The Ringer-Verse - Summer Gaming Showcase Reactions! | Button Mash

Episode Date: June 8, 2026

After being bombarded by gaming news at Sony's PlayStation State of Play, Summer Game Fest, the Xbox Games Showcase, and beyond, Ben, Steve Ahlman, and Matt James get together to analyze the biggest game announcements and trailers. First, they discuss some major themes and takeaways from the week, including the onslaught of releases in store before 'GTA VI' and the industry's about-face on live-service games and console exclusivity. Then, they focus on how hype-worthy each event was and assess what they saw (and in some cases, played) of heavy hitters such as 'God of War Laufey,' 'Marvel's Wolverine,' 'Resident Evil Veronica,' 'Star Wars: Galactic Racer,' 'Final Fantasy VII Revelation,' 'Halo: Campaign Evolved,' 'Gears of War: E-Day,' and many more.Host: Ben LindberghGuests: Matt James and Steve AhlmanSenior Producer: Steve AhlmanAdditional Production: Arjuna Ramgopowel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

and welcome into the Ringerverse, your Nexus feed for all things fandom. I am Ben Lindberg, a senior editor for The Ringer, and the Jeff Keely equivalent of Button MASH without the shiny red jacket. When Button Mesh moves to video, I've got to upgrade my wardrobe. We're doing a rare Sunday recording to bring you the Button Mash Summer Gaming Showcase Showcase, where we will react to all the news, well, most of the news, all the news might take us all day, from Sony's state of play, Summer Game Fest, the Xbox Games showcase and beyond, joining me for this endeavor doing double duty as guest and producer, and giving himself the Survivor-style hero edit.

It's Steve, Summer Steve Fest, Allman. Howdy, Steve? Very good. You don't know this by now, but in post, I've given myself, like, heavenly, god-ray, angelic sounds every time I speak. I don't doubt it. I don't listen back to the... completed button meshes usually. So I have no idea what you get up to. Wow, okay. I could have just had bad air for years and you not know about it. I know.

Hopefully you and Devon are doing a great job. I'm sure you are. Steve, you attended some of this week's festivities and you bring us in-person impressions. Yes, I do. I'm now senior Summer Games Fest correspondent this week as well. Yes. Yes. Some shoe leather reporting service journalism from Steve. So we will get to what you saw and what you thought of it. Also, with us is Ringer Deputy Art Director Matt James, who brings us in-person impressions of Sweden, because that's where he was during

Sony's state of play. Matt, did you go cold turkey for a few days, gaming-wise, or did you lug a lot of gaming hardware to Europe? I had the switch to on the flight, but otherwise I was a very good employee and, you know,

just participated in all the team building. And, yeah, I'm all caught up. I've played some demos. and I'm ready to go. I'm impressed. I thought for sure you would have had a Steam deck or one of your advanced exotic gaming handhelds. Actually, I did bring my Thor as well, but I didn't.

Okay. See? I didn't use that. I knew there was more. Oh, you didn't get to it. Yeah. Two devices minimum on travel. You have me. Nick's games to pay attention to.

I do. And I still do. Yeah. Go New York. Go. I hope you brought your power adapters at least. Well, my friends, no E3, no problem. Enough news for you this week?

I mean, we knew we were in for quite a slew of announcements and trailers and release dates, but I think we may have gotten more than we bargained for. This was a real just fire hose of gaming news. Indeed. And there's allegedly a Nintendo Direct on the horizon as well. Yes, right. Yeah, you know Nintendo. is going to get it on everything, but on their own time.

You know, Nintendo doesn't play by anyone else's rules, but could be as soon as this week, so more to come. But we will cover everything that we have heard and seen, and we wanted to convene on the weekend so that we could get you a more timely reaction here. So I have a few high-level takeaways from what we saw this week, just some themes, some connections that stood out to me, so I will throw those out to you, get your thoughts. you can add any that you might have. And then we can just talk about the big name games.

And Steve can tell us about what he got his hands on. I think the big takeaway here, and it's pretty obvious, but nonetheless, striking, is that if you had plans for September, cancel them. Right. Because you got games to play. Not even just September. I guess late August to mid to late October. that's it. This year, the holiday season ends around October 23rd. It's like in the sequel to 2001 of Space Odyssey 2010, Hal sends a message to humanity. And he says, all these worlds are yours except Europa, attempt no landing there, which we are attempting a Europa landing soon. So we should be careful. But it's as if Rockstar Games said, all these months are yours, except November, attempt no releases there.

And every other publisher said, okay, we won't. And now what we have is a massive pile up before GTA6. And you have to wonder whether this will backfire. But let me just do a dramatic reading of the dates that we know. I'm just, I'm looking at this is Games Radar, which seems to be pretty updated here. And I guess I'll just start end of August, Star Wars Zero Company. We got a release date, August 27th. Plague Tale Legacy Resonance.

also August 27th. So that's really when it begins. Then you've got Eldon Ring coming to Switch 2. Finally, you have the already announced Blood of Dawn Walker coming to us from the Witcher 3rd, The Witcher 3rd, which looks pretty exciting. That's September 3rd. Marvel's Wolverine, we knew, September 15th. We got to see more of it here.

There's a Warhammer 40K Dawn of War 4 game coming out September 17th. Dune Awakening now is coming to PS5 on September 22nd. Silent Hill Townfall, we found out, is coming out September 24th. You know what else is coming out September 24th? Control Resonant. Every other game ever. Every other game. The Sony state of play was just a series of announcements for the last week of September.

It was like, did you guys coordinate this? Do you realize that there is only so much time in the day? I guess they arranged it so that Silent Hill and Control come out. September 24th. So we have a whole day to get those done. Matt can do that. Matt will finish them both somehow. I don't know how, but he will. And he'll be ready for Onimusha Way of the Sword on September 25th. So we have a whole day

to prepare for that. You also played that game, Steve. Then, coming in early October, we have Rayman Legends retold on October 1st. There's a Dynasty Warriors 3 remaster also coming that day. One of my hotly anticipated games, East Combat 8, Wings of Thieve, we have learned. Whatever Thief is, I'm in October 2nd. Gears of War, E-Day, October 6th.

Star Wars Galactic Racer, October 6th. Another game that Steve played. Matt's most anticipated game of all time. Castlevania Belmont's Curse, October 15th. And then, of course, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 comes out on October 23rd. Phantom Blade Zero is the laggard, I guess. it got delayed to October 29th. And that's it.

Beyond that point, there shall be no games released this year. Because if I go to the November 2026 calendar, we've got GTA6 on November 20th. Sorry, I'm not announcing a GTA delay. November 19th. And the only other game on the calendar is

Crime Light on November 4th. Very brave, very bold. I know that there are a couple maybe remasters coming, but no original is everyone. steering clear. So what do you guys think? Is this smart? No.

Are we giving too much deference to GTA6? And now everyone's going to get themselves into an even bigger problem because suddenly they'll be competing with each other instead of GTA6. And maybe that'll be just as bad. I personally think that it's smart to be determined. I think it's kind of the only thing that you can do, actually, because GTA 6, while the known quantity, is pretty much an unknown quantity as far as the massive crater of economic gap

that will be left in the gaming industry after November and its release, because any game that comes close to coming out after that is basically being sent out to die. And anything that gets just ever so farther away from it before it comes out has a chance to make an impact on you. So anything that we think that we can get out in September or very, very, very early October, then it has a chance. But I think that this is probably the right move. Is it smart? No. Are we going to have to do like six podcasts in two weeks?

But hey, that's what we got. Yeah, it's like some sort of tragedy of the common situation, though, because it makes sense for each publisher individually to move. But then when everyone has exactly the same idea and we have. this onslaught, then there are going to be some games that are left high and dry in late September, too, because only Matt James can play every single game that comes out somehow. So people are going to have to make some tough choices. And even you, Matt, you sounded like you think this is maybe an overcorrection. Yeah, I can't handle all that, Ben.

I just can't do it. I'm pretty sure you can. If folks anybody else on this podcast, I'm pretty sure you're the one that actually can. Have no doubt I will try. I just, I think that this is a little bit stupid. I think just the idea that that like when Grand Theft Auto comes out, no one is playing any other games for ever again X amount of time. Like like do we really think that like Rayman is a complete direct overlap in in audience as the new Grand Theft Auto game?

Like I am not so sure about that. Do you want to take that chance, Matt? Do you really want to? Because again, it's been like 15 years. Since the last biggest game ever came out. Okay. But how about I put my game out a week before GTA? It better be before.

It can't be after. There's just such a huge buffer before and after. I feel like someone is going to move around their game release. After this weekend, you're going to see some people will be like, oh, you know what? We're just going to move it a little bit later, maybe. Yeah. Yeah, I think there will be some last minute jockeying for position and some slippage.

Just because now that everyone has these dates out, you know, I guess some people are maybe able to coordinate if they have the same publisher. But otherwise, they're all just watching and waiting the way we are. And if they're suddenly like, oh, crap, there are three other games coming out on the day we picked, then, yeah, you'd think that maybe, and games get delayed anyway. So you could always use a few extra weeks of polish. So I would guess, yeah. And we might see some longer delays. That's always possible, right? We've seen some of that, right?

Like Tomb Raider Legacy of Atlantis is now coming out next year. Fable is now coming out next year. It's possible that some other games might make that choice too. But it's risky. I do think, though, that it is a bit of an overreaction. I was reading something in the game business newsletter this past week where there was a study, that was done on which games lost out when the last big GTA online expansion

was published last year. And basically it cannibalized the audiences of other online games that you might consider kind of adjacent battlefield, call of duty, some sports games, just like the most kind of AAA mainstream. And so, you know,

and that's a GTA online expansion. This is a little bit different. Obviously, there's a big offline component here too. But I do think that there are some games that they're not really competitors for GTA, and GTA not really a competitor for them. Or at least it's still worthwhile just because there's such an opportunity cost of stacking all of these releases at one time. But as of now, yeah, cancel your plans for that August to October window,

because we will be doing nothing but gaming. All right. Another thing that stood out to me here is that there was a real lack of live service. Just very little, hey, here's our new high guard, basically. And in fact, Jeff Keeley alluded to that. He, I think he posted on Twitter even before Summer Game Fest. He said, today's final announcement at Summer Game Fest will be a single player narrative game. Thank you for the feedback, which was kind of funny.

Credit to Keeley. But I think there was kind of a backlash or a fatigue or just, we don't want this. That's not to say that there aren't going to be any more live service free-to-play type games coming out because these things have been greenlit years ago and have been in development forever. So it might just be an announcement strategy difference that they know that there could be a backlash given what we've seen before. And so Jeff and also the publishers are saying, let's keep a low profile. Let's go about this a bit differently than High Guard did.

But maybe it's also that these games aren't getting greenlit as much. Like we see the Sony state of play, and it's kind of we're getting back to basics. We're getting back to single-player narrative games more so than what we have been tilting at windmills about for years now. You know, there is a bit of marathon, but that was about it. Can you guys really even remember any high-profile live service stuff? I mean, you know, live service is kind of a squishy. Obviously, there's MMOs and online games and Guild Wars 3 and whatever else. Which people have been mistakenly calling Chud Wars because of the font choice.

Yeah. But I guess it's more the MoBA sort of hero shooter, arena shooter, shooters, basically. We just did not see much of that this year. No, I think that's a very clear sign that that's going to be a backpedaling of the industry. the unfortunate timing that we're getting a call of duty extraction shooter at the ripe, ripe time that Marathon's doing just great. But no, that's a very big sentiment that not only we saw from a lot of these presentations, but like it was definitely clear in the things that I saw at FGS on the campus here in L.A. Because this is really full of a lot of people that are passionate about getting like a single player experience off of the ground that are shown in.

really unique ways. And if anything is multiplayer, it is either like couch co-op or direct co-op in a story-driven thing. And that's very refreshing for me personally to see. Oh, yeah. This is music to my ears. I just, I wonder whether it's more the rollout strategy that has changed or the actual games. I think in terms of games getting greenlit, we've already seen that start to change. But usually when games are getting announced at these things, they've already been in the works for a while, not in all cases. Sometimes it's, hey, we're making this thing and we have nothing to show you other than a logo. But persona 6, we promise. It's totally coming and we will tell you more about it next year when it arrives. But yeah, just because of the backlash, because of some of the high profile failures,

this was, I think, a big change in that respect. And also, I didn't really sense a whole lot of hurting when it came to everyone is copying the popular genre. And so we're seeing 10 trailers that all look the same. I don't know whether you guys had this impression, but I got the sense that there was a little less just cookie cutter. You know, because some of these showcases it's like, everything's a soul's like.

Everything's a rogue like. Okay, we see what was popular a couple years ago and everyone decided we're going to make one of these. And then every single trailer kind of is indistinguishable from every other trailer. I thought there was a bit more variety and diversity

of genre this time around. and less free-to-play stuff everywhere. I think, you know, the updates that you did see for things along that line, I feel like we're updates to existing live-service games that were on the horizon. Existing successful ones, like Sea of Thieves or, you know, anything like that. Refreshing to kind of get all of that garbage. Not that all of that is garbage. But, you know, get that out of the limelight so much that there isn't a bunch of garbage being made just trying to cash in.

And, you know, I'm a big single-player narrative experience guy. And I also feel like when I do have a craving for a sort of multiplayer fix, I think we're in a really nice era right now where there are plenty of indie devs making really low-budget, excellent multiplayer experience. Whether or not you call them friend slop or not, there is no shortage of great things to play with friends, even if there isn't a several billion dollar budget behind those experiences. Yeah. And that's not to say there was no similarity. The similarity was that we saw lots of sequels and remakes and remasters, but it's always thus, right? It's not new that things are not new that franchises. And in some cases, new IP, but from famous franchise creators, which is the next closest thing. From the creator of, insert franchise title here.

That's one way you can get a new franchise off the ground. You have to have had a previous franchise. But we've seen that in every medium for years now. So nothing new there. Also, wanted to shout out another game that's braving the November window, Godzilla Destroy All Monsters, Melee. Hell yeah. The remaster of the 2000.

2002 GameCube game coming out. Let's actually go. That's so great. That's so incredibly niche. I'm so happy for that. Yeah, November 3rd. So you will have a couple weeks to get your Godzilla on before the big kaiju of video games shows up to take over everything.

So yeah, okay. Also, what it stood out to me is that we saw some backsliding in exclusivity. So this is an ongoing story, obviously, but we certainly saw a change here at Sony State of Play. We had a few big games that were advertised as PlayStation exclusives, which is not news or surprising because it had previously been reported and announced that Sony is pivoting from its plan to publish a lot of its big first-person or first-party heavy hitters on PC as timed exclusive. they come to PlayStation, then they come to PC.

Turns out that strategy evidently didn't pay off, and those games, by and large, didn't sell so well. And so they are not doing that anymore, or at least not consistently doing that anymore. And so games like the new God of War spin-off, God of War, Laof-Fae, and a few others are just going to be PlayStation only. So that does reflect a change for PlayStation, I think.

And then obviously in the Xbox presentation, we saw that too with most notably Gears of War Eday, which evidently reportedly was ported to PlayStation. It's just a complete PlayStation port that is done and they are just not releasing it. It was not announced formally as a PlayStation game, but there was a Walmart listing that went up that said that it would be for PlayStation. They quickly took that down. And so this appears to be, hey, we're throwing a bone to the Xbox diehards here. And we will not be releasing this game on PlayStation. This is an Xbox exclusive as is an upcoming RPG Clockwork Revolution.

And they're trying to thread the needle here. So we're still seeing some multi-platform Xbox releases and some big ones, Fable, Halo Combat Evolve, State of Decay 3, Senoa, the new Hellblade game. These are all multi-platform, but with the exception of Senoa, I guess, these were all previously announced and confirmed to be multi-platform. So it sort of seems like if you were announced as a multi-platform game, okay, we'll stick to that. If not, though, maybe we are dialing back the exclusives. And we saw some language to this effect from Asha Sharma, who gave an interview earlier this

week and said, I think it's a tough topic. We're the number two publisher in the world, and in order to be a great publisher, you must have your games reach large audiences to play. At the same time, we're increasingly becoming a platform. In order to be a platform, you must have exclusive content and services. And so we're looking at that very closely. I think that we have to be very thoughtful about each title and how we want to think about it and learn from similar cases in the industry. And then she tweeted after the showcase, we want people to choose Xbox, all caps. Because of great games and experiences, that also means giving you something that was made for Xbox. Gears of War, E-Day, and Clockwork Revolution will be Xbox console exclusives.

And the Xbox Wire blog post specified that these are not timed exclusives. And so games already announced as multi-platform releases will stick to that plan. Beyond that, who knows? We're all figuring this out along with Asha Sharma. So what do you guys think of, hey, everything is multi-platform? We just want to get games in front of the most eyeballs and potential players as possible. Two, maybe we took that a bit too far. Maybe there is still some value in exclusivity.

It's tough to tell whether or not the overall sentiment, seemingly over at Xbox, is, hey, maybe the console wars are over or, wow, we really underplayed our hand and play sedation just won. But regardless, that doesn't really feel tenement to the fact that the attitude around Xbox now still feels like the right one. I think now after seeing this presentation, it really is starting to feel like too little too late because every time that I would see world premiere, Xbox exclusive, blah, blah, blah, blah. At the end, whenever you see that title card,

you just see a little tiny Steam logo and a little tiny PlayStation logo at the bottom of it. They make it smaller and smaller each time. It wouldn't really matter to me because I look at everything that I see in the Xbox showcase and I'm like, well, this is the PC showcase. Anyway, because I personally don't own an Xbox. I personally don't see the need to own one at the moment.

For the generation that is seemingly missing out, quote unquote, on these new Xbox exclusives, they're kind of tied to brands that we haven't really given that much time to in the long run. Like, I don't think Gears of Wars moving mountains anymore like it has. Like, I could be wrong, but the motion for me personally is like, okay, Gears of War fears like Gears of War. And that'll be that. And that'll be fun. But, you know, until I know what Fable actually is, which is kind of really starting to piss me off that I don't know what that game really does or what a real like swing at Halo looks like nowadays, instead of just, okay, this is just another revamp of the same first campaign, I am really kind of disappointed and feel nothing at Xbox at the moment.

And a console exclusivity really has lost most of its meaning. I'm not quite sure. Matt, am I crazy? No, you're not crazy. But at the same time, I think that there is some strategic validity to making games exclusive on your console. And Sony obviously agrees with that quite a bit, having backpedal done all their PC releases. And I think this makes sense for it. Until done, too, by the way.

Until Dun 2 and Wolverine are the other big PlayStation exclusives. There you go. But I do think that for Xbox in particular, the timing of this backpedaling doesn't particularly make a lot of sense. They have new hardware announced that is allegedly on the way either next year or early the year after. Their consoles are largely hard to find out in the retail stores now,

the prices are out of control for their console that has a limited shelf life now. So having the exclusivity sort of kick in again at the very back end of this generation feels like it's going to be

a fairly unsuccessful pursuit for the company. Is it the back end of this generation now? This generation could go on for a few more years, Matt. Because it doesn't They're putting out new hardware. Their project Helix is coming.

Yeah, I'm sure that's happening real soon. Yeah. Yeah, we will see. That's what we're told. It is funny, the whiplash, though. And it's not Asha Sharma's fault. She takes over if she thinks that decisions were made that are not serving the company, then it makes sense to change.

It doesn't make sense to just say, well, I'm bound by what my predecessor did, obviously. predecessors were replaced and things have not been going so great. So it makes sense to change course, but it does lead to a lot of whiplash because you get something like Gears of War, where Gears of War Reloaded came to other consoles last year. And at the time, the perception was, okay, now we're kind of wetting PlayStation players' appetites for this franchise. They're getting a taste of Gears of War, and then they'll be ready to hop on to E-Day. And now, nope, they're not going to get E-Day.

So there's a real inconsistency there, but I don't think exclusivity is everything, and there are certainly plenty of Xbox players who if you put those games on GamePass, they couldn't care less if people can play them on PlayStation. So it kind of comes down to, are the games good, and am I pleased with the value proposition here

and not necessarily feeling like, I got something you can't get? But it is tough because as consoles continue to get more and more expensive, then you really do have to make a proactive case for your piece of hardware, as opposed to the other piece of hardware. People are going to have to choose more and more. It's always been something where not everyone could just snap up every console,

but if things keep trending in this direction, you really are going to have to pick a lane. And so why would we pick your lane? And you do have to make that case. And when Microsoft surveyed players and they had a forum and everything and people are upvoting, here's what I want. The number one request was exclusivity. It wasn't overwhelming.

There were plenty of other things that people were requesting or complaining about, but that was number one. So whether that's a skewed sample of the people who are responding to that prompt, I don't know, but historically speaking, I think there is some sense

and just saying you can get this here and nowhere else. Yeah, and it's a little weird. Like, what's your number one want as a consumer? It's for other consumers. consumers to be unhappy? Is that the idea? Yeah, if everyone else is unhappy, at least I've been good company. Sony's making me so unhappy that I want Sony fanboys to be unhappy too.

And that's what I want. That's what the console wars are all about, just making the other people more unhappy than you are. That's how you win. I do think that like backpedaling into exclusivity now, like as Asha Sharma, like who's just taken over the company, like the results. of exclusivity on Gears of War E-Day and what's that Clockwork, Quark Revolution, like, the sales of that are going to be heavily scrutinized as like the first two titles

into this, you know, exclusivity thing that we're heading back into. And I have reason to believe that the results of that won't be that great. I don't think that, you know, Gears of War is good. I don't know anyone who's like tremendously hyped for this. I don't know how much we have to innovate with Eday. We'll see. I mean, I expect it to be a very good game. I don't think it's a console seller.

And we still don't know what's going on with Clockwork Revolution. But again, like, if you don't have an Xbox right now, and you know there's a new one coming out, like, I don't think those are getting you to drop $650 or $800 on an Xbox just to buy those games. But Atomic Green! It does look very cool, the newly announced translucent. Nothing beats Atomic Purple. Nothing beats Atomic Purple.

Yeah. All right. Well, there are many big games to talk about whether they're exclusive or not. So let's talk about the heavy hitters here. And, of course, the biggest news from this whole week is that there's already a 007 First Light DLC on the way, starring our boy, Bhavma. Lenny Kravitz is coming back, baby. A wild start.

Producer Devin's going to be so excited. Who knew that I would lead? with the Bhavma DLC. But man, that game is just a huge, huge hit. And it's not hard to see why, but we talked about it last time. If you're just catching up, we talked about Mina the Hollower,

which has been a success by low-budget indie standards. But 007 First Light has been an absolute blockbuster. They announced 2.7 million copies sold. It's probably 3 million by the time you're hearing this. It's the best-selling I-O game. I mean, it's an absolute juggernaut, which I guess goes to show that there was some pent-up demand for James Bond out there, both in the video game realm.

I wonder whether Amazon, which put out a statement to say, well, we're going to handle the publishing for the next one, which isn't to say that Iowa isn't going to develop it. But I wonder whether they're miffed at all. I mean, it's good for the brand, in a sense, but also if the movie franchise is in this little lull here and suddenly First Light comes out and just sort of steals your lunch, is like, I am the captain now, I am James Bond, basically.

Do we need a movie anymore? We have, we have Bhvma. So I wonder if there are mixed feelings there, especially because, like, you got to figure that whatever's in the works for the next Bond movie, it has to be about some evil AI, right? What else could it be about? Yeah. I don't think that that's a, I actually don't think that's a bit of a misread or Amazon's

kicking themselves for not, like, wholeheartedly investing in IOS stake in this, because, like, if they do have a stake, they license this out to I.O. And I'm sure that they get a cut of something. But they certainly don't have as much fingers in the pot as they would want to. But I'm guessing it's mainly because of the fact that, like, Amazon Studios hasn't really gotten anything off of the ground in years when it comes to this gaming studio. And to know that an IP that they own with a studio that they don't made a massive hit with their IP is nothing but good things. Because whether or not they either buy IEO potentially or look to either commission them again to make another one, they will renege on making it as profitable as they can for them because now it's nowhere to go but up.

Nobody can probably imagine a 007 game formula unlike IOS ever again. Like this is what we want. And to know that this is a hit, Amazon's going to capitalize regardless. Yeah, this does confirm one of my most strongly held takes, which I, I wrote for the ringer.com. What a great website several years ago, which is that they should just let people be bond once. Just let whoever wants to play bond and whoever would be good to play bond. Just do it once. Just do a one-off. It's ridiculous that we're, what, five years past the last Bond movie and they haven't even picked a bond yet. And I know that there's been all sorts of upheaval and the sale of the franchise and Jeff Bezos wants to put his wife in the movie or whatever.

But just we don't need to, they put these constraints on themselves where we have to, whoever we get to play bond is going to be bond for the next five movies and 15 years or something. Just do it George Lasonby style. Everyone, just give me, you know, do the Idris Elba for one movie, just a one-off. He doesn't have to commit to be bond. That way you get your pick of the litter because people don't have to sign away the rest of their career to be bond. They just get to do it once. and we get the variety.

I get that you get attached to a Bond, maybe, especially in this more serialized era of storytelling for Bond, but the success of this game just reinforces to me that people just like the Bond formula. We just want to see gadgets and adventures and Bond girls and fancy cars and all the rest of it and evil villains. And I think it would actually help the franchise to say, let's go get the biggest star, and you can just be Bond one time.

Everyone will come out to see your take on Bond, and then it'll be someone else's turn. And if it works out so great that you want to re-up and come back and be bond more, well, then you can do that. They're overthinking it. That's all I'm saying. And 007, First Light has proved beyond all doubt that we just want more bond, just to give us more bond. But we have much more coming. Let's go in kind of chronological order here. I mean, we can start with the state of play. So the big announcement here, it wasn't exactly a surprise because there had been rumors and leaks that something Santa Monica was coming. and you had to figure it would be God of War related. But we learned what it was.

It is a spin-off starring Kratos's late wife, but not late. She's still around. She's still kicking in the every when, in the whatever it is, the realm of all of the mythologies joined together. And also Frank, the gelatinous cube played by Jack Quaid,

who is the Internet's favorite gelatinous cube now. So I feel like the Lauf, Fae branding. I mean, that's her name, but also no one knows how to pronounce that. I feel like they just could have gone with goddess of war. But that's really my only note, I think. Other than that, I'm in, you know? And this, it takes place seemingly concurrently with the reboot games and and Cretos and Atrios are like mourning their wife slash mother. And evidently she's just somewhere in the afterlife kicking ass anyway. So that kind of retroactively makes all the morning funny, but what do you guys think of God of War Laot-Fay?

I think it looks like more God of War to me. You have, you know, a protagonist who has a, you know, more mobility, I would say. Yes, I like that. It's like a faster pace and somewhat aerial at times combat. I still think that, I don't know if we needed a 20-minute reveal here where most of the time, nothing's happening or you're holding R2 to do something. slipping through narrow passageways here and there. Of course.

It doesn't seem like there's any formula that's going to be straight away from here. Granted, I'm still looking forward to it quite a bit, but I could understand if anybody feels they have a bit of God of War fatigue. This doesn't aim to be going in any different direction, really. Yeah, and Corey Barlog, who I always want to call Corey Balrog, is now just in charge of the whole studio and the whole series as opposed to hands on directing this game.

But yeah, I'm into it. It's been a few years. I'm always down for more Godapur. Obviously, we're always going to get more Cretus too. There's going to be more Cretus. Don't worry, people. We know that they're already remaking, remastering the old school pre-woke Cretos.

So, you know, we're going to get our Cretus supply. Don't worry. But I'm looking forward to, Yes, a slightly different approach to gameplay and killing lots of stuff. But that's a ways out. We have Control Resonant and Silent Hill Townfall to look forward to as we covered on the same day. So, Steve, you played a little bit of control, right? What can you tell us?

I can. The section of the game that we played is basically the very beginning of it. It's basically following up exactly where the first control left off. I am still want to find any other game studio that has better game direction and better art direction

than remedy because everything that they do is seemingly a wonderfully stylistic home run in my book and control resident is no different. It's basically all of the bad stuff that got into the Department of Control was let out

and all of the bad stuff is wreaking havoc on Manhattan. and turning it into basically Dr. Strange hellscape. So frustrating how that happens. Yeah. You play a whole game. Remember Goes BuzzFes 2? I'm pretty sure that happens when the Knicks will win.

Like it's basically a down is up and zombies roam the streets. Yeah. Great side talk content. When I got my hands on it, it's really, really different than Control's first iteration because it's all DMC-style melee combat and the weapons and, like, alteration.

that you get to pick for your weapon are quite unique. Move styles are very different. It's very heavy on platforming. It's very heavy on timing and use of your game intuition reflexes. No real shooting to be spoken of here. But the level design and the boss battles, or the one boss battle that we encountered that they allowed us to capture, and hopefully we're going to be putting that out sooner rather than later

so I can get to talk about it more, is really unique and really, really, really, exciting. Like, I cannot wait to see it. And it's also like, they generously were like, hey, so you're going to have a great time playing this. This is going to be really cool. Just notes for everybody. This is going to be running on a PlayStation 5 Pro. Please don't change any of the settings that we put on it. And there's like, 70% of the sound isn't missing from this demo. So a lot of work to still be done and enjoy. And being on the campus of Summer Games Fest, it really makes me understand just how important the final three months of development are and how hard everybody is working to make something that as good as we know control is, go from something that's literally a lump of digital clay to that. And I loved it.

It was great. I'm super psyched for control. Now, you two are bigger Silent Hillheads than I am, although I've gotten into. it of late, but the Silent Hill Sants continues because I didn't expect this so soon, but we have from Konami and Annapurna, which is interesting.

This is not your typical Anapurna published game. I hope there are enough fail states to satisfy the mixtape haters in this thing. Anapurna is publishing this and also a dinosaur horror game, The Lost Wild, which I could have sworn when they were announcing

I'm like, this has got to be a Jurassic Park alien isolation thing, right? That's what it is. And it's like, no, okay, no branding. In isolation. Oh, boy, we got more news there. But what do you guys think of this Silent Hill spin-off? Is it too much? Silent Hill, is the Silent Hill supply

outstripping the demand, or is your demand insatiable? It wouldn't be insatiable. It's not insatiable. But the reason I love it so much lately is because they've been willing to go in new directions with the franchise. And this seems like another

new direction. And I could not be more excited. We just talked about how the new God of War seems to be kind of like another God of War, right? And I don't think that that's what this series, the Silent Hill series is doing now. They keep, you know, there's a new

bond every game, Ben, right? They're doing new things with it. You don't have to be in Silent Hill with the same protagonist every time. It's really exciting to me. I'm sure you feel the same way, Steve. Yeah, no. Konami's got the

right attitude when it comes to divvying out who they let get this franchise and take a swing at it, because not only is it coming out so fast, but like every single studio that they seem to be having take this on has a great idea for it, and that excites them and that allows them to do that. And I'm like, keep doing it until it doesn't work because it's been great every single time. Well, everything is working for Capcom as well. And we had a lot of Capcom news, some Resident Evil news, which we will get to. At the state of play, we saw Onamusha Way of the Sword, which comes out one whole day after control and Silent Hill. Steve, you may or may not be NDA to some degree, but you spent a little time with the reboot of Onamusha after a couple decades.

What did you think? Yeah, well, they released a worldwide demo that's available now to play. Which I played, is that what you played? No, that is not what I played. I played a different section of the game. And I can't exactly describe what I. touched on, but I can share my general feelings about it, and that is...

Please do. If you liked that demo, you are really going to love the rest of that game, because it is from the demo and from what I played, definitely, a really interesting mix of modern-day Souls-esque gameplay. Like, Ben, Matt, have you

played the demo? Yeah, I finished it. And so you agree. You liked it. I loved it. Yeah, the combat that feels really fantastic. And I think there's enough systems around it to make every encounter feel interesting. Yeah, a lot of times with things that are souls-esque or souls-like, you can feel like there's too much going on or not enough going on,

and it really felt like the perfect amount to me. So, yeah, I was a little unsure about the story. in the game. The demo kind of drops you into a section of the game. So, you know, I can't, I don't think I can really judge, uh, that quite yet. Um, but, but I do think that the combat is good enough to carry me through, regardless of whether that setting and story delivers. Yeah. And I, I would say from what I've played, I, you can be alleviated of your concerns with the story, at least from what I've been seeing more. I don't, I don't have many more details to share, but it's definitely something that I've been curious about,

and I definitely want to see more of, because this is a really, really interesting take that they're going with for Onomusha. They're basically taking a famed and late-deceased Japanese actor from the 50s and basically putting him in the role as Musashi and wanting to kind of make a bit more of a cinematic, dramatized adventure, and this is really, really trying to execute that. And I was very impressed.

You know what would be the funniest outcome? And I'm not hoping for this to be clear. But you have Silent Hill control, Onamusha, Ace Combat 8 coming out within a week or so of each other and other things. What if we get to mid-September and Rockstar is like, you know what? I think we need a little more time than the other. I think we're pushing back. Rockstar has the opportunity to do something so funny right now. It would be, right?

I'm not rooting for this. I want GTA6 to come out. But imagine if they did that after everyone stacked their releases. Now, it should give you some confidence, I guess, because if you're still out there thinking the delay is coming, when are they going to drop the hammer? Well, clearly no one else thinks the delay is coming at this point. And no one knows, right?

I mean, even Strauss Zelnick may not know until he gets that email from Rockstar. Oops, we're delaying. But clearly the industry has a lot of confidence that this November 19th, state is solid and for real and is not going to slip. I'd imagine that these people talk to each other a little bit and be like, listen, can you at least give us the runway and let us know that we got a shot against you, Rockstar? Like, come on.

Yeah, I think people would be pissed. But they're saving the industry. Yes, there would be a lot of bad blood if Rockstar screwed everyone over. But it would be in a certain sense. It would be the funniest possible thing that could happen. But also tragic. Speaking of bad blood, should we talk? about Marvel's Wolverine because we saw some extended gameplay and the bloods was many people's

takeaway, not new. We've seen some looks at this and obviously we knew that it was going to be gory and bloody, but boy, it really is. So I know that there are settings in the game so you can turn all that stuff off and you can just, I guess, impale people through the skull bloodlessly, maybe. I don't know how that will work exactly, but if you're squeamish about this stuff, you can turn that off, but they're clearly really leaning into this. And not to say it's not consistent with the character or comics accurate or something. This is Wolverine, after all. But it's quite gratuitous. I'm not someone who has any sort of problem with blood or guts in media or anything. But the way that they have implemented it here, I don't know.

ultimately it's just superficial and what will matter is the game fun to play. But it's just geysers. It's just like constant, like being bathed in blood. And then weirdly, like whatever his healing factor is evidently applies to his suit being clean too. Because like he's just covered in red. And then three seconds later, the red just mysteriously evaporates or something. So it keeps going away. It is, right?

It's like kind of jarring that it's just. He's completely covered, and it's not realistic-looking blood. I guess that's not what they're going for here. This is a superhero comic book game. It's over-the-top bloody violence. But it doesn't even look like blood. It kind of looks like bad squibs, special effects, just bursting everywhere and just slaughtering hench men and hench women.

Equal opportunity, hench person slaying going on in this extended look here. But what did you think of this? Both the bloodiness of it and whatever sense we got from the gameplay. Did this peak your interest, Steve? Yeah, this looked really, really cool. I like the idea that this is a linear single-player uncharted-esque game. Because I was not so much worried, but I was curious as to whether or not they would make this open world a la Spider-Man or if they would make this a bit more of like a globe-trotting adventure.

and I'm glad that they went with the former because I think that's cause for a better story. And I think that's actually what I'm interested in because Insomniac has this pretty good affinity for making superhero stories in this kind of shared universe. They've said that Spider-Man isn't going to make an appearance in this game. And I understand why. But it kind of feels like a bit of a familiarity that we have with these characters already because we've been with the MCU. we've had, we've known all these characters before when we want to see them in a new story again. Like, gripes about

blood physics and regenerating costumes aside, I think that this is a really fun and kind of needed step-in for like superhero games in general because outside of Spider-Man, I think this is kind of the one that you have to do in the Marvel space because it's like either Batman or bust over at DC.

I do like how hairy he is. They definitely got that. It's all blood and hair. Yeah. The blood just gets caught in the hair. You'd think like if the hair got dried gibbits in there, then that would be even better. But no, it just goes away. But I think the original story aspect of it, so that is something that we kind of learned here.

So, yeah, there's no crossover with Spidey. There might be references and Easter eggs and everything, but they're not doing a full-on crossover among their Marvel franchises. and obviously they've got to be working on the next Spider-Man game, so no fears about that. But there's also just no X-Men in this game. Now, there are ex-people. There are people that we recognize as X-Men, and we saw Gene Gray, obviously, and there will be others. But they are telling an original story here, which will differ a little bit from anything

we've seen before, which is good, I guess, right? And instead of the X-Men, we have Team X, which is... completely different. It's a big rebrand. So you got Gene Gray, you got Mystique, you know, some familiar faces will show up. Sabretooth is sort of a frenemy for Wolvie here, but yes, they are

sort of establishing their own continuity here for better or worse. Matt, what did you think? I liked what I saw. I was a little distracted by, I guess, the consistency and physics of the blood as well. Yes, right. The blood slowly fading off of the... Do you know

intimately how blood works, Matt? Is that a thing that you're into? Not particularly, Steve, but I've played a video game or two, and I've seen some blood fly around and some video games, and it's usually not all that distracting for me, but this time, a little bit distracting. I mean, I don't know what the solution is. Like, once he gets covered in blood, you can't just, like, set everything in the suburbs and have him run through lawn sprinklers every two seconds or anything. So I get it has to kind of fade away eventually. but crossover between Marvel's Wolverine and Power Wash Simulator

where you just clean off Wolverine after every fight. I'm absolutely down for that. But I think that the action, the controls look like they're going to be pretty good for me. This is going to hinge a lot on this story and the portrayal of this character. If this Wolverine feels like Logan should feel or a new take on that that resonates, and if the storyline is good, I think that this is going to be an absolute banger. If it is not all that great,

I think that there's a chance that this game is just good, but we will see soon enough, thankfully. Yeah, I could imagine it being just good. I mean, just seeing the extended gameplay there, there didn't seem to be a lot of, I know there was some sneaking around, but it seems sort of extraneous when you could just stab people through the heads quite easily.

seemingly. I don't know. Maybe the person playing was just really good at the game. They made it after all. But it seemed like, why am I bothering to sneak up when I can just impale people in this way? But anyway, in Insomniac, I trust rarely do they go wrong. You got to just bank on the track record there. This is a little bit different from what they have done recently. But obviously, they have a lot of success with more linear action-oriented games. And this is a bit more adult oriented or bloody than we are used to seeing from Insomniac. But you got to imagine it'll be polished. It'll be beautiful. It'll be bloody. It'll look and feel good. And other games, I guess we could just briefly touch on from the state of play we got Until Dawn 2 coming next year,

which gosh, that's the sequel to a game from 2015, is it? It's been a while. So that's a dozen years that we've been waiting for an Until Dawn sequel. I am excited about stuntman coming back. Yeah, stuntman Hollywood. But not stuntman. Yeah, I mean, stuntman Hollywood, which is, it's kind of interesting. They're fortnightifying stuntman, and it's a natural brand to do that with, where they're just getting licensed crossovers where you can be a stuntman in The Fast and the Furious or whatever it is, some sort of driving-oriented game. I mean, that kind of makes sense, I think, for this series, obviously. And it's been a long time since we saw a stuntman.

I'm trying to remember any sick jumps and back to the future. Yeah. I don't know. But I'm sure there's plenty of opportunity for licensing and crossovers and brand extensions here. And you guys know I'm a fan of driving games more so than racing games. So stuntman is up my alley. anything else from the state of play or something that didn't show up at the state of play

catch your eye or fail to I had a few they announced Bancho the chef which is a spin-off of Dave the Diver Dave the Diver Succi, fishing cooking looks great love Dave the Diver

very happy to be doing anything in that universe can't wait for that two excellent PC games coming to PlayStation in September and October, Dune Awakening, September 22nd. No rest for the Wicked

in October, which I'm looking forward to. And then of course the biggest announcement, Guitaru Man to PS Plus Classics. Wild choice. Anything else you want to mention? Steve, any shout-outs? No. For the state of play, no. There's

a couple of things that I had seen there that I'm still excited for, but like the main ones we're going to come to later. Oh, the Tomb Raider legacy of Atlantis trailer was pretty encouraging and that has a release date of February 12th.

So hopefully GTA doesn't get delayed to that. I think I've mentioned that I'm not super excited by Tomb Raiders usually. I like it just fine. But this trailer did

kind of point me into a more positive area with it. I'm actually kind of getting excited for that now. Yeah. And we also saw a game from Ikumi Nakamura, which is kind of like a demon hunters, jiu-jitsu-Kaisen

sort of action game, which looks pretty darn interesting. Yeah. So that was cool, ill, which is a survival horror game that looks extremely scary and probably not at all for me, but it will be for some people

when it comes out next year. Yeah, that's for you guys. Have fun. Enjoy it. And all in all, it wasn't anything super shocking or breathtaking at the state of play.

But it was fine, right? It played the hits. It played the games that will probably be hits and the games that everyone expected to see and wanted to see and would have been disappointed not to see. So, decent slate. And that was the prelude to summer game fest.

Now, I got to say, I mean, obviously, as a huge Star Wars guy, I'm pretty excited that the rest of this year in Star Wars is video games. I mean, that's it. Star Wars belongs to video games for the rest of this year, which says something about Star Wars and the pace of releases and the falloff in the box office of Mando and Groku. But putting all that aside, put aside all the negativity and is Star Wars ruined and will they ever make a good movie slash show again? the games look good. So let's savor that at least. And Zero Company comes out August 27th.

And then Racer, which I'm very envious that you got to play, Steve. That comes out in October. And October 6, to be specific, and we got trailers, we got story trailers for both of these things. And they appear to have substantial stories, particularly the XCOM-like Zero Company. which is set in the Clone Wars era. We got a little hero shot of Anakin pre-Darth at the end of this trailer.

And it looks like they're really trying to develop this into a meaningful story, which is cool because the X-com-like gameplay is great. But when you get that sort of outside of the tactical turn-based, just like you get to wonder around the levels. You get to get a feel for who these people are. That's not my favorite genre, but I think when you package it in this way, I'm pretty excited. And then, you know, the story for racer is a little less ambitious, obviously.

You know, we just played Forza Horizon. The story in games like this is you want to race well, basically, right? But with Sibolba this time. So Galactic Racer also just looked really cool. And Steve, I am very eager to hear how it played. This game might be a banger, guys. This is really, really, really cool. I got to see quite a bit from the floor, and we got to do like a couple of like co-op races along with some walking around in your like garage area, basically.

And that's tied a lot into the story of this campaign. Like you're a racer that is kind of building up their reputation and building up their garage full of racing with like your mechanic and your basically your manager. and there's a really cool, intricate garage system, and there are also management elements that you can co-alongside with the development of your racing vehicle. Like, you can customize them quite a bit. And if you want to make it a pod racer,

if you wanted to make it a speeder, if it's a dual-engine car-like racer, hovercraft, all of those things are available to customize and to race with. And the racing, which is the most important part, feels great. And I'm very, very excited

for people to get their hands on this because this is a, this could be really, really, really good. Do you really feel the burnout? That's what, yeah, do you feel? And how fast does it feel? Is it like F0, you're barely in control? No, it's not F0.

It is closer to burnout, where you don't feel sluggishly slow, but fast, but it's like fast, but you are definitely in control of most of those things. You can't do like hairpin turns or like Tokyo drift it, but there's a lot of maneuverability in between that. This is extremely exciting to me. So gaming is coming up big.

Gaming will save Star Wars. That is what is happening over the next few months, hopefully. Now, I know you guys have some thoughts on the Code Veronica remake, which is now just called Veronica. We have dropped the code. It is Resident Evil Veronica. So we've talked a lot about Capcom's success and how they managed to give us something old, give us something new.

In Onamusha's case, something old that is also new. They have managed to just, hey, we're starting new IP. Here's Pragata. You like that? Great. We formed a new franchise. Oh, we're digging deep into our back catalog and giving you a new Onomisha game. And we're going to keep making new Resident Evil's, but we're also going to keep revisiting

the back catalog. And we're going back to the Dreamcast days. We're going back to Y2K and Code Veronica. And it looks like this is first person, and it's coming in 2027. Matt, did you gasp? Did your jaw drop? Is this the Resident Evil that you wanted to be remade next? This is the one.

I love this game when it came out on the Dreamcast. I probably remember about 20% of it by now. but I do remember having a really great time with it. I am curious to see if it actually will be first person, if it'll be more of what they did for Requiem, where you can switch between first or third person. I would think that they would do that again because people did like that flexibility in Requiem,

and I don't think you want to take that away once you've sort of given it out. But yeah, we didn't see any gameplay to speak of. We saw Claire in a cinematic that looked great. Yeah. Any notes from you, Steve? No, that R.E. Engine is going to be working overtime for Capcom, and it's been doing great. I don't really have that much of an affinity for Code Veronica, but if it continues to be as good as all the other RE entries have been, I'm in.

Now, we mentioned alien isolation. Alien isolation two had been previously teased, but now we got a good look at it. And I am already terrified in anticipation, but in a good way, this game looks great as far as I can tell from two minutes of footage. And it's exciting that it's in a colony setting on a planet. So it's not a space station. It's not in space. People can hear you scream. And it looks kind of like Alien Earth style setting. And so I like that there might be a bit more variety in the kind of biomes where you are being hunted down by the xenomorph. But I am worried that I just will not be able to handle next-gen alien isolation too, because I could barely handle playing it on, you know, switched or wherever. I finally forced myself to play it for an anniversary for the podcast. But these kind of graphics brought to the sheer terror and suspense of alien isolation too. Not sure that I will be able to handle it, but I will do my best. Same. Seems very stressful.

Yeah. Yes, it does. Also, I think they should not brand it as AI too as they were in the trailer because people say AI and immediately downvote. Yeah, it's like they know that it's bad or something. Just stick with alien isolation. But I'm excited. We still don't have a release date, but take your time, fellas, and I will use that time to get my nerves ready for this game.

We have to talk about Final Fantasy. So this, instead of High Guard, this was what Keeley was alluding to. This was the closer. This was the big name game. Final Fantasy 7, Revelation will be the final game in the remake trilogy, and it will be a simultaneous release on all systems, So no one will have to wait to get this. It's coming out in spring of 2027, and we got a great look at the high wind,

not to be confused with High Guard, which it seems that you can just fly this thing everywhere and parachute off it anywhere. I don't know if it'll be that permissive in reality, but that's the way that this made it look, at least. And, you know, we've seen a lot of games lately doing the sort of tiers of the kingdom. we can just dive to the ground from on high. And if there really is that sort of freedom where this is the biggest open world in this trilogy yet,

and you can kind of explore it in a nonlinear way and just go to the ground wherever you want to, I wonder whether it would be that permissive, but that got me pretty hyped. Yeah, this seems like the promise of what the remake trilogy is going to deliver on. This is the thing that everybody imagined it when it would be this one,

big thing. To know that you basically are fortnighting into the map from Highwind is kind of insane. And the amounts of reworks that they're, I think the reworking of this combat from what they've been showing to us, they've been very conscious about how to streamline this every single other game. And now that seems like it's kind of been perfected in this third one. I think that's probably my biggest thing. Because as much stumbles as their second remake was, as it had as far as side questions,

I won't say bloat, but it's more of like, okay, you can really do everything here. This seems a bit more focused as far as like an open world. We're here to discover and we're here to bring this like final chapter home. I'm really liking what they're doing with this one. I love the combat system throughout this remake trilogy. And it seems like they're adding the sort of job system on top of what we got in. rebirth, which looks very intriguing. I'm glad that they're not starting the combat from the ground up because they've really

got a good thing going here. That's exciting. And just, you know, this third one was always going to be a chance to spend more time with Vincent Valentine and Sid, and those are two of the most fun characters for me in the series. I'm really looking forward to that. Probably going to be a banger. and releasing on all platforms at once, that should be a pretty good idea, I think, for Square Enix. And now that everything else is available, even on Switch 2, they're giving people plenty of time now

to kind of catch up before Revelations comes out. Yes, I am pretty impressed. I am pretty excited. We got a few other announcements, a couple of Cuphead games coming. We didn't see them, but they're in the pipeline somewhere. As the resident Trecker, I am pretty excited for Star Trek Shadow Frontier.

Speaking of sci-fi psychological horror, maybe not quite as horrifying as alien isolation, but it's made by Bluber Team, the studio that made The Silent Hill to remake, and it stars Rolearen of TNG. So this is an interesting crossover of brand and developer. I'm very into it. What else did we see at Summer Game Fest? we should maybe acknowledge Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the last Ronan coming to us from Platinum Games,

which will hopefully redeem itself, right? Because Platinum Games made a Ninja Turtle's game, and it did not quite live up to the high standards of the developers of Bayonetta and Vanquish and Near Automata and everything else Ninja Guide in 4. There was Teenage Mutual Ninja Turtles Mutants in Manhattan. right back in 2016, not Platinum Games' finest work. But I like the idea of adapting this property,

the last Ronan, and just having sort of a revenge quest with turtles, with the action experts. I'm in. Platinum, my old friend, I missed you so much. It's really something that I think that I personally need, not so much that I'm the biggest fan of the turtle. I love the turtles.

I don't know what I'm saying, why I'm saying that. But I think, the fact that I just needed a damn good platinum game, it feels like I haven't personally touched one in so long. And it's really just refreshing. I'm like, man, it's in good hands. I have no qualms with this whatsoever. You could go get Ninja Guiden. It came out last year. Yeah, we played it. That exceeded my expectations by a lot. So I'm really excited for this. I wasn't familiar with Ninja Turtle's last Ronan.

So maybe I want to read that comic mini-series before this game comes out. Or maybe I don't. I'm not sure. But I know it's a beloved series. Going cold. Surprise yourself. No spoilers. Yeah.

You alluded to this earlier, Matt, I think. But the new Fomito Wita game, which is no longer called Project Robot. It's called Gen Atlas, which is, again, too close to Gen A-I-I. I don't stay away from the AI and the Gen A, but I am pretty excited. Of course, the Autor, the maker of Eco and Shadow the Clossus and Last Guardian. And he appears to be back on his bullshit for this game. And I cannot wait because it looks like we're playing as a little robot who is friends with a big robot. And sometimes the little robots interfaces with a big robot.

And you control one or you control both them. There always has to be some giant thing and some smaller thing. So that's kind of the hallmark of a good way to game. But this looks a little different. It's action-oriented maybe. There's like a little shooting going on here. They're shooting. Everyone's going melee and they're zagging.

They're going. They're putting shooting in this series. And these games haven't had them in them before. It feels so strange to see that a gun in one of his games now. And I'm for it. But it feels like of any of these developers, I feel like I need to know the least about what's going on with this game before I play it because I feel like it not only would it make me more skeptical, but it would probably just like warp my expectations in such a way that I wouldn't actually know how to calibrate. Yes. And we don't know when we will be back exactly.

And probably not for a while. But I'm excited. Yeah. I can't wait to find out the specific way in which this game is impossible to control. because you know that it will be impossible to control in some fashion, but it will be a different fashion, and I can't wait to find out. We got another few announcements or confirmations or release dates or proof of life. We got The Wolf Among Us, too, coming next year after a long wait.

We got a new stellar blade, blood rain on the way. We saw a little bit of Clutch, the Open World Racer, from some forts of veterans. And also, we got a little look at six. 1666 Amsterdam, which appears to be, hey, remember old school Assassin's Creed? Did you like that? Would you like to play some more of that? Well, can I interest you in 1666 Amsterdam, a game made by one of the makers of old school Assassin's Creed, Patrice Dezle.

Pretty good. Yeah, I played that demo, too. And it does feel a bit like a double A game rather than like a AAA game. But I will say the vibes. are there. And I am pretty excited based on that demo to keep playing that game. Really, really like the art style. Very sort of creepy storytelling going on here. Lots of mystery to unravel. Yeah, pretty hyped on what I played, 1666 Amsterdam. Yes, I am excited for that as well. All right, anything else that we need to mention from Summer Game Fest before we finish up with the Xbox Showcase.

Yeah, just a polite fuck you, Jeff Keeley, for messing with me on the commit your heart to this, thinking that there was going to be a Kingdom Hearts announcement and just like general wordplay fuckery that he was clearly doing just to mess with me personally. That was real fun. I appreciate it, Jeff. Thanks, Jeff. There's a game called Crossfire, which is a different crossfire from the Crossfire that we've seen before. This is, I think, a single-player crossfire. But it's got a really cool cover system, which is tough to tell if you just watch footage.

But based on some of the hints on previews that I read, this appears to be next-gen cover. For too long, we've just been following the footsteps of gears, and you have a bunch of waist-high barriers and you go to a new area and suddenly there are a bunch of barriers set up and you think, oh, well, there's going to be a firefight here. And then you crouch and you stick to the barrier. And well, we all know the drill. And the conceit of crossfire seems to be everything is cover. And it's meant to be a bit more realistic or a bit more like how actual combat works, which is you get the hell out of the line of fire any which way you can. And so you're kind of crawling around and adapting to the environment in what appears to be a pretty interesting way. So the game, it looks

kind of just like a generic sort of sci-fi-ish shooter. But the cover system, that's the hook. So going back to win back covert operations, you know, when there's a new innovation in cover, that's always exciting. And it does feel like we're overdue for one. It does. Yeah. We saw Guild Wars 3, which is a big deal. Hopefully. Yeah, it's been almost. 15 years since Guild Wars, too. Yeah, it's been a long time. I think Guild Wars carries quite a lot of goodwill amongst its community to want to continue on, because it's really been a bit of an untouched gem of an MMO for its small little family of a community,

because it's really held strong, and to know that we're getting a third one after this long, really is a testament to how well-loved it is. And I'll admit it was a blind spot, but I'm like, damn, we really are fucking with Guild Wars like that. All right, great. Yeah, I was an original Guild Wars guy, and I got pretty into it. But yeah, it's been a while for me. So maybe this is where I get back into Gillsworse. But I don't know, Dune.

That also is something that could maybe entice me to. But Guild Wars won't be till next year. So we're staggering the MMOs a little bit here. And I guess we can just wrap up with a few more thoughts on Xbox. We touched on some of this already, but we got a release date for Halo Combat Evolved. And good news, it's not coming out in late September. It's coming out in late July, getting ahead of the rush. This was actually sort of an open spot on the calendar.

So July 28th, Combat Evolved, single player only, but there is some new content, three new missions, Operation Meteorite, and this, of course, will be a multi-platform release. So my excitement is somewhat muted, I guess, given that the... There's no multiplayer and there's not that much new stuff, but I'm glad that there's something new. And it is still sort of disorienting to see original Halo get Unreal Engine-fived like this. But for anyone who wasn't around way back when to play with our giant controllers and our system link cables, well, now this is your chance to experience the first Halo adventure. And three new missions, you know, those could be pretty significant, you know. It's not necessarily the shortest missions in Halo, so we'll see what we get.

I'm pretty excited about it. Okay. We talked about E-Day. I wanted to, you know, one last thing from Summer Games Fest, I wanted to mention how much I hated to see Tupac popping up in Stranger Than Heaven. Okay. You know what? So glad you mentioned that, Ben. So, so glad you mentioned that.

Tell me why you don't like that. Oh, well, he's dead, and he couldn't say that he wanted to do that. Right. And also, on top of that, distraction casting. This is, there's, you couldn't cast anything more distracting than Tupac. Right. You just couldn't. There's no one more distracting in a game.

Really? Not Snoop Dog? Not Snoop Dog? Nope. He's still alive. He consented to this. So, nope. Okay.

Well, yes. And here's the beautiful thing, Matt. You're correct about all of these things. No, Tupac did not consent to this because he has passed away. And his estate has signed off on this, which is more or less his family. And they have given their blessing. And I'm sure they were compensated for that generously. And all things aside, it seems like this is a level of, you know,

video game stunt casting that the game directors wanted to put in the game. And they were allowed to do so. And I feel like if this were to outrage you, we need to keep the same energy to all of Bruce Lee's kids. Because I certainly don't think that anything worse that came from Bruce Lee's, you know, besmirched legacy of selling vodka from a CGI enhanced version of himself is going to be anything worse than this. I don't like it as well. I'm sure, Matt. Matt will concede that that's bad too. No, that's also bad.

What aboutism? They're all bad. And I hate to resort to what about it. But like, yes, it sucks. It really does suck. But I'm like, all right, they did it. Yeah, you're resigned to it. Yeah, you're used to it.

Yeah, it is stunt casting for sure. And it is weird. The people online have also just been hating. You know, they don't like it. But also, there's this odd conflation that people are doing where they're like, okay, so there's this thing that I don't like where they've basically brought somebody back from the dead in a game that, and in a move that I. I feel like tasteless and a money grab.

Fine. But then equating that to be like, oh, man, they better not have used AI to do this. And it's like a very bad faith interpretation of, on the part of the game devs to just assume that just because they did one thing that you don't like would mean that they now did a second thing that you don't like. Yeah. Thank God the Tupac hologram was in a pre-AI timeline, you know.

Right? Like, holy shit. Like, they're kind of like savants for that now. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I guess does it even matter? I guess it's doubly bad if you get AI to make, to resurrect the person who didn't consent. No, no, no seeing use of that, that that recreated Tupac is for real. Mm-hmm. Yes. Some actual artists labored to bring Tupac back to life without his consent. But yeah, anyway, didn't expect the Tupac reveal. Sorry for the diversion. We can go back to the Xbox showcase.

No, that's fine. It cannibalized a lot of the discourse when that was announced. Yeah. So we got a longer look here at Fable. Not every question has been answered, but Haley Atwell will be playing Isabel in this game. A lot of, I'm sure that some subset of the internet is mad about how many female protagonists were announced in these games.

But nice to see as far as I'm concerned. And I guess Isabel is maybe a baddie. But, and a villain. Batty. A baddie and a villain. It's Haley-A-Will. Anyway, this game is actually coming in next February. I think we can kind of count on that now.

It is funny that when Xbox announced that this game is being delayed till February and said it was because of the logjam of releases, everyone was like, sure, Microsoft, we know why it really is. It's because of GTA. Well, maybe they had a point about the logjam of releases, actually. I think so. extra months to work on fable. It's okay. We will get to it when we get to it. But yeah, it's interesting because this trailer was kind of dark, you know, darker than you are used to with fable, but then also

interspersed with kind of classic, very British fable humor. So I don't know exactly what the tone of this game will be and maybe it will be a mixture of tones. But yeah, we didn't get a long look at gameplay here. But we've gotten some sense of what it will be. But Steve, you sounded dissatisfied with how much we still don't know about this game. Yes, frankly, because I know that Molyneux isn't anywhere near this project, but the mere fact that I think the juice that this game has, for its hype, has no need for the justification based on how little we know about it. Because all we know now is that Richard Aywate and Haley Atwell are in it now. And there's a rag tag group of seemingly very attractive 20-somethings that are now our heroes. Does this not look a little bit like Dragon Age Veil Guard to you?

Does this not feel for the wrong reasons where it's just going to be like, we're bringing it back and it looks like this and it doesn't look like it used to, but it's still going to be good. That's all I feel when I see anything having to do with this new fable that I don't know how it plays yet. I'm reserving judgment. It's been in the works for so long. The track record is so spotty. Who knows? But I have high-ish hopes, but a low degree of confidence about them being fulfilled. We also saw a state of decay three. It lives. It's still in the works eventually. And everyone's dreamcast nostalgia, millennial nostalgia, was triggered by Crazy Taxi World Tour, which we knew was coming. But when that offspring hit, it took me back, I will say, took me back to the Code Veronica original Crazy Taxi days.

Evidently, there was some gin AI used in making assets for this game too, or at least that's a disclaimer. So that stinks if so, because I don't want any reason not to get hyped for Crazy Taxi. It kind of looks more or less like Crazy Taxi. It's been a quarter century. I don't know that they've changed the gameplay loop a whole lot here. But, you know, you just pump some offspring through my speakers and give me a taxi. And I will drive around. Reading the tea leaves in this trailer, I feel like the villain of this game might be Uber.

Yeah, the gig economy. Yeah. Like ride sharing. And I think that's probably genius. Yeah. It could be. Yeah. You're like old school.

You know, you're trying to earn your medallion or something. Or you are the driver who's being exploited. Yeah, I'm not playing crazy taxi for the story typically, but if that's the innovation. All right, sure. And as I mentioned, the new Hellblade game, it seems like they're leaning into the action aspects of that series, as opposed to the extremely cinematic gameplay that we saw in the last one. Also, Spiro back. Spiro back.

Spiro, a realm beyond coming next year. Always good to see the purple dinosaur being back again. In the Xbox showcase, not the PlayStation one. That's right. Yes, it's changing colors, the mascots, who knows who represents whom anymore. And Castlevania, Belmont's curse coming October 15th, Matt, I assume, that you are circling that day on your calendar. Yeah. Okay.

All right. Well, I think we covered the main news. There's just one more item that we should probably address, and that is the fact that there's about to be free DLC for Cairn. No, that's not it. Is that true, though? Extremely excited. It is true. Oh, nice.

I didn't hear that. That's true. That's great. Yeah. Yeah, you get to climb over water now. I'm pretty pumped about it. And, you know, of course, there's a new Witcher expansion coming and a new Witcher eventually, but next year, new Witcher 3 expansion after however many years. So that's exciting. But we did get confirmation from Valve that the steam machine is coming this summer. And I don't know if you guys have looked at a calendar lately, but summer starts in two weeks. So it could be late summer, but even if it's late summer, but even if it's late, summer, that's pretty soon, and we still have no idea what this thing will cost or how many units will be available. But for anyone who was worried, as I was, that this thing was going to slip past this summer, past this year, it appears not. It appears that Valve has stockpiled enough inventory and enough RAM that they can get the thing out the door. How many people will be able to buy it? Well, maybe that won't be a problem because it'll cost $1,500 or something. I don't know. But, uh, yeah, I mean, that's going to be the moment of truth, but it was,

it was news to even confirm that it's actually still coming soon. Yeah, good luck on that. I, man, I, I, I just don't know how that can be successful at the price point it needs to come out at, which is a massive bummer. Yeah. Because I know. If this came out two years ago, you know, before all of this AI buying up all of the computer components, uh, man, what a product this seems to be. Yeah, at the moment, it feels like, you know, that meme of like the tornado and it's that guy being like, here it comes.

And like it's the, and it coming is the foregone conclusion that you will have to probably spend like $1,500 on this now, like an exorbitant amount of money if you really want it. It will never be made again. And that's the, and that's the massive bummer that we're going to have to all deal with. Yeah, we will see.

Well, we've got to get that reveal of the, It sucks that we're dreading this. It sucks that we're not looking forward to what this thing is now. Yeah. I mean, Ben, you would want one of these if the price were right. Oh, yeah. I'll be first in line if it's anywhere near affordable or if they send me one. But that's not something that they will do for most people and perhaps not even us. So yes, but in theory, I want one. I am the target market. And that market will be restricted if it costs as much as it probably will. So they must be waiting until the last second because they must still be figuring out how much can we sell this thing for and get people to buy it and not be underwater

and not have to have Gabe sell his mega yacht or something. So yeah, fingers crossed. We will see. Steve, is there anything you want to say about Phantom Blade Zero, which is coming in late October? Because you got some chance to play that, right? But there's only so much you can divulge. Yes, I did. And there is only so much. that I can divulge, but I can talk about my, again, my excitement about this, because from what we got to play

and see of this game that's going to be coming out pretty soon is quite exciting. The amount of combat that you've gotten to see over the course of several trailers and demos that have been out there for you to consume,

it really does play as good as it looks. I can tell you that this is definitely not the Souls-like that you're thinking of, It is very much a character action game that is focused on, like, weapon and combat variety that is really, really punchy and very responsive and very easy to pick up and quite difficult to master. And yeah, that's really all I can say. All right. Before we wrap up, Matt, we don't want to focus exclusively on the AAA stuff on the big platforms.

So tell us a little bit about Dea the devs because you checked out some interesting indie games. Yeah, there's a few through Day of the Devs and the other showcases this past week that really caught my eye. There's a game called Tenebris Somnia, which is like an old-school pixel adventure game that intersplices like incredibly high production value like film segments into it. It looks really interesting. There's a music game that looks, has a very cute art style called Mr. Records. that looks excellent. If you're a fan of old-school 16-bit era JRPs, there's one called Threads of Time

that was announced looks really promising. They dropped a trailer for, a new trailer for a game called Screenbound, which we've seen before, which is the game where you're walking through a 3D environment while holding like a Game Boy and looking at where you are in 2D on the Game Boy, well, right? So a demo

dropped for this as well, which I played through, and let me say at first, it is really hard to wrap your brain around the 3D and 2D at the same time. By the end of the demo, I was starting to get the hang of it, and I could

see how they could add in new gameplay systems. So I'm definitely still keeping my eye on screenbound. That was pretty promising when I played. There is a fighting game rogue-like called One-shot Fighters

and the idea is as you progress through your run you add new moves to your 2D fighter so that seems pretty exciting if you're a rogue-like fan and a fighting game fan I haven't really seen this done before

in the Xbox showcase they showed off a game called Vivarium which looks like an 80s, 90s, anime art style while being like a life sim. It looks absolutely gorgeous.

Similar art style to orbitals. That's the switch to, I believe, exclusive anime-style shooter that's coming out. That's nice to see that. It's a release date. Yeah, nice to see that art style making sway into some games. And finally, bad magpie was unveiled in the Xbox showcase. That looks really great.

This is like a bird that only has one wing functioning, sort of making its way through the world. Really awesome art style. Definitely looking forward to that as well. And there are a bunch more, of course. There's no shortage of great indie games on the horizon. Always want to highlight a few. Very exciting stuff.

Yes, excellent. And this has been an absolute avalanche. So everyone gurg your loins for September and October in that pre-GTA period. And there's going to be more to come, you know, because there are games that have been announced for this year that we still don't have release dates for. Those are going to be added. When we get that Nintendo Direct, there's more Nintendo news to come. We have some insight into what Nintendo's doing, but we definitely don't know what they have planned for the holiday season and whether they will be afraid of the big, bad GTZ. So, boy, the games have been good already.

We thought we were busy in May. We had not seen anything yet. September is going to be nuts. And we got a bunch of good games coming before then, too. Later this month, we have The Adventures of Elliot. We have the Star Fox remake here at Buttmash. We're going to be playing that and discussing it. We're also going to be doing a 30th anniversary, Nintendo 64 draft, peak millennial content for everyone.

And then, of course, Assassin's Creed, Black Flag, re-synced, comes out next month. There's a new backyard baseball, Spatoon Raiders, Halo. So we will have our hands full even until we get to August and the deluge begins. Marvel token fighting souls coming early in August. So lots to be excited about if you'd care to share what caught your eye at Showcase Week. Please write to us, Ringiverse Gaming at gmail.com. if we left anything out that you think is worth mentioning. We want to hear about that, too.

Thank you, guys, for hopping on a weekend so that we could bring button mash to the masses a little sooner. Of course. Happy to be here. And Steve, thanks to you for producing as well, which you were about to do. And thanks to Arjuna Rengo-Pal for his senior podcast management. And thanks to everyone for tuning in. Also, thanks to all the people who make games for giving us so much to play and so much to discuss. us. But Nash will be back a little eager this month.