Bears In Games Johnny Barnstorm

Johnny and Robbie tackle Final Fight 2 to ask: has the game got less gay?Alright, here's a Let's Play of sorts for the first couple of stages of Capcom's Final Fight. Johnny and Robbie tackle this brawler to answer the question: has Final Fight become less gay? (The answer? Yeah, kinda.) This episode has some interesting appearances, including Guy, Cody, and a skinny background version of Chun Li! We discuss the longevity of the brawler genre, what can be considered modern descendants of the brawler, ask what's semaphore, and spy a scrawny Guile! Maybe it's Guile's french cousin, Guillaume. Sorry 'bout the audio glitch near the end - mic cut out so we just had camera audio during our fun encounter with Freddie!

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!

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!

Dragon Age is here! Dragon Age is Queer! Get over it! Yeah, it ain't just Zevran who can get man-on-man action in Dragon Age! And he's not the only gay character either! Bears In Games tackles the important subject of Dragon Age this week. It's true, there is gay banging in Dragon Age, involving elves, dwarves, humans, Qunari, you name it! But that's not the only reason a lover of the bearish type should purchase the game; for one thing, it's Dwarf character model is pretty damned hot. And you can make everyone in your party through off their clothes and go adventuring in just a jock strap. So we start off by having a look at the character creator, which honestly has some of the best options for creating a hot character that we've seen. Perhaps second only to Saints Row 2. Then we take this Dwarf adventuring, and see how much better the cut scenes are once you remove the clothing. (The answer? Infinitely better. Particularly when your father notes how great you look "in your great grandfather's armor.") Finally we finish with Kevin the Dwarf, Johnny's custom character, based on a heterosexual friend of John's, as he breaks hearts across Ferelden.

Street Fighter IV! And more Street Fighter IV! We end the Bears In Games One Year Anniversary Street Fighter Mantacular by seeing what our favorite Street Fighters are up to now. Plus: a very special montage. Johnny and Robbie go head to head with some Street Fighter IV action! But, first, Johnny has to admit that he hasn't actually unlocked much in the game, due to the draconian unlocking policies. Which is too bad, because Gouken is totally a bear. Actually, everyone is looking a whole lot more ripped these days, from Chun-Li's Bear Thighs to Ryu's throbbing pectorals. And then there's Rufus. Johnny loves Rufus! He's so pleasantly dumb. And everything is capped off with a look at the cutscenes of Zangief and Rufus, and finally a Bears In Games One Year Anniversary Montage aimed at everyone's favorite gay bear character! Shananana!

Part 3 just checks out one game - but when you realize that it's Marvel Versus Capcom 2, you can understand why it takes about twenty minutes to go through all the burly, sweaty manliness that is contained inside. If you are a fan of comic books, you might want to skip this one; Johnny and Robbie know next to nothing about them, and confuse "X-Men" with "Ultimate X-Men" or something shameful like that, and can't figure out why they're trying to slip in TWO Wolverines. But Marvel Versus Capcom 2 is a beartacular filled with bears and bearishness. Just exactly who is hot in this game? Lessee. Thanos? Maybe? Wolverine definitely qualifies. Sabretooth, yep. Zangief, of course. ("His big, burly shoulders are good to... HUG ya!") When ANAKARIS was alive, perhaps? Juggernaut! Gay Russian Colossus! M. Bison! The Hulk! Sadly, the Marvel fan seems to be much more on the bearish side than the Capcom side - apparently they didn't take enough characters from Saturday Night Slam Masters.