Day 0 Update #539 - The DK Bananza Bonanza

In this episode of the Day 0 Update: We talk about our experiences with Donkey Kong Bananza, the layoffs at Virtuos, and Steam's big changes to their marketplace to appease payment processors and the evangelicals that are behind them. All this and more, up next!

Full show notes can be found ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Episode Transcript

(00:18):
Welcome to Dazer Update for July20th, 2025.
I'm your host, Chris Emoji. Brandon Perkins.
And I'm Daniel Vic. And yeah, this has been a pretty
busy week of news. We have a number of games coming
out, especially next week. Yep.
We got a game being delisted. It's not a huge surprise.

(00:42):
We got Nintendo news. They're going to let you play
two things in the near future. Yeah, we got some.
The first big delay after we dida release date preview.
Yep. And probably the the least
surprising company to do it. We got a bunch of shit going on

(01:04):
in the industry in various ways.Yeah, we'll get to all that.
But we do have some good news atthe end.
But yeah, but before we get to that, we'll talk about even
playing, and I'll kick it off here.
I've been playing some Donkey Kong Bonanza.
Yep. I'm still in the the first area

(01:28):
or the first new area you get toyou kind of it starts with
Donkey Kong amongst his coworkers working out of mine
trying to get bananas as they are want to do.
That's a lot of gold in this area.
They kind of just let you go do whatever.

(01:50):
You kind of just go run around and do the the main line stuff.
Or you can go and punch a bunch of rocks and punch your way
around and collect all the the gold that you can, because that
is kind of the the coins of thisis.

(02:11):
Yeah, this coming from the SuperMario Odyssey team.
It's very much got the frameworkof Super Mario Odyssey in a lot
of ways. So the coins, the gold here is
your coins. And so if you happen to die, you
lose 500 of those gold and you get kind of different amounts of

(02:34):
gold from things because you gotlike little Nuggets and bigger
ball form like gold and you can get, you know, bigger stuff than
that. And yeah, initially you're kind
of just going around doing this,going through these different
areas as it's, you know, showingyou what controls you've got and
all that. So it makes a pretty good amount

(02:55):
of sense, though I would say thethe nature of being able to just
bust through any rocky walls andsuch around you kind of causes
the camera to go haywire. It's all over the all the time.
Yeah. Because I was playing it after
it unlocked before going to bed and as I was like nodding off, I

(03:18):
was just constantly stuck in a tunnel of my own making in like
first person view is because thecamera can't really deal with
that. You do get into more open areas.
Like some stuff happens. The the whatever the the place
that you're working near gets sucked into this vortex that

(03:43):
then drops it down below the surface level, I think they call
it. They tell you like each new
place like this is, you get to the next area and it's surface
level 100. And as you drop down even from
there without going to the next like level, it'll be like, oh,
this is surface level one O 1 kind of thing.

(04:05):
And it's you kind of run into this place that deals with a lot
of, there's not much framework to this.
Like in Odyssey, you have the ship, you kind of do your thing,
You beat a boss in an area and then you go back to your ship to
go to the next area. And so far there hasn't been any

(04:26):
of that for me. I'm basically in the the area
below like service level one O 1still at this point.
So I basically been going arounddoing, you know, busting through
a bunch of stuff, collecting bananas.

(04:46):
I think I'm at like 20 or 30 or so very much all over the place.
And much like Odyssey, it stops to tell you like all this, this
is the the title associated withthis banana.
And it's like, I just plunged through a wall and there it was.
There was no brand. It doesn't tell you.
I think ahead of time. Like Odyssey had like little

(05:06):
titles for things that could give you hints where they are,
which makes sense when you're not able to really manipulate
your environment that much. Whereas here you kind of just
bust through the place and it's like, Oh, here's one occasion
when I'm hitting the a clap thing that lets you collect all

(05:27):
the gold near you, but also can show you in like a radar fashion
of like, oh, here's a banana next to you.
There's also other currencies. There's what is it?
That's artifacts. It's like fossils, like a few
different types of fossils that you spend at the the the dress

(05:47):
shop to get more clothing items,which it seems like a lot of
those affect your own abilities.So the earliest ones I've gotten
make you swim better or faster Iguess, though I can't swim down
into the water from what I've seen so far.

(06:08):
That's probably something I'll get at some point, but I've run
into areas of water where there's like gold clearly
leading down, which may be all other things you do around here
creates giant holes to go down to the next section of the of
the the tier area that you're in.

(06:28):
It almost feels like a one piecegame, which if you know the part
of one piece where they get to the the blue line and they're
kind of hopping between islands.That seems like what this is
where they're kind of their own ecosystem essentially of sorts,
because you drop down from the area where the like mining shop

(06:50):
is AT and initially you get, youknow, sense from the the monkeys
that are hanging around there like, oh, these are the the
losers that are falling down from here.
We don't trust you. These are our, you know, golden
bananas to collect, but then they get stolen by the the bad

(07:12):
guys. And.
So there's like a despite this area being, you know, almost
like a Beachy type of area, likethis is underground, but it
looks like, you know, a whole normal place, like some of the
underwater areas that they go inin one piece and all that kind

(07:36):
of fun stuff. So, yeah, there's, there's a lot
of that where it's like, oh, this, I don't know that I want
to think about the the way this world works.
But yeah, it's, it's very much that kind of game where you just
kind of farting around. You find a lot of chess treasure
chest that will, if they don't give you gold, they give you

(07:58):
like a map or add to your map icons to tell you like, oh,
here's a fossil, here's, you know, a banana, this kind of
stuff. And you can go into the map
screen and highlight them or in them.
Though I would say that system seems pretty bad so far because
you really have to get almost exactly to where it's at to see

(08:23):
the pin. It doesn't like highlight it in
the distance in any way. So you're just kind of like
popping back and forth like, OK,wait, where was this at?
Because it's just an icon overlaid essentially.
What is a version of that area? Put a miniaturized.
So I've seen people say that there's like a little

(08:43):
performance issue with that stuff, which makes sense for the
way that they show it. But yeah, there's sometimes
where you just see icons, you'relike, OK, wait, where the hell
is this? Because it it's overlaid over
the environment. So sometimes it's like, OK, this
I thought I was here, but it's actually over this way.
And you run into like in Donkey Kong Country passion.

(09:03):
There's a lot of side things here.
You find little portals that yousaid you have to do the like
ground pound ability to activateand you get transported and
there's ones focused on taking out enemies in a certain amount
of time, some that's have 3 bananas in them that are

(09:24):
separated throughout this, you know like linear course.
But maybe one of them is very tricky to find that kind of
stuff. The toughest one of those was
like a, I think we're essentially climbing on a
ceiling. Great.
Like series of areas here that you had to get across and they

(09:46):
throw walls at you to walk off this path that you have to kind
of bust through to keep progressing forward, that kind
of stuff. And I've dropped a few times and
that's the balloons is another currency you get sort of like in

(10:06):
country, but instead of being lives, they are essentially, oh,
you fell, you know, to your death in this area.
It'll reset you back to the the nearest piece of ground that you
were on. There's those kind of ones.
There's others that are just like, oh, there's a bunch of
gold. Just fuck shit up and see how
much of it you can get kind of stuff.

(10:28):
So they have a lot of stuff likethat and yeah, for every 5
bananas you get, you get a skillpoint you can put on your skill
tree, which generally seems to do a lot of like oh, your punch
is stronger, you have more health, that kind of stuff.
Enhancing smoothie abilities. So there are a few that seem to

(10:52):
give you new abilities, but the the ones that are enhancing your
abilities seem to have a few different upgrades to them.
But also that screen seems to have more pegs off to the right
of it. So there's probably going to be
a lot more to add to it. But yeah, it's it's a very fun

(11:12):
game. It's a very loose, loosely
structured game. It's seems like you can probably
do main lining if you want. It's not very tough for any of
that. It's like the so far the the big
tough areas of these like stone crocodile creatures that show up

(11:36):
that you usually pick up a pieceof rock or explosive rock to hit
them with or throw at them that will bust them down to their
like golden skeleton core. Then you beat up and somebody by
the end of the last one has a key that will fly into a lock,

(11:57):
and you have to punch that to spin it around and unlock the
thing. And also, I guess, is a sign of
where I'm at, Pauline is still arock, a singing rock.
They help you with certain unbreakable materials that are
covering different things. They're covering a lot of
challenge stuff at certain points and also covering big

(12:22):
holes that you can go down. Yeah.
She is not turned into a human form.
She's just like what they call odd rock and you do use the the
singing, which is sort of a here's where you need to go.
This your next mainline thing. So if you kind of lose track of
where you're supposed to go, that's kind of way of

(12:43):
highlighting where you need to go.
And it'll even show you a path to that.
But it's also an interesting game because it also has like
Dark Souls elements of you get to these areas where there's big
drops down and you can literallybust a thing that drops a rope
down so that if you're down there and need to get up more

(13:05):
quickly, you just climb this rope kind of thing as maybe the
one Dark Souls thing. Otherwise, I haven't run into
too much else with this game. But yeah, it's just kind of fun
to run around and fuck with things.
You kind of talk to monkeys around that generally don't seem

(13:30):
to give you like side quests as far as I've seen.
The kind of just seem to have multiple characters that will
often point you in the same direction just in case you don't
go the, you know, the preferred way usually have somebody to be
like, Oh yeah, there's there's these plugs.
We got problems with our water. There's these weird plugs in

(13:51):
the, in the, the water system here.
You need to go and destroy all three of these things and
they'll point out which one you need to do.
There's like multiples that I'veseen point out the same thing.
So I assume that's must be why you can kind of just ignore
everything else going on and do whatever.

(14:13):
So yeah, it it makes for a really interesting experience
and certainly a collect a thon game that is much more
interesting than Donkey Kong 64 is because you don't have to
swap between different characters to collect things.
It's just Donkey Kong. And I do like his character here

(14:34):
as everybody that he runs into is like, oh, there's Donkey
Kong. He just punches things.
He's the strongest one of us. So, you know, you run up the
characters like I can't open this test, I can't do this thing
and you go punch it open. He's like, oh great, you can
have it Then since you did this,there was a lot of the
challenges that these charactersare hanging around.

(14:54):
They're like, oh, how'd you get in there?
I was like, I punched it. Of course, now he does
everything. So yeah, it makes for a really
interesting game and I'm lookingforward to playing some more of
it. I would say this is maybe
another game that's I don't wantto play in handheld mode because
the my hands naturally rest on the L&R buttons because they're,

(15:20):
you know, extended on the, the switch itself, the switch to
itself. And I end up having a lot of
times where I'm just holding down the, the whistle button or
RI think does the slap, hand slap thing for either busting up
areas to collect gold or, or thethe radar thing.

(15:46):
So yeah, it's it's it's tough when they're just doing that a
bunch accidentally because of the way that you have to hold
the Switch to when you're holding it in handheld mode.
I'm trying to use my Pro Controller more if I'm going to
play, it's in not docked mode, but also I'm just probably going
to start playing it more in docked mode when I can because

(16:09):
it's a game that looks really nice in, you know, full screen
and all that. So yeah, yeah, that's doggy.
Khan. Bonanza seems really good so
far, so I'm looking forward to playing some more of it and
seeing what other weird stuff isin there.
I have found Cranky Kong and Ramsey Ramby.

(16:31):
He complaints that you weren't around when all the shit went
bad, so he had to bring Ramby down with him to try to solve
the problem. Then you run into him and he's
like, all right, well, you can do it now.
And he gives you, I think a freebanana whenever you find them.
So yeah, there's there's a lot more going on in this with a lot

(16:53):
of the the picking up rocks element that you can connect to
things. And there's a lot of weird
little extra mechanics that in this game that are also good as
though we are running into the vine stuff that will just be the
one thing that does damage to you that I've seen so far.

(17:17):
As like the one thing I died on is I used rocks to break it up
but had like 1 little piece I didn't see and I just kept
hitting it and you know, died asa result.
Like I've only died twice so far.
One was in a challenge stage because I kept falling off of a
thing and the other one was justdying on a stupid little piece

(17:40):
of mine that I didn't see in this area.
But yeah, it's it's one of thosegames like a Super Mario Odyssey
where you kind of want to explore or be nook and cranny
and kind of find all the the weird little side stuff before
you kind of get to the mainline stuff.
At least for me it is. I kind of finding the the things

(18:00):
that will unlock a lot of the cool outfits and all that.
Right now I just have some basicstuff like a new tie that's I
think makes more treasure chest show up when you're punching
around into rock and some pants that's make you swim better.
Funny thing in one of the opening cutscenes is he has, you

(18:23):
know, pants on working in the mines and then the big like
black Holish kind of thing goes up and sucks his pants off of
him. They kind of have like a weird
little Bart Simpson thing from the The Simpsons movie where he
falls down and has a big rock crash onto him, everything but

(18:44):
his crotch. Essentially.
There's like, oh, OK, they're the highlighting that he's naked
and they do call it naked in thethe clothing screen when you
don't have pants on. So like, oh, they covered it
with hair, obviously any sort ofgenitals, but they're
acknowledging that's this is nota Donald Duck situation or

(19:08):
anything. But yeah, that's Donkey Kong
Bonanza. I'm looking forward to playing
more of that. The other thing I played this
week is Golden Tea Arcade Classics, the digital clips
collection that came out on the same day as, you know, Donkey
Kong Bonanza. That's on everything. 30 bucks.

(19:30):
It includes the, I think the first seven of the games that
were released in the arcades in the the 90s and early 2000s.
It's a very good collection I'veplayed so far.
I'd say maybe PlayStation 4 or five and PC might be the best

(19:56):
places to play this because on PC there are some trackball dial
accessories. I don't know how easily they
work with this thing. But on PlayStation you can they
have an option to use the trackpad on the the dual sense
and the DualShock 4, which workspretty well as a substitute for

(20:16):
it, at least once I got used to how the controls work.
They do also have, you know, button based versions where
you're essentially kind of, if you don't know the, the way that
the, the trackpad worked, essentially you had three
directions down to pull the rollthe ball back.

(20:38):
That would determine, you know, if you're going to do like hook
shots or whatever. There's always a diagram on the,
the side of the machine or you can hit R2 on the on the
controller to pull up a bigger version of that.
So you can kind of see like whatthe what angles you might want
to go with your shots if you're not just going straight.
And then on the the follow through, you pick one of the top

(21:02):
three directions that will finish that off.
If you're just doing a straight shot, it's just straight down,
straight back up. And the thing that took me a bit
with the the trackpad is that it's not, it's not like a right
stick thing that like the Tiger Woods games would do where it's
a, a full motion back and forth.If you're doing these different

(21:28):
shots, you can sit there and swipe it in the the bottom
direction that you need to and then stop touching and then
start swiping it up the way thatyou want.
So it's not necessarily having to do a weird direction thing
with it. It's kind of a, it gets much

(21:49):
easier once you realize that kind of stuff and also that the
follow through now you're swiping up is the the most
important part of a lot of your shots, especially on the on the
green with the putter kind of thing where your your approach
shots from the, the bunker or the rough around the green, a

(22:12):
lot of stuff. Once you kind of get the hang of
it, I was doing a lot better, sinking longer putts and getting
a few good approach shots into the into the hole or getting
very close kind of stuff. And yeah, it works pretty well.
And these are the thing about these games is that they do not

(22:38):
all the sequels were upgrades for the machines.
If you don't know your arcade stuff, a lot of machines were
basically upgrade kits where you've had the one of the the
base kits, base machines, you could essentially just open it
up, pull out the the old kits and plug in the new one and not

(22:59):
have to change buttons or anything.
And they have some of this art in there for the arcade Flyers
that are as they were sold to oryou know, sent out to arcade
operators of like, hey, this is an easy upgrade kit.
You get the marquee stuff that you have to change out.
But otherwise, you know, you don't have to change the buttons

(23:21):
or anything super expensive. And so a lot of the visuals for
this game, these games don't really change too much.
It's mostly like some UI stuff. They change with each release.
And these are kind of different arcade games than I was thinking
the way they worked because I was assuming you might, you

(23:43):
know, log in with your initials and it would apply every like
record that it has to that, but you have to kind of keep
entering it in over and over again.
So it usually once you've started playing a machine and
entered in your initials, it'll then just auto, you know, auto

(24:05):
put those in. You just confirm it the the X
button a couple times to do that.
So yeah, it and it has all the the stuff you want for this or
safe states. There's no rewind, but they have
mulligans for this. Maybe the one issue I have is
that you can adjust the mulligans from like 1 to 18.

(24:30):
And I kind of wish there was just an infinite option.
Otherwise you're just, if you'retrying to figure out how to play
it, you end up just wasting a lot of those.
And they do have practice, a practice mode with a bunch of
situations to try out if you want to figure that out for
yourself. I was just jumping into the game

(24:51):
itself to figure it out and eventually got there.
But yeah, it's a, it's a game. It'll take a little bit if
you're not a veteran of it, as Iwas not.
I maybe played one of the original versions as a kid when
it was at a restaurant my dad would take me to on occasion.

(25:11):
I had a couple machines there, Ithink was usually a Golden Tee
and a Miss Pac-Man. And so there's like 2 of the
arcade games I played the most as a kid.
So it was nice jumping into thisbe like, Oh yeah, this there's a
lot of interesting stuff here asfar as playing golf and
eventually became a huge game inlike the the 2000s and 20 tens

(25:36):
where they, I believe they look a lot better now and have
Internet connectivity so they can have more tournament stuff.
The Flyers have a lot of information about tournaments on
them. They're running them back then.
But I think more is a a local thing, inviting people to, you
know, the bar, the arcade, whatever to do, tournaments and

(25:58):
such. But yeah, everything's free play
here. So even though you can hit the
pad to insert credits, everything's on free play.
So that doesn't really matter for this.
But you can play one to four player games for all that.
There's also two bonus games andit's there's a was there's a

(26:19):
bowling game and there's one that's like a a shuffle board
game kind of thing. The bowling game is pretty
simple. You just swipe it up on the
touch pad to send it. It has options for trying to do
like hook shots with that. That's maybe the, the toughest

(26:41):
game to get good at because it'svery particular and how you're
spinning things and, and how youlike visually your ability to
tell where you need to aim kind of is a little bit more of a
challenge. So that's one that's they have
achievements and trophies for the, the shuffleboard game and

(27:03):
the bowling game. And the, the bowling game has
one for getting a 200, which I think I've gotten like 14150.
My plan is basically just do a safe state before each each
frame and just try and get a a strike or a spare with it and
then move on to the next one andsave again before I do that.

(27:25):
So I just have better an option there.
There's no mulligans or anythingfor that.
But also it's so quick you can finish a whole 10 frames in like
5 minutes. But the shuffleboard ones were
pretty interesting. It's pretty sure this, if you
would tell me the the developersare Canadian, I would believe it

(27:46):
because this, this game in particular has a lot of Canadian
voice acting in it in a funny way.
And yeah, it has like 5 different games in it's, some of
them are basic like bocce ball style thing or shuffleboard kind
of style thing. There's a curling style thing
there and you're just basically running these little roller

(28:10):
pucks down the board against an AI or another player.
You're kind of often watching them try to get this onto, you
know, bullseye looking thing andthen try and hit them out of it
or get your own shot close to itand getting scored based on that
stuff. Fairly simple idea for there.

(28:33):
But they also do have like a a tougher mode for that.
Bowling has a similar thing called think flash mode or since
you have numbers on the top of the screen that it's lighting up
as time goes on. And basically when you hit the
the pins is what score you get off of that.
Though I don't really I don't really understand the scoring on

(28:55):
that. So I didn't really play that one
too much. But yeah, it's a it's a fun
little collection here of golf games.
It's, you know, fairly bare bones one with no real story to
it or anything. That would have been nice to
have some history of the of the series kind of thing and some,
you know, interviews with the developers and what not.
But that seems to not be what they were going for here.

(29:19):
Maybe they didn't have access tothe devs from the original games
or whatever. But for what's there, it's a
very fun collection. I'm going to keep playing some
more here and there. So yeah, that's a it's a fun
one. And the last game I played the
Shadow Labyrinth, one of like a handful of Band and Amco games

(29:40):
that they've got coming out overthe next few months.
And this one is basically what if you had a Metroid game, but
Pac-Man was involved in it. And they start off with a fun
little scene of just like space mech fight situation as they're

(30:01):
kind of teaching you some basic controls.
And the weird thing with the thecontrols is that they have
different controls based on the different forms you have.
But yeah, initially you kind of do this and then things get
messed up and the mech, the Pac-Man mech gets sent down onto

(30:22):
the planets and you kind of wakeup and you're told you're #8 I
think you're a clone of maybe the operator for the mech.
They don't really tell you anything as the the Pac-Man,
which is named Puck, which we don't know is the was the
original name for Pac-Man was Puck Man.

(30:45):
Then the devs realized that maybe not making it so easy for
teenagers to scratch out a thingand have it say fuck man was a
good idea. So they said, well, we'll just
call it Pac-Man, make that work.So that was a fun little thing
here They called the little Pac-Man drone thing that's, you

(31:06):
know, goes around with you is Puck.
He's kind of telling you some story stuff and you know,
tutorializing how you're doing things.
You go to pick up this sword andyou can't pick it up to your
character sort of has like a look over you, but I don't know
if you have arms or not. But you get a like a prosthetic
robot arm that is able to handlethe sword and do attacks and all

(31:30):
that kind of stuff. And from there just kind of
keeps adding more and more stuffto it makes this kind of more of
a complicated Metroidy game. So it's got elements of like
Hollow Knights and a number of other games in this genre.
You fight a lot of enemies. Mostly so far I've been like

(31:53):
animal types of enemies. I haven't fought any big mex or
anything just yet. I did find a big giant ball that
you kind of turn into whenever you be the boss, the kind of
takes over your body and turns into a big like, let's just say

(32:17):
almost like a Venom symbiote style version of Pac-Man and
swallows up the enemy and you absorb the power from that.
It's like one of the first signslike, oh, this is, yeah, this is
going to be a lot of weird Pac-Man stuff layered on to this
game that otherwise would be a fairly simple Pac-Man thing or
Metroidy thing. And from there that that first

(32:40):
boss you kind of are able to turn into a Pac-Man form
whenever you run over what's they call D lines, essentially
like railings you see around theenvironment that you have to
activate. Generally once you do that, you
kind of turn to this Pac-Man form that's has a jump ability

(33:02):
so you can jump between, you know, you know, over gaps or two
other rails, that kind of stuff.There's an attack elements
there. We kind of turn back into your
like human form to attack with the sword and then turn back
into the Pac-Man form. That stuff is a little bit
clumsy so far from the way it's feels because you can't just

(33:25):
attack enemies that are near you.
You essentially are jumping off in the process.
So I've definitely fallen off into dangerous areas and died as
a result of trying to figure that stuff out.
That's kind of stuff that takes a bit to understand.

(33:45):
It keeps track of all the the pop ups for controls and such
and you can check all that stuff, but it definitely gets
very into the weeds on how a lotof this stuff works.
There's an automatic movement mode when you're in that Pac-Man
rail mode. I've turned that off because you
don't always want to just be constantly moving, especially

(34:06):
when you're trying to deal with enemies and make precise jumps
to get around. And then, yeah, you kind of deal
with that stuff. It's got some souls like
elements to it's where you run into essentially what is a, a
bonfire type equivalent where you refill your s s flask.
You get to refill your health when you take enough damage.

(34:31):
What you have to, you're going to do that back at the these
like bonfire points that are also your save points.
You can teleport between them there.
But there's also a lesser equivalent of that that you
can't teleport or you may not beable to teleport.
You definitely can't do upgradesthrough it and you can't refill

(34:51):
your flask from it. I don't think I could be wrong
with some of those mechanics there because it does throw a
lot at you, but they're versionsthat will just essentially save
for you and others will let you do more with them.
That's kind of a a thing to dealwith.

(35:11):
And then you get to a boss that essentially is where you get
your mech form, where after you beats enough enemies, you fill
up this meter, you can turn intothis mech and really, you know,
take out enemies pretty easily and bosses.
So for all the bosses have been pretty easy for what they are.

(35:35):
I think the second boss I fought, which is a character
that kind of runs away afterwards.
So it's kind of one that you will, as I assume linked to your
past in a way. So they kind of keep running off
after they challenge you and youtake them out.
It's a it's an interesting doesn't for the the mech does

(35:56):
not take any but like gaps with spikes and steam spewing all
over them that would normally kill you or do damage to you
that the mech can just run through.
But when the mech, when you get the mech form, you also get this
ability to collect materials from these enemies, which is

(36:17):
where the upgrade stuff starts to go into full OverDrive as you
get a few things you can get with just the basic currency.
But then there's a bunch of stuff that requires materials
and it'll show you the in the the menus that like this
currency can drop from, you know, some of them have like two

(36:42):
dozen enemies that can drop the same thing.
So it's not super complicated, but it is trying to figure out
which ones have special materials that you need for
certain upgrades. And so that can be a little
frustrating. You can do that collection in
your human form, but it uses up your stamina.

(37:03):
You have a stamina that's when you dodge, you dodge rolls and
and this collection thing will take up a chunk of your stamina.
So if you run into areas that are full of enemies, it can pick
up multiple enemies at once, butit can be very finicky about
that. So sometimes you'll just go to

(37:24):
pick stuff up and if you're pointing the, the analog stick
or the D pad in the wrong direction, it can go into, you
know, almost like eight way in diagonals, upwards, downwards,
that kind of stuff. I've had a number of times where
I try to go collect the thing and I'm pointing the stick in
the wrong direction, you know, the slightly the wrong direction
and it misses it and you don't get much time to collect things

(37:49):
like a few seconds do. You can lose materials and
there's like a lot of frustrating stuff with that,
especially when you're faced with a bunch of enemies that are
kind of tough to take down and then you're losing stamina to
the collection thing and all that.

(38:10):
It's, it ends up becoming a verycomplicated game.
Where I'm at right now, I've gotten out of the like the
mountain facility that you're infor the first hour and a half or
so. And I'm in the point where I'm
fighting like natives on this planet that's are always coming

(38:30):
after you kind of thing. And then I'm trying to get a
save point somewhere around hereso I can breathe a little more
easily. But I just kind of end up
running from this other area over a few screens until I get
to there. Yeah, it's it's a pretty solid
game. 30 bucks might be a bit much or what I've played so far.

(38:51):
I assume in the next few months it'll probably be on sale for 20
to 25 bucks. It might be a better price point
to jump in, especially they can do some up updates and maybe
tune some things a little bit better.
But yeah, so far been enjoying that a bit.
But it's not it's probably the worst of the three here that

(39:12):
I've been playing. But yeah, not a bad game, just a
little. It loves to throw jargon at you
that you have no what it becauseit's all in world stuff that's,
you know, Puck describes things as and it's like this is a bunch
of gibberish that I as a person trying to play this game doesn't

(39:34):
understand when it's talking about D lines and I guess a few
other letter line things. I don't remember a lot of it's,
I just usually my eyes glaze over when I see that I'm like,
this is a this is nothing here doesn't mean anything.
But yeah, that's Shadow Labyrinth.

(39:55):
But yeah, that's been pretty much what I've been playing.
So how about you, Brandon? What have you been doing?
Well, As for me, the newer thingI'm playing is Neo Feud, which
is this old kind of point and click.
Adventure Gang came out in 2017.Yeah, it's basically like a like
a cyberpunk ish future that takes place like in 2033 where

(40:17):
there's like all of these synthetic peoples that are all
around you play as one of them working as like a as like a
working as like a private detective trying to solve a
murder. Because whatever function you
were originally made for either no longer exists or you're just

(40:40):
sort of obsolete. But The thing is, it's it it's
got this sort of it, it ended upbeing like weirdly, I guess
timely for some reason, because one of the things you find out
early on is that all of the extremely wit rich and wealthy
of the Neo feud universe have essentially all gone to these
isolated floating cities that are like parked over most of the

(41:04):
major areas of the planet. And at least in the United
States and or what used to be the United States.
And basically they've started taking on like the the customs
of the old French aristocracy before the revolution.
And it's just, I haven't really gotten into it that far, but

(41:28):
just automatically it's like, wow, this is weirdly timely and
I don't know why, but I'm kind of looking forward to playing
more of that. But the other big thing I've
been playing is systems is stillthe system shock to remaster.
And I'm just about done with it.I've got like two more areas I
got to get through and then that's the game.

(41:49):
Unfortunately, the from what I remember back when I originally
played this game, these are a part of the hardest part of the
entire game, mostly because at least the area I just got
through, which is arguably the worst part of the entire game.

(42:10):
One of the like main missions you have to do, one of the main
tasks is you have to hunt down these, these dark like lava eggs
that are like hiding in these little crashes like all over
this area. And it's not really linear
because kind of you can find like maybe a bit about half of

(42:31):
them out in the open, but the other ones you have to like,
actively go out and hunt for. And the worst part is that
because of the way this game is,the game is now sending out like
its strongest enemies at you allat once.
So we're talking about like the security droids, which are like
these huge, like hulking Mex sized robots that have like

(42:53):
lasers and rockets to shoot you.We're talking about the Cyborg
assassins, which are literally just ninjas that throw knives at
you. And then there's the the what
are sometimes called the, the hominids or the offspring or
whatever, basically these huge, like weird, hulking, fleshy
creatures that are basically like the strongest thing in the

(43:15):
entire game, and they throw morethan one at you.
So you're doing that on top of trying to find these eggs.
But then then it also adds probably the other thing,
probably the one thing about anyfirst person game that is always
just the worst idea period. And that's platforming.

(43:35):
And this isn't like the type of platforming where like you can
kind of see where you're going to go.
No, this is more of the I'm going to go in that general
direction and pray that I make contact with where I'm supposed
to land. Because remember, this is like
1999 two thousand. They still haven't hadn't gotten
around the idea of like how you're supposed to do jumping in

(43:56):
a first person shooter just yet.But yeah, I I finally got
through that part last night andnow I'm in the second to last
area, which is very hard. Not hard in the sense like the

(44:16):
last one was where it was a bunch of bullshit, but like,
genuinely difficult because again, you got a bunch of strong
enemies. You've also got to hunt for
stuff to get these openings out.And it's also just very, very
disgusting because you're literally inside of a giant
Organism in this part of the game trying to find its brain

(44:40):
and kill it. But yeah, I've already started
my review and I should have it on the website for this time,
this time next week, so y'all belooking out for that.
But overall it's still the game I remember it in all the best

(45:01):
and worst ways possible. It's still a really solid game
of that era. It's still made a bunch of
advances in gaming that were mind blowing when the game came
out. And All in all it's still plays
all right. But compared to like the games
that would come after it, be it Bioshock, which was Irrationals

(45:23):
next project, or hell, even DeusEx, which released around that
time period and that game's like25 years old.
System Shock to there are a lot of parts of it that just haven't
aged well at all. But yeah, that's what I've been
playing. So, Dan Rib, what about you?

(45:45):
Yeah, the main thing on my plateis primarily been Donkey Kong
Bonanza. I know Chris hasn't gone too
far. Me on the other hand, this is
like all I've been playing. Like there's been some other
stuff, but this is primarily been like my comfort food for
right now. I'm about 18 hours into the
game. And to put it to perspective,
you know, it's very similar to games like Mario Odyssey where

(46:08):
you can mainline them, but at the same time, it's like the
jump between Super Mario Sunshine or sorry, Super Mario
Galaxy to Super Mario Odyssey was huge.
I forget how many stars were in were in Galaxy, but Odyssey has
somewhere around like 700 moons.Doctor Kong Bonanza has around
650 golden bananas or the bananium shards or whatever

(46:31):
they're called. And yeah, so this is like
something I didn't even really expect at all.
It's not that I was on media Blackout, but honestly, like
this game wasn't, it didn't really capture my interest.
So I did not watch the full director, things like that.
And you know, I watched a few short videos.
I do know that the Rock turned into Pauline, and I thought that
was pretty cute. But yeah, popped in the game and

(46:54):
I have been amazed. This is easily the best doggy
Kong experience I've ever had inmy life.
And I'm really, really enjoying it so far.
And yeah, like the, the, the main reason why this game is so
good is that it's like a culmination of a lot of what
made the Nintendo Switches best games great.
Like, you know, going back to The Legend of Zelda, Breath of

(47:15):
the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom, you know, the one thing
that'll definitely set that gameapart from all Zelda's is just,
you know, the, oh, shiny is whenever you see a shrine,
Doctor Khan Bonanza has those shrines to an extent.
They call them challenges. So you know, every, every level
that you're in, or they're called layers in this game
because what you're doing is you're diving through to the

(47:39):
Earth score in order to help Pauline get back to the surface.
I know it makes no sense to go to dig, to go up, but it is what
it is there. And yeah, like, you'll come
across all these challenges thatyou can open up using Pauline's
voice. And they can be different things
like, you know, arena rooms where you want to kill all the
enemies to finding a way from point A to point B, similar to

(48:02):
those secret areas from Mario Sunshine, or even going back to
things like retro areas. So one cool game that I'm pretty
sure we'd all expect was like, they they they pretty much go to
2D mode. Allah Dark Khan Country.
And that being said, while it does give you that 2D plane, you
do still have a lot of the movesthat you had, a lot of the

(48:25):
modern stuff at your disposal. You know, Chris mentioned
patting the ground. There's there's a destruction
that you can cause with your fists by just beating up
terrain. You can do that in the 2D levels
too. One thing that I like is just
the way everything has differentrules.
Like for example, if you want a double jump, you have to be
carrying something. So whether you're you're
carrying a rock, you're carryingsome dirt.

(48:47):
This stuff allows you to throw it, it allows you to ride it, It
allows you to use a double jump.So when I went through the 1st
like retro Dunkin Khan country esque level, you have to find
like 3 bananas and I found the last two, you know, I went
through the common path and I did not know where the first one
was. So, you know, lo and behold,
well, we're not before embargo anymore.

(49:08):
So I, I looked up a guide and yeah, the, the main way you got
the, the first banana that you couldn't find is by backtracking
through the very first part of the level and getting into D KS
house. And if you remember from the
original bucket Kong country, there was a trampoline or bed in
the middle of his house or Hut that you can use to get another
item at the very top. And it's the same thing here.
So, you know, have having those little Easter eggs was pretty

(49:31):
cool. And yeah, you actually have to
use some effort to get to it because you actually earned or
learned about the double jump like, you know, a few minutes
before that. So it really goes ahead and test
your knowledge. So there's your comparison
there. And then another comparison I
want to make to those all the games is with the bonanzas.
So and, and breath of the wild tears of the Kingdom.

(49:54):
You can use the Chica slate or tablet or whatever to, you know,
summon the Champions, right? You can summon the Goran, summon
the Zorras, summon Dorito and things like that.
And you can do things like fly, have more have more powerful
punches and a roll through. And it's the same same sort of
thing with Doctor Khan Bonanza and they call them bonanzas.
So the first one you run throughis is the elder ape.

(50:18):
And basically he's just a more powerful doctor Kong when you
use it. There is also a zebra and this
zebra allows you to like run on any terrain including water,
where as you'd probably just fall off.
There's also a snake that can jump really high and stuff like
that. I don't want to spoil them all,
but it's also, it's also really cool just seeing how you're able

(50:38):
to get through all these things.Chris mentioned the game being
fairly easy to mainline. That's definitely the case
throughout any point in the game.
You can hold on the L button to see where you have to go on the
map in order to move the story forward, and you can always do
that. But at the same time, it's like
it's going to be really fun justexploring every nook and cranny
using the abilities you have. And normally it's going to

(51:01):
result in you finding something,whether it be a banana or a
fossil, which you can use to which you can use as currency to
get Donkey Kong and Pauline new costumes.
And these costumes have different kinds of abilities.
So for example, in the first world, the costumes allow you to
swim faster and then Pauline's costume allows you to use your
bonanza for a longer period of time.

(51:22):
So yeah, like, even though I'm not someone who really wanted to
dress them up too much, at the same time, like, you know, you
have to acknowledge all the Fortnite kids who want to be
able to customize to their hearts content.
But it's cool that, you know, they actually have actual
effects to them. Granted, like sure, it'll, it'll
make a relatively easy game easier, but at the same time,

(51:42):
it's like cool, I I definitely do have a reason to want to look
for these things aside from justbeing cosmetics.
Speaking of cosmetics, you can also change doctor Kong's colors
by buying different dyes. These don't do anything.
They just pretty much change theway you look, and I don't really
care for any of them. Like I don't know, I'm, I'm, I'm
not someone who wants to run around with a green DK.
So you know, I'll, I'll go aheadand skip through that there.

(52:06):
Another thing that you'll find are areas where you can just go
to sleep again, like the game isn't isn't too hard you you
will die a few times, but it is easy to just get hit by things
because in my opinion, like it doesn't DK doesn't really do a
good job showing pain. You can go ahead and get hit by
multiple enemies and it doesn't really feel like much.

(52:27):
And the only time you'll really,like, feel pain as DK is either
if you like, fall into a bottomless pit, which of course
leads to death, or, you know, jumping into lava or hot oil or
things like that. Because, yeah, then Doctor Kong
will all of a sudden you'll losecontrol of them because he's
running and, and, and, and the pain that he has.
But yeah, like, it's really easyto deplete your hearts in the
game. So you end up finding yourself

(52:48):
looking for a way to sleep it off.
And when you do sleep it off, itactually leads to like one of
the more charming parts of the game.
Everything that Pauline says is fully voiced.
I don't know who her voice actress is, but she does an
extremely good job. And the conversations that she
has before going to bed with ZK are, you know, very charming.
They definitely add some character, they add some lore,

(53:10):
they add some personality to everything happening.
And that's something I really appreciate because I feel like
Mario Odyssey, despite how much I loved it, lacked a lot of
that. It was very Mario, but I didn't
really care about what I was doing.
Like you're, you know, you're going to save Peach from Bowser,
whereas with Donkey Kong, like your whole thing is being able
to bring Pauline back to the surface.

(53:31):
And you know that that'll that'll call back memories of
the original Donkey Kong game inthe 80s for those who have
played it, where, you know, you use Jumpman and you try to save
Pauline from the evil Donkey Kong, but it's like, was he
really being evil? We don't know.
Maybe like maybe this is does this actually explains it?
Then again, like maybe not because there is a lot of issues
with lore and chronology here. Like just just to say it like

(53:54):
Diddy Congress in this game. And so is Cranky Kong.
That being said, like Cranky Kong is supposed to be the
original DK. So if you try to put two and two
together, like the way people dowith the with the Zelda lore,
it's not really going to make much sense.
But at the end of the day, like you have to be able to find
different ways to appreciate thehistory, the music, all is all
really well done. The DK rap does definitely find

(54:15):
its way into the game. Beating certain enemies allows
you to unlock records that you can use to play at the, you
know, the various places you sleep or things like that.
And yeah, it's been really, really cool.
I've also really enjoyed the theway the levels are paced, as I
mentioned, like there are bananas everywhere that there's
over 600 in the game. So don't be surprised if like

(54:37):
the first level you go through has like 50 of them.
And you know, I I believe you actually do have the ability to
get everything within one go as long as you're able to find that
levels bonanza. But yeah, like, it's been really
fun just being able to destroy the environment there.
There is gold aplenty. The gold allows you to pretty

(55:01):
much power up your bonanza abilities.
In addition to you can use them to pay various people in the
game to give to give you things like warp barrels and create
bridges to just open up shortcuts within these worlds
just because they're so expansive.
That being said, like, you know,if you follow the main path, you

(55:21):
just find a way to get lower andlower.
The bosses are all pretty easy. But yeah, it's just the the way
that the levels are designed that I that I really appreciate.
I just finished one that takes place in like a, in a fast food,
in a fast food themed theme park.
And, you know, you have to, like, ride a roller coaster and

(55:42):
shoot people with salt. And then at the end of the day,
like, what you're trying to do is try to build the biggest
burger possible by looking at all of the attractions that are
in this theme park. And yeah, definitely been a
really good time. I think I'm in the last World.
Or if it's not the last World, I'm I'm, I'm at a very, very
late one just because like, yeah, the the difficulty is

(56:03):
definitely shot up. You do have to think a little
bit more about what you're doing.
And it really reminds me of the space worlds in Super Mario
Odyssey where, you know, they they weren't colorful and they
were really dark with the way they were approached.
And yeah, I'm definitely enjoying it so far.
So hopefully by the by, by by the next time we will we get to
the next day 0 update, maybe I'll have beaten it.

(56:25):
And I'm hoping that they have asgood a post game as they have in
Mario Odyssey. But yeah, I am definitely
impressed with this so far. And it's easily one of the best
games I've played. And yes, it is the best game on
the Switch to right now. So Brandon, whenever you get
your Switch to, you want to makesure you get done along.
With I'm making a note of it. Anyway, moving on, still playing

(56:46):
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and four.
I've unlocked all of the coursesin three, which is pretty much
like what I want to say is like what you want to do in order to
really beat the game. Like obviously the game is a
beat is all about getting the highest score with with with the
skater as possible. But for me, I just want to be
able to unlock all the courses because in order to do that, you
have to clear out as many goals as possible.

(57:08):
Some are a lot harder than others.
Some require you to actually like interact with certain
things that are hard to get to because they're all, they're all
pretty much skill based. And when your skater is just
moving, like without much agencyfrom you, it gets a little bit
more difficult that way. And when you're upgrading your
abilities, not only are you faster, but in my opinion, you
also, even though it's easier todo tricks, it's a little bit

(57:30):
more hard to maneuver. So it's really just finding that
comfort zone along with the factthat every run in the game is 2
minutes long, which is not really long if you really want
to like explore things. So that being said, like there
really isn't any sort of penaltyfor to take taking too long.
It's really just about just about how you want to go through
it. I remember like seeing a Reddit

(57:51):
post about how much people hate Tony Hawk compared to Skate and
I'm like, there's the way Tony Hawk has always been.
So I'm not sure like what you'retalking about there.
But yeah, that's been about it. Moving on.
I've also played a little bit more college football 26.
I haven't been playing as much because I platinumed it, so I
don't really see much of a reason to play it anymore.
I'm ready for Madden, but yeah, I still play one on the ones

(58:14):
with my friends every once in a while and I'm really enjoying
that. And then lastly, I'm playing
Dragon Quest 3 HD 2D Remake. I have about 10 hours into that
game now and yeah, I'm still doing it on Jackie Quest mode so
I don't have to worry about dying all that much because it
just isn't all that fun. And I want to be able to finish
this before wanting to come out later this fall.
So yeah, that's been about it. All right, yeah, let's get to

(58:38):
some news. First up here, we have new Game
Pass editions for the rest of this month, kind of filled with
some nice stuff here, things that I didn't necessarily know
was going to be on Game Pass. But yeah, the stuff that's
available now. Let's see.
It looks like High on Knife cameback to Game Pass on Ultimate PC

(59:02):
Game Pass, Game Pass standard. So if you want to I guess get
ready for the sequel, you could do that now.
And get the ever loving crap annoyed out of you.
Yeah. Good God.
Yeah, you can also just watch a movie.
Yeah. At the beginning so is that
let's see also available now Rogue City if you haven't

(59:25):
checked that one out that's on game pass ultimate, PC game pass
and Game Pass standard. It's a fun first person shooter
with RoboCop. He does best Let's see also on
Let's see Game Pass Ultimate andPC Game Pass My Friendly
Neighborhood, which is is a horror game about Muppets.

(59:48):
Basically you get stuck on the set of a like Sesame Street type
of area, but the number of the Muppet characters have sort of
run amok done their thing. Some case after you.

(01:00:09):
Some are just doing their thing you're trying to.
Get around and kind of figure out what's going on and stop it,
I guess. It's definitely a game that can
be pretty. Freaky.
Oh yeah. Because when you get, I think
when you get caught by one of them, they're flapping heads,

(01:00:30):
doing their thing while they're killing you.
So fun times. Let's.
See Also available now Back to the Dawn on Game Pass Ultimate
PC Game Pass. This says it's a prison escape
RPG. Yep.
So that's neat. That would be pretty
interesting. Could be, I'll have a look at

(01:00:52):
it. Let's see the stuff coming up
here on Tuesday. Abiotic Factor.
Much like on PlayStation Plus, this is also on.
You can check that out. The survival crafting game where
you play with up to six players.Yep, and sort of 1/2 lifestyle

(01:01:13):
underground research facility. That looks neat.
Let's see on the 23rd, so Wednesday wheel world will be on
Game Pass, Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass.
So yeah, that's the the fun looking game where you on a
bike, I guess trying to save theworld from what this says.

(01:01:36):
So yeah, that looks neat. Looking forward to checking that
one out on July 24th. There's Wu Chong fallen
feathers. Yeah.
The Souls like action RPG, another one that's set in
Chinese history in the Ming dynasty.
So you got that one to check outon?

(01:01:58):
Yeah, it's Thursday the 24th. Then next week on the 29th,
which is yeah, Tuesday. Grounded 2 will be going into
Early Access, so you can check out that on Game Pass Ultimate
and PC Game Pass as the takes place a few years later after
the kids have returned back to their normal sizes.

(01:02:20):
But then trapped in the new scheme might shrink some again
on dealing with more more bugs and such so.
Yep. All that fun stuff.
Oh yeah, fun fun fun. And then the last one here,
which will be on Friday, August 1st, Farming Simulator 25 for
Game Pass Ultimate piece of GamePass and Game Pass Standard.

(01:02:43):
So, yeah, it's the the newest one of those, yeah.
Farms across North America and Central Europe or East Asia.
So that sounds neat. There you go.
That's your your line up. Some neat stuff there.
Yeah, that'll be a checking out.So there you go.
Anything you're interested in, Brandon?

(01:03:08):
Honestly, not at the moment. Thank you.
What's your dinner? Yes.
And I'm playing it and I can't talk about it yet, so.
All right. All righty then.
Let's get to another game that that you unfortunately cannot
buy anymore. Nope.

(01:03:29):
This is John Wick. Hex was announced to be delisted
on Thursday. Yep.
Which got announced, I think on like, Monday.
Yeah. The publisher Big Fan Games,
posted a short message on the the Game Steam page that'll be
removed from all platforms in three days.
Yeah. Which, Yeah, it it was on like

(01:03:53):
Switch, Xbox, PlayStation and PC.
This is a Mike Bithal game from his studio.
Yep. A game that had a decent bit of
hype and you know, it was a pretty decent game, about as
good as you could expect out of a big IP like that from a

(01:04:17):
smaller developer that hadn't really made any games like this
before, but. Yeah.
I managed to grab a Steam key for 4 bucks, so I'll be playing
that at some point. Yeah like the the John Wick
franchise hasn't really been much of a big game franchise.

(01:04:38):
I think there was a VR game thatthey made at some point that is
also no longer available so. Yeah, which is weird if you
think about it, because like, ifthere is any franchise that
seems to be just made for gaming, it's the John Wick one.
Yeah, there is a game, I forget what it's called, that it's not

(01:04:58):
a licensed game, but it's very much got a lot of John Wick
energy to it, some of that kind of stuff.
But yeah, sad to see Butts. Not too surprising for a
licensed game here. Yeah.
But yeah, there you go. Yeah, definitely a weird,
especially since it came from, you know, Mike Bipple did.

(01:05:21):
Thomas was alone and obviously had his own issues with the
toxicity for a little bit there.But you know, just ignoring all
that. Yeah, it's it's it's, it's
definitely weird because normally you don't see an indie
in charge of an IP, especially one as like well known as John
Wick. And all of a sudden this
happened. So it's weird.
I unfortunately did not get a chance to play the game.

(01:05:41):
I never bought it either. And I actually just bought it.
I bought the PS4 version of PlayAsia this morning for about like
50 bucks, but it's going on eBayfor more.
So I don't regret it too much, Iguess.
Hope the game is actually in it.Yeah.
Well, we'll see, won't we? Yeah.
So yeah, there's that. Let's see, we have some Nintendo

(01:06:06):
news. That's weird.
Play test Bandbox game thing they did last year seems to be
coming back. They announced that on this link
here. You can apply for it yourself if
you have not done so previously.I guess if you were in the
previous play test, you can justget in automatically.

(01:06:28):
They're taking applications until Monday morning.
I think it's a weird process where you can create the
application, but you can't submit it until sometime Monday
morning, sometime after the the deadline to start it, I guess.
Yeah, it's a little bit weird with all that.

(01:06:49):
So yeah, that's a thing they're doing.
Playtest period is going to go from July 28th to August 10th so
a couple of weeks there to play it but you have to have a let's
see an active Nintendo Switch Online plus expansion pack
membership as of last Thursday be over 18 and be from a

(01:07:16):
certain. Like.
Seven or eight countries here and United States, United
Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy,Spain, Canada, Brazil or Mexico.
So yeah. And you can apply with a group.
So if you get the opportunity, they give you like a link that
you can send to a couple of people to join with you for

(01:07:42):
that. So that's the way you can do it.
But yeah, there you go. That's the thing that people
will weirdly leak and talk aboutin ways that the NDA probably
doesn't allow. There's been a decent bit of
that stuff happening with the previous play test, so I assume
that'll continue to go here as people wonder what the heck this

(01:08:06):
game's going to be released as it even will be released.
This is certainly one of the theweirdest, weirdest games they've
developed as far as how they've made it available to people,
because I don't think they've done any real public play
testing like this on anything outside of like, you know, beta

(01:08:29):
before launch kind of stuff. So yeah, there you go.
That's an interesting Nintendo'sdoing here.
Yeah, I, I, I do want to see like what it is they're doing,
like the, the this, this weird, like they, they're, it's been,
they've been very vague about itand I'm not really sure like

(01:08:51):
what it is they're thinking they're trying to do here.
Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it's been interesting
because the last time they did this, like you normally expect
people to just break embargo anyway, but I think they did a
pretty good job like keeping things tight lipped.
And when when they first did it,I thought it would just be for
like switch to features, but it ended up being for something

(01:09:12):
else entirely. So I don't know what to expect
out of it, out of it at all. I remember when they first did
it, I was hoping it would be like a street pass thing, but it
wasn't. So I don't know.
Yeah. Well, there you go for that.
Let's see, we got a couple gamescoming out next week at the end
of the month as if we needed more games coming out on that.
Dave's I think I have here on the list of five games already

(01:09:36):
coming out on the 31st and we'regoing to add two more.
First up here is Dead. Take the the new game from
Surgeon Studios, which is a horror FMV game with some
interesting actors in it. Yeah, there's Neil Newborn, who
plays Hysterian in Balter's Gate3.

(01:09:58):
Ben stars in this, who's been in, you know, Final Fantasy 16
and Claire Obscure Exhibition 33and all that.
So yeah, this this will be out next Friday.
Yeah. And that's an interesting
looking game. Oh, yeah.
They also mentioned here Jane Perry, Matt Mercer, Laura
Bailey, Sam Lake, Travis Willingham, Elena Pierce, Honor,

(01:10:23):
Sea Dog, Vulcan and music by Ross Arganza.
So a lot of interesting names inthere.
Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah, because the Tales
Considerable did not do super well and it seems like it's at
least going to be something at least appeals to something that

(01:10:44):
does pretty decently a lot on Steam and the consoles with some
horror stuff, especially when you got interesting ideas.
That seems like they do for thisone.
So yeah, that's that's one that looks pretty neat.
So yeah, there you go. Also coming out on July 31st,

(01:11:05):
there's Cook serve forever the the in that franchise.
The Cook Serve Delicious franchise is when they've been
doing early access on PC for a good bits Yeah, since May 2023.
So they've done a lot of work ofimproving things.

(01:11:25):
So they get rough. It launched in early access at a
bit of a rough state. So this one looks like it's
turned the corner and has some really nice stuff going on here,
a bunch of new things, new recipes and all that kind of
stuff. So yeah, I'm looking forward to

(01:11:46):
checking this one out and seeinghow it goes.
So yeah, that's that's one will be on PC, PlayStation, Xbox,
Switch in peace. Yeah, PC as well.
Yeah, that's cool. Another one to look forward to.
Let's see for a couple weeks after.

(01:12:06):
That's the brag and Dr. game that Nintendo announced a while
ago will be coming out, I think August 14th.
I think it is. They announced that they're
going to have a global jam demo event that were happening
essentially on like August 9th and 10th here at very specific

(01:12:27):
times. You've seen how they've done
this before. This is not really too big of a
surprise. Essentially seems to give most
regions at least two decently set chunks of time to play here
in the US. First ones on August 9th at 3:00

(01:12:49):
AM Pacific Time to 7:00 AM Pacific Time.
And. There's also one on the 9th at
5:00 PM Pacific Time and 9:00 PMPacific Time.
It's been better for most of thecountry.
And the 10th is at 9:00 AM Pacific Time, 1:00 PM Pacific
Time. So, yeah, that's also another

(01:13:10):
one that's better for the US So yeah, could be in most areas, at
least two of these are in decentenough times for people to check
out. But yeah, that'll be time to see
see what the hell that game is, if you're going to enjoy it with
that. So yeah, there you go.

(01:13:31):
I want to keep, keep there. And yeah, this is for NSO
members. Obviously they're going to need
that to check this thing out, but yeah, maybe I'll try and
stream that if I can. We'll see.
So yeah, there you go. Yeah, it'll be interesting.
Like normally when they put out these demos, it's also usually

(01:13:52):
around the time like codes I putout.
But also it's Nintendo and I wouldn't expect anything early
anyway. So yeah, I definitely look
forward to trying these out. I don't know if I'll have time
within these within these blocks, but yeah, like
everything I've heard from people, they either didn't like
it or thought it was cool, but it was too tiring.
So we'll see how that goes. Yeah.

(01:14:13):
So yeah, there's that. Let's see Next up here.
Q Games announced, 2 games coming out on the same day.
On October 10th, they announced that Pixel Junk Eden 2 for
PS5PS4 and PC will finally be out.
That's when they announced, I think like two or three years
ago, they were going to have outs fairly quickly and it just

(01:14:35):
kind of took longer than they thought.
So yeah, that'll be PS5PS4 PC and that's Steam and Epic Game
Store for that. They also announced that Dreams
of another, their PS-5, PSVR 2 and PC game will be also will

(01:14:56):
also be out October 10th. And the neat thing they're doing
is they're doing a bundle of thetwo games.
But if you buy that, that shouldpre-order that you'll be able to
start playing on October 7th. Check it out.
Check out both of them early, which is a neat idea.

(01:15:18):
I looked on the PlayStation Store and it looked like that
bundle is what was it. I'm going to log us up for real
quick. I believe it was like 35 bucks
for the game itself. I think 4249 for the bundle,

(01:15:40):
which seems like a a decent up price for that since you're also
essentially pre ordering this. The the bonuses.
There's a 2 bonus pyjamas for the man in pyjamas in dreams of
another. So I guess you get some outfits
there and pixels don't get into comes with some PSN avatars

(01:16:03):
there. So that's kind of the the two
bonuses. But yeah, looking forward to
this. I've been looking forward to
Dreams of Another and Pixel Junk.
Eden 2 was a game I was, but I would certainly like to play
what seems like it should be thebest version of that game
because it kind of started as a mobile game.

(01:16:24):
That's all that interesting. That is Switch port.
That was a bit better, but also a little bit rougher.
On the edge redone a bit, especially making it look real
nice for 4K and all that. So yeah, looking forward to

(01:16:46):
these. Yeah, there you go.
And then the last up here for the dates we found out that's
the first game on our upcoming releases list to get delayed is
in a Zuma 11 Victory Rd. was delayed from August 21st to

(01:17:07):
November 13th. Do you no longer have to worry
about that game at least for a few more months?
Yeah yeah, that'll be out on everything, PS5PS4, Switch,
switch to Xbox, PC, all that stuff.
So yeah, it seems like they don't need more work.

(01:17:30):
So you're due to the content volume exceeding our initial
expectations, additional times required for voice recording,
multi language localization and other related processes as we
work toward the final stages development, we have decided to
adjust the release date to ensure the best possible
quality. There's like yeah, those seem
like things you don't want to berushing or launching.

(01:17:53):
So yeah, that's over. That turns out well.
Definitely worked for Fantasy Life.
I making sure it was delayed until it was ready for launch.
That has done very well for them.
I think the last number saw was 1.2 million units sold which is
great. Hopefully this one turns out

(01:18:15):
well too. OK, yeah, I've never actually
heard of this one, but normally when they say that, oh, it's a
larger undertaking than the we expect that they're taking more
time. Normally it's a good thing, you
know, level 5 that did the same thing with fantasy life and that
ended up being good. So hopefully they can do that
with this. I'm not sure if this is a a
known anti IP but yeah it looks nice for what it's worth.

(01:18:40):
Yeah, it's a soccer RPG. They've made a couple of those,
especially on the 3DS. That was where the couple of
those were made. And I think we only got one of
them because that was their their whole weird period where
they were focusing on the Japanese market, not much the
the rest of the world. So that's kind of where that one

(01:19:04):
came from. This seems like their their big
console version of it. So it looks like it's going to
be neat. Speaking of console RPGs, we
found out more information aboutDragon Quest 1 and D2D Remake,
particularly for the Switch and Switch to is that Square Enix is

(01:19:25):
not going to allow you to upgrade from one to the other.
I believe the the Switch versionhas the the full game on it and
the switch to version is the game key card.
So people have been wondering ifthey're going to be able to get
the switch version and do the upgrade.
However that's going to work andscreens like no, you got to buy
both if you want both of them, which is a very square next

(01:19:48):
thing to want to do. So yeah, that's that's certainly
annoying a lot of people becauseyeah, the Switch 1 version, this
here and there FAQ we'll work onswitch to, but switch to version
won't work on the Switch one, which has been like a bonus
thing at some of these cross-platform Switch to games

(01:20:10):
have been able to do. But yeah, playing Switch one
version on Switch to 1 unlock it's improved version, but
rather will run exactly the sameas it would on the original.
Not really too surprising for them.
So yeah, you're going to have tospend. 60 bucks twice if you
wanted on both. So yeah, there you go.

(01:20:34):
Yeah, this is beyond asinine. Obviously.
I am very much looking forward to Dragon Quest One and Two,
especially as I'm playing through three right now.
And yeah, like this makes no sense.
We already knew Nintendo's policy didn't make any sense,
and all of a sudden Square Unix chose to not make sense either.
That being said, like my strategy for, you know, Switch

(01:20:56):
and Switch two games moving forward was to buy switch one
games and then just go ahead anddownload and pay for whatever
update I have to do so with the eShop because 1 like look at the
look at the 2 box starts. OK, the the switch to box start.
I'm I'm not even mad about the two on top.
I've gotten used to that. I don't like the the writing on

(01:21:17):
the bottom that talks about it being a key card.
Like that's ridiculously dumb. So even if I didn't care about
the card, I would want to go with the switch one version to
begin with. But now that I can't even
update, that kind of sucks. The main thing though is that I
would not expect that big of a difference between the switch
one or switch to a game anyway, because let's not forget that

(01:21:38):
the HD 2D remaster thing startedwith the switch to begin with.
So I don't really need to see this in 4K or anything like
that. And yeah, it's, it's just weird.
This kind of just makes me want to go with PlayStation, but at
the same time, all of my Dragon Quest games are Nintendo.
So it's it's it's weird. I I honestly do not know what to
do. I'm going to hope hope I get a

(01:21:59):
code and just and just forget about it.
But I do have the switch one version preordered but this was
the day before they mentioned this happening so I don't know.
I am at AUI, am at a weird spot with this and it sucks.
Yeah, I was trying to check if they did, like it's just on PS5I
was going to find it funny if they did APS 4 and PS-5 or

(01:22:19):
bundled together on this but noton Switch.
But it seems like it's just onlyon the PS-5 because that's the
only platform that can handle Dragon Quest one and two and all
that. But yeah, that seems to be the
case here. So yeah, that's a fun thing
because I think it was supposed to be coming to PS4 at some

(01:22:42):
point. But yeah, I think it was just
only announced for PS-5. Must have just cancelled that at
some point. So yeah, there you go.
Upon Square Enix news to get annoyed by.
And now we'll go to Apple where they have decided that they are

(01:23:03):
going to D list or remove this indie game called Wheels of
Irelia from the App Store because it has not been updated
in seven years despite it's, youknow, running just fine on the
modern Apple devices, not reallyneeding an updates.
But the Apple Store policy is that you need to be updated for

(01:23:27):
the specific and there's a need for the modern releases, the
support for the specific little things that they need.
I've seen the devs saying, yeah,they have it here.
Updating Wheels of Rally at thisstage would demand very
significant resources solely to refresh the engine and SDK
elements without providing meaningful enhancements, user

(01:23:50):
experience or artistic value. They've tried to get in contact
with Apple to clarify this stuff, but they seem do not
really care on this. And yeah, this is not really a
huge surprise because Apple doesnot really care about backs or
backwards compatibility on, you know, mobile games.

(01:24:12):
They've been fully fine with updating these, you know, the
the tech baseline for these phones and the iPad and all that
and just letting a bunch of games just disappear into the
ether, even if they would have run just fine on the the new

(01:24:33):
devices, which has also been pretty much the same for Android
as well. Mobile gaming is just kind of a
hellhole at this point of games just dying off and having no
real great way to preserve them and keep playing them unless you
just literally keep that exact phone or whatever device needed

(01:24:57):
to play it and hope that nothingever causes it to break.
Which is, you know, an unreasonable thing to have when
you have most everything else about your your phone app set up
transferring over to your new new phones just fine.
This sort of thing that just kind of makes the gaming on

(01:25:18):
these devices annoying a lot of times.
So yeah, kind of the fun situation this developers find
themselves in for game that's runs just fine and doesn't need
all that extra bullshit. Oh yeah, there you go.
Some real fun stuff there. So yeah, let's see here.

(01:25:41):
Virtuos support developer that'sworked on a lot of ports and all
kinds of different projects, including the the main developer
on yeah, Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion Remastered, one of the
biggest releases of the year, has announced that they are
laying off 300 people when you're like, oh, how how can

(01:26:05):
that be when they worked on that's the the Metal Gear Solid
Delta sneaky to remake is them as well.
They've also been working with CD project Red on Cyberpunk 2077
updates and all that. Yeah, this broken France when a
reporter revealed the studio would be calling about 7% of its

(01:26:28):
staff who had 4200 employees across multiple countries in the
US, China, Ireland, Singapore, and France.
Most of the layoffs are in the company's Chinese subsidiary.
Yeah, they work on a lot of games, you know, poor projects
for Hogwarts Legacy near Onamata, Horizon West.

(01:26:51):
Oh yeah, This is kind of what happens with a lot of support
studios and port studios and allthat.
These kind of Jack of all tradesstudios that do a bit of
everything is that they don't really get paid too much out of
this stuff. I believe the word was
essentially that their pitch to get the job for Oblivion

(01:27:12):
remaster was like, we're not going to get any of the revenue
for that game, which is not really because they didn't want
it. It's because they're pitching
against other studios. They will also make those same
kind of like pitches as well. Like we're not going to we're

(01:27:33):
also not going to take revenue from this and that we need and
this much time. We can do that and all that kind
of stuff and end up making you know what, you know, Intense
Purposes was a pretty solid remake for that game and not
really benefit too much with other than that's another thing

(01:27:54):
that can go on their list of resume stuff for pitching to
other studios. Yeah.
That actually ends up leading tothis kind of stuff where I think
they say a 200 rolls in Asia, 70rolls in Europe, including fewer
than 10 in France are getting laid off here amongst some other

(01:28:14):
people. But yeah, as part of their
ongoing investment that reflectsour intent to grow in areas
where our expertise and scale create lasting value while
selecting exiting service segments where demand is
weakening, which is all jargon for the sort of jobs that
they're taking on from partners and all that's and yeah, sad to

(01:28:39):
see, but yeah, this is kind of the the life of this kind of
studio deals with for the ability to work on all these
kind of projects here. So yeah.
Yeah, I mean, you pretty much hit the nail on the head.
You know, studios like Virtuos that primarily do support work
and like things like remakes andthings like that, they typically

(01:29:00):
don't make a whole lot because of what you just said.
You know, they're they're tryingto pitch to studios to handle
more work, but when you have no revenue share, All right, how
are you going to pay your peoplewho were already underpaid to
begin with? And the the rough catch 22 was
that especially in this era where publishers don't really
want to take a chance and they just want to, you know, release

(01:29:21):
things from already established IP, like an oblivion, like it
should work and like there should be some stability.
If not, they should at least know what's coming next.
And yeah, it, it appears that there isn't.
I, I don't know how many people are going to work on both
Oblivion and Metal Gear Solid because like, you know,
obviously Metal Gear Solid hasn't come out yet.
We don't know who's on that staff.
And they're pretty much usually not allowed to say that they've

(01:29:43):
worked on it until after. So yeah, we'll see there.
Hopefully these people can land other jobs elsewhere, perhaps
with studios that actually want to do their own original content
and go from there. But at the same time, it's like,
you know, I've, I've never played Oblivion.
A lot of people did like it. And yeah, like we're, we're
we're in an era where there are a lot of IP that need to be

(01:30:08):
resurrected, whether it be with a remake or whether it would be
with a port. So you would think that there'd
be some stability there. But at the same time, virtual is
one of many. Yeah.
And that that that therein lies the problem.
Yeah, and not just like need to be like resurrected, but in some
places they need to be, shall wesay, streamlined a little bit.

(01:30:34):
Oblivion is kind of a good example.
It's definitely like a bit easier to play now because, you
know, they've got Skyrim behind them and that sort of showed
like how they could do an, an art game of that scale and make
it like fairly easy to comprehend.

(01:30:55):
But a lot of the, the old sort of the baggage that Oblivion had
with, you know, how complicated its UI could be, It's still
there. And like, it's the same thing
with like I've been playing the,the remaster assistant shot too.
Same thing. The UI kind of sucks and you

(01:31:17):
know, a lot of those games couldreally do use a retooling like
very much so. Yeah, that also depends on the
tools under it. Yeah, how much they can actually
change some. Some games are easier to do that
and others are like full of old code that's you try to change

(01:31:39):
certain things. It'll just 'cause everything to
fall apart. Yeah, like any sort of change
you can make can absolutely pickthe game.
Definitely the truth. But like, yeah, just again, just
talking about these kinds of studios in general, like when we
talk about, you know, companies like Virtuos, you know, it also
brings up places like Blue Point, you know, which is owned
by Sony and I believe they're based in Texas.

(01:31:59):
And then there's Grezo, who has done a lot of the Zelda remix
for Nintendo. I don't, I don't.
I'm not sure if they're owned byNintendo, but yeah, at the same
time, it's like, as Microsoft has proven, it doesn't matter
who owns it either. So you know, it's always going
to be a risk. Yeah.
So, yeah, there you go. Some bummer news there.

(01:32:21):
Let's see, what else? What are the bummer news we have
here, King? The supposed real thing that's
Microsoft wanted out of the Activity King acquisition?
Yeah, they suffered a number of layoffs in the last round of it.
Yeah, and now we found out why. Or at least some of the.

(01:32:43):
Part of this whole process about200 people were laid off cross
King many impacted staff are poorly in limbo until union to
go up in September. So they may be dealing with
whatever buyouts negotiations there, but it seems like also as

(01:33:06):
part of this process, they had been working with AI tools for
working on Candy Crush contents.And seems like it's expected
that's that may just be replacing those people, at least
some of them. Yeah, somebody, you're saying

(01:33:26):
most of it, most of level designhas been wiped, which is crazy
since they've spent months building tools to crap levels
quicker. Now those AI tools are basically
replacing the teams. Generally the copywriting team
is completely removing people since we now have AI tools that
those individuals have been creating, which copywriting
definitely seems like a thing that AI could do well enough to

(01:33:51):
get by on things. You probably have somebody just
to go over the text to be like, oh this, this all sounds good
enough. Lola design stuff is kind of
wild, but also being Candy Crush, I could see the game
feeding like all the however many fucking levels they've had
in one of those games now just feeding a ton of those and it's

(01:34:13):
just designing more like that. Seems like that could be
something that works better thanyou'd like.
But yeah, this is one of those situation that really sucks.
But yeah, the bots, the AI bot stuff is going to be in more
places like this, unfortunately,especially in the mobile space

(01:34:35):
where they can squeeze that muchmore profit out of it when they
don't have to pay as many peoplemake the content when it's just
basically puzzle, puzzle stages and such.
Yeah, that's seems to be the oneof the things behind the King
layoffs. So yeah.
That was a little bit rough. You know, obviously as somebody

(01:34:57):
who has experienced, you know, being bought by another company
while working in mobile, you know, it's, it's tough to hear.
But at the same time, the AI thing is ridiculous actually.
Like when you're considering a game like Candy Crush, that's
obviously going to be reliant onmicrotransactions.
The thing that makes the thing that makes mobile gaming a
little bit, I don't want to say easier because at the end of the

(01:35:20):
day, it's more work. But with mobile gaming, you can
correct a problem like that. And as we talked about earlier,
sometimes correcting a problem will result in other things
breaking. But yeah, like the key basis
here is going to be things like customer service and Libops.
And you can't replace any of those two things with two things
with AI. So yeah, it's it's just done all

(01:35:42):
around and. Yeah, unfortunately, Yeah,
unfortunately as far as like game developers go, King is like
the Platonic ideal of what a developing company being taken
over by AII tolls is 'cause you can just like look at what they,
what their products are, look atwhat they put out.

(01:36:03):
It's fairly formulaic. Yeah like look at their art
direction for crying out loud. Like that is their their art
direction is generic as all helland very easily could be taken
over by AI, so much so that I'm pretty sure they've already used
a ton of AI in their art in their art direction already.

(01:36:24):
But then there's just like the way those games are, like pretty
much all of their games are match three games or some
variation thereof, and all of them have the more or less same
endless travel quest sort of format.
So the idea, unfortunately, thatthey could be replaced by AI.

(01:36:44):
Like it sucks and it's diabolical, but it's like that
whole company was just ready, made for that shit to take over.
Yeah, especially when the the audience is a lot of older
people that are not going to be that discerning about things
about this kind of stuff. You can say that.

(01:37:05):
I mean, like, you know, the the thing about these whales is that
at the same time, like they deservedly so, are the most
entitled people you'll come across in customer service.
And you know, I'm pretty sure they're all they're already
outsourced at this point, but they're not going to handle
being talking, being talked to by a machine all that well, like

(01:37:26):
they can't even use like a basicsmartphone feature.
So all of a sudden having to talk to AI to solve your problem
is going to lead to a lot of cycling back and forth.
And that's ultimately also what makes these quote, UN quote
whales leave the game. They want to be seen, they want
to be heard. And that's not going to happen
with the AI. So tough to see all around.

(01:37:47):
At the same time, it's not exactly like the most wavering
way I want to see a company makemoney either.
But yeah, it's lame. Yeah, so there you go on that
front, but it's not the only Xbox news we got the the weird
kind of abrupt news that they are now used to be the video

(01:38:08):
marketplace, but yeah, they've essentially stopped that
immediately on I think, yeah, July 18th I think it was when
they just shut it all down. If you own stuff on there, you
can still use it, watch movies and TV shows you've purchased.

(01:38:28):
Like most of that I have either were things given away for free
or things that I had like Redditfor.
I was just like, I don't know what I'm going to spend 4 bucks
on. I think I bought Paddington too
because they had Movies Anywheresupport.
So I was like, at least I can watch this somewhere else, that

(01:38:49):
kind of stuff. I think I have like the original
episodes of the Guild that they put up on free on Xbox Live back
in the day when that was new, stuff like that.
I was looking up when this everybody's like, oh, started
like acting like it's starting the Xbox One.
It's like, I know there's a whole big pitch of the center of

(01:39:10):
your living room, hook up your cable to it and all that.
But they started that marketplace back in 2006,
essentially about a year after the the 360 S launch where they
started selling stuff then wherelike you could download the TV
stuff and had to stream the movie stuff.
But then they eventually allowedyou to download both and dream

(01:39:31):
both and whatever you needed to do and all that.
And yeah, just kind of one of those things that is not
necessary anymore, I guess the having a device dedicated to,
you know, you're buying your TV and movies at this point.
So it's like I, I was looking at, I think like Hard Boiled and

(01:39:56):
a bunch of those movies that were never really available
anywhere over here in the West finally started showing up on
places. And it was only like Amazon,
Apple and like maybe Fandango. There at this point are a
notable video marketplace. I think it's because they bought

(01:40:22):
Voodoo. I think it's that version of
Voodoo and it's like nowhere else can you watch it, so you
have to buy it and it's like reasonable prices for it.
But yeah, it's like that stuff where it's almost platform
agnostic. The Xbox video stuff is a little
bit of that. I think you can watch EC and
your Xbox, but that's as far as it goes.

(01:40:43):
There's no app on PlayStation oryour phone, I don't think.
Did you watch that stuff there? So yeah, this is kind of a whole
system that is kind of ancient in terms of feature sets
compared to what your other services have to offer.
It was not really too surprising, especially if

(01:41:06):
Microsoft is looking at ways to cut costs and serving up all
this movie and TV show stuff that you have to keep updating
with new things and doing deal promotions and all that kind of
stuff. Definitely seems like a thing
where they would like, you know what we're we're done with this
crap because I imagine not many people buy that stuff anymore as

(01:41:31):
they used to, especially as you can get to a lot of it on street
at this point. So yeah, And the I'd see it go,
but the app is still going to bethere to watch it.
Yeah, I'm sure it's not going tobe a huge priority to make sure
it's as good as possible for people, but yeah.

(01:41:55):
Yeah, definitely. It is interesting, especially
like Xbox was one of our Microsoft rather is one of the
first companies to really pioneer buying things digital.
You know, like we we all we all know what, what, what Don
Mattrick did with the Xbox One. And that wasn't really that far
fetched, you know, to what what what eventually happened, you
know, less than a decade later. So the other thing that's

(01:42:17):
surprising is that almost every company does this.
So I don't know like what kind of losses they're experiencing
even with the growth of streaming.
So you would think it would be aslam dunk no matter where you
go, even if it's not your traditional platform.
You know, as Chris mentioned, like movies anywhere is huge.
I personally love Movies Anywhere especially, well, not
even especially, but it's it's, it is interesting because I I do

(01:42:38):
still prefer to buy my movies onBlu-ray.
And at the same time, I only buythem when they include a digital
code so I can put it into MoviesAnywhere.
And when it's not Movies Anywhere compatible, I just get
annoyed. And yeah, it is interesting to
see them take this route. But yeah, like, especially with
where Microsoft and Xbox right now is as a company, it seems

(01:43:00):
like, you know, their next effort may or may not be their
last. You wonder what this kind of
move does for what they think ofentertainment and how these
other companies are going to move forward as well.
Because I don't know if anybody else is going to just jump out
of it. It it, it just seems like it,
it, it makes sense. So it's great stuff.
Yeah. So, yeah, there you go.

(01:43:22):
For that, we do have an update on the continued craft in
Subnautica 2 situation. Which is still like, it's just,
it's one of those stories, it's,it's the gift that.
Keeps. Yeah, gift that keeps on giving.
Yeah, mostly that the the trio founders have filed their

(01:43:45):
complaints in court as part of the the lawsuit process and yeah
so the it's a 58 page lawsuits people have decked into it's
found some interesting new details.
Yeah mentions of alleged rampingup efforts of efforts by

(01:44:06):
crafting to to delay Subnautica 2's planned 125 released in
order to avoid triggering provisions from the October 2021
sale. The studio that will lead to
$250 million payouts bonus payout if certain sales goals
are met through early 2026. According to this lawsuit, terms
of that agreement prohibited crafted from firing any of the

(01:44:28):
founders without cause or interfering in the studios
business in any way that might impact that payout.
I know Worldswood quote UN quotemaintain operational companies
in all material respects, including for both existing and
new products, product road map, launch planning, partnering,
budgeting and employee matters as long as at least one of the

(01:44:50):
Co founders remain employed there.
And yeah, and they claim the thebusiness relationship didn't get
bad until earlier this year whenprojection for Synagogue 2 sales
were shared with crafted management, one would show them
hitting the targets required forthe $250 million payout.

(01:45:12):
So yeah, interesting informationhere and, and you can read for
more of it here. But yeah, a lot of a lot of
stuff that certainly doesn't look great for craft in here.
So we'll see if this actually ends up going to court, if
there's some sort of settlementsthat happens or whatever about

(01:45:35):
to see how that goes. But yeah, this certainly isn't
cooling off anytime soon just yet.
So that, yeah, there you go. Yeah.
Yeah, I, I, I Brandon said this story is the gift that keeps on
giving. Obviously, like, I don't think
there is a world where Kraft andwins this case, but we we we

(01:45:57):
have seen the worst things happen.
So I also wouldn't be surprised if they didn't.
But yeah, it's, it's, yeah, but it's, it's lame.
It is what it is here. I hope the developers for a
Subnautica to go ahead and get their due, especially when
they're all saying that. Yeah, like if, if we wanted to,
you know, put it out in early access now, like we, we we
totally can. And obviously, like some

(01:46:19):
Subnautica was a game that really put this studio on the
map. So a lot of people are going to
expect a lot of things from Part2.
Yeah, it's, it's it's unfortunate.
Like the the other thing is thatcompanies aren't even shy of
doing this either. Like this might even happen in
your like, everyday life. Like, I don't know how many of
you are football fans. Like this happens in the NFL all

(01:46:39):
the time. Like, you know, guys like
Russell Wilson get screwed out of their contract because the
coach all of a sudden finds out he can reach an escalator by
playing Game 8. And all of a sudden he's not
starting. And then the reasons why he's
not starting are absolute bullshit.
So except with this, instead of affecting 11 employee, you're
affecting a whole lot of people and obviously when you're going
into their pockets, it's a really serious situation and

(01:47:01):
hopefully they can get their duehere.
Yeah. So yeah, this is definitely
going to be something that's going to be messy for a bit
until we see like actual court stuff happening.
But yeah, for now, it's just going to be a lot of this kind
of stuff. So we'll see how that goes.

(01:47:21):
And the last of our bad news here is that Steam is now
stepped into this weird situation where as the result of
dealing with their payment processors, MasterCard and Visa,
they have taken down a bunch of games from the Steam store,

(01:47:42):
mostly porn games, stuff like that, that violates the rules
that these payment processors have for things they'll fund.
This is like a thing that's beenhappening for a while.
Remember when only fans tried togo make a real big build up of

(01:48:08):
non porn content being on their platform that never really went
anywhere? That was part of that.
But yeah, this seems like the whole thing.
They have a new rule here. They added content that may
violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam's payment
processors and related card networks and banks, Oregon

(01:48:29):
Internet network providers in particular.
Certain kinds of adults only content are now listed as things
that should not be published on Steam, which if you've used
Steam a good bit, you've seen a lot of these games show under
new releases and whatnots, a lotof which are just kind of

(01:48:50):
interesting to look at and see like what kind of watch that
people are coming up with. Then you find like games that
are called sex with Hitler and that kind of stuff.
It's like, OK, weird places those like it's not much there
that like, Oh no, how bad. But also that they're being

(01:49:13):
forced through this through the payment processors is a a very
shitty thing and kind of a thingthat's been a problem for a
while as platforms of various kinds are being forced to go
against their rules. Because the people running these
kind of increasingly look like they are right wing evangelical

(01:49:38):
people that want to turn everything into puritanical shit
holes essentially. So yeah, there's, there's a lot
of details here about the way this stuff is going.
Not really too big of a surprisewith the way that Valve is
basically been running there. There's like a Terry now, which

(01:50:03):
means Nazis get to do whatever they want if they spend money.
And yeah, they had this Vice article that showed up the other
day essentially going into the group that may be behind this
blame claiming ownership of pushing the the Visa MasterCard

(01:50:28):
towards this an Australian groupcalled Collective Shout that
claims I believe they are essentially A turf group that
has taken responsibility for changes Esteem's payment
processors that really results in the room removal of a various
adult games with taboo themes. They you know, Rome is on their

(01:50:49):
official website. Then they're targeting nearly
500 games for removal on Steam with 81 more that they want to
be removed. Yeah, they have the backing of
various anti porn groups behind them.
The National Center on sexual exploitation and Exodus cry

(01:51:12):
coalition against trafficking women in the UK and the UK org
cease. Yeah, a lot of information here
on this. The interesting thing that ended
up happening is that vices owners company called I think
Savage Savage ventures seem to must have gotten attention from

(01:51:40):
like to shout for having this article on Vice.
So they ended up pulling it earlier today as a result.
So the link here is to a web archive version of it.
So you can see a lot of this whole article here if you want
to check it out. And sort of showing the
unfortunately increasing power of these kind of groups in a lot

(01:52:05):
of spaces in our society, in many countries that are
unfortunately becoming more and more powerful.
And these people do not care about any sort of free
expression, especially because they have enough money backing
them that they can kind of get whatever they want done,

(01:52:26):
especially when they can influence, you know, Visa,
MasterCard on this stuff. So yeah, leads to a lot of awful
things happening. Fortunately, it seems like we're
not going to stop anytime soon. Oh yeah, there you go.
That's the the weird situation Valve and Steamer in.

(01:52:47):
Yeah. Oh yeah, there you go.
Yeah. We got a couple nice stories
here, unless you got something to add, Brandon.
No other than I hate when shit like this happens.
Yeah, yeah. So there you go, let's see, we
got 2 good stories here. First up, the next cover story

(01:53:10):
for game in four. I think anybody that's been
looking forward to it has lost hope that it would ever come
out. Vampire the Masquerade
Bloodlines too. But actually happening?
I would not believe it if I didn't see it with my own eyes.
Yeah. So they have that.
We'll be launching digitally on Tuesday, so you can start

(01:53:33):
reading it in the the digital archives on your accounts there
on game if you need. Issues will probably show up in
a handful of weeks here. Yeah, Borderlands 4 just started
arriving this past week, so yeah, they'll be posting some

(01:53:57):
details here and there when theyget the chance to.
So yeah, that's a game. That's going to be a real thing,
it looks like. Also they'll be a poster
included with the issue, so that's coming back.
That's the thing I don't think I've seen in a long time in a
magazine. We used to get posters in them
that always look bad because they're folded up so much, but

(01:54:20):
otherwise it was a nice, nice thing to have up.
So there you go. That's the thing to look forward
to. Yeah, it's been a while since
I've used to work your fold, so yeah, I, I, unfortunately, I
subscribe too late to get this one on.
Yeah, Bloodline or sorry, I say the the Masquerade Bloodlines
too is definitely a huge get, especially since we haven't

(01:54:41):
heard from them in years. And you know, good of them to go
ahead and invite Game Informer, who you know, was gone for a few
months with what happened to them.
I'm glad they had the budget to to go ahead and go to England
for it. So that's that's pretty cool.
Yeah. So yeah, that's cool.
And the last thing here, we'll end on Summer Games done quick

(01:55:03):
at their events over the past week.
That's had a lot of cool stuff happening there.
Any of it yet? I'll have to look at the the
YouTube account and see what cool stuff was there.
But they raised point $4 millionfor doctor's orders, which is
great because, yeah, that's a a charity that can help out with

(01:55:28):
some of the shortcomings with the and of US foreign aid in a
lot of ways that could have helped out on a lot of medical
things around the world. But this group at least will be
able to help with some of that stuff.
So yeah, that is good to see. And yeah, if we go check out

(01:55:49):
their YouTube channel and see a lot of cool speedrun stuff,
especially some of the the stuntstuff they do where people are
doing weird things for playing games in unusual ways and races
and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, there you go.
Yeah, this is awesome. You know, I've, I've heard about
this event. I just didn't know like what

(01:56:11):
kind of like work went into it. And as somebody that works for a
gaming nonprofit, I'm like, wow,this is pretty cool.
So I'm happy to see, you know, gamers coming together to raise
money for a great causes and at the same time, like have their
content actually be interesting.So the speed running community
isn't something that I haven't really dove too far with.

(01:56:31):
But whenever I do watch stuff, Iwatch for quite a bit because
it's always like cool to see. Yeah, it's always good to find
like games, you know, and especially look at the the
length of videos and be like, how the fuck did they beat this
in minutes? And you watch it, you're like,
all right, this person's played this enough and knows like all
the the various bugs and glitches to take advantage of to

(01:56:53):
do this. And you're like, all right,
that's some wild shit. There's like a as a bilatro we
run here. That's a wild thing to see.
I've heard good things about that when it's like 57 minutes
going. To see that game.
Yeah, somebody figured out a good way to that game.

(01:57:15):
So yeah, there's a lot of wild stuff like that.
So I'm trying to see what other things they have here.
There's neon white stuff, which,yeah, that's not too surprising.
Yeah, I believe there's a blueprints one in here that I
saw bingo style game around. It's that's like that's got to

(01:57:36):
be pretty interesting for that. So yeah, there's a lot of stuff
there. So yeah, that's a that's a fun
one. And yeah, I think we're going to
end up and the show here. So, yeah.
Thank you to Brandon Dinner for joining this week.
We'll be back next week with a new slate of news and things to

(01:57:56):
talk about. Yeah, we'll be back just before
the end of the month as this week has a bunch of games.
Let's see Ludo Monument Valley Three Wild Gates Wheelworld
WWE2K25 for the switch to and Super Mario party Jamboree
Nintendo switch to edition plus Jamboree TV for the switch to Wu

(01:58:19):
Chong fallen feathers honestly for Kaname Dante from AI the
somnium files while hearts S forthe switch to which from the
demo were around the demos that it doesn't run well.
So which it didn't really run well in the other consoles.
So it's not really a huge surprise, but this is a big week

(01:58:40):
for Switch 2. There's at least four games
here. I think.
I see. So yeah, that's some stuff to
look forward to. But yeah, if you enjoy the show
for that friends and family, check out the show and select
strangers that are also into summer.
Games done quick and awesome games done quick and all the the

(01:59:02):
cool stuff there. So yeah, thank you all for
tuning in. Hope you have a good week ahead.
We will see you all next time. Have a good one.
Bye. See you.