Day 0 Update #540 - Woke Lollipop Chainsaw

In this episode of the Day 0 Update: We talk about some hot movie properties getting their first games, the downside of the announcement of a new Lollipop Chainsaw game, and how Itch is dealing with its own payment processor pressure. All this and more, up next!

Full show notes can be found ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Episode Transcript

(00:17):
Welcome to Daiser update for July 27th, 2025.
I'm here as Chris Emoji. And I'm Brandon Perkins.
Yeah, two man crew this week, short for news.
Nope. A lot of stuff has happened,
some related to last week, whereone of the big stories of last
week evolved to another platformon PC.

(00:40):
We'll talk about that. We got some delays.
We got a game deciding to not befully out anymore for obvious
reasons. We got a franchise joining the
gaming realm. That has not happened yet.
And yeah, a bunch of other things happening here.

(01:02):
We'll get to that. Before we do, we'll talk about
what we've been playing and I'llkick it off here.
I've been playing some abiotic factor that is on Game Pass and
PlayStation Plus. I'm playing on PS-5.
All for that. It is very much a survival game
in the vein of things like Subnautica, Minecraft, a bunch

(01:29):
of other stuff like that. You can play with a few other
people. I'm not sure if it's three total
or 4 total people, but you can have some people helping you
out, but you also can play it solo.
You're just probably going to have slower progress and that's
but it is very much in the flavor of 1/2 lifestyle world.

(01:53):
But in Australia, yeah, the the intro and like the tutorial
stuff is very much you on your first day at this facility, it's
out in the middle of the desert and you happen to show up on the
day where some wild stuff has happened.
Probably similarly to the way that Half Life starts where

(02:18):
people, scientists working on like transdimensional machinery
has something go haywire and a bunch of these creatures get out
in the facility and you are kindof dealing with the after
effects of that. The tutorial kind of just runs

(02:38):
through a lot of the basic control stuff and basically ends
when you get to an elevator thattakes you down into the facility
where you reach the cafe area and the interesting things.
You make your own character and it's, you know, very fluid in

(03:01):
the way you design it. You have a lot of options for
hair and all that kind of stuff,but it is also very 90s olygonal
3D graphics kind of stuff that has a really nice look to it.
And it's sort of the, the kind of character design that is not
very non binary. Like the, the bodies have I

(03:25):
think like 3 or 4 options for essentially females, you know,
showing or masculine showing. You can mix them with any kind
of hair and facial hair and all that kind of stuff.
So you can kind of go in a number of ways on that stuff.
So that's kind of a nice aspect of this.

(03:45):
So if you're playing solo, you're not going to really see
much of your character because it's first person.
And yeah, you're starting out inthis Cafe area and you've run
into a scientist who is like, oh, this guy I know that I don't
really like professionally is over here locked out of this
area. You need to figure this out

(04:06):
because I'm not going to do anything.
It just sits there the entire time.
And so you're kind of looking around to do, like, what you can
do. And you find some bents that you
can use to get out. Otherwise, most every other
avenues blocked off with a locked door or something.
And yeah, you're kind of gettingthrough here collecting some

(04:28):
materials. You have a decent amount of
space for that stuff early on. Yeah, what kind of main way
you're dealing with enemies at that point is with these Nets
that you can make with cloth scraps.
You essentially throw it onto these like little goober enemies
that locks them in place and youstop them.

(04:49):
They can collect their their guts because there's a lot of
that kind of stuff to this game.You kind of keep exploring and
eventually find your way to thisdoor like a warehouse area.
It has all damage to it. So you can kind of, you know,
damage your legs in such a way that you have to be careful with

(05:14):
how you're getting around. After that, you can make, you
know, bandages to and splints toheal you up, though those will
take a little bit of time to work.
But if you're kind of short on materials, you can just kind of
if you're not pushing yourself too much, kind of let it heal

(05:35):
naturally in a circle around to the kitchen area, which has some
more enemies to it's they kind of feel like the enemies from
half life may be mixed with the the ones from the tremors
franchise. They got they got some of those
kind of jaw like structures of the the big tremors worms and

(05:55):
the I forget what they call the ones in the sequels.
I don't want them like ass blaster.
I think they call it like that. I got some looks of that.
But yeah, you kind of work your way around.
And I've holed up in the essentially the break room of
this area because it's got at least an extra door on each side

(06:16):
blocked off from any potential enemies.
And it doesn't seem like enemieswill spawn like a like a
Minecraft for enemies will just spawn at certain times or
randomly whenever it deems it time to do so.
You're going to get a little note on your screen like, yeah,

(06:37):
you're in a safe place mostly. But yeah, once you kind of get
to this other door where the thescientist dude is at since like,
oh, you got to make this this battery thing to power the door.
And that's where essentially, once you do it, you've
essentially gotten out of the the second tutorial of sorts.

(07:00):
You go to power up that door, let the scientists in and a
creature, a big creature kills him.
And then you're dealing with a big enemy, which I died on my
first try at it, which kind of freaked me out because I felt
like maybe you shouldn't be dying so much.
But also I'm playing the solo, so it's a little bit tougher

(07:23):
because I used my kitchen knivesand was like slashing him a
bunch. Maybe the Nets would have
worked, I don't know. But I didn't try it on that
enemy. It's a game that seems like it
probably would really work well with a, a wiki.
So if you have questions on likewhat the best way to take on
enemies and whatnot would be versus the the in game system,

(07:49):
which is more of a, you know, like a, a repository of
information. It's like very basic
information, just about the typeof creature it is and what the
scientists would know about it, which usually is couched with a
lot of Yeah, have. A lot of.
Reinforced, you know, walls between you and preacher kind of

(08:13):
thing, which, you know, it's nota thing that you can necessarily
do in this game, right? Or at least not initially.
So yeah, that was my first encounter.
I dealt with that the second time and so yeah, I started
building stuff in the the break room, built a crafting table as

(08:34):
you would expect from this kind of game.
And that kind of opens up the ability to make more things,
though you can make a lot of basic stuff without it.
But there are other crafting tables that you can make one
for, like repairing items and scrapping items, one for cooking
stuff because hunger is a big deal here.

(08:55):
I feel like there should be options to lessen some of that
stuff, but maybe that's not in there yet.
So I haven't really, you know, taken a huge look at everything
on that stuff. But yeah, I've been enjoying it.
I've explored the the next section pretty well.
You basically get out there and you need a security guard who's

(09:16):
locked himself into his little security checkpoint room with
like, tons of canned peas and such.
He's like a traitor. You can bring them stuff.
So like the the skull of the creature that you kill, I forget
what they call it. You can trade that to him for a

(09:37):
trinket that is essentially an employee locator that will
essentially highlight enemies oremployees through walls.
So if you're looking for other people to either find, find more
information about what's going on potentially like trading or
doing a little quest for them, that kind of stuff, that's a
very useful thing, especially they don't like, OK, there's

(09:58):
probably no enemies in that immediate space that they're in,
but there might be some around. So I've mostly fought the the
little goobers that hop around that are pretty easy to take out
with Nets and knives and such. And I've been enjoying it.
I'm basically the point where I'm trying to get through this.

(10:20):
I forgot what they call it, the another wing of the building,
the facility. And I need to get up to the
second level because there's a forklift that's partially
propping this door open with thedebt, You know, dying guy in
front of it is like, oh, you just get the battery thing.

(10:42):
And that's, you know, likely up on this level three thing.
And I'm like, oh shit, now I gotto deal with more, more things.
And I've, you know, you can upgrade your equipment a bunch,
you know, stuff for your, your head helmets, you can make
helmets out of some of the creatures you kill, backpacks

(11:05):
sort of thing you get right. I've made a makeshift one that
gave me a few more spots. And then I found a couple in
this. It was like a, a gym, an
employee gym, I guess, with a pool next to it, bunch of
lockers all around there. So I was like going through that
stuff for materials and such. And as you get materials, you

(11:26):
unlock new things in your crafting.
And then anything it has is you get recipes for a bunch of
stuff. And there's some things that are
like, oh, you've come up with anidea for how to make, you know,
X thing might be another crafting table or something.
And it shows you the, the formula for that crafting table

(11:47):
plus like 567 items maybe that can fit into the spots that are
there. And so you're like looking like,
OK, what could make this thing? It's like maybe some cloth
straps and some metal parts and maybe some duct tape.
And you try it out. It'll, if it's not correct,

(12:10):
it'll just tell you the, the ones you tried that don't work
and you just try more things. There's no real failure to that
other than it taking some extra time, but that's like a neat
idea for adding things to it is like, oh, I came up with this
idea for a potential item because of some of the materials
I've seen kind of stuff. So yeah, it's got a lot of neat

(12:31):
stuff to it. Seems worth checking out if you
are into Half Life, a lot of theaesthetics of Half life and all
that. So yeah, that's on PS plus extra
and premium people can check that out and game Pass Ultimate
and PC game pass people can check it out.

(12:51):
It's also on Steam and maybe other PC platforms, I'm not
sure, but was in early access there.
So it's one point O now so there's that That's that's been
pretty fun jump into you can't do safe states like a Minecraft
allows you to do. You essentially just have to

(13:12):
like leave the server and it'll save on the way out.
Do you definitely want to park yourself?
Some are safe. So at least when you come back
you don't wondering like what why the hell am I here kind of
thing. So yeah, it's got some some nice
stuff to it. So there's that.

(13:33):
Also been playing some DK Bonanza.
Yep. Been working my way through the
2nd area. I managed to get all the fossils
in the first area. I think there's one type I'm
missing one on, but I believe I'm at the the point where I
should be able to have a shop that can just sell you maps of
where the the missing stuff is for a price.

(13:57):
But yeah, the second area has a big like little village that has
a bunch of shops in it that letsyou use a bunch of your
currencies to get things you might want.
Maybe just buying bananas and some other stuff for whatever
you need. It's the first place I've been

(14:17):
able to build a house or pay fora house.
So you can play some music therethat you collect randomly and
kind of chill out with Pauline and take a nap essentially.
Which is nice because Pauline was sometimes just like, I like

(14:39):
the late nights kind of like discussion with DK on things,
which is nice. But also once you do that, you
get an extra part of health that's a contemporary heart kind
of thing. So that's nice.
And yeah, the second area where the first area is kind of based
around just punching your way through everything.

(15:01):
The second one has less of that.You can still do that, but it's
kind of all based on a lot of your abilities to get around
like the turf surf stuff. Perhaps you're picking up rocks
to use as like a makeshift surfboard to get around the, you

(15:21):
know, the the wider map a littlebit more easily because DK
cannot really run and this he can sort of move at a decent
pace. But if you're trying to get
around quickly, you're either wanting to do that or fast
travel. I've not really done any fast
travel yet, so I haven't really messed with that too much.

(15:41):
But that's been a fun game to continue to push through.
The the first boss fight wasn't too bad for challenge.
It was fairly easy, though. I got it into a state where
essentially like hops away in that lack of momentum was
definitely a bit of an issue. And I feel like there's one
control thing I have a bit of a problem with because you hold

(16:03):
down the, the right trigger to pull a piece of, you know, stone
or whatever you're standing on to grab.
And I often hold it, assuming that I can go from trying to
grab a piece of ground to throwing it.
And I have to let go of right trigger and then hold it down
again to go into the, the aimingmode for that.

(16:26):
And I feel like that should be abit more of a, if you continue
to hold it, it should just go right into that mode versus just
making you let go. And it kind of leads to
frustrating moments where I either drop the items because I
I'm trying to do, you know, a number of things at a quick
succession. But yeah, kind of just running

(16:47):
to a little bit of control, small control issues like that.
But for the most part, still enjoying it a lot.
So there's that's and the other game I've been playing.
I got a code for this dark fairytale Dreamland Survivors.
It's on Steam. It is a vampire of survivors
like but from what you can tell by the title it's kind of based

(17:11):
on fairy tale stuff in a very dark form and it's a game.
That's I misread when I got the code I I read it as it was going
into early access on a certain dates and then found out like
the day before. Oh, it's been an early access
going into one point O, so I wastrying to put some more time

(17:34):
into it and they've been updating this game a lot, making
like notable changes to the gameand the progression and all that
since launch for the past few weeks in such a way that I'm
like. I wonder what's going on
particularly that is causing those kind of big changes
because the reviews seem pretty well well reviewed.

(18:00):
It's pretty positive and a lot of it's these also might be
people that have put more time to kind of understand a lot of
this stuff. But yeah, the the weird thing is
you're kind of playing as Pinocchio and that's the only
character you would think with this kind of thing.
You would have a bunch of different fairy tale characters

(18:22):
potentially, but it's Pinocchio with the caveats that as you're
doing the like campaign, what they call dream mode, you get
some like bonus challenges between waves of enemies that
are based on what is it the the card stuff, tarot cards, like

(18:48):
all those types. And once you successfully
complete four of those for the same type of card and different
runs, you unlock a new version of that character that has, you
know, whatever the bonus for that tarot card is.
I think the ones I have right now is Devil and I forget what
the other one's called. The other one essentially has

(19:10):
you, you have a second characterthat is essentially of a mirror
mode. So you move your character one
way and the other character is moving the opposite way kind of
thing. They both take damage.
So you can, did you have twice as likely a chance to take
damage as before, but you also have twice as much chance to do

(19:33):
damage to enemies. There's like neat ideas around
that. But the progression also you
have like 3 loadout slots and a progression only ties to the
loadouts, not to the character that you're building out.
So if I wanted to, you know, make one of care, you know, 1

(19:56):
loadout for each of the the tarot card things that I have
unlocked now those would have tostart over again.
On the currency unlock stuff, I believe in one of the recent
updates they changed the whole way the progression is.
So in a lot of these games you're essentially buying stat
upgrades between rounds and theyweren't doing that at a certain

(20:20):
point. Essentially they were kind of a
certain amount of those you could invest your points into
between rounds. But I believe they've
essentially rescinded that so that now you can invest into all
of them. And so you just build up your
stats over time as you get more points to put into it.
And as you do that, you unlock the next tier of those stats and

(20:43):
so sell your basic, you know, HPboost and move speed and pick up
and all that kind of stuff. So that's kind of the a nicer
thing so that you're kind of able to keep progressing and
just build up a more powerful character that will, you know,
assumingly be more likely to be able to go deeper into runs and
that kind of stuff. The weird thing, they also have

(21:07):
a currency for beating a run they call dream Crystal, which
then on the sides of your character when you're picking
them, they have extra stats there and do different things.
And so you put those points intothere and again, those don't
transfer over to the other slots.
So it's kind of very interestingway they're doing this stuff it

(21:30):
it essentially tells me I shouldn't bother trying to do
any of those other load slots unless there's something really
interesting. It's going to lock at certain
point. But for now I've beaten one
successful run in the dream, which is usually like 15 waves
of a minute each. Then between those waves, you

(21:51):
get a chance to go to the shop to buy what they are calling
eggs, dream eggs that are essentially your weapons.
And the neat system they have here is that the eggs
essentially you either activate them to take their like perks

(22:12):
essentially, or you consume themto take their stats that they
are going to add to your stats. So that'll upgrade all your
stats, but you also take the tags from them and those are
essentially your weapons and there's no limit to those.
So the system here is it has youhave three basic weapons,
Lancer, a, a bow, I think, and acaster, which is like a magic

(22:39):
ranged attack. And so you're kind of building
up these attacks and the, the way it kind of explains probably
not the best way possible in game in the, the tutorial
section is that based on how those stats are those three
basic weapons are upgraded and what, which ones the most

(23:04):
powerful and the second most powerful and the weakest.
Those will change what your abilities are overall.
The some will have there's like a tentacle 1 based on how you
have those ordered. And there's other ones that do
these, like laser shots, which is neat.
It doesn't really explain them well at all.
It takes, it took me until like my 7th or 8th run to figure this

(23:27):
out. Like four or five hours into the
game. I was just like, why is this
thing keep changing all the time?
That's because it kept changing all the time.
But I didn't understand anythingwhy I was doing.
That's why the effects were changing so much.
So yeah, there's those three. And then there's a bunch of
elements X, you know, your basicpoison and stuff with the wool

(23:52):
first enemies and all this is 5 total, I think.
And so you're building up those as well by consuming these eggs
and you can take on extra challenges and buy them in the
the shop and all that. I just kind of, it kind of does
that. It's so far as not opened up
into anything much deeper. But yeah, that's been a pretty

(24:14):
solid one of these so far, but it just seems a little lights on
contents. But it's also a $5 game, which,
you know, I'm not going to expect a ton out of.
But also, it's saved Vampire Survivors as a $5 game.
It. Has a ton of contents in it
because they added that. Because I've done well enough to

(24:36):
Add all that content and they'vemade it that kind of game where
you're trying out different characters and all that kind of
stuff, and this hasn't evolved in that way yet, so maybe it
will. They seem to be doing weekly
updates with some notable changes based on how the
community is liking certain things.

(25:00):
So yeah, that's, again, it's pretty solid for my plate so
far, but I'm not going to say it's an amazing one of these, at
least not yet. But I'm looking forward to
playing some more of it. But it's also a rough game to
play on a Steam Deck because it's drains the battery super
fast, as all these do. I was even running it on my PC

(25:20):
and it was. So there's dream mode and
there's endless stream, which isjust you continually playing
with no interruptions. You just have to hope a shop
spawns in the map or whatever, but it'll throw a boss in every
60 seconds. So I think I got like 15 minutes
in or so on that and it was justa mass of enemies in the middle

(25:44):
of the screen with bosses, a number of bosses with health
bars on them. And I'm like, these are never
getting killed. Also, because my character was
not super powered up or anything.
I hadn't really understood the the system there.
But yeah, it's a it's a pretty solid one of these.
I'm hoping to see it improve some more, but for now, this is

(26:05):
a pretty decent one if you need a new one.
But yeah, that's been pretty much what I've been doing.
So how would you, Brandon? Well, As for me, I have well, I
finished System Shock to the 24th 5th Anniversary remaster.
My review is on the Smash Pad website for anybody who wants to

(26:27):
see it. Basically, you know, it's still
a pretty good game. It's still like, you know, it's
still an important release, but a lot of it has not held up,
especially when you compare it to games that would come out
after it that managed to do a lot of what it did, but

(26:48):
streamline it to make it a lot easier to deal with and have a
not have a clunky interface the way that that game does.
But since I was done with that, I started playing Banishers
Ghosts New Eden, which is a gamethat is on PlayStation Plus.
And honestly, I'm shocked it took me this long to play it

(27:11):
because it's an amazing game. It's a don't nod joint.
So basically you're playing these two individuals.
One of them's named Red, he's a Scotsman.
The other is a woman named Albia, who's a black English
woman. And basically they're travelling

(27:31):
to this this, the game takes place in 1695.
And they're both sort of travelling to this Puritan
colony in New England called NewEden, which is, it's not real,
obviously, because a friend of theirs, a guy named Charles, has
been telling them about this curse that has seemed to
overtake the town. Now Red and Albia and also

(27:56):
Charles for that matter are all banishers and basically
banishers in this universe are people whose job it is to help
deal with like ghosts and spirits of various persuasions.
Essentially trying to sever the whatever link that the ghost

(28:21):
still have with the with the mortal plane.
So they can either ascend to youknow, which is what happens when
they do it nicely, or you can just banish them outright, which
is a bit more violent in nature when it happens.
But when they get there, they find out that New Eden is

(28:43):
practically a ghost town. And no pun intended, there's
most of the people have fled, all the children are gone.
They've all, you know, been relocated to somewhere else.
Most of the adults have followedthem.
And by the time you get there, the only ones that are still
there are the governor of the colony, guy who's a like a

(29:06):
scholar or whatever that lives across the street from the
Tavern. This woman named thick skin who
is a hunter who works with the they call it what works sort of
looks with the local hunting group to try and get food to the
colony, you know, game and that like and also Charles's widow

(29:28):
because a spoiler alert, Charlesis dead and part of the early
part of the game is finding out what happened to him.
Because the way this works is that basically in this game, you
go through a series of cases that are called haunts.
And what this involves is you. It involves a lot of like
talking to people, doing interviews, gathering

(29:50):
information, looking for things like correspondence and letters,
diary entries, various objects or such that seems to be to find
out like what how this person died, why they died, and why
their ghost seems to still be sticking around instead of

(30:11):
moving on to the astral plane orwhatever.
And The thing is, you have to dothis because ghosts by their
nature essentially drained the life force of whoever they are
attached, they are attached to. And it's not like a a thing of
like good or evil, it's just that's just what ghosts do.

(30:31):
And the longer they stay around,the longer they have to drain
their moral life force until eventually they inadvertently
kill the other person. And you eventually do find out
what happens to Charles, what happened to him essentially.
And honestly, I'm not really spoiling anything here.
It's not even close to the majorspoiler for this game.

(30:54):
Charles had the the curse he'd been talking about.
He'd essentially sent for Red and Albia to come and deal with
the curse, but there had been too much time had passed between
when he'd sent out the letter and when they finally managed to
get New Eden. Get the New Eden.
Because on top of a bunch of other stuff, you know, this is

(31:16):
still 1695. It's still the age of sail.
And it takes a while to get from, you know, to across the
Atlantic. And unfortunately, one of the
parts of the curse that have been inflicted on New Eden is
that there's basically a perpetual winter, meaning that

(31:38):
by the time they get there, eventhough it's like in I think
April, there's like a bunch of like icebergs and like pieces of
ice floating around on the coast.
So they, they literally have to like disembark from the ship and
then get on a rowboat and row toshore.
And eventually it just got to the point where it's like

(31:59):
Charles is literally like, I can't do, I can't stand by and
do nothing anymore. I got to do something or we're
all dead. And he finds out what the source
of the curse is. And unfortunately, the source of
the curse ends up killing him. And like, your first, like,
official act as a banisher in the game is ascending, you know,

(32:24):
ascending his spirit so that he can move on.
But essentially what he finds out is that what has caused the
curse is a type of spirit calleda nightmare, not literally like
a bad dream, although it can definitely, definitely causes
bad dreams. It's a basically a spirit that

(32:45):
is made-up entirely of vengeance.
And it only comes about because it's usually made-up by the
victim or victims of some horrific tragedy, usually some
incredible injustice and a big part of the, and you're trying
to find out what caused that nightmare.
And then I'm not going to spoil it going from there because some

(33:06):
stuff happens. But damn, the good, the, the
game is good, Like legitimately really good.
Unfortunately, it kind of came out at a time where it got kind
of, you know, it came out like Ithink last year and it kind of
it got pretty good reviews, but it didn't sell very well, which

(33:27):
is sad because it is a good game.
So you know, if you if you got if you got PS plus, give it a
shot because it's definitely entertaining.
But other than that, I've also been playing a little game that
came out back in 2018 called 0 Ranger.
This was made by the same guys who made another game that I've

(33:48):
talked about on the cast before called called void Stranger.
And that was the one where you're essentially playing this
woman who picks up the staff in like this, in like these ruins.
And now she can only move like 1space at a time, up or down,
left or right. But the staff that she has gives
her the power so that she can actually take a tile off of the

(34:16):
floor and then use that tile andput it over on an area that will
like over like a pit so that she'll have a bridge to cross
over to get to the next floor. And it it gets a little bit more
complicated than that. Obviously the game is kind of
notorious for the fact that it it get it, it can get
legitimately very vexing later on.

(34:37):
But it's also a legitimately great game.
And it's also famous for the fact that it is an absolute
masterpiece and like emergent storytelling where failure will
actually like further the story.And like as the game goes on,
you know it'll slowly incrementally reveal like this

(34:59):
universe that you're in and whatthe nature of these ruins are. 0
Ranger is actually the other game they made.
It was actually made before VoidStranger.
And that game is actually a schmuck, like an old school, you
know, Japanese style top down schmuck.

(35:20):
At least much of it is. There's also like some side
scrolling bits later on as well.And essentially what it is is
you are given the choice betweenthese two different kinds of
ships. One of them is a ship that's
like skinny and fast, but the trade off is is that it's shots
are not as powerful or as like spread out and it's slightly

(35:45):
weaker. Or there's another ship that is
bigger and it's like it's not thin.
It's like squarish to like widerand it's a bit slower than the
other one is, but it's also a bit stronger than it is.
It has long longer bullets. It has it has a bigger spread of

(36:09):
its basic attacks and those are a bit more powerful.
And essentially like most of it is very much like how you would,
you would, you know, a traditional old school Japanese
schmap is a top down, you know, enemies coming down towards you
shoot at them, everything blows up.
But as the game goes on, you youget some other stuff like

(36:31):
eventually, like one of the first things you can get is a
ability that lets you shoot backwards that gives you like an
A like a weapon that where you can focus your fire from the
rear from the rear, which you will need because a lot of these
later on, some of these, some ofthese later stages, like there
are a bunch of enemies that willcome at you from below.

(36:55):
So you absolutely have to have something to fire back there.
Another thing is this game is very, very difficult.
You will be needing to learn patterns.
You will die a lot. And the good thing though, is
the more you play and the biggeryour score is, every time you

(37:16):
die, you'll end up like getting more and more continues that you
can use. Because the game has like this
sort of like Dharma wheel systemwhere every time you die, but
you get a big enough score, the Dharma wheel will like fill up.
And every time it fills up it you'll get like a new continue

(37:36):
that you can use. Also, there's just like some
other stuff about it that's kindof odd.
The game very makes it kind of clear that something just as
what is the same with void stranger.
The game sort of shows us like there's something odd going on
here. This isn't exactly just your
standard sci-fi schmuck that youwould get a lot of weird stuff

(38:00):
is happening underneath the surface another one another.
Otherwise it's just a really funand really solid shoot em up
game. Highly recommend it.
It's like only like I think 11 to $12.00 on Steam right now.
So, you know, if you, if you, ifyou want, if you got to scratch
and you want to, you know, play a really solid shoot them up

(38:22):
with a lot more hiding under thesurface, You can do no better
than 0 Ranger right now. Seriously.
But yeah, that's what I've been playing.
Oh yeah, let's get to some news.Oh yeah, we got, we had a
Pokémon Presents Direct that happened earlier this week,
which didn't really have much toit, mostly just updates for a

(38:43):
lot of the existing things they were doing.
But one of the notable things that happened there was the
announcement of Pokémon Friends,which is a mobile game that's
also a switch. It's free to start on the on the
phones, but 10 bucks and it's based on the Switch, which I

(39:04):
played the the mole version. Kind of get what was going on
here because the the way they described this game, unlike the
E shop and all that was pretty weird because they described it
as having like 30 like 30 puzzles, something like that.
That was just a a weird thing tosee.

(39:26):
And then some one of the videos was like, oh, there's 1200
puzzles and I'm like, what the heck is this going on here?
The one it is a game made for ormade by IT company that does
Children's Games. And a lot of the puzzles are
essentially very quick logic puzzles. 1 might be just a maze,

(39:48):
a quick maze or one that requires, you know, turning this
block with a bunch of stuff in it to try to get the Pokemons
little thing in there out of it.All of that kind of stuff that
you're basically trying to do. However many it needs you to do

(40:09):
like three to seven, usually in a quick succession because your
speed on that can influence yourability to get more materials
out of it. Then you turn into plushies of a
good variety of Pokémon. So it has a bunch of individual
puzzles of each type. And it has, I think, let's see.

(40:33):
Yeah, the basic pack has 30 puzzle types.
Essentially. It just calls them 30 puzzles,
which makes it seem like a huge RIP off.
But yeah, you have a bunch of different types in there of each
one. So yeah, it's it's more than it
looks, but you're getting the basic pack essentially, once you
play the the mobile game, it takes maybe 5 to 10 minutes to

(40:54):
get to that point where it's like, all right, you've done
everything you can do for today.But if you want to pay US 10
bucks, you can keep playing, youknow, infinitely.
And beyond that, they have two $15 packs to add more puzzles,
puzzle types to it. Like it says, 1010 additional
puzzles, 40 plushes to make, 15 pieces of furniture you can earn

(41:18):
because you're basically betweenpuzzles, you can go to this
little room that you can decorate with different
Wallpapers, furnitures and display these plushes however
you want. You can kind of move them in 3D
space kind of thing to build outa cute little room if that's
what you want to do. So yeah, they have those two $15
ones, and then I can get a bundle of those two for 26

(41:43):
bucks, I think. But if you want to go all in up
front, you can get a bundle of all that stuff for 34 bucks.
So kind of makes for a bit of a high price initially, but once
you kind of see what's all in it, it makes sense to get really
into it. That's why I would suggest
checking out the mobile game first and seeing what's the

(42:06):
scope of what you're getting into.
But what's there is pretty neat and it's kind of a it's kind of
one of those daily puzzle game kind of things that you can do
some for every day. You get different kinds of yarns
that you can essentially used inthe little machine that produces
a plush. And I think it's the the odds I

(42:28):
saw in that. So it's like 25% to make this
125% of this 125%. You know, it's pretty basic put
up. You have one in four chance for
a lot of the the easier Pokémon to get out of each type of yarn.
I don't know how much you're going to get duplicates or if it
prioritizes the new ones. I haven't played enough of that,

(42:50):
but that's a neat one. There's that.
That's the the big new Pokémon game that got released, so
there's that for those that wantit.
Let's see. The other thing that got
announced this week, PS-5 Systemsoftware beta that is out now in

(43:17):
beta test. That's two big features.
One, the ability to pair a dual sense controller across multiple
devices. So now you can have it sync to
your PS-5 as well as your PC. And I believe you essentially
hold down the PlayStation button, one of the face buttons

(43:40):
you swap between the different devices that it's supposed to be
paired to. So yeah, they mentioned PC, Mac
and mobile devices or other devices switch your pairing to
kind of makes it easier to do that stuff without having to

(44:02):
repair it each time depending onwhether you want to play on PS-5
or PC or your phone. So that's a, that's a nice one
to add. The other one is a power saver
mode that they're adding I mentioned as part of their
environmental plan Road to 0 environmental plan.

(44:26):
So they offer this mode called power saver mode that won't be
in the beta here, but once it's out, it will essentially allow
sported PS five games to scale back performance and allow your
PS-5 to reduce its power consumption when the features
enabled optionally by the player.

(44:49):
If not enabled or if games do not support the feature, it'll
just run as normal, which peopleare assuming.
This is part of some work that they're also getting towards a
PlayStation handheld thing that would allow them to have these
games running a lower, you know,a lower spec states that may

(45:14):
work on a, you know, a less powerful handheld.
So maybe that is also part of this.
But for now, it's part of allowing the the PS-5 to run in
a more power efficient state forgames that support it.
So there's that need a little firmware update.
They got planned be available right now, but not out just yet,

(45:38):
probably in a couple of months. So is that the other thing that
came out already this week? Yeah.
All right. So yeah, we got some stuff
coming up here. I mean, we found out the the
first of the batch of games, ArcSystem Works announced pretty
recently. Dear Me I was is going to be out

(46:01):
on July 31st. So which I think is yeah,
Thursday. That's their interactive
adventure game that is switched to exclusive.
Yeah, I believe it's 799 on the E shop, so fairly cheap price
for what it is. Yeah.
So that's neat looking game. I'm curious to see more of that.

(46:26):
So yeah, if you need your your big fancy expensive switch to to
be doing something that does notpush it in any way shape or
form, this is a game you can getfor a decent price.
Yeah. If you want your more visual
novel style game. Yeah.
Yeah, I'm actually looks. Pretty neat actually.

(46:49):
Yeah, I like these type of games.
So part of the reason I love theSwitch is, and obviously Switch
too as well, is because, you know, they showed that there's a
market for these types of games and the Switch is like basically
the perfect console for them. Yeah.

(47:11):
You know, like, yeah, they're not typically like graphically
super challenging. You know, they you can pretty
much run a lot of them on a potato and, you know, it's it's
it's they're just fun. Yeah, it's, it's just, it's the
perfect console for them. Yeah.
So, yeah, that's that's out thisweek.

(47:32):
So there you go. Yeah, we also have this.
The Assassin's Creed Shadows First Story DLC has gotten a
dates of September 16th. Yep, that game ended up doing
very well financially and critically, in spite of all the
haters. Yeah, this one's called Claws of

(47:54):
the Awaji said after the conclusion of Shadows events.
We need to beat the game to unlock it so it gives.
Now I had new slate of foes on the new island setting Awaji, so
that's neat. Yeah, free to players who
pre-ordered Shadows, but yeah, probably part of the the battle

(48:19):
or not the battle pass, the season pass or whatever they're
doing. Yeah.
For that game and also part of that, they have an update that's
out this week on the 29th that will be introducing new Game
Plus. So if you've beaten the game and
want to start all over again andhave that much time for that, so

(48:39):
that will be out this week then.Yeah.
Reset story and objective board progression, but allows you to
retain your character level, gear, field points, knowledge
rank and hideout progression. So that's interesting.
Yeah. And I guess it also gives you
the option of restoring the restarting the story from the

(49:00):
very beginning or skipping the prologue starting when now a
first. It's the the hideouts.
Yeah. I guess that also raises the
level cap from 60 to 80 and has some new skill stuff to get.
Yeah, new upgrades for the the hideouts and it adds Project 3

(49:24):
for yeah, new resources, data files and exclusive Animus
themed rewards. I think it's for the the weird
little launcher thing they have.Yeah, so there's that.
Oh yeah, there's that. That's some nice more content
for the for that game. Doesn't need it.

(49:44):
So there's that. We also got some stuff coming
out shortly after that. Frost Punk 2 is finally coming
to consoles on PS-5 and Xbox Series X&S on September 18th, so
people can check that one out. Seems like it also be on Game
Pass. So you have an Xbox, you can
check it out there. They also have physical editions

(50:05):
that will be coming out around the same time too.
So yeah, that's that's another good game there coming out to
consoles. Yeah, sounds awesome as yeah.
What do we got here next? I'm saying, what are you, what

(50:28):
are you looking forward to on that game?
On Frostpunk? On what?
Frostpunk 2. Yeah.
I mean, I'm looking forward to it, but I'll be completely
honest, I've played that game. I've played the original Frost
Punk both on consoles and on PC.And I'll be completely honest,
PC is really the the one to do it because that game, trying to

(50:49):
play it on consoles is a whole challenge in and of itself.
Yeah, they did. Those types of games just are
not made for console control schemes.
You have to have a mouse and keyboard for games like that.
But you know, I I'm still going to give it a shot.

(51:13):
And I loved the original Frost Punk, so yeah.
Yeah, there's that. Let's see, Next up here, we got
a date for Nicktoons in the Diceof Destiny, which is September
30th. That's on everything I believe.
PS-5, Xbox, Switch and PC. Yeah they be announced roster so

(51:37):
far as SpongeBob any cheeks? Leonardo from TMT.
Yep. Guitar from Avatar, the last day
of Render, Timmy from the FairlyOdd Parents, and I guess they
may still have some more to announce.
Oh, definitely. So there's that's, yeah, it's
4999 at lunch special deluxe edition for 5999.

(52:01):
I guess if you want to pay more,there's an $80 addition.
And yeah, I can see also see Susie from Rugrats.
I can see Azula. I can see what's his name from
Fairly Odd Parents. Yeah, it it, it looks
interesting. I'll give it that.

(52:21):
It's just, you know, what's going to separate this from your
typical Nick Nickelodeon tie in game, you know?
Yeah, it seems we're not seeing it.
Looks more like an action RPGI. Don't know if that means in
terms of loot or just sort of a beat them up with RPG stuff to

(52:43):
it. Yeah.
Still have to see. There's also Game Male, so
there's not going to be that much of a budget to it, but.
Yeah, yeah, definitely. It still looks neat, so there's
that. That's the last of the September
stuff. We did find out that Borderlands
4 is not going to miss the switch to for too long.

(53:06):
No, the regular game is out September 12th and the switch to
version is out October 3rd. Yeah, so couple weeks, yeah, a
couple weeks later. Honestly though, I'm going to be
playing this on my PS-5. Yeah.
So I think Randy Pitchford has talked about performance, that

(53:27):
the switch to version will run at 30 FPS.
That can go up or down dependingon how many, you know, people
you're playing with, what kind of content you're doing because
that game can get hectic at times.
So yeah. Yeah.
I'm so excited for Borderlands 4, mind you, because I did like
Borderlands 3IN spite of the shitty writing, it was still a

(53:48):
lot of fun and I just, I'd, I want this game to be good.
So yeah, we'll see. Yeah.
That's a month and a half away, not much longer.
The other thing we found out of note from the Pokémon Presents
Direct is that there will be a Pokémon Legend ZA Switch to

(54:11):
bundle. Yeah.
It'll be the same 49 or 400 and 9999 price that the Mario Kart
bundle is, but just gets you theSwitch to edition of Pokémon
Legend ZA which is 70 bucks instead of 80.
So you're saving a little bit less, but still saving if you do
not have a switch to yet. Yeah.

(54:34):
Yeah, that'll be out on October 16th alongside the game.
So if you have, if you're going to get one, then then you might
as well get that bundle. So there you go, that'll be
another bundle for the holiday season.
So yeah. There you go.
Yes. More more news.
More Pokémon news Yep. Let's see, go into the Xbox

(54:58):
world. The way they announced this is
so dumb. But The Outer Worlds 2 is
getting a price drop to 6999 ahead of launch.
Yep. And I guess the Xbox has said
that's no other games for this year will be going to 7999.
Yeah, which is good to see. Yeah.

(55:23):
Because this was a bungling on their parts and you could tell
Microsoft wanted to hide by thisbecause they made Obsidian
announce it on their social media stuff.
Yep. I know Xbox social media channel
was posting this on their own. So the Obsidian announcements

(55:45):
they had one that was normal andone that was in world.
Yeah. Which I feel like this seems
kind of a shitty thing, a shittyway to write this.
Dear Galactic Citizens, we have received your SOS via skip Drone
about the pricing. As an organization devoted to
making sure that corporations donot go unfettered, we at the
Earth Directorates have worked with Redacted to revise the

(56:07):
price of The Outer Worlds too. While this will not bring peace
to the Galaxy or even your localcolony, we assure you all that
we are here to fight for all colonies in every way that we
can. From the office of the Director
of the Earth Directorate. So yeah, Yep, we're going to
make Obsidian the the face of this.

(56:28):
Even though they did. Not get the.
Pricing decision. Yeah.
That is a Microsoft decision. That is 100% a Microsoft
decision. Not because I'm betting most of
those devs are like, yeah, why are we going higher than
everybody? Yep.
Why do we have to be the game that gets be the face of this?
So yeah, that's a shame for them.

(56:51):
I'm going to bet if they have Forza Horizon 6 coming out next
year, that'll be 80 bucks because 5 is sold well enough,
especially on PS-5, that they will not take a a chance at
taking less money for that from a willing audience.
But yeah, and doing that made a lot of people writing articles

(57:12):
about this. They hope City announced this
like, no, they didn't. They their social media team was
forced to do this. But you can go to their Xbox
account on Twitter or Blue Sky or whatever and see no mention
of any of this, not even on XboxWire, I don't think.
Maybe they posted that later. Yeah, there's an Outer Worlds 2

(57:34):
post on here, but I think it's just about gameplay stuff might
be from yeah the 16th, so not even recent so.
There you go. Yep.
Good news for that game, better chance of it doing well, but not
because Obsidian made any decision here.

(57:56):
All right, Yeah. Let's see, we got another date
here. Terminator 2D.
No fate was delayed. Supposed to be on September 5th
but now they pushed it to October 31st.
You don't remember? This is the 2D beat em up
shooter game based on the original Terminator 2 movie that

(58:20):
looks really good for this game.Yeah.
It seems like they were, yeah, coordinating and manufacturing
the physical release has taken longer.
So they're delaying the release of the game to have that outs at
launch as well, which I would not have been, I would not have
blamed them for just having the physical release later, but they

(58:40):
probably know the sort of peoplethat they are targeting here for
this kind of thing. So yeah, making a move to say
we'll get all the versions of this ready for lunch.
Not a great time to put out thiskind of game, but I imagine it's
not going to hinder it too much.Yeah, yeah, I doubt it.

(59:03):
So yeah, that is game. It just looks really good.
Just also one of the weirdest announcements we've had.
Yeah, because it's like, hey, we're going to make a movie or a
game about a movie that came out33 years ago.
Yeah, I mean, it's a good movie.Yeah.
No, make no, it ain't no mistake.
It's a, it's an amazing movie. In fact, this is like, very much

(59:26):
like a throwback to like. Oh yeah.
Remember when they used to like have SNES games and arcade games
based on movies? You know?
Yeah. And it definitely looks good.
Like looks like something that that honestly, if you know, it
was still back in the day and I was going to like, you know,
Blockbuster or something and sawthis on the shelf, I'd be like,

(59:48):
damn, yeah, I got to play that. Yeah.
Also the fact that they decided to release this game the same
day as MENA the hollow where comes out.
Yeah. That, that, that, that takes
some balls. I will not lie.
Yeah, though in October you're is just picking what's kind of

(01:00:09):
death you want. So here there's that.
I think it's the last of the thedates we have for this year.
But yeah, Speaking of old moviesgetting games at random time.
So we got a we got a game here coming from Rudolph the Red
Nosed Reindeer. The Rankin S classic movie is

(01:00:30):
getting a game release through Game Mail entertainment.
Yeah. Yeah, coming to PlayStation,
Xbox, switching PC this holiday.This is such a random
announcement that yeah, kind of in on it's kind of just want to
check this out. Yeah, that's a classic movie.

(01:00:52):
Yeah, not for me. Yeah, those old Rankin Bass
movies were really good. It's a little off putting when
you think about it because of the really jerky animation
style, but yeah, you look at this and it's like, yeah, this
is like really low budget. Yeah.
Obviously kind of reminds me, I don't know if you remember that

(01:01:14):
Popeye game that came out last year it this looks better than
that, but wow. Yeah, but it's just a really
interesting looking game. So yeah, I'll try and check this
one out. There's that.

(01:01:37):
Yeah, just like we'll take this classic Christmas special and
make a 3D platformer out of it. And it's like nobody has done
that in decades. Yeah, it's probably the PS2
generation, really. We got anything like that?
Yeah. So hey, I think it was also an
Elf on the Shelf in the gut announced that I didn't care to

(01:02:00):
put in here because those are stupid things that became a meme
for a while and we don't want topay a bunch of attention to that
kind of nonsense. So there's that, Yeah.
The other thing we got coming this year is Atari 50.

(01:02:21):
The Anniversary Collection is getting new DLC called the Namco
Legendary Pack out of nowhere, supposed to be out later this
year. They're doing a whole host of
things with this partnership with Namco.
So this DLC will be 8 bucks, it'll add new story stuff to the
game, but also a number of games, a lot of which are bad.

(01:02:48):
Yeah, Pac-Man for the Atari 2600is a bad game.
Well the games themselves aren'tbad, it's the the ports that
they made that are terrible. Yeah.
You mentioned the Pac-Man. Yeah, the Pac-Man 1 is
notoriously awful. A lot of their 2600 stuff was
not great because that was a system way underpowered made

(01:03:10):
those games famous. Yep.
I was like hey imagine a Pac-Mangame that scrolls, that's how
bad that was. And it was also one of those
games made in like 6 weeks. Yep.
It sold pretty well, but I believe it also got a good
amount of refunds. Not as bad as ET, but was
definitely one of those games that Atari hung their head on

(01:03:33):
for a holiday. Didn't really pan out like they
expected. Yeah, they also including a
number of Atari 5200 and 7800 games, which should be better
versions of a lot of these. I mentioned Galaga, Dig Dug, ZBS
and Galaxy, and so a lot of those should be better versus

(01:03:53):
Atari TWIX 2600 versions that are just square shooting at
squares, that kind of stuff. So.
Yep, yeah. They also announced they're
doing a version of the the 2600 Plus that is yellow Pac-Man
yellow. What else?
They're offering cartridges versions.

(01:04:14):
They're doing a 7800 version of Pac-Man, which did not exist
before that also includes I think it's a dual cartridge that
can also boot on a 2600. So if you want to see that
shitty ass version of the game, you can't do that.
So yeah, they're they're sellinga bunch of specialized stuff.
There's special of versions of the wireless joysticks for the

(01:04:38):
the Atari 2600 Plus thing and all the Ghosts varieties, which
is also a joke because the the Atari 2600 version of the game
did not have colors for the Ghosts.
There's just kind of all the same color.
But you can spend $200 for a full package of five of those.

(01:04:58):
Or you can but they have a bundle here 275 bucks for the
2600 Plus with the the Pac-Man bundle of games and get it with
all the the joysticks and all the games for $434.92.
If. You want to spend an absurd

(01:05:19):
amount of money for things that honestly look really nice but
nobody needs. But Atari knows what they're
doing here because they know they've got just enough of an
audience that wants to buy this kind of cool stuff that you can
do that so. There you go, cool stuff.
There, I feel like you're you'regaming history and seeing where

(01:05:42):
Bandai started on the console front, one of the places they
were kind of licensing out theirthing all over the place.
Yep. As they are want to do, but yeah
RE 50 still getting expanded with new stuffs which is awesome
to see. So yeah, there you go.

(01:06:02):
We got one more game here getting a dates.
It is the Legend of Heroes Trails Beyond the Horizon, which
I believe was supposed to come out earlier this or later this
year. We got delayed, yeah.
And they announced that it'll beout January 15th in the West.
Yes, finally. Awesome.
That shortly after the new year.Yep, and don't forget that the

(01:06:25):
Trails in the Sky remake comes out in September.
So. Yeah, you can play that and then
this game and be very confused how you get from.
Oh yeah, there you go. Let's see, Yeah, we got another
game that was announced that is pretty interesting.
Climb Parker's Hellraiser revival.

(01:06:48):
Yeah. A franchise that somehow never
really got a game release. I think they had one in the
works but never made it to release.
Yeah, weirdly enough. Like it's that this franchise
has been around for a long, longtime, and yet somehow no game
Diane's. It's crazy.

(01:07:08):
Yeah, so they have one here coming from Sabre Interactive
for PS-5, Xbox and PC. No date yet.
The developers boss team games. So that is, I'm not sure what
else they've worked on here. They worked on the side
scrolling Retro Realms, Halloween and Retro Realms, Ash

(01:07:29):
versus Evil Dead games and the Evil Dead the game they like 4B1
kind of thing. Let's see.
They got some decent chops there.
But yeah, they're basically working on a new story here.
Seems like a horror shooter kindof game with a lot of the the

(01:07:53):
Hellraiser stuff to it. So Yep, looking through the
screenshots, Yep there's a creepy weird enemies with they
look like Voldo but not censored.
Well, I mean, Valdo, that's kindof what his whole like thing was
kind of based on to begin with. Yeah, he's also got a lot of
bloody parts around there at theregions.

(01:08:15):
Yeah, that's that is very hellraiser.
Yeah. Yeah, and I believe they do have
the the guy that was the original voice of whatever the
the Hellraiser guy is Pinhead, he is back to voice this.
Yeah, Doug Bradley. Yeah, Aiden is the the character

(01:08:37):
you're playing, which I believe I saw is voiced by Zlavier
Nelson Junior, who's. Yeah, strange scaffold that's.
Right. Yeah, that's.
Right. I know he got hired for this,
but he's doing voices, a voice for the the main character.
So that's that's cool for him. Yep.
If you want to fucked up horror game, this probably is going to

(01:08:59):
be the one for you. Maybe a ways off, maybe next
year, maybe the 2027, I don't know.
Yeah, we'll have to find out. So yeah, there you go, some neat
news. Now let's get to the the bad
news. Yeah, here we go.

(01:09:20):
So the Split Gate 2 saga has continued.
They have decided to put the game back to beta states not
having the fully available anymore.
I don't know, I assume if you already have it downloaded you
keep playing it if you want. But they basically said that

(01:09:42):
they are. They launched too early, they've
been too ambitious. We rushed certain features, made
some boneheaded mistakes, and most importantly, we didn't give
you the Polish portal filled mayhem you fell in love with.
So yeah, it's going to be returning to playable beta form.
They're going heads down until early 2026 to significantly

(01:10:03):
rebuild the game. Unfortunately, along with that,
they are doing some layoffs. We don't know.
How many they're laying off? But yeah, they're kind of
essentially moving back into a pre release mode and supposedly
we'll revamp the game. I don't know if they're going to

(01:10:26):
successfully pull it off becauseit's not a thing you do because
things are fixable. But also remember that the the
head of the studio is the son ofthe guy that Co founded one of
the tax companies. Yep.
Into it, I think so he's got plenty of money available to him

(01:10:49):
to spend on this stuff, so he's not using it to spend on a
people that can work there for the whole time.
Yeah. So yeah, I imagine it's probably
a lot of community people or whatever.
Yeah, probably. Ones that would deal with a more
finished game. So yeah, that sucks for those

(01:11:12):
people and that this guy is going to run things poorly.
Because if you remember, Flick 8launched and was a huge success
and the the studio immediately was like, all right, we're done
working on this game. We're going to work on a sequel.
And the guys that like they madechoices with their engine and

(01:11:34):
design and all that that's wouldn't allow them to evolve it
so much. But that has not worked out well
for them. We're probably better just to
keep working on split gates, at least for a while.
And kind of is the the problem is they didn't really monetize
that game very well. So.
Yeah. They weren't exactly making a

(01:11:56):
ton of money, and I guess there's also part of this
they're shutting down the service for the original game.
Yep. So they've said that the that
cost some hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Yeah. All because of those kind of
poor decision making stuff goingon.
So yeah, not really a great timefor the studio.

(01:12:20):
Sort of made the opposite decision, like the Among Us devs
who we're playing a sequel to that game and then it blew up
during the the pandemic and they're like, you know what,
cancel that. We're going to just keep working
on this game. Yep.
And that turned out big enough that's, you know, they're doing
lots of crossovers with other games.
Yep. Made it into the second Knives

(01:12:44):
Out movie. You know, a big cultural
zeitgeist for a game that nobodycared about before 2020.
Yeah. So.
That's everything that Splitgateis not.
Yep. So yeah, sucks to be the guy
running the studio, but also sucks to be the people getting

(01:13:04):
laid off because of his stupid decision.
So. Yep.
There you go. We do have another studio doing
some layoffs that are delaying things.
Supermassive Games has delayed Directive 8020 to like the first
half of 2026 and laying off somepeople as a result.
Yeah, they do mention that the Little Nightmares 3 is not going

(01:13:30):
to be delayed as a result of this.
That's out pretty soon I believe.
Yep. Yeah, October 10th.
So that one's pretty much done. So it should not be affected by
any of this. But Directive 8020, which was
supposed to October 2nd, they decided to push that a bit and
kind of keep working on it. So yeah, I guess it'll be

(01:13:55):
upwards of 36 employees that areexpected to be laid off so.
Yeah. Wish all the best for them and
for Supermassive, because that'sa studio that has a lot of great
people working on there and I'vemade a lot of cool games.
I'd love to see them keep doing well and survive.

(01:14:15):
You're right. So yeah, there's your other bad
news. We do have some good stuff here.
We got the announcer that SilverSurfer and Beta Ray Bill are
going to be on the roster for Marvel Cosmic Invasion.
Yep. Silver Surfer just being in

(01:14:37):
Fantastic Four makes sense to announce that character.
Yeah. Beta Ray Bill's one I'd never
heard of but I looked it up and he's a Thor side character.
Basically an alien that's becamea Thor.
Yeah, basically, yeah. He, he debuted like back in the
80s when Walt Simonson was doingthat book and basically his

(01:15:02):
whole thing is that he's an alien.
Who it it, it was back during a time period when the the
original Thor had been depoweredfor whatever reason.
And somehow, Beta Ray Bill managed to come across Thor's
hammer, and it turned out that he was one of the handful of
people that were actually worthyof using it.
So he essentially became a new Thor.

(01:15:26):
And eventually he proved himselfto be so really cool that
eventually Asgard decided to, I mean, not, yeah.
Asgard decided to give him a hisown, his own hammer.
And that's basically how he cameabout.
Yeah, he's a, he's kind of an old school, kind of a deep cut

(01:15:51):
character though, so honestly, the fact that they even
recognize them is kind of cool. Yeah, so I imagine they're
trying to not just have The Avengers characters in this,
which you've already got CaptainAmerica.
Yeah. Wolverine and Spider Man.
But Yep. They're also having other

(01:16:12):
characters, so that's nice. Best for the characters.
Steve Blum Steve Blum is voicingVenom and Beta Ray Bill Brian
Bloom Captain American Silver Surfer Trevor Duvall is Rocket
Raccoon. Cal dot is Wolverine.
Gosh Keaton is Spider Man. Matt Mercer's Nova and

(01:16:33):
Annihilus. Aileen Mithin as Phil of L
Elysia Rotaru. As she Hulk.
And Allison Seeley Smith at Storm.
Yep. So I'm guessing this is
probably. About the.
Must be the final cast, the final people getting announced.
So because, yeah, I think that is supposed to be out this fall,

(01:16:57):
Yeah. So they're probably.
Finishing. Up.
All the work they're going to dofor that and have it out here in
the near future. So yeah, yeah, be fun to see,
definitely. Yeah, just it look, it looks
awesome, like I I can't wait to play this.
Yeah, yeah. So there's.

(01:17:17):
That and I love the fact and I do.
Genuinely love the fact. That, you know, they're not just
staying on. Like the characters?
That are in the, like, mainstream, you know, public
consciousness. They're bringing some of the
more obscure ones here too, yeah, which is just really cool.
Shows that you know these guys. Are like legit fans.

(01:17:40):
Yeah. So there you go.
Let's see. Yeah, we.
Got some business news? Yep, Sony Group Corporation and
Bandai Namco Holdings have signed a strategic partnership
and as a result, Sony will acquire 2.5% of Bandai Namco
Holdings become like the fourth or fifth highest stakeholder in

(01:18:00):
the company. This is not necessarily a gaming
thing so much because if you don't know, Sony is one of the
biggest anime companies in the world now that they've acquired
Crunchyroll and a few other companies.
One of the other ones is Banda Namco, who owns all the whether

(01:18:26):
it be all like the. Jump properties essentially.
Dragon Ball, One Piece, all those big ones, That's why they
keep making those games, becausethey're.
The main. Stakeholder in them.
This would seem like a thing that's.
If you're investing in. Anime, you would want to invest
in those companies and that seems like what Sony would want
to do, and probably also gettingthose properties onto their

(01:18:51):
services. So yeah, they'll probably do.
Some game stuff here and there, but yeah.
Mostly just investing in their anime properties and all that.
So yeah, Yep, not a huge surprise.
No, not really, you realize. All that.
So there you go. Yeah.

(01:19:15):
Let's see here we got some more,yeah.
Some more good business news. The Chinese Room have completed
a management buyout, Yeah, so that they can depart from.
Sumo. Digital ownership, which is
cool. Hopefully that works out for
them. Yeah, Sumo Digital acquired them
in 2018 for £2.2 million and nowthey're going independent again.

(01:19:43):
Yeah, they're going to be led by.
Current studio director Ed. Daily facilitated by BC firm
Hero Capital, but is also resulted.
In some layoffs. As a result of divestment, yeah.
So that sucks, but they will. Be.
Able to, you know, being the troll of their own destiny and

(01:20:05):
that's probably good enough for them.
They're the ones working on Empire the Masquerade Blood Bull
lines 2. They're also working on 2 new
IPS as I've said here. So yeah, they said we had been.
Working on new. IP that needed investment and
that was no longer possible. Sumo's new model because yeah, I

(01:20:27):
believe Sumo Digital's under thethe Embracer family of
corporations. That's right.
And so I believe those. Companies are essentially at
the. Point where they are investing
huge sums of money in new properties that don't seem like

(01:20:47):
they're going to be obvious breadwinners, yeah.
That is a. Whole thing.
So yeah, good on the. Chinese room for making a deal
to buy themselves out, but hopefully that works out for
them. Definitely the far the farthest

(01:21:09):
away they. Can get from Embracer.
Group the. Batter just 100%.
Yeah, and that doesn't just go. For them, that goes for.
Basically anyone. Yep.
Now if you want to get. Mad Lollipop Chainsaw.
Oh boy, get ready folks. A property that's.

(01:21:29):
Did pretty well back in the day on the PS. 3 and Xbox. 360 as a
a fun campy action game suit of 51 and James Gunn.
That was a pretty cool game thensome.
Companies. Came in to.
Remaster. It's for this generation that.

(01:21:51):
Did not go well. It was fine, but it.
I think I lost some music. Stuff out of its as a result and
there's some other changes that were made that's were not huge
surprises. But it.
Ended up not being a huge sellerso yeah, the origami.
Games and partner. Not a Holdings announced they're

(01:22:13):
going to be working on a new game and anime adaptation and
sort of. Put out a press release.
With all this being committed toa new game and a new for this
and mentions here in one. Bits as.
With the original, the new titleaims to recreate the world a
world rich in dark humor. Development process will

(01:22:35):
prioritize staying true to the distinctive tone and spirit of
the original work without imposing excessive creative
restrictions in the name of DEI diversity, equity, inclusion, as
it spells out. And so like that that that
doesn't even make. Sense for the original game
anyway. Because like, the game was

(01:22:57):
specifically. Made to be like.
Super campy and weird. There's like and like for the
record we need to make. A point suit of 51.
Isn't involved in this. Neither is James Gunn.
The they, these guys basically bought the IP and are
essentially using it to, you know, create controversy and

(01:23:20):
stuff with it. And it's just stupid.
Yeah, it's a property that didn't.
Necessarily need to become a bigdeal thing yeah but this company
has seemingly. Acquired it and wants.
It to be that, yeah, they're investing into it and also
trying. To appeal.

(01:23:41):
To. I don't know the.
The culture warrior crowd bullshit, which is bullshit
because that's like the. Original game, it's whole sort
of premise was it was really going into like that old like B
movie aesthetic, you know, whichI mean, if you think about it,
that's sort of a lot of what suit of 51 stuff is.

(01:24:01):
He loves to work his you know, his his his film buffness into
like every game he makes. And you know that's.
He he was like. Obviously really inspired by
like old B movies, by like trauma, stuff like that.
Anybody who's played like a lot of his games knows that he is

(01:24:23):
not like some weird reactionary.Yeah, especially if you played
his most. Recent stuff you know that is
the exact. Opposite of who he is and it
just does not make sense for this property.
Yeah, it's just a. A very weird thing to to press
release. On yeah.

(01:24:44):
So yeah, that's a thing. That's we'll.
Keep an eye on to see what the. Heck's going on here, but yeah,
it's, I think that's nobody should have any high
expectations for it. So yeah, it's it's a thing that
will happen, unfortunately. Yep, yeah, they do mention they

(01:25:04):
have. Key staff members who were
involved in the previous. Title, but not, you know,
directors or the lead writers oranything.
Yeah. So yeah.
That's a. Weird thing.
So there you go, we'll get. You to another story that'll
get. You mad?
Oh, this one is freaking. Oh, it's.

(01:25:24):
Just so many layers of bullshit.Yeah, so much like the Steam
store. H dot IO.
Has been also hit by payment providers being pressured or
pressuring them into what they've done.
Is delist all the not safe work games on the platform.

(01:25:46):
The queer ones, but also a lot of porn racy games.
There's a lot that are. Compared to Steam, Itch is kind
of a a very open platform that allows people to.
Make all. Sorts of.
Games and products on there. There's lots of tabletop stuff

(01:26:08):
on their books, even just game assets and all that kind of
stuff. And there's a lot of like.
Student projects and projects developers make that are just
here's a little free thing I made in my free time, all that
kind of stuff. It's.
Also been kind of the. Backup platform of Steam where

(01:26:28):
if you're putting your your gamethat may not make it on the
steam. You probably also have it on
itch as a backup. And yeah, it seems like they
have mentioned this whole thing going on.
A bunch of developers noticed their games were being
essentially, I forget what they called it here.

(01:26:49):
It's not it's not being removed,but de indexed I believe was the
the term. They've also changed their their
content rules for these results.It's not really gone down super
well, especially because the thedevelopers on the platform not
been, we're not involved in the the announcements of this stuff.

(01:27:14):
Yeah. So a lot of people just found
out randomly. Through.
You know, whatever social media they were on or checking on
their game or whatever. And yeah, this isn't just
affecting small games, it's affecting award-winning games
like Consume Me that's coming out later this year on Steam.

(01:27:34):
As I said, it was a backup platform that the early versions
of that game were being available on.
And yeah, a lot of developers are very responsible marking
their games as, you know, adult or whatever tags they use, this
kind of stuff. And now her game has been Jenny
Josh is, you know, unhappy that her game is now gone, even

(01:27:59):
though what it the subject matter it has is not one that
should fall under any of this stuff.
But yeah, it's just the the way that.
This. All is happening in a very
haphazard and. Very kind of.
Let's say maybe violent matter causing a lot of people just be

(01:28:20):
super angry at the wholesale change of what kind of art is
allowed on these servers, and that is.
Really caused a lot of. Chaos there are people on blue
sky that are organizing, you know, information on what
numbers at the, you know, Visa or MasterCard and mostly saying

(01:28:45):
like, I'll take take as much time not be angry at the people
because the the customer servicepeople aren't the ones causing
this. You want to take up their time
and mess up their metrics because they want to get do
these calls as quickly as possible.
And don't take the bait for whenthey offer an e-mail because

(01:29:05):
these companies would like you to send to an e-mail that they
don't have to give a shit versusmessing with their phone
systems. And all the metrics there?
You know, asking for managers and all that kind of stuff and
just wasting. As much time as possible.
And it seems like it's definitely getting noticed, so I
want to see if it has any actualeffect.

(01:29:27):
But yeah. Yeah.
And in case you're curious, thisis in fact.
Related at Once again, the collective shout that group out
of Australia. For the record, the article that
you link to from Kotaku gives that group way more credit than
they even deserve because they're not really like a
feminist group. They're more of like a, you

(01:29:49):
know, a evangelical culture warrior type group, kind of like
Moms for Liberty that mask themselves with the feminist
label. Yeah, they're doing something.
That's similar to like what? Another like American group was
doing a couple years ago when they were actively trying to
attack Steam. I forget what that other I think

(01:30:13):
it was called. Something like Exodus
International? Or something.
Yeah, that ultimately ended up. Failing.
I'm still not exactly sure how this group has managed to be as
successful as they are. Well, with a lot of this stuff.
It's a lot of direct. Focus anger at one place or

(01:30:33):
couple places that makes them seem like a much bigger force
than they actually are. Yeah, that's what I thought.
So I think the. The people in Blue sky organized
organizing. This stuff, and it seemed like
it was only like 1000 calls or emails that it was and it's like
we're bigger than this. We should be putting the same
kind of pressure in the oppositedirection.

(01:30:55):
Yeah, to show the these payment processors that they're making
bad decisions on trying to get them to.
Go the other side. Yeah, which I mean if, if.
That's the case where like these, these folks were like
purposely misinformed. I think it would.
Honestly, it wouldn't be. That.

(01:31:19):
Big of an, of a, of a, of a be able to like just inform them
like, yeah, this is you, you were misinformed.
These folks are like specifically targeting a certain
group of people for it. But you know that's not the
world we live in, right? Now so.
Yeah, it's like how the NRA. Has a.

(01:31:42):
Huge presence despite their. Membership not being.
That huge? Yeah, it's because they.
Have a pretty simple message. And they have people that are
willing to show up at the placesto push that message.
And that can be as effective as the people as or more effective

(01:32:03):
than the people just yelling on Twitter.
Blue sky out gun control. So yeah, it's one of those
things. That's.
People on the left have to realize that they have to also
show up for the Yeah and not just yell into.
The Void. Because the void don't give a
shit. Yeah, Especially the capitalist

(01:32:25):
void. Yeah, especially so.
So yeah, yeah, I think it's going to end.
Up doing it for the show. We'll have to keep an eye on
this itch process, but the way that itch does their ownership
of things you purchase that can make it real hard to back up

(01:32:47):
your. Purchases and all that kind of
stuff. So it's worth.
Going through your bundle purchases and all that and
double checking things, at leastthe important things you have
and make sure you can re download those.
But for now, that's kind of where you want to look at for
now. And also just check on Blue Sky

(01:33:10):
for people that are all tips on all this stuff.
So yeah, that's where you're going to go.
For that stuff. So yeah.
That's. That's going to do it for the
show this week. Yep.
Thank you to Brandon for joining.
Always we. Should have Dan Rebeck next.
Week, he's at comic. Con Yep.

(01:33:33):
So. He's watching panels and.
Trying to play what he can over there.
Yep. So yeah, we'll be back.
Next week with a new slate of news.
And things to talk about and yeah, I'm going to double check
what we. Got coming out this.
Week yeah the 31st has like 8 things coming out we talked

(01:33:54):
about 1 this week which is Dear Me I was dead tape from Surgeon
Studios, Cook There Forever along with Eartheon, 9 Years of
Shadows, Ninja Gaiden, Rage Bound, Spy Drops and Time flies
which I think we should have tworeviews of two of those games so

(01:34:14):
there's those that are coming out there's also.
Achilles survivor. Tales of the Shire a The Lord of
the Rings game My favorite branding title in a while.
I love a good Our branding overrides your attempt to make
this title sound like a thing written by English people.
Just having A and. D right next to.

(01:34:37):
Each other is a clear violation of grammar Nazism, but the
brands always win. Yep.
So that's that's. Why your title is looking like
that, So yeah. That's going to do it.
If you enjoy the chauffeur, let.Friends and family know they.
Should check it out and select strangers that are also here to

(01:34:57):
be unfortunately faded by brandsand nostalgia, but try to do
what you can to push back on them.
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.