Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is out today, and to mark the occasion, we sit down with a SPECIAL GUEST STAR: Gabe Graziani, senior community developer at Ubisoft and the official face of Assassin's Creed fandom! But first, Halloween is this week, so let's celebrate by talking about playable werewolves, after which we'll get to some of your creepiest experiences playing games.

Remember way back when game publishers weren't interested in locking down their intellectual property, and would hand the franchise keys to any porting house that had two ZX Spectrums to rub together? No? Well, this week's Top 5 does, as we take a look at some of the not-quite-official sequels that were part of gaming's early years. There's also a little chat about Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney — Dual Destinies, as well as some vague disappointment about Watch_Dogs being delayed and the resultant lack of enthusiasm in this fall's next-gen launch lineups — and then we talk about what you'd slap Tom Clancy's name on AND your favorite cover Pokemon.

This week, Mikel and the rest of the regular VGA crew take a breather, giving special guests Henry Gilbert, Carolyn Gudmundson and Brett Elston exactly the opening they need to stage an impromptu reunion of their old Pokemon Monday podcast and chat at length about Pokemon X/Y, before turning the conversation to the very important matter of Pokemon in general.

If you're not a Pokémon fan, the biggest release this week is Beyond: Two Souls, the latest beautiful, divisive, interactive game-like thing from developer Quantic Dream and its cackling French overlord, David Cage. In honor of its arrival (and to balance out all the swipes we've taken at Heavy Rain over the years), we lavish a little praise on our favorite moments in David Cage's creations, shed a tear over Tom Clancy's passing, and talk about some of the things you wanted to do in Grand Theft Auto Online before the servers were working properly.

This week, we decided to take a look at some of our favorite, sadly misguided one-off consoles, created mainly by companies who'd dipped their toes into video games once or twice and suddenly thought they could be the next Nintendo. Then there's a whole bunch of talk about Steam OS (or possibly a Greek guy named Steamos), a general loss of cohesion, and a look at your most memorable experiences standing in launch lines.