#i also am never super into any podcast that has like official character designs like

[arospecsyourblockdudes]

reason i had to leave the ch/nt fandom is bcus u cant post shit like “i’d let elijah volkov psychic-drug and manipulate me into dying as the messiah of his own personal stalker religion any day” w/o like several people being mad that ur into the villain of the podcast

[garden-ghoul]

Overground is back, baby! Me and @deathofthetext begin our work on the Evil City, a city what eats people, in this thrilling 52-minute episode! You’re here for cities layered like projector transparencies, rambling stories about transit infrastructure in the northeast, and extremely bad bridge design. Transcript below the cut.

GHOUL: This is… Overground, technically episode 4 but… we’re doing a different city this time.

VERA: So it’s really not Overground any more.

GHOUL: Well, but, Overground is a super good name for a podcast though.

VERA: That’s true. Well, it’s still Overground then.

BOTH: Welcome! To the Evil City!

[Theme plays: ‘Bolt Cutter’ by Doomtree]

GHOUL: Before we start we should probably go over what our sort of… design…?

VERA: Concept…?

GHOUL: Our design concept?

VERA: Our evil city concept that we already have because of the plot of a different thing? Um, so the concepts we have for the evil city…

GHOUL: First of all it’s evil, it eats people.

VERA: It’s evil. It eats people.

GHOUL: We, we are very inspired by I Am In Eskew, which is a podcast about an evil city that eats people. Um. And Vera has only listened to only like half of it, so I keep being like ‘Oh this reminds me of this one episode of Eskew that you haven’t listened to yet, let me spoil it for you!’

VERA: [laughing] That does keep happening,

GHOUL: and Vera’s a very good sport about it.

VERA: Right, we’re also inspired by being from cities and having lived in cities.

GHOUL: Right. I’m from Boston.

VERA: I’m from Newark.

GHOUL: And those… those are both somewhat evil cities.

VERA: Yeah… I’m from next to New York also. Y’know, growing up next to New York City is also like, that’s a whole different flavor of city what’s evil and eats people. [wicked chuckle]

GHOUL: All right, what else do we know about the evil city?

VERA: Ummm… It’s got a lot of cities in it, one of them is a ghost city, one of them is a business city?

GHOUL: Right, so, the concept is that—this is also from I Am In Eskew, kind of—the concept is that there are these parallel cities within the city that like, depending on your social and economic status, the city will have a different physical conformation, so, if you’re rich there’s some places you just can’t go. There’s just like, places that rich people can’t see. That’s how the world is. And we’re just kind of, codifying it and making it official and slightly more real than in reality.

VERA: Right. It’s physical reality in addition to a social reality.

GHOUL: Yeah. And we had this concept that… each of these cities within this city would have some unique subway stations that you cannot get there from any of the other cities. I think the main other thing is sort of a, like a tone and climate thing, which is that basically it acts as if it were somewhere in the Northeast because that’s where we’re from.

VERA: Mhm. Oh, also probably should at least mention that, saying that it’s got rich people is… well, we’ve said that.

GHOUL: Every city has rich people.

VERA: Yes, every city has rich people. I just think that the Meadowsweet Manor… mansion on the hill or on the cliff overlooking it is kind of… I don’t know, I feel like that’s an image that is in…

GHOUL: Right, because then it has to have hills or cliffs surrounding it. Or at least on one side. Which leads me to the thing I was wondering about, which is what are some major geographical features of this city?

VERA: Right.

GHOUL: I’m That Guy so I want it to be a port town.

VERA: Right… I mean… I also was like… I mean it’s… well, not that I’ve thought about the geography on purpose, but also… are we…

GHOUL: It’s a port…

VERA: Are we not going to make it a port? It’s got a river… We never said it had a river, which is…

GHOUL: We were just imagining it had a river, which it does.

VERA: Right! [goofy laugh]

GHOUL: Okay. So I’m going to draw the coast… [referring to the river] Should there be like, little islandy stuff going on?

VERA: Yeeeessss.

GHOUL: Some bullshit minor tributaries… And YOU start thinking about the first subway line… and so as we’re thinking about where the first subway line goes, we have to think about what this means about the structure of the city.

VERA: Yeeeeesss. I do think we should think about where Meadowsweet Hill is also.

GHOUL: Yeah, sure. Why don’t we mark some other geographical features in pencil?

VERA: Yeaaaaahhh.

GHOUL: Did you have any thoughts on where Meadowsweet Hill is?

VERA: Uuuuummmmm.

GHOUL: Not that it’s called that.

VERA: I dunno, I think it probably has… eugh, it probably has a fucking view of the ocean.

GHOUL: Oh, suuuure, we gonna have some beautiful oceanside cliffs? Like the port obviously is not cliffy.

VERA: The Jersey side of the Hudson is just the Palisades.

GHOUL: I don’t know what that means. I will look them up though. [Looks them up] OH SHIT. These Palisades are goooood.

VERA: Right?

GHOUL: It’s a pity that we can’t just name a geographical feature ‘The Palisades,’ because that would be showing our ass a little too much.

VERA: [heh] I mean this conversation is already… are we not?

GHOUL: But we CAN…

VERA: Also… I’m not completely sure what Palisades means and it might just be a word that means…

GHOUL: [reading off Wikipedia] ‘Sometimes called a stakewall or a paling, it’s typically a fence or defensive wall made from iron or wooden stakes.’ So not just any wall, but a wall made of stakes. And the Jersey Palisades are called that because they look like they’re made of stakes. Good old columnar basalt. Yes! We were going to draw some… ARE we going to name them The Palisades?

VERA: Well, I mean I suppose we’re writing in pencil, we can name them whatever we want.

GHOUL: Well I was just going to draw them and then we’d know they’re called the Palisades and that’s gonna be the name of the neighborhood.

VERA: Oh, sure, okay, that also works.

GHOUL: Do you want to d—‘cause I’m assuming that actually at the port part they’re not palisades? So are they up or down the coast? Or both?

VERA: I like them up the coast I think.

GHOUL: Excellent.

VERA: [mhmhmhmhm]

GHOUL: All right. So probably there’s a neighborhood of rich people on the Palisades. ‘Cause they like to be tall.

VERA: [HEHEHE]

GHOUL: Rich people are like cats, they like to be tall. Also they are bastards but only to those weaker than them.

VERA: [softly, but with feeling] Christ.

GHOUL: My cat metaphor’s doing pretty good. Okay. First! Subway! Line! Let’s go! [uncaps pen dramatically] [chanting] Bridge across the river! Bridge across the river!

VERA: Oh, you’re so right.

GHOUL: Charles MGH! There’s a stop—there’s a T stop ON the bridge over the river.

VERA: Oh, that rules.

GHOUL: It rules. Uh… yeah, so, I think the first thing we usually do when we make a new subway line is name the termini.

VERA: Rrrright. That or we’re like ‘oh no we can’t name these termini yet, we need to make one more subway line, and then we’ll have at least one transfer stop and then we can name the termini.

GHOUL: [falsetto fainting lady voice] Oh! Transfer stop! …What’s the evillest eating-peopl-est part of this city?

VERA: Oooo.

GHOUL: I want to place that and give it just a really horrible stop name.

VERA: Oh, you’re right, you’re so right. Hmm. I think I would like it to be…

GHOUL: In the armpit of the river. [sees where Vera is pointing] Interesting, very close to downtown.

VERA: Oh, you’re right, that’s very close to downtown.

GHOUL: I feel like it needs to be a little ways out from downtown where there used to be a ton of mills and manufacturing facilities that would use the river to cool their machinery and whatnot.

VERA: Yesssss.

GHOUL: So I’m proposing over here. [south of the river, just west of the island]

VERA: Oh that… yeeeess.

GHOUL: So just put a stop there and we can put a line through it later if we figure out where the line goes. But that stop is just going to be the naaaastiest Undercity-only subway stop. Also, are we doing a thing like Ghost Line where some of the stations are just nicknamed by… ‘cause if the only people who can get on at that station are people from the Undercity or the Ghost City, then like… it’s gonna have a weird name.

VERA: Right. [tsk] Oh I just started thinking about the concept of subway stations that just have to manifest themselves because they’re in a city where transit workers don’t manage to get to.

GHOUL: Aaaaah. I mean, transit workers are pretty low on the city hierarchy but I think in the Ghost City… stations might have to manifest themselves.

VERA: Right.

GHOUL: I don’t know what physical locations there are in the Ghost City that aren’t in the Undercity?

VERA: Right…

GHOUL: It might be… like places that used to be important and are no longer important enough for a subway station? So it’s like, no actual transit workers would build a subway station here, obviously, but in the Ghost City you do need them.

VERA: Yeaaah. Yeah. Right. And I guess the flip side of that would kind of be… stations that used to be subway stations but now a commuter train wouldn’t go there—an actual subway train that wasn’t just for ghosts wouldn’t go there.

GHOUL: Right. Right.

VERA: Just thinking about Orion’s place.

GHOUL: Do ghost trains stop at Orion’s place?

VERA: I feel like ghost trains might.

GHOUL: Ghost trains might… Gentle listeners, Orion is a character who lives in a subway station in the Undercity or possibly in the Ghost City. Yeah, I think ghost trains do come through Orion’s place, probably not that often.

VERA: Right.

GHOUL: Otherwise you would not want to live there.

VERA: I think we should try to come up with other qualities of the place…

GHOUL: One thing that we said, I think it’s probably in your Keening Lake notes, one thing that we said was that it would be great if a lot of the stations and a lot of the streets are just numbers? But numbers that are terrible?

VERA: Oh yeahhh. Thanks to Lee. Shoutout to our friend who… commutes in New York City. [starts laughing]

GHOUL: For saying that we should have numbers and it should be terrible. I do think that’s terrible of New York City to do.

VERA: Yeahhh.

GHOUL: To just be numbered. Where’s the… where’ the creativity? Where’s the life?

VERA: Yeah… on the other hand, the… I’m not sure that’s exactly what we want to go for in our podcast where we talk about interesting subway stop names? So… there’s a bit of a conundrum.

GHOUL: Can there just be one neighborhood where all the streets are numbered instead of named, but it just didn’t catch on in the rest of the city?

VERA: [pf!] I think that’s very funny. Sure.

GHOUL: It’s like one of the sort of new neighborhoods, but it was new one or two hundred years ago?

VERA: Yeah! Yeah, they were like, ‘we’re going to be very forward-thinking and put it on a GRID and have NUMBERS and it’s going to be SO navigable’ and then everyone else was like ‘I mean, you do you, but… I like the cow paths.’

GHOUL: [wheezy laughter] Thi—was this city designed by cows? We gotta pin this down now, this is important.

VERA: Ohhh. I mean you’re the one who has a lot of experience with cities… from cows… how evil are they?

GHOUL: The thing about Boston is that any individual road is not that bad, but any time roads intersect it’s very extremely bad, especially because it’s usually not just two roads intersecting, it’s three to five roads intersecting.

VERA: Mmm.

GHOUL: [disbelieving laughter] And they don’t intersect at right angles! You have, like, okay. In fact none of the roads go straight through the intersection. I’m thinking of the one in Davis Square, which is a fucking nightmare. So there’s a road that comes in from the east and then it kinda turns that way, so it’s almost going through straight, and then there’s another one that almost goes through straight. And there’s another one coming from over here and I think there might be another one going that way? But there’s, in the middle of the intersection there’s a triangle park, so you have to make your way around the park. And I think all the intersections in this city should be like that.

VERA: Yeah. Not that that’s any of our concern really, but, yes.

GHOUL: Well, I think definitely some of the subway stations could be named after really terrible intersections.

VERA: Yeah, yeah, no, yeah. Yeah, the thing about roads that are like that is that they’re fine as long as you don’t have cars on them.

GHOUL: [guffaws] Every road is fine as long as you don’t have cars on it. That’s a quality of cars, not roads.

VERA: Yeah. Cars.

GHOUL: Not even once.

VERA: Just stop that.

GHOUL: Now this evil city, it’s evil, so it has a lot of cars in it.

VERA: It doooooes. It does.

GHOUL: Looking at you, California. SMH.

VERA: Stop. I mean.

GHOUL: [despairingly] Vera, we have not named a single subway station.

VERA: [likewise despairingly] We haven’t. [laughs] Oh my G-d it’s been so long… and this is the only the second recording… [deep sigh] Okay. How about we do that then. I know, what a great suggestion from ME.

GHOUL: What a great suggestion! If only someone had suggested had suggested that earlier! If only SOMEONE hadn’t been like ‘Ohhhh orrrrr we could just hold off on naming them until we have more of them…’ Are you sure you don’t want to draw another subway line first??

VERA: I’m NOT sure, thank you very much. [HEHEHEHEHE]

GHOUL: Name. A subway station.

VERA: [sigh] Okay. Okay, so that’s downtown.

GHOUL: Yeah, what stuff is in downtown? Hm.. What’s your favorite thing that’s in downtown Newark that sucks?

VERA: Ohhhh. Um.

GHOUL: [whispering] That’s the secret, gentle listener. [Vera starts to cackle] Talk to Vera about Newark. Works every time.

VERA: I mean there is City Hall though. I think it would be kind of funny if the stop was right next to City Hall but it was actually named for the horrible little court building behind City Hall.

GHOUL: Ooh, what does the horrible little court building look like.

VERA: It’s a square. It’s… one square and another little kind of rectangle thing but it’s only half a rectangle and it’s the diagonal half. And that’s sticking out of it at some point.

GHOUL: Like a cartoon of a factory! Like a factory clip art you find on Google Images!

VERA: Oh. No. The rectangle isn’t sticking out upways.

GHOUL: So it’s like a flying buttress?

VERA: WHAT? No, like… [starts drawing]

GHOUL: ! It’s as if there was another building intersecting with this building!

VERA: Yes! Exactly!

GHOUL: Intersection. The station is just called Intersection. But it’s not because of a road intersection, which you can find at any subway stop. It’s because of these intersecting buildings that have been built through each other.

VERA: [laughing] Oh that’s very Evil City of it. Municipal Intersection?

GHOUL: [wheezing softly] Municipal Intersection.

VERA: Municipal Intersection!

GHOUL: This is the evillest name for a subway station I’ve ever heard!

VERA: Right!

GHOUL: All right. Where shall we put it?

VERA: Um. Hmmm.

GHOUL: It’s downtown, so this area. [just south of the river mouth] Do we want to make it this transfer station here since we’ve already drawn it?

VERA: Sure, yeah.

GHOUL: I’m going to think a little bit about the history of downtown.

VERA: [softly] Ohhh.

GHOUL: I’m trying to think where all the docks are, because, you know me.

VERA: Rrright.

GHOUL: I assume it’s right around here at the mouth of the river. Or is it literally in the river? And the docks are in this section? ‘Cause that seems like it might interfere with river traffic. Yeah, I think… so the docks are not near the Palisades.

VERA: Oh, NO. No, no, no, no.

GHOUL: Whatever’s near the Palisades it’s probably like… [resigned] beautiful. …So the docks are over here. [in the  bay just south of the river mouth] It’s weird that we don’t yet have a subway thing that actually goes by the docks. Like if you want to get to the waterfront at the harbor… we really should just move it closer to the coast.

VERA: I mean, here’s the thing. The city. Sucks.

GHOUL: Mmm. All right. Sure. That’s fair. You just have to walk eight blocks if you want to get to the coast from the nearest subway station.

VERA: Right. Or, you know, there might be a really stupid line that goes up through—like that, [crossing the river north] or something.

GHOUL: A stupid line… I do like a stupid line.

VERA: I know.

GHOUL: But if you want to get north of the river…

VERA: [incoherent]

GHOUL: It’s not for walkable. It’s for rich people.

VERA: Right. You’re supposed to get chauffeured there. Obviously.

GHOUL: I’m going to go ahead and put another line through Municipal Intersection, so that it can be the worst transfer station imaginable. Can you remember how many lines go through Grand Central, or another one of those…

VERA: What I went through more was Penn Station New York. And the thing about Penn Station New York is that both the blue lines (A, C, E) and the red lines (1, 2, 3? I believe)…

GHOUL: Fuck New York City.

VERA: Yeah, it’s really like that.

GHOUL: Shall we just cross the river twice, or does it…

VERA: Yeah! Why not? Because that’s terrible?

GHOUL: It is terrible.

VERA: [with quiet yet satisfied menace] Exactly.

GHOUL: I feel like the subway lines are at least to some degree still dictated by where actual stuff is.

VERA: Yes. But, you know, in a terrible way.

GHOUL: In a terrible way. Also it just has this terrible little dogleg to really get into the armpit of the river.

VERA: Mhm. Mhm.

GHOUL: [laughing] So it does this weird little diversion to go through the Municipal Intersection station.

VERA: Uh-huh. Oh, the thing I was saying about Penn Station is that, if I recall correctly, Penn Station is under the entire block from 7th to 8th Avenues and the 7th Avenue trains (the 1, 2, 3) and the 8th Avenue trains (the A, C, E), you cannot actually… they are not in the same subway stop. So if you want to transfer from one to the other, you have to pay again. So yeah, they both go through Penn Station but they are not actually ‘connected as part of the subway system.’

GHOUL: We gotta have some shit like that.

VERA: Oh, we will.

GHOUL: That’s Municipal Intersection. If you… Municipal Intersection is a huge stop, there’s a lot of different trains that go through there, and if you want to transfer from one of these north-south lines to this east-west line, you’re going to have to pay another fare.

VERA: So!

GHOUL: Oh, I actually get to name a subway station now.

VERA: Oh, wait, I actually had another thing I wanted to share, about horrible labyrinthine subway stations in New York City. I think it’s important that you know that the 42nd Street Port Authority bus terminal that is also a subway stop has a dedicated shuttle to Grand Central Station, which is also on 42nd Street, so they just go back and forth and they just have them so often.

GHOUL: That’s real bad, thank you.

VERA: Mhm. It is a subway shuttle.

GHOUL: It’s only for that.

VERA: It’s only for that. It’s a subway line that just goes between those two stops. Back and forth. Forever. And also the cars on it don’t have seats. So yeah. I just wanted to share that with you. Which is actually kind of the exact opposite energy from Penn Station where there’s two stops and they’re not part…

GHOUL: Right, it’s the same physical location but you have to pay again, as opposed to…

VERA: There’s different physical locations but you can go to any of the trains on them and they’re all part of the same subway stop, really, if you think about it.

GHOUL: …Streets.

VERA: You name them after, well, people, sure. Although if you name them after a person you don’t have to name them after their name. People, events, locations.

GHOUL: Geographical features.

VERA: Mhm.

GHOUL: It’s going to be a cop-out but I’m going to name this station Wharf Street.

VERA: That’s fine.

GHOUL: [hah] Also the distribution of subway lines is really something right now. There’s a small area of downtown that has very very stupidly dense subway stations, and then everything else is like, oh yeah, if you want a subway station you’re going to have to walk six miles.

VERA: [hmhmhmhmhm!] Mhm.

GHOUL: Which is very evil of them I think.

VERA: [lovingly] Yeahh. We’re just going to put a lot more subway lines I feel like.

GHOUL: Obviously—obviously. …It’s your turn to name a station.

VERA: So it. Is. Hm. Huh. Well there’s a 9 already by this subway stop over here. [in the top left corner of the page]

GHOUL: That’s fun.

VERA: Because of the qualities of this paper having a 9 on it and nothing else. [ghoul starts chuckling]

GHOUL: I thought it was blank paper, in my defense.

VERA: No, yeah, it looks very blank except for the 9. And the 9 is very small.

GHOUL: It is completely blank except for the 9.

VERA: Yeah.

GHOUL: Is that going to be like 900th Street, or is it going to be some bullshit thing.

VERA: Ummm. The thing my brain keeps producing is ‘9th Crossing.’

GHOUL: That’s great, because it’s not on the river.

VERA: 9th Crossing Boulevard? …No. That’s just too stupid.

GHOUL: Even if it were on a road called 9th Crossing Boulevard I think it would still just be called 9th Crossing Station.

VERA: You’re right.

GHOUL: Go ahead and name that. …Well, I’m going to take the easy way out again and name Palisades. But I can also do another one ‘cause I feel kind of bad leaving you with all the actually creative work.

VERA: Mhm.

GHOUL: I just don’t know what’s in this… You know what? We’re going to have to figure out what is in this city.

VERA: Right.

GHOUL: I feel like in this evil city there’s way too many bridges.

VERA: Well there’s at least crossings, and then there can just be other bridges too.

GHOUL: This is not named aft—oh, maybe 9th Crossing Boulevard actually does cross the river.

VERA: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.

GHOUL: You did not verbalize that.

VERA: Ohhhh. I didn’t.

GHOUL: All right. And then I’m going to have a bridge over here. [second bridge from the river mouth]

VERA: Yeeees.

GHOUL: Even though it could cross on this bridge, [north of Municipal Intersection] but it doesn’t.

VERA: Yeeeeeeeessss.

GHOUL: Aaaand. I’m just going to kind of extend the line [west] out into this… what’s in this neighborhood? So this is the neighborhood that’s like industrial hellscape.

VERA: [takes a deep breath of fresh dewy morning air] Aaahh. Love it.

GHOUL: From the early 1900s.

VERA: Oh yes. Oh yes. Ah man, I really regret that my phone was at 3% battery when I was taking the PATH train—Port Authority Trans-Hudson!—World Trade Center Station into New Jersey into Newark. ‘Cause. Factories.

GHOUL: I can name some stuff after some factori—oh wait, we were talking about this neighborhood. But I can still name some stuff after some factories. I want like an old factory from… like you know how factories used to have better names? Like evil in a totally different way?

VERA: Mhm. Mhm. Right, the think I started thinking was ‘Like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory! What an evil factory that was!’

GHOUL: It was a very evil… why was it called Triangle? [looks it up] …Okay, Triangle Waist Company. It was just called Triangle for reasons.

VERA: Right.

GHOUL: I was going to say Clagg and Starling.

VERA: Ooh.

GHOUL: What do Clagg and Starling make? I was contemplating heavy industry such as automotive manufacture, huge textile mills…

VERA: I was thinking about specifically chemical manufacturing, which is just a really really horrible thing to do in the middle of the city.

GHOUL: Oh it’s very evil! Also there’s probably a lot of good history about river pollution.

VERA: [beatifically] Oh yes. I love good history ‘bout river pollution. Oh! I think it would be fun if one of the ghost station stops—or just if somewhere in the Ghost City the river is still burning.

GHOUL: Yeeeees. YEEEEESSS. Is it called Burning River Station? ‘Cause that would own and it’s in the Ghost City and they can name it whatever they want. …Where do you want to put it?

VERA: Hmmm. Probably not too close to the mouth. Also at some point we should name the river.

GHOUL: Oh, we will. Not to close to the mouth but it does have to be downstream of here where all the… well, there could be chemical manufacturing plants over here too.

VERA: Yeah.

GHOUL: If there was one right here [in the large loop of the river] it could maximally pollute right here [west] and right here [east]. [chuckles]

VERA: Yes!

GHOUL: Doooooes. Orion live at Burning River Station?

VERA: Wow!! That would just be typical, I think!

GHOUL: Also it’s going to make for some great lyrics. Are there petroleum refineries here? I feel like there’s a bunch of petroleum refineries up here.

VERA: Sure. I like that. Oh…

GHOUL: So refineries are here in the bend of the river maybe… Which is a terrible place for them to but…

VERA: [soft, protracted gasp of realization] I remembered what I was going to say.

GHOUL: What were you going to say?

VERA: I was going to say that I just remembered the… I don’t remember the full name of it… the Linden Cogenerative…

GHOUL: The Linden Cogenerative Facility. Oh, it’s so dreamy. Listeners…

VERA: Gorgeous…

GHOUL: Listener, look up some pictures of the Linden Cogenerative Facility. [editor’s note: it’s called the Linden Cogeneration Plant. We were close!]

VERA: Yeah, if you can find some at night… It’s soooooo gorgeous.

GHOUL: Why did they build such a beautiful electrical power plant?

VERA: I don’t know.

GHOUL: Yeah, so there’s probably some power plants and refineries in this bend of the river.

VERA: [laughing softly] There’s something on that island.

GHOUL: It’s not an island that’s for rich people, like in Anisport.

VERA: No, it’s not an island that’s for rich people.

GHOUL: It’s a sucky island. It’s an island that’s terrible.

VERA: Yes.

GHOUL: The fact that you cannot walk off of it just makes it worse. I mean you could walk off of it by bridge, but there’s cars on that bridge, it’s not a bridge that’s for pedestrians. If you want to get off the island, you have to drive.

VERA: [softly, with feeling] That sucks.

GHOUL: What if there’s no subway stations on the island?

VERA: Oooooh.

GHOUL: It’s just like a quarantine zone.

VERA: Chhrrrrist. That’s pretty terrible. That’s pretty terrible.

GHOUL: I don’t know who they’re quarantining but holy shit. …I mean the thing is, probably at this point it’s starting to get gentrified, but it’s still… it’s gentrified but it’s also a shithole so there’s some really good restaurants there. But also. It just sucks. It sucks to be there.

VERA: Mm.

GHOUL: Yeah, what’s up here? I think we should, in honor of the Linden Cogeneration Facility, name the neighborhood Linden. But I’m not decided on where it should be. Obviously it can’t be a terminus because it’s not cool enough for a terminus.

VERA: It’s not. Sorry, Linden.

VERA: We’ve got some stuff that we know, now. Up that way is nice. Up this way is downtown.

GHOUL: There’s a state park up here.

VERA: Eugh.

GHOUL: North of Palisades.

VERA: Yeah, there is.

GHOUL: It’s really nice, you can go hiking there, but only if you have a car because public transportation does not go there.

VERA: Right.

GHOUL: There’s a highway that probably runs parallel to the coast.

VERA: Yeah. I think that, you know, maybe sometimes there’s like, the city government has some like… get kids to… let’s all take a bus with some camp counselors and go out hiking. It’s just severely underadvertised for people to actually sign up. So you only do it if you work for the city so your friend tells you about it. Or your friend works for the city and they tell you about it.

GHOUL: Right, I like that, I like that. None of the helpful municipal programs are advertised adequately, and that’s why no-one uses them, and that’s why they keep getting their funding cut.

VERA: Mhm.

GHOUL: I think another good way for the city to be evil about social programs is to have a lot of advertisements for certain ones of them, like you’ll see ads plastered all over the trains, but if you actually try to apply there’s this hellish bureaucracy that you have to go through that just makes it so hard and you will hate yourself and kind of want to be dead and almost no-one actually finishes the application process.

VERA: Yup!

[both laughing]

GHOUL: I keep thinking about the Newark Public Library, that I read about in Outwitting History. [by Aaron Lansky]

VERA: Oh man. [YIKES humming sound]

GHOUL: Anyway, in the 80s or 90s the Newark Public Library got defunded, and—

VERA: 70s-80s.

GHOUL:  70s-80s? And they just destroyed a bunch of books.

VERA: Yeah. And I was actually very interested in when… I was like ooooo? When you tweeted about that, I was very much like ohh?? Because that’s not a thing you hear about, going to the Newark Public Library they’re like ‘Oh, this building is very old and we have a long and storied history as a public library and here’s some influential library people who talked about library policy when they founded the library, or whatever.’ And you can read about those on a plaque or on the library website. But I had never heard about, ‘Oh yeah, and also in the 80s when they supremely defunded the city library, ummmmm a bunch of collections just got decimated!’

GHOUL: Dumped in the dumpster! …We should come up with a story about the public library getting defunded.

[Both start laughing like assholes]

GHOUL: And where is the library.

VERA: Okay, well, obviously there are a lot of branches of the library.

GHOUL: Yeah, but there’s a main one that if you say the library people will think of that one. …Uh, yeah, where is the library?

VERA: Um.

GHOUL: I kind of. Hm. It’s probably in the south of the river portion of downtown, yes?

VERA: Yeah. It’s honestly probably not too far from Municipal Intersection?

GHOUL: No, probably not. It might actually be on the line that goes west from there. It might just be the next stop to Municipal Intersection.

VERA: Yeah. [hovers over the southwest-bound line]

GHOUL: Oh, I mean the other line that goes west from there.

VERA: Oh, that one. [the northwest-bound line]

GHOUL: It could be either of them.

VERA: Mmm.

GHOUL: Whichever one you want.

VERA: Wait. We’re not calling the stop just ‘Library’ are we?

GHOUL: Naoo!

VERA: No. So what are we calling it?

GHOUL: I think it should have a really cryptic name like… in Boston the library’s at a station that’s just called Copley. I think that stop should have a really cryptic name, like a one-word cryptic name.

VERA: My brain is saying ‘Delver’?

GHOUL: Delmer…?

VERA: Delmer.

GHOUL: Delmer. I also want to have a station named Rush. I think it’s very cryptic, I think it’s a fun name for a station.

VERA: I agree. Not on the river, right?

GHOUL: Not on the river. No, that would be too obvious.

VERA: Yes.

GHOUL: It’s probably on one of these two lines.

VERA: Yeaaaah.

GHOUL: Just stick it there.

VERA: Yeah.

GHOUL: I refuse to even speculate on why it’s called that. …What other notable stuff is in the Evil City? What stuff do we want to have that’s in the city that helps make it more evil?

VERA: I think I want there to be a bridge right there. [I HONESTLY do not know which bridge this is referring to, good luck]

GHOUL: But do you want the subway line to go over it, or do you just want there to be a bridge there?

VERA: I want the subway line to go over it.

GHOUL: Okay. It’s going to branch obnoxiously.

VERA: Yes.

GHOUL: Are you ready for—and that branch is going to become this. [????]

VERA: [hissing] Yessss. There we go.

GHOUL: That’s annoying.

VERA: Yeah. I just think that it’s… well, I was going to say ‘good and right’ but the exact opposite of that. For there to be a subway bridge right below the island. It’s just encircled.

GHOUL: Yeees. Also, it’s encircled by—this is all the same fucking line. So this line actually crosses itself and it’s super obnoxious. I think that’s just right for the Evil City.

VERA: Mhmmmm.

GHOUL: Did we design this to look like an actual subway system? Not really?

VERA: It’s fine.

GHOUL: I mean, maybe it also intersects with this subway line and the terminus is just that.

VERA: That’s so dumb.

GHOUL: Or maybe it goes… I cannot fucking think of a reasonable place for this to go. It’s basically a loop except, hang on, it’s like a loop with a stupid little tail.

VERA: Yeees.

GHOUL: But it’s like a double loop with a stu… [both begin to laugh]

VERA: Oh this is quite bad.

GHOUL: Once we color this I’m making this the red line. I’m making the executive decision that this is the red line. Not that it’s called that, but. It’s called something, you know, horrible.

VERA: Right. I mean, you know, a decent amount of this subway system was just unplanned whatever by ghosts. I don’t know, I guess I’m envisioning the ghost subway process as pretty unconscious.

GHOUL: No, it’s definitely the collective unconscious of the city that designs them, not actual ghost city planners.

VERA: Right. I mean, that would be fun, but, no.

GHOUL: Oh, my gosh, look at the red line. It’s so stupid.

VERA: [adoring hum]

GHOUL: Let’s name this station.

VERA: Oohhhh yessss.

GHOUL: The station where you have to choose which red line to be on. And one of them goes back to the station you were just at and one of them goes out to the sticks.

VERA: [adoring hum; adoring sigh] Oh, it’s so dumb! Um, let’s see. So that’s a bridge right there…

GHOUL: Yeah, we could name it after the bridge.

VERA: We could…

GHOUL: I want this bridge to be terrible, like the train goes over it but also cars go over it, but it’s not a multi-level bridge. The train is just in the middle of the bridge. And on the other end there’s like… you know sometimes when there’s a parking garage entrance just in the street, and there will be like half of the street goes into this stupid tunnel?

VERA: Yeees.

GHOUL: That, but the subway goes in there.

VERA: Yeess!

GHOUL: On both sides of the bridge.

VERA: Yeeessss. [happy sigh]

GHOUL: And right above that before the road can come back together again there’s this stupid island with one sickly-looking tree.

VERA: On the one side there’s that, on the other side the subway goes into the stupid tunnel thing in the middle of the road and… also that’s where the train station is.

GHOUL: Okay, so the entrance to the train station is in the middle of the road. You have to cross the road from both sides to get to it.

VERA: Mhm.

GHOUL: Mm!

VERA: Mhm.

GHOUL: Good. Unsafe for pedestrians, annoying for cars.

VERA: Mhm! Mhm.

GHOUL: Right, ‘cause the thing is there’s not actually a streetlight there! So… [laughing] pedestrians just have to get yelled at!

VERA: Right! And they have to yell back!

GHOUL: Right! Right! People are always—this is the intersection where people are always leaning out of the windows of their cars to go ‘HEEEY! WATCH IT!’

VERA: ‘FUCK YOU, YOU WATCH IT, I’M WALKIN HEAH!’ [wicked chuckle]

GHOUL: I feel like it could just be called like ‘X Street Bridge.’

VERA: It could…

GHOUL: My brain is supplying ‘Fenugreek Street Bridge.’ [Vera laughs] There’s an area downtown where all the streets are named after spices. No-one knows why, it’s not like there was ever a spicemarket there.

VERA: Um… my brain is supplying me with ‘Bridge to Nowhere.’ Which isn’t true, it’s bridge to the other side of the river.

GHOUL: Could call it Nemo Bridge. Like ‘nobody.’

VERA: Hmm.

GHOUL: I don’t know how to say ‘nowhere’ in Latin but I could look it up. I have to know now.

VERA: Okay.

GHOUL: [Looks it up] See, this is great because it actually sounds a lot like a lot of native place names in New England?

VERA: Huh, yeah.

GHOUL: Nusquam Street Bridge. …Actually, what if both ends of the bridge are an entrance to the subway station. So it’s just a really long annoying subway station.

VERA: Huh. Hm. Right. Right. And they’re both inconvenient in different ways, I’m sure.

GHOUL: Yes.

VERA: Ahh. For instance, the one on the south side of the river where people… are more, is horrifically—not on the island in the river, on the island in the middle of the street. Sorry. And the other side…

GHOUL: There’s a bridge to the island in the middle of the road, but it’s torturously complicated to get there, but people still usually do that because it’s better than actually having to walk through traffic.

VERA: Yeeess.

GHOUL: It’s like… [sighs] So, over Storrow Drive, which is just north of the [Boston Public] Library, so if you get off at the library and then you want to go see the river, you have to go there, so the bridge over Storrow Drive is like, you have to walk up this stupid ramp, with several zigzags, to walk across, then you have to walk down the stupid ramp again. So if you came… and the ramp is really long, so if you came from over here, say you’re standing directly under where the bridge starts. You still have to walk an entire block to get onto the bridge.

VERA: [smiling] Mhm.

GHOUL: So on one side you just have to walk through traffic. On the other side, there’s probably fences up to prevent you from walking through traffic so you have to take the stupid bridge. [starts guffawing]

VERA: Wonderful.

GHOUL: ‘It would be dangerous if we made people walk through traffic!’

VERA: [laughing] Aah. …Wait, actually, sorry, I just realized you’re saying this and this are both entrances to Nusquam Street Bridge Station. So you’re saying that the subway stop goes under the river, but the subway goes over the bridge.

GHOUL: I can’t even imagine how this works. I totally forgot that we said that the subway goes over the bridge.

[both gasping with laughter]

VERA: I mean, I’m delighted by this.

GHOUL: No no no, so there’s a platform at each end of the bridge, underground.

VERA: [laughing] Yes.

GHOUL: You can’t walk between them, either.

VERA: Oh. Ooohh, cursed.

GHOUL: They’re just called the same station.

VERA: Ohhh. Perfect.

GHOUL: So—they’re called the same station—maybe, you know what, oh my gosh, this is good. So the northbound is on the south side of the river. The southbound platform is on the north side of the river. So if you are trying to go south and you go into the station on the south side of the river, and you pay, and you realize there’s no southbound platform, you just have to leave, [nearly incoherent] walk across the bridge—

VERA: Which is not designed for pedestrians to walk across!

GHOUL: Or you just walk to the next station you’re going to walk to.

VERA: Right!!

GHOUL: [laughing very loudly]

VERA: Oh, this is bad! This is some good stuff right here.

GHOUL: Aaaaough I love the Evil City.

VERA: I mean, of course. Of course. Oh boy. There’s so many cities in this city. Yeah, that’s how cities work, idiot. But…

GHOUL: I do want to actually mark down some of the stops that are specific to a city. [map rustling]

VERA: Oh, yeah, that’s true.

GHOUL: Actually, can we call it Gold City or some shit? Silver City, Silver City.

VERA: Mmmm.

GHOUL: Maybe Silver City is actuall the nickname from the age of economic prosperity that the Evil City had? So some people called it Silver City, in the same way that some people call Newark Brick City.

VERA: Right. Um.

GHOUL: Okay, so I’m going to write this down—no, you should write this down in your notes. We have—

VERA: A notes!

GHOUL: Silver City, the business city, which we should come up with a better name for… I keep imagining that there’s also a middle class city.

VERA: Yeah, yeah me too.

GHOUL: So there would be five of them. Can the middle class city inexplicably be named Topside?

VERA: Yes.

GHOUL: What do businesspeople do… They fly around in planes…

VERA: [very softly] Briefcase…

GHOUL: Briefcase.

VERA: Suit.

GHOUL: Suit City. Actually, I like Suit City a lot.

VERA: Actually Suit City is fun.

GHOUL: Suit City just sounds like… ‘Oh, boy don’t make me go to the business district. Fuckin suit city.’

VERA: Yeah. I like that a lot about it. Because as we’ve discussed but not on this podcast, awareness of the multiplicity of the Evil City is…

GHOUL: Varied?

VERA: Varied. And ignorance of the multiplicity of the Evil City is kind of… a privilege for the rich and for people who don’t have to deal with the Undercity or the Ghost City or anything.

GHOUL: Yeah, I think residents of the Undercity generally know that there are better cities out there that they could be in but can’t be in.

VERA: Mhm. [sing-song] You can’t get there from here!

GHOUL: You can’t get there from here.

VERA: [little laughing]

GHOUL: Mmm. I think that’s also a popular graffiti in a lot of the…

VERA: Ohhhhhhh you’re soooooo riiiiiight.

GHOUL: In the Undercity.

VERA: Oohhhh yeahhhh.

GHOUL: I know that last time you visited you had A Madness of Angels [by Kate Griffin] in your bag.

VERA: I did.

GHOUL: Did you start reading that at all?

VERA: I did start reading it.

GHOUL: So you know about the graffiti thing. There’s a graffiti thing in those books, where the graffiti sort of expresses the soul of the city, perhaps directly? It’s not clear whether all graffiti that exists was actually painted by someone. But the idea of ‘you can’t get there from here’ being a popular graffiti in the Undercity… Probably not one that was actually painted by people. Aaanyway, I feel like we’re getting distractible enough that we should probably stop podcasting for today.

VERA: Right… probably… I did want to say, I think that… I’m just thinking about graffiti in the Ghost City and being like, Hm! Hm!

GHOUL: Graffiti in the ghost city would be way more interesting than graffiti in the Undercity.

VERA: Yeah.

GHOUL: Because it contains the unexpressed feelings of people from the last one or two hundred years.

VERA: Yeah. Including people who are alive!

GHOUL : Including people who are alive. You can be alive and be a ghost.

VERA: Yeah. Want to make it very clear: you can be alive and be a ghost.

GHOUL: Yeah, tell me your thoughts about graffiti in the Ghost City.

VERA: Mainly I was thinking it’s very, it can be really pretty, probably a lot of it is kind of depressing as shit though.

GHOUL: Pretty and depressing.

VERA: Yes.

GHOUL: Right, right, because most of the graffiti in the Ghost City was not painted by anyone, it’s often a lot more elaborate and beautiful.

VERA: Mhm, mhm.

GHOUL: And it says shit like ‘you can’t get there from here’ and ‘belly of the beast.’

VERA: [hmhmhm laugh]

GHOUL: All right, if that’s all, I think we’ll sign off?

VERA: Yeaah.

GHOUL: Thanks so much for listening. LEE.

VERA: Yeah, thanks, Lee.

[both laughing]

GHOUL: I assume no-one else is going to listen to this. All right, we’re signing off now. Thank you for listening to Overground: Evil City: We’ll Name It Someday (The Evil City, That Is).

VERA: Will we?

GHOUL: Fuck. Maybe not.

VERA: Right, I thought we were thinking we just weren’t going to name it anything other than The Evil City. The City. There’s names for the cities in The City. But the city itself? It’s just called that.

GHOUL: Fair enough. All right. See you later!

VERA: [laughs]

GHOUL: Bye!

VERA: Buh-bye.

[Ending sting plays: more from ‘Bolt Cutter.’]

[entergamingxp]

DualShockers’ Favorite Games of 2019 — Tomas’ Top 10

December 26, 2019 10:00 AM EST

Astral Chain, Death Stranding, Super Mario Maker 2, and Erica were some of my favorite games from 2019, with plenty of others in the running.

As 2019 comes to a close, DualShockers and our staff are reflecting on this year’s batch of games and what were their personal highlights within the last year. Unlike the official Game of the Year 2019 awards for DualShockers, there are little-to-no-rules on our individual Top 10 posts. For instance, any game — not just 2019 releases — can be considered.

2019 has been a very odd year for games. While we didn’t have any heavy hitters like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, God of War, or Red Dead Redemption 2, everyone had their niche catered to, so I think DualShockers‘ personal GOTY lists will be quite varied this year. I have rounded up the 10 games that stood out to me the most in 2019, and they are all quite different from each other.

Of course, I did not have the time nor the patience to get through every single game that came out this year. That means some notable releases like Resident Evil 2, Gears 5, and DualShockers‘ Game of the Year Judgment did not make my list. Some great games were also just barely beat out, but I’d still recommend Ape Out, Baba is You, Samurai Shodown and Mortal Kombat 11 if you are looking for a good time. Without further ado, here are my 10 favorite games of 2019:

10. Erica

While this live-action interactive game is very short and definitely won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, it is an experience that has certainly stuck with me this year. Unlike most FMV heavy games, Erica doesn’t try to justify its use of live-action through its premise, it’s just how Flavourworks wanted to tell this story. That was an incredibly risky move, but the experience is held up by good writing and a great performance by Holly Earl.

I always love trying games that are innovative, weird, and unorthodox and Erica was able to check all of those boxes. For that reason, it’s still on my mind at the end of 2019 despite a couple of problems. If you’re done with Telling Lies and are looking for another intriguing FMV game, Erica should be on your radar. The game, not the person. That’d be quite creepy.

Check out DualShockers‘ review of Erica.

9. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

After Star Wars Battlefront 2 got struck down, EA’s Star Wars games have become even more powerful than you could possibly imagine. While the discourse surrounding Star Wars is hitting an apex of toxicity following the release of The Rise of Skywalker, fans should still remember that the franchise received two great additions this year: The Mandalorian and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

Capping off a great year for Respawn Entertainment, this game finally provided the engaging single-player focused Star Wars experience that players have been yearning for ever since EA and Disney struck their Star Wars game deal all those years ago. In fact, the only reason this game isn’t higher on this list is that I haven’t beaten it yet, and I’m sure my love for it will only grow as I play it more.

Check out DualShockers‘ review of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

8. Lonely Mountains: Downhill

I initially slept on this game upon its October release, even though I enjoyed my time trying it at E3. When I recently got an Xbox One and Game Pass, I decided to download this game and have been hooked on it ever since. Lonely Mountains: Downhill is a great podcast game, and I have now played it while listening to everything from stand up comedy to podcasts to the last democratic debate. Still, even if I wasn’t listening to anything, the game remained enjoyable.

Just like the Trials series, half of the fun is in mastering the course, and a few unique objectives across the game’s sixteen tracks and four mountains add to its replayability. Lonely Mountains: Downhill can still be quite difficult and somewhat irritating at points when you just can’t get a part of the course down, but overall Lonely Mountains: Downhill is a soothing and relaxing game to play if you aren’t doing anything else or want to do something more than just listen to John Mulaney, Ben Hanson, or Andrew Yang.

7. Super Mario Maker 2

I’m not much of a creator, but I’ve had a ton of fun seeing what everyone’s made in Super Mario Maker 2. Whether I’m rating levels for StephenPlays’ Morning Mario, getting random grab bags of levels in multiplayer or endless mode, or just browsing for myself, I am always surprised by the masterpieces and monstrosities that people can come up with if you give them the right tools.

On top of all of that, the story mode provides a meaty and varied single-player 2D Mario experience, which is something that the series has needed for years. It is my favorite platformer of 2019, and the first of many indicators on this list that 2019 has been an amazing year for Nintendo Switch. Also, Super Mario Maker 2’s multiplayer is terrible, but I love it.

Check out DualShockers‘ review of Super Mario Maker 2.

6. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate also made my top 10 list last year. In that article, I said it could make the list this year if the game added Geno. While they weren’t added to the game, we still got exciting characters like Joker, Hero, Terry Bogard, and most surprisingly Banjo.

Thanks to its hefty post-launch support and just being a damn good game in general, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is one of my most played Nintendo Switch games of the year and has managed to make my top 10 once again. Even though it didn’t work last time, I will say it again: now just add Geno, Sakurai, and we’ll talk about Super Smash Bros. Ultimate making it onto my 2020 GOTY list as well.

Check out DualShockers‘ review of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

5. Tetris 99

I was simply addicted to Tetris 99 earlier this year. I played it every day non-stop and had to actively draw myself away from playing it when I had other things to take care of. While battle royale and puzzle games don’t seem like they would mix, boy howdy they certainly do. While Fortnite remains the king and Apex Legends brought a lot of innovation to the genre, Tetris 99 proved that the mechanics of battle royale aren’t limited to just shooters.

Tetris was already great on its own–just look at last year’s Tetris Effect–and splicing battle royale mechanics in there only embellished the whole multiplayer experience. As the game has received some single-player and local multiplayer modes since launch, Arika and Nintendo’s game has cemented itself as one of the best Tetris titles of all time. It’s becoming a mobile game too. That’s always a good sign, right?

Check out DualShockers‘ review of Tetris 99.

4. Death Stranding

I really like Death Stranding, but for the opposite reasons of most people. Many despise the traversal mechanics and adore Kojima’s writing. I can barely stand many of Kojima’s cringey scenes, but love the melancholic but tense and engaging delivery mechanics. Death Stranding tends to struggle anytime other than when it does do that. While the writing can be bad and the shooting sucks, I was still totally engrossed by Death Stranding and couldn’t put it down until I finished it. Its “Strand Genre” mechanics are also very innovative, showing how multiplayer elements can be combined with a single-player experience for maximum impact.

We’ll be seeing this game’s influence on the industry over the next couple of years, whether that be via making traversal interesting alongside the online mechanics. We need more games like Death Stranding. Still, I don’t think I can ever hear another line as terrible as “Like Mario and Princess Beach.”

Check out DualShockers‘ review of Death Stranding.

3. Dicey Dungeons

PLAY THIS GAME!!! Dicey Dungeons is dice-based in both a mechanical and literal sense, and is by far the most underrated title on this list. It turns standard roguelike and deck-building mechanics on their heads with its dice-based actions and differing playstyles between its six characters. I tend to be very lukewarm on deck-building or card games, and while games like Slay the Spire are fun, that still served as a roadblock for me.

Dicey Dungeons made deck-building interesting by turning genre conventions on their head in its various playstyles. It is a game that everyone should give a whirl, even if they don’t typically like roguelikes or deck-based games. Dicey Dungeons never stops being fun and is far and away the best indie game I played this year. I don’t have a joke for this one, but I think the jokes have been on a good roll thus far.

2. The Outer Worlds

The Outer Worlds was everything people wanted it to be and more. While studios like BioWare and Bethesda have seemed to abandon their roots in recent years, The Outer Worlds revels in its old-school RPG design. It isn’t the largest or most grandiose game out there, but it is certainly one of the most well-written and replayable RPGs in a long time.

I’d rather play a 30-hour RPG 4 times than a 120 hour RPG one time. The Outer Worlds seems to understand that mentality and delivered an experience that can be quite diverse depending on one’s character build and choices. It was just barely edged out of being my game of the year and is certainly a must-play for those who have ever remotely enjoyed an RPG at some point in their lives. On that positive note, Parvati is my daughter and if any of you hurt her, you’ll be hearing from my lawyers.

Check out DualShockers‘ review of The Outer Worlds.

1. Astral Chain

I don’t really have any problems with Astral Chain and it’s super innovative, which is why I gave it a 10 earlier this year. Astral Chain features the tight and rewarding action PlatinumGames is known for but is quite accessible at the same time. Its detective case-solving portions feel like better versions of similar segments in the Batman: Arkham games. Astral Chain is one of the best-looking games on Nintendo Switch. And finally, the Legion is the most innovative thing to happen to action games since Bayonetta’s Witch Time. Creating a unique weapon-user relationship I’ve never seen in a game before, Astral Chain remains fun and manageable while still tasking players with controlling two things at once.

Just like many of the other games on this list, Astral Chain is a trailblazer within its genre and will push the industry forward. While 2019 didn’t have one or two truly groundbreaking games like previous years, games like Astral Chain show that the game industry is at an all-time high when it comes to creativity and quality. I don’t have a joke this time either, seriously.

Check out DualShockers‘ review of Astral Chain.

Check out the rest of the DualShockers staff Top 10 lists and our official Game of the Year Awards:

December 23: DualShockers Game of the Year Awards 2019 December 25: Lou Contaldi, Editor-in-Chief // Logan Moore, Managing Editor December 26: Tomas Franzese, News Editor // Ryan Meitzler, Features Editor  December 27: Mike Long, Community Manager // Scott White, Staff Writer December 28: Chris Compendio, Contributor // Mario Rivera, Video Manager December 29: Scott Meaney, Community Director // Allisa James, Senior Staff Writer // Ben Bayliss, Senior Staff Writer December 30: Cameron Hawkins, Staff Writer // David Gill, Senior Staff Writer // Portia Lightfoot, Contributor December 31: Iyane Agossah, Senior Staff Writer // Michael Ruiz, Senior Staff Writer // Rachael Fiddis, Contributor January 1: Ricky Frech, Senior Staff Writer // Tanner Pierce, Staff Writer

December 26, 2019 10:00 AM EST

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