Get Played - Games of 2026 Part 2

Episode Date: June 8, 2026

Everyone is here! Heather, Nick and Matt do a mid year check in on 2026's video game releases and look ahead at what's coming for the rest of the year! We also talk Pokopia, Mina the Hollower and more! Check out our brand new merch at kinshipgoods.com/getplayed Follow us on social media @getplayedpod Music by Ben Prunty benpruntymusic.com Art by Duck Brigade duckbrigade.com For our exclusive show Get Played DLC, ad-free main feed episodes, our complete back catalogue including How Did This Get Played? episodes go to patreon.com/getplayed Join us on our Discord server here: https://discord.gg/getplayed Wanna leave us a voicemail? Call 616-2-PLAYED (616-275-2933) or write us an email at [e-mail] Advertise on Get Played via Gumball.fm All of our links can be found at linktree.com/getplayedpodSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a Headgum podcast. Wow, summer game fest. It just always delivers. And this year, no difference. No, yeah. Keely at it again. Keylet had it again. Bangor after banger.

And Lucy James as well, co-hosting. Oh, yeah. What a show. I just could not believe they announced that game. That was crazy that there was finally stuff about that game. No, yeah, that was really, really crazy. I was really hoping we'd, I heard rumors that, We were getting maybe hear about that game, but they showed a lot more than I thought they were going to show.

You guys are talking about the one with the trailer and the, it was like all the particle effects and, uh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there was like music and, um. I can't believe who wrote, they announced who wrote that score is like stunning. I love all of his work. It's incredible. Yeah. That was really, really crazy.

Yeah. Like, and you don't expect him to write music for that kind of game. So I was pretty blown away. I mean, obviously you saw this and we're as shocked as I was. Yeah, we all saw it. We all saw Summer Game Fest, which just happened. Well, yeah, we happened and we saw it. We all saw it.

We know everything that happened there. But the- We all streamed the live showcase event Friday, June 5th, 5 p.m. Eastern. That's right. But remember when they brought... In the past. It's the thing we did in the past. And we had seen it.

But we had seen it in our present when we watched it. Yeah, we saw it. When they brought out, when they brought out, that guy. Oh my God, that guy. I was like, it's that guy. It's that guy. He's here at this, at Summer Games Fest, which happened already.

What's he doing here? What's he doing here? Then he said, or she or they. Or she or they? Or that, you know, it's like, you know, it's, what is a person doing here? What's a person doing here? The fact that a person was even there was so crazy. I was losing my mind.

And the thing that they announced looked pretty like a thing. It was 100%. a thing. I really liked it when the when the host said at the forefront of games that like to punctuate stuff like that I was like it is yeah is the forefront of games and I mean we all like the part where Kojima was there yeah yeah I I will say I am disappointed

that they didn't show Pac-Man's because I've been hearing so much about Pac-Man's which as we know like is this it's a rumored game Yeah. And it's where there's a lot, it's like a lot of Pac-Man's on screen, and they did not show Pac-Man. Is it possible they did show Pac-Man's? I just want to make sure, like, do it if we want to cover it. Maybe we should do a version if they did show it.

Okay. Which we already know, we know at this point. So, like. That was crazy when they showed Pac-Man. I could not believe. You were really excited about that? I can't believe they showed Pac-Mans. Yeah.

And they talked about why it wasn't called Pac-Men. Because there's Mans. It's man. There's mans. Yeah. It made total sense to me. Anyway. They brought back that meme

Whose Mans is this? That was so fun. We have a great time. I love that. Unless they didn't. Awesome announcement. It wasn't announced. 128 player Pac-Mans.

Crazy. Anyway, rest in power, Jeff Keely. We didn't know about your shellfish allergy. So sorry I offered you that shrimp. What about one if he lives? Got it. Great, great. Okay.

Anyway, rest in power. Jeff Keely. Fuck. It's hard. It's hard. It's until you got fucking shocked with the fucking paddles and then came back. Like the fucking Frankenstein. Yeah.

Well, he was wearing those bolts. He was wearing those bowls. He was wearing the bowls. Insane. Pac-Man's. Keely back to life. And the announcement of that game. We anticipate GTA 6 and 1.

wonder if anything will pull us away from Mina the Hollower as we preview the back half of 2026 in gaming this week on Get Played. Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between. It's time to get played. I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Tiger Weiger. That's me, Nick Tiger Weiger along with our third host, Mr. Games, Matt Upadaka. Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast, where this week we're talking about video games. Yeah, we're taking a little break from our normal sandwich and soup discussion and Varong fan podcast format to talk about video games this week. So, you know, if your regular listener, you might be a little unnerved by that development, but just take it all in stride. You know, you said hello everyone, your catchphrase. That's right. And everyone is right because everyone is here. Everyone is here.

After a few episodes where we were out of town in various combinations, we have the full Triforce of Freedom. Freedom? Yeah, it's freedom. What the fuck? Are you following the news? We're not the Triforce. Triforce of friendship is out. Triforce of freedom is in.

Here's the thing? I kind of like it. And we had, I meant to, look, I fucked up. A fan on our Doe Boys tour in the South gifted us all Magic the Gathering cards. And not only do I not have that person's name, I forgot to bring them today. Wow. So I'm sorry. So you're zero for all.

Yeah. And, you know, this kind of sucks because I brought you something. I know. Matt brought me a very kind gift. Oh. Not that you have to give a gift to get a gift. No. But it kind of would have been nice. This is a cinema roll? Is that the...

Cinnamon roll, yeah. Cinema roll. And this is the Hawaii variant. Yeah, he's got a little Hawaii tattoo. Yeah. I got a little, they had these Sanrio plushes when I was in Hawaii. And I got one for everybody. I got ranch one.

There's Karomi. me with the guitar. That kind of, yeah, kind of like a KK slider sort of vibe. Yeah, and I got Heather

Goudatama. Lazy egg. The lazy egg. And I just got, mine was tan hello kitty holding a license plate that said, I love Hawaii.

That's pretty good. If you like, like, it's really cute, the Hawaii on the back of the head here, the bunny's head, but it's a bunny

with sunglasses for our, for our audio listeners who are the bulk of our audience. A bunny with sunglasses and, a Hawaiian shirt and a little like ukulele and a cute little smile here. A bunny has Hawaii on the back of their head. But if a real person got a Hawaii tattoo on the back of their skull,

you'd think they were insane. I was just thinking if you had a tattoo that said California on the back of your head, I would have you locked up. I have a friend who has two tattoos on his arms. And one arm says there is no Hawaii. and the other arm says there is Hawaii. Hmm. What does that mean?

Yeah, what do they mean by that? Well, I believe he explained it to me as... One arm always lies and one arm always tells the truth. Both of them are jerking you off. I think he explained it to me that he was on... He was having a mushroom-induced euphoria experience where he was like, you think of Hawaii as this place that is far away that you might someday go to that's perfect.

Yeah. But there is no Hawaii. Like you're, you are here in the present and it's somewhere that you have to make the Hawaii that you are in. Yes. And then later he had looked at that tattoo long enough that he was like, but there is a Hawaii. Yeah.

And so he got it on the other arm. That is really good. I like that. Yeah. I don't have any themed tattoos like that. yet. I guess I do actually. All your tattoos are themed.

You're tiger now. Yeah, I'm tiger now. And our producer, Michelle Chen, a ranch, continues to be ranch, but also is today rocking a Chen jersey for the Golden State Valkyries, the WNBA franchise. Number two, this is Caitlin Chen. This is Taiwanese American Excellence, recognizing Taiwanese American excellence, Caitlin Chen, the standout reserve for the Valkyries.

Very cool. Yeah, awesome. Yeah, congratulations. Yeah, congratulations. By default, the Valkyries are my favorite team in the WNBA because they're the Viking team. Yeah, I mean, like for me, I got to stay loyal to the L.A. Sparks, but I do think the Valkyries color way and theming is really cool. Yeah, and I like the Caitlin Chen story. She almost made the league last year.

it didn't quite, and then this year is, like, found a, found a role with the team, and it's, uh, good for her. Yukon, Yukon, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, , uh, uh, uh, uh, great. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess it's going to seem like a bad look that I don't have a favorite WNBA team.

Is that it? You guys tried to, to corner me. Oh, I have a favorite and I don't have one. It says Chicago ladies. Oh, the Chicago lady. What is? The Chicago female bulls. Speaking of teams, you are wearing a Dodgers hat as usual, and you received a jeer from a new figure in the, a new character has arrived here in the Get Played slash Headgum family.

The new headgum intern Ethan, who is a Padres fan, is that correct? Hello, hello, yes, I am a Padres fan. You hail from San Diego, California. San Diego. And so there's, of course, a famed rivalry, the Padres and the Dodgers, and the Giants. I described it as the scene. from Madman where I can't remember the one guy's name is talking to Don Draper and says, I pity you.

And Don Draper, the Dodgers, say, I don't think about you at all. The biggest fuck you. No, no, no, you know, SoCal's, uh, us SoCal Surfer dudes got to stick together. We got to stick together. But yeah, San Diego is one team left. Yeah. And, you know, we've taken two of their other ones. I think they could have, they could, with the chargers, they could have them back.

I get, get them the charges and Clippers back. as far as I'm concerned. Send them on back. You know what? The Clippers would be, they'd be so happy in San Diego. San Diego. They would love it there. This is a, this is a thing I talked about when we did our, I didn't know to dwell on my other podcast, but to talk about our, when we did the, our podcast in San Jose, California. Yeah. San Jose is a shockingly large city. And I think it's like completely forgotten about. Oh, yeah. It's like a top 10 city in, in population in the U.S. San Diego as well. And it's like, these are major. population centers that are just kind of largely ignored by pro sports. They just get like one one big franchise apiece. I guess two in San Jose's case. They got it. Because California's too big.

Yeah, California's too big. I mean, I don't actually think this, but if California was sort of divided up into like six states, then these would be the capital cities of those states and they would get major representation in sports. You're talking about the five California's movement. Sure. This is a weird libertarian crusade. by Silicon Valley people that would have created some of the poorest states in the country

by putting all of the wealth generating areas into smaller pockets. But, yeah, it's... Separate me from those people. The people with this idea, I mean. Yeah, no, I think it's always fun when the Padres come to town. But, like, I feel like we're united against the Astros, though, no? There we go. Of course, of course.

Yeah, we have a common enemy. Everyone hates the Astros. Fuck the Astros. The Astros. But go Lady Astros. Well, their lipstick is unsubstreet. Caitlin, do you want to... I just called Rochelle.

Caitlin, because he's wearing the Caitlin Chen jersey. I'm mortified. You would be so fooled by any disguise. I had Caitlin Chen in the brain. Rochelle, I'm sorry. I know your name. Rochelle, do you want to tell your... Do you want to share your Padre's story?

Oh, sure. One time me and my boyfriend, Mark, we were in San Diego for the weekend, and then our waiter at some restaurant whispered to us, hey, are you guys Padres fans? And unbeknownst to us, the owner of the Padres was sitting right next to our table. And Mark goes, what are the Padres? The waiter was mad. That rocks. San Diego, the eighth largest city in America, just ahead of Dallas. Wow.

Wow. And Jacksonville and Austin. San Jose comes in at number 13 ahead of Charlotte, Columbus, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver. All these cities are smaller than San Jose in San Diego. You know, I made a big claim shipping off the chargers and the clippers. Yeah. I can't speak to it. I don't know.

I know that people, the Lakers have just been here for a long time, of course, and I think there is like a sort of you're either a Lakers fan or a Clippers fan. Right. Right. But I'm not in. I can be bought. I could go either way. Whoever says they want me as their fan, I'll go.

What is the etymology of a city without lakes having the sports team, the Lakers? They're fundamentally from Minneapolis. And they moved from Minnesota in the 50s and retained the team name. And because L.A. Lakers is so sonorous, even though it makes no geographic sense, it's stayed the same. It's the same reason the Utah of NBA team is the Utah Jazz. It's because they originated in New Orleans. They moved to Utah. What does Utah have to do with jazz?

Fucking nothing. But it's the name just kind of stuck. Yeah. Why does Memphis have Grizzlies? They don't. It's just the team was from Vancouver. I love it. Memphis does some grislies, right?

If you move the team. If Memphis says crazy, I'm sorry. You've got to change all of it. Yeah, I agree. You got to change all of it. Like, how fucking hype would it be if it was the Los Angeles smog? Los Angeles smog. I mean, I can get it.

I can get on board. The Los Angeles. And the uniforms are gray? I mean, that's like in. Fucking awesome. In Robocop, that's what the NBA franchise would be. Yeah. Or like Emolition Man.

They'd be the smoke shows. Yay. Matt. You're pritting money with the smoke shows. Look, come on now. Wow. I've just never been to an NBA game. I'd love to go.

It seems like it'd be a lot of fun. Wow, you've never been to an NBA game? No, but I like when I hear the squeak of the shoe. I love that. I've been to an NBA game and you haven't been to an NBA game. I've never been to a football game either. Well, that's okay. I've been to a football game, though.

I've been to a little footy match before. Proper football. Proper football. Not that American football. No, no, no. Hand egg, I call it. He calls it hand egg. He calls it hand egg.

I love these guys But are Is that guy real? Like I feel like the soccer Like the football fans are like the more like It's actually like they're like they're like they're like They're like they're like they're like football people are like It's that's soccer

I think you're maybe talking about the Tui American soccer fan But I think like the European fucking hooligan I forgot about the hooligans The hooligans are giving you some shit They're no good these guys With their voo zella's Yeah, they'll yell at it. you in English, but you won't be able to understand it as they beat the shit at it.

That was my experience being on my very first international flight flying to Italy, had a layover in Dublin. They were speaking English on the thig, and I was like, I didn't get a lick of that at all. Wow. And I was just glad that I had been on an airplane before because I knew what the rules were. I kind of had an idea of what they were saying, but I was like, I didn't understand a word of that. Laipa has never heard it. It was like they were like rewinding the audio. You're the person now.

Strait of baggage seat. All right. Everyone's here. Everyone is here. Everyone is here. Wait, I did have one other thing I wanted to ask Ethan about, but you were a pole vaulter. I am, I am. Wait, how did you get into pole vaulting?

So in high school, we had to join a sport, right? And everyone who wasn't very athletic joined track because it was like, you'll stand around. You'll just do whatever. Yeah. And then we realized that track's actually running. Yeah. And a lot of us didn't want to do that either. And you looked over to the side and you saw the pole vault mat.

You'd see like five people just laying down there. That's what I wanted to do, you know? I just wanted to lay there. But you ended up having some talent at it. You could actually like, you're like, oh, wait, I took to pole vaulting. I wouldn't say it was talent. I'd say that no one does it. So when you do decent, it looks like you have some talent, you know?

But it seems like you're, like, are you doing at the collegiate level? Is that correct? Yes, I am. So, I mean, you know, you know what you're doing with the pole. Yeah. But you're like a tall guy, right? I am, yeah. Yeah.

Have you ever seen somebody, like, run up to do pole vault and they stick the pole into the ground and then it goes through their neck and out the back? Great question. I have not. But one time when I was at a meet, I did that, and it went right through my shirt. Oh! Completely ripped my shirt off. And I fell back on the ground, completely shirtless.

Holy shit. completely, like, beat up. Yeah, it was not fun. That's rough stuff. It's rough stuff. I didn't go through your neck. Yeah, I know. Was that marked as a fault as a fault?

What do you do? You get to try, you get another try? No. That's just it. They have little, like, white flags and red flags, and the officials will raise the red flag. Just to, like, put, like, something on the burn. It just makes it so much worse.

Wow. Well, so if you, but, like, in a meet, how many attempts do you get? You just get one. You get three at each time. Okay, so that counts as one of your three at each time. All right. You made up for it all.

Do you think they'd raise the red flag if somebody, like, put the pole vault, they put the stick into the ground, and they slipped and it went straight through their stomach? Do you think you'd get like a red flag on that? I think you might have to. You probably get a red flag, but you could, but you got two more tries. What do you think the refs would do if that guy was like, oh, for a long time? Blood pouring out of their mouth. Well, thank you for being here, Ethan. Thank you for sitting in today.

Thank you for being one of Headgums, a few employees. And ranch, thank you, as always, for being a part of the show. And we should say, you're friends with Ryan. Your friends with Ryan are the other headgum intern. You have anything to say about that? Just like in general, like what's the takeaway? How do you have been friends with them? I have been friends with them since, I would say eighth grade.

I met him in sixth grade. Wow. Didn't become friends for those two years, actually. The first time I saw him, he was. wearing a Mickey Mouse t-shirt. I looked at him and my middle school self was like, oh, kids are going to be eating a lot.

And so I was like, I was like, got to stay away from him. He's not the right guy for me. I got to be cool. And obviously I had the terrible side part, hair all the way to the side, completely shaving the other side.

So in eighth grade, I realized, you know, maybe I should stop trying it for them and become friends with, like, lowly Ryan, you know? Right guy for that. Glad you did him a solid there. Oh, of course, of course.

Sounds like he needed a friend. At least one. You made the right call. I mean, look at you now. You're here about to listen to a video game podcast as someone who does not have any interest in video games. When people hear that Mint Mobile plans are only $15 per month, a lot of them wonder, what are you talking about? How is that possible? What is the catch?

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Like, like, wow, what a catch. Since we were given MintMobile here on the podcast, I've got a double phone, right? And I'll tell you what I'm doing with it. I'm just saying orange juice over and over in front of the phone so I can try and catch the CIA secretly listening to my conversations. So far, no gotchas, no gimmicks. All of my ads remain for diapers, but I am saying orange juice over and over and over again in front of that phone. MintMobil took what's wrong with wireless and made it right with premium wireless for $15 a month. You can even bring your current phone and your number. Choose from three,

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It's time for the question of the hour. What are you playing? What are you playing? Hi, it's me the wretched and even merchant, and I'm here to talk about my interest in what my friends are doing in gaming. And I'm so happy to see you guys again. It's been a long time.

I've been holding down the fort all on my own. you've been doing what what does that mean I had to fill in for you guys when you weren't here I don't think you did no no rents and I recorded episodes is that true yeah we recorded like 10 episodes 10 you didn't have to do that yeah yeah yeah yeah they're pretty good they're pretty good is devastating never said that about get played

think of it because it ended up that you guys were able to record these doubles Yeah. But I think that in the future, if we need any, like, backup, or if there's like a war, we could just release those from the vault. Yeah. Yeah, it's nice to know we have 10 in the can. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that should cover the length of a war.

Right, I imagine. Now you run, you can run repeats. And then you're supposed to keep the audience. I keep it going. So, like, maybe every other week in that case, we do a repeat, unlock something. But then the treat is we have a merch episode. Yeah, we got a year.

coverage right there. I don't want to spoil content to come. I'm glad you ask. The first one is, what is it game? That's a pretty broad topic, but an interesting one. We filled four hours. Wow. So see, I would have got more

episodes out of that as you, I would maybe part one, part two, part three, part four. Yeah. No, no. You'd get lost. If you were dropped into the middle of that episode, you'd be like, I know I'm still I don't understand what a game is. I got to hear the whole thing from the beginning.

Episode one, what is a game? Episode two, when I drive in a game, am I driving in real life? Right. That feels like that can be a pretty brief episode. I could answer that with one word. Staggering two and a half hours of content right there. Jesus Christ. The answer is yes, right?

We'll talk about it off the one. Okay. I don't want to spoil everything. So, you know, you guys want to hear more. I can. No, well, we'll keep us in suspense. Chumper's examining the role of teeth in video games. Okay.

Episode three. Would be interested. Yeah, that's kind of interesting. You know, I'm thinking of some spells that involve teeth. I'm thinking about the teeth level in psychonauts too. There's maybe some territory there. A lot of toothed monsters. I do think for SEO purposes, titling something, chompers, is confusing.

Might be a little confusing now. what is that is that a game you have to keep reading of course but it might get cut off in the player episode four

merchant nukem two and a half hours on a charity drive oh hey that's actually oh so hang on a charity drive so the episode you recorded two hours

you recorded four hours on what is a game but for the charity one where you're presumably raising money for a cause during the length of time that one's half the length for somebody's video.

It was really hard to keep Newcomb in line. Oh, of course. I kept being like, hey, buddy, let's stay on topic. Yeah. And he kept saying, literally awful things. Yeah, it feels like he, like a conversation between the Resident Evil merchant

and Duke Nukem would just be a little unhinged. And upset, he upset me in various points. I can imagine. He's upset all of us. Anyway, so we got 10 episodes like this. A lot of content. I took a shit the size of my leg. Yeah, Duke get out of here.

Oh, sorry. Is he gone? Yeah, he left. Oh, thank God. Hey, yeah, I was hoping he would make him. We left on bad terms. Yeah, it's tough. That's tough.

He took it like a romantic breakup. Oh. Some people just feel more indifferently. He's one of those guys. Yeah. Anyway, I'm here to ask you a question. That is my job to ask. And that's mad up and duck out.

What are you playing? Merch, I'm glad you asked me. merch out I like I like merch out I do like merch out I have a couple of things that I feel like

depending on how I start it could go either way as a tee off for both of you oh okay so let me just start here first I'm still playing 007 first light

all right and I fucking love it that's great I really really love it I think it's a spectacularly made game I think the the stuff in the beginning that is dull

is I get what they're going for right it's supposed to be like you are him it's like it's immersive what if I was James Bond in a Jeep yeah exactly but like and somebody was driving me somewhere

and they were talking to me and it took like 15 minutes that stuff is tough that stuff is tough but even you're a James Bond fan at all not really okay we're gonna find something that we like that you like to We'll get there.

I hope so. So far it's Ryan. Yeah, so far it's Ryan. Do I like Ryan? We'll see. But like I think the story is unfolding in an interesting way. I did experience more of Lenny Kravitz's character's story. Insane.

Insane. And I was wrong. Or at least I think so. Because in the marketing, in the initial marketing, before the game was released, they were like, and we got Lenny Kravitz, and he's this guy, and he's the bad guy. And he's kind of like just a guy in it.

Like, he's not like, he doesn't seem like he's the main bad guy. Oh. He seems like he's like a guy that does bad stuff on your way to meeting other, you know, other character. Perhaps an anti-hero. He's a Benicio del Toro of the Last Jedi, but not a Kylo Rennera, Hux.

Exactly, yeah, he's like, he's does, yeah, that's perfect. Well, actually, Hux is, good, but we don't have time to get into it. Well, yeah, he's the spy. He's the spy. We remember. Which we didn't bring up last week when we were talking about spies and spy games.

Oh, you didn't talk about episode nine revelation. We should have talked about Hux. Hux. He was giving the Hitler speech in two movies earlier is the spy. I think he becomes the spy in between Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker. The only way I can justify it in my head is as a response to Kylo Ren becoming supreme leader, he's like, I hate this fucking guy. I'm going to be a spy. It has to be the justification, but it's stupid.

It's dumb. Either way, it's dumb. So I'm still playing that, and I'm really, really loving it. Okay. I'm going to, I'll jump into this one first because I think it would tee up Nick, but I don't have that much to say about it. I get something to say. What?

But I know where you're going, but keep going. But yeah, but I have one more thing to say, though, too. So I did start playing Mina the Hollower. Let's go. Okay. Which is as fantastic as everybody says it is. it on the Einthor, which is like just a fun novelty of having the Ein Thor. Love it.

I could be playing it on my Steam deck, but like the Ein Thor is, you know, it's small and and Mina's a little mouse. It is fitting. And it's a game that has an intentionally apes the ascetic of the Game Boy Color. Exactly. And so playing it on something like that, it's also not too, it's not too intense on the Einthor, so it runs perfectly via the app game native, which is how I play my, some of my Steam library on there.

But I'm hoping to get more into that. But I did get more into a game pretty recently. And that game is Pocopia. Let me, can I, can I talk about me to the hollowar a little bit? Yes, please. We'll go back to Pogopia. Great. You know the two of you can talk about that.

But the two of us can talk about me to the hollowar. We're both pretty early on in the game. We should say we're recording this not too long after its release. This is a Yacht Club games development and publication. They, of course, made Shovel Knight most famously. And like Shovel Night is kind of a retro throwback with a Game Boy color aesthetic, as they mentioned. And it's awesome art direction that constrains its palette to four colors a tile, like the technology of the era. It's on basically everything.

And it is currently the highest rated game of 2026 on Metacritic. It is universally revered by critics and mostly by the player base. There's been a little bit of backlash because of early. difficulty, which we'll talk about. I've seen described as Zelda, like the old school, like, isometric, you know, top down Zelda's, Zelda, Castlevania, Dark Souls.

It's basically, I think that's pretty good. I mean, because clearly, like, kind of has some Castlevania, like, weapons and tonality and, you know, the cinematics kind of evoke that. But the gameplay, for something that looks and sounds so retro, is very modern.

It is like an 8-bit-looking and sounding game that plays like a fully open world souls like. Yes. And I will say that, that, Rochelle, I don't know if this game's been on your radar at all, but as someone who's a Hollow Knight enthusiast, it's not Hollow Night, but I think it has like Hollow Night and Silk Song, it scratches the same sort of edge. Yeah, I think you would like it. I think you would like it. It's really cool. So you get plays a cute mouse. The mouse is cute as fuck.

The mouse is really cute. I'm looking at the art for this game. And when you describe it as a Game Boy Color-like game, what I think is important to convey is the palette is limited and as a result has the sort of off-putting nature of a true 8-bit game. Yes. It's gorgeous. It's really cool. Just art direction goes so far and, you know, sometimes giving yourself a restraint can be a gift. And that's definitely the case here.

Similarly, it has this incredible chip tune soundtrack that evokes an 8-bit chip set. Honestly, kind of like a Game Boy chip set, which I'm right. Some, it kind of a Game Boy NES, it feels like at times, but it sounds great. The composers are Jake Kaufman who did Shovel Night and then Yuzokosiro, a name you might recognize Heather because he's been composing games for Sega since the 1980s, most famously Streets of Rage. Yes. Streets of Rage soundtrack. One of the greatest soundtracks of all time. And this soundtrack fucking rips.

I mean, just it's been a year of great game scores, but this is right up there. Yeah. And yeah, so you asked me earlier and then you were like, we'll save it for the show. Yeah. My starting weapon. Yeah, so you get three starting weapons you can choose from and you eventually can acquire the other starting weapons. Yes.

And some more beyond that apparently. But the three options are Whisper and Vesper, which is a pair of daggers, Nightstar, which is a whip, which is what I picked. You know, got to go to whip in the Castlevania homage. Yeah. And then the Blast Strike Mall, which is a big ass hammer that I've heard is the most difficult to wield in the early going. Yeah, I also picked the whip.

Hell yeah. A couple Indiana Joneses over there. I had thought about getting the knives because I do like knives. I also like knives. And I also like big hammers. So it's like this is not like a gimmie for me, but I was like, oh, I'll go to whip. It was kind of crazy how difficult the choice was. Well, because you think you're locked into it.

And then you're like, okay, well, I can get everything eventually anyway. this is just a way to start things off. It has good range. It seems like a good to pick. Yes. And that's the main benefit so far because, like, I, speaking of difficulty, I've been dying a lot. It's hard. And the difficulty is, from what I understand, front-loaded.

Yes. The game does, as you play more of it, obviously, you're going to get more reps and learn how it works. So, you know, that's part of it. But a big part of it also is you get these trinkets, which are things that convey various benefits, a lot of games have like badges or something similar. You know, what are the things called in Eldon Ring? Oh, not runes. Those are. Insignias? What are they?

Medallions? Yeah, whatever the fuck they are. We know what they are. We just don't hold the name. We just know what they are. Get off our fucking back. Don't tell us we don't know what they are. You're actually made in list for being upset. They're not badges, but it's like badges. But yeah, so we know what they are.

Yeah. Maybe we're just not saying it. Maybe we're just being coy to see if you know what they are. Yeah, we actually do know, and it's really embarrassing. that you don't know what it is. Anyway, whatever those are, which we know, it's the same sort of thing where it's like they convey various bonuses, and you can get ones that mitigate damage and improve survivability.

The healing mechanic is really interesting because it's like the Soulslike system where you have a limited number of flasks, basically vials, they're called here, plasma vials. But it's tied to the amount of healing you receive is tied to the amount of damage you have dealt. So you can't just turtle and, like, heal repeatedly. You got to like get in there and get some hits on that some bitch Or else you're not going to get much health in return

I think it's so, so cool. The burrowing mechanic, which is like a big part. I mean, more like Mina the burrower. It's more like Mina the borrower. You jump and then again, you're this little mouse, cute as fuck. And it is very Gurin Lagan. Like Mina loves to dig, much like Simone, the digger. That's right.

It goes in there and goes under the ground. And it's both like an exploration mechanic, but also like it's kind of like a role in a souls game. You can use it in combat as well. So it's really cool. You can use it to lift big boulders. You can lift big boulders. And also, you mentioned the souls earlier, the runes.

The bones are their money. This is a game where the bones are their money. The bones are the equivalent. And I can't tell really what some of these enemies are. Some of them kind of look like skeletons that maybe came to life. It's possible they are. So they're just walking money. They're so money they don't even know it.

It's just like, Heather, you'd love this game too. Okay. It's tough as nails and it's a throwback. And it's like, it's like a soul's game. But it's like, again, just like if you're responding to the art, then I think this will totally be in your wheelhouse. Yeah. This is, I mean, I think already kind of that it's funny how we keep getting consensus

consensus game of the year after consensus game of the year, like kind of just one after the other, which I guess we'll talk about when we're talking through the games of 2026. Yes. But it feels like this one's in pole position right upside, right along with the AAA release that have been so revered this year. It's sold massive. It's sold like 300,000 copies in three days or something.

It's under 20 bucks, too. Wow. She's like fucking, I don't know. I mean, I was talking to a friend at work today about just like this developer yacht club, which kind of, it seemed from what I've read in Jason Schreier's book, came from a world where kind of I was in game development, making games that, like, mobile games and licensed games that no one was really passionate about. And they were just like, let's just go off on our own. Let's take a risk. Let's have this Kickstarter. And let's just make a game

that we want to make. They make Shovel Night. It's a, it's a huge success. The Kickstarter like meets all their goals and exceeds them. And then instead of like repeatedly monetizing it, which they could have done, they just are releasing an endless amount of free DLC. It's just like really, it's like clearly they are, yes, they're a very successful developer deservedly, but also like they spent seven years on this game in the same way that that that silk song had such a long development cycle because they wanted to make it into what it is yeah it seems to have reap the benefits so yeah I mean like this this is one um you should just you already are playing if you're listening podcast you're probably playing but just it's a one that people should not it does make me want to go

back and revisit shovel night because I everybody that I know that loves shovel night is like a shovel night like evangelist yeah sure like it's like it's so good but I haven't really spent that much time with it to get into to the parts of it that I love. Can I, wait, I want to give you both a chance to talk about Pocopia because you're about to go there. Yeah. So, but I, one more thing I'll get back to.

Sure. But go for it, Matt. Oh, sure. Okay, well, I had previously, I think put maybe like a paltry 10 hours into Pocopia and was like, I like this, but I kind of need to just do a little more investigate. I needed to go away for a second. Yeah. I came back to it since we last recorded.

Yes. which was like a week ago. Uh-huh. I don't have 30 hours in this game. I love to hear it, Matt. Because I've just been playing it when I wake up in the morning and then basically when I'm done with work until I go to sleep. Because I, um,

something just, it happened to me. It happened to me. I experienced just pure majesty and joy playing this game. I have audibly gassed playing it. I've gotten choked up watching them move around. Yeah, man. There was like on the bleak beach, I have Piplep there. You need Pipplup so you can help clean up the mud.

And Piplup is one of the starters, and he's just a little penguin. He's just a baby, actually. Yeah, he's a little guy. He's kind of just a baby. I thought I was going to cry watching him climb up a block. Because he couldn't do it kind of. He was kind of like, it was so cute that I was like, oh, Oh, God.

He needs my help. He's just a baby. He's out here all alone. Yeah. And so I let him move into my house with me. I built a little house that him and Torchik, we live in this little house together. That's great. That's the fun part of each area is that I get to pick who gets to live in my house.

Yep. And so far, my house there is not my favorite house, but my roommates there are my favorite. Okay. Because they're just, they're so cute. They're all really, really cute. I've grown a new appreciation for Trubbish, because I know that you love Trubbish so much. But I, Heather, saluted him for the audio listener.

But he, he's just so helpful. Yeah. He helps you recycle. Yeah. Which is really great. I think Pocopia is doing a little bit of image massage for Trubish, because Trubbish is so, like, highlighted in that second area.

And I'm like, of all the thousand Pokemon to call out, it felt like somebody at the studio was like, Trubbish deserves a little bit more love than Trubbish gets. Well, that's a thing too. With a game like this, it would have been really easy for them to have the known favorites be the ones that do all the work, like that have main roles in the story.

But like, there's the fucking ones carrying the like metal, like, not Girder or is it Gertor? I think Gertor you have these guys walking around and I was like

I, who fucking likes these guys? I mean people, everybody has their favorite of course. But like there's ones that I just don't really even know or like

frankly care about that now I have like a deep like attachment to and I'm now in the I've basically done all the main tasks for the first couple of areas the you know

the withering wasteland the bleak beach and I'm pretty close to finishing off the, I think it's the Rocky Ridge, and I'm now in, because that was the thing that was tripping me up was that I was getting the ability

to go into new areas while not finishing the previous one. And I've found that just slowing down and not really worrying too much about the aesthetic of the area. Yep. Has helped me, like,

with just completing the quests which is the thing to complete the game right so I've been doing that I've been adding the items to the lighthouse I'm in the third iteration of that I think where now I have to like add like gold bars or some shit

like that takes real time to make but I'm also now in the the flying like the the the, the, the glitter, it's like the shimmering sky place or whatever. Right, right, right. But I got Dragon Night and now I can fly.

Yep. And I'm having a blast there. That one I think aesthetically is my least favorite area, though. Oh, I think that area is so interesting. Really? Yeah. Because we already know what the story is of Pocopia. It's been pretty well spoiled across.

I mean, like at this point, the game's been out for a few months. Yeah. And all the other areas, you can kind of be like, okay, What happened here is there was an earthquake in this area. It split this building. I can see that this building is broken in half. This building is missing its roof. But the final, well, the sort of final area.

Yeah. You're like, what the fuck happened here? And my internal story is that the people tried to make the cities float to save the cities. And it was catastrophic. Interesting. Because the cities don't float in Pokemon. Yeah. It's not like that.

Yeah. It's not, there's not a Pandora world in Pokemon where there's floating cliffs or anything like that. And I know it's hard to hear, but that's not in there. That's a bummer. You can do it with some clever block placement. Yeah. You could do it. Yeah.

Because if you took Pokemon and combined it with Avatar, why you'd have a potent. I've looked up Girder, who I was not, a Pokemon is not familiar with, an evolution of timber. Yes. Timber is really cute, starts with a piece of lumber. Girder evolves to carry steel. These are fighting-type Pokemon. Yeah.

And then Conchilder is the ultimate evolution. Okay, yeah, that's who I'm thinking of. Conclder is the guy, the guy who's got concrete. Well, because he mixes, he makes a potent mix of, of, you give him limestone, he'll turn it into cement bricks. Wow, that's cool because it says the lore is it's thought the Concorda taught humans how to make concrete more than 2,000 years ago. Yeah.

There you go. But yes, you asked who likes this guy. I like that guy. Hey. I don't dislike him. It's not like I wouldn't think of him as like he's not on shirts. Yeah. Same with what tinket tink or whatever her name is.

Yes. Like you're like, this isn't my favorite Pokemon, but now I'm like deep. I love that she was trying to do. something when the people left. Yeah, she's like building. She's like, she's doing something. Yeah. But I'm having an absolute blast and I just like, it's, it's nice that some of the things

that you have to do are on a timer, right? So like when you're building a house, it'll be like, it'll be ready tomorrow. I'm like, okay, I guess I'll just like finish up the little things that I was doing. And I guess that's it. Yeah. You have a sort of like built in time limit to like what you can't just play it all day. Yeah. I love that honestly.

Yeah, it's really, really nice. So I'm like, I'll check in on my guys, see what's going on, see if there's any, if anybody's trying to talk to me. And then if not, I'm like, okay, great, they're building, I'll just, I'll see everybody tomorrow. They're making paper for me. Yeah, I'll see everybody tomorrow. So that's, that's what I've been doing.

It's great. Yeah, great game. You need any paper for. Gonna spark a spliff. Roll up a J. Have yourself a jazz cigarette. This is the energy that was missing when the three of us weren't together. Smoke a little sticky.

The kind kind. Can I talk about a game? The greenest of the green. Yeah, go ahead. Are you sure? Yeah, please. Are you done? Yeah, I think so.

Are you sure? Yeah, I think so. When I do do it, though. Yeah. When I take a puff of the marijuana cigarette. Yeah. I have this crazy reaction. And I go, that's a potent mix.

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Can't get enough of the stuff. But here's the thing. We have these things called borders. And those borders lead to legal restrictions on what's accessible in your territory. Well, you know what? I say break down those borders. We're all one people who enjoy content. And one way I do it is with NordVPN. If there are TV shows, film, anime that aren't available in your region, you can switch your virtual location to a country that's showing it. And if you're traveling abroad, which I did for the first time recently, you can access all your streaming services back home. I get my NBA fix just because I'm on another continent. I'm talking about Japan. I've been thinking about getting more into geography, honestly, because I find it fascinating. And I'm surprised by how much I don't know about this world, the swirling blue marble we all share. Again, we're all just one people.

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Now I'm trying to fill out the Pocodex. I can't let go with the game. Yeah. I, you know, there's a region. I don't know if you've unlocked this region yet, Matt, so I don't want to spoil it. Palet Town. Yeah, I have that. And I've been, so I've been fully.

building up Palatown with a... I made a convenience store. I'm making a high school. Like, I'm just building it anything that is interesting to me on that day. I love it. But the game that I've been playing at night,

now that I've maxed out, Pocopia, I feel like there's less I can do. I build habitats trying to lure guys in, but that's, you know... They may or may not spawn. Yeah, if I come up with a building, I'll build that new building. But otherwise, I'm, like, kind of just, like,

very lightly playing it by contrast. to the all-consuming constant panic I would feel when I wasn't playing it before. So the game I'm playing is a game that I think would have been the highlight, the high watermark of how did this get play days. Wow. It is a game called Sega Gaga.

It came out two days before the Dreamcast was discontinued. And the game is a meta game about trying to save Sega from collapse. Holy shit. Wow. It was developed in private by Tez Okano who worked at Sega and he presented it. He worked on it for two years and then presented it to his bosses who first thought was a joke. And then the second time he brought it in, they were like, oh. It's too late.

This is a real game? Okay. It was a game where you work at Sega as a new employee. and Sega only has a 3% market share and is losing to another company called Dogma which is lightly coded as either PlayStation or Nintendo there's a lot of references to the PlayStation 2 just fucking annihilating Sega.

Your goal is to try and get games made so that you can save the company and increase your market share. But when you go down into the development areas, all of the employees of Sega have lost. lost their minds from stress and have become monsters. So you have to battle them RPG style. And the way the battles work is you insult them until they're broken.

So you don't have like attacks, like physical attacks. You're yelling things at them like, you'll never have a girlfriend. Meanwhile, they're like shouting stuff back at you. When you beat them, there is a small window of time at like a 10 second timer. where you can recruit them persona style to join the fight to try and save Sega. And the way that works is real-time negotiations about what their job will be. So, like, they'll say something. The clock is ticking.

There's like a sort of a meter on the side of the screen that shows their willingness to join you. And it's like, what's my starting salary? And it'll be like four numbers and you have to choose one really quick. And it'll be like, what kind of games am I going to work in? And you're like click on something. It's like small Akihabra only games. Like just try and negotiate really quick. And at the end they'll be like, okay, I'll join you.

Wild. This game is so funny. Like it is so you can't, I cannot believe that it exists. The enemies on the map, which are visible, are sometimes photographs of real people, sometimes very crude drawings. Yeah. But they are existing on a completely two-dimensional plane in a three-dimensional environment. Like a world you're walking or like isometric world you're walking around in are these two-dimensional guys like walking up and down the hallway.

And when you ask somebody, why are they flat? Somebody else would be like to save money, man. There is a point early in the game because it also has animated, fully animated cutscenes, like full anime style cutscenes, which apparently were, done by, nah, I don't even know. I can't even look it up. You can't,

it's actually not allowed. But there's fully animated, animate cutscenes and then the sort of like stuff where you'll be talking to, like a still of an anime character who's like your boss or something, and it'll be like explaining the premise of the game for you.

And like taking like these positions, you know, but like not animated in any way. It'll just be like, and you'll hear like the dialogue I think is spoken. But after you've talked to this person for a while, a fully animated character walks in

and is like, why aren't you moving your mouth while you're talking to the first character who's like, I'm trying to save money. The company is in deep trouble. That's so crazy. Do you think if you had played it contemporary with the time it was released, it would be funny?

Or is it funny now in hindsight? Oh, it is definitely funny at the time. And also, it was released two days before the Dreamcast was killed. Like they knew what they were doing. Sure, yeah. When they released this game, they gave it a $200 advertising budget, $100 of which the designer used to buy a luchador mask and wear in Akihabra to advertise

the game by himself. Oh my God. It is a legendary game, which has a translation. I've been playing it on my Einthor. And it is, it is laugh out loud funny. Like, Mary was like, what are you playing? because I laughed out loud when the second character came out and was fully animated and was like, why aren't you moving your mouth? It was great.

I'm early in the game. It is apparently chockful of references to all these old Sega franchises, which are, you know, knocking on Death Store as the game is released March of 2001. And I've already caught some of those references as a Sega kid, like the store theme for, because you it's rogue-like-ish so you buy a bunch of items in order to infiltrate the dungeon and the item store is playing the song from Fantasy Zones market it's it's really it's a love it's a love story to Sega but also like it's got I mean like when it's like look at your status screen and determine how much market share we have yeah and it shows you a pie chart and there's a red sliver that's Sega and the rest of the pie chart is dogma it's great

Yeah, so that's what I've been playing when I'm not playing Pocopia. That's incredible. I love that. Yeah, I've never even heard of that. It's amazing. I believe we've talked about on the podcast maybe before. Maybe I, you know, but like I love that you're actually getting skins of time with it. Yeah.

I'll read from Wikipedia the reception for this game. Likely due to its late release in the Dreamcast lifespan, Sega Gaga was not a commercial success. In its first week of release, it sold 18,000 copies. In total, it is a... is sold 34,000 copies. Wow. I got to say that's for a guy, for the marketing being man walking around,

that's pretty good. Yeah, it is pretty good. Yeah, it's all. And obviously such a, like so many Dreamcast games, a very long tale of fandom. Yeah. Yeah. Can I talk about basketball?

Yeah, talk about basketball. Wait, wait, before you do, can I talk about one other thing? Yeah, sure. Which is that, Matt, you're wearing the family-mart socks. That's right. I'm dressed in Family Mart shirt. I'm just happy to see us reuniting these items.

Yeah, they probably missed each other. That's it. I got to get some more Family Mart gear. It was my big regret. Yeah, me too. I should have bought more socks when I was there. All my socks should be Family Mart socks. You can get them on eBay.

There's plenty of people who in Japan will upcharge you for a pair of Family Mart socks. Yeah, and here's the thing. They're so comfortable. They're really good socks. Yeah. I'll bring some Trader Joe's bags, make some swaps. There you go. There we go.

I want to talk about basketball, not just Caitlin Chen of the Golden State Valkyries, who is a name is. Richel Ranch. I know who our producer is. She plays for the Golden State Valaries. I want to talk about the NBA finals, the MNBA, if you will, the Men's League where the New York Knickerbockers are currently playing the same. They absolutely should do that.

I'd love it if they called it the MN. They have to do it. They might as well. As of this record, and I'm saying this, I'm giving context for our non-sporto listeners, who I believe is the bulk of you. But as of this record, the Knicks are up 1-0 in the finals and may very well win. There'd be another game before this episode releases, so we'll see where they are. But it would be seismic for the franchise, the city, and the league, if the Knicks ended up winning.

But the focus of my discussion, because I like to try to talk about sports when I bring it up from a, a game perspective is Victor Wembenyama. We know about Victor Wembenyama. Yeah. Victor Wemba. Are you, Ethan, are you a sport at all? A little bit. Not much of a basketball guy, but...

Okay, great. Anyway. Victor Wembañama is a French basketball phenom for the San Antonio Spurs. He's only 22 years old. And he is listed at 7 foot. four, but believed to be as tall as 7 foot 7 or 7 foot 8, which is like 2.3 meters for people who aren't on the, our dumb system. He looks a head taller than everyone else visually. He is just absolutely gigantic. I guess I'm going to play one game in person. And it's just,

it's just fucking crazy because basketball is the land of giants. And then you see a guy who's like, you are so much bigger than all of the biggest people I've ever seen. That's so crazy. But here's the thing. There have been very, very tall NBA players in the past. guys like George Murissan, who you may remember as Billy Crystal's co-star and My Giant. The most recently Taco Fall, a Manute Bull is maybe the most successful one. He was a very, very tall player who was like also, you know, but he was not like an all-star level talent. Whereas Victor Wembeyanama, Wembe, he's nicknamed, also nicknamed the Alien, is so talented and so fiercely competitive. This is not a perfect comparison, but it's kind of like you took Kobe's talent and

work ethic and put it into Shaq's body. It's like, it's like unbelievable. You have this gigantic guy who is also just like the most competitive guy who wants to win so bad, cares more than everyone, will do anything to win. And also is just like can hit three pointers, can dribble. And it's also already the defensive player in the league, like in arguably, arguably the best overall player in the league. He's only going to get better.

Again, he's a kid. And anyway, from a game design perspective, he is single-handedly altering the NBA meta. It's fucking crazy to see basically Dalcum on a basketball football field. You know what's like it's like... He's one of the fucking monsters. Yeah, he's one of the monsters. It's like if a new DLC character

appeared in like a moba or a hero shooter or fighting game and was just totally OPE. And the developer was like, we're going to patch them to make them more powerful because that's what's going to happen. And so like you're like already because of his size and because of his talent, the Spurs have the most unique defense of the league. Basically, the rest of the team guards players one-on-one. They leave the

worst offensive player undefended. And then Wemby acts as like kind of the man in the middle free-roamer. And because it's not just that he has vertical leg. So if you come near the basket, he can block your shot. It's also because he's fast, he can close so much ground so quickly with his long strides. So you can be taking a three-pointer, think you're alone, and he can be right there and block your shot. It's just like he alters basically every offensive possession and teams do not know what to do with them. It's crazy to watch someone, a player who's, like, extremely good, dribble towards the rim, see him and then just, like, turn around.

Because they just don't know what to do. Yeah. I think just hearing about him scares me. It's fucking unbelievable. It's like the most compelling figure in, right up there with Otani as far as I'm going to, it's like most compelling figures in American pro sports right now. Taller players who have used their size to dominate their own careers. Also, like, you know, Chet Holmgren of the Thunder, who they just defeated in the Western Conference final.

Chad Holmgren is 7 foot 1 and just looks scared in playing against him. Jesus. Because the first time he's matched up in his life, he's matched up against someone who's significantly taller than him and is better than him and he just doesn't know what to do. Like because if you use your size has been your main advantage and then you've got someone's like, well, shit, this guy has more skills than me and also more size than me.

What the fuck are you supposed to do at that point? Anyways, going to win a championship, possibly as early as this season. What I want to watch, again, from a, again, the game design perspective is how everyone is going to game plan because the entire meta is going to shift towards beating one guy who's utterly unique. And it's just a fascinating place for the game. It feels like Blue Lock. It feels like it's like Caroco's basketball is a basketball anime and it's about a guy who can

pass extremely well. And it changes the way that other teams have to play against him because he's so good at passing. like that's what it feels like to me. It feels like what we've suddenly got in the league is an anime character. So is this his first like season in the NBA? No, this is his third season. Oh, okay.

And but this is his first real like playoffs run. God. And everyone was like, like, okay, well, the Spurs are a young team because there's some other, there's some other very, very good young players on the Spurs. They're a great team. They have a great record. But everyone's like,

they're going to lose this year because they're just too young. and instead they're just being willed all the way towards the finish line. That's incredible. I do want to circle back to something that you said while talking about this, Nick. Yeah. You mentioned a player named Taco Fall. Yeah.

Sounds like my worst nightmare. Matt, I'm glad you circled back because I'm right there with you. Do you imagine it? Just a taco on the ground just splayed out all the inner just everywhere? I don't have to imagine it. I've lived it. And let me tell you, it's no picnic. What if instead of a taco fall, it was like a taco fall, and it was like tacos were falling from the trees.

Oh, that sounds delightful. Hey, I like that. I like that a lot. Like timefall and death stranding except as tacos? Yeah. It's like cloudy with a chance of meatballs, but the biome was impacted permanently. Life on Earth as we knew it was ruined. Yeah.

There was no more water, but tacos flooded the streets. I mean, we would crush tacos and get the juice and then process the juice and turn it into water. But it was still, it was like kind of red. Seasoned water. It's time for this week's topic, the Games of 2026, the sequel, part two. The sequel, part two. You know, part one, just for people listening, you're probably thinking, how's part two different? I'll tell you how.

Part one, we kind of only really talked about the games from January to this very point. Right. Because not everything had been announced. And at this point, I would say not everything is announced still. But we have a little bit more clarity on one of some of these later releases are going to actually drop. That's right. And purportedly. And then also, you know, we get to focus now on the back.

end of the year, July through the holiday season, but also I think we can spend some time talking about the games that have already come out in 2026, already a great year for games. I was kind of thinking about this, actually. Yeah. It's too early to tell. Maybe this happens every year. I think it's been a really good year for games. I think it has been a really good year for games.

I don't think it's too early to tell because I would just say, like, if nothing else notable comes out, we've already had so many bangers. It's so many that I have not had time for them all. Yeah. And I guess maybe one place to start is what from the first half of 2026 has really connected with you? I mean, obviously, Pocopi is the big one. Well, that's the big stunner for me is that a game that was not on my radar that I was deeply uninterested. Like, I would say that I was like put off by it.

And until those reviews started hitting and people were like, this is a masterpiece, this is a masterpiece, this is a masterpiece. did I even think about giving it a shot because I didn't like Minecraft. And so Pocopia is a stunning game that also shifted my personal window of what I think is a game for me. Because until Pocopia, the idea of doing what I'm doing in Pocopia was like a zero out of 10. And now I'm like, should I be interested in building games or is it the unique synthesis of the super fucking sad story? the Pokemon being people I want to like care about, like the little guys and the building that is making it that I'm like, I want to build buildings for them because of what happened to them.

Yeah. You just said unique synthesis. I just think it's there might be another way to say that. Perhaps a potent mix. Perhaps a pokey mix. No, I do think. I think, I mean, gosh, I think you, you're maybe right, though, like, because I liked, I really did connect with Animal Crossing, but I think there's, frankly, had no choice. Yeah, I mean, like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to diss on Animal Crossing. It was a, it was a great game and it really was important to me. But there was no terraforming. There's no real building in its placement in Animal Crossing more than it is. I mean, there is, you can terraform.

but like just the number of options available to you in Animal Crossing are so few compared to the fact that you can build functioning machines inside of Pocopia. Yes. I just think for me, I think the IP is what's doing a lot of the heavy lifting. For how unique the gameplay is and stuff too, I think it's like really fun. But if it wasn't a Pokemon game, I don't know if I'd be even this invested in it. It changed my relationship to Pokemon too. Like I'm now like thinking about and shopping for Pokemon stuff. Yeah.

All the time. And what a great time to be doing it since it's the 30th anniversary. And there's all this like really classy collabs coming out. I love it. I love Pokemon. It's really great. Some, some from me, I've more, I've fallen off more games than I've completed this year. You know, I'm still working through First Light and Soros, haven't quite started.

did Lego Batman yet, but I'm excited to get into that. I kind of thought that maybe that Dragon Quest 7 remake was going to be a contender, but I fell off of that. Me too. Not that it's bad, but I just like, just like didn't have space for it. Yep. The game to beat for me right now of the games that I was excited for that have come out, and the only one that I've finished is Resident Evil Requiem.

To me, that's just, that's like top of the mountain for me right now. I've been thinking about playing it again. I've double-dipped. I now own it on Switch also because I was like, if I have the controller, I should be playing it. I should have it on Switch also. Okay. You didn't have to do that, but I respect it.

No, it was sort of like this. Somebody came to my house and they told me you had to do this. I kind of was just like, it was on sale. So I was like, oh, I'll get it because I'll want to play it again at some point. Dragon Quest was definitely a contender for me, too. But I think Pocopia came out right on the heels of it. and just drove my car off of a clip. Yes.

And then some games that I was excited for at that point have not come out, and one of them was canceled. That was the Prince of Persia, Sands up Time remake, that I always knew was never fucking going to happen. Right. There was no way. It's horrible, because I think they did do a lot of work on it. But it's just, it was canceled.

They've really done that franchise dirty. They really have. It's about time we have a new. It should. It should have a modern entry that sits beside the current Assassin's Creed games and is like the sort of multi-platform like god of war antidote too. Like because they're not quite similar, but the hack and slash nature of the combat I think is like close enough. and I do think that like they to me they occupy the same space in my mind because like I like both of those games when I was

a teenager. Ranch did you end up finishing Requiem? Where did you get in that? No, I long hiatus. I'm getting back to it though. Hey, there you go. Follow up question. When you're facing a left-handed defender, do you alter your dribbling at all? I would think it would affect your crossover. If you're not doing it, you should continue. I just think about it. But, I mean, like, Mario Tennis, I was like, it was being a baby, not as fun as I thought.

I do think Soros has like a, Heather, you should be playing Soros. I don't know what you're doing. You should be playing Soros. It's fucking awesome. The guy is the fastest guy I've ever seen. Oh. He's fucking fast. And he don't have to press a button for him to run.

He just runs. Soros, huh? Soros. It's really, really good. And then, of course, there have been some games that are coming out later in the year. I want to just shout out a couple of surprises, and these are not all games that I've played necessarily, but I did mess around a little bit with vampire crawlers.

It was a surprise, right? Yeah, that game was, I didn't put a lot of time into vampire crawlers and it was going to take over my life, but that is a shockingly, annoyingly good design. Yes. Mina the Hollower, which we've talked about already. I thought Tomidachi life was a bit of a surprise. Obviously, it was not a surprise if you're like,

or if you already like that franchise. but for how fun that was, I just wouldn't have thought to get it at all. I just didn't expect a first-party Nintendo game to allow me to build Epstein's private islands.

Yeah, I did. And then of course, Mugenics, which we did an episode on, was a surprise. I just thought that game was so, so good and did fall off of it,

but would like to get back in there. And I still haven't started esoteric ebb, but I would like to. I have played esoteric ab, Eb, and I, you know, I recommend it to both of you as disco-elisium fans. Mugenics was, is definitely on my list. And Meena the Holloware I already talked about today.

But I will say esotericab by virtue of being a disco-like. And then Meena of the Hollower and Muggenics, by virtue of their pedigree, you know, the shovel night developer. And then Edmund McMillan, who developed Mugenics, also developed Binding of Isaac and Super Meat Boy. Those were less surprising for me, if we're talking surprises, than Sol Cesto. That's the game that really caught me. off guard, came out of nowhere.

It's the thing about, I always, we always talk about in our 2020, like, I said 2026, whenever our previews are, whenever we do a preview episode, we, I feel like we always are talking about the game we're looking forward to is the game we aren't even thinking about right now. Yes. And I mean, that's, it's, it's, it's, Sol Cesto is maybe been unmoored from my game of the year, you know, position, which I initially had because it just caught its hooks in me. But just as this tactical rogulight where it was just,

where it's just all about speed and runs are so quick. And it's just a matter, like, you're just navigating a four by four grid. And it's just like so simple. It's just like stripped down to its bones. It's just pure gameplay. And it's super duper satisfying. I just was not expecting that to like that so much.

Most hours I put into a game in 2026 that's a new release. It's got to be Slate the Spire 2 in early access. Wow. I just think it's fucking. awesome and I'm really excited for whenever the final release comes out. We've already seen major modifications to it. They completely swapped out the final boss, or one of the final bosses, which is a really interesting design decision because they were just sort of like, this mechanic isn't

working. Let's try something else. Which I don't know, it's kind of cool to see that something that drastic happened and developed. That is really cool. But, yeah, I mean, there have been some really, really good indie's in particular. Here's a place I want to go. is there a game from the first half of 2026 that you missed but intend to go back to?

Because for me, my big answer is Pragmata. Yeah, I was going to say my two are Pragata and Dragon Quest. Like, I would love to return to Dragon Quest. I like that vibe. But Pragmata was on my radar and I was like, I can't, we're not doing an episode about it. So I can't justify purchasing it unlike 007, which Nick you weren't here for. I don't like that game. I know you're the one person I've heard that is not like 007,

but I think that's totally fair. Your criticism sound valid. I'm sorry. I'm going to single you out. I didn't say anything. Geez, get off my back. I silently agreed with you. It seems like people love this game, but it just didn't work.

It's not a Heather game. Not a Heather game. At some point, I'm sure there's action and stuff in that game, but I just can't look through a drawer. I wish you had played enough to unlock the tax sim stuff. because it has like the like the VR missions like in metal gear or in death stranding. Just so you could see the versatility of the combat. Right.

There's like stuff that's not in the main tutorial that you can only learn how to do in the tax sim stuff. That I'm like this is an incredibly useful mechanic that you wouldn't have learned if you didn't do the tax sim stuff. Okay. Okay. Maybe I'll dip back in. especially as my, like, there's fewer and fewer Pokemon for me to get. And as much as I enjoy building Palatown, it's like, I'm only building Palatown because of the DLC that comes out next year. Yes. And I'm like, if the people come back, I need to have a place to show them.

They have to show them a good place. A game that I missed was God of War, Sons of Sparta, the side-scrolling God of War game. That they put out. But you swore off God of War after they announced the next one would star a woman, right? Well, first of all, we're calling it God of Woke. No, no, I don't have chud brain disease. What are people complaining about? Is it just that?

Well, she's a woman and she's, one, she's a woman in the game where you get to be the big guy. So why the fuck would you, I hate, why would I ever not want to be the big guy? The other thing is that she is not beautiful and her tits aren't hanging out. Yeah, and they're using a, they're using a photo of her where she's like very done up. They're really like, they really did her dirty. And it's like they picked a screenshot from a moving image and are comparing it to the actress who is like is a pretty person. Now, to some degree, I understand the complaint. And here's why.

Yeah. Because I'm a dumb person. You're a big dumb idiot And my favorite food is fucking farts Well, no Here's why My least favorite parts of God of War games Are where I have to play as Atreus

And so like I get like If I'm signing up for a God of War game I want to be the butcher Like I don't want to be But then you look at the gameplay And she looks like fucking red So I don't know man We have to remember

The reason he has the Leviathan Axe is that it's hers Yeah She's a fucking giant and she's a beast. Yeah. She's awesome. I hope she has a fucking mini game. And I hope she makes the same sounds Cratos used to.

Yeah. She makes the cube go down. There's a cube who is voiced by Jack Quaid. Love a cube. A gelatinous cube. That's fun. It's gelatinous? Yeah.

Oh, wow. And the person playing Faye is Deborah Ann Wohl from the Daredevil series. and I think she's a great actress. And she is beautiful. Yes, of course. Like what are they talking about? But the, and it takes place in, I can't remember what they're calling it. It's like called everywhere or something.

And it's this like this afterlife for gods. And it takes place in between the every one. The every when. And it takes place in between God of War 2018 and Ragnarok. So things are all happening sort of simultaneously throughout the story. stories and we're going to, I think as a huge fan of these games, I stopped watching the presentation because I was like, I don't need to see anything. I'm, I have full faith in this team. That's a game that I should, I should, I should finish. Because I was back on Ragnarok for

a while. Yeah, you should, you should finish it off because I think the storytelling in these games are so good. And as somebody who's been with Cratos this whole time, I do think the only way for this franchise to continue is to see who else can, they can tell a story about. I don't think there's that many more stories you can tell with Credos. He's learned too much in these two games from his previous life in the Greek mythology. That it would be like you can't really take this guy and put him in the Egyptian mythology. To have him tell more interesting story. He's like he's kind of done it already.

You know what I mean? You can't keep doing it. I think exploring what else is in the world with a different character is probably the way to go. So I applaud the effort. I may have a pitch for a direction that they could take Cratos. What about bring back minigame three ways? If that was all it was, I'd be like, yeah, do that. What about this?

Hear me out. Pine Sky. Cretus in New York City. Sounds pretty good. He fights the secular gods of business. I mean, like, that would be a, I would, if they announced Cratos versus Capitol, like, I. Yeah.

I don't know that I would agree with the messaging of the game, but would I buy the deluxe package? I got to see what's going on. Yeah, I got to know what's happening. I saw a funny... Did you use the blades of chaos against the CEO of J.P. Morgan Gates. I can go. You team up with Luigi Manjillo.

I did see a funny TikTok and I wish I had the person's thing, but they were like, there's going to be a point in this game, in this new God of War game, where you're fay and you're captured by one of the dead Greek gods and they're going to mention, you're going to mention that you had, that you knew Cratos at all and they're going to be fucking scared of you now. Yeah. And I'm like,

that is like, yeah, that's going to be awesome. I think, I think it's great. But the side, the side scrolling, there was a, baby Cratos game is the one I wanted.

There was a, a moment that somebody synced up where Cratos appears to her. Mm-hmm. And they synced it up to the moment in, I think, not Ragnarok, but the first one in 2018, where he dies temporarily while fighting Thor. Yes.

And it sinks up perfectly that he dips down in and then comes back out. That's that detail I love. Sony San Monica has given me no reason to ever doubt that. They only make bangers. They're doing it. But this is not a 2026 release. No.

No, no, no. We just ended up. We went on a god of war tangent. We went on a god of war tangent. I do think that I sort of think it's not coming out soon. But there are reports that it's Jason Schreier saying it's coming sooner than we think. Okay. Maybe it is a 2020.

I kind of don't think it'd be this year. They did show 20 minutes of gameplay, which I'm like, that means they have something. But I'm thinking next year. God, what if it's shadow dropped this summer? I would have lost my fucking mind. Like, they would have to have done it already. They would have done it at their thing instead of Summer Games Fest, which is tomorrow as of this record, Friday as of this release. But I wanted to play that.

And I am interested in pragmatic because everybody said it's fucking awesome. Isn't it? I mean, this is the thing. This is some people might say it's a dereliction of duty for us. We have a video game podcast, the three of us. And we've not played Pragmato one of the big releases of this year. But also, we all have other jobs. But I've also put it 100 hours in a Pocopia.

Yeah, we're playing other games. But I mean, it's just like if we were, if this was all our one thing, we would all be like, well, we should play pragmata just to play pragmata. We just, unfortunately, have not all had time for it. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's, I wish. I wish, I mean, there's games on my list that I have played that I'm like, I wish I had played more of that.

I know. I, you know, as research for the, for the episode, I googled video games upcoming releases 2026. And one of the, uh, one of the articles in my top five articles recommended is 10 biggest games of 2026 from Thinks of a Thotter. and GTA 6 leads the pack, right? Yeah. Still upcoming in 2026. The second game on the list is High Guard.

Oof. Wow. Old article. Yeah. It's a January article. It's like what to look forward to. And we did play High Guard. Yeah.

A dead game. Which is one of the, was supposed to be one of the biggest releases of the year. And we played it two days before it was shut down. And I think that that's a, that's an interesting. Like, obviously it was not on my radar, Highguard. The only reason we played it is because we heard that it was being like sort of sunsetted. Yeah. And then before our, like the day our episode dropped, I think it was announced that it was terminated.

Yeah, it was done. But that's a fascinating first half of 2026. Yeah. Yes. Apelogue. Yeah. I mean, here's the thing. Video games are now back and they're kind of crazier, bigger than ever.

Should we talk about the upcoming 2026 calendar games yet to come? I want to talk about a game. excited about that wasn't on my radar until a gameplay element was announced this week. And that is Wolverine from Insomniac. Yeah. Okay. I'm like, okay, another superhero game. Maybe I'll dip in.

Probably won't. When they said on their like stream or whatever, that the way that Wolverine heals is you have to fight harder and more violently, suddenly that game went to the top of my list. I was like, oh, a game where you are compelled to create greater violence in order to maintain your ability to play the game, that sounds like a real dopamine loop for me. I, on paper, should be so stoked because I love games like this. They're just like my favorite kind of games. And I love Wolverine. I love The X-Men.

I love Marvel stuff. for some reason and I can't I can't quite identify what it is I am suss of this game and I don't know why I want to play it

the gameplay that they showed looked awesome looked bloody and you know he's running around it was funny to me that in the gameplay preview though that you have the option

to do stealth and I was just like why would you pick that why would the fuck would Wolverine ever do stealth in what world would you need to do it and but

some of us in the Discord were chatting live while the state of play was happening and people were pointing out that people were calling Wolverine like a mutant freak and also had like robotic or like phaser arms or stuff like stuff like that

it's just like you can't do that but like they had like like like like sort of like electric sword arms like get out of here you fucking freak and he's like just destroying them but like I liked Spider-Man too I think I love the first Spider-Man and Spider-Man Miles Morales Morales more than Spider-Man 2.

Yeah. I thought they were a little more focused. I think this one doesn't seem like it's an open world at least, which is probably a good thing. It feels like it might be more like a single, it might be more of a god of war kind of like a single character action game where you're going from set piece to set piece instead of here. your open world is the forest of Canada.

Yeah, right. No, I mean, like, look, I love a, I love a linear design where we're gushing about me to the hollow world, which is a little bit more open world, but it's still like, like the, we love the Last of Us games. What games are more linear than that? I mean, sometimes if you get a really structured critical path, it's nice to just guide the player along that

instead of having this artificial freedom. And I love, I love claws. Claws are good. I think claws are just like a good weapon. Yeah, it's kind of cool. You can get a little like, you can also like a shik. And then you can be like, come here, bub. Yeah, you can do a little one-two punch.

Yeah. I love well, he's oversaturated. I think that's the other issue too. I kind of wish there are other X-Men in it that you could play as. But I understand that like from a balanced standpoint, you kind of probably have to focus on one that Avengers game that Square did was. not very good because there's just too many things going on. But I am excited about this game.

I pulled up 2026 in video games from Wikipedia, and one of the sections is critically acclaimed games. And these are 2026 releases scoring 90 out of 100 or higher on Metacritic. So far here in June, the list is only too deep. One is Mina the Hollower. The other is Forza Horizon 6. Be a force of the horizon is really well regarded completely a game I completely ignored. I mean, I don't really play the drive-drive games.

I love a drive game. Well, you don't like driving. I don't like driving now. I love driving. I love the setting. I don't have an Xbox anymore. You could. Can you say it?

Sorry, can you say it? You don't love driving again? You don't love driving. Unless I'm at the links. Four. All right. Continue. You can't be mad at me ever again.

Wait, you say it. Say you don't like driving to me. Matt, you don't like driving. Wait. Then why are you both always driving me crazy? I want to see, but I couldn't figure it out. Heather, of course, Adam. But no, yeah, you don't like the Vroom Vroom games he called it.

Yeah, unless it's Vroom in the night sky. God, that game was. baffling. You're a bicycle, right? You're a bicycle with nothing on, like, you're just a bicycle? I think you're a lady, a lady on a bicycle, right? Yeah, right, you're a lady on a flying bicycle.

That was a game I had like 100% in like 90 minutes. It was fucking insane. And I had like no collision or something. It was just like completely broken. I think you should try the cloud Xbox cloud gaming so you could just see. On what? On my, on my Thor? On your Vision Pro.

Don't you need to have like a PC? in order to do the, you just do it straight. You have the game pass. I think there might be its own tier, like a cloud tier, that you can just, you need it to remote play from your device, but they have a cloud option that you can just play games from the cloud. Hmm. Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm.

I don't know about that, but I'll check that. You have to believe me. I mean, but get used to it because eventually it's how all games will be played. The only cloud games I like are Final Fantasy 7, Final Fantasy 7 remake and Final Fantasy 7 rebirth. We'll be right back. All right, we're back. If we can drop an ad there, it'll be great.

You know, a surprise announcement, which will be coming out very soon, is Star Fox. Yes. And look, I really did enjoy the Star Fox games. I mean, at least the couple that worked in the early going. and I mean, I think it's an interesting place to go to just say, like, hey, fuck it, let's just remaster the last one that was, that everyone enjoyed and then just like, and update its aesthetics and have some new character designs for slippy and peppy hair and everything. And then you're just all your buddies. And then we'll just see what happens. You know what I mean?

Like, it's like, I have to think they've got bigger plans, but I think it's a good starting point. I do think that if it's like, because there's not a current Star Fox on the Nintendo Switch platform at all. No, nothing. So this will be a lot of people's, it'll be my first Star Fox. What? I've never played a Star Fox before. How about that? Yeah.

Holy shit. So I think from that standpoint, it being, here's the best one, here's like the one that we know works, and here's a modern way to play it. I think that's, I think it's a good move. Interesting. I like it. Yeah, I mean, also, there will definitely be a lot of people whose introduction to Fox McCloud is via the Super Mario Galaxy movie. Yeah.

And so they will just be like, well, this guy's got a video game. Yeah, let's fucking play. So I'm sure there's obviously some savvy timing on Nintendo's part. Or maybe that, maybe Nintendo, I wonder what the order of operations was. Because Nendo may have been more like, we're going to have this surprise launch. Let's seek this motherfucker in the Mario movie. Yeah. People are kind of down on the,

the redesign saying that they're not fuckable enough. And to them, I say, where's your imagination? Yeah, exactly. I lightly agree with the redesign of McLeod being a little, a little off-putting. I think he looks better in the movie. I don't know why. Yeah, he looks great in the movie.

Yeah. And I wish he looked more like the movie version of him, which is a surprise to me. He does look more like the original art than the movie version guy does. So, you know, whatever. To each their own. Yeah, two of this, four of another. There's definitely some unflattering angles of the, you know, that the redesign.

Well, part of the rumor on why they designed the maquettes, is that what they're called, that way is that you can use voice chat with your friends when you're playing. and map it over Fox's face. Wow. So they had to make him look a certain way so that you would be able to match lip sync. Yeah, I can't wait to make Fox or Slippy or whoever say the most horrible things to my friends. Yeah.

Yeah. 9-11 was an inside job. I was just looking for reactions to it and someone posted the teeth sonic. Remember the original? Yeah. Teeth Sonic is tough. Teeth Sonic.

Rough stuff. They're not, it's not, it's not, I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't mind the designs that much. I'm just generally like, let's see this in motion. Yeah. Sometimes it's just you need a little bit more time with a character design for it to settle in if there's any sort of adjustment. But whatever, I get people are passionate about it. I know that we've already played this game and some of us have played it twice.

But the announcement that, or the finally giving Eldon Ring Tarnest edition for Switch 2 a release date of August. I'm going to play this son of bitch again. Wow. I'm going to do it again. I'm going to become Eldon Lord yet again. On the Switch 2 is an interesting. Yeah, I mean, like, I guess it'll be kind of, it'd be nice to have that on the go.

Yeah. You could play it on Steam Deck, I guess, if you wanted to. But it seems cool. Why not? I hope it's a good port. I hope it's a good port. You know, the Switch 2 hardware, if it can't play Eldon Ring, that's a little bit of an indemnification of it coming up.

But the Switch 2 hardware, you do a side-by-side comparison of Final Fantasy Rebirth, and it looks shocking. They've done a really good job with some of the ports. I just hope it's a similar sort of effort. Yeah, even the Requiem port is incredible. Yeah. But I'm interested in checking that out. I think my big game of the rest of the year,

well, I am excited to dip into that Assassin's Creed black flag re-synced. Okay. Because I don't like any of the, my least favorite part of any Assassin's Creed is the modern day stuff. I hate that stuff. Okay. I think that stuff sucks. It's boring. Okay.

It's like the beginning of 007 first light for you to me. Yeah. I don't want to be doing any of that. Right. I'm in an office, and it's like blue and white in here kind of. Yep. I'm doing an archaeological dig for Viking artifacts. This sucks.

When I can just be a Viking? Yeah, no, no, no. Right. So they're taking all that stuff out and I can just be pirate in this. Ohoi. Yo ho, yo ho, yo, ho, I say. Wow. You are a pirate.

Yeah. I like that. And I like games where you're kind of like on the water. Yeah, I like a game when you're on the water. I like that. Win waker. Win waker. Yeah, I've never really got into that.

Great game. The rest, of course. But my big, also, I'm kind of nervous that Final Fantasy 14 is coming to switch to. It's getting closer and closer. Are you going to actually play it? I don't know. That's the thing. That thing's in my hands a lot.

It's going to be. Be careful. It's not impossible. It's a slippery slope, those, those, those, Final Fantasy online games. Do we still think Grand Theft Auto is actually coming out this fall? Grand The Vardto 6th, yes, I believe it is. I mean, a lot of release dates have been moved, so it is not step on its release.

I think that's some bishops. What if it sucks? Just entertain the thought for one second that we rise of Skywalker, the next Grand Theft Auto game. An idea which before Rise of Skywalker was inconceivable that the ninth episode, of the franchise wouldn't be a complete and easy home run that it would answer questions

we didn't even know we had. Like there's a world where six comes out and people are like oh, this is overcooked. I don't need to press a button to hold a pen to sign a check. I'm less worried about that

and more worried about how sweaty some of the humor is going to be, I think. Yeah, hopefully that'll be limited limited a little bit, that'll be muted. But I'll say this, Heather, I think there is so much money behind this and so much money to be made that it will be, even if it comes out

and it's initially like a, you know, a bit of a mess. Let's say it's a cyberpunk 2077 launch, eventually they will patch the shit out of it. They will update it to get to a point where because they can't just like bail on it. You know what I mean? They will iterate on it until it gets to,

even if they have to do a no man sky level of revision to get it to a point where the player base is happy with it. I'm really interested with how they handle GTA online. Like, is it going to be GTA online two? You're in this one now, or is it going to be like, hey, it's all in one thing? It's kind of interesting. If it's the Overwatch 2 model is there's just like, you know, they merged everything and now it's just Overwatch.

That's right. You know, there's the two. It's cleaner. And I, but I could, like, I hope the subtitle is you're in this one now. Grand Thethado online two You're in this one now It's that way you know which one's different You don't want to go back to the old one

Because you're not in that one anymore You're in this one now You're in this one now I already know that The most anticipated game for me And somebody who's been anticipating Grand Theththous six for What?

Your adult life My entire adult life And I love those games I'm excited about that one Game I'm looking forward to the most With the bullet is Control Resonet I'm so excited about control resident.

You're a control freak. You're a resident remedy head. A control freak. What? I don't know. I thought it should put a little stank on it. I like this. But that game looks cool and it looks different than control.

You know, they sort of pivoted Alan Wake 2 to be more survival horror away from the first one. And instead of this one being a like action sort of third person shooter, this one's a melee focus game, so I'm really excited to see what's going on with Jesse's brother Dylan. Do you think Heather would like Allen Wake 2? Because I absolutely loved it, and I'm not like a big remedy guy. I kind of think everybody that plays Alan Wake 2 should love it. It kind of feels like a game that's for everybody. There's a lot of story, but I think it's well-written. I think it's really engaging. And there is some combat.

I don't think you'll find the combat particularly deep. But I don't know. I mean, I feel like, Ranch, you loved it. Yeah, it's so, I just think it's such a creative design. It's maybe if I think about it long enough, one of my favorite works of art. Like, it's like, it's so good. Yeah.

But I don't know. I could see how they're also bouncing off it. I don't know. I don't know. I'm nervous to try it because it means so much to you guys. It's okay. I don't care. You're not going to hurt my feelings.

What the fuck? Oh, okay. See if I give a shit. Well, then fuck that game. Fuck you guys. One game that, look, I'm not a fighting game guy. I keep trying to hope I could get into some fighter because I like the fighting game community. And I love things like Evo.

I love the e-sports aspect of it. It just seems so cool. But it's just, it's never been a thing for me. I have been eye Marvel Tocon Fighting Souls, which just because it's like by the developer of the Dragon Ball fighter, which everyone, like, loves and as far as licensed fighters go. And it just seems like kind of like, I look, Marvel versus Capcom, too,

one of my all-time favorite fighters from back in the day, gonna take you for a ride. Anyway, the acid jazz in that soundtrack, but also just like the endless array of Marvel characters as well as like all the crazy movesets, the fact that it's not balanced at all as part of the fun.

Yeah. So I'm really curious if that'll be, you know, a use of the license that that connects with me. But I also want to bring up Steinsgate reboot, which is a remake of the 2009 visual novel turned anime. Now, I have no exposure to Steinsgate. But I've always heard it's awesome. I do really like visual novels. And I feel like just like a modern re-skin, maybe enough to be like, I'm going to finally try this sum bitch. And I'm going to see what all the fuss is about.

All right. Yeah. No, that's not my radar at all. That's, Heather, did you ever watch the Steinsgate anime? Because that's, that's like one of the biggest anime adaptations of a game, even though the game is not particularly. I bounced off Steinsgate. Wow, interesting. I watched the first four episodes and I was like, this is not grabbing me.

Whereas the anime I'm watching right now, which I believe is called I'm best friends with the second prettiest girl in my class. I'm in. I watch that shit every day. Wow. Like every morning, I'm like having my coffee and I got that show on. And I'm like, this is just. Just good time, gentle humor. Yeah.

I think somebody, it might have been the actress from Obsession might have just name-checked Steinsgate. Because she said that she doesn't watch movies, but she watches a lot of anime. Love it. And I was like, I already thought you were great. I were saying stuff like this. That movie's great. Really good movie. Victor Wenamah, who I mentioned earlier, you know, he seems like a big nerd.

Like he loves like that. He is a big nerd. He's fucking seven feet tall. He loves fantasy novels. he loves his favorite movie is Revenge of the Sith but he did an attack on Titan celebration after a win which is so like he probably learned it from his parents the Titans fucking big ass guy

also Matt the well we all love Kojima but Metal Gear Solid 4 has been stuck on you know one generation of hardware for the longest time it's been unless you're doing some sort of emulation jumping through some hoops, you're just not able to play it.

But Metal Gear Solid Master Collection, Volume 2, will make that game accessible on modern hardware. And I just like, I kind of like that that's going to exist. I like that too. I think it's packaged with Peace Walker and something else. Portable Ops, I think, is the other one maybe. But, yeah, I'm excited about that. That's the one where I'm sort of like, where do I get this?

Like, what platform do I get this? I kind of like the idea of playing, for some reason, games like this. I'm like, I like having this on Switch 2. Like the idea of playing Metal Gear Solid 4 on the Switch 2 sounds good to me. I like that. But yeah, I don't know. Because I feel like if a game like that comes out and I get it on my PS5 and maybe I'm going somewhere, I'm like, oh, shoot, I can't. I was into that.

Right. I want to play that. I can't take it with me. And sometimes the greatest damage you can do to the sort of momentum of a game is taking a break from it by force. Yeah. Like if you get overworked or if another game comes out, like the reason I dropped God of War was because another game came out. And now I'm like two games away from it because of Pocopia.

That's why I'll restart games more often. Like it's just because like, oh, I had to take a long break from it. And I go back to my old say, it was like, what the fuck is this? Right. I'll like like like which one's crouch again. Oh, okay. Yeah. This is one that this uses, okay, it's circle.

Like it's just like I forgot. gotten all the shit that I, that, and I've also don't even remember the context of the story fully, but then I replay it and then just like the part I've already played now breezes by. And then I, I can end up connecting with a game and enjoying it. But yeah, I did. You're right. I absolutely have bounced off of games just because of the realities of life. And it's a bummer.

I've never played four, but I've actually only ever played the first three Metal Gear's, I guess. I haven't really finished the first one. I would love a remake of that. if they're taking note of what people want remakes of, I guess I'd say I want a remake of that. I like that there's that you won't have to dig out your PlayStation 3 anymore just to play. Metal Gear Solid. Obviously, you can just get like Peace Walker on Steam or whatever.

Right. But it's, I like that it'll just be somewhere else. We'll see what kind of a port it is. I think you mean Metal Gear, because you said you don't have to dig out your PlayStation 3 to play PlayStation 4? Did I? Yeah. Ranch, can we fix that in the edit? No.

Okay. I said no. So it'll be seamless when you're listening. It would be wild if Ranch fixed those things by putting her own voice. So it'd be like, I'd be nice not to be, you know, not to dig out the PlayStation 3 in order to play Metal Gear. What about, I mean, just another one I'll bring up. This is an ARPG from Moon Studios who made the Ori Games. And this has been in early access for a while.

But I've resisted because I'm just like, I feel like it's gotten some mixed reviews from the player base. They're probably going to tweak it a bunch. The full releases purportedly coming later this year. No rest for the Wicked is the game. Yeah. And I kind of want to see what that's like if it's fully in ship shape when it has its actual official 1.0 launch.

They also had this as a preview at the recent PlayStation state of play, and I thought it looked really cool. It does look cool. I have not finished the second Ori game, but I absolutely loved the first one. First one's great. But yeah, it didn't bounce off of the... I think I tried to do them back to back, and it was kind of like, I'm kind of done with this right now, but I would love to get back to that second one.

Second one's a little bit more of a sprawling Metroidvania, but I did find it really satisfying. I really had a lot of fun with it. And those games also just have like absolutely meticulous art direction. Something new from that team though, sign me up. Sounds great. Yeah, why not? Yeah. Yeah.

I also like, like it's just like, I guess Mugenics is one from earlier, but meena the hollow are also to some degree. It's just like, oh, this studio that did this one, did this thing previously really well. They're trying something new. Yeah. Let's see what that's like, you know, because sometimes that works out famously. That's kind of why I'm kind of interested in Beast of Reincarnation, which is, Game Freaks' first non-Pocomon game

in God knows how long. So strange. And it looks like it looks crazy. Like that and I forgot about one I wanted to mention too. Which we talked about I think a little bit

when they announced it. But Star Wars Galactic Razor looks fucking awesome. Oh God, I forgot about Galactic Razor. That looks really good. I can't fucking wait for Galactic Racer. It looks awesome. In part because the sound design of those fucking things

is so addictive. It's so good. Boop, do, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, do, da, do, do, do. Boom. We did our best. Yeah, we tried. I tried. I liked it.

Yeah, okay. I like when Ben Quadroneros has a ship explode. I like that that character for some reason has a first and last name. Yeah, he's Ben Quadronero. Ben a pretty common name in the...

Ben, very common name in... Ben Solo. Ben Solo. Ben Canobey. Ben Canobey. Ben Quadreneros. Ben Quadreneros. Did you know, Heather told me this last week.

That Char... Hmm. I know where this is going. We're pivoting to Gundam. Char from Gundam. Char Asnabal. Char Asnable. By the way, they announced Cologne.

Char Cologne. Charr Cologne. The Cologne that he wears Smell like char. Apparently it's sage. It's probably pretty good. Charcolon. I'm in.

Charcoal loan. I'm out. Want to smell like a barbecue? We'll be right back. So, yeah. So Heather was telling me a new thing about char that I didn't know. Because I don't know that much about him. I know he's got the clone now, of course, that you mentioned.

And a helmet. And a helmet. You almost can basically be him. But when he uses an alias, is this what he's, it's the condition that he has this new name? It is unclear why he's doing what he's doing. Okay. But his plan is that people don't know he's char.

So you're familiar with the James Bond villain Octopussy? Yes. Not villain, but the character. The character octopussy, yeah. Sometimes, and this is true, Heather told me this. Char goes by quattro bagina. Which is to say four vaginas. Sounds like an Austin Power.

I know. It's really crazy. Why is Charm acting like that? Also, I think Quatro is a really funny first name. Guantro is a really funny name. Bagina also a funny last name. Look, you put them together. I kind of felt like because you weren't here last week, you needed to hear that. I'm glad I know it. But when you, when you, Quatro, what is it? Begina. Baggina. When you Google Quatro Begina, it just pulls up charm. So it's a bad alias if that's what it is. Yeah.

Might just because the name, Quatro of Begina sounds so made up. Not less made up than char asnable. All that to say, I do think the rest of 20206 looks good. And hey, maybe this year of games could be one of the best yet. Who knows? Yeah. Yeah, we keep having some pretty good years, it feels like.

Yeah, the years just in general have been very good. Great. but particularly for games, things continue clipping along, and we hope the rest of 2026 proves to give us some more fun new releases. Matt, it's time for the question block. All right, this first one, they're all, of course, all of these are from our Discord. Discord.org.org. slash get played.

Here we go. This first one's from Eric Salt House. What's up, Salt House? Salt House. I hope a slug doesn't live there. Why he'd stay away for sure. if he does live there, he's not living there for very long. Not for very long.

Dying there, too. Yeah. Does it hurt when tails flies? I kind of think it might. His tails are whipping around. Because let's say this has happened and I'm not, this is not good. On occasion, if I don't see one of my cats, might accidentally step on their tail and they go, yeah, ow!

Ouch! Right, but what are you? The question was, this flying hurts. They feel pain in their tails. So the movement of whipping it around like that, that might hurt a little bit. What bothers me about the whipping of his tail is the implication of a seam in the flesh. Yes. Because in order for it to fully rotate, it has to be disconnected from effectively the ball joint that works the tails.

So there has to be a slit. That goes all the way around the fur so that the fur, because otherwise, it would just, it would twist halfway and then you'd be done. Yeah. But the tails keep going. So there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a slit in there. Yeah. I'm going to have to ask you to stop saying slit. Well, you could probably see the meat.

You could probably see the meat. Do it? Because it's not, because if it was just like. going around and around and like tying in on itself, that would have an end. Right. Like you wouldn't be able to do that and fly. But no, it's full helicopter rotation,

which implies like a ball joint, which also implies a slit in the fur where you can see the meat. I don't think you'd be able to see the meat. But I do think it doesn't hurt because he seems all too willing to do it. He does like it. I also just think like it looks fun.

I bet he enjoys that. aspect of it. And he's also built for it, you know? It's just like, like he's miles tails per hour. Think about the core strength. If you're, if you're flying point is the is your butt and he's looking up like he's lifted, like his face is level with the helicopter part. Yeah. The core strength that he's displaying. Yeah. To hold his front, his front half up is incredible. Yeah. You know, to say, I will say to, to half answer Salt House's query. and the positive, it hurts in the sense of physical exertion hurting. Yes.

It seems like exhausting. Yeah. It seems like he's really going for it to get Ariel while rotating his twin tails. But I don't think it's like a painful act. It's not like Wolverine unsheathing his cloth. Right. It's every time. Yeah.

It's not until the slit gets infected. Yeah. And that infection gets into the meat. Right. Then he's fine. I should have never asked this. If I knew that, that's how you were going to behave. Great question, sold out.

Great question. Ruined my day. This next one is from Jukh-13. Jutk-13. Hey, buddy. Have you developed any new hobbies as you've gotten older? I've really gotten into gardening while I hated it when I was younger. I think COVID really changed how I prioritized spending my time.

I've been playing. I played on a baseball league last season and I'm currently playing on it again and that sort of is new to me to have any sort of athletic activity and folks I'm having a report I'm getting better every time I play

Look at you, I love it, we love to see it. I'm having a lot of fun out there. I'm sneaky kind of fast. You're sneaky kind of fast? I kind of feel like I don't have like the build that you would assume that I'm fast but I can get to where I need to go if I need to. I'm glad to hear it.

Yeah, yeah. I don't like it when things are slow. No. No. I'm mading me out there. Oh, God, I'm slow. Yeah, I'd be so bummed out. Do you think you'd beat me in a race?

I don't think so. Really? I think your legs are longer than mine, too, so you have a sort of that advantage. But I think you're probably faster than me. But you have the advantage of youth. Yeah, but I also have asthma. So I got to be very judicious. I get asthma too.

So that's a, that's a, should we race after this? I'd race you. I don't want to race. Okay. I think the three of us should race. It'd be kind of funny. One of the questions I didn't, uh, never mind. What?

This is for a different one. Okay. Ritch, if we, and Ethan answered this too. If the three of us were racing, who would you, who would you bet on? Heather? Hmm. I'd also bet on Heather. I'd bet, I'd bet on Nick, but I'm curious about my performance.

I think you'd be good. I think my issue is like, I, there's a, like, I think I could be the fastest, but there's a very good chance I'll fall down. Well, you're very long, and that's such an enormous. It's such an enormous advantage over Matt's natural speed and perhaps my experience with sprinting. Right. Like the fact that you're long just gives you that basketball player advantage that neither of us have. But I'm not Victor Wenban Yamala long. No, nobody is.

That guy is so tall. I'm 6'1 and he would tower over me. Yeah. He said he's 7.7? That's the they think he's 7.7 or 7. They have to figure it out. They can't just think it. The thing is, like, somebody measure this man?

There's, there's a gamesmanship element to NBA Heights where you'll tie it, like, if you're a little guy with Jalen Brenson, the star for the New York Knicks, who is awesome. But he's like probably like 5, 9, 510. He's listed at 6-2 because you don't want to say I'm this small. But then if you're a very tall guy, you want to say you're a little shorter so people kind of underestimate you. I see. And, uh, and also don't pigeonhole you as one particular type of player. But yeah, it's, it's, I'm trying to, like it's, it's, I don't even know how to, it's, it's, I don't

even know how to make the gulf comparable because like I'm like it's like like I'm like the difference between my height and ranch's height is less than the difference between Victor Wemba Njama's height and my height. Yeah. It's like it's like fucking crazy how big he is. Big dude. Big guy. But have you guys developed any hobbies as you've gotten older?

Oh, he also came as a no face in costume for a game on Halloween. Oh shit. It's really cool. It was fucking badass. Yeah, that's pretty good. scariest guy that's ever lived, I think. He rocks. So I feel like a lot of my adult hobbies have been going long enough now that I don't think of them.

I was not like particularly into Lego as a child and then became a Lego adult. The most recent thing that I can imagine becoming like a sort of thematic in my life is adventure traveling or cycling. Oh, sure. Yeah. I think that might be this last trip to Japan might have arced me into. a new era of of my life where I consider not the pleasures of a good hotel, but instead the cool crisp breeze on the back of a bicycle. Wow.

That's really great. It might be. Check out Wembe's no-face costume. Oh, my gosh. Jesus Christ. He's a fucking towering figure. He should be a mummy for Halloween. Some scary shit.

Yeah, he should be a mummy for Halloween. It'd be kind of fun. Nick, do you have any new hobbies? You know, I've talked at length about me picking up the piano, playing the tickling the ivories. True. So I'm trying to think of something novel because I've talked about that so much. I mean, like, you know, running mentioned, you know, I guess strength training, but I've been doing that for a while. You know, I've been lifting weights and the like.

I guess I would say a recent development beyond international travel, which I've done for the first time, across an ocean, finally, this year, this calendar year. I guess another development is I'm just trying to, I've had a lot of issues with touch. Like, and I think there are people who can relate to this of just like I don't necessarily love being touched, but I've tried to get more comfortable with that. So I guess like a general sort of like warmth, like, you know, like I'm, I'll try to hug people. I've gotten, like, I've gone to like massage therapists and gotten massages a few times. Just like try to try to get used to that. So I guess like there's there's just an element of like maybe addressing that aspect of my, my, my, you know, mental health to just like get more comfortable with that.

I don't know if that counts as a hobby. It's kind of a hobby. I guess I'm being touched more. You're you're exploring the hobby of wellness. Of wellness, yeah. Hmm. Yeah. That's pretty good.

That's nice. Yeah. I love that. And finally, from Blazing Scorge. Wait, wait, Ranch, do you have an adult hobby you developed? Magic to gather. Oh, really? That's fucking badass.

Yeah, that's the best answer. Incredible. Finally, Blazing Scourge writes, if Kingdom Hearts 4 is shown off at Summer Games Fest and confirms that we're exploring beyond Disney cartoon IPs, which IP do you think would be you'd be most excited to explore? Easy answer, the Apple Dumplin gang.

Give me them an Apple Dumplick boys. What are they up to? Those mischievous scamps. What's the, that professor guy? The nutty professor? Yeah, I guess him. Oh, the absent-minded professor? There's a couple of them.

There's like a Disney guy that's like, I'm Professor Doinkman or whatever. Yeah, Professor Doinkman. My answer, of course, is Avatar. Yeah, Avatar is a great answer. Oh, it's got to be Avatar. of course. Great answer for where I'd like to see Saur.

I'd like to see Sauri in Star Wars. Yes, of course. I'd like to see... The Keeblais' lightsaber would be peak. Yeah, it'd be great. I'd like to see Sora go up against Thanos. Why not? Yeah, why not?

But then I'd also like Sora to summon Herbie the love bug. Pretty good. Like, I would love like a couple of 1960s or 1970s Disney IP as summons. And I think... crashing Herbie into like Maleficent would be great. They'd be really great.

They're not going to do this because I don't think it's like the exact right fit for what they do. I would love to see a heartless in the shape of a xenomorph. That's fun. That sounds cool.

And it's like that level is scary kind of. I didn't even think about how they own the xenomorph now. They have it now. Speaking things they own, how about the Simpsons? I mean, it would be kind of fun. It feels like a natural fit than going to Springfield.

It'd be really fun. It would be really fun. But I mean, like, Sora, you have to do Apu now. They're recording it. Like, like, I just imagining, I'm just thinking of a world where they're just announcing some of the new biomes and they got, they got Springfield, they got Pandora, and then they got the town from the Apple Dumpling Gang. And this is top of mind for Nick because this was the first movie he saw in theaters.

And it was two days ago. These two old West bandits who have to take care of three orphans. I have no concept for what an apple dumpling is, but what I'm picturing sounds really good. I just like saying an apple dumpling game. I kind of got that, but imagine like a bow bun that was like a sort of like pie filling. Yeah. Like the hostess apple pies are effectively an apple dumpling. Fuck, I used to love those fuckers.

They're great. We're talking about this because we're hungry. That was it for the question block. Thanks for writing it and letting us know what you thought. And at Discord. Discord.org. Slash Get played. Hop in.

Anyone's welcome. It's a great community over there. And thanks again to our mods, as always. That's this week's Get Played. A special thanks, of course, to Ethan, our intern, for sitting in. Ethan, do you have anything you like to plug? Not really. Okay.

Great having you, Ethan. Our producer is Rochelle Chen, Ranch, Twitch. Dot TV slash yard underscore underscore Sard. How about you, Ranch? Yeah, just that. Okay, great. Check out. Are you still streaming?

What are you streaming? I will eventually get back on Requiem. Okay, great. It's been a while. Wow, I love it. Music by Ben Prenti, Ben Pranty, music.com, art by Duck Brigade, design, duck brigade. com, merch at kinshipgoods.com. And a bonus episode every single Wednesday on our Patreon.

Get played DLC. Matt, what's up this week? This week, you and I watched, we did another retro rewind where we watched a promo tape detailing the Nintendo 64 lineup. God, that was really fun. It was really crazy. What a great, great piece of, like, 1996, like, culture.

Remember the, well, we don't get into it, but they, like, invented these, like, gamers for the thing. They're like, oh, it's these guys. And we're like, what is it? Yeah, like, oh, these are, like, gaming celebrities there was like, no, they're, like, made up guy. Fictional characters.

Like, what? What's going on? And they brought them into, like, a government, like, black site to, like, show them these, like, games. It's really, really. really weird video. It's a really fun video. That's over at patreon.com slash get played. And hey, games of 20206, some of you got played and more of you're about to get played in the future. Sure. That was a HeadGum podcast. Hi, I am Mandy Moore. Sterling K. Brown. And I'm Chris Sullivan.

And we host the podcast. That was us now on HeadGum. Each episode, we're going to going to go into a deep dive from our show, This Is Us. That's right. We're going to go episode by episode. We're also going to pepper in episodes with different guest stars and writers and casting directors. Are we going to cry? Yes. A little bit.

Are we going to laugh? A lot. A whole lot. That's what I'm hoping, man. Listen to that was us on your favorite podcast app or watch full video episodes on YouTube or Spotify, new episodes every Tuesday.