last of Us Part II, the chaotic bird-butt coop of KeyWe and the narrative clunk of Cloudpunk. Do a physics on men, shelves and concrete, in this throwback shooter: Trepang2. Do a physics [...]

Alex, Tom S and Marsh swelter and sweat through a discussion of ecstatic automation in Satisfactory, the didactic bleakness of The Last of Us Part II, the long view of Humankind and dire straits in Desperados III. Cherish your mucky factory in Satisfactory. The Last of Us Part II sounds unplayably horrible to me, but [...]

Chris, Alex and Marsh ponder penguin chicanery, Destiny’s destiny, dialogue-by-card-deck in Signs of the Sojourner, conversation-as-combat in Griftlands, redeem Mass Effect: Andromeda, resist scratching tingles and rejoice at Desperados III. What is shape? Shape is crime. What is going on with Aiball / Penguin Cretins? Gamesindustry.biz have talked about it here. A Monster’s Expedition – [...]

Alex, Tom F and Graham muse on the eternal E3 news, marvel at itchio’s BLM bundle, lament pyromantic stealth game Wildfire, adore deck-builder Monster Train and flail further in Half-Life: Alyx. IGN’s eternal E3. The Escapist’s indie stream. Sony’s PS5 stream. I found it unconscionably boring, to my surprise and dismay. Undaunted: The Heretic One [...]

Tom S, Chris and Marsh try to fathom the bloody ways of Stoneshard, bloody the fathoms in Maneater, embrace doldrums in Sludge Life, bang the old drum for Fez, make other things go bang in Receiver 2, and probe wholes, holes and souls in The Witness. At the beginning of this episode we express our [...]

Sorry for the pops and crackles on this one! Alex and Marsh are joined by special and exceedingly distant guest, Rich McCormick, to discuss Noclip’s Arkane documentary, space thriller Observation and space driller Deep Rock Galactic. Wholesome Direct – not just a showcase of games about frogs wearing Nike Air Jordans. Noclip’s fabulous Arkane documentary [...]

Alex, Chris and Marsh gather to be confounded by Crucible, the first foray into videogames by billionaire devourer of iguana flesh, Jeff Bezos, and admire acrobatic aerial shmup Jet Lancer. Crucible is out! Should Crucible be out? HMM. Whither the edgy boys go? They go to be a sharkborg. Fly, fly, up and away in [...]

Tom F and Alex are joined by special guests and storied devs Soren Johnson and (at the end) Leyla Johnson – CEO and president of Mohawk Games, respectively – to talk about Old World, an historical, epic strategy game. And polygamy. You can get in on Old World’s Early Access phase via the Epic Games [...]

Chris, Alex and Marsh creak, rasp and seep from their respective tombs to bewail the passing of the years on this, the 10th anniversary of the podcast. Plus: fulton fun in Mr Sun’s Hatbox, killer crocs in Hunt: Showdown, démodé dipsticks in Max Payne 3 and a terrible quiz. Best games of the last decade? [...]

Tom S, Chris and Marsh lay themselves bare to discuss the Xbox showcase, sample the tasty-tasty-tasty open world comfort food of Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, unspool tubes in Filament and eye-roll at time-gribblies in Close to the Sun. The XBOX XERIEX X is coming and, if anyone notices, they will be able to play some [...]

More Animal Crossing with Pip and Chris! We talk island design, the pleasures and pitfalls of meeting your inexplicably naked heroes, put Blathers on trial for art crime, and consider the ups and downs of multiplayer island life. You can find this bonus episode on YouTube, and our intro music is, as ever, Clambake by [...]

Alex, Tom F and Graham e-gather to e-give their e-takes on the Assassin’s Creed reveal, get kicked right in the breach phase, courtesy of XCOM: Chimera Squad, and amp up the wide-men of Gears Tactics. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla has been announced. Watch the Vikings raid and pillage – but in a good way – in [...]