The Game Awards & Upcoming Video Games | Game Junction Podcast

Ever wondered if a long-dormant game series could make a triumphant return? This episode is bursting with surprises as we unpack the latest announcements from beloved franchises like Onimusha, Ninja Gaiden, and Turok. With a sprinkle of humor and a dash of skepticism, we navigate the gaming awards show maze, share our thoughts on the unexpected twists, and openly critique the decisions that left us scratching our heads. Plus, our personal shoutouts and recent pickups, including some sweet audio gear and cinematic treasures, keep the excitement rolling.

Shifting gears, we tackle the intriguing rumors of a resurgence in SteamOS-driven handhelds. Could the Asus ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go be redefining portable gaming? We explore the potential of these devices and ponder Valve's possible return to the console scene with a new Steam Machine. The discussion heats up as we dissect the enduring allure of live service games like Fortnite and Apex Legends, and marvel at the unexpected success of Marvel Rivals. Our insights don't stop there; the buzz around Switch 2 leaks fuels a spirited debate on the legitimacy and implications for accessory makers.

Finally, we wade through the complex waters of PC building, GPU mining, and industry trends, offering our candid takes on what it all means for gamers today. We share our excitement and concerns for upcoming titles, including the HD re-release of Okami and the next chapter in the Borderlands saga. Along the way, we reflect on the broade

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Bonfire Merch:
to get the recording put intothe driver stuff like that, so
that we could get everythingworked out for the audio podcast
stuff so what we're going to dois we're going to upload that
to YouTube as a bonus episodeand then to the audio as a bonus
episode and then just run withthe straight numbers.

(00:20):
So we're just kind of notcounting last week as a number.
This is basically going to be apost-game awards podcast,
pretty much.
But there was a lot more thanwe thought at the end of the
show that actually did happenand get announced.
And there was a lot, man, therewas a lot more than I thought.

(00:41):
I actually had the thoughttoday.
I was kind of like oh, I don'tlike some of the decision making
with, yeah, we're jumping rightinto it, but I don't like some
of the decision making with theway that Jeff Keighley is
running certain things as far asthe ad stuff and getting the ad
revenue and things like thatand in the actors and actresses

(01:02):
and stuff like that.
But overall, like like I've gotto say I think like this is the
most successful like gameindustry game awards show
there's been, because there'sbeen there were so many
announcements for a completelydead series, for you know,
onimusha, ninja Gaiden, turok,these series that haven't been

(01:24):
around for a long time.
So, but yeah, I guess we'llensure the podcast.
Yeah, some might say good, good,some might say yeah For sure.

(02:55):
Yeah, yeah for sure.
Get those little shout outs andstuff.
Shout out to kyle robinson, uh,subscribing 11 hours ago.
Shout out.
I also saw the junction networkgot some new subscribers, uh,
since yesterday.
So cool, cool.
But yeah, I guess we would talkabout the game awards.

(03:15):
Um, I'll talk a little bitabout Indiana Jones, cause I
played it.
Um, and then Mark pretty muchcovered the base for most of the
news, uh, last week.
So really just going to be apost-game awards thing.
You know, I guess, kind ofwhat's up with me and Mark this
week and you know everythinggoing on there Any news on your
end, mark, any cool stuffhappening, or you know, did you

(03:49):
get any pickups this week?
Cool, we can hit it now.
We never hit it at thebeginning of the show, why not?
Game Ward's going to take upmost of it.
So, yeah, he's like oh, I forgotas soon as we were done.
Yeah, I know you're a big Segafan too.

(04:24):
Sega does a lot of figures, alot of figures.
Is it from Funbox the company?
Because I have?

(04:44):
Yeah, I think that's Funbox.
Yeah, I used to have somefigures from them.
They got cool stuff that's likelimited run games.
Man, I'll be like oh, Icompletely forgot, I pre-ordered

(05:05):
that.
Yeah, yeah, right, no betterthan the VHS days.
Yeah, I've been wanting towatch that Because of DVD and

(05:44):
Blu-ray.
I've been wanting to watch thatfor a long time.
Is it based on a Super Sentaicharacter?
Not a Super Sentai character,more like Not Kamen Rider, but

(06:04):
Some weird, because it wascalled Gargantua man or
something.
What the source material wascalled.
I don't know, it might not beit, but Jet Jaguar is still a
little cooler.

(06:27):
Gotcha gotcha, are this two ofthe same movies?
You bought two of them.
Oh, they're different.
Okay, thank you.

(07:32):
Oh, so she's like a what's theword for it here?
A scribe, all right, sucks.
That's kind of dope.

(07:59):
You find somethingheart-wrenching.
That's shocking.

(08:19):
I, I am shocked that you feelanything at all.
You had a black solo.

(08:57):
I was trying to see what I, oh,I remember.

(09:31):
Yeah, oh, nice, how is it so?
They do a lot of that.

(09:51):
Let's combine the first coupleepisodes of the show into a
movie.
Yeah, yeah, hey, thanks forfollowing from our short video.

(10:29):
Appreciate that?
Yeah for sure, sounds cool.
It's hard for me to showanything because I just dropped
a pickups video that showedeverything off pretty much there
, and then I'm filming anothervideo with stuff that you sent

(10:53):
out, so I just grabbed a coupleof things to show.
I can't sit here and showeverything like I want to do a
video on it.
I think it would do betterjustice.
It would be cool to be able tospend some time to talk about
everything.
Okay, yeah, no worries.

(11:13):
The first thing was I showed mypickup studio, which was the big
thing.
This was the big boy purchasewas the Rode Wireless Go
microphones.
So it comes with, uh, two micsand then a receiver.
So this was the big boypurchase.
Um, I, I've been needing thesefor videos for a while and uh,

(11:36):
look at my talking to himselfthere, he's laughing.
Oh man, I see you laughing.
Uh man, I see you laughing,yeah.
So we just picked that up.
And then a couple of thingsthat came in the mail from Mark
was I was just going to show acouple of Blu-rays.
I love Blu-rays, I love 4KBlu-rays.

(12:00):
So I know I saw you laughingback at me rays.
So I, yeah, I know I saw youlaughing back at me, uh, no, I
see I got my big boy purchasewith the road wireless go
microphones for regular videos.
Finally, um, and then I wasgoing to show a couple of the
blu-rays, but, uh, pressprincess mononoke, a classic

(12:23):
Studio Ghibli film, one thateverybody should watch.
I would say it's one of theessentials.
It's an amazing film, freezing,which I had never seen.
This one, so this one I have tocheck out.

(12:45):
Okay, it doesn't scream ecchi,besides the boobs, I guess, but
I mean every anime is like that.
Now Then the other really coolone.
I love all the Studio Ghiblistuff, so I wanted the two packs
for Ponyo and my NeighborTotoro.
So now I'm probably it's eitherI'm going to go after all the

(13:06):
Steelbooks or I'm going to goafter all the double packs and
then buy the rest singles,because unfortunately not all
the Studio Ghibli movies come inthese double packs.
There's only like seven sets.
There's six or seven, yeah, butfor some reason not all of them
come in these double packs thatcome with, like, the special

(13:27):
cover and everything like that,which is really weird.
Um, but I might grab those.
I might grab steelbooks I don'tknow yet.
And then one that was superexciting because it's not out on
4k blu-ray.
I don't know why it's not, butit is on blu-ray, which is good,
is one of my favorites,obviously you hockey show.
So I'm really excited.
I said I wanted to revisit that.
It was one.
I said it's not, but it is onBlu-ray, which is good.
It's one of my favorites,obviously, uu Hockey Show.
So I'm really excited.
I said I wanted to revisit that.

(13:48):
It was one I said I wanted totalk about.
So we're definitely going to betalking about it.
I'm going to be revisiting itand excited about that.
So there's just a couple ofthings.
Keep an eye out for anothervideo coming up on mostly anime
and manga, with a couple ofgames and a couple of other
things thrown in there, likePokemon cards and stuff like

(14:09):
that.
So, yeah, I absolutely loved it.
It is one of my favorite things.
I was really excited about that.
That's what I said.
Now I have even more reason tobe able to do it.
I don't stream it anywhere.
I'll tell you what streaminganime kind of sucks, especially

(14:33):
when you go to the illegalwebsites, because the quality is
all over the place.
You might watch like one ofthem sub 720p, like some of them
.
They're so bad, it's like sobad.
But meanwhile Disney plus youcan stream 4k like it is.

(14:54):
It's just like it's kind of abummer that they're like all
over the place, like some arereally good and then others are
like really bad.
I'm like you, you hawk showbeing one where cause I went
back and watched episode one andtwo a few weeks ago, I was
revisiting it a little bit andthen I was watching it on a
website and it was really bad,really, really bad.

(15:15):
This looks like about 10 timesworse than it looked like when
it aired on Tanami on a CRT, butI like watching anime on VHS.
Man, that's what they say.
So I guess we'll go ahead andjump into the Game Awards stuff.
Yeah, we got Nagaswife overhere on TikTok and then

(15:44):
Spacelove just joined in.
So what's up, guys?
Yeah, so I guess before we likeget into like all the
announcements, kind of, we saida little bit before but what did
you think if you had to rate it?
We don't really like the ratingskill, but if you had to rate
it, what would you rate it?
Yeah, yeah, that was reallyannoying.

(16:16):
Yeah, I'm at an 8-2.
That was the first number tocome to my head, because the I
will say they there was.
And then, like the other thingthat brought it down to me for
me was there were too many liveservice games, like PVP live

(16:39):
service games.
There was like 6 announcementsfor those type of games.
They're not.
I mean, that's the thing.
Why are we still getting somany of these?
It's like one out of tenactually survives.
All I can think of is Fortniteand Apex Legends.

(17:04):
I guess Warframe sort of does.
All I can think of is Fortniteand Apex Legends.
Well, I guess Warframe sort ofdoes, but not the same way that
Fortnite and Marvel Rivals is ahuge success, huge success and
it's actually not that bad.
Like we didn't hate it and Iplayed it again.
I tried it again.
I didn't hate it.
I don't like those type ofgames like in general, but I
did't hate it and I played itagain.

(17:25):
I tried it again.
I I didn't.
I didn't hate it.
I don't like those type ofgames like in general, but I did
not hate it and it's got likeover.
I think I think they reachedlike 25 million players already,
which is crazy, like hit somecrazy crazy number.
So it's like, uh, it's chartingeverywhere and people are
playing it and loving it.

(17:45):
I went back to it and I don'teven play those type of games.
Yeah, it's an Overwatch clone,but it's a good Overwatch clone.
I don't like Overwatch MarvelRivals.
I was like I get playing thiswith friends.
I get it.

(18:06):
Yeah, for sure.

(18:33):
Oh, yeah, that's a good grab.
Yeah, scarlet Nexus.

(18:55):
Don't grab that one, though.
Don't recommend Scarlet Nexus.
You like that game?
Is that the game that likeflopped right away?
That's a lot of time for a gamethat flopped.

(19:15):
Yeah, steam sales are nice.
Did you see the rumor thatpopped up today?
It actually came out today thatthe next Asus ROG ally is
actually going to be a SteamOSmachine.
Yeah, we should probably bringthat up.

(19:37):
I didn't think about thatbefore the Game Awards.
One of the rumors that came outwas Steam is making a console
again, and there's more behindit than that.
It's basically that.
I'll type in to verify what theOkay, so SteamOS is here.
It's a public release of theirLinux-based operating system.

(20:01):
Basically, articles are sayingthat the, the new lenovo legion
go, may be the first steam oshandheld not made by valve.
Uh, so it wasn't asus wrongally, but uh, lenovo legion go.
People love that handheld aswell, and so it says.
What's interesting is, if youlook closely at the black

(20:23):
variant, there's a dedicatedSteam button near the left
joystick.
This suggests that Lenovo couldbe one of the third-party
manufacturers to launch ahandheld gaming console based on
SteamOS, and obviously SteamOSworks way better than running
Windows 11 on.
That's the problem with the onedownfall, because I played one.

(20:44):
The one downfall to no, notLenovo the Asus ROG Ally, which
I would say is the best.
The one downfall is that you'rerunning native Windows 11.
So you're not running.
There's no over-the-top OS,there's no operating system.
It's a copy-paste Windows 11.

(21:05):
Yeah, yeah, so that's the onedownfall, but you can still play
steam, you can play game pass,you can play gog, you can play
you know, all that stuff onthere.
So all that makes it reallygood.
It's just that overall you'rerunning windows 11 and in
general, most people hatewindows 11 to begin with.
What's up, melvin Roach?
You're still running 10?

(21:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but what doyou?
What do you think about SteamOSbeing used in other non-Valve

(21:52):
hardware?
And then also, what do youthink about Valve making another
Steam machine, basically aSteam machine too?
We knew they were making a newSteam Deck, but we didn't know
that they were going to make adedicated console.
But it's like just get a PC.

(22:15):
That's kind of how I feel aboutit.
No, not the Steam Deck, but Inot the Steam Deck, but I meant
the Steam.
When I say dedicated console, Imean a dedicated, like a PS5
and a Series X.

(22:38):
That's what I'm saying.
What's the point?
They've done it before theSteam Machine.
I owned it.
I owned that device.
A steam deck makes total sense.
But the other thing I boughtthat steam machine and it was
terrible.
I had one of the worstcontrollers of all time.

(23:01):
It just seems like it just seemslike it doesn't feel like there
would be a market there forthat, but the Steam Deck

(23:23):
obviously is a huge market forAre you?
Yeah, yeah, it could.
Yeah, it could be, I don't know.
Yeah, that's yeah, that's yeah,let me look here.

(23:59):
Good, keep talking.
Yeah, hopefully we get someaudio.
We did something.
I don't see the sound comingthrough the we're do.
We did something differentbefore the stream.
We're using a new beta thing.
So give me just a second.
Yeah, maybe try.

(24:24):
I think I figured it out.
Give me just a second, guys.
I apologize, it's a littleembarrassing there.
Go ahead and talk, mark yeah,you're coming in oh, man, it's
going to be fun for the audiopart explaining that to
everybody.
Alright, we got that.
At least we got that fixed andat least it was early on that we

(24:47):
found out.
But, uh, should should begetting sound coming through,
because you're coming through myboard and you're coming through
my mark mark can speak can you,mark, speak?

Mark Trobough (24:57):
you can't hear me .

Brandon Hurles (24:58):
Now it's not just me talking and nothing's
coming through um, but yeah, Imean I just, uh, the steam os.
I like the idea of that andother handhelds and other coming
through.
But yeah, I mean I just theSteam OS.
I like the idea of that andother handhelds and other
devices.
I think that's kind of cool.
Have you played a Steam Deck?
I?
Haven't the OS itself theoperating system is pretty good.

Mark Trobough (25:18):
It works good.
The problem is I already have aif I'm going to be on the go.
I usually that's what my switchis for, so I'll play Nintendo
games more often than not on thego, so it's just like a good
little steam OS and how it kindof controls, cause it like it's
just like it works like aconsole basically.

Brandon Hurles (25:32):
So I mean, like it it does its job and so them
using steam OS and otherhandhelds makes sense.
Um yeah, I don yeah, I don'tknow, I think it'd be.

(25:53):
Uh, I think it'd be pretty,pretty cool.
I 100% agree with that.
But we do have one other huge,huge, huge thing to talk about
before we get into the gameawards, because it's also like
breaking news for today.
So apparently we got anofficial accessory manufacturer
came out with some images forthe Switch 2.
Some renders of their Basicallytheir protectors came out with

(26:14):
it.
They marked it as Switch 2.
They said they're not answeringany questions right now.
That was it.
I'm trying to pull it up realquick where I retweeted it.

Mark Trobough (26:24):
I'm trying to figure out.
You tagged me with so muchstuff on me.
I'm trying to pull it up realquick where I retweeted it.
I figured out.
I retweeted something.
You tagged me.
It's so much stuff on me.
I was trying to figure out.
Uh, oh, there it is yeah yeah,I, I, I saw this, but this was
kind of confusing that they,that they came out like you,
can't tell me they're not likepotentially breaking some kind
of they have to be breakingsomething legal liability or
some kind of ND.

Brandon Hurles (26:43):
What company is it again?
What's it?
Called PNP dbrandcom was thelink you shared with me.

Mark Trobough (26:51):
So yeah, dbrand, if this is true, you can't tell
me they're not puttingthemselves in trouble for this.

Brandon Hurles (26:58):
You can't just release this.

Mark Trobough (27:00):
Unless this just works for just the Switch itself
, or it could potentially workfor both, but it specifically
says Switch 2.
That doesn't make sense.

Brandon Hurles (27:10):
Switch 2.

Mark Trobough (27:12):
First of all, I can't imagine Nintendo willing
to work with them, but you can'ttell me they're not breaking.
Some kind of this wouldn't openthem up to legal litigation.
What's interesting is we giveyou access to this, but you're
not allowed to announce it.

Brandon Hurles (27:25):
What I think people are ignoring.
What I think people areignoring Is the actual device.
The device covers the front Ofthe console.

Mark Trobough (27:34):
Yeah, but the console Based on the actual
dbrand website.
It just looks like a regularswitch on the inside, to be fair
.

Brandon Hurles (27:41):
So they call it the switch 2, not the curves,
not at all, no, not the actualcase, but the switch to the
curves?

Mark Trobough (27:45):
not at all.
To me it doesn't.
No, not the actual case, butthe the.
The render inside the caselooks like a regular switch um
so it could be one of those tome, because, if you look, at the
joy cons.

Brandon Hurles (27:58):
The joy cons don't have a hump on them.
The joy cons are a flat back.
If you look at the joy cons onthe back of the switch too,
there's this weird hump and likewhere your fingers would go in
between the trigger buttons.

Mark Trobough (28:11):
Based off the render, you can't really see a
whole lot dude, I could see theentire.

Brandon Hurles (28:15):
You can see the entire back of the joy con.
It's got that whole hump on itand joy cons are flat.
Unfortunately, I don't use joycon, so I don't have it on my
switch.
I gotta there's no way this is.

Mark Trobough (28:28):
This is not some like just mock-up for it
regardless.

Brandon Hurles (28:33):
How are they not going to get in trouble?
For this is what I want to knowthat's the problem.

Mark Trobough (28:38):
You can't tell me they're not first of all
nintendo, they're gonna have todo their own thing, like third
market or aftermarket movingforward, but you can't tell me
nintendo's not going to have todo their own thing, like third
market or after market movingforward, but you can't tell me
Nintendo's not going to go afterthem for this.
If this is like an actualdesign of the Switch 2, not just
some mock-up that they've madeon their own for what they think
it's going to look like crazyyou can't just release this and

(28:59):
not expect to get legalliability like cease and Desist
and some other stuff would 100%come out.
You would think so, yeah, that'swhy I'm super skeptical on this
being legit.

Brandon Hurles (29:16):
The thing is that dbrand is a legit company
that I legit own accessoriesfrom and they're a verified
account, not gold verified, so aand their verified account like
not gold verified, so like averified, verified account.

Mark Trobough (29:28):
Yeah, that's why this is a problem, like they
can't just come out and do this.
This is, this isn't a mistake,this is intentional.

Brandon Hurles (29:35):
This can't be like oh, whoopsie, Someone was
stupid.

Mark Trobough (29:38):
You can't tell me that you know this.
This isn't going to be problembecause 100% Nintendo doesn't
want anybody to know about thisuntil they release it themselves
yeah the announcement yeah,yeah, give me.

Brandon Hurles (29:51):
I don't want to get.

Mark Trobough (29:52):
I don't want to get spoiled on it before it
comes out.
I think it takes away from thefun of the actual announcement.
That's that's why I've always,and like a lot of people, hate a
lot of these leaks and stufflike that, because, like you
want, the whole purpose of theannouncement is to be surprised
and to find out, then not beinglike oh well, we already saw

(30:13):
this, so it's not as exciting,just because some random company
decided, oh, we're going torelease something early.

Brandon Hurles (30:25):
I did want to show off one more thing as well.

Mark Trobough (30:36):
As he goes in, walks away and grabs it.
It's okay, we'll laugh atBrandon.
Brandon's such a joker.
He can't hear me right now makefun of him.
Hey, welcome back.
I didn't say anything bad atall.
Yeah right, I heard you sayanything bad at all.
What are you talking about?

Brandon Hurles (30:49):
I heard you say something about when he comes
back.
No, I just Crazy, man, aboutthe dbrand stuff.
Wild it really is.
I just wanted to show off incase you haven't watched the
video.
You guys definitely shouldwatch the video that I dropped
with the pickups.
But I wanted to explain lastweek why I was having problems.

(31:11):
I've never built a PC before,Don't know anything about it.
I'm learning as I go.
First I put a CPU in, Then Iput a GPU in, but I picked up a
4090, a very fairly undervalued4090.
Like under market value Quite90.
Under market value A lot.

Mark Trobough (31:32):
The thing they didn't tell them about it was
they used it for crypto mining.

Brandon Hurles (31:36):
Nah, it's legit, it's good.
I ran all the tests on it andeverything.
Everything's good.
Why would it matter if it wasused for crypto mining?

Mark Trobough (31:46):
Because its lifespan would be drastically
shortened.
You're talking about just thewear and tear on the actual
hardware itself.

Brandon Hurles (31:54):
He said he had it for three months and he had
it received, that's why usuallyoverclocking is such a big thing
for some people.
Do people even overclock likethat now, like they used to,
because I mean, what'sadvertised now is basically like
the Overclocking is not what itused to be.

Mark Trobough (32:18):
No, the advertising says this is the
base level and this is what itcan do.
Overclocked They'll advertiseoverclocking.
You can still technically do it, but it's still technically
extra wear and tear on thehardware.

Brandon Hurles (32:29):
Right, you're wearing down your system Extra
10% performance or 15%performance.

Mark Trobough (32:34):
But most people that overclock already probably
have the money for the high-endgear, so they're trying to get
the most out of the hardware.
Most of those people probablyget new hardware every year
anyways from the new 5090s,6090s, so it comes out, and
stuff like that.
They're just selling what theyhad for a year and then buying
the new thing.
They don't really care becausethey're not going to have it to
where the wear and tear is goingto be possible.

Brandon Hurles (32:55):
The guy seemed legit and everything like that.
He actually went back to.
He was showing me everything hesaid, the fun that he has.
He doesn't really have funplaying games anymore.
He has fun building PCs.
But he went back to a 4070 Tibecause he doesn't have time to
play games, so he had no use fora 4090 anymore.

Mark Trobough (33:15):
It's just sitting there.
It's just sitting there.

Brandon Hurles (33:19):
The price he sold it for essentially paid for
the 4070 Ti it was under MSRPwhich, if you know anything,
these are going for about 3-4times MSRP which, if you know
anything, these are going forabout three to four times MSRP
right now the 4090?

Mark Trobough (33:30):
Yeah, you can find it for $3,000 to $4,000 all
day.
But it's normally $1,500.
Yeah, it's normally $1,500.
What is the cost of my wholerig right now with the 4070?

Brandon Hurles (33:43):
So I paid under that.
I'll just say that I paid underthe MSRP, which is very hard to
do for a used one on eBay.
I mean you're looking at likethree grand right now.

Mark Trobough (33:55):
I appreciate it, mr Coffee.
He said hey, kid want to hop inmy van and look at my GPU?
Sure, mister.

Brandon Hurles (34:03):
Those are run hot.
Those are crypto machines to beon for days.
Yeah, that makes sense, I guess.

Mark Trobough (34:08):
Well, they essentially run 24-7.

Brandon Hurles (34:10):
Yeah, crypto mining is just stupid, I'm sorry
.
That's the problem For anycrypto bros that we have
following, I'm sorry.
Crypto mining sucks.

Mark Trobough (34:19):
It makes sense.
The problem is they didn't sellthose GPUs.
The problem is they might lastthree months before they go dead
on you.

Brandon Hurles (34:27):
The problem is they might last three months
before they go dead on you.

Mark Trobough (34:30):
That's the problem, which is a problem?
Yeah, because they're running.
They're essentially running atmax.

Brandon Hurles (34:35):
They're running maxed out for months on it.
I know a guy that bought three4090s when they first came out.
What in 2021?
He bought three of them, andall for crypto mining.
He got nowhere with it.
He still works at his localretail store.

Mark Trobough (34:53):
The problem is when did Bitcoin come out?
Like 2012 or something likethat?

Brandon Hurles (34:58):
Yeah it's been around for a long time.

Mark Trobough (35:00):
The problem is if you really wanted to get into
it and you immediately get intoit immediately, then the problem
is now if you want to make anymoney, you essentially need a
warehouse of just nothing butcrypto.
Mine at this point, yeah, toreally make money just because
of the they all run minecraftand everything, yeah it gets
harder to to do the calculationsand to get more out of a

(35:21):
bitcoin is more time goes onbecause there's there's just
less of there's like a.
I guess, if you think of it,this is not wrong.
But for example, at its start,say Bitcoin, it only has, say,
100 Bitcoins and you can onlymine that for so long until it's
all been mined.
And once all the crypto hasbeen mined, that's it, there's
no more.

(35:41):
So there is a hard cap on whatyou can have.

Brandon Hurles (35:45):
Yeah, I just I don't necessarily get it.
I don't understand the mining.
How can you just buildsomething and it digs up Bitcoin
.

Mark Trobough (35:55):
It's doing mathematical equations, that's
all it's doing.
Essentially, it sounds likerobbing a bank.
It's essentially just it'sdoing a lot of it's doing a lot
of equations to find the the newbitcoin essentially for
whatever it does.
I haven't dug into it sincelike probably 2021, 2022, uh,

(36:17):
because I knew, I knew a guythat knew about it.
He didn't mind bitcoin but hein, he traded in bitcoin, in
bitcoin stock essentially yeah,one bitcoin is worth like
fourteen thousand dollars now,which is crazy.
No it's close, it's like it'sabove.
It worth like fourteen thousanddollars now, which is crazy.
No, it's close, it's like it'sabove.
It's above ninety thousandright now whoa I can pull it up
right now bitcoin.
The bitcoin price right now isa hundred two thousand one

(36:38):
hundred and five dollars rightcrazy.
It's spiked in the last, like Ithink it's.
It's spiked back in.

Brandon Hurles (36:45):
November.
I think that's wild.
I got way too much of my mentallearn from what I've been
through.

Mark Trobough (36:54):
I finna do what I yeah it it it spiked, uh,
around the 6th or 7th ofNovember is when it spiked from
70,000 all the way to like90,000 in Spain, like a week or
two wild so from like earlyNovember to like Thanksgiving,
it spiked about about $20,000and it slowly on an up and up
that's crazy man.

Brandon Hurles (37:16):
Yeah, it's wild uh M said why Snoop Dogg was in
Game Awards, said Snoop's a G, Iknow, but Game Awards of all
things, it's kind of weird.
And he's like I want to be in avideo game and I guarantee
he'll's kind of weird.
And he's like I want to be in avideo game and I guarantee
he'll be in a.
I mean, he's already been in avideo game.

Mark Trobough (37:32):
Anyway, I mean he's got money.
That's the thing.
He just chills now all day.

Brandon Hurles (37:38):
Can you blame him?

Mark Trobough (37:41):
Especially with all the royalties at this point.
Yeah, dude.

Brandon Hurles (37:44):
Oh my gosh, he bought.
Death Row Records and they havea game studio Called Death Row
Games.
Apparently it's crazy.
I might have to look that upreal quick.
I don't know if that was a jokeor if he was like being serious
, but with it being him, Ibelieve it's serious.

Mark Trobough (38:01):
I mean he's an actual gamer.

Brandon Hurles (38:03):
I know he loves the PS5.

Mark Trobough (38:05):
Ubisoft made a game called Death Row back in
what, 2002?
.

Brandon Hurles (38:10):
Yeah, Death Row Underground.
Team Combat.

Mark Trobough (38:14):
Yeah, like 2002 Xbox games.

Brandon Hurles (38:16):
That is a horrible name.
New Regency.

Mark Trobough (38:20):
Teams of Death Row Games.

Brandon Hurles (38:22):
Oh no, death Row Games is real Interesting.
Yeah Well, snoop Dogg's infortnight now, but you know so
hey, that's how you know.

Mark Trobough (38:33):
Snoop dog now official.
He's in fortnight.
That means he made it.
He's popular enough to berelevant everything's been in
fortnight now.

Brandon Hurles (38:40):
I mean like fortnight's got like five modes.
Now I just got guitar here.
For God's sake yeah, it's now.

Mark Trobough (38:46):
It's got its own.
Uh, what's that hero shooter?
Now it's got its own heroshooter.

Brandon Hurles (38:48):
Yeah, now it's got an arena shooter.
What the heck?
I mean, it makes sense thatthey're jumping in the train,
because everything else is, Iguess.
But what do you guys think ofthe Muppets?
The Muppets was weird.
They were kind of annoying, Ilike the Muppets, but I don't
like those.
Muppets.

Mark Trobough (39:04):
I like them riffing on Jeff Keighley.

Brandon Hurles (39:06):
Yeah, I like the ripping on Jeff in the show.
But yeah, they were kind ofannoying, To be honest with you.

Mark Trobough (39:14):
After a while I'm like, okay, that's like a lot
of the awards I'm seeing.
They're like aren't thecommercials the game?
Every time it's why do you needother BS commercials in this
thing?
Just keep it going.
Come on, guys, if you need thatextra money for Snoop Dogg,
then you don't need Snoop Dogg,that's at the very least, that's

(39:35):
how I feel about it.

Brandon Hurles (39:35):
I don't know if I should bring this up or we
should save it for the save itfor the other podcast, but the
official lineup for theCrunchyrolls Winter anime lineup
is up.
Just went up today.
Oh no, we're going to betalking about that tomorrow on
the for the Crunchyrolls Winteranime lineup is up.

Mark Trobough (39:49):
Just went up today.
Oh no, because we're going tobe talking about that tomorrow.

Brandon Hurles (39:52):
Okay, we'll just save it for tomorrow.
That's like the whole whole.
Yeah, that's right, I forgotwe're reacting and everything.

Mark Trobough (39:58):
But no, I want to say because I saw it on there,
I think it was at Shiba the Wazover on X.
He was like when white peopleat the Game Awards, when Snoop
Dogg tells them to stand up anddance, it's just a weird meme
with some dude going yeah, yeah,you saw that.
Like those two girls, hot ass.
I'm like oh, y'all are makingfools of yourself.

Brandon Hurles (40:21):
It's a good meme .
That was funny.
That's funny.
Did you see that CyberpunkEdgerunner is getting a Blu-ray
and a prequel?

Mark Trobough (40:30):
That didn't surprise me.
I assume the second.
From what we know the secondseries is going to have.

Brandon Hurles (40:35):
It's not supposed to involve it's getting
a prequel manga sorry Prequelmanga and then it's coming out
on Blu-ray.

Mark Trobough (40:41):
That makes more sense.
I thought they said if theywere ever going to do a second
season, it was going to do asecond season.
It was going to have to be awhole new story.
Those characters or storieshave already been told.

Brandon Hurles (40:50):
Blu-ray coming in 2025.
I love that Edge Runners was sogood.

Mark Trobough (40:56):
I got to go back and watch it suffer through Edge
Runners for a second time.
Not because it's bad, justbecause of how it ends.

Brandon Hurles (41:01):
It's depressing yeah, let's jump into the Game
Awards.
What do we got first that wewant to talk about with the Game
Awards?

Mark Trobough (41:09):
You want to get into the big one with new we can
jump in and just go through thewhole show.
Yeah, I mean this istechnically starting at the end,
but a lot of the talk is withNaughty Dog's new game.
What's it?
Intergalactic, the HereticProphet.
Yeah, I saw grums uh ripping onthis one all around it's all

(41:32):
around the main female characterwho, to be fair, has the butch
shaved, buzz, androgynous look,which seemed to be like what she
can have cancer.
We don't know what's going onwell, she's shaving her head at
the very beginning, like youknow that much.
But people are talking aboutlike, oh, this, this looks like.
If this is in this trailer,this looks like it's going to be
full of DEI, essentially justbased off how they introduced

(41:54):
New Deal.

Brandon Hurles (41:54):
I hope not, because Naughty Dog is a great
studio.
They put out great games.
I hope not.
It's hard to argue with it.

Mark Trobough (42:06):
This is Abby 2.0 with the.
What's the meme?
Neil Cuckman, people go afterNeil Druckmann for.

Brandon Hurles (42:14):
Yeah, neil Cuckman.

Mark Trobough (42:19):
The main character looks androgynous.

Brandon Hurles (42:21):
She really does, which isn't always a bad thing.
I mean, we just don't.
Maybe there's a meaning behindit, maybe I don't know.

Mark Trobough (42:31):
No, that's just Western gaming, to be fair at
this point, because then youlook at what you get out of,
like Japan and Korea and Chinaand stuff like that, and your
female characters actually looklike female characters and in
the West they're kind of likeWell, they look like female
characters that are a littleexaggerated in certain areas of
their body.
But it's a video game.
It's not real life.
Nobody wants to play a gamebased off real life.

(42:53):
You want that fantasy out of agame.
You don't want to be thinkingabout reality.
Let's be fair.
How many times have you caredto see yourself in a male
character?
Never, I haven't.
You want to play as thatmuscular dude.
You like man.
I need to go to the gym more tolook like him.
I need to put some effort intomy.
Stop eating this fast food andstop being lazy.

(43:13):
Go to the gym, workout, eatsome good food stuff like that
yeah because it's a.
It's a fantasy, like a lot ofthese games, like it's you.
You don't want to play as likea weak nerd who just sits on his
computer all day, like wealready do.
You, you want that powerfantasy.
That's, that's the whole.
That's one of the reasonsisekai is an anime are so
popular.
It's that.
It's that fantasy of going froma nobody to a somebody yeah,

(43:36):
going, looking going from a askinny, weak little nerd to
someone who's ripped and getsall the ladies like it's the
same concept.

Brandon Hurles (43:42):
Like to be fair yeah, no, I get it.
I get it.
Um, I guess we'll just we'llhave to see.
We don't know enough about thegame.
We really didn't get to seeanything besides the main
character shaving her head, andthat was it it's a space game.

Mark Trobough (43:58):
You're hunting some guy it was like a bounty
hunter type game Metroid StarWars vibes yeah, it was just a
CGI trailer, so I mean, that'senough ammunition for people
that don't agree with the wholeDEI, or the perceived DEI, to go
after it, but the game itselfnot dealing with that.

(44:18):
There's a lot of people outsideof Grumps that yeah, but you
posted about it a lot today he'sjust the biggest, most well
known feature or the most publicfeature to go after.
But the actual game itself,story-wise, you get a glimpse of
it and then gameplay you didn'tsee any gameplay.
It's all CGI.
I can't remember.

(44:38):
Did we get a release datewindow for this or did they just
say they're working?

Brandon Hurles (44:41):
on this.
I can't even remember.
I'm looking.

Mark Trobough (44:44):
Because I remember getting the title but
they didn't.

Brandon Hurles (44:47):
I think it just said 2025, right, they've been
working on it since 2020,apparently, so 2025 would make
sense.
Five years.

Mark Trobough (44:57):
Because we got I was pulling it back up.

Brandon Hurles (44:59):
Yeah, there's no actual dates, but they've been
working on it since 2020.
So I would say it's a safe betthat 2025 is probably the year.

Mark Trobough (45:09):
If we were coming 2025, you would have gotten the
year on there, which means it'sprobably 2026 or later, to be
fair maybe, yeah, it could be itcould be like a star field
where we get it announced waybeforehand and know it's coming,
and then get disappointed a lotof games that are coming out
next year.
Had a title of just 2025 fornext year if it was coming out
next year.
Had a title of just 2025 fornext year If it was coming out
next year why not tell people?

Brandon Hurles (45:32):
Yeah, what do we got next?

Mark Trobough (45:36):
Let me pull it up .
No, this is going back to thebeginning of the show.
We finally got well, we knowthey've been working on this for
a while, but our first officiallook at the Witcher 4.
Which?
You get to join.
That series is going to be yournew main character, not Geralt.
We do know Geralt's going to bein the game to some degree, but
it looks like Ciri's now goingto take over the new playable

(45:57):
character, which kind of makessense.
Geralt's story was kind ofwrapped up in Witcher 1 through
3, which is a great game, and Idon't know CD Projekt Red has
yet to really let us down, likethey put a lot of work into
fixing down but they they, they,but it's a good game yes, I'm
still a really good game,especially with the phantom
liberty dlc that came out lastyear yeah

(46:19):
they've yet to actually put outa bad game, so I can still be
somewhat hopeful in that aspect.
Obviously, like like before,it's a cd trailer very
reminiscent to the trailer wehad for the Witcher 3, as far as
the fighting, the creature, thewhole introduction stuff.
It's all CG.
But this is just verification.
They're working on it and weknew this game they were working

(46:40):
on.
I think this one was fairlysimilar.
As far as I don't know if wegot a release window for this.

Brandon Hurles (46:48):
Yeah, I don't remember getting a release
window on this one.

Mark Trobough (46:52):
I was pulling it back up just to verify, but I
think it was just they'reworking on it and it's just one
of those, the trailer, whichmeans it's coming eventually.
I was just trying to verifyBecause realistically, I think
this game's a few years outstill.
Yeah, they didn't give us arelease window, but I think
probably 2027 would be arealistic window at this point.

(47:13):
I would say 2026, I think.
Well, I mean either one At best.
They've been working on thisgame for a year.
Phantom of Liberty came outlast year and that's a fairly
large DLC for Cyberpunk afteryears of fixing Cyberpunk as
well.

Brandon Hurles (47:30):
Yeah, but they got teams separated and stuff
for them.

Mark Trobough (47:33):
Yeah, but you mean this game probably didn't
kind of like with Witcher 3 toCyberpunk.
Until the previous game's DLCis fully done, there aren't 100%
in full-on production, whichmeans this game has at best a
full year of full-on actualproper production going into it.
So I think we've probably gotanother three years before this
game comes out.

Brandon Hurles (47:52):
Yeah, you definitely can't get wrong with
guessing that.

Mark Trobough (47:57):
I think 2027 is a good window, just because you'd
rather them work on it longerthan cut corners and have it
come out sooner.

Brandon Hurles (48:05):
Yeah, no, I agree, I agree For sure.
So we got, we get to look atthe witcher 4, and then we got.
You got a okami later okamisequel, which is a a big deal.
It's literally called okamisequel.
Um, finally, in the works atcapcom, uh, under direct and the

(48:26):
original director, which wasHideki Kamiya sorry, hideki
Kamiya took 18 years.
We did actually get anotherOkami game called Okami Den for
the DS, which for some reasonare like disregarding, which was
a sequel to the game.

Mark Trobough (48:44):
I never had this on the I think it was the PS3
but I had the HD version theyput out on the PS4 yeah, which
was the PS three, but I had theHD version they put out on the
PS four.

Brandon Hurles (48:49):
Yeah, which is really good too.
Yeah, the we.
I still prefer to play on theWii, cause I have HD version too
, but there's something aboutplaying it with the Wii with the
non-chuck controller and andthe things that you do with the
painting with the Wiimote.

Mark Trobough (49:05):
It's just crazy.
This game originally came out.
They re-released on the PS4.
I don't know if it came out onthe 5 as well.
This was a Wii game.
It came out in 2006.
It took almost two decades toget a sequel for this game.

Brandon Hurles (49:19):
It's crazy.
I mean what year did Okami Dencome?

Mark Trobough (49:28):
out Okami.
Den.
Yeah, that's the game that cameout after came out in 2010 2010
, so it's been basically 15years since then crazy that's
more of like a side game, not anactual mainline game.
So as far as like mainline, theoriginal game is the mainline
game, this is more of like aspin-off game.
Yeah, so definitely superexcited.
Mainline the original game isthe only mainline game.

Brandon Hurles (49:47):
This is more of a spin-off game.
Yeah, definitely super excitedthat was one of my favorite
announcements of the entire show.

Mark Trobough (49:55):
I wonder if they're going to stick with
sequel, or that's just aplaceholder for now.

Brandon Hurles (49:58):
I bet they stick with it.
I bet they stick with it.
It seemed like it was goingaround everywhere today that it
was called Okami sequel and JeffKeeley retweeted something
again today confirming the title, because people were asking
questions if that was the titlehe named it as the title Okami

(50:19):
sequel, which isn't.
It's weird, but it's not bad,it's kind of cool.

Mark Trobough (50:24):
I think it needs to be changed.
Okami 2 would sound a lotbetter than the sequel.
It just sounds more Japanese, Idon't know.
I mean, it's kind of cool, Ithink it needs to be changed.

Brandon Hurles (50:29):
Comic 2 would sound a lot better than the
sequel.
It just sounds more Japanese.

Mark Trobough (50:33):
I don't know If it was Japanese.

Brandon Hurles (50:38):
I'd give you the Japanese word for sequel.
Look, mark, I can't do anythingto make you happy, mr Coffee
said I'd need something tocomplain about.
Mr Coffee said no officialrelease date.
Websites are just saying nochance for 2025.
2026 has only recently enteredfull-scale production phase this

(50:58):
year.

Mark Trobough (50:59):
Yeah, that's for the Witcher, yeah.
I even think 2026 is too early.
If it was coming out next year,they would have given you a
2025 release title.
If not, it's a year or two at aminimum.
But I think some of these othergames are going to take a few
years to come out well, I'll letyou take this next one, since
you're the the big dog for thisseries here oh, borderlands 4

(51:22):
yeah.
I mean it just it looks like asfar as the graphics go, it looks
pretty much just like like.
As far as the graphics go, itlooks pretty much just like 3 as
far as that goes.
So it's not a 1 to 2, 2 to 3 asfar as how the graphics look,
it just looks a little bit morepolished.

Brandon Hurles (51:37):
But graphically, it looks pretty much the
similar as 3.

Mark Trobough (51:39):
Which you'd expect another 4 years.
We gotta look at the main.
Don't know a whole lot aboutthe we were talking, so I
probably missed some of it.
So obviously we're getting anew villain I don't know if we
kind of have an idea of who itmight be, but might need to wait
for a proper trailer.
And we got to look at some ofour new Vault Hunters, though I

(52:01):
don't know as far as the actualabilities.
Obviously, this is more justshowing off what the game's
gonna look like and a little bitmore as far as what you're the
villain's probably gonna be.
But yeah, obviously we need tosee more.
I want to see more gameplay.
It should play probably a lotlike three, just refining the
combat like they have with withyou one, two, two to three.

(52:23):
I'm mainly just interested inthe story at this point because
that's going to be a a maker tobreak it for me yeah because I
thought the problem with threeis it looks and it plays amazing
it plays great, it's just thestory is such a letdown, which
is the main villains like it's?

Brandon Hurles (52:38):
not.

Mark Trobough (52:38):
And then two is like the story's great, but the
gameplay isn't as good but Istill I don't think two's got
solid gameplay the problem islike, but it's not as good as
three.
I don't.
I don't hate the storycompletely, but when the story
bottoms out, it bottoms out bad,especially with how they
treated Maya, and then how Avais written is terrible, and then

(53:00):
the, the main villains.
I get it.

Brandon Hurles (53:02):
It's not the worst, but I thought they they
got a little bit too meta withthe with your villains and the
life.

Mark Trobough (53:10):
Yeah, some of the it felt like I can't remember
who, what video I was watchingwhen they said it, but I kind of
agree with the simon, but thatit felt like they were trying to
force jokes more often thanthey did with two or two.
It felt, uh, it felt like tothe, the, the, what they weren't

(53:30):
writing just straight jokes.
Sometimes things were justfunny in the situation that they
were in.
But with three it just feltlike they were just writing
jokes out and forcing it to fitin.
So hopefully they fix thataspect of it.
Like it there wasn't a wholelot writing wise.
They really need to fix, to fixwith 3 to make it at least not
bad.
But that was the big problem Ihad with 3.

(53:52):
And then obviously New Tales,just kind of shows New.

Brandon Hurles (53:56):
Tales is canon too, which sucks.

Mark Trobough (53:58):
That's the problem.

Brandon Hurles (54:00):
Because it's terribly written so bad.

Mark Trobough (54:03):
And if they did that after Borderlands 3, I have
zero faith that they canactually fix the writing in
Borderlands 4.
Borderlands4 will probably playamazing, but you're going to
want to play it on mute, becausewho wants to do a poorly
written story?

Brandon Hurles (54:16):
Yeah, no doubt.

Mark Trobough (54:18):
That's.
The only frustrating thingabout this is the writing.
At this point I'm hoping thatthey write the ship on that.
I want this game to be good.
I love the Borderlands series.
I love Borderlands 1, 2, andthe pre-sequel for the most part
.
I don't know where I'd put 3 inthere.
3 is probably between 1 and thepre-sequel.
As far as the writing enjoyment, I want the game to be good.

(54:42):
I'm going to be critical of it,but I want to see more actual
story and narrative.
I'm going to be critical of it,but I want to see more actual
story and narrative.
I get the worlds that lookgreat.
The gameplay is going to begreat.

Brandon Hurles (54:57):
Did you play Tiny Tina?
Because it also looked a lotmore like.

Mark Trobough (55:00):
Tiny Tina to me Wonderlands.
I didn't actually play it.

Brandon Hurles (55:03):
You didn't play it Okay.

Mark Trobough (55:05):
I think I have it on my shelf.

Brandon Hurles (55:08):
I just haven't put it in.
Some people like it, somepeople don't.
I've heard from from both thatthey like it.
That it's I've heard it'sbetter than three.

Mark Trobough (55:16):
Fixes problems that like three, has and feels
more like borderlands one andtwo but I've also heard people
say that it was very repetitive,so I mean that's a lot of how
these games play, that that gameloop still needs to be fun.
But it's also a game thatdidn't get a whole lot of
support after launch.
They kind of launched it andjust kind of forgot about it
from some people that I saw thatactually do Borderlands content

(55:38):
a whole lot.

Brandon Hurles (55:38):
Did you ever play Borderlands Legends either?

Mark Trobough (55:41):
No.

Brandon Hurles (55:42):
You never played it.

Mark Trobough (55:44):
I don't even know what it is.

Brandon Hurles (55:46):
It's like an RTS Borderlands game that sounds
terrible.

Mark Trobough (55:50):
It's not an RTS, it's a looter shooter yeah, but
you have Tales from the.
Borderlands, that's not, youknow but that's not a core game,
it's a spin off and it's areally well done game so is
Borderlands.
Legends.

Brandon Hurles (56:04):
I can't believe you're saying you're a
Borderlands fan, you've neverheard of Borderlands Legends.
You've never heard ofBorderlands Legends.

Mark Trobough (56:11):
Mobile RTS probably is what it was have you
played the Borderlands VR?
Yeah, borderlands 2 VR and itwas, god awful.
I didn't have the PSVR one, soI never got to play it it's one
of those things where they justforced VR on a game that wasn't

(56:31):
designed around.

Brandon Hurles (56:32):
VR, kind of like Minecraft, right, minecraft?
Yeah, you said, you tried thattoo, and I never played it.

Mark Trobough (56:40):
VR was never Games that were developed
without VR in mind and theyshoehorned in never really.
It's just a more in-person,like a first person view, but
you still it plays better with acontroller than it does with
any kind of VR controls.
It's just, it's good.
Vr games were built as a VRgame from the ground up, not

(57:01):
shoehorned in years after theyeah, nah, I'm with ya.

Brandon Hurles (57:06):
I'm with ya, alright, what do we got next on
the announcement list?

Mark Trobough (57:09):
Oh my god.
This mobile game came out in2012.

Brandon Hurles (57:11):
Yeah, it's old, 100%.
Why didn't you play it backthen, the year we graduated?

Mark Trobough (57:17):
It was.
I didn't play Borderlands.
The first time I playedBorderlands was 2015.
So there's a 0% chance I wouldhave played that mobile game.

Brandon Hurles (57:24):
But it was fun and I'm not even an RTS guy.

Mark Trobough (57:31):
I don't even like RTS.
It was removed in August of2016.

Brandon Hurles (57:33):
It lasted four years, it was probably a little
sport.

Mark Trobough (57:38):
Yeah, at the peak of Borland's Peak.

Brandon Hurles (57:42):
You know what?
I got a Glock in my Yori.
Alright, well, we got Next,please.
Oh yeah, so the new standaloneElden Ring game got announced,
which is a three-playeraction-adventure game.
It's not like Elden Ring, it'san entirely different game.

(58:06):
It's basically a spin-offstandalone game.
It has nothing to do with EldenRing.
It's an entirely different game.
It's basically a spin-offstandalone game.
It has nothing to do with EldenRing or the DLC.
But this, actually, me and Markwere slightly talking about
this before the podcast, andbecause it's not a Souls game,
we might be interested inplaying it, both of us, because
I like the lore and the story ofall the Souls games.

(58:26):
I don't like the combats.
I don't like the combats.
I don't like the combat becauseit's hard.

Mark Trobough (58:33):
To be fair, I went back and tried to play the
first.

Brandon Hurles (58:36):
I bought Demon's Souls Remake on.
Ps5.
I bought that.
It came out around launch ofthe PS5, so I bought it and
tried it again.
I played it on the PS3 andcouldn't get anywhere with it.
I was even worse with theremake for Demon's Souls so bad.
I played every Soulsborne gameHaven't beat any of them, but

(58:58):
two.
I beat Dark Souls 2 and thatwas it.

Mark Trobough (59:04):
I'll watch videos on it for the story, but from
what I understand it's rumoredthat it's a supposed to be
FromSoftware's take on theMonster Hunter type game.

Brandon Hurles (59:13):
Essentially, oh, I'd be in for that.
People are expecting it to playyeah, I mean it sounds like more
of something that would be upour alley, like an action
adventure game like this and Ilike the lore and the setting of
Elden Ring and I like the loreand the setting of Elden Ring
and I like the whole medievalmonster aspect of Elden Ring,
like I like all the stuff aboutElden Ring and Elden Ring is the

(59:36):
most playable of any Soulsbornegame there is.
So like this would be like theentry point for anybody to play.
This is like a low level Soulsgame yeah.

Mark Trobough (59:48):
So this is kind of like uh, it's souls like
games aren't rage inducing, butthey are to me and I don't do,
oh my god, they're rage inducinggames, are you kidding me?

Brandon Hurles (59:56):
they?

Mark Trobough (59:57):
they break controllers and tvs all the time
they break and hold tvs if youdon't have like, uh, you know,
self-control you you say I wantto throw this, but this
controller costs $60.

Brandon Hurles (01:00:09):
I'm not going to throw it.

Mark Trobough (01:00:11):
I can see you doing it before I could, though.
I've never, I'll just rage,quit a game.

Brandon Hurles (01:00:16):
I've never rage anything with a game.
I've rage quit, yeah, but I'venever thrown something or gotten
angry.

Mark Trobough (01:00:25):
Bro's never played Rocket League before.
He doesn't know how ragey I getat a game which you're usually
competitive games.
That's the problem.

Brandon Hurles (01:00:33):
Yeah, that's the problem.
Mr.
Coffee say, just beat Demon'sSouls this year on PS3.
Nice, yeah, I couldn't beat theremake, couldn't beat the
original.
I kind of gave up.
What do we got next, mark?

Mark Trobough (01:00:51):
I mean, well, technically, what's it?
Helldivers 2 is getting anupdate.
Yeah well, it was a wholeexpansion right.
Yeah, which is not surprising,since it's a live service game,
you'd expect them to bring newcharacters.

Brandon Hurles (01:01:06):
All it really did was like, hey, maybe we
should actually hop into thisgame and play it for a little
bit yeah, I think, uh, yeah, weneed to play that soon because I
need a reason to pick it up andI've been wanting to play it
anyway, so it works for oursaturday streams an actual good
co-op game.

Mark Trobough (01:01:23):
If you really want to talk about that one, was
the split fiction game lookedup?
Yeah?
That looks really cool that itvery similar to like.

Brandon Hurles (01:01:31):
It takes two style of game yeah, it's a co-op
only game, so you have to playwith somebody else, which is
really cool.

Mark Trobough (01:01:37):
The question is is this?
Is this co like couch co-op orcan you?
Can it be like online co-op?

Brandon Hurles (01:01:42):
yeah, I was like an online co-op.
This would be great, great toplay this would be be an awesome
Saturday stream game, if that'sthe case.

Mark Trobough (01:01:49):
I wonder if it says anywhere here it comes out
in March, so it's about threemonths away, essentially.

Brandon Hurles (01:01:57):
I feel like they've got to have online
multiplayer in 2025.
If they've got to, it's got tobe.
I feel like it can't be couchco-op only, because even it
Takes 2 you can play onlineright.

Mark Trobough (01:02:12):
Yeah, I think it would have to.

Brandon Hurles (01:02:14):
Yeah, that might be a fun one to do because it
looked good.
I'm watching the trailer rightnow.

Mark Trobough (01:02:22):
It's coming out on PS5, the Xbox Series X PC via
Steam Epic Game Store and theEA app.

Brandon Hurles (01:02:30):
Yeah, it'd be a good PS5 pickup if it gets
physical.

Mark Trobough (01:02:36):
Yeah, it looks like a lot of fun.
Yeah, so GamesRadar isreporting that, like with it
Takes Two, there will be aFriends Pass available.
This means that only one of youwill need to buy the game in
order to play it together online.
So it looks like they'll haveonline.
It's also saying the FriendsPass will also have cross-play
between PlayStation, xbox andSteam.

Brandon Hurles (01:02:57):
That's cool.

Mark Trobough (01:02:59):
So one could be on PC, one might be on a console
, Because I know you preferconsole.
I prefer PC if it'smulti-platform.

Brandon Hurles (01:03:05):
Well, now I'm starting to prefer pc, but it's
just like if I'm going to buy agame and there's a physical of
it, I'll get the physical beforeI buy it digitally oh, that's
one of those.

Mark Trobough (01:03:14):
I'll buy it digital and then I'll wait for a
sale or buy used physical.

Brandon Hurles (01:03:19):
It doesn't look like a uh, it doesn't look like
it's pushing the limits um on pcanyway so fair.

Mark Trobough (01:03:27):
Though, like I don't like to buy, I won't buy
spaces like a premium.
I won't buy anything physical.
I'll buy games.
I absolutely like physical I.

Brandon Hurles (01:03:36):
If it's one or the other, I just gotta go
physical uh well I just don'tlike, I just don't like digital.

Mark Trobough (01:03:45):
so I'll buy digital on pc, on steam, and
then maybe down the road alittle while later I'll buy it
physical, just to have itphysical, but I mean.
Pc's my preferred platform, butif it's like a.

Brandon Hurles (01:03:55):
Steam sale or something like yeah, but at a
full price.

Mark Trobough (01:03:59):
At launch.

Brandon Hurles (01:04:00):
I'm going to buy a physical copy of this because
if I end up not liking it, atleast I can sell it or get rid
of it or something and get adifferent game Stuff like that
or GameStop.
Now you can straight up returnyour game, you can open up your
game.
You got 30 days to return it.

Mark Trobough (01:04:19):
If you have under 2 hours played, you can refund
it on Steam.
But, you have to be under 2hours for it to be a guaranteed
thing.

Brandon Hurles (01:04:27):
Yeah, I feel like two hours isn't enough, but
I'm 100% looking forward tothat.

Mark Trobough (01:04:31):
Yeah, for sure, be a fun game, because we
haven't been able to play a gamelike this before.

Brandon Hurles (01:04:35):
So yeah, we haven't, uh, and there's a.
There's a couple games outthere like that.
There's that a way out gamewhere you're two guys breaking
out of prison.
It's the same thing play withthe other person.
We also got the director of Icoand Shadow of the Colossus.
We got their next game, whichdoesn't have a title.

(01:04:56):
It just shows a mech floatinghead in it.
We just really don't knowanything about it at all.
It was just kind of didn't meananything to us.
We don't know anything aboutthe at all.
It was just kind of didn't meananything to us because we don't
know anything about the game.
But it looks visually, looksvery, very good If it's anything

(01:05:16):
like Ico or Shadow of theColossus or any of those games
that he did 100%.
it's going to be Then it'sprobably going to be like a 10
out of 10 game, Because thoseare.

Mark Trobough (01:05:26):
I'll say this what I would say.
I thought about it, yeah,looking at the, the trailer
after the fact, where he'sstanding on the robot and got
that weird black lookingcreatures or income at him yeah
hundred-percent.
You know what that reminds me ofwhat the dream sequence from
the Final Fantasy movie.
They came out like 20 years ago.
You don't talking about it.

(01:05:47):
Children that know the spiritswithin oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, I remember that came outlike 20 years ago.
You know what I'm talking about?
Advent Children.
No, the Spirits Within.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I remember that that is likeFinal Fantasy and name over 100%
.
It looks like it's drawninspiration from that movie.
It might just be me, but that'swhat I thought of.

Brandon Hurles (01:06:00):
I mean, it could be as much as I know.
Final.

Mark Trobough (01:06:02):
Fantasy fans hate that movie but I like that
movie as a kid.
I like Advent.

Brandon Hurles (01:06:07):
Children a lot.
Did you ever watch that one?

Mark Trobough (01:06:10):
No.
I didn't.

Brandon Hurles (01:06:14):
That one's really good.
I do have a movie.
I think I don't know.
All right, mark's looking forsomething, so we got uh shinmu,
lead you.
Suzuki has a new game comingout next year with anime vibes
cranked all the way up brandon,you're lame.

Mark Trobough (01:06:38):
No, and it's.
Uh, I did have one.
It's a final fantasy.
Was it 15 king's claves?

Brandon Hurles (01:06:44):
oh, yeah, kingsclaves yeah, I watched that
one too.
I forgot about that one.
I don't like that movie though.
I also don't like Final Fantasy15 at all not a fan.
But yeah, this is cool.
I love Shenmue.
Definitely does have animevibes.
He also created Virtual Fighter, which I found funny.

(01:07:07):
I didn't know he createdVirtual Fighter and Shenmue, but
the thing is it's a mobile game.

Mark Trobough (01:07:12):
So you know, and he's going to lose a few points
there.

Brandon Hurles (01:07:16):
Lost a few points with me there, but it
says and we don't know muchabout this game at this moment,
but the trailer shows GameAwards has an adorable art style
and cranks anime vibes up to 11, featuring a purple-haired girl
in what seems to be sort of aminiature mech suit matching the
cast of Robot Buddies actuallycalled Buddy Robots.
So that's what we know on thatone.

Mark Trobough (01:07:40):
Yeah, as well as another smaller game that I
didn't care for, but it'sanother PvP.
What's that?
Thickest Thieves game?
Didn't leave a whole lot.
Yeah, thickest Thieves,thickest Thieves.
Oh sorry.
I didn't care for it.

Brandon Hurles (01:08:03):
It didn't interest me much.

Mark Trobough (01:08:08):
I mean, it kind of looks like Under Legend 5
slop really it kind of does.

Brandon Hurles (01:08:15):
It doesn't look interesting at all, but yeah,
figured I'd mention that one.

Mark Trobough (01:08:22):
I might change my mind later on, but initially I
didn't care for it.

Brandon Hurles (01:08:25):
But the next one I'm very excited about we got a
new Ninja Gaiden announcement.
So this is the first 2D NinjaGaiden game in 29 years and it's
a Metroidvania which is crazy,crazy, 100% so excited.
I saw a whole bunch today.
It's called Ninja GaidenRagebound.
I saw a whole bunch today.
It's called Ninja GaidenRagebound.

(01:08:46):
I saw a whole bunch of tweetsabout this game today, people
that were working on it and werelike, hey, I can announce that
I've been working on this gameand I actually know one of the
people that are working in theart department for this game.
So they're one of the lead artdirectors and it makes total
sense because emu is involved,involved with this and they do a
lot of um, you'd have to lookthem up.

(01:09:08):
But they do a lot of likealmost indie-esque games that
are in this metroidvania vein.
So it makes sense.
They've kind of gotmetroidvania down to like a
perfect science, um, essentially, and this it just it has a
really cool anime, um, likeopening.
Basically, I'm assuming this islike the opening for the, the

(01:09:28):
game, but it's got like a wholeanime for it.
Um, I'm just really excited toplay this game.
I can't wait.
Uh, it's been it's been a longtime since we had ninja gaiden
like this and, uh, it looksreally good.
And I love metroidvanias and Ilove that they actually like put
the time into making an animeopening story to it stuff going

(01:09:48):
on throughout it.
I'm just watching it back hereand it just looks really really
good.

Mark Trobough (01:09:58):
I mean the fact that you should get another
Ninja Gaiden game and IP,especially on the 2D side.
You thought was just forgottenfor all of time.

Brandon Hurles (01:10:05):
Yeah, I mean EMU and Koei Tecmo obviously are
collabs in this one, so it'scoming out on PS5, nintendo
Switch, steam and Xbox.
So summer 2025, so just aroundthe corner.

Mark Trobough (01:10:22):
Yeah and talk about a game that came out like
what this past summer FinalFantasy VII Rebirth is finally
coming to PC January 23rd.

Brandon Hurles (01:10:30):
I still haven't beat it on PS5.
I'm still actively playing it.

Mark Trobough (01:10:36):
But hey, now you can get it on Steam.
Hopefully it's not going to beanother one of those crappy
ports that we seem to get fromSony.

Brandon Hurles (01:10:46):
I know that's what I'm worried about, because
it's such a good game and theSony ports are just so hit or
miss whether they're good or not.
You just don't know.
A game like this I would wantto play on PS5.
I already have it on PS5, soI'm not going to rebuy it.
I'm halfway through the game.
I'm actually going to rebuy itand I haven't even.
I'm halfway through the game,like I'm actually through the

(01:11:07):
halfway point, um, so I'm notgoing to rebuy it.
But a game like this I wouldhave liked to have played on pc
rather than ps5, because youknow 120 frames, stuff like that
, um, even on the ps5 pro you dohave pro enhancements and it
does look way better.
It runs better, um, it justperforms better all around.
But still, on pc you have moreoptions, like if you got a 4090

(01:11:30):
or a 4070 ti and up, basically,um, you know it, it run pretty
dang good on the pc.

Mark Trobough (01:11:38):
So good, I'm trying to see what they had on
steam.

Brandon Hurles (01:11:41):
They had a what's it crisis core reunion,
yeah that was the one I told youyou needed to play.
I was telling you about thatlast night.

Mark Trobough (01:11:48):
They've got Remake Integrate but I didn't
see the original 7 remake,unless it's one of those games.

Brandon Hurles (01:11:53):
Remake Integrate is the original.

Mark Trobough (01:11:56):
It's the.

Brandon Hurles (01:11:57):
PS5 version of it.

Mark Trobough (01:11:59):
So they just made it.

Brandon Hurles (01:12:00):
They remastered it and added content to it.

Mark Trobough (01:12:03):
The titling is confusing.
That's the problem with some ofthese games Now.

Brandon Hurles (01:12:07):
Integrate.
Essentially what they did isthey remastered the game, but
they added an additional storyon at the end of the game that
ties into Rebirth and thenCrisis Core Reunion.

Mark Trobough (01:12:19):
Yeah, and apparently you can get Ever
Crisis as well.
It's free, but it's got mixed.

Brandon Hurles (01:12:24):
Ever Crisis?

Mark Trobough (01:12:25):
well, it's free, but it's got mixed Ever.

Brandon Hurles (01:12:27):
Crisis.
What's that?

Mark Trobough (01:12:30):
Is that the?

Brandon Hurles (01:12:31):
PVP game who knows.
There was a weird.

Mark Trobough (01:12:37):
Final Fantasy, all the other games have made
their way.

Brandon Hurles (01:12:40):
Oh yeah, it's that weird PVP game.

Mark Trobough (01:12:44):
It's for phones.
Yeah, let me pull this up realquick.
So it comes out January 23rd.
Through January 23rd, if youbuy it on Steam, you can get it
30% off.
So it's $48.99 instead of thefull $70.

Brandon Hurles (01:12:58):
Not bad.

Mark Trobough (01:13:00):
It's still a $70 game on.

Brandon Hurles (01:13:01):
PS5.
There were a bunch of sales forBlack Friday, though, where
it's still a $70 game on PS5.

Mark Trobough (01:13:07):
There were a bunch of sales for Black Friday,
though, where it dropped downto $30.
Yeah, it's still 30% off.
If you got the Rebirth DigitalDeluxe Edition upgrade, it's 30%
off from that $90, so it's like$63 if you wanted that extra
little upgrade.

Brandon Hurles (01:13:18):
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
But I definitely recommendchecking out Intergrade and then
Crisis Core Reunion, for sure.
But I definitely recommendchecking out Intergrade and then
Crisis Core Reunion, for sure100%, 100.

Mark Trobough (01:13:30):
$100.
$100.
Money, money, money.

Brandon Hurles (01:13:36):
Alright, what do we got next?

Mark Trobough (01:13:40):
Oh, we got a Pal World update which looks really
good.
I'm glad this is more like whatyou'd want Pokemon to evolve
into.
But Game Freak just says, no,here's my broken middle effort
game.
Give me money.

Brandon Hurles (01:13:55):
Anyone remember?
Ps4 or Final Fantasy Type-0 HG.
Yeah, I have that.

Mark Trobough (01:14:00):
Oh, that was the first Final Fantasy game you
ever played.
Yeah, you were telling me that.
Yeah, it was horrible.
I don't even have it anymore.
It's not good, it's a terriblegame.

Brandon Hurles (01:14:07):
It does not represent Final Fantasy very
well.

Mark Trobough (01:14:10):
I got less than two hours into that game, but no
, power World's main update, bayBreak, is coming out December
23rd.

Brandon Hurles (01:14:20):
I got way too much in my mental Learn from
what I've been through.

Mark Trobough (01:14:23):
I got way too much in my mental Learn from
what I've been through.
You could say that allafternoon.
But I mean, regardless ofeverything else going on, it's
glad to see that game iscontinuing to get you know
updating content, especiallysince the, what, the, the legal
cost was like what, $63,000,something like that.
It was like negligible.
It's like okay, Okay, and umcan't remember if he was and um

(01:14:43):
came to figure out saying lame,no, buy, buy on ps5 for what?
uh, final fantasy 7 yeah, buyfinal fantasy on ps5 but then I
can't play it modded like youcan on pc.

Brandon Hurles (01:14:58):
Yeah, that's like the one benefit.
You gotta wait for the mods,cause you're not gonna mod it
yourself.

Mark Trobough (01:15:02):
You're talking about stellar blade.
Stellar blade will be so muchbetter once it's modded.
It'll be interesting to checkthat out on PC.
If you know why, I will buythat on.

Brandon Hurles (01:15:10):
PC again when there's a sale for sure.

Mark Trobough (01:15:13):
Oh, I'm going to buy that on PC and then, oh yeah
, it's going to be modded 100%.
You already know what I mean.
I don't need have more to endup oh boy, amen.
You know there's other othergood stuff.
People make their own content,other cool stuff you can bring
to the game.

(01:15:33):
But I mean just saying there'sa reason people love to play
games modded.

Brandon Hurles (01:15:39):
Uh, two reasons former uh payday devs, uh, new
co-op heist game.
Den of Wolves got its firstgameplay trailer.
This was the game I was mixingup earlier with the Thieves game
.
I was getting them mixed up butit says as a strong reminder.
This year has been a strongreminder of how popular co-op

(01:15:59):
games can be, like Helldivers 2and Power World.
It looks like the developers,gtfo, a team of veterans from
Payday the Heist and Payday 2announced Den of Wolves, a new
sci-fi take on the co-op heistgenre.

Mark Trobough (01:16:15):
They say sci-fi, it's more of a cyberpunk style
game.

Brandon Hurles (01:16:19):
I will say this Payday 2 launched crap.
It launched with less contentthan the first game, had made no
sense like way less content,less effort, it was like it was
like they hit the reset onpayday one.
It's like, okay, you can playpayday 2 with no content on it.

(01:16:39):
I was like so, mad man, I, Ilike, I used to like to play
payday.

Mark Trobough (01:16:45):
I would be mad, but I didn't waste my money on
the game, so you don't even playgames, mark, oh, okay, okay,
okay, what we got next?
Let me pull it up.
I mean, I guess we I wanted togloss over it yes, the Last of

(01:17:06):
Us, part 2 this game that cameout like three years ago is
getting a remaster as well asit's coming to PC.

Brandon Hurles (01:17:13):
So it's like there's like no news it is
getting a remaster or remakelike part one it's getting a
remaster for part two and it'scoming to PC.
I knew about the pc, but Ididn't know that it actually got
announced for the remaster part.

Mark Trobough (01:17:30):
You know they can't help until they release
the same guy, same game, threetimes in under five years yeah,
I know upgrades each time.
It's so frustrating.
It is like such a frustrating.

Brandon Hurles (01:17:40):
It is very frustrating, I will say.
The last of us part one was thefirst game I tested on the PS5
Pro and it looked amazing.
It ran, performed very well.
But it got a remaster a yearafter release yeah, I mean it
came out on the PS3, got aremaster on the PS4, and then a
remake on the PS5.

(01:18:01):
It makes no sense.
It's a cash grab.

Mark Trobough (01:18:04):
It's a cop layer of paint.

Brandon Hurles (01:18:08):
You know the worst part of this.
You know the worst part of thiswhole thing.
There was a Firefly edition ofLast of Us Part 1, the remake.
They came out and I wanted this, this collector's piece it was
called Firefly Edition Only onthe PlayStation Store.
Sold out immediately Right away.
H out immediately Right awayhits eBay $500, $600, $700.

(01:18:28):
For a copy of this game.
That was $100 MSRP.
All it did was come with a bookinside of a basically like a
little package.

Mark Trobough (01:18:38):
That just means Scalper is just artificially
jacking up the price online.

Brandon Hurles (01:18:41):
I was so mad.
You still can't get it unlessyou want to pay like $200, $300.
I'm like no.
Absolutely not.
Absolutely not Made me so mad.
I wanted to get that.
I liked the Last of Us,especially the first game, but
it's like that was totallyunnecessary.
Now, if they had, if they hadskipped the remaster on PS4 and
then remade on PS5, that wouldhave made sense, but they

(01:19:04):
remastered it and remade it, soit didn't make sense you know
two systems.
Later to remake it is not.
There's nothing wrong with that, but when you can still play
the remaster on the currentsystem and then you remake it
too, there's problems it didn'tneed it.
I can literally pop thatremaster in there and play it

(01:19:28):
just fine, but nope, let'sremake it too and it's sold.

Mark Trobough (01:19:33):
Minimal effort for more money.
That's the problem.
Another old game is coming backwith Drifter.

Brandon Hurles (01:19:41):
Yeah, the initial V.

Mark Trobough (01:19:44):
It's Screamer.
Essentially an anime-styleracing game.

Brandon Hurles (01:19:50):
Kind of like Initial D, which is pretty
interesting.

Mark Trobough (01:19:54):
I mean they brought up Initial D in name
only.
Initial D has its own games, ifyou actually care for that.
But I mean it's interesting.
Didn't actually see anygameplay.
This game doesn't come outuntil sometime in 2026.

Brandon Hurles (01:20:05):
So this is basically Fast and Furious Tokyo
Drift.

Mark Trobough (01:20:08):
What it looks like.

Brandon Hurles (01:20:10):
It kind of does, doesn't it?
Looks like a future Fast andFurious game, I mean movie.

Mark Trobough (01:20:15):
Japanese anime racing game.

Brandon Hurles (01:20:17):
Interesting.
We didn't hear anything newabout Sony's Affair games
Competitive heist live servicegame.
I didn't even know about that.

Mark Trobough (01:20:27):
Did games competitive heist live service
game.
I didn't even know about that,did you?
Yeah, I never heard of itbefore.
Huh.

Brandon Hurles (01:20:32):
I have to look that one up.
What's up?
Playstation shabby they're inthe tiktok and user
2081012625698.
Literally, how's it going, guys?
What do we got next afterscreamer, so we got the oh, it's

(01:20:56):
another like co-op game, stage,stage fright.

Mark Trobough (01:20:59):
Yeah, I was less this was like this one.

Brandon Hurles (01:21:02):
Yeah, more kids ask game, yeah it seemed like a
more targeted kids co-op stylegame in the vein of like a way
out and and stuff like that,like that sort of thing.
Um, it didn't look bad.
Definitely I like the animationstyle.
Just it looked like it wasmaybe more targeted kids.

(01:21:24):
Well, who knows, maybe it'll begood.

Mark Trobough (01:21:27):
But yeah, I didn't.
I was like that's a game, Ididn't care for it too much.
I don't have a whole lot to sayabout it.

Brandon Hurles (01:21:34):
And then we got Project Century.
I got World Premiere.
This is from the LEGO DragonStudio RGG Reels, its first new
IP in six years.
It doesn't look like Yakuza andit's set in 1915 Japan, which
that right there made meinterested.
I like.
Japan period pieces.

Mark Trobough (01:21:56):
This studio only does the Like a Dragon slash
Yakuza games, so it's going tofall within that game series.

Brandon Hurles (01:22:04):
That says it's a new IP, so it's going to fall
within that game series.
It says it's a new IP, so Idon't know.

Mark Trobough (01:22:11):
I don't know.
I still think it's going to tieinto the whole Like a Dragon
series, slash Yakuza, whateveryou want to call it by.
I don't think they've ever madea non-game that's in that
series, though it says Ryu.

Brandon Hurles (01:22:22):
It looks in place like it.
It says it says Ryu it looks inplace.
Toku has revealed a brand newIP which, for the first time in
a long time, doesn't look awhole lot like Yakuza at all.

Mark Trobough (01:22:37):
I disagree with their take.
It looks like a more refinedcombat style.
It looks and plays a lot likeYakuza.

Brandon Hurles (01:22:43):
I don't think it's going to tie into Yakuza,
but yeah, I can see where youcan see some Yakuza in it.

Mark Trobough (01:22:48):
The gameplay 100% looks like those games.

Brandon Hurles (01:22:51):
It does.

Mark Trobough (01:22:52):
It's not a one-for-one, but you can still
tell that it looks like it whenyou make a style of game for so
long, even if you do somethingnew, it's still going to have
its roots in the, the way the,uh, your other games have played
in the past that was the game,where they work in teams robbing
a bank and they all wear werewearing weird masks, I think.

Brandon Hurles (01:23:11):
Are you talking about a way out, or that he
brought up the oh, yeah,probably the fair game then we
got another big one that I wasexcited about.
This was one, one of my top Ihad like a top five
announcements.
Ani Musia is coming back after18 years on the PS2.
Um, finally getting a new gamein the series.

(01:23:33):
It says uh, despite thelegendary status Capcom's Ani
Musia earned back at the PS2days, series never got its due
in later consoles.
Now series is coming back inthe form of animus.
Show way of the sword.
Would you believe it?
A modern third person actiongame without about a japanese
warrior slaying demons, looks alittle more like sekiro.

(01:23:55):
Uh.
Whether capcom's taking anydirect inspiration from from
software remains to be seen.
Um, I did kind of see that too,because at first I said is this
?
I kept saying, is this a fromsoftware game, like what?
I I thought it was a sekiro uhsequel.
But um, yeah, no, it makessense.
Animusha, really, really cool.

(01:24:16):
I?
I got confused a couple timesin the trailer because, like,
what is this?
I thought I thought it was afew different things.
Before the wording came up Iwas like oh, that's a really
good announcement If you havenot played the Onimusha games.
They are so good, so why theynever?
Capcom never continued, justlike they ignore Mega man, they

(01:24:37):
ignore everything.
Man.
If it's not Monster Hunter,they ignore it and Resident Evil
Pretty much.

Mark Trobough (01:24:43):
Yeah, because those are their money makers.

Brandon Hurles (01:24:45):
So that's what they're going to pay for.
I mean, and I love both ofthose series, but it's like Mega
man is one of my favoriteseries of all time and it's what
they're most notorious for, Iwould say.
And we don't get any Mega manstuff at all.
Mega man 11 came out like fiveyears ago, six years ago,
something like that.

Mark Trobough (01:25:03):
I just have to bring it up, because Mr Coffee
brought it up the Ryu Ga Gotokustudio.
They've worked on Like a Dragonsince 2012.
They also worked on BinaryDomain Judgment.
From 2019 to present, they'veworked on Super Monkey Ball and
then, from 2021 until now,they've also worked on Virtua
Fighter.
So technically they've workedon other games, but the bulk the

(01:25:26):
the bulk of what they put intois like a dragon series yeah,
yeah, I didn't know they workedon uh and it's and it still
looks like they.
It looks and plays like the likea dragon games more often I
don't know about judgmentbecause I've not played it.

Brandon Hurles (01:25:39):
So makes sense because it's a studio.
So we also got a new gameplaytrailer for Splitgate 2, which
looked really good.
Did you have any thoughts onthis one, Mark?

Mark Trobough (01:25:54):
I never played the first one.
It didn't jump out.
Like some people, I wasn't afan of the series because I
never played it before, so Ididn't know what to think about
it.
It kind of looks like anothertake on the whole studio or the
the arena fighter, the wholelike 5v5 type thing or the free
for all it's more of halo andportal put together.

Brandon Hurles (01:26:14):
It's more it's more of a halo game than it is
like a arena shooter.
It's more the maps are morelike halo.
The gameplay is more like halo.
It's just you're mixing in thewhole Portal stuff, which is
where that's what separates itfrom, say, halo, but it plays
like Halo does.
It actually plays like that.

(01:26:34):
It also plays kind of likeHalf-Life, kind of like Team
Fortress 2, and gameplay.

Mark Trobough (01:26:42):
But I mean after a while.
A lot of the shooters tend tostart playing the exact same way
, though after a while.
With modern shooters.
They all kind of play the same.
The whole teleportation isgoing to be the real gimmick.
That's probably going to makeor break this game compared to
something like Marvel Rivals.

Brandon Hurles (01:26:58):
The first one did very well and I liked it.
I normally don't like thosetype of multiplayer games, but
it captured me when it came.
And I normally don't like thosetype of multiplayer games, but
it captured me when it came outand I really liked it.

Mark Trobough (01:27:08):
It's just a really competitive market with
those shooter games.

Brandon Hurles (01:27:12):
What else we got ?

Mark Trobough (01:27:15):
I think the last one.
Oh yeah, we did get a newtrailer for the Outer Worlds 2,
finally, yeah, what did youthink about that one?
Hopefully it's going to be good.
I mean didn't get a whole lot.
I mean it's more of like ateaser trailer is what it felt
like.
I feel like this is what thegame's essentially going to look
like in kind of play.

(01:27:36):
It wasn't really a whole lot ofstory, but I assume it's going
to take place after the end ofthe first one, because that's
just narratively where the gameended off.
But I mean I like the firstgame.
It wasn't like a super longgame, didn't overstay its
welcome, but it's still anenjoyable, quasi comedic game to
play.
So as long as it's more of thefirst game just continuing on
the story, I think it'll be agood game.

(01:27:56):
But I mean I'll wait and seeall right.

Brandon Hurles (01:27:59):
So there, we got a lot of the the announcements.
I guess we should get to someof the awards.
Um, get to start off.
Get to some of the awards.
Um, good Start off with withsome of those.
I guess we'll start off withthe the big one, Astro bot, one
game of the year.
Um to much contention with Mark.

Mark Trobough (01:28:17):
I thought it there's.
I thought there were only threegames that that should have won
either metaphor rebirth orWukong.
The shoot up one eitherMetaphor Rebirth or Wukong.
The other three games oneEldritch is a DLC, astro Bot is
a platformer you know living offof nostalgia.

Brandon Hurles (01:28:31):
I still don't understand your take on it.
I don't understand your take on.
Why does it matter if Astro Botis a platformer?
I don't understand the take onit.

Mark Trobough (01:28:41):
Because I just don't think it's a good game.
You don't think it's a good,it's just it falls short.
You don't think it's a goodgame it's a good game, but not
it's not better than Wukong orMetaphor, two games I actually
have played.

Brandon Hurles (01:28:52):
Metaphor is amazing, but it's, like Astro
Bot's also a fantastic game, soI don't know.

Mark Trobough (01:28:58):
I mean, what's the narrative in Astro Bot?

Brandon Hurles (01:29:03):
what's the narrative?
You play as Astro Bot and youget through the game.
It's a 3D platformer.

Mark Trobough (01:29:08):
Exactly, it's just a platformer.
There's no story to the game.
It's just living on nostalgia.
It's a good game.

Brandon Hurles (01:29:14):
You're living on prayer dog.

Mark Trobough (01:29:17):
All these other games, except for Bellator, are
better games than that.

Brandon Hurles (01:29:20):
See, I don't know, because you told me during
the live you're like a 3D Mario, should never win another game
of the year, you told me that itshouldn't?
I'm like, are you?

Mark Trobough (01:29:29):
kidding me?
The narrative doesn't exist inthose games, it's just a
platformer.

Brandon Hurles (01:29:34):
Which was nominated for Game of the Year
that year and deserved to win.
It deserved to win.
That's a 10 out of 10 game.

Mark Trobough (01:29:44):
You need more than game mechanics.
Like you need narrative story,something that does something
else, like it's not a roundedgame.

Brandon Hurles (01:29:53):
I don't think that it's wrong in winning.
I just think personally, for me, what it would have been is
would have been Rebirth first,would have been Metaphor.
Second, astrobot.
Third, black Myth.
Fourth I haven't played BlackMyth, but I have enough faith in
you.
Would have been Rebirth first,would have been Metaphor.
Second, astro Bot.
Third, black Myth.
Fourth I haven't played BlackMyth, but I have enough faith in

(01:30:13):
you and other people I talk to.
I want to play it.
You don't need friends anymore.
Hey, shut up.

Mark Trobough (01:30:17):
I said I'm going to play it because it came out
on PS5 with a physical, so I'mgoing to get it.
Then again, I still stand by it.

Brandon Hurles (01:30:23):
I would not have put Elden Ring's DLC Bellatro
or Astro.

Mark Trobough (01:30:24):
Bot, I wouldn't have put either of those three
games in Game of the YearContention to begin with.

Brandon Hurles (01:30:29):
Bellatro and Elden Ring.
Elden Ring was ridiculous.
Elden Ring is on a whole otherlevel of being ridiculous
because it's a DLC of a gamethat requires you to own the
base game to play.
This is not a new game.
This is DLC to an old game.

Mark Trobough (01:30:44):
Which is why I'm surprised it didn't win.
To be fair, yeah, becausethey're pushing this other.

Brandon Hurles (01:30:49):
I'm like, oh, this is why this is Game of the
Year Contender, because they'repushing this new Elden Ring game
Didn't need to Elden Ring alonethe name sells.

Mark Trobough (01:31:01):
You didn't need to be Game of the Year to get
people to watch.
I disagree with that wholeconcept.
But Astro Bot's just aplatformer.
There's no story to the game,it's just ooh, this is cute.
Oh, remember these other games,oh yeah.
I'm a journalist who knowsnothing about games.
I'm just going to vote onsomething.

Brandon Hurles (01:31:16):
The one good thing about Astro Bot winning is
that it was actually a Japanesedeveloped PlayStation game,
which never happens.
We don't get any Japanesedeveloped PlayStation games
anymore.

Mark Trobough (01:31:28):
They moved their headquarters over to the US
Aren't all of these games otherthan Bellatro, non-western games
, master of War, wukong, eldenRing, final Fantasy, metaphor.
Aren't these all Easterndevelopers?

Brandon Hurles (01:31:40):
essentially Bellatro's, not even a game in
here.

Mark Trobough (01:31:44):
But it's not.
It's not a not from an Easterndeveloper, it's the only like
it's from a like Indiandeveloper or something.
So I don't think based out ofthe U.
I thought it was based on likethe U?
S or Canada or something likethat.

Brandon Hurles (01:31:55):
Let me look up Blatro but I didn't.
I'm pretty sure every othergame was developed by Eastern
whether it was chinese forwukong uh or like japanese or
something like that regardless.

Mark Trobough (01:32:07):
Yeah, I mean yeah , so that doesn't mean anything
to me.
I just I didn't think it wasgame of the year contention and
it just felt like because I mean, you saw it in the gamer's
choice canadian, canadiandeveloped game.

Brandon Hurles (01:32:16):
So yeah, yeah, I don't know player's choice,
which went.

Mark Trobough (01:32:21):
I mean I didn't agree with everything that made
the final final cut, butessentially player's choice
which went.
I mean I didn't agree witheverything that made the final
cut, but essentially player'schoice came down to Shadow of
the Earth Tree or Wukong andWukong beat it.
And then just media, whodoesn't know anything about
games, just picked the safest,non-controversial one to pick
because it's the only one thatthey probably it was easy enough
for them to beat because weknow game journals suck at

(01:32:41):
playing games.

Brandon Hurles (01:32:42):
This was a terrible one, I thought.
As far as game direction, AstroBot won Best Game Direction 2,
which I think Metaphor shouldhave won that Game Direction.
That game is so unique.

Mark Trobough (01:32:56):
There's no story to direct the game with Astro
Bot.
It's just living off nostalgiaand other Sony IPs.

Brandon Hurles (01:33:03):
And then Best Narrative Metaphor metaphor, one
which it should have won that,I think, out of the games there.
Best art direction I metaphor,again which I agree with, has a
very unique art direction withit.

Mark Trobough (01:33:15):
Um, best score and you notice, there's one
thing like astrobots, not I meanlike every single thing here
yeah, I know even in stuff itprobably shouldn't be in.

Brandon Hurles (01:33:25):
Oh, I'm sorry.
Playstation probably has somesort of backing behind the game
wards that we don't know about.

Mark Trobough (01:33:31):
What game won score music, do you know?

Brandon Hurles (01:33:34):
Final Fantasy Rebirth.

Mark Trobough (01:33:36):
Yeah, I'm sorry.
I thought this is Stella.
Blade got shafted on one of thetwo wards it was nominated for.

Brandon Hurles (01:33:42):
It had really good music.
There's actually a vinyl comingout for Stellar Blade.

Mark Trobough (01:33:47):
I can't remember the last time I listened to
video game music and StellarBlade blew it out of the water.

Brandon Hurles (01:33:52):
Dude Rebirth I've been listening to Rebirth's
music and it's really good.
It's not often there's a gamewhere I listen to the music
outside of the game.
That doesn't happen often.

Mark Trobough (01:34:03):
It's one of the only other ones outside of the
game of the year that I've.
I kind of vehemently disagreewith the way they went.
Not as much for this, but I waslike mmm Stubble Blade had some
fantastic, because a lot of itsmusic is also vocal, has vocals
with it as well.
It's not just score, yeah,score and vocals as well, and it
fits the theme of what you'replaying.

Brandon Hurles (01:34:22):
So best audio design was Senua's saga
Hellblade two, which is a ninjatheory game.
Best performance Senua's sagaHellblade two.

Mark Trobough (01:34:33):
I thought it should have gone to the the
Brianna White for rebirth forthis one.

Brandon Hurles (01:34:37):
Yeah, for sure, I did so good.
I was actually.

Mark Trobough (01:34:40):
I was so afraid that Outlaws was going to win
this game and I'm like, no, thegame's just trash.

Brandon Hurles (01:34:45):
Absolutely not.
Innovation and Accessibilitywas Prince of Persia Lost Crown?
What does that even mean,accessibility?

Mark Trobough (01:34:55):
For people with disabilities or something.
That's what.

Brandon Hurles (01:34:57):
I thought, but how?

Mark Trobough (01:34:59):
did that win?
They just voted for a game.
Let's be fair, they weren'tlooking into anything like that.
It's just a.
I don't pick which one you wantto pick games for was Neva
another another like math gameaward, like doesn't really
matter best ongoing game.

Brandon Hurles (01:35:19):
Held Ivers to best.

Mark Trobough (01:35:21):
This is where this is, where probably the
shadow the earth DLC should havebeen in.

Brandon Hurles (01:35:27):
What best ongoing game.
It wasn't even nominated, yeahthat's what I'm saying.

Mark Trobough (01:35:33):
This is where that DLC would have made more
sense.

Brandon Hurles (01:35:35):
Yeah, for sure.

Mark Trobough (01:35:37):
But ongoing.
I didn't really care for any ofthose games.

Brandon Hurles (01:35:38):
To be fair, Well , you just said you want to play
Helldivers 2.

Mark Trobough (01:35:42):
No, yeah, but the award is kind of pointless.
Yeah, that's subjective towhatever MMO or live service
game that you play.

Brandon Hurles (01:35:53):
I got to pull up something while you're talking.
I got to pull up somethingwhile you're talking.

Mark Trobough (01:35:56):
Or like four of those live service games, one's
technically an MMO, I believe.

Brandon Hurles (01:36:01):
Final Fantasy XIV is an MMO.
Okay.
So Elon Musk tweeted today he'splaying Path of Exiles 2.
Oh my god, he has so manytweets it's so hard to get
through.
He tweets a lot and retweets alot about video games, a lot
Like.
I just scrolled through likefour that were about games just
today, trying to find the exactone.

(01:36:23):
Hold on, oh right here.
He tweeted, he took a pictureand said Path of Exile 2 wasn't
even using a macro, lol, and itsays disconnected.
You have been kicked forperforming too many actions too
fast.
He's hilarious Dude like it'sfunny.

(01:36:45):
I actually kind of wanted to addthat to the list to play
because everybody keeps talkingabout it and it's not my type of
normal game.
But neither was Age of Empiresor some of the other stuff like
Helldivers 2 isn't really mytype of game either, but I still
want to play it and check itout.
That'd be interesting to checkout.
Multiplayer game Check it out.

(01:37:07):
That'd be interesting.
Check out.
Multiplayer game Dead silence.

Mark Trobough (01:37:12):
Sorry, I wasn't prepared.
I was trying to pull somethingelse up, oh, you're good, did
you care?
For about what's that communityindependent game?
I think Bellatro won that one.
Bellatro won, yeah, notsurprisingly, same thing with
the debut indie game, bellatroagain Best mobilecher won.

Brandon Hurles (01:37:25):
Yeah, same thing with the debut indie game,
blotcher.
Again, best mobile gameBlotcher.
Best VR game which this shouldhave won was Batman Arkham
Shadow.
I heard nothing but fantasticthings about that game.
That is actually couldn'tpotentially be a system seller
from the MetaQuest 3 for me,because I love the Arkham games.
Apparently, this game is reallygood, built from the ground up

(01:37:48):
for VR.
So it's not a VR thrown in mode, it's an actual full-on VR
action adventure game.

Mark Trobough (01:37:54):
Yeah, those are the best games because it's a
whole separate way of playing agame.

Brandon Hurles (01:37:59):
I probably could have gone without getting the
MetaQuest 3 at all.
But when they announced that, Iwas like, oh, I actually want
to play this.
It's from Oculus Studios, it'sfrom the studio that developed
the headset.
So, like they know their wayaround the hardware and like you
talked about, you said you weregoing to pick one up.
A while ago you were talking tosomebody at GameStop or

(01:38:21):
something and it kind of put itin my head.
I was like you know, I kind ofdo want to have one of those.
I'd like to have a headsetwhere I don't have to be hooked
up to something, because rightnow, with the PSVR 2, I have to
be hooked up to the PS5, whichis really annoying and I get it
allows.

Mark Trobough (01:38:37):
it gives you more fidelity with the screen, with
it being plugged in, but nothaving that cord.

Brandon Hurles (01:38:42):
And if I want to , I can plug it in my PC for
more power.
Right, like you get morehorsepower, so now I can do that
I'm not sure.

Mark Trobough (01:38:50):
I have to double check.

Brandon Hurles (01:38:51):
Because I've got the PC adapter for the PSVR 2,
but I still haven't used it yetbecause I don't know what games.
I don't have any VR PC games.

Mark Trobough (01:39:01):
No, fair enough.
Yeah, anyway, so no, fairenough yeah anyway, I just don't
know what to pick up.
Which game won best action game, do you know?

Brandon Hurles (01:39:09):
Black Mith Wukong okay yeah, elon did a
whole post saying his hardcorecharacter died and he was sad
about it.
Yeah right, best actionadventure game Astro Bot.
Best RPG metaphor it's the onlything.
It was like nominated wild Bestaction adventure game Astro Bot
, Best RPG metaphor.

Mark Trobough (01:39:29):
It's the only thing it was nominated for and
it lost.

Brandon Hurles (01:39:31):
Wait, what is it ?

Mark Trobough (01:39:34):
The Zelda game.

Brandon Hurles (01:39:35):
Yeah, I feel like that.

Mark Trobough (01:39:41):
For that one.

Brandon Hurles (01:39:42):
I think I would have picked Echoes of Wisdom For
best action adventure game.
Astro Bot, to me, does notscream adventure.

Mark Trobough (01:39:52):
Yes, it's an adventure 3D platformer, but
action it's in here like why isthis even nominated in a
category?

Brandon Hurles (01:39:58):
it's not even doesn't fit in, really and it
would have been nice to see thatZelda take home something,
because it is a very good game.

Mark Trobough (01:40:10):
Because on a mainline Zelda game the industry
doesn't care for it.
That's the other problem withthis 90% of what won these
awards was journalists thataren't even primarily game
journalists.

Brandon Hurles (01:40:22):
Yeah, you look back, I can pull up the list.
I can pull up the whole list ofeverybody backing the game
awards.
Npr is one of them.

Mark Trobough (01:40:30):
What?
Yeah, that's the problem.
These votes should, at the veryleast, be 50-50 between the
fans and the industry.
I think the industry shouldhave less than 50% to see on
these awards personally, but Idon't get to make those
decisions.
If I had made those decisions,I don't get to make those
decisions.
If I had made those decisions,this would be purely off fan
vote and fan vote alone.

Brandon Hurles (01:40:46):
Tell me that this is bull crap.
There's actually an articlethat came out today that said
why the 2024 game awards dialback.
It's Hollywood element.
Why did it feel like there wasmore crap in the it?

Mark Trobough (01:40:59):
didn't?
It felt like there was more.

Brandon Hurles (01:41:02):
Felt like there was more crap in it.

Mark Trobough (01:41:04):
You're being you're being gaslit by.

Brandon Hurles (01:41:07):
Jules, that comes from Varietycom too.

Mark Trobough (01:41:10):
Shocker.
Here's why you should watch itagain and give them more money,
so we can profit off of it.

Brandon Hurles (01:41:17):
And there's another article why they dialed
back Hollywood promotion.
It didn't to me feel like theydialed back Hollywood promotion.
We kept complaining about itduring it.
It's in LA promotion.
I, I didn't.
It didn't to me feel like theydialed back hollywood promotion.

Mark Trobough (01:41:25):
We kept complaining about it during it
it's in la, why would they dialit back?
I mean, they had snoop dogthere.
For christ's sake yeah, that'snot.

Brandon Hurles (01:41:33):
Andy performed his new song and everything so
yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Like that's the epitome of ofcelebrity endorsements yeah,
yeah, I definitely didn't,definitely didn't dial it back.

Mark Trobough (01:41:47):
Nope, not at all.

Brandon Hurles (01:41:49):
So what do we got next for the awards?

Mark Trobough (01:41:53):
Best RPG.

Brandon Hurles (01:41:55):
Best RPG.
What won Metaphor?

Mark Trobough (01:42:00):
I don't know.
The site that I have isn'ttelling me.
Oh, let's see I don't have theactual winners in front of me.

Brandon Hurles (01:42:08):
Best RPG was Metaphor.
Best fighting game was Tekken 8.
Let's see.

Mark Trobough (01:42:15):
We got best family game was Astro Bot.
Sorry, Sparking Zero gotshafted.
I was supposed to say that.
Yeah it definitely got shafted.

Brandon Hurles (01:42:24):
It got shafted.
I thought for sure.
Say that yeah, it definitelygot shafted.
It got shafted, I thought forsure.
Either Dragon Ball or Mario vsCapcom Fighting Collection One
of those two should have won forsure.

Mark Trobough (01:42:32):
But 100% Jamboree should have won Best Family
Game.

Brandon Hurles (01:42:36):
Yeah, that game is so good, man, we played it
multiple times.
I want to play it again.

Mark Trobough (01:42:42):
I'm sorry.
It's the only multiplayerfamily game on here.

Brandon Hurles (01:42:45):
that makes actually sense that the family
would sit down and play, like Ithought Jamper was like I
thought it was the best MarioParty to come out and I said it
was the best since 2, and I ownall the ones on the Switch.
I own the Wii U the two thatcame out on Wii U.
I own Mario Party 8 on Wii.

Mark Trobough (01:43:08):
Yeah, I thought Unicorn Overlord got shafted on
Best Sim because it went toFrostpunk 2.
But I mean, that's probablyjust me being biased.

Brandon Hurles (01:43:21):
No, I think it should have won.
I think it should have won.

Mark Trobough (01:43:23):
Yeah, I didn't care for the sports racing, I
don't even know should have won.
I think it should have won.
I didn't care for the sportsracing, I don't even know which
one won Probably F1 or somethinglike that.

Brandon Hurles (01:43:31):
Which one won that one?
I have to keep going back andforth between articles here.
Best esports game was League ofLegends.
Best esports FC25.
Best, no, it's best sports oh,eSports FC 25.
Best multiplayer gameHelldivers 2.
Best adaptation oh my God, WasFallout.

(01:43:56):
Are you kidding me?

Mark Trobough (01:44:00):
I could believe that If realistically it came
down to Arcane and Fallout ofthat, Of that whole list.
It's one of those two games Iheard nothing but bad things
about it.

Brandon Hurles (01:44:07):
Knuckles, though , bro was really good.

Mark Trobough (01:44:11):
I didn't watch it .

Brandon Hurles (01:44:12):
It was really good.

Mark Trobough (01:44:13):
I didn't watch or anything.
The Tomb Raider one was I meanokay, I guess it's not that I'm
not that shocked.
Fallout was good, it's just Ifeel like I didn't care for it,
but like this one really camedown, it was either gonna be
arcane or fallout, like to befair.
Yeah, especially we do withwhat the critically rated and
you're dealing with critics thatare deciding who wins this it's

(01:44:33):
gonna be one of those two yeah,I guess, I guess either of
those two would be fine.
I'm to be honest, I'm reallysurprised I didn't go with
Arcane.

Brandon Hurles (01:44:47):
Nah, I mean yeah .

Mark Trobough (01:44:48):
Not shockingly most anticipated game, which I
think is a stupid award.
Of course it was a GTA, but Ithink this is a stupid award.
What game are you most hypedfor?
And then it was an abjectfailure.
How many games have been likethat?
Oh, man, Okay.
Content creator failure.

Brandon Hurles (01:45:03):
How many games have been like that?

Mark Trobough (01:45:05):
oh man, okay content creator I don't know a
lot of people were like contentwith that.
I got yeah, best eSport went toLeague of Legends.
Not shocker there.
It's also a super toxic game.
What best e esport athlete, Ithink, went to Faker, which is

(01:45:27):
not surprising.
He's like the most popular,well-known esport player
globally.

Brandon Hurles (01:45:33):
Yeah.

Mark Trobough (01:45:34):
He just won the League of Legends Worlds.
This past year, I think for thefirst time in a while or
something like that.
Oh really, whether it was thisyear or the past year or
something like that, he'd wontheir worlds recently.
I don't know who won theesports team.

Brandon Hurles (01:45:51):
Yeah, I don't know either.

Mark Trobough (01:45:52):
There's three league I think T1 is what
figures a part of for league.
There's a Counter-Strike andthen a Dota team.
So I mean, which one is morepopular?
Yeah, and then obviously theplayer's choice went to
Blackmuth Wukong, which I didthink was funny because it's
either going to be Wukong orErdtree.

(01:46:12):
But technically, genshin,impact, wuthering Waves and
Xen'Lazone Zeros are all likemobile game gotcha games.
Essentially.
I mean you can play them onother platforms, but technically
those three are gotcha games.
That I mean you can play themon other platforms, but
technically those three aregotcha games that 100% were
voted for with the probablypeople from like.
China and stuff like that.
Yeah, essentially.

Brandon Hurles (01:46:35):
Wild.
What else we got?

Mark Trobough (01:46:41):
I think that's all the awards at that point.

Brandon Hurles (01:46:44):
Okay, so we had some other news stuff trying to
find that popped up today.
Did you have anything that youhad that pulled up from X?

Mark Trobough (01:46:56):
No, I didn't.
That's like the bulk of all thenews that people were talking
about this week.

Brandon Hurles (01:47:05):
So well, I'll try to pull up.
Try to pull up this stuff fromtoday.
I mean talk about big thingsfrom today, bring it up go ahead
.

Mark Trobough (01:47:23):
Someone said it things from today, I'll go ahead
and bring it up.
No, I guess you can go, Goahead.
No, I was going to say someonesaid it.
It's like Bilgar Bros, we won.
Nude mods are finally here.
It's like a meme.
Like a meme of a meme Prettymuch.

Brandon Hurles (01:47:40):
Meme of a meme of a meme.
No, so one of the other bigthings was of no surprise at all
.
End of Suicide Squad of a meme.
No, so one of the other bigthings was of no surprise at all
.
End of Suicide Squad means morelayoffs at Warner Brothers.
So Suicide Squad is gettingshut down.
Saw that coming a mile away, itsays as predictably as night
following the day.
The last gasp of Suicide Squadkilled Justice League seemingly

(01:48:03):
resulted in lost jobs.
A CBC Radio Canada report saysWB Games Montreal has eliminated
99 jobs, primarily amongkeywords subcontractors working
on its QA team.
One source told the site thatemployees were informed that
there wasn't enough work tojustify their continued
employment during a videoconference meeting on Monday.

(01:48:26):
Employees impacted by the cutswere then given two options at a
second meeting, exceptassistance in finding a new job
or sign up for a recall list forwhen work becomes available.
The report says roughly 240keywords employees work as
subcontractors of wb gamesmontreal, while suicide squad

(01:48:47):
kill the justice league wasdeveloped by rocksteady wb games
montreal is also credited foradditional work on the game.
Actual layoffs are expected tooccur in eight weeks, according
to the report.
Some employees expressedfrustration at the short notice
of the cuts.
There was apparently no talk oflayoffs at the company's
biannual meeting in late summerand sources said they were told

(01:49:09):
there would be enough work tokeep them on.
So yeah, this is more peoplefor 2024 losing their jobs in
the game industry.
But when a game like this doesso terrible, you know, and is
just an absolute piece of dogcrap, unfortunately things
happen, you know.

(01:49:29):
So yeah.
What's your thoughts, Mark?

Mark Trobough (01:49:35):
I mean it's just uh, this point, it's just
inevitable.
I mean, if you don't want toget laid off, don't make bad
games.

Brandon Hurles (01:49:47):
Now where.

Mark Trobough (01:49:48):
I stand on some of this stuff.
Yeah, I mean, at this pointwe're just kind of like
retreading stuff that we've kindof already hit a million times.

Brandon Hurles (01:49:52):
At this point, kind of feels like it just keeps
happening.
Um yeah.

Mark Trobough (01:50:00):
I mean I'm not going to feel empathetic for you
.
I mean, like you didn't givegamers what they wanted and you
didn't sell.
It's not that hard.

Brandon Hurles (01:50:09):
Yeah, yeah.
So Well, did you have anythingelse you wanted to bring up?

Mark Trobough (01:50:18):
I mean nothing that I've seen, for the most
part.
Alright, I mean there's plentyof controversial stuff I could
probably bring up, but I don't.
I don't want to talk about itright now.

Brandon Hurles (01:50:27):
So what is it?
Let's hear now.
You already have my attentionlet me pull it back up I don't
want to bring it up, but we'regoing to talk about it.
If it has anything to do withthe glock and your Rory, I'm
going to be real angry and ithas to do with comments.

(01:50:50):
Mark's ignoring the Twitch chat.
Jesus, that's so rude.
I just saw.
I just pulled it up.
I was like geez.

Mark Trobough (01:51:03):
Dang Mark.
No, so these were comments madeby the new voice actor for the
new intergalactic game.
Essentially where it's like thewhole, like you know, you can't
reinforcing the whole um, howwould you want to call it
androgynous, non-binary stuff?
Where it's like you can't justaccept it, you must embrace and

(01:51:25):
some other stuff that she saidin an interview recently oh my
gosh Interesting.

Brandon Hurles (01:51:35):
You must embrace it.

Mark Trobough (01:51:36):
I was sending him , like you're giving people that
already had fuel to say, theDEI game, to be like oh, 100%,
why would I ever want to buy orsupport this game?
And we will not be buying thisgame.
So I'm saying about that maybeyou just need to not stop saying
stupid things to give peopleammunition to go after your game

(01:52:00):
yeah, I mean, it seems yeahyeah that's all I'd say at this
point yeah, yeah for sure.

Brandon Hurles (01:52:12):
And then, though , there was one other thing that
I wanted to bring up, trying tofind it here on X, real quick,
maybe I can find it.
Oh yeah, this is it not bignews, but for series that I care

(01:52:33):
about that are very nicheseries Hyperdimension Neptunia,
rebirth Trilogy and Death EndRequest Code Z for Switch are
cancelled for the West, so theywill not be coming out here.
And I love the HyperdimensionNeptunia games.
I've been a big fan.
Death End Request Code Z forSwitch are cancelled for the
West, so they will not be comingout here.
And I love the hyperdimensionthat 2 New Games.
I've been a big fan forever.

Mark Trobough (01:52:52):
Absolute crap what I'm just saying.
It's absolute crap.

Brandon Hurles (01:52:59):
Yeah, and really frustrating.
And it says the Switch versionsof I'm not going to say the
full titles because they're verylong, but Rebirth 1, rebirth 2,
rebirth 3, v-generation andDeath End Request.
Code Z will no longer bereleased in the West due to the
contents not complying withNintendo guidelines.
Publisher Idea FactoryInternational announced A

(01:53:22):
Western release was originallyplanned for May 21st, but a
death end request Code Z didlaunch for the PlayStation 5,
playstation 4, and Switch onSeptember 19th in Japan.
Idea Factory Internationalclarified the PlayStation 5 and
4 versions will still launch inthe West, so just the Switch
versions won't be coming out,which I would have been picking

(01:53:45):
up for sure, because those areto me Nintendo titles, like I've
always picked those up.

Mark Trobough (01:53:49):
That makes sense to me.
It's on the Switch in Japan,but not in the US.
Yeah, it makes no sense at all.

Brandon Hurles (01:53:56):
How does that?
Make any damn sense at all Morecensorship stuff, more
censorship.

Mark Trobough (01:54:01):
Because it just doesn't make.
It's still on a nintendoplatform.

Brandon Hurles (01:54:05):
Yeah, it doesn't make any sense it's okay in
japan, but it's not okay here,where, if you ask me, there's,
you know, I, I don't know I havea lot of opinions because let's
go to this, let's go to switchonline store and see how many
games how many hentai gamesthere are on there right now,
let's be real with theconsistency of what Nintendo

(01:54:27):
said.
Yeah, it makes no sense.
If you go on there right now onthe Switch eShop, you will find
at least a dozen hentai gamesright in your first hundred
search, Like no doubt you canget Doom on your Switch as gory
and as bloody and violent as hecan get.

Mark Trobough (01:54:43):
Yeah, it makes sense we don't like anything.
That's the hint of I don't know.

Brandon Hurles (01:54:51):
And then I guess I will mention a couple of
other things.
There was a couple of Godzillathings for today that I figured
might as well just go ahead andthrow in, because we love
Godzilla.
This is really cool to see.
But Criterion Collection you'reaware of Criterion Collection?
You're aware of CriterionCollection, right, mark?
They are releasing Godzilla vsBiollante.

(01:55:11):
It will be released in 4K UltraHD this March and will
reportedly feature a new digitalrestoration.
I will definitely be pickingthat up, for sure.

Mark Trobough (01:55:23):
I'm really excited about that In your 4k
ultra hd yeah, I love, uh, Ilove criterion collection big
fan a lot of good movies thereyeah, there really is, and they
always put out good stuff forfor godzilla.

Brandon Hurles (01:55:38):
But also today is the anniversary of tokyo sos,
so I wanted to bring that up aswell.
I love that movie nice withmecha, godzilla and uh, mothra
and stuff.
So, um, yeah, a couple thingsthere.
And also, last godzilla thingthey did announce that um, king
of the monsters is to take onmarvel comics cross the eras in

(01:55:59):
godzilla versus marvel in 2025,which was announced yesterday.
So he'll be taking on variousMarvel characters all throughout
time, somehow and some way.
So I will definitely be readingthis run because I love
Godzilla.
I don't know how this is goingto work, but Godzilla's fought

(01:56:21):
Marvel before in the past, soit'll be interesting.
But a couple Godzilla thingsfor you Godzilla fans that watch
and listen.
How is it going to work?
But Godzilla's fought Marvelbefore in the past, so, uh, yeah
, it'd be interesting.
But a couple of Godzilla thingsfor you Godzilla fans that
watch and listen.
All right, mark, what do yougot for us?
Uh, you got anything for us?
Uh, closing.

Mark Trobough (01:56:35):
No, I think we got everything.

Brandon Hurles (01:56:37):
All right, can we uh?

Mark Trobough (01:56:49):
can we find anywhere?

Brandon Hurles (01:56:50):
find us anywhere oh, you know, you know where
they can find us where they findus.

Mark Trobough (01:56:54):
You find us over on the facebook do it, youtube,
kick instagram, tiktok, twitterx, blue sky threads, everything.
All these socials are down inthe description below, where you
can find us as well I mostlymeant like update on the Anime
Junction, cast stuff before topromote that.
That's what I was saying.

Brandon Hurles (01:57:13):
Yeah, well, that too, of course, follow us on
social media, which, like he,says everything down below, but
wanted to promote the otherstuff that we're doing.

Mark Trobough (01:57:22):
You need to not be so damn vague with it.
Then Jesus Got an attitudetonight, just a bit.
But no, obviously we got theanime junction cast and a little
more anime content as well,coming on the junction network,
so go check that out.
That'll be out.
Every sunday is when the animejunction cast comes out as well,
as we have a publishing someclips for a little bit shorter,

(01:57:43):
some more more digestible stuff,if you just want that as well.

Brandon Hurles (01:57:45):
Yeah, for sure, good stuff.
So, yeah, we'll see you guysall later.
Again.
We'll be, uh, live.
If you're watching live rightnow, we are live every Saturday,
8 PM Eastern standard time,playing new games.
Tomorrow we are, of course, ifyou're watching live for this

(01:58:07):
week, we're playing WarhammerSpace Marine 2.
And then what did we decide forcommunity stream next week?

Mark Trobough (01:58:10):
So audio listeners know, I don't think we
did.

Brandon Hurles (01:58:15):
We said we were going to decide today.
Yeah, we didn't.
We didn't bring it up, but Idid want to at least announce it
.
So there's a week ahead,because tomorrow will be a week.
So I don't know.
But can we do Helldivers 2 as acommunity game, because we're

(01:58:37):
already wanting?
to play probably okay, let's doHelldivers 2.
So this week we'll do Warhammerand then we'll do Helldivers 2
next weekend.
But then again, of course, GameJuncture Podcast for our audio
listeners is live every Friday,8 pm Eastern Standard Time on
YouTube and Twitch, so you cancatch us there.
Definitely love to see some ofour audio listeners watching

(01:58:58):
live with us hanging out, havingfun, getting shouted out in the
comments and harassing Mark.
So we'll see you all later.
Have a good one everyone.
We'll be back soon with morecontent.
Peace.

Mark Trobough (01:59:14):
Peace everybody.