Day 0 Update #548 - An Impermissible Monopoly

In this episode of the Day 0 Update: We talk about Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree, the backlash surrounding Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2, and some updates on lawsuits involving Tencent/Sony and Krafton/Subnautica creators. All this and more, up next!

Full show notes can be found ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Episode Transcript

(00:17):
Welcome to Daiser update for September 21st, 2025.
I'm your host, Chris Emoji. I'm Brandon Perkins.
And I'm Daniel Vic. And yeah, we've got a big week
of news. We got a bunch of games that
have come out on and are coming out soon.
Things that we can talk about, some that we can't, but also a

(00:40):
bunch of things coming out here in the near future, as well as
some industry news. Let's say some lawsuits are
progressing in interesting ways,as well as one person related to
the games industry who will be going to prison for doing
something very stupid during theLA fires, as well as other

(01:05):
things going on here. But yeah, before we get to that
stuff, we'll talk about. What we've been playing.
And I'll kick it off here. I've been playing some skates,
the new skates that is free to play on PlayStation, Xbox and
PC. This is an early access, so it's

(01:26):
not, you know, final build or anything or one point O kind of
thing, which shows in a good bitof ways, but still is pretty
good. So kind of starts you with the
character creator, which kind oflets you get a decent bit of
customization going on, maybe not as much as I would like.

(01:49):
And I think the the initial creator has some weird elements
of the menus that can obscure the character you're trying to
make. Like I was in the hair section
and it was kind of covering the the top half of the head.
I'm like, what are we doing overhere when you can't have sort of

(02:09):
a full view of the head, but youcan customize the character
after the intro at any point from the menus.
So that one seems to not have that issue or they updated
between the two points that I was doing that.
But yeah, you're kind of thrown in this new city.

(02:29):
I think it's new Vanderstrom, something like.
That. Not 100% sure on that, but yeah,
it's a new city. It's very well built for the the
open world here. It's got a lot of interesting

(02:49):
set pieces and such for doing some cool tricks and all that.
And the the interesting thing they've done here is you can do
things like. A lot of the.
Traditional gate stuff of setting you know spawn points so
that you can try doing tricks and if you fail to do it.

(03:11):
You can just. Respawn and try it again, that
kind of stuff. But you do have actual climbing
abilities now. And so they put challenges on
top of buildings and the climbing is very, you know,
uncharted esque in a way that's I'm kind of annoyed by at a
certain points because it's one I forget about it after not

(03:35):
doing it for a while. And then when I do it, it's like
it's very tedious. You're climbing some of these
larger buildings. But yeah, it's it's still pretty
neat that kind of let you do that, but it doesn't always tell
you the challenges are on top ofthe building.
I was like looking for a path upand I was like, Oh yeah, I got

(03:57):
to climb. This is the climb wall that you
run into. But you can also mantle over
stuff around the environment, climb up onto ledges and all
that kind of stuff to get where you need to go.
Still has some some bug issues. The first night I was playing,
it was doing fine. I was getting to through the

(04:20):
initial missions and it's like, oh, now you get to play these
other missions. And I looked on the map, there
was nothing on it. So I just skated around for a
while. Then I found something on the
map and I was skating over towards it, kind of running into
a bunch of obstacles that walls and such that I couldn't get
through. So started trying to figure out

(04:40):
my way around it and the game crashed.
I was like, well, this is a goodinto this this session here.
But yeah, you're kind of doing these challenges.
A lot of them are fairly basic, like have you in like this skate
park area. It's like I'll do these kind of

(05:02):
tricks in this, you know, line like these like almost
skateboard wheels kind of thingsthat are put on this line to
kind of get you doing tricks. And like, oh, you got to do 3
grinds and two foot tricks in this area and this kind of stuff

(05:22):
and get a score, a total score of at least a certain amount of
points kind of stuff which has not been too tough so far.
Is that just like owning missions where you kind of go
and do big tricks off of certainparts of the environment to own

(05:46):
it, which seems weird to do in like a solo mission kind of
thing. That seems like very much a
multiplayer kind of thing, whichthey do have Co-op opportunities
for some of this, but it has youhave to have a party set up for
that. You can't just match make into
that kind of stuff. So I've been just doing a lot of
solo stuff, but of it eventuallyopened up the the stunt part

(06:10):
where if you played I think likeSkate 2 and Skate 3, those had
this like Thresher Hall of Meatsstuff where you would do these
tricks or not tricks even you get up on top of buildings and
try to land in dumpsters and do various kind of stunt tricks and

(06:31):
such depending on the mission. And often it would have things
where you're breaking bones and such to get points and all that.
Then they kind of have that here.
It's not branded for Thrasher. It's just called stunt missions
and most of them have been easy.I ran into one that was branded

(06:54):
as like a hard challenge where Ineeded you to jump off this
building, fly for bits, get backon the board and land on this
like half pipe that will launch you up onto this this bridge.
You're supposed to do a flip trick onto the bridge, then do a
manual on the bridge, cross it and then fly off the other side

(07:17):
and land in a specific place andit branded That is like very
hard and it definitely was I think I got.
Was able to get. Everything marked off but the
manual thing. I just could not get the the
landing right on that, but I could sort of fly off from one
side of the bridge to the other kind of land in the general
area. You get kind of unlimited

(07:38):
attempts at this stuff. But if you get tired of trying
to do something that's a bit tootough for you, you can just
pause it and hit, you know, end the mission and you'll get the,
you know, the points that's you've completed.
You'll get credit for that whichends up in these I think.

(08:00):
RIP. Is what they call it is sort of
a an XP system for each of theseareas.
I figured what RIP stands for, would you get RIP chips for
that? And then there's an XP system, a
separate XP system. I forget exactly 1 for the area,

(08:24):
one for I think just doing stufflike an account wide XP system
because you're trying to do missions and rank up the
different districts, which I think is 3 districts so far.
Like there's a fourth that mentions that it is under

(08:44):
construction in the in the map screen.
I think that one's something that they're going to finish up,
but you can still get over thereand do stuff.
You just won't have challenges or anything.
So so far it's been pretty good on that stuff.

(09:04):
And yeah, at any point you can get off the the board if you
need to, to run up steps or climb up to places and whatnot.
But yeah. It it has a lot.
Of physics stuff going on so much so it's almost kind of just
fun to fuck up and just go tumbling off of over, you know,

(09:26):
railings and off of bridges and all that kind of fun stuff.
You do get like points off of that stuff that's you can tie
into lines and all that. And it has a whole clip system
for you so that you can make the, you know, make your fun

(09:47):
videos of you doing ridiculous tricks and or messing up in fun
ways. But yeah, that's kind of where
that is all going. And yeah, it, it kind of doesn't
really have a ton of character to it yet.
So maybe that's something I'll add in later.
Because initially you're gettingall your guidance narrated by

(10:13):
this character named V. It's an AI character.
But then you run into or have other people kind of set, set up
things that you're doing, actualpeople that will guide you
through different things. So I'm working with some of
those people. But then you.
Start running to some of the theprogression stuff where it's

(10:35):
like, oh, I'm mainly in this onedistrict, but there's the the
two others required me to complete it.
You know, X amount of challenges.
It's like 70 for one and 140 forthe other, something like that.
And I'm like halfway to 70 rightnow, so still working on it.
But they do seem to have a lot of, like, time challenges that

(10:59):
rotate out to every 24 hours. So you can kind of do a bunch of
stuff there. And like, they keep adding new
things in as you progress through the game.
But yeah, every, I think level up of the RIP stuff, you unlock
new loot boxes. These are all paid with in game

(11:21):
currency that you earn completing challenges and all
that kind of stuff. And they're very much set up in
the way that you can. You get unique things each time.
So if a box has like 10 potential items in it, you
essentially just buy it 10 timesto get everything in it and it

(11:44):
kind of work your way up. So if you find boxes have better
things in it that you want, likeI had this one that had stickers
or not sticker tape, tape designs for the the top of the
board. It was in the cool ass shape.
I was like, all right, I want that.
But it ended up being like the 10th item out of 11 that I
unlocked there, which a little frustrating, but otherwise it

(12:08):
was mostly fine. But yeah, you get a good bit of
that currency. So I just go back to the the
shop every once in a while and buy a bunch of boxes and a mock
them. I would say the IT should give
you a skip for that. The animation because it it
literally obnoxiously pops up a congratulations before you even

(12:31):
see what you get out of it kind of thing.
And then it kind of just shows avery slow like loading box.
Then it shows like what you whatitem you got.
So this is like a 10 to 15 second process.
I'm just like, I just let me skip it because this is not an
interesting thing. It's not even like the Madden or

(12:53):
college football Ultimate Team thing where you watch like a
little pack of cards get opened.And even that's pretty dumb
after a certain point, especially once they start
putting the branded card packs in there.
Or it's like, here's the Snickers logo for five seconds
and it's like, oh God, just let me skip this shit.
But yeah, there's a there's a lot of that.

(13:15):
There's a lot of multiplayer. You see a lot of players around
the the map. And you know, when you're
looking at the map screen, you can even see them moving around,
see what interesting things are doing.
That is pretty neat. So you will not fast travel
points around the district as you do more there.

(13:36):
I think they they have not addedthe first like battle pass kind
of thing to the game for the first season.
I think it's supposed to be sometime soon, but they're kind
of working on bugs and such. So far have been fairly minor
outside of a lot of like the crashing stuff.

(13:56):
There's been a lot of weird little things where I'm trying
to land a trick and it bugs out and mostly that's is pretty
minor stuff because it looks funthe way they're ragdoll stuff
goes. But yeah, it's free.
You can check it out whenever inthe on PlayStation.

(14:16):
PS Plus has a little pack of extra cosmetics that you can
check out there, which are all just bored stuff.
So now I have like a fun little design and some stickers you put
on the bottom of the board and. You know the.
The truck and wheels and all that are also fun little design.
So there's that. The the clothing is all fairly

(14:40):
plain. So far.
They do have paid stuff in the shop that requires the paid
currency. The nice thing they're doing is
the founders packs is a regular founders pack.
There's a deluxe one that are 25and 50 bucks respectively.
If you just pay those outright, you get the the same amount of
points as you would for paying. You know, just for 25 points,

(15:03):
$25.00 worth of points and videois worth of points.
So you get the. Bonus cosmetics with that and
you, you know, support the the game and the team and kind of.
At least encourage. EA to let this keep progressing
in early Access, which seems like it's doing pretty well.
Like the number was 2 million people they had in the first

(15:24):
couple of days, which seems pretty solid for what they're
doing. But yeah, it'll depend on how
far they go how how much that number sticks with the things.
So yeah, that's been pretty fun so far.

(15:44):
Let's see. Also got Trails in the Sky first
chapter. They saw that it was weird.
It's one of those games you couldn't pre-order and I think
it went live here at like 3. AMI was like, fuck that, I'll
get it when I wake up in the morning.
So I woke up and bought it and downloaded it.

(16:04):
I've only played about an hour because I'm working on something
else for review that kind of took precedence, but basically
got to the point. I think I'm on that first racer
test mission where you're in thesewers.
I'm near the end of that. But yeah, it's been pretty good
so far. I'd say this game introduced an

(16:26):
annoyance that I didn't really have until now, which is that it
has the auto advance feature fordialogue, but it doesn't
differentiate between the spokenand non spoken dialogue.
Even if it's like hip dialogue of like explaining, you know,
gameplay stuff or whatever's going on.

(16:48):
If you're not, you know, I was playing it so, you know, paying
attention, but had to do something on the computer real
quick and it was just sitting there scrolling through, you
know, skipping through this dialogue.
It was explaining something. Luckily nothing all that
important. I was like man there should be
an option to have it auto advance on a spoken dialogue and

(17:11):
then not on anything else. Versus me having to turn it off
and on again depending on when Irun into spoken dialogue.
Yeah, that's part of the problemfor, but the whole thing not
being voiced. Yeah, which I get because
there's a lot of like, dialogue for characters that don't really
matter, that kind of stuff. But even in sequences where

(17:33):
you're talking to people, they'll, you know, stop talking,
stop being voiced, more bits. You can press.
The up button though to get a history of what was said.
Yeah, but I looked at that and Iwas like, OK, I didn't miss
anything, but this is still, I think that there should be a
nuance in it. But yeah, I'm still early enough

(17:54):
in its that it's not that big ofa deal.
So I do like when they could be like the little bit of freedom
and you see, like, oh, here's a thing I can collect in this
path. That's not the story path, so I
can't go collect it. It's like, oh, that's not where
we're going. But yeah, I know.
But I'm going to go get this thing.
You literally put a shiny in my view.

(18:14):
I can't fucking go get it. Yeah, that's where I'm at on
that. Luckily it's one of the better
JRP GS in terms of you can pretty much save it anytime.
So that's at least nice. I like saved in the middle of
the dungeon and not have to worry about, you know, the fact

(18:37):
that I would have to do that restarted or anything like that
because there is a save point inmost of the dungeons, but
they're like you can save, you know, anytime you're not in a
fight. So that was a nice thing so I
can come back and not lose too much progress.
So yeah, that's Trails in the Sky, first chapter, my first

(18:59):
impression. So there's that.
And yeah, the last one I've beenplaying is the the new addition
to PS Plus Legacy of Kane, Defiance, the the last game in
the series that we've gotten thelast one that's Amy headache
worked on before she went over to Naughty Dog.
And it definitely feels like a game that's it's going to be,

(19:23):
you know, an ending to the to the story because they've had,
you know. Four games before that.
Two featuring Raziel 2 featuringKane and I guess the beginning
of this is deals with the end ofI think Soul Reaper 2 to where
they kind of both run into each other and are kind of either

(19:46):
working with each other or doingwhatever and they get separated
again at the beginning of this game.
And so I was looking at the the trophies for this and you
basically, I don't know, I was looking at a game fax guide and
you basically literally swap between them back and forth
until like the last couple chapters where they both come

(20:09):
together or you do, you know, one side a couple times in a row
as like the story deems it important, but it's a
straightforward action adventuregame in this early part I was
in. The first couple hours, you just
run through this castle, kill dudes, you get XP that unlocks

(20:34):
extra moves for your character. Occasionally it's like, oh, you
got to find this thing to unlockthis door, or you got to fight
these enemies to, you know, build up your meter that lets
you unlock this door or whatever.
Whatever dumb little things it'sasking you to do.
Kane's trying to kill this character and of course he

(20:57):
thinks he's about to do it. And there's just they already
know he was coming and try and deal with them and all that.
And then it zips over to Raziel,who is also trying to escape
from his whole thing there, which he's dealing with some
supernatural force that is keeping him where he's at.

(21:18):
He thinks he can get away and they still have some control,
but not as much as they would like.
But yeah, you can. That one has a little more
platforming to it, but they bothhave a thing where if you jump
in and hit the jump button again, you can glide across
distances. And his whole thing is more

(21:41):
involved with that. But they both have mechanics for
sucking up blood or souls, whichRaziel's involves him pulling
down his little. I don't know what you would call
it. It's not a cloak.
It's like a it's not a scarf either, but it's like a shawl he
has on him around his face because he.

(22:01):
Used to be. A normal looking person and then
got turned into this, I forget what they call him.
He's sort of a demonic form of himself and has like no bottom
jaw, but he can suck up soles and they have you do that since
some funky ways. I'm like jumping across these
gaps, holding R1, going to suck up these guys nearby and all

(22:25):
that kind of stuff. But yeah, it's pretty solid for
what it is. It's probably most of the story
stuff that would be the most important thing here.
And having not played through the other four games, it doesn't
really matter to me. Just like.
OK. These guys have a beef Kane and
Raziel and Raziel and Kane with the two guys that are kind of

(22:50):
keeping them where they are for the chunk of this.
They have collectibles and pretty restrained collectibles.
There's like there's twelve of these in the entire game as like
totems or totems or like little books, things you're getting
that unlock concept art that is needs.
There are cheats. For, I think unlocking all of

(23:14):
that before whatever reason I couldn't get it to work, but the
one that could let me watch all the cutscenes did work.
There's also cheats for turning off the textures.
You can just do that if you want.
I just want to turns it into a cartoony thing, which doesn't

(23:35):
isn't as good as it sounds. It kind of turns the the
character you're playing as intolike a little TV comic character
version of what they look like. And yeah, it's, it's one of
those things where you pause, you hit the to the the chain of
buttons that it wants you to hitand you hit start again.
And if it worked, then you'll find out immediately, unless

(23:57):
it's the, the thing about unlocking stuff that you have to
save it and then quit out to themain menu and then go to the
section where it has those extras and you load up that
save. And I kept running into the
issue because it I think initially once you have a save,
it opens up the openings or trailers for the two Soul Reaper

(24:18):
games. And it has like the totems you
can see like the stuff people locked there.
They had like two or three total.
So I can look at that stuff, which is, you know, for the
basic concept art for like what's and from the other games
too. So not just for this game, it's
from throughout the series. But yeah, I'll be able to unlock

(24:42):
the all the the extra bonus stuff with the code was pretty
annoying. But it seems like if I were to
beat the game, you unlock all ofit.
Even if you don't get all the totems, it just unlocks them all
for you. Once you beat the game, you
know, save it. And so I was like, all right,
that's pretty generous for a game of this era, which I think
was like O3O4, something like that.

(25:05):
How many games would be like, get the game, we'll just unlock
everything for you versus like, now you got to go do it all over
again and remember to collect everything.
But no, the guy that I saw was like, you don't have to worry
about the totems, that kind of stuff.
But yeah, that's a legacy of King Divine Defiance.

(25:26):
It's on PS5PS4 and it was originally APS 2 Xbox game.
We're. Checking out if you have PS plus
X premium but you can also buy it out right for 15 bucks I
think. So if you are fan of that
series, you got a pretty solid way to playing it here.
But yeah, that's been pretty much what I've been doing.

(25:47):
So how about you, Brandon? Well, As for me, I have been
playing Toa and the Guardians ofthe Sacred Tree.
I'll wait to get that till when Dan Rev gets to it and we'll
both share our feelings for it. But other than that, I've been
playing Crow Country, which is one of the games that's been

(26:07):
offered on APS Plus, and I've been using my subscription to
play it. This is a game that came out
last year and I've been wanting to play it for a while.
It's just, I never got around toit because, you know, just stuff
got it got in the way. But I finally got a chance to
play it and it's actually like really, really good graphically.

(26:30):
Like if you look at it graphically, it's like, yeah,
this is definitely like a throwback to like PS1 server
games like old Resident Evil or stuff like that.
And it definitely looks like one.
It doesn't really play like 1 though, because, well, for one
thing, there ain't no tank controls you have to deal with
and the combat isn't and, you know, dodging isn't nearly as

(26:53):
harrowing. In fact, compared to a lot of
those old survival horror games,this game is actually distinct,
a lot easier. It's not.
It's not to say it's not challenging, but the game
usually it gives like you several opportunities to get
additional ammunition or additional health items or
whatever you need to use stuff like that.

(27:14):
In fact. But basically what the game is,
is you're playing this woman named this young woman named
Mara, who is or at least claims to be a part of law enforcement
and she drives. She this whole game basically
takes place in in a amusement park in the middle of Atlanta,
GA in like 1990. It's called, that's literally

(27:37):
called Crow Country because it was founded and owned by this
guy named Edward Crowe. And Mara is going there because
she needs to track Edward Crowe down because the game did the
game kind of slowly reveals this.
And I'm not going to not going to reveal it because it's kind
of a solar, but essentially she's trying to track Edward

(28:00):
Crowe down because she needs some answers about some stuff.
And when you get there, the parkitself has basically been closed
for a couple of years because there was an incident that
happened with a woman with a young teenager who was injured
at the park and developed a gross this like some sort of
like illness or whatever. And the bad publicity basically

(28:22):
meant that they had to shut down.
So when you get there, obviouslythe park is completely
shuttered. It's, you know, it's obviously
kind of falling to pieces. It looks like it hasn't been
cleaned in a while. But a lot of the major stuff is
still like in tagging, a lot of the major attractions are still
intact. And the park itself is sort of

(28:45):
like divided up into these threesort of areas.
There's obviously like the main hub area that then leads to the
other three big areas and those areas are divided up into one,
which is like a sort of like a classic fairy tale world.
There's one that's like based around like haunted houses and
stuff like that. So like there's there's a

(29:06):
Haunted Mansion, there's a crypt, there's a dungeon that
sort of acts like a Chamber of horrors type thing, you know,
that kind of thing. And then there's another place
that's sort of under the sea themed, you know, so there's a
lot of fish everywhere and, you know, there's like a submarine
you can go into and stuff like that.
But when she gets there, she suddenly realizes that a lot of

(29:30):
weird things are happening because it's survival horror
game. And that's kind of how this
stuff goes. She starts, you know, coming to
contact these vaguely humanoid monster creatures that in the
game, they're called guests. And they're, they look like what
would happen if human beings were made out of sausage.

(29:51):
It's very unsettled. And as you're going through the
game, you start to reveal some things about this, about what
this park is. One of the things you find out
fairly early on is that this park was sort of a cover for
this illicit gold mining operation that was happening

(30:17):
underneath it. And it seems at some point
that's while they were while they were doing this, they hit
upon something that is causing all of the weird stuff that
you're seeing, which oh so far seems like a very like standard

(30:39):
survival horror type plot. But it's not 'cause it ends up
taking this wild turn that is like, wow, I did not see that
coming from like anywhere. Like there are tiny little hints
that you'll see everywhere, but like it's, you know, it connects
all of them at a certain point. Like I said, compared to like a

(31:02):
lot of old school, you know, survival horror games, it's not
very difficult. It does have its challenging
aspects, especially when it comes to like the environmental
puzzles. And there's a bunch of them.
Some of them do definitely require you to, like, think
really hard about how you're supposed to go about some of it.

(31:23):
And also the fact that unlike ina lot of the old Resident Evil
games, the game mostly takes place in fairly like tight,
compact areas. Because for for even though it
was a pair, it was a theme park.It was a rural theme park and
therefore not a very big one. So, you know, a lot of these

(31:47):
areas are very compact and closetogether, which can, you know,
make it difficult because like as the game goes further on, you
know, more of those monstrous guests start showing up more and
more often. So there's a lot of dodging and
weaving involved. Probably the one issue I have
with the game is the, is the combat.
Because unlike in you know, the,the, the old Resident Evil

(32:11):
games, you know, the, the, thosegames generally operated under
the knowledge that, you know, you couldn't really get an exact
aim on a lot of those enemies. So they would kind of compensate
for that by just sort of doing like a point in this general
direction and you'll hit them. Not in this case the your your

(32:32):
weapons all are come with like laser sights and you're sort of
like having to like make these amore direct aiming.
And that in itself is not a problem.
The problem is that because of the way the game, the angle the
game plays at, because, you know, it's a third person game

(32:54):
from like from like a diagonal sort of downward angle.
It can be difficult to really kind of get a bead on some of
these enemies. Especially the ones where you
can like actually like decapitate them with like a shot
because some of them are really do like to like wiggle and twist

(33:15):
around to make it difficult to actually shoot them.
But other than that, like, yeah,this is a really solid game.
Really loving it. But yeah, so Dad, Dad, before we
get to talking about Toa, go ahead and tell us what you've
been playing. Yeah, I've been playing a
handful of different things. Couple reviews went out last

(33:36):
week. Yeah.
Before I start, Congrats to Chris.
His his Browns have, yeah, brought my Packers down to
earth. So yeah.
You know. It is what it is.
I'm not going to be around next week because I'll be at the
game. But anyway, get that out of the
way. So yeah, most of my time was
spent on Trails in the Sky. I did talk about it last week

(33:56):
'cause there there was no embargo for that one.
And I I finished it took me about 45 hours.
And that is actually really, really short as far as Trails
games go. So if you were.
Worried about the length? It shouldn't take you that long
at all. I think my original playthrough
of the game was over 50. So they did quite a good job as
far as the quality of life improvements, though, you know,

(34:17):
Chris already mentioned and added more analysis in regards
to like, my problems of the gamenot not having enough dialogue.
So those are already like, you know, few and far between.
So there's that. But yeah, like the main thing in
my review was I also talked about a lot of the differences
that, you know, veterans of the series might notice.
So I thought I'd just go ahead and talk about each of them

(34:40):
pretty quickly. I talked about this last week.
You can't steal turn effects andbows anymore.
You know, they're the cool thingabout the S craft is that you
can use them to interrupt the turns of your opponents.
But if you were trying to steal their effects, that that isn't a
thing. There's also no more fishing.
So if you were looking forward to the fishing mini game, like

(35:00):
that's, that's no longer a thing.
The one chapter, which is chapter 2 in the game was
amazing. This is the one where you see
the theatrical play that Estelleand Joshua help Chloe with and
they have it in its entirety. It's a it's a 30 minute long
cutscene, but it is like extremely well done and it, it
really just shows off like how good the voice actors were.

(35:24):
Voice acting is good. Stephanie Shane does a great
job. Troy Baker does not come back as
Olivier, but it's Matthew Mercerwho has pretty much been
Olivier's character in every game after that.
So he does a fun job as well. Although although the voice
acting is good, I do have like aproblem with pronunciation.
Like, I have no idea whether it's supposed to be liberal or

(35:48):
liberal, and I've always been pronouncing it as liberal, but
in this game, it's liberal throughout.
And if you've played the NIS America Trails games, they've
also referred to it as liberal. So, you know, there's a little
bit of inconsistencies there. Another problem is Calvert.
You know, in the Calvert games they said Calvert and in this
game they called Calvard. So I'm like, all right, we got

(36:10):
it. We got to fix this up because,
you know, there's a lot of disconnection with with what's
going on here. That being said, the
localization is also a little bit different.
It is not exceeds, it is someoneelse's.
That being said, it's not terrible, but if you're someone
who's like used to talking to let's say Sydney here in the

(36:30):
corner, maybe her name changed. Not only did her name change,
but she's also not going to say as many things as she did
before. One thing that the original
games were in the were notoriousfor was the fact that you can
talk to these characters three times in separate times and they
would always say something different.
Now it's the typical RPG thing where they say the same thing
whenever you talk to them. So that's one thing I have to
get used to. And on top of that, the chests

(36:53):
don't have the chess messages anymore.
So that the balance a little unfortunate.
That being said, I really enjoy the new UI and the fast travel.
The original game did not have fast travel at all.
And that's probably the main reason why I was able to beat
the game as quickly as I did. So, you know, just being able
to, you know, when you, when youget to a new, new place, it's
advantageous to just, you know, explore as much of the area as

(37:14):
you can. Of course, it'll do the RPG
thing of Oh yeah, we, we, we can't go here yet because plot
or something like that. But you know, when you are able
to explore, I totally recommend doing it, especially since you
can do things like find various treasure chests.
You can go ahead and work on themonster notebook, that sort of
thing. Another thing that is sort of

(37:34):
going to be divisive is the factthat hidden side quests are
gone. Another thing that the game was
notorious for was there were these hidden side quests where
there really was no no way to tell how to find them and there
there was no indication on the map.
Like you would have to talk to random people and hope it would
unlock a quest here. Pretty much every quest is

(37:56):
visible on on the world map and you can just go to wherever you
have to go. Sometimes they aren't even a
quest. Sometimes it's just somebody
giving you a book, which you need to, you know, not only fill
out the the book tracker, but also there are there are some
hidden items you can get with these with these items.
And yeah, like I like. These.

(38:17):
Because, you know, I wasn't a fan of just like going around
them people and talking to them for no reason.
It's definitely a better way to respect your time and I, I, I
definitely appreciate that aspect of it.
That being said, like this is still the definitive way to play
the game. You know, it looks beautiful.
The battles should definitely bemore, be a whole lot more

(38:37):
interesting to people who don't want to do just turn based
stuff. And the ending, you know, if
you've never played the game, the ending is still as damaging
as it was as it's ever been. Those of you who've who've, you
know, gone through the series already know and know what's
coming next. And yeah, we'll just hope that,
you know, that the next game doesn't have as excruciating

(38:58):
overweight. But at the same time, it's
really cool seeing the reaction to this game.
I think it's a 91 on both Metacritic and open critic right
now. And yeah, that just goes to show
that how how great this game andthis series is.
So I hope to see that continue. Next up, I've also been playing
Sonic Racing Cross worlds. This is a game that we've really
covered extensively since SummerGame Fest.

(39:20):
And yeah, like it's like to me, if you, if you wanted to, you
know, have me choose between Sonic Racing and Mario Kart
World today, I would prefer Sonic Racing just because I
really like the track designs and the amount of detail they
really put in regards to, you know, just customizing the

(39:41):
options and what not. On the flip side, with Mario
Kart, I also really liked that all of the carts were just like
designed there. And you don't you don't really
have to worry so much about customization.
You got into the action really quickly, which is something that
Sonic Racing doesn't do. But at the same time, like I
really appreciate the fact that everything from the characters.

(40:02):
To the vehicles definitely changes up the stats a little
bit. And those are things you have to
really consider because the biggest problem with the game is
the rubber banding from the AI. And the game is actually really,
really hard when you try it out in faster speeds.
And part of the reason is because they have this rival
system where when you're going through a Grand Prix, for
example, you have one random character who is just going to

(40:24):
be absolutely obnoxious to you. They will go ahead and talk
random crap. And they'll also be the most
difficult AI to deal with when you're actually playing, whether
you're playing single player, a multiplayer Co-op.
So there's that. But yeah, the, the main reason
why it, it didn't hit the way I wanted it to is because of the
fact that the reason why I was interested in this game in the

(40:45):
1st place was because of all thecrossover content.
You know, I was interested in playing as Joker.
I was interested in playing as Ichiban.
Hatsune Miko was cool. When I finished my Behind Closed
Doors preview a couple months ago, I got to play as Ichiban.
So when I when I plugged in the game, I was disappointed to see
that I'm not allowed to use Ichiban until October because

(41:06):
all of the crossover characters are tied to events, and the ones
that are not tied to events are actually premium DLC.
So the game currently has Hatsune Miko who's going to be
available at launch that September, so I've already used
their issues. Cool.
The Ichiban doesn't come until October, and then Joker from
Persona doesn't come until November.
Or maybe it's reverse. But either way, like you don't

(41:27):
have immediate access to those two characters, which is
unfortunate because why would you show them to me in June and
you can't use them now? It doesn't.
It doesn't make any sense to me.There are three Minecraft
characters in there as well, butthose are actually premium DLC,
so you have to have to buy that.And I think they're gonna do the
same thing to Pac-Man when they do that next year.
So I am looking forward to, you know, getting involved in these

(41:49):
events, seeing if they have likeinteresting and new gameplay
loops. If they don't do that, then
yeah, I'll be a little bit disappointed.
But, you know, just just so far,it's it's an awesome alternative
to Mario Kart. It's definitely cheaper.
You're paying 60 instead of 80 unless you bought the, the, the,
the the switch to bundle. And yeah, it is definitely
easily a game that I can see myself enjoying throughout the

(42:11):
holiday season. I've also been playing a lot of
Madden. You know, it's football season,
so there's that. I'm also in the Freelancer
Journalist League. We started our our second season
because we actually simulated through our first and it's been
a pretty cool experience playingagainst other people.
I am one and one I am. I am using the Arizona Cardinals
and I was surprised to see that I won my game yesterday going

(42:33):
against one of the better teams in the league apparently.
So I'm pretty psyched about thatand I hope to continue that
record, but I don't know how it'll be since I'll be out of
out of the state in the next week.
So we'll see how that goes. I've also been playing Hirogami.
That game is an indie that was published by Dan Dynamco earlier
last month. Just haven't had a chance to

(42:54):
jump into it just because we've been so busy.
But the cool thing about this one is that everything here is
like based on origami. It's pretty cool, but it
definitely feels like an Indian.It definitely feels low budget.
A lot of the dialogue is like sort of like broken English
almost like the translation can definitely be better.
And a lot of the controls like they don't feel as snappy as you

(43:15):
would expect from a 3D platformer.
That being said, like nothing has been like bad.
It's just that it it it just doesn't feel as polished as I as
I would expect the game to be. And then lastly, I've had time
to jump back into till when the guys have taken 3.
I haven't had too much time to do anything totally new When I
last played it, I was playing a four hour preview build and

(43:38):
basically the place where I got to was where I stopped.
So I don't really have much to add.
I will say though, that you know, at from from that point
on, like I knew what I was goingto, I was definitely enjoying
myself. And you know what, I'll talk
about it with Brandon in a bit or or even now if you want.
But I do really enjoy the whole facet of having your cog or die

(44:02):
or sacrifice as soon as you finish the mission.
Like it definitely makes you think about, you know, who you
want to be using because not only are you worrying about your
load up, you also sort of grow an attachment to these
characters as your game. And you know, you actually do
learn about them when you go into the hub world of of worth
where Toa is. I do know that there's a odd

(44:23):
point that sort of changes it asas you move further, but you
know, from what I've played so far, I've been enjoying what I'm
playing. Yeah, I liked it OK, But the SAT
the problem is, is that it just cannot get out of Haiti's shadow
at all. Like it.
It cribs so much from Haiti's that even when I was playing it,

(44:47):
you know, and in genuinely enjoying it because the parts
that it Crips from Hades are still really solid.
I just kept thinking about Hadeslike it's like, you know, I I
was playing this. I'm like, huh, you know, I could
be playing Hades right now, but because literally the whole like
game, like I, I say literally the whole game.

(45:09):
Obviously there are parts that are original, but like the game
structure is basically Haiti's all of it.
There's a hub world where there's a bunch of people that
you're talking to when they havea little story arcs and
everything and you're trying to build up Rappaport with them to
like the whole thing where it's like you're doing a run on a
single life bar and you need to get to the end and kill the

(45:33):
bosses. And if you die, you know, that's
it. You have to go back and start
again. The whole thing about how, you
know, it's all these sort of shuffled around rooms and
dungeons. You have to go through the fact
that, you know, you get like a reward afterwards that's like
based around some elemental stuff or, you know, currency or
that kind of thing. Having the choice to go between,

(45:54):
you know, different paths, who'slike type is signified by what?
By like the symbols over on top of them.
The whole thing where you're like on a giant raft going over
a river. The thing where there's like a
bunch of vases and stuff everywhere that you destroy so
that you can get additional items and stuff.

(46:15):
The sort of interweave like storefronts that can have either
merchandise that you know you can get or food that'll have
like special effects for a few rooms.
Like it's literally all straightfrom Hades, all of it.
Yeah. And like, I don't, I don't doubt
you at all when you say that. I mean, you're absolutely right.
Like my main thing though, is that pretty much every rope like

(46:37):
has followed that exact format, whether it's this or something
else. And I, you know, I would say
it's definitely closer to Haiti's in the sense where, you
know, it's a, it's a 2D isometric game and you know,
the, the art is nice. I do feel like the hub world is
both not as good yet at the sametime has as much charm just

(46:59):
because like the mini games likethe fishing as well as, you
know, the, the Smith, the swordsmith stuff, you know that
that stuff is not in Hades. But at the same time, it's like
the stuff that you do in Hades does kind of do the same thing.
Yeah. And like the hub world, like,
yeah, there are definitely likable characters there.
But again, I was there. I just, I was like, I don't

(47:21):
know, man, the characters just aren't as don't have the
personality like the characters in Hades do.
Like it's, you know, don't get me wrong, there's definitely
characters in there that are likable and I will, OK, I will
say this for the game that is definitely really cool is the
time mechanic. Because like, one of the major
things in this game is that every time you go up against one

(47:42):
of MAGA 2's offspring and just sexually kill him, you know,
they he have to send like all the mana and stuff back so that
it shows up at that little shrine that Toa has to go to.
And every time she does it, you can see like a significant
amount of time passes in betweenthat and, you know, characters
die and other characters take their place.
Some of these characters you actually like watch them age as

(48:05):
the game goes on, which is definitely like significantly
really cool compared to like hades, you know, where like all
the characters are literally just immortal because you know,
they're all divine beings or semi divine beings and you know,
you know. And I will also say that one of

(48:26):
the neat aspects for it was, of course, the whole thing about,
you know, instead of in Hades where you know, you're a lone
adventurer and you're, you know,you choose your weapon and then
go do your run. You're here.
You actually have to have like choose a couple of characters
that you have to do. And those characters all have

(48:46):
like their different strengths and weaknesses and all that.
And they all do have a pretty significant personalities.
And then, you know, then you go out and, you know, do a run.
The difference though, is, and this is it, it's a hit against
this game and also not a hit against this game is even though

(49:07):
all these characters are different and they have, you
know, the more you know, different strengths and
weaknesses, they also all have the same equipment.
Basically every time you have a pair of swords and you have the
Kagura staff and that's it. Obviously the swords, you know,
you can craft newer, stronger ones and you can kind of

(49:28):
customize them and add like Marks and stuff to them, which
is, you know, fun if that's something I want to do.
But because of the whole like, the like, QTE sort of nature of
it, it comes out more like a chore than anything, which is
why I always found myself going to Smith's Choice for, for that

(49:49):
'cause it just goes through all of that immediately.
So you then just go to like sharpening and then putting your
mark on it and that's it. Now, I, I, I do have to ask you
this, that whole like the, the whole thing with the dual
swords. And you've no doubt already know
this. You know that when you're in
combat, they degrade over time, yes, with every hit, which means

(50:14):
that you are constantly having to shuffle between your two
different swords. And this is an issue because
those swords both have differentuses.
Your primary like long sword, which is for, you know, your
combo attacks and everything. And then there's your shorter
sword, which is used for like, you know, area wide attacks and

(50:37):
effects and stuff like that. And it is a massive pain in the
ass to have to constantly switchbetween the two.
Yeah, the the main thing that I did, and again, like I'm nowhere
near as far as you you got and you know, I'm I'm, I'm going to
go ahead and ask you about the difficulty spike later.
But like my main thing was I just sheathed and unsheathed.

(50:57):
I didn't even bother using the secondary sword most of my runs.
Yeah. And see that would that wouldn't
be a problem, but it's also in and of itself kind of a pain
because you have to, you know, because keep in mind, and I need
to sort of point this out. One of the things like the, the
because whenever you craft a newsword, you know, it tells you
that, you know, after a certain number of hits, it's going to

(51:19):
dull. And when that happens, the sword
is the you know, it loses half of its strength, you know, until
you shuffle it and bring it back.
Yeah. Now, sometimes that's not as big
a pain once you get like a swordthat's strong enough to where
you can kind of negate that. But especially like in the mid

(51:42):
game, it becomes a major pain because that, you know, the
further on you get, the more thestronger and more resilient the
enemies get and they can take a lot of hits.
Yeah. And this also comes from the
fact that the weapons that you're using, like I said, the

(52:03):
care the second sword is more orless a like an area wide effect
sort. So it'll call it like vortexes
and stuff like that, or it'll like, you know, it'll be like a
like a Hertz everything in a specific area around you type
thing. Now, some characters in
particular, I will tell you thattheir secondary attacks are so

(52:25):
effective, you could damn near just spam it constantly and you
would almost break the game thatway.
But others are damn near and useless.
Yeah. Whereas, you know, the other
ones, the the, the attacks, the combos, they're pretty good, you
know, and they, their strength tends to change depending on

(52:48):
what character you're using. But much as is the case with,
and this was distinctly one of the issues that I think kind of
separates it from Hades in a negative sense, is with Hades
you were able to sort of have. One of the things I know is

(53:10):
playing this game compared to like Hades is dashing around and
the mobility doesn't quite feel as good because with Zagarius,
you feel like you're, you know, a lot more nimble.
Whereas with these characters, you know, there's like a drag.
Yeah, they're all different. And there's kind of a drag to
the dashes sometimes and it's kind of difficult to like try

(53:33):
and aim your attacks when you'redoing all of that, which again,
starting out with Haiti's, that's also an issue.
But again, this, you know, goes with the fact that in Haiti's
you have a wide range of weaponsthat you can use that can
compensate for that, whereas with here, you just got the two.
Yeah. And here's the other big issue.

(53:54):
And I did not personally get this because I'm a, I'm always a
single player guy. I don't do Co-op, but I've
talked with a bunch of people who have played this that have
done the Co-op thing. This game kind of sells itself
as a Co-op experience, but that's not really the case when
you do the Co-op stuff. What happens is the second

(54:15):
player is always playing the person that's, you know,
carrying the Kagura staff. And the problem with that is
you're essentially playing as like a semi mobile turret
basically, where you can only occasionally use your spells and
attacks because again, that's all based on mana.
And you only gather mana from the person with the swords, you

(54:38):
know, the saroogi who gathers upmana from their attacks.
And you know, so your ability todo that is only as good as, you
know, this the person who is playing the saroogi is.
And on top of that, you're tethered to the person that is
playing the saroogi. So you can't really move around
that much. And because of that, it makes it

(55:01):
far easier for you to get hit and you can't really dodge
anywhere near as easily as the Saroogi can.
Yeah, and it's. Just a giant pain in the ass.
You can't really act independently because of that
tether. So that's.
Yeah, Yeah. Let's see what else.
One thing I will say that is different from Hades, that's

(55:23):
actually not a bad thing at all.I think it's actually in some
ways an improvement is unlike inHaiti's where you have like a
set path that you have to go on where there's like you start
here, then you go here, then go here, then go here, then there's
the last boss and boom, your, your run is over in in Toa,

(55:45):
you're the areas and places you go changes depending on what
your mission is. So you're going to like
different parts of the world andexploring new parts of it, which
is definitely cool. But as far as like, and I guess
I'll go ahead and say it becauseof the later parts of the game,

(56:08):
the later parts of the game, damn basically suck to play
because they artificially drop drive up the the difficulty of
the game by making the enemies you're fighting increasingly
cheaper and cheaper. OK, so they're more spongy and
they have they're. Spongier they have, they have
attacks that they can like really powerful attacks that

(56:30):
they can spam and like can do faster than you can to dodge
them unless you can like, think two or three steps ahead of
them. Yeah, it's a It can be a pain in
the ass. Yeah, it's definitely rough.
I will say though, that my current loadout consists of
well, my DPS guy is Bampuku. He doesn't really use a sword,

(56:54):
but he has this awesome body slam move that can be used both
in close counters and from far away.
Yeah. Pretty cool in that regard, but
he's also like he's a big dude so he's not the masters.
As far as dodging it, that's really hard to do.
And like, most of my play was done through a Steam Deck.
And that was why I was so excited to be using a, to be

(57:15):
playing on PS-5, because when you're playing on the Steam
stick and dodging as much as youare in regards to doing the
whole like, sheath and unsheath thing to make sure that your
weapon is always sharpened. Yeah, my, my hands definitely
cramped up. And the PS-5 like it, it, it
wasn't nearly as bad. But this game does require some,
some active thumbs. So, yeah.

(57:36):
But yeah, that, that that's, that's pretty much, you know,
everything I got about TOA. I don't know if I'll, you know,
actually roll credits just because of what it was, what
everyone's saying about everything about the end game,
but you know, from from what I've played so far, I'm enjoying
it. So I am both looking forward and
not looking forward to continuing.

(57:57):
Yeah, I'm not saying it's it's it's it.
Again, like I said, the solid parts of the game are really
solid, but the stuff that is irritating can build up after a
while. I mean like.
My issue with it and like you were talking about it like, you
know, sort of selling itself as a Co-op game.
My issue with it is it sort of sells itself as a cozy game and

(58:18):
if it's anything but that at theend, no matter if you're using
the casual mode or not, it just seems like, did I just waste the
last 10 hours getting good to find that I suck?
I don't know. Yeah, and.
That's not what I want to be doing so.
Yeah, you'll get there, trust me.
But yeah. That's what we got.

(58:40):
All right, so let's get to some news.
Let's see, in two days we'll have an Annapurna Interactive
direct from Tokyo Game Show for the 23rd.
That'll be at, Let's see, 5:00 PM Pacific Time, 8:00 PM Eastern
Time. They've said that it will
feature, yeah, feature the reveals of three new games

(59:01):
they've signed one developed by Iridium Studios, 1 by Marmitu,
Marmitu Games and Yarn Al Yeah, respectively.
So yeah, I've so I was looking at these devs trying to see what
what they worked on before Iridium Studios worked on that.

(59:23):
There came an echo a little while ago before the echo and a
new game all being, let's see, that first one was kind of an
RTS and a game. It was kind of a rhythm
role-playing game. So I imagine they'll.
Are we working something in thatseries there?

(59:45):
I assume kind of a series. Our Mitsu games is.
Let's see. Yeah, they worked on a bunch of
weird little games. Star One, Origins, Captain Star,
It's a mobile game. I think these are all mobile
games. Then Captain *1, which was on

(01:00:05):
Switch and Steam, seems like probably a version of some of
these other games. Then it worked on a game called
Shot Shot Spy for mobile. And yeah, they seem to suggest
this new one is called Project Dwith a more sophisticated
looking graphics from the one shot they show here.

(01:00:26):
The description humanity has reached paradise.
So. Probably going to be some near
on amount of shit there. Then there's Yarn Owl.
Let's see. Oh, their website like here is
not working. So yeah, there we go.

(01:00:46):
I think this might be their first game.
Yeah, I think so for that. So yeah, it'll be interesting to
see what new projects they have,especially with this form of
Annapurna Interactive. It kind of went through a shake
up a couple years ago that yeah,has been at least chugging

(01:01:12):
along, working on some new stuff.
So yeah, that'll be fun to see. Then the yellow, Yeah, go ahead,
some new Indies. The Next up later this week on
Thursday, I believe we will havenew games added to the Nintendo

(01:01:33):
Switch Online Plus expansion pack, Game Boy Advance app 2 new
games from Band Dynamco. Let's see Mr. Driller 2,
obviously the main sequel there for the block breaking puzzle
game kind of thing there. The other one, Clonoa, Empire of
Dreams, which I forget if I had that one or the sequel, but it's

(01:01:57):
basically another Clonoa, you know, 2D platformer.
Yeah. We're being pretty good for what
it was. Those kind of games are pretty
good to have. Very much, you know, puzzle
platformer essentially. Yeah, good one to have, so good
to see. Hopefully we get the the sequel

(01:02:19):
there, which I assume if they'redoing the first one, they're
going to do the second one. That's called Clono 2 Dream
Champ Tournament. So those will be fun to see.
Yeah, I believe those are both Namco games, if I'm not, if I'm
not mistaken, and I have played this, they were both amazing.
And so yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to jumping in

(01:02:39):
when I have time. Yeah.
So, yeah, there's that. Let's see.
Yeah. The next thing I have here is a
SOPA tale of the stolen potato. There's a launch date of October
7th, as it says, here you are searching for Grandma's lost

(01:03:02):
soup ingredients. And when Mijo steps into the
pantry to get a potato for his grandmother's soup, he's pulled
into a distant, fantastical land.
He must retrace the steps of mysterious great traveler before
him. Yeah, but each time he returns
to the kitchen with an ingredient, he gets a little bit
taller and his grandmother a little older.

(01:03:22):
I'm probably telling a bit of a growing up story here, but yeah,
looks really neat. We just on Xbox and PC at launch
and also be on Game Pass, so youcan check it out there.
But yeah, that looks neat. Wanted to keep an eye on for
October. All right, Yeah, Looks good.

(01:03:46):
Yeah. Next up here we got Dispatch,
which will be out October 22nd and for PS-5 and PC, this is a
neat looking game, 30 bucks for it.
You essentially get 8 episodes that they're going to be
releasing 2 at a time per week as they say here 2.
You get the 1st 2 episodes on October 22nd, 3:00 and 4:00 on

(01:04:11):
the 29th, 5:00 and 6:00 on November 5th and 7:00 and 8:00
on November 12th to get a littlebit of space between them for
that. Oh yeah.
That's, that's the game from former Telltale people that very
much has a lot of that DNA. And it's where you're
essentially working as a dispatcher at a superhero

(01:04:34):
workplace business or picking who of your heroes are going to
go to which, you know, emergencies that are popping up
based on, you know, their availability and sort of what
their skills are for that stuff.There's a Steam demo a while
ago, but yeah, seems like it's gonna be a very neat game.

(01:04:56):
There you go. Yeah, I don't know if that Steam
demo is still available. Definitely check it out if you
haven't. It's like 20 minutes.
It's not it's not really long atall.
And you definitely get to see like a nice piece of all the
pieces of dialogue. Like when you're playing it
honestly, it seems like you're playing an episode of
Invincible. You know, they definitely have
that crudeness to it and I'm I'mdefinitely looking.
Forward to it. What I'm not so sure of though,

(01:05:18):
is the actual dispatch part of it.
You do you do that in the game or in the in the demo and I
don't know it, it didn't really seem like I had a lot of like,
well, first of all, you don't really have a lot of control
what's going on. You basically just just dispatch
people and hope for the best. And I don't know if there was a
right or wrong thing of how I was doing things, but that's
definitely something I'll be keeping my eye on.
And yeah, I'm definitely excitedfor this release.

(01:05:41):
I just hope they're able to staywith that schedule just because
like, you know, we haven't really seen any game have
success with this sort of release chapter cadence since
the original Walking Dead. I'll go ahead and give Life is
Strange, it's Flowers, but now that game is a game that they
just release. All at once.
So this is definitely a chance that they're taking.

(01:06:01):
And yeah, I was able to also meet a few of the developers
over at Comic Con, and we got totalk about some stuff that I
can't divulge at this time. But I'm hoping that the
conversations that we had definitely made their way into
the game. Because I definitely think that
there's some promise as long as,again, we got to be able to stay
at this scheduled period. Because once you hit one delay
and you lose it's, it's like, for example, if you're a casual

(01:06:23):
gamer and you don't know when these things come out and all of
a sudden it doesn't come out consistently, That's when you
lose, you lose your, you lose your audience and you want to.
Yeah. So yeah, it looks like the the
demo is up so people can't checkit out ahead of.
Launch. Yeah, probably check it out
myself. Yeah, this definitely looks like

(01:06:45):
it's like the glory days of Telltale Games are back.
Yeah, to a degree. Yeah, to a degree.
But yeah, there's that for something to keep an eye on.
And about a week later, Recreation will launch.
This has been in the works for quite a while now, at least a
few years. I think they announced it.

(01:07:07):
This is from Yeah, 3 Fields Entertainment, the former head
of Criterion, 3 heads of Criterion that went off and
formed their own studio and started working on some burnout
esque games. This is their new one that yeah,

(01:07:28):
they called the the world mix world, a 400 square kilometer
big racing realm. You can sort of shape how you
want. I assume also download other
people's tracks and and all that.
But yeah, that looks, I think itcould be a really cool game.

(01:07:50):
Oh yeah, it looks like it's onlygoing to be 40 bucks at launch
on October 28th. So yeah, that's PS-5, Xbox and
PC. So there you go.
That's one to keep an eye on. So yeah, there you go.
You want some arcade racing action there?
Yeah, obviously we need more arcade racing stuff like I think

(01:08:14):
with the with the the sort of decline of video arcades, that's
something that but damn near died and went the way of the
dodos. But some of them are bound to
determined to keep it alive. Yeah, yeah.
That's, that's cool to see. Yeah.

(01:08:36):
Next up here we have the news that POW World will finally be
hitting One Point O in 2020. 6. Yep.
They basically said that they are sort of continue to work on
a bunch of content for the One Point O updates while working
on, you know what issues are still standing in the game ahead
of One Point O. But they say the rest of 2025

(01:09:00):
will be quiet as a focus is on preparing the game for its full
launch. So that'll be cool to see.
I played that when it came out and early accessing Game Pass
and it was like, yeah, this has got something here.
I don't know if it's for me, butit's got some interesting stuff
going on. But I have not jumped into it

(01:09:22):
since then. But yeah, it definitely seemed
like it was pulling a lot of inspiration from a variety of
things. Obviously Pokémon, but also some
Breath of the Wild and some survival game stuff do it as
well. Let my jump.
Back into it here at some point and see where it's all going.

(01:09:43):
But yeah, there's that. It'll be next year at some
point. So yeah, there you go.
Let's see. Yeah.
The Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2 has been kind of
getting some backlash lately, particularly because, well,
publisher is Paradox Interactive, who is sort of the

(01:10:05):
king of flooding all of their releases with a bunch of DLC to
it in a way that is just kind ofweird, I think for the the
average person outside of it. And so when they, you know, are
publishing Vampire of the Masquerade blow lines too,
they're kind of dealing with thesame issues there because the.

(01:10:31):
Big controversy was that they. Were having two of the six
vampire clans in the game BDLC, I forget what they were going to
be. 2199 was part of the $90.00 premium edition, which is a lot.

(01:10:55):
That is anything that caused a lot of consternation from fans
wondering, you know, why the hell are you charging people for
things that should be in the base game.
Same like that's broke through to the point that they have now
said that those two clans will also be part of the base game
that are probably going to be working on other things to make

(01:11:16):
as the DLC. Yeah, yeah, they put post a new
video sort of over lining what'sin the the game for launch and
you know what DLC stuff is goingto be happening and they said in
this video, thanks to our community for the frank feedback
on Bloodlines 2 in the premium edition.

(01:11:37):
That feedback made it clear the Sombra and Toriador belong in
the base game. So that is what we are doing.
We also like to thank the Chinese Room for their quick
turn around on the concepts for the post launch story packs.
We're constantly impressed by their creativity and skill and
weaving enticing narrative threads that expand on the main
story in Bloodlines 2. So yeah, it looks like what the

(01:12:01):
premium edition now has the basegame plus the expansion pass,
which includes, you know, like Ithink 3 pieces of campaign from
story DLC to its yeah, which looks like the two of these are
going to be later in next year, Q2 and Q3 for 2026, so later in

(01:12:22):
the summer and fall. So, yeah, good on them for
making this change, not making the the clans be like a thing
that's is broken up based on whocan afford the premium edition
or not. So yeah, trying to ride this

(01:12:44):
line, very thin line of what's the fans wants and what they're
going to have to deal with from this new game.
Because yeah, I've seen gameplaystuff where it's like, it's not
what the original game was, which is like, yeah, I can get
people frustrated by that. But also, it's kind of what I
would expect making a sequel 20 some years later of a very,

(01:13:10):
very, very PCs game. Oh yeah.
Thousands, I think, instead of the like, you put points in for
all your stat upgrade stuff, whereas here it's more like a,
you know, consoleized skill tree, that kind of stuff.
And it's like, yeah, that seems like what a modern version of

(01:13:30):
that would be versus trying to stray exactly where the original
game was. Like, those kind of games don't
really get made like that anymore unless you're Water
Skate 3. But even that was because the
dev made specifically those kindof games before that and kind of

(01:13:52):
knew exactly what that fan base wanted.
But yeah, there you go on that. Yeah, I'm at least glad that
they listened to that. But I'm still I, I, I, I'm wary,
let me put it that way. Yeah, but yeah, there's that.

(01:14:13):
Next up here, keep announcing new characters for the Marvel
Cosmic Invasion roster. This time we're getting Black
Panther and Cosmic Ghost Rider for that, so that's interesting.
Cosmic Ghost Rider. Yeah, it looks like a Spaceman
Ghost Rider, essentially, which I guess makes sense.

(01:14:33):
He's a character that gets to gointo space and do space shit,
then he can't just be on the thebasic motorcycle and leather
jacket shit for that. So yeah, it looks like he's got
some neat stuff going on here. Black Panther looks like the
Black Panther. A lot of heavy melee stuff and

(01:14:54):
all that. So those look like good
additions to the roster. And I guess this is 12 of 15
characters they're going to havein the game.
Yeah. So that's interesting to see.
Yeah, definitely. And then we got this.

(01:15:16):
We got this story that's basically it's like, yeah,
they're doing exactly what they should be doing.
Yeah, Local Thunk has announced that he is delaying the big 1.1
update that they were hoping to get out for the end of this year
by the end of this year. But basically posted on their

(01:15:38):
the websites with the post titled I'm slow on September
12th saying, yeah, didn't they didn't want to have to crunch to
get this thing out and kind of wanted to work on it as a
hobbyist. Is the way that's he describes
it here saying I know I announced it.

(01:15:59):
It would, but it's become clear now that it won't happen by the
end of the year. And I wanted to tell you all now
I feel bad for not keeping that promise and I'm sorry.
The truth is that I probably shouldn't have announced that or
announced any date for the 1.1 update at all.
Yeah, you explained that they'vebecome all too familiar with the
crunch and stress that inherently comes with

(01:16:20):
professional game development since Belatra went public in
2023, and that these struggles didn't stop at launch.
So has been sort of making concerted efforts lately to kind
of take their time. Singer.
I took a break from everything to do with the game for a few
months until the start of 2025, when I very slowly eased myself

(01:16:40):
back into the work. However, I chose to only work on
the game like I did when the project began as a hobbyist, a
few hours per day and not alwayson the 1.1 update.
Turns out that it's a lot slowerthan working in crunch mode 12
hours per day like I was around launch.
So yeah, they still consider their game development their
hobby, but the prospect of rushing the work and going back

(01:17:02):
into crunch mode to get it out this year just felt terrible.
I'm working slowly, but I like it that way.
I love getting sucked into rabbit holes that I don't like
trying to force things creatively.
I've never before Bilotro set a deadline for any of my creative
projects and I not realize how important that is for my
process. So yeah, there's more here if

(01:17:23):
you want to read it. But definitely get the the Bible
what he's going for and wish himthe best.
And, you know, try not to push himself too hard for this
because the I think people will be fine just waiting for the
update and not wanting them to, you know, crunch themselves to

(01:17:45):
death just for a fucking game kind of thing.
So yeah, always a good move, especially when you've.
Made a game. That sold so well that you don't
have to rush yourself on that stuff.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean it, it just goes
back it, it goes back to what Team Cherry did with Hollow
Knight. You know, they had so much fun.
It's whatever they made like millions of dollars and they're

(01:18:06):
spreading it amongst like what, 30 people?
So it's all good. So local thunk.
And you know what they did, whatthey did last year was
absolutely amazing. And they can take as much time
as they want. It's all good there.
Yeah, but yeah, we'll get to somebody that's shitty.
Yeah, the, you know, Co founder of Treyarch who has not worked

(01:18:30):
there for quite a while, Peter Tripp, Ackman Ackman of Culver
City made the news back when thePalisades fire was going on
because they were apparently flying drones from their place
and managed to fly into one of these super scooper firefighting

(01:18:55):
aircraft and a big hole in it that caused it to have to be
taken, you know, down for maintenance during a crucial
time for fighting those fires. And sort of got yeah, charged
with some Yeah, I got some charges from that.

(01:19:16):
And yeah, they have pleaded guilty of earlier this year to a
federal Class A misdemeanor count of unsafe operation of an
unmanned aircraft and was recently sentenced to serve 14
days in federal prison followed by 30 days home detention.

(01:19:37):
He was also ordered to pay about$156,000 in restitution fines.
And yeah, that seems about rights for the the seriousness
of that, that offense for its not a huge deal, but it's still
a big deal. He probably doesn't deserve to

(01:19:57):
get years of prison for that. Two weeks seems probably about
rights. And yeah, mostly fines are
probably the big, big thing there.
But yeah, we're running sort of what the outcome of that whole
shitty situation was. So there you go.

(01:20:21):
Oh yeah, there you go. Yeah.
So yeah, let's see here. Yeah, we got some lawsuit news.
The founders of Subnautica 2 studio Unknown Worlds have
successfully blocked Crafton's request for a protective order.

(01:20:42):
Because if you remember, they were suing over them sort of
having these side projects and that leading to the need to fire
them because they were not goingto get the game into good shape
enough to get out for early access or any sort of launch in

(01:21:02):
the near future. Then pivoted to this weird story
about them downloading data fromtheir computers, supposedly
confidential information that's was not under the purview of the
original lawsuit. So from what I remember for what
I can see here, they successfully were able to block

(01:21:28):
this. Where is it written?
Here? Yeah.
The. Yeah.
Let's see. Yeah.
Crafton's disorganized retreat raises more questions and
answers that Crafton's new theories.
A Hail Mary would be an understatement, both because the
downloads were not wrongful and because Crafting claims not to

(01:21:48):
have learned of them until afterit had fired the founders.
Downloads cannot have been the actual motivation for
termination. And so, yeah, they request that
the court deny Crafting's request for a forensic
inspection, as well as dismiss amotion for a protective order on
the grounds of its gift and theories.
And so, yeah, the court is granted that, which is good.

(01:22:11):
So yeah. Again, this is just it's as
we've said numerous times in thepast, this is that one story
that just keeps on giving, and it gets weirder and weirder as
it keeps going. Yeah, it's just a thing.
These kind of interesting details pop out of it every once
in a while. Let's see where that goes next.

(01:22:34):
Yeah, Brandon says weirder. I say better.
Like this is this is full on drama.
If this if this ends up being Instagram or TikTok reels I'll
I'll watch all of them. Oh yeah.
But yeah, there you go for that one.
And for the next lawsuit, this is involving the Sony lawsuit
against $0.10 over there IP infringement with their game

(01:22:59):
light of Modorum that's obviously is stealing the vibes
of the Horizon games. And very much Sony was saying
that they twice tried to come toa deal over the license to make
it an official Horizon game and Sony rebuffed them both times

(01:23:20):
and they kind of just kept goingwith it.
So they have filed. Let's see, I guess this is just
their motion, yeah, filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in
which they say that, yeah, Sony's lawsuit contains

(01:23:40):
undifferentiated vague allegations, claim the Japanese
firm has failed to quote, identify with specificity of the
trademark that was allegedly, allegedly was infringed.
They also said lawsuit is based almost entirely on speculation
regarding future conduct. They claim Sony has failed to

(01:24:02):
allege facts that would justify exercising personal jurisdiction
over 10 Cent Holdings is a foreign company incorporated in
the Cayman Islands and headquartered in China.
Suggests that alone is sufficient grounds to miss
dismiss all of Sony's claims. Plaintiff Sony has sued a grab
bag of 10 Cent companies and 10 unnamed defendants about the

(01:24:22):
unreleased video game Light of Motorum Legend if the game
copies elements of Sony's game Horizon 0 Dawn and its spin
offs. At bottom, Sony's effort is not
aimed at fighting off piracy, plagiarism or any genuine threat
to intellectual property, is an improper attempt to fence off a
well trodden corner popular culture and declared Sony's

(01:24:43):
exclusive domain to which they named off a bunch of games here.
Yeah, by suing over an unreleased project that merely
employs the same time honored tropes and embraced by scores of
other games that released both before and after Horizon like
Enslaved, The Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild, Far Cry,

(01:25:04):
Primal Far Cry, New Dawn, Outer Wilds, Bio Mutant, and many
more. So he seeks an impermissible
monopoly on genre conventions, which is like.
No, they're not. Speaking of monopoly on genre
conventions are suing you because your game looks very
much just like theirs. Yeah, like almost bit for bit

(01:25:28):
looks exactly like just it looksexactly like it.
Yeah, it's not that the that thethey think they have a unique
idea of this trope because it's like they're not suing, you
know, Ben and Amco over Enslavedor Nintendo over Breath of the
Wild or Rubisoft or any of theseother companies.

(01:25:51):
We're suing you because your game is the one that goes far
above and beyond in aping their style and their vibes of their
game. So yeah, it's kind of a wild
place they're going with this, and it just make it seem like
they are taking some big stabs here because yeah, it's just

(01:26:15):
kind of a a funny thing to see here.
Yeah, there you go on that. That's some fun stuff to see.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's quite clear that that art was, you know, not what they
want it to be. It's.
No. Anybody can see that?

(01:26:36):
Yeah. Yeah, we'll get to our last
negative story here with tariffsand all that going on.
Microsoft has announced raising that they're raising prices
again on the Xbox Series X&S dueto what they call macroeconomic
conditions. And it's a shame they don't say

(01:26:57):
what's really going on here. So these people understand
because if you mentioned like these are because of tariffs,
people get really weird about it.
Like, how do you know that? And it's like, because it's all
the same type of terms. That's all these companies have
been using for prices that are getting raised up.

(01:27:19):
So yeah, the price is here. The yeah, the regular Series S
is going to cost $400.00 now going up from 379 and the Series
X will cost $650 from 600. Yeah, I believe the the bigger

(01:27:42):
Series S will be going up. So let me see here.
They put it as a PDF for Microsoft.
Good. The one terabytes going up to
449 for the Series S The Series X digital is 59999.
The regular Series X is 64999 and the two terabyte Galaxy

(01:28:04):
Black Special edition Series X is going for $799.99 for one
terabytes of extra storage spaceinternally and some fancy paint
$150.00 increase over the original game or the original
series X and it's like those aresome wild ass prices I'm going

(01:28:29):
to look up what the PS-5 price increases were yeah this was a
few weeks ago. The Pro is 749.
So like with that you get, you know, actual upgraded internals.
The regular PS 5 is 549, which is less than the Series X

(01:28:51):
digital, only $100 more than themost expensive Series S.
Then the digital edition PS5IS49999, which is $100
cheaper than Series X Digital. So yeah, that's a lot of money
for Microsoft, and I'm really hugely surprised.

(01:29:12):
But yeah, there's continuing to make it harder to get these
things produced at reasonable costs.
But Microsoft's Windling consolesales are not being done any
favor by any of this. So yeah, there you go.
I believe that goes into effect in October, October 2nd, I

(01:29:34):
believe. So you got some time if you
really want to save some money, October 3rd.
So you got until October 2nd to get that.
But yeah, that's that's where that's going right now.
Yeah, this is like the only reason why I think my launch

(01:29:56):
Xbox TVX is a good deal. That's all I got, Yeah.
I'm curious to see if Gamestop'strade in prices are going to go
up at all. I.
Want to say the? PS-5 ones didn't really increase
that much, which feels like the kind of thing they would do for
that. But yeah, if you can sell those,
it would be more selling on likeFacebook Marketplace or

(01:30:18):
whatever. We'll be able to get a more fair
price. But yeah, get those sooner if
you want them. Or don't.
The. Xbox is not a great platform at
the moment. No, especially with the BDS
protests going on. Yep.

(01:30:39):
They're still heavily involved in that.
Yep. But yeah, let's see last up here
before we get to the last thing,the penultimate thing Game
Informer revealed their cover for the next issue is The Outer
Worlds 2, and they even change the the Game Informer logo to

(01:31:00):
fit the world of The Outer Worlds has that same font to it.
That looks nice. Yeah.
Launched digitally on the 30th of physical issues, hitting soon
after that in October. I did get my Ninja Gaiden issue
a couple weeks ago. I didn't have a chance to read
it yet, but they're still going on with that stuff.

(01:31:22):
And yeah, that one will be not too far, so you'll be able to
read more on the outer world so before it launches later in
October. So yeah, that'll be fun to see.
So yeah, there you go. And last up here, there's an
indie showcase, the the six one indie showcase.

(01:31:44):
Pretty fun little show. And fortunately I didn't really
find any great articles summarizing all of this in order
to have the time to really writeanything up here in the dock.
But there's a bunch of stuff here to check out.
Some all of them are on Steam. I believe there's a Steam
whatever sale thing, whatever for everything, so you can check

(01:32:10):
out all the demos and such that are in them and find that stuff
pretty easily. So there's that.
But yeah, there's definitely some interesting stuff they
talked about. You have the DLC for Little
Gator Game in the Dark. The showed off some of that.
That'll be out early next year. That's what I'm looking forward

(01:32:32):
to. Yeah.
There's map Map, a game about maps.
Pretty self-explanatory there. Exploring this map on a or this,
this sunny island and filling out a map with all the
interesting stuff on it and you know, just doing that pretty

(01:32:53):
fun. There's Angelina Era, which is
the new game from Analgesic Productions, the game that made,
oh, I forget what their other stuff is, but it's a yeah,
anodyne, anodyne one and two, I think even the ocean and

(01:33:15):
Stephanie, a bunch of that kind of stuff that is really good.
Now this one also has kind of APS, one kind of art style to it
that looks really nice. They've been posting videos of
this for a while of that's that's a demo out now.
I was just kind of like a a Zelda ish kind of vibe to it.

(01:33:36):
Yeah. Is that, that looks really neat.
What else here? Yeah, there's a game called
Penguin Colony. That's the new game from the
Umarongi Generation devs. Yep.
That's set in Antarctica like a 1939, which is centered around

(01:33:58):
Penguins, as you would expect. So yeah, I got some sinister
vibes in that trailer. Yeah.
Perfect Tide station to station as a neat little looking game.
It's out January 20 or no? Yeah, January 22nd.
They wrote 2025 here. So 2026.

(01:34:21):
Gecko. Gods, that's one that looks
really cool. It's been showing off for a bit.
Desktop Explorer, which is whereyou're exploring a like a like a
Windows 95 style desktop, just all like mysteries and such on
there. That looks pretty neat.

(01:34:44):
Yeah. A bunch of stuff here for people
to check out. That looks really neat.
I see. Yeah, the Mr. Sleepy Man was one
that looked really neat. It's like a three platformer
adventure game kind of thing. We're just this very tired man
who is running around causing a bunch of chaos and all that,

(01:35:06):
that has a demo out now for people to check out.
Yeah, a bunch of neat looking stuff.
So worth checking out these games, seeing what else they
have to show off here. So yeah, it's a it's a showcase.
Actually, they don't link to theactual showcase.
So just look up the 6th 180 showcase for September.

(01:35:29):
It's about an hour or so interesting games.
So yeah, there you go. And yeah, I think it's going to
do it. So thank you to Brandon dinner
for joining this week. We'll be back next week with a
new slated news and things to talk about, especially with a
bunch of games are coming out. Let me see if I got my list

(01:35:53):
here. Yeah, Silent Hill F is this
week. Sonic Racing, Cross Worlds,
Helier, Rez LA, Rihanna, the RedAlchemist and the White
Guardians is out, I believe. Baby Steps is out this week.
That's one I'm working on. Yeah, a bunch of a bunch of
things, so that'll be fun to see.

(01:36:17):
But yeah, that'll do it for thisweek.
If you enjoy the show for let friends and family know they
should check out the show and enjoy the conversations we have.
And yeah, feel free to let friends and and select strangers
that are also interested in seeing the lawsuits here where

(01:36:40):
companies are going back and forth at each other over stupid
shit. But yeah, thank you all for
tuning in. I hope you have a good week
ahead. We will see you all next time.
Have a good one. See you hi.