Day 0 Update #543 - The Bubsy Conundrum

In this episode of the Day 0 Update: We talk about the merits of the Bubsy collection, John Davison leaving IGN, and Arkane's brave statement to Microsoft. All this and more, up next!

Full show notes can be found ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Episode Transcript

(00:18):
Welcome to Day 0 update for August 17th, 2025.
I'm your host, Chris Emoji. I'm Brandon Perkins and yeah,
and Andrea Victoria will be joining us shortly.
Yeah, he is finishing up his little trip that he's on and so
we'll hopefully see him not too far from now.

(00:40):
But we still got a plenty of bigshow here.
We got a bunch of games announcing for September, a
bunch of things to look forward to.
We got one game that is shuttingdown and technically come to new
platforms, replace it as we see the limitations of the the

(01:02):
previous Gen. kind of holding some of these games back.
We got some games, or one game is getting delayed and a couple
of interesting new announcementshere, as well as a bunch of
industry news, including a weirdupdate for a game that's part of

(01:23):
the culture war in China. Yeah, we'll talk about that, the
weird thing going on there. Yeah.
And it's a very, it's one that is very kind of Chinese in
nature involving sort of like how they treat like historical
figures over there. Yeah.

(01:44):
But it's it's, it's kind of complicated, but we'll get to
it. Yeah, but yeah, it seems like
Dan rubs here now. Yeah, Dan Rubs here.
Maybe I am. Yep.
Hello guys. Hey.
There we go. But yeah, we'll get to what
we've been playing here and I'llkick it off.
I have been playing a little bitof Madden 26.

(02:08):
I got a code for that. I have been kind of messing
around with it a little bit and Madden's always, and it's always
bad to play right away because the rosters are not set for any
of these teams since they're still in the preseason.
So I'm always kind of like, I want to play, but I don't want
to play because I don't know which of these players are going

(02:30):
to actually stick with the teams.
Though I did make my customary changes to Deshaun Watson where
I took all of his stats and madethem zero and cut them from the
Cleveland Browns to get the get them the fuck out of here, which
is always fun to do. And I kind of immediately, since

(02:53):
they have five other quarterbacks on their roster, I
traded any pickets and Huntley, I forgot what his first name is,
traded them for draft picks basically.
So kind of Weld it down to the three like viable quarterbacks I
think they have right now, whichis the incredibly old man Joe

(03:15):
Flacco and the two rookies they just drafted.
But yeah, I played one game so far in the season.
I skipped all the preseason games and kind of just made my
cuts as I did here. Played one game and I do like
the way that they instead of just constantly working on the

(03:40):
like more advanced passing system, they kind of added a
little bit extra to the classic system and kind of made it a
little more of a touch pass kindof system that you can use.
That works out pretty well from what I've seen so far.
Otherwise everything feels pretty solid for this defense.

(04:03):
Feels pretty solid, but maybe one of my issues is that it
seems like it's going to be. If I knew what the hell I was
doing on the kick blocks, fibbleblocks kind of stuff, I could
get blocks constantly. But because I don't know what
I'm doing, I just have a guy that gets free pretty easily and

(04:27):
have gotten at least one roughing the kicker on that.
That was unfortunate, but I managed to win my first game
fairly easily and I'm playing onlike the the second easiest
difficulty, so I'm not exactly expecting to have too much

(04:50):
trouble. But yeah, that's been pretty
decent so far. I would say maybe the the other
weird thing is I feel like it's so this is Madden 26 and they
still can't display like half sacks in the like the player of

(05:11):
the week kind of stuff areas because I had miles gear get 3
1/2 sacks and everything that wasn't the like player stats
stuff was just saying 3 sacks. And I feel like it's, you know,
for as much as they're making inroads on making the
presentation feel part of a league wide thing with the like

(05:32):
half time like break showing plays from other games.
There's like a recap that you can see when you're back in the
the franchise menu that can showyou how a few games turned out
with some plays there. Being able to not show, you
know, full numbers for stats just seems like one of those

(05:56):
things that could be an easier fix.
Maybe it isn't. So I also found it funny they
gave was I think on the NFC side, the offensive player of
the week was the guy that lost to the what did he lose to?
I think Green Bay Jordan loves seem to have a better game, but

(06:17):
they give it to what's his face,Jared Goff for some reason.
But little small things like that are kind of annoying.
But yeah, that's been mad and not really too much to say right
now because I've barely started doing anything in it.
They do seem to have a lot of bullshit between games that you
can do like practice mini games and all this other kind of shit

(06:41):
that I just kind of want, wantedto simulate.
Just like how do you deal with this crap?
Even the scouting stuff, it's like I'll just draft guys when I
get to the draft. I don't want to scout guys and
have to know their their full potential and all that.
But yeah, there's that. These next two games I put in

(07:02):
the category of nonsense roguelikes because they are
games that if I describe it, they sound like the the gameplay
is just complete nonsense. And it's because they are, they
seem to be intended to be that first up here is a game called
Mage or Merge Maestro. This is on mobile and PC and I

(07:27):
think on Steam it's 3 bucks at most, so not a terribly
expensive game. But the main, main like gameplay
loop is that you are dealing with this 4x4 grid that you're
filling with these tokens that initially are mostly numbers one

(07:51):
through 8. Those are sort of the ranks of
them. You merge 2 ones to get a 2, you
know, 2 twos to get a three, that kind of thing.
And as you go with each of thesewaves, I think it's 15 waves for
at least all the the runs I've been doing is the Max where you
face the boss, you get enemies coming in to fight you.

(08:13):
And initial ones have like one or two hit points to them.
And between waves, you're picking tokens to fill those
spots one through eights and they have specific numbers to
them. And so you know, initially
you're going to be picking ones that have attack capabilities to

(08:34):
attack the enemies that are coming in.
You get a queue of four enemies that can potentially be on the
verge of attacking, but if they're not shaking, they're not
about to attack. But you are dealing with all
your your tokens here, merging them.
If you kill your enemies before you finish the the four turns

(08:54):
for a wave, for a round of a wave, you can just place tokens
or start merging stuff dependingon what they have to them.
The the tokens have, you know, alot of different descriptions
for them, things they'll do whenthey, you know, when you put
them on the on your grid, when you merge them, when they get

(09:16):
destroyed, might be like one or two other herbs that they use
for that stuff. And you're kind of trying to
find a good layouts or loadouts of eights tokens that will help
you get to the end of the game and take out enemies and
eventually take out the boss to finish a run.
I've had one successful run. I don't know that I think I've

(09:41):
had two successful runs on the easiest difficulty.
So they have a thing where it shows you all the things you've
unlocked. There's difficulties, I think
four or six of them, and from there you get different perks or
different like things that they make it tough with.

(10:03):
Like I think the second difficulty, all the enemies have
some sort of perk to them. So some might spawn in and spawn
other enemies with them if thereis room.
Others might have things that will negate your first attack,
you know, a variety of things that they can do.

(10:23):
Like typically the boss will have something that it can
attack even if it's not at the front of the the line kind of
thing. But you are, you know, trying to
devise all these different loadouts that work out well and
get you through to the ends. And sometimes things will
happen. They're just complete nonsense
from from what I understand of it so far.

(10:48):
And yeah, a lot of these, a lot of these tokens are emoji style
designs, the fairly kind of simple things to look at.
But yeah, if I show you like a screenshot of something, you'll
just be like, this is, I have noclue what's going on here based
on this screenshot. So that's been pretty fun.

(11:11):
I've got a few hours into it, soI'm still kind of getting the
hang of it, but I'm enjoying it so far.
Or a lot of the the nonsense is going on here.
There's that. The other game I've been playing
is 1 called Nubbies Number Factory.
That is a $5 game. Yeah, $5.

(11:34):
I think this is made by one person and it very much looks
like it's it has kind of a 90s Internet kind of look to it's a
lot of what it's got going on here.
And that one you are almost got like a Peggle or Pachinko kind

(11:54):
of style to it where you've got this grid of blocks that these
pegs can spawn into. And you are launching Nubby
himself into the grid and tryingto hit, you know, pegs to get a
certain amount of points to get to the next round kind of thing.

(12:14):
And if you beat your goal, it will often throw more pegs into
it. So the numbers merge and get
bigger. If you can manage to wipe out
the entire grid of pegs, then you will double the points you
had for that round, which makes it easier to obviously hit your

(12:36):
goal. But after you do a few rounds,
you start getting to the point where you can pick up perks and
all this kind of stuff. I'm trying to think of what you
would even call them. There's kind of these items that
you put in your load up bar at the top of the screen.
It goes one through 7. I think initially start with

(12:57):
five through 7 being locked off.I'm still at the when you get to
the shop you can buy them off ifyou have enough coins to pay for
them and your really getting a lot of nonsense items that do
different kinds of things. Some can drop like spikes or do

(13:19):
laser attacks to hit those eggs.Bunch of weird things that they
can do depend. Also, you want to kind of order
them the right way, so it's got a little bit bilatro in there
because you might get items thatwill double up what's to the

(13:39):
left of them or maybe do some boost to the items on both sides
of them, that kind of stuff. Then you get these like little
books that are kind of like perks that can boost things even
further. Those can have a a variety of
things that they can do and the the way you get through this is

(14:00):
you kind of go through, I feel like it's like 80 rounds of this
thing at least in the the defaults difficulty, which are
based on these characters that you pick.
Would you first start off with Tony, who I figure might be the
dev with warrior wear style likesunglasses over their eyes.

(14:23):
It's got that kind of vibe of some of the F&B stuff in Warrior
Wear where it's very much like there's 2 frames of animation
and I'd be like the the guy withhis mouth closed and then mouth
open kind of stuff. There's a lot of stuff like
that. Then you get to some side rounds

(14:44):
that'll be like oh these are some of these pegs will be
covered in boogers and you hit those and they pop and hit the
other pegs and cause a bunch of explosions and a lot of nonsense
like that. There's all sorts of weird
little rounds you get to and as you beat the, the 1st, you know,

(15:06):
difficulty, which is just bass Tony, you start opening up more
and I got to Squid Tony, which adds more of these squid items
you can get, which will basically double up whatever's
to the left of them, what whatever that items doing.
And so you're kind of trying to build out to load out that will

(15:27):
try to just break the game. And the game apparently has a
means for dealing with that. So we're just like, you've
broken the game, you know, let'sjust end this nonsense right
here kind of thing. And it's, it's pretty fun.
So yeah, it's a it's a game. It's hard to describe, but if

(15:47):
you start, you know, trying to narrate what you're doing, you
realize how stupid it is. So yeah, it's it's just one of
those kind of nonsense games andmade by, I think a solo
developer. So that's a fun thing to see.
I think Merge Maestro is also a small team because I was looking

(16:09):
at their Twitter accounts, they've only posted on it like
once despite launching a game. I'm like, oh, you guys are busy
with things. I don't have to have a ton of
time to be spending on like social media stuff.
So there's that, Yeah, I recommend those if you want
games that are just complete nonsense, at least on Steam.

(16:33):
And then there's the last one here is Powerwash Simulators.
I've been playing some more. That's after trying to get the
platinum and the found out the save is corrupted on PS-5.
And instead of being like defeated about that, I'm just
kind of starting it over again just fine.

(16:53):
They've added a bunch of free stages, so I have a number of
things I can do to get extra money if I need it.
So I've been kind of dipping into campaign stuff.
I'm on the playground right now,so I'm kind of working my way
through that. But when I've been wanting to

(17:15):
play some other parts of it, I've played the the Final
Fantasy 7 side DLC stuff that isalso very fun.
So enjoying that. Just playing it because I want
to get the platinum before the sequels out, and I don't know
that it's out anytime soon, but it seems like it's got to be at
some point here. Well, yeah, that's been pretty

(17:38):
much what I've been doing. So how about you, Brandon?
Oh well, As for me, my primary gaming, because I've been trying
to kind of fill the void before,you know, the huge flood of new
releases that'll be coming out within the next month or so, you
know, as we're going headlong inthe fall.

(18:01):
So one of the things I've been playing a lot of this week is
Sly to the the sequel to the original Sly Cooper.
And, you know, I've, I've playedall four of the Sly Cooper games
and I know Chris has too. And you know, one of the things

(18:23):
that any person who plays the whole Sly Cooper series in total
will tell you is the first Sly Cooper game is very, very short.
It is fairly linear in design. It's mostly, you know, it's got
a fairly simple story where there's like, you know, there's

(18:44):
essentially just five bosses more or less that you're going
up against because you're tryingto get the pages back for the
book and everything. And it's over because both
because, you know, it's kind of short and also because the game
is just that damn, you know, intriguing and fun to play.
It ends pretty quickly. So when you compare it to its

(19:06):
sequel, which is probably a good5 or 6 times longer than the
original than the first game is,you can tell that they're still
kind of trying to find ways to make the experience longer.
While at the same time they're also kind of stretching some
things out, sometimes unnecessarily because they're

(19:30):
trying to to to compensate for the fact that the first game was
just so damn short in comparison.
So part of that has to do with the fact that unlike in the
first game where you know, you're like, OK, there's a boss
you got to go up against and here's, you know, their

(19:50):
respective world that you got to, their location you got to be
in. That doesn't actually happen in
this game. They actually, they will
actually have like a singular character that will have like
that will have like 2 or even 3 locations that you have to go to
as you, you know, slowly foil their schemes.

(20:10):
And then actually. You know, go up and confront
them, you know, for the for the boss fight and all that stuff.
And that can you know that that in and of itself isn't
necessarily a problem, but it can be when you also factor in
the fact that this is the first game that lets you play as other

(20:33):
members of the Cooper Gang. So, you know, Sly obviously is
still the the primary star, but you can also play as Murray and
you can also play as Bentley. The issue is that Bentley and
Murray are not nearly as nimble or acrobatic as Sly is.
So trying to traverse through a lot of these places, especially
the really vertical ones, can bea challenge because you're

(20:57):
remember you're still kind of trying to be stealthy here, sort
of, you know, at least as far asSly and Bentley are concerned.
Murray can basically just plow through them without any issue
because he's the team's muscle, but he's also somewhat slower
than the other guys are. But because of that, it means

(21:18):
that you're having to find, you know, additional platforms you
can traverse and, you know, playways that you can bounce up on
top of buildings. Whereas, you know, it's Sly,
it's a lot easier because he can, you know, he can climb up
lampposts and he can, you know, swing on bars and things like
that. But that's especially an issue

(21:39):
with like the third level in this game because it is heavily
based around traversal and and getting from like one from like
the bottom to the top and back again.
With Sly, it's basically a breeze because he can just like
I said, he can grind on rails. He can, you know, climb under
stuff. But again, Bentley and Murray,

(22:01):
they can't. They they have to like either
find stuff to jump on or they have to find some sort of like
trampoline type object that theycan use to bounce up.
And that can be especially challenging because the games,
you know, they tell you where you need to go, but they don't

(22:21):
really give you a good idea of how you're actually supposed to
get there. And that can be kind of
frustrating for some of these characters, not all of them, and
for some of these missions in particular.
But, you know, other than that, it's like, yeah, it's still,
it's a slight hooker game. They're all amazing.
And every one of them is worth playing to the finish.

(22:44):
The other thing I have been playing on top of that is the
demo for the upcoming game Hell Is Us.
This is a game I've been sort ofkeeping my eye on for a while
now and it's supposed to come out early next month, the 4th of
September. And essentially what it is is at

(23:07):
first, first foremost, I need toget this out of the way because
people going into this and seeing like some previews and
stuff might get the wrong idea. This is not a souls like game at
all. This is not a souls like game.
This is a fairly gameplay wise, a fairly standard like action
adventure type video game, but there are definitely some things

(23:32):
that are a bit different from your average action adventure
game that you'll get, especiallylike a third person game.
The first of course is the story.
The game makes it pretty clear, like right off the bat, that
even though there are things that seem really familiar, this
is not our universe. First and foremost, the guy that

(23:54):
you're playing, this guy named Remy, is a soldier, a decorated
soldier who after he leaves the army, he decides to go and
become part of the peacekeeping forces for the ON which is the
there this universe's equivalence of the UN, which
right off the bat, that's to tell you.
OK, Yeah. So this isn't our universe.

(24:17):
There's also the whole like thing where you start off where
like there's the interrogation thing that starts right off the
bat with the interrogator. And I'll just let anybody who
wants to play that game experience that for themselves
just to realize, oh, right, thisis this is not our universe.
This is a weird world. And his essential sort of story

(24:37):
is you're playing this guy Remy,who was originally part of the
pre, like I said, soldier becamepart of the peacekeeping forces
in this little country called Hadia, which has basically been
locked in this nasty sectarian conflict for centuries upon
centuries up to this point. And up until recently, it had
been ruled by this guy named President Maxwell, who was a,

(25:00):
for all intents and purposes, A totalitarian dictator who turned
the country into like a walled off sort of hidden Kingdom type
world where nobody went in and nobody went out, mostly just so
he could keep the sectarian violence at up at the minimum as

(25:20):
he could. And then a few years prior, he
goes into his office and he blows his head off.
So now that he's dead and the government more or less
collapsed the civil, the sectarian violence starts up
again and a whole ass civil war starts.
And the civil war itself, like Isaid, it's a sectarian one.

(25:44):
It's between these two religiousgroup sects.
One's called the Sabians, the other is called the Palamas.
And these guys absolutely despise each other.
And it's not a new hatred either.
It's one that goes back a long time.
One of the first major areas in this game you go into is this

(26:05):
old ruin that's connected to like this tower, and you
immediately come across like these murals and like these
these bits of like texts and stuff that is essentially a
group. It was essentially manned by a
group of Sabians whose whole thing was they wanted to kill

(26:29):
all of the Palamas, and they do not make it subtle.
The, the, you find out that the,the dungeon that you're in is
part of like what is essentiallya death camp type complex, but
like Middle Ages and you'll findlike piles of bones everywhere
and like torture implements. And it's really clear like this

(26:51):
is a, this is a, a conflict thatgoes back a long time.
And at this point, it started upagain and it's basically
wrecking the whole country. And the reason Remy is going
back in is because he's originally was from this
country. He was born in it, but his
parents basically put him on like a like a like a, a truck or

(27:15):
something and gave him this necklace when he was like 3 or 4
years old. And his mom basically saying
don't come back. And so at some point they, it
just gets to him. He's like, I got to find out
what the hell happened. So he goes AWOL, crosses back
into Haitiya and immediately finds out that on top of the

(27:36):
war, something really awful has happened.
He comes across these weird things called limbics, which are
these weird pale skinned humanoid creatures with a, you
know, they're like they have like a hole in their faces and
like a hole in their torso and they move in like this weird

(28:02):
like stop motion blink if you miss it, like ballet type
manner. And it's it's really creepy and
off putting. And as it turns out, a lot of
them are like keeping this thingthat's essentially like a
parasite inside of them that will break out and will attack

(28:24):
you, essentially acting as like a living weapon.
So you know, what you think is going to be like a solitary
fight ends up becoming a two on one conflict and you often have
to kill the parasites before youcan actually get to the limbics
themselves to actually finish them off.
And they come in various kinds. Eventually, what you realize is

(28:48):
that something has happened in this country.
It's the game hasn't really likethe demo doesn't really tell you
outright, but it highly suggeststhat it's got something to do
with these ruins that you go into and eventually like what?
So like that's a more or less like the game's story, at least

(29:09):
as far as the demo goes. The game base, the demo
basically ends when you get to the hometown that his parents
are from. And there's like it looks like a
like an active like demilitarized war zone, but by
the you know, and there there's a lot of other stuff you'll see

(29:29):
too. Like there's this whole, this
whole like sequence where you'regoing through what looks like a
World War One era, like like battlefield where there's like
all these trenches everywhere. And there's like mortar cannons
that are like all rusted and overgrown.

(29:49):
And you'll find like these little craters that look like
they were made by like mortar fire.
And as you're going through the trenches, you'll find like
Diaries and stuff from like old soldiers where they're talking
about how, you know, they got the, you know, they came across
a savvy quote UN quote, which I guess it's supposed to be like a
slur for the Sabians that where they got like a gold pocket

(30:14):
watch or whatever and they stoleit.
And they can't wait to show it to like their girlfriends when
they get back home after the warends.
And all this stuff. And it's like, again, the thing
I'm getting here is that I, I, Ihave this theory that the whole
like calamity or whatever it is that's happened to this place is
somehow being like fueled by this sectarian conflict.

(30:35):
Or it might even be like a like 1 fuels the other and it's just
a continuous cycle. 1 creates the other, which in turn helps
perpetuate the other. But that's the that's
essentially like the story. What really makes this game
different from a lot of these action adventure games like this

(30:57):
is right off the bat the. They tell the developers tell
you, yeah, just so you know, there is no map.
There are no objective markers. You're going to have to pay
attention to all the context clues and the conversations that
you find in this game to know where you're going to need to
go. And that is like right off the

(31:19):
be, you know, like from the veryend, you'll from the very
beginning, you'll come across like this guy who's like holding
out in this old house where he tells you he's like, OK, look,
there's a bunch of like there were a bunch of like ON soldiers
that peacekeeper soldiers that came by.
If you want to know where they are, There's like these wood
chimes that I've got set up in the woods nearby that I had so

(31:41):
that, you know, my sons would not get lost.
And if you follow those wood chimes, you'll eventually come
across these like trees that arelike marked with like white XS,
which is like typically what people use when like they're
doing like forest clearing or whatever, which essentially
implies that there's people around and eventually you come

(32:01):
across and that's how you eventually come across like
where the peacekeepers are and where that dungeon I was talking
about shows up. One of the other things this
game doesn't communicate you right off the bat, but you kind
of figure out later is you'll come across like a bunch of
puzzles in this game. Puzzles and locks and all of
these things that require various items that you need to

(32:26):
like engage them and then solve them.
But you're not going to five that find them right off the
bat. In fact, 9 a lot of times you're
not even going to find them in that general area.
You will end up finding them somewhere else.
The 1st 2 like lock puzzles you find in this game in the demo,

(32:46):
at least right off the bat. You'll find them eventually like
they're in the like in sort of like the area that you're in,
but there's a couple of lighter ones, including one that seems
to like actually lead into another major area.
The the previously mentioned tower that I mentioned is there

(33:09):
and you can go to the tower. You can look at it, but you will
not encounter any of the items that will let you get into the
tower. There's like a puzzle there that
you need to get there to let youget in.
You will not encounter any of those items in this demo.
More than likely you will if thefull game comes out, you will
not be able to do that until later on.

(33:30):
There's also another lock that'sconnected to a ruin that's sort
of midway through that that not nearly as complicated.
It's just like, OK, I need like these two things to put them in
and then like a numb code or whatever.
You will not encounter any of them there either.

(33:50):
The game is essentially trying to tell you that, yeah, there
are all of these puzzles that are all over the place, but
you're not going to be able to solve them right off the bat.
And in fact, you're probably going to have to look around for
a ways in the game before you can even think of doing it.
But yeah, just the the game is incredibly intriguing.

(34:15):
The combat is really good. It has this it has this whole
thing where like there's there'slike a rhythm thing to it where
every time you're attacking these enemies and all the one
like thing from like souls like games.
They actually do have in this game is that you have a stamina
bar that can run out depending on if you're attacking or

(34:39):
running around or dodging too much.
But unlike in those other souls like games, the game every time
you attack in like a in like a sequence, there's like this this
like white ring that will form around you and if you end up
pushing, I think it's the R1 button.
When that shows up, you can actually regain a bunch of

(35:01):
health depending on like the amount of damage you end up
inflicting on an enemy. Kind of similar to like what
they did like in blood borne, where if you like inflict enough
damage, you know, and then hit yourself with like the healing
power up, it'll it'll like restore a certain amount that's

(35:23):
like equal to the amount that you inflicted on enemies.
But yeah, about as far as that game goes.
That's about all I can say aboutthat.
It's definitely got me intriguedand I'm really liking what I'm
saying. And the other game I've been
playing on top of all that, of course, is I'm still playing
Void Stranger. I've made the more significant

(35:43):
progress. I actually beat the first like
major campaign of the game and started the next one, which has
a completely new character and more or less the same like
sequence of levels, but they're they've added like new stuff to
it. So right now it's basically like
hard mode. But yeah, that's what I've been

(36:03):
playing. Yeah, As for me, I've been
playing a lot of Madden. I am.
I am in a, what's it called, an online franchise with a bunch of
other freelancers. It hasn't really started yet.
But yeah, Chris mentioned, you know, not wanting or having to
deal with the rookie scouting. All of that matters just because

(36:26):
like typically a franchise lastsaround 30 seasons.
And I believe they're actually going to be skipping the first
season just so that we can actually have an, an actual
offseason in our hands. So looking forward to that.
That'll start next week. In the meantime, though, I have
been playing the regular season franchise mode with my with my
brother and it's it's it's been rather cool to see.

(36:48):
As I mentioned last week, a lot of the changes that they've made
to college football made their way to Madden, making it a much
more a solid game. And in fact, that I'd I'd go as
far as saying like this is the best Madden in years.
I'm not ready to put it in 2005 status, but it's definitely up
there. One thing that I'm having
trouble getting used to, despitethe fact that this has been

(37:10):
introduced a couple years ago, is the kicking meter.
The kicking meter requires you to time it with your accuracy
and then go with your power. The problem is because I'm used
to the two click system in previous Maddens and they
actually do still give you the flexibility to choose which one
you want when you're playing online.

(37:32):
You have to go with the one thatthey choose.
And unfortunately, you know, it would be the newer 1.
So my kickoffs are still going out of bounds, which would put
the ball on your opponent's sideof the 40.
And they've also instituted the new kickoff rules where if the
ball doesn't land in the landingzone, then you also have to play

(37:54):
from the 40 yard line, which, you know, puts the defense at a
big disadvantage. So you don't want to do that.
But it's also really easy to make that mistake, especially if
you're trying to do squib kicks and whatever it may be.
And what happens is if you, for example, one thing that a lot of
people don't realize is that front kick meter, If you take

(38:14):
the meter all the way up to the maximum red point, you do what's
called an over kick. And often times the over kick
doesn't go as far as you want. And when you do that with a
squib kick, it's not going to land in a landing zone.
I've, I've used good kickers, bad kickers, it doesn't matter.
So it's, it's just one thing to definitely keep in mind and it's
just, it's just really finicky. One thing with the extra points,

(38:35):
for example, is as long as you have your accuracy straight, it
doesn't matter how much power you put into your kick because
you can just have no line of power at all.
Whatever. As long as it's accurate, it'll
go in. As long as you're taking the
extra point from the actual P18 line versus, you know, getting a
penalty or something, that'll that'll actually matter.
But yeah, the halftime bug is still there.

(38:58):
For example, this game has the best halftime show I've seen out
of any Madden before it. Especially when you're playing
in franchise mode, you're able to see highlights from other
games. It's awesome.
The problem is, as soon as it's over, the game just freezes and
you have to just, you know, actually reset the game.
So it's been a week to this point.
You know, we're already past thegame's release, which was on

(39:19):
Thursday, and they still haven'tfixed it.
So it's annoying because I actually like watching it and
you know, you have to skip a certain part of it in order to
make sure that it works properly.
And that's not the way it shouldwork.
And that's really unfortunate. That aside, there is some
emphasis on on Ultimate Team like that.
That'll always be a thing. I don't play it, but I do like

(39:40):
the fact that the that they theydid put some effort into the
season passes. Like depending on who your
favorite team is, you're able toget some cosmetics that'll make
your profiles look good. You know, it's very similar to
prestiging and Call of Duty, that kind of thing.
It's not something that I'm I'm going to get involved with, but
I do like that customization aspect of it because it really

(40:01):
makes the gameplay feel at home.So yeah, I really liking Madden
so far and looking forward to playing some more as season goes
on. Moving on, I am nearing the end
of of a Wheeler World. This game is published by
Annapurna, developed by meshoff,the folks that made new hug and
yeah, this is definitely their their most, you know,

(40:26):
complicated game as far as visuals like everything that
they've made has been 2D, whereas this game is an open
world bike game and all you really do in this game is just
vibe. It's it's it's open world, as I
mentioned, and all you really dois you just try to unlock
certain waypoints so you can seemore of the map.
And then when you see more of the map, you're able to see a

(40:47):
whole lot of bike gangs. So you can just go ahead and
challenge to races. The races are pretty fun.
They have some nice music to vibe along with that as well.
And it's just an overall good chill time.
There is sort of a quest involved where this bike spirit
lost all of his legendary parts.So you have to go through every

(41:08):
Biome of the map and challenge certain bikers for to to get
your parts back. And then, yeah, I did that and
eventually I opened up another portal to another dimension and
another map is there. So yeah, there's some, there's
some meat to this game. I've I've probably played it for
around 4 hours and I think it'lltake another three to finish it.

(41:31):
But yeah, it's not something I plan on platinuming, but it's
definitely a fun game that I definitely plan on starting my
reviews soon. Aside from that, I've been
playing a lot of games that I can't talk about yet, but I am
enjoying one demo. This was shown during the
Partner Direct a few weeks ago. I'm playing The Adventures of
Elliott, definitely one of the lamest titles that Square Enix

(41:55):
has come up with. But yeah, so far the game is
really, really nice. I got to the maybe second save
point, and I don't know how muchlonger I have, but basically it
is ahd 2D action game, much in the vein of Secretive Mana.
But as I'm playing it, it reallyfeels more like a Zelda there.
There is some light puzzling involved there there that you

(42:15):
have a fairy that follows you around you out in battle and it
is really interesting just playing an HD2D game, 2D action
game, but just because everything up to the point has
been turn based. So it's definitely been a breath
of fresh air, especially considering the fact that aside
from Octopath and you know, the Dragon Quest remakes there,
there really hasn't been much totalk about aside from things

(42:38):
that are that are that are like,you know, rehashes such as Live
Alive. So yeah, it is nice to play
something that's totally original that isn't talked
about, even though that is coming.
So I haven't got, again, I haven't gotten to the end yet or
the OR the point where I have tolike just start, go ahead and do
the survey that in the Nintendo Sense sense for the feedback.

(42:59):
But aside from that, that's pretty much it.
All right, so yeah, let's get tosome news.
And we are at the point where the PlayStation Plus game
catalog lineup was announced Yep, that'll be arriving here on
Tuesday the 19th yeah looks likethe the the big thing they added

(43:21):
here before the rest of the lineup is that there's a 5 hour
PlayStation Plus premium game trial for Death Stranding 2.
So if you have that you can check out that game if you have
not done so yet. So that's one you can check out,
but for the game catalog itself for extra and premium, we start

(43:43):
off here with Mortal Kombat one for the PS-5 and that is the
latest game, not the first game,just the the way they're
numbering for all this has gone.This is the follow up to Mortal
Kombat 11 game that I've heard good things about, but I have
not played it myself so. I haven't been able to play it

(44:06):
either myself, but I am glad I'll finally be able to do that.
Yeah, it seems like the the Mortal Kombat game with the most
fanservice to it. Yep.
Which is saying a lot. Yeah, that's saying a lot.
So yeah, there you go for that. For PS-5 and PS4, Marvel Spider
Man returns to PlayStation Plus.Yeah, you get the remastered

(44:30):
version on PS-5 and the Game of the Year edition on PS4.
So there you go. That's well worth checking out
if you have not done so yet. Then the the other big release
for the catalog here for PS5IS Sword of the Sea, the newest
game from giant squid. I believe they made previously

(44:54):
ABS Zoo the Pathless and most ofthe people are most of the the
leadership of the team worked onjourney, mostly on the arts
side. But this seems like a another
game that is channeling a lot ofthat where you are doing a lot
of surfing on the sea in the desert.

(45:16):
It seems like you can kind of surf on your sword a lot through
the the desert and you'll have water show up at times and other
times just surfing on the desertsands and all that and having
fish and all that happening around.
But yeah, you're also doing tricks and all this kind of
stuff. It's seems like a wild idea for
a game, so I'm very curious to see that one in action.

(45:39):
There's that's then for PS-5 andPS4 Earth, the Force Fence six.
That looks pretty neat. If you want your big silly bug
killing game, this is one of those you can pick out.
Another big one here for PS-5 and PS4 is Unicorn Overlord from

(46:03):
the Yeah the doves of 13 Sentinels, Aegis Rim,
Odinsphere, Dragon's Crown. Yep, Vanilla Ware has their
newest game that is a a turn based tactical RPG.
Yeah. Taking their their talents to be
kind of fun and fantasy tactics Rome.

(46:23):
Yeah, if, if you, for all those who have not played it, it was
one of my games of the year. So yeah, yeah, yeah, you
absolutely need to play it. It is amazing.
Yeah, now let's see for PS-5 andPS4, Atelier Ariza 3, Alchemists

(46:45):
of the End and The Secret Key. That's the third game in that
trilogy of the girl. That's the main thing I've heard
is people complaining that she'sthick.
And I'm like, she's not thick. Yeah, she's just anime girl with
a little more meat on her than. Your.
Typical anime girl, but yeah, that's one of those games.

(47:09):
You can check out then for PS-5 Indica, an indie horror game
that's got a lot of buzz last year, especially if you are and
deep with the kind of Catholic religion, at least knowing a lot
about that. This plays into a lot of the
Catholic guilt kind of stuff. Oh yeah, and it's also just

(47:32):
like, really, really weird. Yeah, legitimately.
Like, you never know, like what type of game you're playing,
like from minute to minute. It changes so frequently.
It's also, I have been told, extremely funny as well.
Yeah, it knows how to playoff ofthe the strangeness of

(47:55):
Catholicism and like your your whole thing is you're playing
this like young girl who's like an aspiring nun and she starts
hearing the devil talk to her and that's causes her to get
into a bunch of weird situations.
Someone charged Gary and some that are making fun of things.

(48:16):
So yeah, there's that also for PS-5, Harold Halibut, a, you
know, playmation style adventuregame.
I played a decent bit of this onGame Pass and it's very fun, but
also it's just kind of a thing that keeps going.

(48:41):
I played a a good 3-4 hours of it and then just never went back
to it. Not really for any real negative
reason, just like didn't have the the time to kind of keep
going with it. But it really, it looks really
good. So it's a cool part of it.
And also for PS-5 at Coral Island, I believe it's another

(49:03):
one of those kind of farming SIMgames, but you're set on a an
island like a tropical island, Iguess.
So dealing with the coral reefs and all that kind of stuff.
So yeah, that looks neat. And that's it for your main

(49:24):
lineup for the premium only stuff, the classic stuff.
It is what got announced a couple months ago.
Resident Evil 2 and 3 for the PS1 looks like OG Resident Evil
2. No director's cut or anything
like that. Nope.
So you know, you know, just get ready for tank controls.

(49:46):
It's all I was going to say. Yeah.
And then yeah, Resident Evil 3 Nemesis is the original version,
so yeah. Yeah, don't get me wrong, those
OG games can still legit be super scary.
Yeah, like, and I don't know how, but somehow those old like
polygonal Resident Evil games, despite how like rough the

(50:08):
control schemes are, those gamesare still legit very spooky.
I don't know how, why or how it's held up as what that well,
but it does. Yeah.
So, yeah, there you go. That's your lineup for the month
and a very good lineup. A lot of interesting stuff here.

(50:29):
Yep. Anything here you want to check
out Brandon? Well, obviously Mortal Kombat 1
is the big one. Like, I've been wanting to play
that game for a while. I just never had the money to do
it or get around to it. But now I can, and that's
awesome. I'm probably going to look Sword
the Sea into because Absu is a pretty good game as well.

(50:52):
I've already played Spider Man, so you know, and I've also
already played, you know, Unicorn, Unicorn Overlord too.
But don't let anybody not play those on my regard, because both
of those games are amazing. And yeah, like, as far as like
that stuff is concerned, yeah, I'm definitely want to play

(51:14):
those. And also Indica, yeah, like
Indica is a game I've wanted to play for a while.
It's just other stuff either is there or I just couldn't get
around to it. But that game is like, I've,
I've known for a while, that game is just straight up bizarre
in just the best way possible. And of course, the the, you

(51:39):
know, but I might go back into some of the older Resident Evil
games. It would be nice, but yeah,
that's pretty much it for me. How about you, Dan Rib?
Yeah, this is actually quite a stellar month.
There are games I have played, obviously, Spider Man and

(52:00):
Atelier Raisa. That's the game that you know is
one of the most popular in the Atelier series, probably the
most popular for the reason Chris mentioned.
You know, the whole the whole thick thing.
I do think her her thighs are a little thicker than usual as far
as anime characters, but no, nothing, nothing that major
anyway that that's also a game that made me decide that the

(52:20):
atelier series isn't for me justbecause a lot of the potion
making just really made the gameridiculously complicated.
Even though everything about theeverything else about the game
is pretty simplistic and I don'tknow it, it was just hard for me
to get into and I don't think it'll ever work out for me.
That being said, Unicorn Overlord is a game that I always
been wanting to try and now I don't have to directly pay for

(52:44):
it. So that's something I definitely
want to give a chance. I don't know if I'll have the
time to do it, but there's that.I probably will give Mortal
Kombat 1A chance though. That's another game that I've
wanted to try. It hasn't really lasted as far
as like, you know, keeping the attention and but I do like me
some Mortal Kombat every once ina while and I might dive into

(53:04):
that. But yeah, we'll see if we have
time. The highlight though, definitely
sort of this, you know, I love games like Journey and OBSO and
the whole thing about turning your sword into a skateboard
just looks like a lot of fun to me.
So I'm looking forward to tryingthat.
One All right, so yeah, let's get to some more subscription
news this time on Nintendo Switch Online Plus Expansion

(53:26):
pack as they've added a are theygoing to add a new GameCube game
to the lineup? And it is chibi robo plug into
adventure for the GameCube, sortof one of their very under
represented games for the GameCube.
I feel like it's one of the smaller games that kind of came

(53:47):
out, probably didn't get very many copies printed, so most
people probably didn't get a chance to check it out.
And yeah, it'll be added on the 21st, so that'll be Thursday, I
think. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to
this. I've not played this one.
I played the 3DS game, but that is more of a 2D puzzle

(54:07):
platformer thing. But yeah, I'm looking forward to
this one. Yeah, this one, you know, if
you're someone that follows likeNintendo going back to the game,
as Chris mentioned, it's a little bit more niche.
It did come out in America. That being said, if you didn't
get it back then, it's pretty much impossible to get now on
eBay it it usually sells for over $150.00 so super

(54:31):
inaccessible. So I imagine once this comes
out, we're going to see the prices drop significantly and
this game is good. Oh yeah, it is.
If you're someone that enjoys Pikmin and you, you want to see
the charm of everything Nintendodid as far as like the their
little miniature characters and art style, this is definitely
one to look at. And it's a game Cube game, so it

(54:53):
hasn't really aged that much as far as visuals.
Like these games are still fullyplayable and you don't have to
worry about problems that persist on the PSX or game or no
sorry, PlayStation and N64. So yeah, definitely this is 1 to
look out for, and this is easilyone that you'll want just based
on the fact that you can't get it anymore.

(55:15):
Yeah. So yeah, that's one you can
check out later this week. Let's see what else we got for
dates here. Yeah, we got a bunch here for
September. This one is what I'm looking
forward to. Clover Pits is going to be out
September 3rd. This is a slot machine game, but

(55:36):
set in like an enclosed space sothat you're basically earning
money to pay off your debts for the rounds and anything you have
left you put back into the slot machine or buying, you know,
using other currencies. You get to buy perks and such to

(55:58):
make your chances of making moremoney, you know, better and all
that. And yeah, there's a a bit of
demonry going on here as you getto see.
You know, they make jokes about hitting 666 on the on the the
slot machine and that kind of stuff.

(56:20):
Definitely like a demon that is waiting for you to fail so they
can drop you from this room intolike a, I don't know, crusher or
something to kill you kind of thing.
So I'm curious to check this oneout.
I'm probably going to see if I can get a code for it, but this
one looks really neat. That's just on Steam at the

(56:43):
moment, so. But I also do like the the PS1
level of graphics on this. So yeah, if you're into the sort
of nonsense spins on gambling games turn into rogue lights,
this seems like another good oneto check out.
Yeah, it, it looks pretty neat. I'd I'd like to at least give it

(57:07):
a shot. Yeah, there should be a demo so
you can check it out. All right.
One you can check out now. Put that in my notes then.
So yeah, there's that. And if you're wondering if
something special is going to happen on September 9th this
year, there is. It is the release of Bubsy in

(57:28):
the Perfect Collection. They still ask myself why.
Yeah. Like, I, I, I don't, I do not
understand why they're constantly trying to bring this
franchise back. Because with the very small

(57:48):
exception of the first game, they're all terrible.
Yeah. Like, the first game was just
middling at best. Like it was a rent title.
Yeah. Bubsy 2 was even worse and Bubsy
3D is like notoriously considered one of the worst
games ever produced. Yeah.

(58:08):
I do wonder like, you know, you know, obviously Brandon's like
saying why, why, why? I do wonder if they're even like
making any sort of problem, likethey, they, they keep trying to
bring it back and, you know, they have to be bringing it back
for a reason aside from, you know, maybe making a new one.
And I'd, I'd, I would not care if we get to that point, but I

(58:30):
don't know there, there, there has to be some money in that
well, because I don't get. Yeah, this is being published by
Atari and Limited Run Games, andit seems like they very much
know that there is an audience there.
So I'm looking at the the store version of this.
You get physical editions for 35bucks, which seems pretty decent

(58:51):
price. Then they start having deluxe
editions starting at 70 bucks. They'll see that gets you 2
sided poster or one disc soundtrack key chain in the game
with a special box art on it there's.
A. $150.00 edition. Let me see what's got here.

(59:14):
OK, A lot of stuff yeah. Another double sided poster, the
multidisc soundtrack, different key chain, a low Poly Bubsy 3D
figure yeah. Spinning ball of yarn pin.
Yeah. Hardcover, museum, art and
design book, individually numbered certificate of

(59:36):
authenticity on the other key chains also here.
So yeah. And you get a nice little box to
put it in. I feel like part of this is just
there's an audience that's likesthese games.
I don't know why this will be one that you would want to, but
they're also very much doing pre-orders.

(59:59):
They're doing the limited runs thing, so taking pre-orders for
about two months and that'll probably all they produce of
this. So, but I also do think it's
important to also with these kind of collections is to draw
bad games too. Yeah, I mean, you could say that

(01:00:20):
at least for like game preservation purposes, this is
at least it's at least good in that sense.
But like, that's like saying like, you know, an important
part of kidney health is passing, you know, a kidney
stone, so. Yeah, I also think there's
interesting things about it because like Bub, C3D was

(01:00:44):
released by a studio that would become Ben's studio and make
these siphon filter games. Yep.
And it's like that is a fascinating part of its history.
It also is like for a fascinating part in the in like
the history of 3D platformers, because I'm pretty sure doesn't
this game, like at least its development, predate Super Mario

(01:01:05):
64. I don't know, you might be
thinking. Of Croc, Well, I know Croc was
like an early example, like, OK,let's see, the game came out.
It came out in 1996. Let's see Super Mario 64 came
out in the same year. So and I think let's see Super

(01:01:30):
Mario 64 released on let's see of June of well it came out
North America in September 29th and this came out November.
So it actually did like come outafter Super Mario 64, but it was
basically like one of the 1st 3Dplatformers to be developed at a

(01:01:57):
time when, you know, you know, we, you know, Super Mario 64
essentially became like the definitive sort of standard that
most 3D platformers would followafterwards.
But there was like this sort of this sort of point when like
they the the genre was coming was just in in utero and they

(01:02:17):
were still trying to figure out like how this was going to work.
And you know, you had that. You also had croc, like was
previously mentioned. You had bugs.
I think it was bug or whatever it was that cricket game that
was for like the the the Saturn I think.
Yeah. That was like the first of the

(01:02:42):
of like arguably the 1st 3D platformer to go to market that
you know wasn't, you know, a jagged mess like you would see
on the Super yes, but that one you could only it was like the
entirety was only like carton, like the cardinal directions.
You couldn't go to Diagon or anything.
And so you suddenly had Bubsy 3Dand it was terrible.

(01:03:06):
Yeah. And that's pretty much all you
really need to know. It was terrible.
It was painful, literally to play.
You know, there was like, you did you.
The. There was no distance tracking
to speak of. It was like, all fogged over.
The graphics were ugly. The soundtrack was ugly.
The character did not shut up ever.

(01:03:28):
And he spoke entirely in this scratchy, high pitched voice the
whole time. Yeah.
It is physically painful to playthat game.
Yeah. And yeah, it looks like they've
added full analog controls to BUB C3D and I assume worked on

(01:03:49):
some bugs a little bit there, but they also have cheats.
So you can turn on some cheats to make it more friendly to
people just wanting to see what's in the game versus
playing it on its own merits. I assume it has rewind and that
kind of stuff, but and, you know, safe States and all that.

(01:04:09):
So yeah, yeah, it does have all that.
So yeah, like these enough ways to play this.
I wouldn't buy this at launch atall.
I'll let it go on sale for a bit.
Well, yeah, it's they're interesting games, especially as
Bubsy is clearly a Sonic knock off and a lot of what it's doing

(01:04:31):
there with a lot of momentum based platforming.
It doesn't necessarily work all that well, but it did decent
enough. But I guess the the creator left
for the successive games and those were bad.
They came back for Bubsy 3D and obviously saved everything.
So yeah. Oh yeah, there you go.

(01:04:52):
That's September 9th. I will say that Bubsy at least
has more St. cred than Gex, at least in my opinion.
Maybe I really Gex was a fairly big deal for the S1 generation.
For the early years of the PS1, it was definitely.
Though if you look at like the releases of those games, I think

(01:05:14):
it each game debuted on different platforms.
Yep. I think PS1 was the only one on
all of them, but it debuted on the Saturn, then the second game
was in the PS1 game and then they made us in 64 edition for
the third one and it's like that's weird but.

(01:05:35):
Yeah. But yeah, let's get to some more
stuff here. There's Lego Voyagers finally as
a date of September 15th. This is the sequel to Lego
Builders Journey, and this one features a two player Co-op mode
in it so you can play with your with a friend, kid, sibling,

(01:05:58):
whatever, all this and, you know, check it out.
And it's also been published by Annapurna Interactive, so that's
cool to see as well. So yeah.
Yeah, this is a game that was probably one of my favorites
during the Summer Game Fest showcase, and I felt like it's
sort of like fell down by the wayside.
But it's good that it's coming out this year.
Looking forward to it. Yeah, looks like it has the

(01:06:20):
friends pass things so you can have somebody even play with you
without having to spend money onit.
So that's cool, especially for aLego game.
Yep. And let's see here the next day
on the 16th, Henry Half Head will be out, will be out on PS-5
switching PC. This is that neat looking, you

(01:06:43):
know, adventure game that I believe is made by a British
studio featuring Henry Half Head, who's half a head
basically, nose and up, eyes andears basically.
And you just kind of flops around as you go and do things

(01:07:04):
and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, seems like you
transformed to different objects, so that's neat.
So I have the demo on Steam. I just have not had a chance to
start yet, but that's cool. It looks like it's going to be a
fun little game. Yeah, this was something that I
played at GDC, but like I had noidea what I was doing.

(01:07:24):
The attendant there was in the middle of an interview, so I
couldn't really ask anybody, butI'm I'm assuming that it's havoc
and chaos and yeah, looking forward to it.
This is a game that we're probably going to go before, so
I'm looking forward to. It yeah, this will be 1299 at
launch, so not too much money there, OK.
Yeah, it looks like the developers from Switzerland, so

(01:07:45):
not too far off, like similar sensibilities there.
Then on the 19th of September, Reddit 10 will be out in early
access on PC, so people be able to finally get to play Nets as
they delayed it from July 25th, noting that there were a number

(01:08:06):
of issues they wanted to addressbefore they launch into early
access. And so they've supposedly made a
made a bunch of progress on that.
So I'm looking forward to seeingthis as I backed it on
Kickstarter. So I'm excited to see how the
the latest build will be lookinglike.

(01:08:27):
So yeah, that's cool. Yeah, we have a preview up on
Snatchpad. It was also one of my favorite
games at SGF. Looking forward to seeing how
that early access build goes. But at the same time, the 19th
is a very rough date for me. You know, we got, we got Trails
in the Sky first chapter, we gotToa in the gardens of the Sega
Tree and now we have it is crowded.

(01:08:50):
Yeah. And then yeah, on the 23rd here,
Blippo Plus will be out for switching PC.
This is basically a cable TV simulator, I guess is the way
they're calling it here. It's basically like maybe a, a

(01:09:13):
very weird TV program guide kindof thing.
You're flipping through these channels.
It's been on the play dates for most of the summer, yes, since
like May 29th. That's a neat game game thing.
You basically roll through the, the, the channel guide and like

(01:09:38):
pick a channel. I kind of sit there and it plays
through a little video of, you know, whatever the current show
is and it might be something to last for a couple of minutes and
goes to the the next thing and that kind of stuff.
And you have a few channels of video stuff and then you have
some other channels of like textwritten, you know, content kind

(01:10:02):
of stuff. And it seems like this is a a
thing that's produced by an alien culture of sorts.
Yeah, from the planet Blip and see like them imitating things
that you would have seen a few you know are like us and channel
surfed at times and stopped on weird things that would be on

(01:10:25):
the TV kind of stuff and this isplaying off of that in some
really interesting ways. So yeah, this is one I've
watched a bit on the the play dates and it's weird to see in
color and all this was the the play date obviously is like a
one bit platform. So it's like, oh, I've seen some
of this stuff, but looking like a a weird like e-reader version

(01:10:50):
of this. So, you know, in color and kind
of more clear is going to be interesting thing to see how
people take to it. But yeah, looks really neat.
You want your your weird thing to obsess about.
There's that. So there's that.
That's it for the September dates, a bunch of stuff coming

(01:11:10):
out throughout that month to addinto, you know, the other things
we've talked about on the, the release date preview of things
that were happening. So that'll be fun to see.
We got tier for the next thing the the PS4 and Xbox One

(01:11:31):
versions of PUBG Battlegrounds are going to be shutting down on
November 13th. And I believe at the same time
we'll be launching native versions for the PS-5 and Xbox
Series X&S on that same day. As you know, the the old
consoles are kind of wearing thin for games like this that

(01:11:53):
are evolving and continuing to get updates that push things
further ahead on that. So yeah, it looks like going to
look better, run better, probably feel better to play and
all that. So that'll be fun to see.

(01:12:14):
I just love the weird way that this this game went to the point
where they turned PUBG into the brand.
So now it's PUBG Battlegrounds, even though the BG and PUBG
stands for Battlegrounds. Yeah, So it's player unknowns
Battlegrounds, Battlegrounds. But now PUBG is just the brand.

(01:12:36):
So, you know, player Unknown is making his own game now?
Yep, we've got a new thing that's like, it's going to open
beta pretty soon. It's like a weird sandbox thing,
but. Yep.
He's, you know, probably made plenty of money selling this off
to Crafton. So yeah, there you go.

(01:12:58):
Some more reason to jump in the pub G on the consoles now.
So there you go. Let's see.
Also happening here let's see also in November a week later,
our type delta HD boosted they added so much to the name there
we'll finally be out till November 20th in the West.

(01:13:18):
This is the same day as the Japanese release date that they
announced a little bit ago, so that'll be on PlayStation Xbox,
switching PC, which is cool to see.
This is the PS1 release of our type.
That's didn't really get too much traction.

(01:13:39):
There wasn't really any like sequels or anything.
I believe to that game. There's a kind of guy here's
like a 2.5 Dr. type game on the PS3 and it's pretty neat, but
not as good as the original R type or anything.
But they've gone back and remastered it and they get to

(01:14:06):
what else did they add here as new HD visuals, new opening
movie remix soundtrack, a bunch of quality of life features.
So that's cool. Yeah.
Bunch of stuff here. So yeah, that's cool.
That's one you can check out andthen let's see.
I think it's it for dates. We do have one more delay, ease

(01:14:28):
versus Trails in the Sky. Alternative Saga has been
delayed quote by a few months, Balcom announced here.
No idea what that means, but probably be either at the end of
this year or early next year. Yep.
But yeah, this is the the fighting game that was created

(01:14:51):
quite a while ago but is finallygetting a western release.
Probably mostly because Ease andTrails have gotten much bigger
since when this game was originally made, so seems like
they found some reason to bring it over at this point so got to
wait a bit longer for that one. Yeah, it's a bit of a puzzling

(01:15:12):
delay. I played a build over at Holiday
Missouri at the end of last year.
And for those of you that aren'taware, this game is pretty much
just a brawler, much in the veinof something like what's that
dream? Kind of like power stone.

(01:15:33):
It's kind of like that, but you use east and trails characters.
But at the time, the only trailsgame or trails games that was
that was that was out was the sky games and you did have
characters like Lloyd and them from the the the crossbow
duology, but that hadn't come out yet.
This game is actually built on the E 7 engine and E7 was quite

(01:15:56):
a bit ago. So that's why most of the
characters there are going to befrom games prior to E7.
And yeah, like it's it's it's a pretty fun crossover.
But like that being said, there really isn't much to write home
about here. It is fun at times, but it's not
something that'll like last people a bit.
So like, I don't know, I don't know what's causing them to

(01:16:18):
delay anything aside from maybe the translation.
But this is also been fan translated for a while.
So, yeah, I wonder if it's just because I've never heard of
Refint as a publisher. I don't know what they've done
before. So maybe they're just going
through a lot of the hardships that a lot of, you know,
publishers are trying to do Because, yeah, like, I don't

(01:16:39):
this is not really anything thatanybody asked for, but it's it's
still good that it's that it's coming.
Yeah. So, yeah, that's fun.
Yeah, Refint looks like they have done a little bit of
localizing publishing. They published.
Let's see so twofold that's coming out to Switch sometime

(01:16:59):
this year if it isn't already out and also published Coho
artificial dream in Arcadia. It seems like it's also come to
Switch in PS4 and PS-5. So this might be them kind of
starting to exist as sort of a localizer flash publishing
company, since that's a game that probably or definitely

(01:17:24):
isn't one that Falcom or Nisa are like putting any money into,
big money into. They're probably the sort of
company that can come in with a little bit of money and maybe
make that work. So as she has like a more
competitive game that doesn't need a ton of localization.

(01:17:47):
But yeah, there you go. Let's see.
Next up here, we got an announcement.
Yeah, this Playstack, publisher of Bilatro and a number of other
games have announced that they are publishing a new game from a
studio called Dora Coon. This is called Rec Coin Coin
pusher roglike. That is exactly what the title

(01:18:10):
says it is, a coin pusher roglike.
Taking that kind of coin pusher style of game and making a
roglike out of it. They're going to be having a
play test here on Monday. That's you can sign up for now
to get into though I got a code from the developer or the from

(01:18:34):
Playstack. You might want to check this out
a little bit early. I was playing some of this and
yeah, it is exactly what it sayshere.
You're kind of getting these coins coming in and as you are
trying to knock off enough to it's to meet what the the round

(01:18:56):
needs. So it might be like 20 coins,
whatever it is. And once you do that, you can
immediately go to the the shop between rounds for the next
round. You can buy up a bunch of these
coins that you collect on the the side that can be used as
extra coins to throw into the mix.

(01:19:18):
They have their own like perks and things they do.
You get little trinkets that arealso things that can get you
more points or coins or whateverout of them.
You get little, I don't know what they're called, like little
like consumables that you can use that can do more things like

(01:19:42):
some of them can. Just whatever you throw them,
we'll pick up a bunch of coins into the air and kind of throw
them around. Well, as a handful of other
things been easy for the first few runs I've been doing, which
might just be on an easier difficulty.
There's a lot of weird stuff going on here that is pretty

(01:20:05):
neat. I had one trinket that
essentially let me every, you know, like 20 coins I knocked
off. I could just shake the entire
machine and knock a bunch more coins in and made it really easy
to kind of get to the next goal.Kind of thing, but the the coins
are shooting into it are coming at the the backside and you can

(01:20:29):
shoot both at the same time. So they kind of hit each other
and meet in the middle. Or you can just shoot them from
one side or the other to get them over to the other side of
the the field and kind of knock stuff down.
At some points it might just hitbuild like a coin tower that you
can potentially knock over and get a bunch of coins that way.
There's all a bunch of weird stuff going on here in it also

(01:20:51):
has a really nice art style to it because it's kind of doing it
as a 3D game, but it's kind of doing a very low res version of
that almost. They've been a nice filter over
it that looks pretty neat. So this one has simply gotten on
my radar a lot. But yeah, you want to check it

(01:21:11):
out on Steam, you can sign up for the play test and see what
it is, see how you like it earlyon before.
Oh yeah. Launch at some point.
So yeah, this is one that's looks really nice.
Looks interesting, I'll give it that.
Yeah. So yeah, there's that.
I'll probably do a video for that this week, but yeah, let me

(01:21:35):
see what else we got here. Oh yeah, Nexon announced a new
game called Wuchi the Wayfarer and this is basically an action
adventure game basically set in the Korean fantasy universe.
Instead of all these, you know, ones in the the Chinese fantasy
universe. We got one in Korea.

(01:21:57):
So that's pretty cool. Describing this as a high end PC
and console action adventure game.
Then traditional traditional Korean culture and mythology.
So yeah, pick the Adventures of Dosa John Woochie of the Mage of
the Way fame. Yeah, coming to PlayStation,
Xbox and Steam whenever it's ready to launch.

(01:22:20):
Maybe next year or the year after.
I don't know exactly when they're going to be ready, but
that looks neat. Always good to see more games
like this coming out about more cultures.
So there you go. Yeah, it definitely looks.
It looks neat. I mean it, it looks interesting,

(01:22:42):
but I mean it's still just mostly cutscenes, so.
Yeah, yeah. There you go.
Want to keep an eye on We'll getto industry news here.
Yeah. Blackbird Interactive announced
that they acquired full ownership of the Hard Space
Shipbreaker IP from Focus Entertainment, which is really

(01:23:06):
cool to see because, yeah, this was a great game, Hard Space
Shipbreaker a few years ago and it really hasn't been much else
done with it. So the things like the the
studio was able to pull up enough money to buy the full
rights back from Focus and they have announced they're working

(01:23:26):
on multiple hard space projects in active development.
So maybe a sequel with maybe some other other kind of
projects going on here. But yeah, they've open
registration for what they're calling the Lynx Pioneer
program. Seems like a community project
thing that they can get probablyfeedback from the community and

(01:23:50):
all that. And I believe they've also
opened up a Discord and some other stuff for that.
So I've got some ways for peopleto support them for the initial
time being. But yeah, I'd like to see
another another hard space game at some point because yeah, that
first one was a really good game.

(01:24:11):
So yeah, there you go. Yeah, that's, you know, I'm glad
you know that Blackbird, they'rethe developers of the game,
weren't they? Yeah.
Yeah, So I'm glad they've got the IP back themselves.
And I'm glad because I mean it just just, if nothing else, for

(01:24:32):
thematic reasons. I mean, you and me, we've both
played that game. Yeah.
Like labor disputes are like built into it.
Yeah, yeah. It's about capitalism.
Yep. And how it robs people of their
humanity. Yep.
And so nice to see that they've essentially bought their

(01:24:52):
property back from the publisherthat was, you know, making most
of the money off of it. So it's good to see.
Yeah. Best Next up here story that was
going around a bit here from Mark Dara, formerly one of the
top people at Spyware who had talked about that they had

(01:25:18):
pitched a remaster of the original Dragon Age, if not like
a trilogy remaster of the first three games EAA number of times,
but always got shot down. You know what they called a soft
pitch? Which is probably.
Mostly just like, hey, what do you think about doing a remaster

(01:25:39):
of these games? You know, like, no, which seems
like the EA thing because they have not really done very many
remasters games. I was trying to think of this
earlier and it's like there's Burnout paradise, there's Need
for Speed, Hot Pursuit too. And then there's the Mass Effect

(01:26:01):
trilogy, and that's kind of it. Yeah.
Dead Space. Dead Space that well, that's a
remake. Yeah, the first was a remake.
That's true, yeah. I can think of a couple of
reasons why they weren't able really to get a Dragon Age, you

(01:26:21):
know, like a remastered compilation off the ground is
first and foremost. If they did that, they would
essentially have to do like whatthey did when they did the the
mask, the the collection for thefirst Mass Effect game, which
was basically have to remake thewhole game from the ground up.
Which I mean, that's not entirely.

(01:26:42):
I mean they showed that they could do it with with what the
first Mass Effect game ended up showing up.
Like all they had to do was, youknow, port the, the, the
characters from, you know, the, the models from the third game
into this game and sort of, you know, but then at the same time
they had to like redo a bunch ofthe environments and stuff.
Also, it's just because like gameplay wise, dragon, the first

(01:27:05):
Dragon Age origins is like completely different from the
later ones because Dragon Age origins was originally supposed
to be like their spiritual successor to Bowders Gate, but
like an original IP. And you know, the reason it
ended up kind of turning more into like an action RPG that it

(01:27:28):
did is because largely because kind of they were that that
second game. Anybody who knows Dragon Age 2
was a very rushed product. It was still pretty good for
what it was, but like, it's veryobvious that they were working
on a very strict timetable because there's like a lot of

(01:27:50):
reused environments. The overall game world is a lot
more condensed to just like a single overall location and you
know, just to do the overall like that, you know, and then
you know, that compare that likereally the like the major like

(01:28:10):
difference of gameplay between like what was between Dragon Age
Origins and Dragon Age 2, between Mass Effect one and Mass
Effect 2, Mass Effect one and Mass Effect 2 basically still
more or less play the same. It's just they add some
additional limitations to it. Dragon Age 2 and Dragon and
Dragon Age Origins are almost completely different games

(01:28:31):
entirely. Yeah, you can definitely see
like the the influence that MassEffect 2 had on Dragon Age 2.
Yeah, definitely. And you know, just overall, you
know, it'd be if they did end upremaking Dragon Age Origins,
honestly, they probably would have had to redo the gameplay as

(01:28:54):
well for it to really just make sense.
I know they want to. Like, the other issue is that
unlike with the Mass Effect games, the like big world
choices that you make in that game aren't really as major
going forward from game to game as it is mostly because you're

(01:29:17):
playing different protagonists in the game.
Especially with the first DragonAge, because you can straight up
like, you know, have like completely different origin
stories for like every differenttype of character.
That means you'll literally start the game in different
parts of it. In Mass Effect, you're Commander

(01:29:37):
Shepard, you're always CommanderShepard, period.
In Dragon Age, you're three different people in that
trilogy, and the effects that one has on the other game aren't
as wide-ranging as they are in Mass Effect.
Also, just to be completely honest, compared the two Mass

(01:29:58):
Effect, it was always the bigger, always the bigger money
getter as well. Yeah.
Like Dragon Age Inquisition still did really well, but it's
still like paled in comparison to the numbers that Mass Effect
was bullying. Yeah, I think it's been pretty
well reported that EA is pretty much been indifferent with

(01:30:19):
everything towards Dragon Age. That being said, you know, story
aside, pitching is hard. Yeah.
Pitching a publisher is really hard.
Pitching EA is is is even harder.
I mean, they are sitting on a goldmine of IP, much like a lot.
But EA, more so than a lot of other companies, is really

(01:30:41):
reliant on just how they craft their message and how, you know,
they're going to be pretty tactical in regards to, you
know, bringing back IP or remastering things.
And like, the the biggest examples I can give here are
skate and college football. Like, these are games that, you

(01:31:03):
know, pretty much disappeared into the aether.
But it was undeniable that the, you know, that everybody wanted
these back somehow in some way. And, you know, college football
was obviously hard. They didn't work with the NCAA
anymore for very many reasons. And then you can't really blame
me here for that. And then, you know, with skate,

(01:31:24):
you know, the the skate genre sort of fell down.
So it's really interesting seeing what Tony Hawk is able to
bring in as far as numbers. But yeah, like whenever they
bring something back, they definitely want to own the
story, especially with social, like something that I've been
told in the past is like, yeah, if, if, if, if there's going to
be like some, some sort of like #marketing that's totally out of

(01:31:48):
E as hands, then they'll go. They'll definitely pay
attention. So that, so that would help.
And Dragon Age unfortunately is not there, so.
Yeah. And another thing they mentioned
here is that the engines are different between the two by our
franchises. All the Mass Effects are on
Unreal Engine, which probably helps a lot in doing more to

(01:32:09):
that. Yeah, the first two Dragon Age
games are on their internal Eclipse engine for making
Inquisition on Frostbite, which probably make it a bit tougher
to kind of get those all into one package and improving them,
especially for an engine that's they hadn't touched in a while

(01:32:31):
with that Eclipse engine. But yeah, this is kind of one of
those, one of those things that would have probably been nice to
have between Inquisition and Vaileguard at some point, but
probably the money part of it doesn't check out for them.
No, not right now anyway. Yeah, but yeah, there you go.

(01:32:57):
Let's get to the culture war part of the show, The Chinese
Culture war. At least.
Wu Chong Fallen Feathers got a big update here that's on all
versions of the game that basically changed the story
significantly. So that's the kind of core
conceit of the the game is that you're fighting a lot of like

(01:33:19):
historic figures in Chinese history that you kill them and
kind of move on to the next one.And with this updates, they
ended up changing it so that youtalk to them a bit after you
beat them and then they just kind of go to sleep and
disappear instead of being killed.

(01:33:42):
Particularly because it seems like the the big thing is that
this became sort of a culture war thing in China.
That's despite it not even beingreleased in China or anything.
This is kind of such a a wild thing to see.

(01:34:02):
But yeah, this is kind of one ofthose things that's there's
definitely a, you know, notable amount of people in China that
would, I don't like any of theirhistory being messed with in any
way in media. And despite this being one, but

(01:34:22):
this being like, you know, sort of a fantastical history kind of
retelling, Yeah, that they're still ended up getting affected
by these people in a way that's,you know, unfortunately makes
the game worse for people. Though from what I've heard,

(01:34:44):
it's also not going to change too much.
It's not like it changes the thestory as a whole is just the way
that you dispatch with these bosses just kind of just falls
flat essentially, which is a negative for the game.
But for the most part, what you're doing in this game, it's
not a big deal. But yeah, it's just sort of

(01:35:05):
like, since you're in your own game, not a great idea.
So it just leads to this weird whole thing that at least like
already on the the PC version, there's been a mod that undoes
this update the people there. Or if you bought it on a
physical edition, you have the version of the game before this

(01:35:30):
updates. And so you can kind of play it
as is. There's one bonus perk of
heaven, the physical edition. But yeah, it's kind of those
things are like, yeah, we had a,we had a, you know, Assassin's
Creed set here in Revolutionary War, Revolutionary War era of

(01:35:50):
the US and involving a lot of historical figures.
I mean most of those games have historical figures, a note in
them that you fuck around with or they change to fit the the
narrative of the game. Kind of.
Stuff. You know, we really bats an eye
on that stuff. I'm sure there's some people
like, why does this have to happen?

(01:36:11):
And it's like, because it's a made-up story.
Yeah. But yeah, this is a game that's
very much an unfortunate thing to have happen.
But yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Well, there you go. Yeah, it's definitely a bizarre
story. I am definitely all for cultural

(01:36:33):
sensitivity, but yeah, censoringto this magnitude is pretty
nuts, especially with a game that didn't come out in that
place to begin with. I don't know if that was like
something planned, but yeah, that this is pretty bad,
especially if you're somebody who, you know, beat the game or,

(01:36:55):
you know, got through these parts and all of a sudden you
turned it on. And I don't know if these if
these patches actually affected anything with the story and
whatnot, but like not being ableto kill a key boss because, you
know, of of reasons like this. Yeah, it, it kind of does does
change the plot because, you know, with these souls like
games, like they're they're they're a big part of the

(01:37:16):
enamour with them. I haven't played this just
because I suck at these, but yeah, I I understand they're
angry if like if you ask me likethe people who want to return
the game or refund the game are totally validated here.
Yeah, but yeah, there you go. Some weird story stuff there.

(01:37:39):
Oh yeah. Let's see what else we got here.
I have some IGN news. John Davison, who is sort of the
head of IGN Entertainment has left after being there for about
5 years now. Yeah, he left as of Monday
saying it was the time for the next chapter, which is not

(01:38:02):
really surprised for John Davis things, I feel like he doesn't
stay at any one place for very long, a handful of years.
But if you go look up his like history, he was at EGM for like
two or three years and went overto OPM, which were all owned by
the same company. But he went there for four or

(01:38:24):
five years, then moved over to Game spots.
I was there for a few years and left to IGN.
There's there's other stuff in between there.
But yeah, IGN is worse for leaving or for losing him.
But yeah, it's not. Really a.
Huge surprise, and I don't know that this is directly related to

(01:38:46):
any of these layoff things, but I'm sure it didn't help.
But yeah, there you go. Yeah, John's definitely a big
name in the gaming space. To be honest, I actually did not
know he was at IGN, but I've known him in his days with
GameSpot and OPM and all that. So that is interesting.
But yeah, as you mentioned, likehe's, he's been everywhere.

(01:39:09):
He doesn't have one place too long.
And if you ask me, this is one of those things.
But yeah, it's, it's, it's toughto see where IGN is going
trajectory now. But also they, they are in
international companies. So I wouldn't say they're going
anywhere soon. But it it it does suck to lose
someone you know, infamous if you will.
Yeah, so yeah, few more stories here.

(01:39:32):
Next up here. PayPal is part of the Steam and
not safe for work. Fuck fest, whatever you want to
call. So they are a more substantial
part of this because it seems like Yeah, as the as it's
mentioned here, in early June, early July 2025, PayPal notified

(01:39:55):
Valve that they're acquiring bank for payment transactions
and certain currencies was immediately terminating the
processing of any transactions related to Steam.
Basically people outside of. These six currencies, you know
are no longer able to use PayPalfor Steam purchases.
Ones that are still there it arethe ones you probably expect.

(01:40:20):
The euro, the Canadian dollar, the British pound, the Japanese
yen, the Australian dollar and the US dollar.
Yeah. They say here we hope to offer
PayPal this from Valve. We hope to offer PayPal as an
option for these currencies in the future, but the timeline is
uncertain. We are also evaluating adding

(01:40:42):
additional payment methods on Steam for the customers affected
by this. Yeah, there's no explanation
immediately for why they were making these changes, but yeah,
Valve seem to confirm that theseare related to the ongoing
censorship campaign. Yeah.

(01:41:05):
Let's see sing here. This is, yeah.
The loss of payment processing support by one of Paypal's
banking partners is regarding content on Steam related to what
we've previously commented on surrounding MasterCard.
In this case, one of Paypal's acquiring banks decide to stop
processing any Steam transactions, which cut off
PayPal on Steam for a number of currencies.

(01:41:28):
Yeah. So yeah, this is one of those
things where if you are Steam user in these other countries,
you'll end up having to see whatother options there may be.
You're just finding a means to acquiring Steam cards or
whatever. People like to use PayPal

(01:41:49):
because it's like an additional layer of security.
Between. Their, you know, bank cards and
the storefronts and for other places it was one of the only
options they may have. So just more of that stuff.
So yeah, PayPal is pretty much off limits on Steam for most

(01:42:12):
parts of the world, so that's unfortunate.
That sucks. Yeah.
And I have to remind people, this whole thing literally
started from like this tiny little group in Australia that
likes to mask itself in the gauze of feminism, when in
reality it is an evangelical Christian or organization that

(01:42:35):
is attempting to impose itself on the rest of the global
population they have seemingly found.
And it's not to be completely fair.
I mean, I say fair, but completely honest.
Be factual. The the playbook they're using
is not new. This very this very thing

(01:42:59):
actually happened with another organization years ago, a few
years ago where they were specifically targeting the sites
like pornhub specifically. And if you ever noticed like the
their their Pornhub had like this huge like like purge of

(01:43:21):
like their entire like line of like amateur performers and
content makers who then had to re register with the the with
the company with the the websitebecause there had this one group
had essentially used fears of like human trafficking to

(01:43:43):
essentially blackmail them into doing it.
Now, that is not me, you know, denying that, you know, human
trafficking is something that doesn't happen in the in the sex
industry because it absolutely does.
But the group that was doing this was essentially doing it
because, once again, they were this evangelical Christian group

(01:44:03):
that was trying to impose themselves on the world's
population. That ended up eventually
backfiring because eventually, you know, those those Pornhub
just sort of change their business practices a bit.
And ultimately, this will largely fail as well.

(01:44:25):
There is enough grassroots rage at this group and what they're
doing that a lot of these various payment companies and
banks are now kind of having to scramble to figure out what
they're going to do going forward.
Yeah. Yeah, it this whole thing is
sort of made the the banking system and like the the payment

(01:44:48):
processing systems that you justtake for granted seem like much
more of a a shit show than you really expect, which has
probably been more of a a known thing in people outside of the
the main big countries. But yeah, in a while, just
seeing how like somebody decidesthey don't like whatever's going

(01:45:11):
on here and they're just like, ah, we're done.
And so no longer can use certainpayment methods, like, yeah,
that's fucked. But yeah, we'll see if there's
any good news on this stuff in the future.
Yeah, we'll see. But yeah, let's get to our last
two stories here involving Microsoft.

(01:45:31):
First up here, Blizzard's Story and Franchise Development
division has voted to unionize. Yep.
Joining nearly 3000 workers at Microsoft owned studios who've
organized with the Communications Workers of
America. Yeah, the The workers strongly
voted in favor of union representation, either by

(01:45:53):
signing an union authorization card or indicating that they
wanted union representation by an online portal.
Microsoft has recognized the union.
This team works on all the in house cinematics, animation,
narrative team producing trailers, videos, cutscenes and
other narrative content for Blizzard franchises.

(01:46:14):
So yeah, we wish them all the luck in getting a fair deal,
which may take a few years. Yep.
We've seen other other unions inMicrosoft do that.
So there you go. Good to see.
Yep, good to see. This last one is also Union

(01:46:37):
story. The the STJV union members at
Arcane Studios in France have joined the Palestinian LED BDS
movements, Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement and calling
for their parent company Microsoft, who ended supports

(01:46:58):
for an Israeli regime, saying that they want Microsoft to stop
being an accomplice in the genocide in the Gaza.
Particularly. There's been a lot of reporting
lately about how Microsoft is heavily involved in a lot of the

(01:47:19):
things that are going on in Gaza, particularly your mentions
of, let's see, this one in the Guardian involves, yeah,
Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella meeting with the commander of
Israel's military surveillance unit, or agency Unit 8200

(01:47:42):
moving. Yeah.
Meeting about moving vast amounts of top secret
intelligence material into the US companies cloud.
This was in late 2021 before, you know, this most recent stuff
has been gone the last couple ofyears.
But yeah, that they have been fully integrated into

(01:48:03):
Microsoft's Azure cloud platformand using that to essentially
build a huge mass surveillance tool that can collect and store
recordings of millions of phone calls made each day by
Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
They would use that to, I believe, use their AI stuff to

(01:48:29):
pour through that data and find information that can lead to
places they should attack and all that kind of fun stuff.
And how kind of heavily involvedMicrosoft is in this.
So they've acted like they aren't and have responded by
being like, oh, we have had no idea what's going on here.
We're going to do an investigation and all this.

(01:48:50):
And it's like, yeah, that seems exactly the thing I would expect
them to say. That is a whole thing.
Microsoft's early this year thatan external review found no
evidence to date that Azure or it's eight Eye products have
been used to target or harm people in Gaza, which is like,
sure, we'll see. But yeah, now one of their more

(01:49:14):
notable studios have our Union studios have made this big show
of support for the Palestinians in Gaza and wanting Microsoft to
fully divest themselves of theirsupport of Israel and all this.
And yeah, very brave move for them to use because Microsoft

(01:49:41):
may very well respond to this bylaying off all the people in
this union as part of this as they have done in the past.
I believe this is the studio that is working on the Blade
game, so they might be putting that project in trouble by doing
that. So yeah, saying here very much,

(01:50:06):
we think that Microsoft has no place being accomplice of a
genocide. And as Microsoft employees, we
don't want to be part of this sinister project for Gaza or
where we think it's our responsibility as tech workers
to raise the alarm and to ensurethat our technologies are used
to make the voices of the oppressed heard and not
facilitate their demise any moredirect manner.

(01:50:27):
We think this could very affect our life directly by reducing
the audience for our games, thusdirectly compromising the
viability of Xbox games and in the long run, our very own jobs.
Yeah, a very good statement to make.
I don't know how much Microsoft is going to really react to this

(01:50:49):
and do anything because of this one team, but maybe we'll get
others within Microsoft and in the Xbox group of teams to maybe
speak out on their own. We'll see.
But yeah, definitely all this reporting has made it very much
more obvious how much Microsoft and their tools are just

(01:51:13):
directly supporting the the things going on in Gaza is very
much maybe one to they will stoptalking about Game Pass stuff
directly on this podcast just now, further involving in the
marketing of those new additionsand such.
We'll talk about other things that are newsworthy.

(01:51:35):
But yeah, direct marketing is going to take a break for the
time being. But yeah, this is one of those
things. We'll have to see what comes to
this, but it's nice to see more people in the Microsoft company

(01:51:56):
as we've seen direct examples ofpeople at, you know, meetings
and whatnots calling out the leadership for their complicity
and getting promptly fired pretty quickly.
And with the claim that it wasn't because of that was
because of other things, conveniently.
But yeah, if you have anything to add, Brandon.

(01:52:19):
Nope, not really. Just, you know, once again, like
we've been saying, you know, it's, you know, the, the, it's,
you know, the the momentum is onthe side of organized labor
right now. And no matter how much, you
know, the current government is trying to stymie it.

(01:52:41):
Yeah. And yeah.
But publicizing Microsoft's, youknow, involvement in this stuff
is very much needed. Yeah.
So yeah, I think it's going to end up doing it for the show.
Yeah, yeah. Thank you to Brandon Danner for
joining this week. Always.
No problem. We'll be back for a new show

(01:53:04):
next week with a new slate of news and maybe some more
positive things to talk about. But yeah, let's see, what do we
got coming out this week here? We got a decent amount of stuff.
We got, you know, Delta Force coming out to the consoles sort
of the C as we mentioned Blackmith Wukong comes to the

(01:53:25):
Xbox discounty is out. I played a little bit of the
demo for that. So that seems neat.
You're kind of running out like a, you know, shopping store kind
of thing. That seems neat.
Britain Valor 1949. That's that like RTS rug like
game that also has VR support. That is neat.

(01:53:47):
Looking in Azuma 11 Victory Rd. I think it's outs or did that
get delayed? It might have gotten delayed.
Yeah. It's late to November.
OK, I have to update this list here.
But yeah, some nice stuff comingout this week.
But yeah, thank you all for tuning in.

(01:54:08):
If you enjoy the show for free to let friends and family know,
they should check out the podcast and select strangers who
are also excited for things thatare coming outs in the near
future. So yeah, thank you all for
tuning in and thank you to Brandon Danner for joining.
We'll be back next week with a new show for some new fun and

(01:54:30):
new games to talk about. 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.
See you guys. Bye.