Video Gamers Podcast - Arc Raiders Impressions, Game of the Year Complete and Pokemon Z-A - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

Gaming Hosts Ryan, Ace and Josh are back with another packed episode of This Week in Gaming. This week the video game world is abuzz about Arc Raiders after hundreds of thousands of people tried it out. Battlefield 6 sets franchise records, Pokemon Z-A disappoints video gamers everywhere, and we got the results of the way to earlier Game of the Year from Gamescom Asia. It’s another awesome, video game packed episode from your favorite gaming podcast! Thanks to our MYTHIC Supporters: Redletter, Disratory, Ol’ Jake, Gaius, Jigglepuf, Phelps and Norwegian Greaser   Thanks to our Legendary Supporters: Panzerfaust   Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/videogamerspod⁠ Join our Gaming Community: ⁠https://discord.com/invite/Dsx2rgEEbz⁠ Follow us on Instagram:⁠ https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/⁠  Follow us on X:⁠ https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod⁠  Subscribe to us on YouTube:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@VideoGamersPod?sub_confirmation=1⁠ Visit us on the web:⁠https://videogamerspod.com/⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platham, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. A new era of fitness is here.

Introducing the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ, built for breakthroughs with personalized workout plans, real-time insights, and endless ways to move. Lift with confidence, while Peloton IQ counts reps, corrects form, and tracks your progress. Let yourself run, lift, flow, and go. Explore the new Peloton cross-training tread plus at OnePeloton.C.A. Hello, fellow gamers, and welcome to the video gamers podcast. We are absolutely feasting on games this year, and our graders just added to the buffet.

On this episode of This Week in gaming, we'll be talking about our time with the Arc Raiders server slam. Battlefield 6 sets records for all the right reasons. Expedition 33 wins its first game of the year and more. But first, some introductions are in order. I am your host Josh. And joining me, he's my resbot extraordinaire, the medic to my corpse. And he hears the words, res me, Ryan, in his nightmares. it's Ryan

I love how even our listeners when they hop in to play with us they'll like repost like res me Ryan Res me Ryan because that's instantly Ryan Ryan Ryan Resby help help I like to think it's that because I am the one that's leading the charge and I am sacrificing myself for the good of the team

that's my story anyway well that's what you like to that's what you like to think yeah I I dude okay all right you used to pick on me for this and be like it's always Res me Ryan, Resryan. And then when we were streaming the other night, I was like, gosh, darn it, because people did start commenting in the Twitch chat.

And I was like, no, no, it's true. Facts don't lie, man. Oh, man. All right, and joining us, he didn't play a lick of Arc Raiders, but that's because we caught him playing Battlefield 6 with three other people that didn't include.

include me or Ryan and I don't know how this makes me feel it's ace. I mean, I had to find some help somewhere. You guys were playing Arc Raiders. I don't know, man. You weren't in Battlefield. That is not an excuse. You could have come up

with a hundred different other reasons why. That's your excuse. Get out of here. Yeah, you were playing Arc Raiders. You were live on Twitch. I don't want to hear it. I just look, we played Arc Raiders a lot this weekend, which we're going to talk about. But last night, we were like, It's back to Battlefield, baby.

I'm hopping in Battlefield. I was playing with a couple friends, like some listeners from the community, awesome people. And we had a spot. We had one more spot in our squad. And I am in the menu. And what do I see?

Ace is online. And I'm like, oh, freaking sweet, dude. I'll invite Ace. Ace in a squad, four of four. And then I was like, wait a minute. Ace was played Battlefield with us like twice.

This explains everything. you're cheating on this ace you got a full squad of people you're playing with i've played with them once so you still have a leg up on them too many man yeah especially when we're looking for another guy i need i need help on the heels man i can only do so much oh gosh i need extra ress in one game was enough to put me to bed last night oh man i don't i don't know how to feel about this ace where are your battlefield bros me and ryan I feel like I've leveled up my guns. When I come back to the squad, I'll actually be decent, hopefully.

You act like you use guns. You don't use guns. Hacksaw Ridge. Maybe we just don't res ace, Ryan. Maybe we'll just be like, where are you, Ace? Where'd you go? I don't see you, man. Oh, there's people over there you're with.

Is that part of your squad? Oh, you're not with us? I'm just going to fall you all around and throw smoke bombs at you. That's what I'm going to do. He bailed out on community night because of internet issues. I'm doing quotes Oh man Somebody did ask about that though

They're like how come Ace bailed And I was like he had computer issue Oh well welcome to the Let's Trash Ace podcast I was gonna say We're getting them hard early man We're messing with them pretty good I didn't know that's what I was walking into

That'll teach you to play battlefield with other people Oh man Well listen welcome in everybody You know, normally we have video to go along with this podcast, but I don't know if people are, you know, aware or not, but Amazon Web Services is down, which means that, like, three quarters of the internet is down as well, which also includes our recording software. You know, we're just like, well, we're going back to old school. This episode's going to be audio only. So, no, it's not us being lazy. No, it's not anything you're doing wrong.

it's just Amazon's fault, which... Somehow, ironically, this will be the most downloaded episode we have in a while. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like, oh, we don't have to look at those crazy guys. Yeah, exactly. So, but guys, one way that we absolutely love starting these episodes is to thank the fine people that make this podcast possible. And we got two new supporters of the show.

So a huge shout out to Craig Carter. And Trevor Fasaro for sign it up for rare status, supporting the podcast. Thank you. To make the world a better place and bring video game chat and news to the planet earth. So thank you to both of you. You can't see, but we were all clapping.

We were. Yeah. I forgot we can't see us. Yeah. We're so not used to. No. No, we're not. So it's throwing us all off here. So guys, we got a lot of news to,

talk about and man we're just going to jump in because arc raiders baby arc raiders okay so to give a little history on this game we when this game was announced way back when we covered this game we said oh my goodness guys there is a game coming out that looks phenomenal this game has kind of gone through an evolution over the years of its development it kind of initially started off where it was going to be somewhat of like a survival based game and then it was going to be like a PVE, like looter shooter type game. And then it kind of evolved into this PVVP type game. Well, this weekend, they had their server slam. This is the cool new term instead of a stress test that they're calling it. And they were like, hey, everybody, it's free to

play. Please hop in, help us just test our servers. Let's figure out how this is going to go. It's going to help us be ready for launch. Now, for anybody that's unaware, Ark Raiders comes out in nine days people officially this is not early access this is not like hey help us test the game forever and pay for it this is the full release in nine days Ryan you and I played a lot of art graders I dude I don't know what it is like I I've been uh I've been not sleeping as much lately and I woke up and it was pretty early and by the time I kind of was like moving about the house it was like five five 30 in the morning I'm like you know what I'm gonna go hop on some art creators and i'm just running solo like by myself it is so scary the audio design

the the graphics it's it's so good this game plays so well it's beautiful it um it's it's it's it's just it's ruthless like you will just get smoked by anybody and then sometimes people will be gracious and like res you and you can team up and stuff so there's there's so much to it there's a lot of depth that we haven't even uh got to experience yet because we've only done the play test. But, dude, I remember you were doing the play test. I was outside, like, barbecuing or something. I didn't have time that weekend to hop in.

And I remember watching your stream. You did it on our Discord. And I was like- Close beta that they had, like, two months ago. Exactly, the closed beta, yeah. I thought it looked so cool. It was 10 times better just to experience it. Like, this game, I'm not one for extraction shooters,

but this may have changed my mind, dude. I am all about this game. Yeah. I am not. much on extraction shooters either the famously a game that is now defunct called the cycle has been one of like we loved that game people had been listening to this podcast for a while i've heard us mention it um we have always said that for us a if you focus on pve and then you add pvp it makes for a better game if you're just focused on pvp and then you try to maybe throw in some pve elements it's like bro this is just a

sweat fest like and and while that's great for a lot of people for us it's not quite as entertaining arc raiders bro i i'll be honest man i did not expect to like this game as much as i liked it and the crazy thing is i got to play with probably six or seven different people over the course of the weekend like we streamed a lot on twitch uh what was that friday i think when it when it opened up so we did a multi-hour stream on twitch with it so if you haven't watched that you want to check it out you can watch that video um but then i i really did nothing but play arc raiders weekend but it was just with it was just with a bunch of different people yeah not ace because ace was apparently playing battlefield six uh i was doing other stuff for the sake of his podcast okay

to be fair ace was trying out all the demos for the indie episode because he's he's actually a hard worker and does his homework for the indie episode so i guess we can't pick on ace too much but everybody that i played with that did not know what this game was that played this game left going oh my gosh like guys this game's awesome dude like what did you ace I know you watch part of the Twitch stream we saw you in there you didn't get a chance to play it

but from an outside didn't get to play a perspective like what are your thoughts on this? It looked like it played great it looked smooth and honestly the graphics looked impressive and the enemies were also very impressive I was expecting very you know basic enemy types I see this giant like strider thing

run by Ryan he takes a pot to shove at it and here it comes flying in a rocket. Of course Ryan takes a punch shot at the giant killer robot. I had to, of course. Well, that's the thing, Josh. You said, like, with the PVE elements, like, I was more afraid to get in a battle with the PVE characters, like those robots than I was to another person. Like that, I felt like I had a chance with another human, like interacting with them,

trying to shoot them or gunfight with them. these robots are gnarly dude and they'll call backup and next thing you know you got four drones on you and i'm trying to run and they'll taser me and then i'm falling down so it's it's got this crazy dynamic where it does have that intense pve element that you have to watch out you have to look at your surroundings when you're when you're looting as you uh do that stuff that makes noise and they'll be attracted to it you have to be cautious of it and then you also you'll get sniped from some enemy you know, PVP style from across the map. So there's just so many elements to it that, that are awesome, that makes it so sweaty.

But also, it didn't, like, I don't know, it's hard to explain. It didn't feel like, I didn't feel sweaty, but also at the end, I was like, oh, you know, like when I was restarting another match, you know, you just get that side of relief. All right, let's do this again. So like, this game definitely, I was, go ahead, Ace. I was just kidding. Does the PV elements in this, does this make it different from other extraction games? like, you know, Tarkov or Wildgate or, you know, the cycle. Like, is that what truly stands out about Arc Raiders, is the PVE?

I think the PVE is done really, really well. You know, there are different levels of, like, enemy types. So there's these little, like, drones, I mean, literally like a drone that you fly around where it's like they can spot you and they have a machine gun. And if they start firing at you, you're in trouble because you take a lot of damage very quickly. But they're also pretty simple to kill. Like, you know, it takes like six to eight. bullets and boom you can bring one down the problem with that is is that you make a lot of noise so

if you have to turn and kill one of these drones you are giving your position away to anybody that might be around you know including other drones and then the problem with that is is that now some armored drones start flying in and these are hard to kill and they take a lot of ammo and so it's like if you didn't bring a lot of ammo because you didn't want to lose a lot of ammo because people can take your stuff just like in Tarkov. Now you're dumping, you know, a magazine or two into this armor drone to try to bring it down. It takes longer. You have more of a chance for people to find you.

It really just adds to the tension of the game. And then you get into the, you are not messing with these robots. They're like the one that Ryan shot. The leaper looks like a giant spider like on crack that like leaps at you and destroys you. we came across this giant walking tank called a bastion that was like okay well we're not messing with that one and then just last night I was playing with some listeners and we found the queen on the map which is the big momba jamba and then we were like what is this and of course my curiosity and I'm like I got to go see it I got to go see it and they're like I don't think you should do that man and I'm like no man I got to I got to go see what's going on with this thing so I not only that but here's the part about the PVE component.

The drones are weak to certain things. So the little one, you can shoot off one of its rotors, and it will all of a sudden just lose its flight control, and it'll kind of plummet to the ground. But they're robots. They're AI. So it learns after a second or two how to compensate with that missing rotor, and now it flies back up to the air again. These things are wicked smart, dude.

If you go hide in a building, if you go hide in a building and you're thinking, well, most games are dumb, I'll just hide here for, you know, 10 seconds, and then they'll leave me alone or I'll go out the back door dude they're guarding that back door they're waiting for you yes I hit in a bus and I was like they're not going to find me here I went and I

hit in the bus and like crouched down and then all of a sudden I just see me me all these lasers and then I just got just exploded they blew me to kingdom come so yeah no they are smart they is pretty crazy I did you guys extract ever oh yeah

well we extracted a lot okay I was And that's the beauty of this one. We're professionals, bro. This is the beauty of this one, has had great PVP fights. The time to kill is perfect, in my opinion. Like, you know, you do get a chance to respond, but it doesn't take forever to bring somebody down. You can res a down teammate, but once they're out, they're out kind of thing. You know, you get to fully loot whoever you bring down.

But the problem is, again, the sound design in this game is absolutely top notch. So if you get into a big firefight, you can bet that another squad is going to show up soon. so you better loot and get the heck out of there. You know, I mean, this game, it does a masterful job at balancing the PVP and the PVE. My one complaint, my one complaint about this game is most of the looting that we got to do was just crafting materials.

There's not a lot of like, hey, I found this really cool gun, or I found this really cool shield or this neat piece of gear. I would really, really like to see the game offer a little bit more. equipment that you can find while you're out in the world. Now, there are high level zones where it's like this is going to be where most of the

PVP is going on and this is where some of the higher level PVE like robots are. But even in those, we didn't really find a lot of equipment. Like you find higher level crafting material. Yeah. So that's my one complaint. Like literally my one complaint so far is just that a lot of the looting didn't feel rewarding. And that's kind of the base of the game, you know, but everything else about this game was absolutely top notch.

everybody that got a chance to play it left just kind of wowed at the same time you know um i this is a game that if you did not know about you should absolutely look into the number one question that we got all week and long was you guys are really loving this is this replacing battlefield you know because they're like guys you just started playing battlefield no it's not replacing battlefield but i will be picking this game up dude like legitimately it's really good i mean we were played with her boy Panzer, he was like at like four in the morning in Austria hanging out with us playing. Like it's, yeah, it's not going to replace Battlefield, but it is definitely a game where it's, you know, like, oh, what do I feel like playing?

Where it's not an automatic for battlefield anymore because like this was, it was a lot of fun. Like, you know, just, you know, no bones about it. Like, it was, it's a good game. So I'm excited to see what they do. Yeah, so that comes out October 30th. The price is $39.99. So for what feels like a absolutely. Triple A title that is polished to the core.

It runs good. It looks beautiful. It sounds amazing. Three man squads. Crazy things going on. This needs to be on your radar, people. I mean, just as gamers, we're not getting paid to say this. This is just gamers that found a game that we absolutely loved.

And everybody that we got to play it with said the exact same thing. So put this on your radar. Definitely. And I was going to say, too, yeah, check it out. And then we play with listeners all the time. So hop in our Discord, like, and if, you know, we're available, we will definitely play. We played with a bunch of people on battlefield or on, or on Arc Raiders. So definitely check it out.

You know, if we're able, we always will definitely play with, you know, anyone we can. So it's been a good time. It's so much fun, man. I love just playing with a bunch of different. That was part of the fun of the weekend is people play differently. Like one group was just like, let's go. Let's go hunt these dudes down. And then another group was like, all right, guys, let's get all the loot we can.

and then let's get the heck out of here, you know? And so it was a lot of fun, man. All right, listen, we're going to take a quick break and then we'll get into some of these news stories now that we've kind of covered Arc Raiders and talked about how much fun that game is. We'll be right back. It's the matcha or the three ensemble

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Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. All right, guys. Well, listen, we got to move quick, so we're not going to spend a lot of time on this one. You know, people have been hearing us talk about Battlefield 6. guys we knew we knew it was good we told people the beta's great do you know how many copies battlefield six sold in the first three days guys oh it's got to be like like a million or something at least

two like two maybe three if we're getting crazy yeah guys this is the difference between like sometimes this is the difference between a triple a game and an indie studio game like i think i saw where expedition 33 which should in my opinion absolutely when game of the year was up to four million copies maybe five million they're up to somewhere or silk songs up to five is that what okay yeah expedition i think is at four silk song was at five and this is months you know well silk song's only been out for about a month but guys battlefield six sold seven million copies in three days oh boy those veteran players were just eager to get their teeth into battlefield man we were hungry uh it was the biggest launch in the

series history. So for all the battlefield games, which there's a lot, this is the largest launch in the series history. And currently, uh, it had 747,000 concurrent players, which is huge on steam. That's just on so many. Uh, the one thing I want to point out on this is it was flawless guys. The launch when you, when you sold seven million copies in three days, like, the only server issue we had was the fact that we could not get a custom match going for our community night. What game can you remember

that sold 7 million copies in three days had a launch as flawless as Battlefield 6 did? No, that's what we intentionally did the community night on a Saturday. So we had time for them to have server issues and then kind of repair them and alleviate the stress on them. And then we didn't have any issues.

like we couldn't do our own we you know which is whatever but we were able to get in and once we got in it was no problem at all like we all played together we all had fun together and so um yeah dude i think this was a phenomenal launch i think they did an amazing job think of how crazy it was like when we got on um onto hell divers like hell divers was amazing but yeah you had to wait an hour and a half to get into the server that view was terrible yeah exactly the cue was nuts so so to be able to hop in and to be able to play this game flawlessly and execute flawlessly and there wasn't you know every game has a teeny little bugs here and there but like this thing i think for the most part 99.9% of the time ran uh a beautifully and i think it is a big staple in this

industry i think it is it is a new kind of testament to what these games can be and what these developers can do and man i'm so proud of them because i i've missed battlefield so bad. And I know that every time I log in, me and Josh are going to play and just giggle and laugh like little kids again and play this game, dude. And it's been so fun. I think I'm 30 hours into battlefield. Like no lie. And every single match I play, I'm just as excited as like the first match, dude. That's a testament to the game. So listen, people know we love Battlefield 6. We won't harp on it. But just it does go to show you, Ryan, you said it, if a company actually cares, right? If they actually care,

what the gamers want. And this is the disaster that happened with Battlefield 2042. And the absolute turnaround of the franchise, now big credit to Vince Ampanella. You know what I mean? Because I think he had a lot to do with this. So Vince, if you want to come on the show and talk, man,

like we'd love to have you because we're fans. We'll take your schedule, but, you know. I do credit a lot of this to his direction on the series. But my goodness, man, if a company actually cares about the gamers and the launch of the game, and going, hey, let's give them what they want. We get a flawless launch.

We get a good game. They have already listened to gamers and made patches about, like, the slow progression that you get with unlocks, the amount of time that, like, conquest takes and stuff like that. So they are absolutely listening to what people are saying, which is crazy to hear from a company like, yay. You know what I mean? But, like, at the same time, it's like, how refreshing is this also, man? as long as they keep the core of the game I don't want you know because you have all these Battlefield streamers or I mean

Call of Duty streamers hopping on all the movement's too slow all this all that all the guns they're doing all the meta stuff it's like no this is about objectives teamwork playing together and just having a good time and I think that's what the core of this is and I think that they're really trying to harness that

so as long as they don't kind of patch that out of existence I think we're going to have a good game for a long time and I'm so excited yeah I am too. And they're already talking about upgrades and patches and seasons and stuff like that. So again, stay the course. Just give us more of what we want and we'll be okay. All right, guys, we hinted at this. Now, I have to chuckle a little bit about this because it's like,

this is, this is a little early for this guys. But it's also kind of a fun topic. So Gamescom Asia and the Thailand Game Awards released their game of the year. They did all their game of the year winners. And I like I said, I, you know, I kind of chuckled and I kind of literally for this, isn't it? But we got the full list of the winners for the Gamescom Asia X Thailand Game Awards. The main takeaway was rightfully so. Expedition 33 won the popular vote and the game of the year in this. This is what I personally would love to see when we get to the end of the year for the actual game awards ceremony. But I'm I want to just read this list to you guys, okay?

Because some of these make me chuckle. Some of them I'm like, what? And then one of them really made Ace happy. So I'll see if you guys can guess which one that is. But all right, so here's their list. Best game publisher, Hoyover's, best sports game, Mario Kart World. Is Mario Kart a sports game, guys? I don't count that.

I mean, Mario Tennis is a sports game. I don't know about carts. Yeah, I don't know if Mario Kart is a sports game. But best family game, split fiction. Hey, I'll take that. Yeah, nice. Best ongoing game, Honkai Star Rail.

Best fighting game, Fatal Fury City of the Wolves. Best action game, Monster Hunter Wilds. Best RPG game, Claire Obscure Expedition 33. Best multiplayer game, Eldon Ring Night Rain.

I wish we had video right now. I wish we had video to show Ace's face. They skipped one audience. Did we skip one? Yeah. Let me finish the list here. What was the best indie game? Josh, huh? What was it?

Oh, wait. Oh, there is the best Indy game. Oh, we missed it. Oh, whoops. Why don't you tell us what it is, Ace. The best indie game was Ender Magnolia Blooming the Mist, baby. Woo! Oh, my God. Dude.

Look, we're really sorry there's no video. It's not our fault. But if y'all saw Ace's slow realization that I intentionally skipped over and Ace, I'll have you know that Ryan DMed me and told me to skip it. So it's actually Ryan's fault. you punk why would you do that i apologize for absolutely nothing i was getting ready to yell

and holler and scream oh my gosh right over ace has been touting intermagnolia to the world i will say this too ace you have gotten probably half a dozen people in our community to play intermagnolia and every single one of them has been like holy crap this game's awesome everyone loves it man it's it's it's one you could recommend and everyone loves it like i haven't had one bad review yeah yeah So you're doing good work there, man. Those devs need to send you a thank you card. All right, where were we? Best action game, Monster Hunter Wilds,

best RPG game, Expedition 33, multiplayer game, Eldon Ring Night Rain. Best action adventure, Death Stranding 2. Best PC console game, Expedition 33. Best mobile game. Can't even say it. Umamomamasumi, pretty derby. Best anticipated tie game,

Lost and Found Company. Most anticipated game. This one caught me a little off guard. Resident Evil Requiem. I kind of agree with this. You agree with that one? I am very anticipate of the next Resident Evil. I am too, but how do you not have like GTA6 on there, man?

It's never, it's not real pick. Yeah, I mean, maybe. I don't know. This is why I say this, I think this is a little too early because honestly, like Hades 2 is absolutely going to win some awards. Yeah, I agree. I mean, Silk Song doesn't have a mention, which I know a lot of people will absolutely be clamoring for um so again you know it's a long list i i will say i love seeing expedition 33

mentions so many times for me that is what i hope happens um i did like seeing that split fiction got a nod here as i did like that as well uh i am expecting uh expedition 33 to kind of have like the astrobot sweep like we did last year where they just kept taking them good i i did like this is the thing because people have been asking right like how do you put How do you put Expedition 33 up against Hades, against Silk Song, against Destraining 2, which, look, I actually played Destraining some to try to get familiar with that franchise. And we have a lot of people that said, dude, Destraining 2 is absolutely incredible. We have heard a lot of people say it's their favorite game of all time. I don't have a lot of experience with it, but I can say, you know, Destraining, from my experience, incredible game.

I kind of get it. I did fall off on that a little bit. So maybe there's something there. It's just personal preference. Guys, we forgot all about Night Rain. Like, what world do we live in as gamers? When is the last time either one of you thought about Eldon Ring Night Rain? The last time, Alexi, D-Ned me and asked me if I wanted to play, and I said, no.

It's been months. Right? And, like, when we were playing Night Rain, we were just like, bro, this game's so much fun. It was so good. It was so good. A year where a game, like Eldon Ring Night Rain, gets just forgotten about is is nuts guys what a time to be alive brother that's all i mean oh my goodness man um so also don't do your game awards in mid-october people yeah that's a little preemptive

funny uh but i also like i said i hope i hope that this continues for expedition 33 uh as much as i love hades too and some of the other games i really just i really want that studio to get the kudos that they deserve. Ryan's sticking his tongue out because he doesn't like turn-based games, but my goodness, man. All right, so there you go. There's those.

And then, guys, we would be completely remiss if we didn't at least, you know, make fun of Nintendo a little bit. Yeah, let's go. We've got a couple episodes. Pokemon Z to A.

I'm not a Pokemon guy. You guys know this. Ryan is a huge Pokemon guy. He's even getting more. so into it lately he's constantly posting i found a pack guys i found a box like you know he's been doing pack openings and stuff like that on the twitch look i don't have a lot of familiarity with the Pokemon games um my kids played Archaeus uh you know like but but the one thing i know is that these games get the least amount of development effort possible oh my gosh and then they get sold to

the masses in broken condition, terrible graphics, terrible performance. Like, what the heck, man? And so Pokemon Zia, which is the most recent release, is getting review bombed. And in this case, I think it's probably rightfully so, right? Like, you guys are the Pokemon guys. You tell me what's going on with this. I don't know if you guys have seen any of the gameplay for this on a regular Switch on, you know, the original Nintendo Switch. The game looks like it wants to off itself. It does not want to run on an original Nintendo Switch. And it, please.

I don't even want to be here. The entire game takes place in one city. That's it. You have one city. You can't go into any of the buildings. They're all flat buildings. And again, what is, Pokemon is one of the most, like, what, profitable franchises of all time.

Oh, yeah. Of all time. And it still has no voice acting. Yeah. Oh, finally. Somebody's joining me on the voice acting train. Oh, dude, it's so bad because they're like, they're talking, they're yapping, or they're singing, and there's nothing coming out. It's completely silent.

It's ridiculous. And not only like, it just, here's the deal. And this is, this is the issue with these large corporations and why I had such a problem with it is that they know that. they know that they put, you know, another $15 million into this and develop a quality, solid game. They have the funds, they have the assets, they have the resources and the people. They could develop a top tier AAA level game

that's optimized to run beautifully on any device and run well and perform well and be amazing and they don't do it. You know why? Because they'll still sell the same amount of copies to the same people. people for putting just pennies in and that's why they don't do it because they know all these Nintendo people all these Pokemon people will buy it either way and and it doesn't matter and so

they look you know look at the dollars and if it makes you know if it make dollars it makes sense and so uh it's it's just it's a shame because there should be no reason for for an entity that's this old you know 30 years old or whatever it is like to to not have a really good quality game with the advancements we've had in game development. It's, it's shame, it's ridiculous, and it's, it just sucks, man. It's, it's, oh. That's like Power World's mopping the floor with them. And honestly, that, dude, I was, that's what I was about to bring up.

Now, if you, you know, because, you know, there's going to be people that, you guys are always hating on Nintendo, right? And it's like, okay, but here, here's, here's the kicker. Pokemon Legend Zita A only needs to sell 200,000 copies to break even. Mm-hmm. to break it like guys that's nothing that's that is nothing for a franchise of this size and the fact that they only need to sell 200,000 copies tells you how little effort went into developing this game they are just selling you slop and people are buying the slop and they buy it every single time dude like and listen like we're gamers we're guilty of this man like you know people said don't pre-order battlefield six it's never going to get better if you guys you know but and we pre-ordered battlefields field six right and it's like gamers do dumb things we played we played the beta for that though we had an idea of what you're getting into we had an idea yep you have no idea what you're

getting into with these crappy Pokemon games dude you know at this point at this point you do but like great maybe you have hope look like if they wanted to they could absolutely make a triple a premium Pokemon game that would sell a gajillion copies yeah like people have been clamoring for this for decades at this point. And here's the problem. Power World did it. And Nintendo got upset because they went, guys,

you're going to make us have to actually like, we don't want to try to make these games. And we don't want to do that. They spent more effort on their lawsuit than they did developing this game. Yes. Yes. Yes. That's what they did.

I am glad to see the gamers are finally getting fed up. They are review bombing it. It was something like, 61% negative reviews on this with a 4.1 user rating at this point, which sounds great. But you know what? The issue with that is there are millions of people that pick this game up and they're playing it and they're just fine with it. And that's what Nintendo is banking. And again, that's crappy. Yeah. No, that is that is crappy. And it's just it's just putting out the same old slot because you know you're going to make a buttload of money on it and you don't have to do anything different.

Like, I may get some hate for this. My wife, she's a quote unquote Swifty. And, you know, Taylor Swift can put out anything and all these people would buy it. Like, they would just eat it up and buy it. And then there'd be arguments whether it's good or not, but all those people still bought it. And they're going to continue to keep buying it. And that's what happens with Nintendo. And it's good to see people kind of that our fans actually be critical of something that they're a big fan of.

It's okay to be critical. it's okay to question the development of something and demand better, not just want better, but demand better. I got a perfect example for you guys of that, Ryan. When gamers truly get fed up and we speak our minds about it, that's what happened with Battlefield 2042. Yeah, absolute garbage, garbage. And people got so mad.

And what happened? They went, oh, my gosh, we better make an effort. And then we got Battlefield 6. Yeah. you don't like stand up man like stand up for this quit buying these Pokemon games make it known that you hate it don't buy the next garbage copy that comes out and you know what you're going to get out of it dude you're going to get a better Pokemon game in the long run

and then you know what else is going to happen is call of duty is going to be like oh crap we better quit doing all this stupid stuff oh wait that's Pokemon we're talking about but there are ripples man so the point is is that you know be willing to be disgruntle and voice that, but also you do have to kind of go, hey, I'm not going to keep perpetuating this cycle because if you do, they're just going to keep doing it at the same time. So you got to vote with your wallet.

All right, guys, we got to wrap this one up. Real quick, Ball X Pit, an incredible indie title, very fun, roguelike game that did just release. I played the demo on it. I was impressed by it. I know Ace isn't going to get a chance to cover this in the indie episode, so I'm bringing it up here. Awesome developers.

Really fun game. It just released to over. overwhelmingly positive reviews already. It's got something like 1,300 reviews, and it just released. So give that one a look. We love our indie devs, and this game's actually a lot of fun. It caught me off guard as well. So, all right, that's going to do it for this episode, people.

Thank you for joining us for another This Week in Gaming. Check out Arc Raiders. There is something to that game. You know, again, a lot of people really enjoyed that one as well. let's all pull for Expedition 33 for Game of the Year winner right Ryan Ryan shaking his head and uh we will hopefully be back on video for our next episodes uh sorry we couldn't share our beautiful faces with you on this one come on Bezos what are you doing man come on get together it's crazy the whole internet is just kapit right now man and the world

doesn't know what to do at least we were in the middle of recording that would have sucked Yeah, that would really sucks. So listen, so remember to follow the show. Click that plus button, that follow button. So you get all our episodes the day that they release. It also does help out the podcast and the algorithm there. Join our Discord community if you want people to play games with. If you want some Battlefield 6 buddies, since Ace doesn't play with us,

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