May 23, 2025 • 40 mins
Welcome to this week’s episode of Digital Coffee: Gaming Brew, your go-to source for honest takes and hot debates in the world of gaming. I’m your host, Brett Deister, and in this episode, we’re diving into the latest controversies and updates shaking up the industry.
We kick things off with a look at the troubled launch of the Stalker remastered trilogy and why fans are fuming over language and content changes. Then, we weigh in on The Witcher’s Geralt voice actor sounding off about Ciri leading Witcher 4, the ongoing clash between Epic Games and SAG-AFTRA over AI voices in Fortnite, and why Randy Pitchford just can’t stop stirring the pot when it comes to Borderlands 4’s pricing.
You’ll also hear about the surprising success of Star Wars Battlefront II, updates for Overwatch 2 and Marvel Rivals, the boom in RPGs like Expedition 33 and Baldur’s Gate 3, and a bumper Warhammer 40K sale on Steam. Plus, I’ll be sharing my unfiltered thoughts on Doom: The Dark Ages after playing through the whole thing—was it worth the hype (and the price tag)?
Grab your favorite drink and get comfortable—let’s get into a week full of gaming news, strong opinions, and everything you need to know to stay in-the-know.
3 Fun Facts:
- Doom: The Dark Ages is one of the least "woke" AAA games released recently, according to the host, and the Doom Slayer actually speaks a word in the game!
- Star Wars Battlefront II has become popular again due to renewed interest from the Andor series, but a sequel isn't happening anytime soon.
- Warhammer 40k has a surprise free typing game on Steam that resembles the look of the "Boltgun" shooter, blending educational fun with the iconic franchise.
Key Themes:
- Stalker trilogy remastered release controversy
- Geralt’s voice actor on Witcher 4 protagonist
- Borderlands 4 pricing and development budgets
- SAG-AFTRA vs. Epic over AI voice use
- RPG genre appeal and industry misconceptions
- Overwatch 2 and Marvel Rivals updates
- Doom: The Dark Ages launch performance
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
And welcome to a new episode of Digital Coffee Gaming Brew, and
I'm your host, Brett Deister. Please subscribe to this podcast and hang your favorite podcasting
apps. Leave a five star review. Really does help with the rankings. Let me know
how I am doing. But this week, we're talking about the
Stalker remastered trilogy, and, well, it's not going well for
them. Unfortunate. We also got the voice actor of
(00:23):
Geralt really trying to tell people how they
should feel about the Witcher four. Agree or disagree, this is his
opinion. Randy Pitchford apparently well,
he just keeps on stepping in it. He's the CEO of Gearbox, and
he keeps on stepping in about the price of Borderlands four
(00:44):
because apparently, Borderlands three did so well that they needed to
double the budget because that makes a better gamer
sense. Gaming development
in this day and age is just a weird space right
now, to be honest with you. Also, we got
Epic and Fortnite and Darth Vader and SAG AFTRA
(01:07):
going at each other or mostly just SAG
being upset about
whatever epic is doing. We also have one of the writers or
former lead writer of Dragon Age talking about expedition
33 and bolder's gate three and why
RPGs do have a bigger appeal than what a lot
(01:30):
of publishers think they do. Overwatch two's
new update or, basically, it's Stadium's
update. We also have
dubious numbers from Bethesda about doom the dark ages.
It's dubious because it's almost the same thing what Ubisoft's
doing. We also have Marvel rivals, a new
(01:51):
hero, and new update. We also have
some Warhammer 40 k. There's there's a huge sale going on Steam right now.
We also have the remaster version of
Warhammer 40 k Space Marine. We also have
new numbers from star Star Wars Battlefront two.
Apparently, it's been taking off so much. And then my review,
(02:15):
actually, Doom the Dark Ages. Yeah. I actually finished
it. Wasn't that hard.
Anyways, let's get on with the show.
(02:41):
That's good. Alright. I hope you're having
a fabulous weekend of full of playing your
favorite games. But first off is GSC Game
World released their remastered versions of the original stalker trilogy,
shadows of Chernobyl, clear skies, and call of
I probably totally butcher that. Well, I've played all
(03:04):
these games. I didn't really beat them, but I played them and they were they
were fun. They were very janky to say the
least. Well, they aren't doing very well. They were
released on May 20, I believe, and it is still
at a mostly negative review
score on Steam. Players have expressed a specification
(03:25):
with removal of the original Russian language, audio track, and various Soviet
era relics from the game, which is odd, but I also understand because they
are Ukrainian publisher, and I'm pretty sure the Ukrainian
government has stipulations. Also,
specific complaints include the deletion of monument signs outside of
Chernobyl that previously read
(03:48):
Chazzy in the name of I don't know. There's something
that people are upset about. Some players have reported issues with blurry
graphics, particularly with using FSR and anti
aliasing features. So
it's not going well. I still say that these games are fun, but, yeah, unless
they fix I think the blurry thing is the biggest thing. I don't I
(04:11):
don't really play the game in Russian language, so I don't really care. The weird
removal of Soviet era relics is weird, but
given the fact that they are Ukrainian, you kinda understand
why they don't really wanna put this stuff back in. I'm not saying
it's warranted,
but that's what you get when you have a war with
(04:33):
somebody or two wars with. It
it's just a mess. Alright. Moving on to
the voice of Geralt from the which are the video
games, Doug Cogol, he said supports the decision to make Syria the
protagonist of the Witcher four. Kogol stated
that the backlash regarding the choice being woke is stupid,
(04:55):
which is not. He emphasized that Ciri is a cool character from the
Witcher and that focusing on her is a positive move for the series.
Why is it a positive move? I have no idea.
You know that's Geralt's story has concluded particularly after the events of Blood and
Wine, so you can go back to, like, a prequel when he
was a new Witcher and do that. I mean, doesn't really make much
(05:18):
sense. I here's the thing. I get
it. But calling people Internet weirdos because they
just really don't want any more girl bosses in their game is not the
best way of helping the situation. I
get it. You may want
this to happen, but gaming
(05:41):
culture has has very much shifted to the right.
Specifically because it's mostly male dominated, as
I've stated several times in a lot of different episodes.
So we have kind of gotten sick and tired of
and it's it's mostly just Marxism and feminism. We we
put it under the tent of woke, but it's it's basically two
(06:05):
specific things, Marxism and feminism, and they go hand in hand. And we've
kinda seen for the past fifty years that feminism has basically just screwed over
men. And And so we're basically done because we don't really wanna
see girl bosses anymore because they're they we don't care.
Like, it's annoying to us because I've
kind of gone over this before in previous episodes, but
(06:27):
men and women are different. Surprise. And the
hero's journey is very male focused because males are being
brought up to, like, basically adapt and
control your environment and win and do all that stuff. So, like, the
hero's journey is very male specific. And so it's weird when
they try to implement it with females because it just doesn't work.
(06:50):
And so when they say Internet weirdos, I'm like, you're just talking about
regular dudes that just do not wanna play this, like,
girl boss thing of, like, fighting the injustice,
and it it just doesn't work. It's why people
flock to, like, doom or people flock to, like, things that
make sense to them and that are normal.
(07:12):
And when you have when you have, like, woke, it's just stupid. It's
not stupid because it's happened,
and it keeps on happening. And the gaming industry doesn't really understand
it or refuses to understand it. It's probably more of the thing.
They refuse to understand it. And then when culture goes, we're done with this.
Every time you do something like this, we're not buying it. They wonder why
(07:35):
they're losing so much money, and then they balloon their budgets
to chase the quote unquote modern audience, which is basically the same thing as
before. The audience hasn't changed. Your perception of the
audience has changed, and that's just bad marketing.
Like, you can be a terrible marketer and convince people that you're chasing
the moderate audience with not knowing what your audience is, and
(07:59):
that's what's been happening. Now I could say also that marketing has been
taken over by more women than men, and so that does not help
either because women do not understand men as we see on the Internet far
too many times. Now you could say men don't understand
women, and you're right. But at least we understand that
part. We admit it. You guys don't. You go, yeah. I
(08:21):
understand guys. And you're like, no. You really don't. And
so this is where we're at again.
Is that it's
usually actors, and actors really need to shut up, to be honest
with you. They just don't understand things. They think they understand
it because they're told that this is the way things are because they
(08:43):
kind of sort of watch the news. But
saying that, like, woke is, like, stupid
or, like, it's like it's like
a term that we just reject diversity. We don't reject diversity. We
reject ingestion of a terrible ideology.
(09:04):
You can have females in video games. I don't really care. But don't try to
make them masculine. It just doesn't work.
We don't like it anymore. It's just a terrible way of
trying to ram down our throat something that isn't really
true. And so when you have these actors doing oh, yeah.
And he's beloved. We we all love him as Geralt. Like,
(09:28):
we recognize his voice and everything, but when he does this, it's like,
why are you purposely trying to piss off a group of
people that love your work?
It just doesn't make any sense. And it's all about and they
and he doesn't understand the side that doesn't like this, which
is becoming more and more a lot of gamers
(09:51):
do not like it. And so when he keeps on saying this,
he's alienating, like, a big portion of his audience
because he's trying to, like, appease
whatever higher up or something like that. It just
it just read the room, dude. Like, it's over. We
(10:13):
don't like it anymore. We have been rejecting it for
probably four years now. I would
say probably after Marvel end games, that's
when we it really started to ramp up where we were just like, we're done
with this. We don't want it anymore.
(10:37):
But that's where we're at.
It's not great. It's not good, but
I just I I just wish they
would understand that we just really just
we just wanna play games. We just don't care. We just care
(10:57):
about things that are fun. And when you implement things that just
aren't fun, we just don't like it. Which speaking of what's
not fun is talking about Randy Pitchford again. Jeez. Like,
this dude does not know how to shut up. Like,
the PR people are like, dude, be quiet. Like, you're not helping the
situation. But
(11:20):
he basically stated that he does not know the price of the Borderlands four,
responded on x and regarding the potential price Borderlands four, which suggests
should should not be $80. Yeah. A lot of people are like, why?
But then he's like, oh, but if you're a real fan, you would pay for
you pay $80 for it because when he
was younger, he bought an $80 game in 1991, which is really
(11:43):
expensive back in 1991. Mind you, the game
he's talking about, star flight did not sell well.
It it's it's kind of a cult classic, but it didn't sell well because it
was $80. And 91, like, $20 was
expensive back then because your money went a lot longer.
And then when you add on to that, you're like, yeah. $80 for this game
(12:05):
in 1991, everybody's like, no. I'm good. So I don't
really understand this because it wasn't it
wasn't one of the top selling games on the Sega Genesis system. It was I
think Sonic's a hedgehog too, was it? And that wasn't $80.
So I don't understand his comment. He's like, if you're a true fan,
so we'll help. Like, why is it $80
(12:27):
again? But then he went back and he's and
you start talking more about it. He's he
just does not know when to shut up. He's
like, yeah. But because Borderlands four is more than twice the development
budget of borderline three, and everybody's like, why? Why is it? Because it's
successful. That doesn't make any sense. When did you wanna keep it, like, a good
(12:50):
budget so you could sell more games? You wouldn't have, like, that high,
like, standard of I have to sell this many units to actually break
even. Like, I don't understand the development or the publishers anymore.
Because it seems like they're just like, let's just throw 10 different
studios and have a $300,000,000 budget.
And then, hopefully, we'll sell breakeven
(13:14):
because it plus with marketing, it's probably half a billion
dollars just to get it to break even.
And that's my issue with all this. It's like, stop. You can make
games with small devs, small
units. You don't have to have 15 different
huge developers making one game. I mean, I'm looking
(13:36):
at Battlefield. I'm looking at Call of Duty. You guys are ballooned
so much that you almost lost the point of
these games. And this is where we're
at. Like, we need to really start going how
to make a successful game, not just throwing money at it, not just throwing more
people at it because then you start losing what made the game
(13:59):
special when you have too many people making one game.
I get that DICE hasn't done a really good job with Battlefield,
but that's just because you didn't have strong leadership, and then
the higher ups got, I think, way more involved than they should have.
But when you don't have a strong vision, that's what kills most games.
(14:20):
We're gonna make a game like this. What's it supposed to be about? I don't
know. We'll figure it out. And that's like, woah. Okay. That's not good.
Anyways, moving on to Fortnite. So Fortnite had
a Star Wars themed event, and
they reintroduced Star Vader, and they use AI generated voice based on James
(14:41):
Earl Jones. And they just can interact with Darth Vader in real time with certain
limitations. And, well, SAG AFTRA would well,
wasn't happy about this. However, the funny part is
is that Fortnite did give permission from the James Earl Jones estate to
actually use that. So it's not like they went,
like, rogue and just as well. Yeah. Whatever. We'll just use it. No. They actually
(15:03):
got permission from the estate to do this.
But then SAG is like, no. No. No. You didn't talk to us about it.
We're supposed to be a part of this. It's like, this is why I hate
unions because they really
do like, they don't innovate.
They really do just it's kinda like this protection of it, and they will not
(15:25):
innovate because of the because innovation a lot of times means less
jobs. And so what they will do specifically is say, like, nope. And
then you have the people that don't do very well that have to get paid
the same as the people that do do very well. And so it really does
hamper, like, a competitive competitiveness and trying
to be better at your at your profession.
(15:47):
So sag is mad because they didn't
inform about it. And I guess it's a violation
of labor laws, I guess. Like, I
it it it doesn't really seem like a solid argument
because and I'm not a big fan of epic, mind you.
I don't like Tim Sweeney very much. I think a lot of his arguments are
(16:08):
dumb, especially when it comes to monopolies because
he keeps on, like, being mad that Steam's a monopoly, but he forgets that
his own company is a monopoly with the Unreal Engine
because it is monopoly on the on the gaming engine side. It's
like unreal engine is the most popular engine. It wasn't like that about
twenty years ago because you had ID, and ID tech four was, like, the
(16:30):
most popular game for ID, and then they just didn't do anything, and then
epic took over. Now you have any other engines.
Dice has their own frostbite. You have
the cry tech engine. You have several other ones.
They're not just as big. Ubisoft has their own engine. Snowdrop, I think
it's called. You have your they have their own, but it just isn't
(16:53):
that popular. So with
this, I'm more on the side of epic because they did
talk to
the state of James Earl Jones and
they got permission. That's all you really should need.
(17:18):
So moving on to the former lead writer, for Dragon
Age compared exhibition 33 to Baldur's Gate three stating
that both games serve as love letters to their respective genres and
have broader appeal than typical typically expected.
Gator, I think, is it is is the last name, noted the
(17:38):
impressive sales of Baldur's Gate three, which he will use contradicts previous
assumptions about RPG audience sizes, specifically that it caps
at around 5,000,000. He mentioned that many good games
do not achieve commercial success for various reasons, including market
saturation. He highlighted that blowsgate three
benefited from extended early access period while
(18:00):
Expedition 33 faced challenges in getting approval from large
publishers like Ubisoft. Both games have received
overwhelmingly positive user ratings and are performing well on Steam.
Yes. I started finally playing Expedition 33, and it's a it's a
great game so far. I'm still trying to get the whole, like, Barry
and Dodge thing, but I'll eventually get
(18:22):
there. But he's right. I mean, you can't really
define the audience because it depends on what the game
is. I mean, Skyrim was popular because mostly
because of mods. I mean, it's a fun game, but mods has really
made it what it is. Ballersgate three was great
even though it already had a success from one and two because
(18:44):
Bioware originally created Bowls gate one and two. It was like their first big
successes was these two games. And then they went on to make their own,
and then, fortunately, they lost their pedigree,
but they were huge successes.
And then you had boulders gate three different studio, but still
(19:05):
recreated the magic of what boulders gate was and people loved it.
Yes. It did. It was an early access, and people were complaining
about early access. But all in all, it was a regret game.
Expedition 33 brought it back to turn based style
action with some real time action. I mean,
the Perry and the Dodge is real more real time.
(19:28):
So it was a hybrid, but it was still fun because no one was
doing anymore. Square Enix abandoned that or Squaresoft. I don't know.
They changed their name so many times. It's just, yeah, Square Enix abandoned it
for the Final Fantasy to be more real time, and they coulda
kept it. Especially for Final Fantasy seven, they coulda kept it and
(19:48):
kind of, like, looked at what exhibition thirty three did and be like,
this is actually a pretty good system. But, no, they went to more of a
real time system, which I mean, it's alright. You
just don't really like as much as what it used
to be. But, I mean, it's a testament to
even old things can become popular again, and maybe just
(20:10):
don't, like, hate on, like, genres because you just don't know the audience. You
can assume the audience size. But unless you create
a game and make it and see what the audience size is,
it's all speculation. If it's a great game, people will buy it. If it's
not, then, yeah, you don't have an audience. It's all about the perception of the
audience to your game and if the game's good or not. Because if the game's
(20:33):
good, it's accessible enough for people who wanna play it, then you're
gonna sell a lot. But if it's not and the writing's
terrible and it's just kind of like,
not what it used to be, I'm looking at you dragon age, then, yes, no
one's gonna buy it.
But that's the thing. I still think RTS is
(20:56):
should come back. I think tempest rising is a great game, and I think that
EA is sitting on a gold mine that they just haven't figured out
yet because they're too focused on first person shooters.
That's all they really wanna make. They're they're basically becoming Activision.
Because that's what all Activision makes now is Call of
(21:17):
Duty. And I stopped playing that game because that gave me
it's weird with all the with all the skins and stuff. It
just it's it becomes like Fortnite, and I'm
just not into that. Alright. Moving on to
Overwatch two and has released an update chain changes
to stadium mode. The update includes tweaks to the mercy rule
(21:39):
item, purchase adjustments, introduction of a new character named
Freya, and hero balance changes. The mercy rule previously required
a cash disparity of 15,000 between teams to trigger an immediate
win for the leading team after winning three rounds in a row. The cash
disparity required to trigger the mercy rule has been reduced to 10,000.
Blizzard has stated that they will monitor the changes to the mercy rule and may
(22:03):
consider further adjustments in the future. Hey. Look. Overwatch two
is having its heyday again because of stadium. People are really excited about
stadium. Marvel rivals have fallen off a little bit, but that does
happen. I mean, that's the nature of live service
games. They're, like, they're popular for a time, and then they're not.
New update comes, everybody plays it, and then they don't.
(22:26):
That's that is the vicious cycle of life service
games. Look at hell divers too. Fun game, excellent
game, but you always wait for the next update and see if the next
everybody is good enough to play the game. And if it is, then you play
the game. If it's not, you don't. So there
you go. All right. So
(22:48):
Bethesda has announced the doom. The dark ages is the biggest launch in
ID software, thirty four year history.
I don't know about that one. The game reached 3,000,000 players achieving
the milestone seven times faster than doom eternal.
Again, it's 3,000,000 players, not unit sold.
(23:10):
Bethesda did not provide sales numbers or details on development and
marketing expenses. Again, not a good sign.
And I'm not, I'm not doing a review after this. It's gonna be later, but
it's not a good sign. And I always say, show me the
numbers. Don't do the trust me, bro, because the trust me,
(23:31):
bro, is never a good thing to have. I
don't want how many players have, quote, unquote, played the game because I
don't know what your metric is and how long it like, they
booted up for ten seconds and decided to I'm
good. I mean, what do you want from
that? I mean, we can
(23:53):
check right now and see how
many players
are playing this. But, I mean, all in all, I've not
had a terrible time with this game. It's just
it's just annoying that they don't actually give
numbers. And it's like, I want numbers. Tell me the
(24:17):
numbers. Don't tell me how many players have played it. Right now
in game, as we speak, there's about 12,000 players playing it, which is not
good. For a new game to come out,
it's not good
because it it should be
a lot more.
(24:40):
But unfortunately, they're
using game pass numbers to kinda, like, shore up that. I mean,
it's it's gotten 85% review on Steam, so it's
good. I mean, the all type peak, unfortunately, was only been
31,000, which is not good at all.
(25:01):
So and that's steam numbers. That's the only numbers I can actually have.
So I don't think it's looking good for doom the dark
ages. It's unfortunate because it's probably
one of the least woke games from, like, a triple a
modern game that we've seen in a while.
But we'll see if there's more of an uptake, but, I
(25:24):
mean, there's over almost close to 15,000 positive
reviews and about 2,000 negative reviews.
So it's sitting pretty in a pretty good review, but we've seen that before
with assessment's creed shadows and
dragon age, veil guard.
(25:47):
Anyways, we'll see. We'll see if they actually give numbers, but
I I it's just marketing
speak. When you see them changing from units sold to
just players, you're like, oh, 3,000,000 players.
I don't know what that actually means. And it just it's a vanity metric
now. It doesn't mean anything.
(26:10):
Because if there's if
there's, like, three or more million players
for game pass, then you've really just said, hey, look,
everybody's playing on game pass. That's not
good because you really want units sold as well. And if they're not giving you
(26:30):
units sold means it's not selling very well.
Anyways, moving on to NetEase announced
details from Marvel's, two and a half season two and a
half set for May 30, which is in
about seven days. The update will
(26:52):
in introduce Ultron as a playable hero. A new
map named Rico will be added,
which has been taken over by Ultron. The update includes balance changes
and new team ups while also retiring some old team
ups. Ultron will be will have abilities including
the and cephleray
(27:14):
drone summons for healing abilities and the ultimate ability called
rage of Ultron, which apparently is just drones that can
either heal your your team or
damage the opponent. There's also six
new team ups will be introduced including community request in move
called Jeff Nato, which basically combined Storm and Jeff.
(27:36):
So it should be interesting. Four team ups will be removed including
the Venom, Penny's, Spidey team up using a
symbiotic bond. A new limited time mode called
Ultron's battle matrix protocol will allow players to assemble teams and
engage in auto battling chessboard like field.
Season two of Marvel rivals will end around mid July
(27:57):
as it is the last season to run for three months,
while season three transitions into a two month
schedule. And the executive producer has acknowledged the
need for harsher penalties for players who rage quit ranked matches, which is
fair. I mean, if you're gonna do that, yeah, you should probably have strict
(28:17):
penalties. I don't really care about quick play. If you leave, someone will join,
or if not, you lose. It doesn't really matter as much. But, you know, rank
play, yeah, if someone leaves, yeah, harsh better harsh penalties
is a okay with me on that one. Alright. We got some news
for the Warhammer 40 k series. There's a huge sale going on right now
in Steam. You can actually get which I download. I didn't know, but it looked
(28:40):
like it was a part of the bolt gun game, but it's not. It's a
typing game. Look. It looks like in the bolt gun game, which you could
download for free, which I think is pretty cool, to be honest with you. I
mean, it's always great to learn how to type faster.
But how cat games has revealed a news, new set
game set in the Warhammer 40 k universe. The game is titled 40 k
(29:00):
dark heresy. It describes as a party
based story driven CRPG, computer role playing game.
Okay. And it really doesn't find it was
probably it's probably more turn based than anything else. Players will take on the role
of a acolyte on the inquisition. The game will involve
leading investigation, uncovering conspiracies, mastering technical
(29:23):
combat, and waging a secret war against heresy. And there's no release
date. We also had bolt gun two being released. It's coming soon
as well because bolt gun was a really fun game. It's kinda like
doom and, like, the Warhammer 40 k series, first person
shooter type of a thing. So it's pretty fun. It's not that
expensive right now. And then Sega and Relic Entertainment announced
(29:45):
the release of Warhammer 40 k space marine mastercrafted
edition. The addition is a remaster of the original Warhammer 40
k space marine, which was first released in 02/11 on the PS three,
Xbox three sixty, and PC. The remaster will be available on
PC, Xbox series x and s on
June 10. There is currently no information on a potential release
(30:07):
for the PS five. The game will be available on Xbox game pass on its
launch day. So sorry, PS five players, you cannot play it for
whatever reason. Not really quite sure why, but the
original space for anyone was great. Relic was the
original developer on that one, and then it was transferred over to
saber interactive. But the first one was a fun game. People
(30:30):
loved it. So I'm all for it. They also
are is it remastering
the strategy game that relic made for Warhammer 40 k original one as
well? So look out for that. Should be fun.
Then moving on to something interesting that
didn't think would ever happen, but
(30:52):
Star Wars Battlefront two is popular again. Mainly because of
Andor, because that was actually pretty fun. And so
players have wanted well, they
want Battlefront three. Guess what? That's not really gonna be
happening anytime soon. What more likely happened from developer side, what he
said because most of the people that made
(31:15):
Battlefront two from dice have left. There's about three left from the
live team, and that's really all that remains. So what he actually stated
was if they actually remastered Battlefront two for
the modern consoles and PCs, then they can get
there. And it's a lot less of a lead time. If it's if it's
successful, they can make
(31:38):
Battlefront three, and that could actually help them understanding the
systems behind it and getting up to date with how to make Battlefront
games, or they just start over and just redo it. But,
anyways, for the time being, there's gonna be no
Battlefront three. One of the reasons why is because the CEO of
EA really doesn't wanna do Star Wars games, just expensive
(32:01):
licensing fees and all that stuff. So you may not see it
ever, or you may or if it gets really popular or if they
actually do a a remaster, it and that sells well. Like you
said, it could happen, but I would not hold my breath out for this.
Now I'm redownloading it because I'm like, I wonder how popular it is because
I mean, I enjoyed battlefront too. It was a fun game, but
(32:24):
don't expect battlefront three
anytime soon.
Alright. And so I have finished doing the dark ages
because I'm a fan of doom, and I actually thought this was gonna be not
very woke game. And I was I was mostly correct.
There's very little quote unquote woke in
(32:47):
there. I mean, it's it's it's a game
that still understands what its player audience is, which is
mostly men. And so the story is not
great. I would not even say it's
marginally good. There's a lot of plot holes. There was a lot of issues with
I had with it. I really don't understand why, like, the
(33:08):
Slayer is already the Slayer, but we don't really understand why. We get
kind of like here and there about why he became the
slayer, but there really isn't, like, enough
for me to go, oh, okay. Now I get why he did it. The
slayer actually talks. It actually says one word in
the game, which is interesting. But for the most part, this
(33:31):
helmet is on. They take a helmet off a few times, but for the most
part, it's on. Now
the combat is still it's not as good
as 02/2016, in my opinion, but it's better than doom
eternal. Sorry. I I just don't like the Mario
(33:51):
version of doom very much. I thought it was kind of annoying. We still need
to actually finish doom eternal. That's how bad it
is. But
the ground combat with the shield, I think that shield was a good addition.
I actually do think the shield kind of brings in a lot of interesting things
you could do with it, like blocking, like, stunning
(34:13):
big characters as long as they don't have armor or just killing a bunch
of them kinda like Captain America, but a little bit more bloody style.
Weapons are interesting. You got, like, you got, like, a nail gun and
there's, like, variations of it. There's not a lot of guns, but there's enough
to kinda like vary it. You also introduction of melee
weapons and you also have your, you have your fists. You also have
(34:37):
the mace and then kind of like a flail as
well. And then your shield there's upgrades to all this,
but your shield has, like, specific upgrades where additional
ones to, like, electrify enemies
through, there's an auto turret part of it. There's, like,
different types of things you could do with it. So there's replayability with
(34:59):
it, but
the dragon flight one is pretty fleshed out. It's
pretty interesting to play. It's still not as good as the ground combat, and the
mech one was probably the weakest out of all of them.
So that was kind of easy and not
(35:20):
as fun to play, but luckily, the mech combat,
it's it's not most of the game or I kind of not really be
enjoying it. So that's great. Now
it runs really well on my PC. I have
a AMD Ryzen 7,900 x. I have
a Nvidia thirty ninety. So I'm two
(35:42):
generations behind right now. Also, I have 64 gigs of RAM,
so it ran really well. I did not run into any
bugs while playing the game. However,
I did run into some weird bugs.
For example, every time I boot it up, I'm gonna I technically have three
monitors, but the Elgato prompter is kind of a
(36:05):
monitor. But it would switch. And I would have to switch back when
I booted it up, which is weird. And then
when I first was trying to get into it, it would not load at all.
It would crash every single time. So if you're running into
this and you have a Ryzen CPU,
disable the APU or the the graphics driver
(36:28):
within your CPU, and it will run fine. That's what I had I had
to search this out. I had to figure it out, but, apparently, it was trying
to run through that one and not my actual NVIDIA card, so it would
never run. It drove me nuts.
So that wasn't good. But I it seemed really
well optimized for me. I saw no slowdown whatsoever, and there was a
(36:51):
lot of different enemy or demons coming after me, and
I had no problems with it. Like I said, there's very little to
know, like, kinda like wokeness in it. It still very much
is doom guy, and he is the central part of the story. Yes.
There is a woman in there. Yeah. She's kinda part of
the story. She kinda helps you out. But without you, you
(37:15):
she would not know that she was what she was or anything
like that. Without you, the human race would die.
Without you, the demons would win. Like, this is
very, like, the Slayer is the central part
of the story. So when people say it's woke,
they don't understand it. It's not.
(37:39):
Now is it worth the price tag? Probably not. It took me about
fifteen hours to complete, which is not great
for like a $70.80 dollar game. Now mind you,
there is gonna be more single player stuff, but I kinda
wanted more. I know you can replay them. And I think
(37:59):
without multiplayer, it kind of seems like it's
not that great of a value. And I do
think what they should have done instead is do like a, like a type of
a co op thing, maybe kinda like a leadership board against your friends to
see who could, like, do it better or kill demons
quickly or something like that to bring kind of a community based thing together. Because
(38:20):
the multiplayer is the other ones never really lasted very long. No one really played
them very much. They kinda had their heyday for a while, and then people stopped
playing it. So I understand why they did they dropped the
multiplayer. It wasn't working. They couldn't find
what worked for doom anymore, and that's fine because doom
really never had a multiplayer. It was always a single
(38:43):
player specific game until doom 02/2016.
So it's not like they're going against what it originally was.
It's just I wish the game was longer
and wish there
was, like, a coop portion of it.
(39:05):
And I think that would actually have helped with the sales.
Maybe they'll add it later. Maybe they won't. I don't really know for sure.
But all in all, it's still a fun game. Like, I
still had a blast, like, throwing my shield, doing stuff, trying to,
like, block at the right times. Like, it it was fun.
(39:25):
People complaining about it. That's fine. I mean, most of
the complaints are about the price tag, and that's that's a fair assessment.
But it's still a really fun game. I had fun playing it. I had fun
playing the doom guy being the badass on
doom. So I'd say if you
actually have the money for it, buy it. If you don't, just wait for a
(39:47):
sale. But it's it's as close as you
can get to to doom 2,016 combat wise.
Story wise, I really
wasn't that impressed with it, but combat wise, I was,
and I was happy with it. So,
anyways, what did you think
(40:11):
about doom? What do you think about anything I've talked about? Leave a comment
below, and I will get back to you. But thank you for listening to Digital
Coffee Gaming Brew. I really do appreciate it. And please subscribe to this podcast
on your favorite podcasting apps. We have a five star review. It will just help
with the rankings. Let me know how I'm doing. Enjoy me next week as I
talk about what's going on in the gaming industry. Alright, guys. Stay safe. Get to
(40:31):
gaming what you wanna gain and not be told that you're terrible for not
liking games. If you don't like them. See you next week.
Later.
And welcome to a new episode of Digital Coffee Gaming Brew, and
I'm your host, Brett Deister. Please subscribe to this podcast and hang your favorite podcasting
apps. Leave a five star review. Really does help with the rankings. Let me know
how I am doing. But this week, we're talking about the
Stalker remastered trilogy, and, well, it's not going well for
them. Unfortunate. We also got the voice actor of
(00:23):
Geralt really trying to tell people how they
should feel about the Witcher four. Agree or disagree, this is his
opinion. Randy Pitchford apparently well,
he just keeps on stepping in it. He's the CEO of Gearbox, and
he keeps on stepping in about the price of Borderlands four
(00:44):
because apparently, Borderlands three did so well that they needed to
double the budget because that makes a better gamer
sense. Gaming development
in this day and age is just a weird space right
now, to be honest with you. Also, we got
Epic and Fortnite and Darth Vader and SAG AFTRA
(01:07):
going at each other or mostly just SAG
being upset about
whatever epic is doing. We also have one of the writers or
former lead writer of Dragon Age talking about expedition
33 and bolder's gate three and why
RPGs do have a bigger appeal than what a lot
(01:30):
of publishers think they do. Overwatch two's
new update or, basically, it's Stadium's
update. We also have
dubious numbers from Bethesda about doom the dark ages.
It's dubious because it's almost the same thing what Ubisoft's
doing. We also have Marvel rivals, a new
(01:51):
hero, and new update. We also have
some Warhammer 40 k. There's there's a huge sale going on Steam right now.
We also have the remaster version of
Warhammer 40 k Space Marine. We also have
new numbers from star Star Wars Battlefront two.
Apparently, it's been taking off so much. And then my review,
(02:15):
actually, Doom the Dark Ages. Yeah. I actually finished
it. Wasn't that hard.
Anyways, let's get on with the show.
(02:41):
That's good. Alright. I hope you're having
a fabulous weekend of full of playing your
favorite games. But first off is GSC Game
World released their remastered versions of the original stalker trilogy,
shadows of Chernobyl, clear skies, and call of
I probably totally butcher that. Well, I've played all
(03:04):
these games. I didn't really beat them, but I played them and they were they
were fun. They were very janky to say the
least. Well, they aren't doing very well. They were
released on May 20, I believe, and it is still
at a mostly negative review
score on Steam. Players have expressed a specification
(03:25):
with removal of the original Russian language, audio track, and various Soviet
era relics from the game, which is odd, but I also understand because they
are Ukrainian publisher, and I'm pretty sure the Ukrainian
government has stipulations. Also,
specific complaints include the deletion of monument signs outside of
Chernobyl that previously read
(03:48):
Chazzy in the name of I don't know. There's something
that people are upset about. Some players have reported issues with blurry
graphics, particularly with using FSR and anti
aliasing features. So
it's not going well. I still say that these games are fun, but, yeah, unless
they fix I think the blurry thing is the biggest thing. I don't I
(04:11):
don't really play the game in Russian language, so I don't really care. The weird
removal of Soviet era relics is weird, but
given the fact that they are Ukrainian, you kinda understand
why they don't really wanna put this stuff back in. I'm not saying
it's warranted,
but that's what you get when you have a war with
(04:33):
somebody or two wars with. It
it's just a mess. Alright. Moving on to
the voice of Geralt from the which are the video
games, Doug Cogol, he said supports the decision to make Syria the
protagonist of the Witcher four. Kogol stated
that the backlash regarding the choice being woke is stupid,
(04:55):
which is not. He emphasized that Ciri is a cool character from the
Witcher and that focusing on her is a positive move for the series.
Why is it a positive move? I have no idea.
You know that's Geralt's story has concluded particularly after the events of Blood and
Wine, so you can go back to, like, a prequel when he
was a new Witcher and do that. I mean, doesn't really make much
(05:18):
sense. I here's the thing. I get
it. But calling people Internet weirdos because they
just really don't want any more girl bosses in their game is not the
best way of helping the situation. I
get it. You may want
this to happen, but gaming
(05:41):
culture has has very much shifted to the right.
Specifically because it's mostly male dominated, as
I've stated several times in a lot of different episodes.
So we have kind of gotten sick and tired of
and it's it's mostly just Marxism and feminism. We we
put it under the tent of woke, but it's it's basically two
(06:05):
specific things, Marxism and feminism, and they go hand in hand. And we've
kinda seen for the past fifty years that feminism has basically just screwed over
men. And And so we're basically done because we don't really wanna
see girl bosses anymore because they're they we don't care.
Like, it's annoying to us because I've
kind of gone over this before in previous episodes, but
(06:27):
men and women are different. Surprise. And the
hero's journey is very male focused because males are being
brought up to, like, basically adapt and
control your environment and win and do all that stuff. So, like, the
hero's journey is very male specific. And so it's weird when
they try to implement it with females because it just doesn't work.
(06:50):
And so when they say Internet weirdos, I'm like, you're just talking about
regular dudes that just do not wanna play this, like,
girl boss thing of, like, fighting the injustice,
and it it just doesn't work. It's why people
flock to, like, doom or people flock to, like, things that
make sense to them and that are normal.
(07:12):
And when you have when you have, like, woke, it's just stupid. It's
not stupid because it's happened,
and it keeps on happening. And the gaming industry doesn't really understand
it or refuses to understand it. It's probably more of the thing.
They refuse to understand it. And then when culture goes, we're done with this.
Every time you do something like this, we're not buying it. They wonder why
(07:35):
they're losing so much money, and then they balloon their budgets
to chase the quote unquote modern audience, which is basically the same thing as
before. The audience hasn't changed. Your perception of the
audience has changed, and that's just bad marketing.
Like, you can be a terrible marketer and convince people that you're chasing
the moderate audience with not knowing what your audience is, and
(07:59):
that's what's been happening. Now I could say also that marketing has been
taken over by more women than men, and so that does not help
either because women do not understand men as we see on the Internet far
too many times. Now you could say men don't understand
women, and you're right. But at least we understand that
part. We admit it. You guys don't. You go, yeah. I
(08:21):
understand guys. And you're like, no. You really don't. And
so this is where we're at again.
Is that it's
usually actors, and actors really need to shut up, to be honest
with you. They just don't understand things. They think they understand
it because they're told that this is the way things are because they
(08:43):
kind of sort of watch the news. But
saying that, like, woke is, like, stupid
or, like, it's like it's like
a term that we just reject diversity. We don't reject diversity. We
reject ingestion of a terrible ideology.
(09:04):
You can have females in video games. I don't really care. But don't try to
make them masculine. It just doesn't work.
We don't like it anymore. It's just a terrible way of
trying to ram down our throat something that isn't really
true. And so when you have these actors doing oh, yeah.
And he's beloved. We we all love him as Geralt. Like,
(09:28):
we recognize his voice and everything, but when he does this, it's like,
why are you purposely trying to piss off a group of
people that love your work?
It just doesn't make any sense. And it's all about and they
and he doesn't understand the side that doesn't like this, which
is becoming more and more a lot of gamers
(09:51):
do not like it. And so when he keeps on saying this,
he's alienating, like, a big portion of his audience
because he's trying to, like, appease
whatever higher up or something like that. It just
it just read the room, dude. Like, it's over. We
(10:13):
don't like it anymore. We have been rejecting it for
probably four years now. I would
say probably after Marvel end games, that's
when we it really started to ramp up where we were just like, we're done
with this. We don't want it anymore.
(10:37):
But that's where we're at.
It's not great. It's not good, but
I just I I just wish they
would understand that we just really just
we just wanna play games. We just don't care. We just care
(10:57):
about things that are fun. And when you implement things that just
aren't fun, we just don't like it. Which speaking of what's
not fun is talking about Randy Pitchford again. Jeez. Like,
this dude does not know how to shut up. Like,
the PR people are like, dude, be quiet. Like, you're not helping the
situation. But
(11:20):
he basically stated that he does not know the price of the Borderlands four,
responded on x and regarding the potential price Borderlands four, which suggests
should should not be $80. Yeah. A lot of people are like, why?
But then he's like, oh, but if you're a real fan, you would pay for
you pay $80 for it because when he
was younger, he bought an $80 game in 1991, which is really
(11:43):
expensive back in 1991. Mind you, the game
he's talking about, star flight did not sell well.
It it's it's kind of a cult classic, but it didn't sell well because it
was $80. And 91, like, $20 was
expensive back then because your money went a lot longer.
And then when you add on to that, you're like, yeah. $80 for this game
(12:05):
in 1991, everybody's like, no. I'm good. So I don't
really understand this because it wasn't it
wasn't one of the top selling games on the Sega Genesis system. It was I
think Sonic's a hedgehog too, was it? And that wasn't $80.
So I don't understand his comment. He's like, if you're a true fan,
so we'll help. Like, why is it $80
(12:27):
again? But then he went back and he's and
you start talking more about it. He's he
just does not know when to shut up. He's
like, yeah. But because Borderlands four is more than twice the development
budget of borderline three, and everybody's like, why? Why is it? Because it's
successful. That doesn't make any sense. When did you wanna keep it, like, a good
(12:50):
budget so you could sell more games? You wouldn't have, like, that high,
like, standard of I have to sell this many units to actually break
even. Like, I don't understand the development or the publishers anymore.
Because it seems like they're just like, let's just throw 10 different
studios and have a $300,000,000 budget.
And then, hopefully, we'll sell breakeven
(13:14):
because it plus with marketing, it's probably half a billion
dollars just to get it to break even.
And that's my issue with all this. It's like, stop. You can make
games with small devs, small
units. You don't have to have 15 different
huge developers making one game. I mean, I'm looking
(13:36):
at Battlefield. I'm looking at Call of Duty. You guys are ballooned
so much that you almost lost the point of
these games. And this is where we're
at. Like, we need to really start going how
to make a successful game, not just throwing money at it, not just throwing more
people at it because then you start losing what made the game
(13:59):
special when you have too many people making one game.
I get that DICE hasn't done a really good job with Battlefield,
but that's just because you didn't have strong leadership, and then
the higher ups got, I think, way more involved than they should have.
But when you don't have a strong vision, that's what kills most games.
(14:20):
We're gonna make a game like this. What's it supposed to be about? I don't
know. We'll figure it out. And that's like, woah. Okay. That's not good.
Anyways, moving on to Fortnite. So Fortnite had
a Star Wars themed event, and
they reintroduced Star Vader, and they use AI generated voice based on James
(14:41):
Earl Jones. And they just can interact with Darth Vader in real time with certain
limitations. And, well, SAG AFTRA would well,
wasn't happy about this. However, the funny part is
is that Fortnite did give permission from the James Earl Jones estate to
actually use that. So it's not like they went,
like, rogue and just as well. Yeah. Whatever. We'll just use it. No. They actually
(15:03):
got permission from the estate to do this.
But then SAG is like, no. No. No. You didn't talk to us about it.
We're supposed to be a part of this. It's like, this is why I hate
unions because they really
do like, they don't innovate.
They really do just it's kinda like this protection of it, and they will not
(15:25):
innovate because of the because innovation a lot of times means less
jobs. And so what they will do specifically is say, like, nope. And
then you have the people that don't do very well that have to get paid
the same as the people that do do very well. And so it really does
hamper, like, a competitive competitiveness and trying
to be better at your at your profession.
(15:47):
So sag is mad because they didn't
inform about it. And I guess it's a violation
of labor laws, I guess. Like, I
it it it doesn't really seem like a solid argument
because and I'm not a big fan of epic, mind you.
I don't like Tim Sweeney very much. I think a lot of his arguments are
(16:08):
dumb, especially when it comes to monopolies because
he keeps on, like, being mad that Steam's a monopoly, but he forgets that
his own company is a monopoly with the Unreal Engine
because it is monopoly on the on the gaming engine side. It's
like unreal engine is the most popular engine. It wasn't like that about
twenty years ago because you had ID, and ID tech four was, like, the
(16:30):
most popular game for ID, and then they just didn't do anything, and then
epic took over. Now you have any other engines.
Dice has their own frostbite. You have
the cry tech engine. You have several other ones.
They're not just as big. Ubisoft has their own engine. Snowdrop, I think
it's called. You have your they have their own, but it just isn't
(16:53):
that popular. So with
this, I'm more on the side of epic because they did
talk to
the state of James Earl Jones and
they got permission. That's all you really should need.
(17:18):
So moving on to the former lead writer, for Dragon
Age compared exhibition 33 to Baldur's Gate three stating
that both games serve as love letters to their respective genres and
have broader appeal than typical typically expected.
Gator, I think, is it is is the last name, noted the
(17:38):
impressive sales of Baldur's Gate three, which he will use contradicts previous
assumptions about RPG audience sizes, specifically that it caps
at around 5,000,000. He mentioned that many good games
do not achieve commercial success for various reasons, including market
saturation. He highlighted that blowsgate three
benefited from extended early access period while
(18:00):
Expedition 33 faced challenges in getting approval from large
publishers like Ubisoft. Both games have received
overwhelmingly positive user ratings and are performing well on Steam.
Yes. I started finally playing Expedition 33, and it's a it's a
great game so far. I'm still trying to get the whole, like, Barry
and Dodge thing, but I'll eventually get
(18:22):
there. But he's right. I mean, you can't really
define the audience because it depends on what the game
is. I mean, Skyrim was popular because mostly
because of mods. I mean, it's a fun game, but mods has really
made it what it is. Ballersgate three was great
even though it already had a success from one and two because
(18:44):
Bioware originally created Bowls gate one and two. It was like their first big
successes was these two games. And then they went on to make their own,
and then, fortunately, they lost their pedigree,
but they were huge successes.
And then you had boulders gate three different studio, but still
(19:05):
recreated the magic of what boulders gate was and people loved it.
Yes. It did. It was an early access, and people were complaining
about early access. But all in all, it was a regret game.
Expedition 33 brought it back to turn based style
action with some real time action. I mean,
the Perry and the Dodge is real more real time.
(19:28):
So it was a hybrid, but it was still fun because no one was
doing anymore. Square Enix abandoned that or Squaresoft. I don't know.
They changed their name so many times. It's just, yeah, Square Enix abandoned it
for the Final Fantasy to be more real time, and they coulda
kept it. Especially for Final Fantasy seven, they coulda kept it and
(19:48):
kind of, like, looked at what exhibition thirty three did and be like,
this is actually a pretty good system. But, no, they went to more of a
real time system, which I mean, it's alright. You
just don't really like as much as what it used
to be. But, I mean, it's a testament to
even old things can become popular again, and maybe just
(20:10):
don't, like, hate on, like, genres because you just don't know the audience. You
can assume the audience size. But unless you create
a game and make it and see what the audience size is,
it's all speculation. If it's a great game, people will buy it. If it's
not, then, yeah, you don't have an audience. It's all about the perception of the
audience to your game and if the game's good or not. Because if the game's
(20:33):
good, it's accessible enough for people who wanna play it, then you're
gonna sell a lot. But if it's not and the writing's
terrible and it's just kind of like,
not what it used to be, I'm looking at you dragon age, then, yes, no
one's gonna buy it.
But that's the thing. I still think RTS is
(20:56):
should come back. I think tempest rising is a great game, and I think that
EA is sitting on a gold mine that they just haven't figured out
yet because they're too focused on first person shooters.
That's all they really wanna make. They're they're basically becoming Activision.
Because that's what all Activision makes now is Call of
(21:17):
Duty. And I stopped playing that game because that gave me
it's weird with all the with all the skins and stuff. It
just it's it becomes like Fortnite, and I'm
just not into that. Alright. Moving on to
Overwatch two and has released an update chain changes
to stadium mode. The update includes tweaks to the mercy rule
(21:39):
item, purchase adjustments, introduction of a new character named
Freya, and hero balance changes. The mercy rule previously required
a cash disparity of 15,000 between teams to trigger an immediate
win for the leading team after winning three rounds in a row. The cash
disparity required to trigger the mercy rule has been reduced to 10,000.
Blizzard has stated that they will monitor the changes to the mercy rule and may
(22:03):
consider further adjustments in the future. Hey. Look. Overwatch two
is having its heyday again because of stadium. People are really excited about
stadium. Marvel rivals have fallen off a little bit, but that does
happen. I mean, that's the nature of live service
games. They're, like, they're popular for a time, and then they're not.
New update comes, everybody plays it, and then they don't.
(22:26):
That's that is the vicious cycle of life service
games. Look at hell divers too. Fun game, excellent
game, but you always wait for the next update and see if the next
everybody is good enough to play the game. And if it is, then you play
the game. If it's not, you don't. So there
you go. All right. So
(22:48):
Bethesda has announced the doom. The dark ages is the biggest launch in
ID software, thirty four year history.
I don't know about that one. The game reached 3,000,000 players achieving
the milestone seven times faster than doom eternal.
Again, it's 3,000,000 players, not unit sold.
(23:10):
Bethesda did not provide sales numbers or details on development and
marketing expenses. Again, not a good sign.
And I'm not, I'm not doing a review after this. It's gonna be later, but
it's not a good sign. And I always say, show me the
numbers. Don't do the trust me, bro, because the trust me,
(23:31):
bro, is never a good thing to have. I
don't want how many players have, quote, unquote, played the game because I
don't know what your metric is and how long it like, they
booted up for ten seconds and decided to I'm
good. I mean, what do you want from
that? I mean, we can
(23:53):
check right now and see how
many players
are playing this. But, I mean, all in all, I've not
had a terrible time with this game. It's just
it's just annoying that they don't actually give
numbers. And it's like, I want numbers. Tell me the
(24:17):
numbers. Don't tell me how many players have played it. Right now
in game, as we speak, there's about 12,000 players playing it, which is not
good. For a new game to come out,
it's not good
because it it should be
a lot more.
(24:40):
But unfortunately, they're
using game pass numbers to kinda, like, shore up that. I mean,
it's it's gotten 85% review on Steam, so it's
good. I mean, the all type peak, unfortunately, was only been
31,000, which is not good at all.
(25:01):
So and that's steam numbers. That's the only numbers I can actually have.
So I don't think it's looking good for doom the dark
ages. It's unfortunate because it's probably
one of the least woke games from, like, a triple a
modern game that we've seen in a while.
But we'll see if there's more of an uptake, but, I
(25:24):
mean, there's over almost close to 15,000 positive
reviews and about 2,000 negative reviews.
So it's sitting pretty in a pretty good review, but we've seen that before
with assessment's creed shadows and
dragon age, veil guard.
(25:47):
Anyways, we'll see. We'll see if they actually give numbers, but
I I it's just marketing
speak. When you see them changing from units sold to
just players, you're like, oh, 3,000,000 players.
I don't know what that actually means. And it just it's a vanity metric
now. It doesn't mean anything.
(26:10):
Because if there's if
there's, like, three or more million players
for game pass, then you've really just said, hey, look,
everybody's playing on game pass. That's not
good because you really want units sold as well. And if they're not giving you
(26:30):
units sold means it's not selling very well.
Anyways, moving on to NetEase announced
details from Marvel's, two and a half season two and a
half set for May 30, which is in
about seven days. The update will
(26:52):
in introduce Ultron as a playable hero. A new
map named Rico will be added,
which has been taken over by Ultron. The update includes balance changes
and new team ups while also retiring some old team
ups. Ultron will be will have abilities including
the and cephleray
(27:14):
drone summons for healing abilities and the ultimate ability called
rage of Ultron, which apparently is just drones that can
either heal your your team or
damage the opponent. There's also six
new team ups will be introduced including community request in move
called Jeff Nato, which basically combined Storm and Jeff.
(27:36):
So it should be interesting. Four team ups will be removed including
the Venom, Penny's, Spidey team up using a
symbiotic bond. A new limited time mode called
Ultron's battle matrix protocol will allow players to assemble teams and
engage in auto battling chessboard like field.
Season two of Marvel rivals will end around mid July
(27:57):
as it is the last season to run for three months,
while season three transitions into a two month
schedule. And the executive producer has acknowledged the
need for harsher penalties for players who rage quit ranked matches, which is
fair. I mean, if you're gonna do that, yeah, you should probably have strict
(28:17):
penalties. I don't really care about quick play. If you leave, someone will join,
or if not, you lose. It doesn't really matter as much. But, you know, rank
play, yeah, if someone leaves, yeah, harsh better harsh penalties
is a okay with me on that one. Alright. We got some news
for the Warhammer 40 k series. There's a huge sale going on right now
in Steam. You can actually get which I download. I didn't know, but it looked
(28:40):
like it was a part of the bolt gun game, but it's not. It's a
typing game. Look. It looks like in the bolt gun game, which you could
download for free, which I think is pretty cool, to be honest with you. I
mean, it's always great to learn how to type faster.
But how cat games has revealed a news, new set
game set in the Warhammer 40 k universe. The game is titled 40 k
(29:00):
dark heresy. It describes as a party
based story driven CRPG, computer role playing game.
Okay. And it really doesn't find it was
probably it's probably more turn based than anything else. Players will take on the role
of a acolyte on the inquisition. The game will involve
leading investigation, uncovering conspiracies, mastering technical
(29:23):
combat, and waging a secret war against heresy. And there's no release
date. We also had bolt gun two being released. It's coming soon
as well because bolt gun was a really fun game. It's kinda like
doom and, like, the Warhammer 40 k series, first person
shooter type of a thing. So it's pretty fun. It's not that
expensive right now. And then Sega and Relic Entertainment announced
(29:45):
the release of Warhammer 40 k space marine mastercrafted
edition. The addition is a remaster of the original Warhammer 40
k space marine, which was first released in 02/11 on the PS three,
Xbox three sixty, and PC. The remaster will be available on
PC, Xbox series x and s on
June 10. There is currently no information on a potential release
(30:07):
for the PS five. The game will be available on Xbox game pass on its
launch day. So sorry, PS five players, you cannot play it for
whatever reason. Not really quite sure why, but the
original space for anyone was great. Relic was the
original developer on that one, and then it was transferred over to
saber interactive. But the first one was a fun game. People
(30:30):
loved it. So I'm all for it. They also
are is it remastering
the strategy game that relic made for Warhammer 40 k original one as
well? So look out for that. Should be fun.
Then moving on to something interesting that
didn't think would ever happen, but
(30:52):
Star Wars Battlefront two is popular again. Mainly because of
Andor, because that was actually pretty fun. And so
players have wanted well, they
want Battlefront three. Guess what? That's not really gonna be
happening anytime soon. What more likely happened from developer side, what he
said because most of the people that made
(31:15):
Battlefront two from dice have left. There's about three left from the
live team, and that's really all that remains. So what he actually stated
was if they actually remastered Battlefront two for
the modern consoles and PCs, then they can get
there. And it's a lot less of a lead time. If it's if it's
successful, they can make
(31:38):
Battlefront three, and that could actually help them understanding the
systems behind it and getting up to date with how to make Battlefront
games, or they just start over and just redo it. But,
anyways, for the time being, there's gonna be no
Battlefront three. One of the reasons why is because the CEO of
EA really doesn't wanna do Star Wars games, just expensive
(32:01):
licensing fees and all that stuff. So you may not see it
ever, or you may or if it gets really popular or if they
actually do a a remaster, it and that sells well. Like you
said, it could happen, but I would not hold my breath out for this.
Now I'm redownloading it because I'm like, I wonder how popular it is because
I mean, I enjoyed battlefront too. It was a fun game, but
(32:24):
don't expect battlefront three
anytime soon.
Alright. And so I have finished doing the dark ages
because I'm a fan of doom, and I actually thought this was gonna be not
very woke game. And I was I was mostly correct.
There's very little quote unquote woke in
(32:47):
there. I mean, it's it's it's a game
that still understands what its player audience is, which is
mostly men. And so the story is not
great. I would not even say it's
marginally good. There's a lot of plot holes. There was a lot of issues with
I had with it. I really don't understand why, like, the
(33:08):
Slayer is already the Slayer, but we don't really understand why. We get
kind of like here and there about why he became the
slayer, but there really isn't, like, enough
for me to go, oh, okay. Now I get why he did it. The
slayer actually talks. It actually says one word in
the game, which is interesting. But for the most part, this
(33:31):
helmet is on. They take a helmet off a few times, but for the most
part, it's on. Now
the combat is still it's not as good
as 02/2016, in my opinion, but it's better than doom
eternal. Sorry. I I just don't like the Mario
(33:51):
version of doom very much. I thought it was kind of annoying. We still need
to actually finish doom eternal. That's how bad it
is. But
the ground combat with the shield, I think that shield was a good addition.
I actually do think the shield kind of brings in a lot of interesting things
you could do with it, like blocking, like, stunning
(34:13):
big characters as long as they don't have armor or just killing a bunch
of them kinda like Captain America, but a little bit more bloody style.
Weapons are interesting. You got, like, you got, like, a nail gun and
there's, like, variations of it. There's not a lot of guns, but there's enough
to kinda like vary it. You also introduction of melee
weapons and you also have your, you have your fists. You also have
(34:37):
the mace and then kind of like a flail as
well. And then your shield there's upgrades to all this,
but your shield has, like, specific upgrades where additional
ones to, like, electrify enemies
through, there's an auto turret part of it. There's, like,
different types of things you could do with it. So there's replayability with
(34:59):
it, but
the dragon flight one is pretty fleshed out. It's
pretty interesting to play. It's still not as good as the ground combat, and the
mech one was probably the weakest out of all of them.
So that was kind of easy and not
(35:20):
as fun to play, but luckily, the mech combat,
it's it's not most of the game or I kind of not really be
enjoying it. So that's great. Now
it runs really well on my PC. I have
a AMD Ryzen 7,900 x. I have
a Nvidia thirty ninety. So I'm two
(35:42):
generations behind right now. Also, I have 64 gigs of RAM,
so it ran really well. I did not run into any
bugs while playing the game. However,
I did run into some weird bugs.
For example, every time I boot it up, I'm gonna I technically have three
monitors, but the Elgato prompter is kind of a
(36:05):
monitor. But it would switch. And I would have to switch back when
I booted it up, which is weird. And then
when I first was trying to get into it, it would not load at all.
It would crash every single time. So if you're running into
this and you have a Ryzen CPU,
disable the APU or the the graphics driver
(36:28):
within your CPU, and it will run fine. That's what I had I had
to search this out. I had to figure it out, but, apparently, it was trying
to run through that one and not my actual NVIDIA card, so it would
never run. It drove me nuts.
So that wasn't good. But I it seemed really
well optimized for me. I saw no slowdown whatsoever, and there was a
(36:51):
lot of different enemy or demons coming after me, and
I had no problems with it. Like I said, there's very little to
know, like, kinda like wokeness in it. It still very much
is doom guy, and he is the central part of the story. Yes.
There is a woman in there. Yeah. She's kinda part of
the story. She kinda helps you out. But without you, you
(37:15):
she would not know that she was what she was or anything
like that. Without you, the human race would die.
Without you, the demons would win. Like, this is
very, like, the Slayer is the central part
of the story. So when people say it's woke,
they don't understand it. It's not.
(37:39):
Now is it worth the price tag? Probably not. It took me about
fifteen hours to complete, which is not great
for like a $70.80 dollar game. Now mind you,
there is gonna be more single player stuff, but I kinda
wanted more. I know you can replay them. And I think
(37:59):
without multiplayer, it kind of seems like it's
not that great of a value. And I do
think what they should have done instead is do like a, like a type of
a co op thing, maybe kinda like a leadership board against your friends to
see who could, like, do it better or kill demons
quickly or something like that to bring kind of a community based thing together. Because
(38:20):
the multiplayer is the other ones never really lasted very long. No one really played
them very much. They kinda had their heyday for a while, and then people stopped
playing it. So I understand why they did they dropped the
multiplayer. It wasn't working. They couldn't find
what worked for doom anymore, and that's fine because doom
really never had a multiplayer. It was always a single
(38:43):
player specific game until doom 02/2016.
So it's not like they're going against what it originally was.
It's just I wish the game was longer
and wish there
was, like, a coop portion of it.
(39:05):
And I think that would actually have helped with the sales.
Maybe they'll add it later. Maybe they won't. I don't really know for sure.
But all in all, it's still a fun game. Like, I
still had a blast, like, throwing my shield, doing stuff, trying to,
like, block at the right times. Like, it it was fun.
(39:25):
People complaining about it. That's fine. I mean, most of
the complaints are about the price tag, and that's that's a fair assessment.
But it's still a really fun game. I had fun playing it. I had fun
playing the doom guy being the badass on
doom. So I'd say if you
actually have the money for it, buy it. If you don't, just wait for a
(39:47):
sale. But it's it's as close as you
can get to to doom 2,016 combat wise.
Story wise, I really
wasn't that impressed with it, but combat wise, I was,
and I was happy with it. So,
anyways, what did you think
(40:11):
about doom? What do you think about anything I've talked about? Leave a comment
below, and I will get back to you. But thank you for listening to Digital
Coffee Gaming Brew. I really do appreciate it. And please subscribe to this podcast
on your favorite podcasting apps. We have a five star review. It will just help
with the rankings. Let me know how I'm doing. Enjoy me next week as I
talk about what's going on in the gaming industry. Alright, guys. Stay safe. Get to
(40:31):
gaming what you wanna gain and not be told that you're terrible for not
liking games. If you don't like them. See you next week.
Later.
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