Video Gamers Podcast - Bungie's Big Reveal, Hades II Exclusivity, and Switch 2 Controller Drama - TWIG | Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

Gaming hosts Josh, Ryan and John are breaking down another wild week in the world of video games! Bungie finally drops gameplay for Marathon, Hades II is confirmed as a timed exclusive for the Nintendo Switch 2, and Star Wars: Zero Company—a turn-based tactics video game—will be shown off April 19th. Plus… Nintendo confirms no Hall Effect sticks for the new Joy-Cons and we’ve got feelings. All the gaming news you need, every week from the Video Gamers Podcast! Thanks to our MYTHIC Supporters: Redletter, Ol’ Jake, Disratory and Gaius Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Community: https://discord.gg/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   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Yeah, it's a big deal. The Ford It's a Big Deal event. Visit your Toronto area Ford store or Ford.ca today. Hello fellow gamers and welcome to the video gamers podcast. It's another exciting week of video game news and we've got a very special episode for you today. This is our first in studio recording and we are pumped to be together to talk all the video game news for the week from the gameplay reveal of marathon to the announcement of zero company and Hades to being a switch to exclusive. It's going to be a fantastic episode. But before we get to that, some introductions are in order. I am your host Josh and joining me Marvel rivals used his physique for squirrel girl Girl and the Hulk and said, no

upgrades needed. It's Ryan. Beef me up, daddy. Come on, let's go. I was really wondering how you were going to take that Squirrel Girl thing. That's right. I got cake. I got cake.

You know, that's what I do. A lot of squads. Okay. Somebody's going to need to quote beef me up daddy. Oh boy and Joining us he was the motion capture actor for Venom's twerking emote But he prefers if people call him mr. Fantastic John I think that's largely positive guys. That is very fun. I'll take mr. Fantastic

That's pretty good. I'm kid twerk to man. Yeah, mr. Fantastic was my nickname in college Guys we are together we are recording this is Absolutely a blast everybody is in for a great episode We you know, this is something we've been wanting to do for a little while, but it's kind of hard to find a space that is set up for a local recording like this. But man, this is awesome guys. I am pumped, pumped.

It is so cool to be doing this in the room with you, man. Yeah, it really is. Love it. Somebody smells really bad though. That's Ryan. That's Ryan over there. Yeah, sorry, I can though. That's Ryan. That's Ryan over there. Yeah, sorry, I can smell it. So that means it's coming past me, right?

You know? So. This is an AOE. Yeah. Oh my goodness. My attack. This is Ryan's ultimate. I'm gonna ult, I'm gonna ult.

Oh man. Guys, we've got some really, really exciting news to talk about. The marathon reveal. Oh my goodness. Guys, we've got some really, really exciting news to talk about. The marathon reveal. Oh, my goodness. The big one. Whoo. That's a big one. I personally have a lot to say about that one. So we'll see what's going on there.

But before we get into all the news, you know, we've been doing this quick question thing from from some of our listeners, our epic supporters. And we do have another quick question. And I'm just going to start off by saying I freaking love this guy, dude. This guy, you know, he joined our Discord server a while back. He has been awesome. He stays up late to participate in our community nights. And by late, I mean, like, really late, like, four early or early.

It depends on how you think about that. But this question comes in from Panzer Faust Ali, amazing member of the community. We love you, Ali. And the question is, surely you have already talked about that, but I haven't heard it yet. I think so. My question would be what was the first game you guys have ever played? We have answered this. We have our names aren't surely yeah they

got the new naked movie coming out oh yeah it's got Liam Neeson in it feel even worse about Liam Leslie Nielsen? No, he's dead. Yeah, exactly. Liam Neeson. It would be way better if I got him in it. That's like a weekend of Bernie's going on. I mean, I'm the oldest, so I'll just start Pong. Literally Pong is the first game that I ever remember playing. I know that sounds terrible, but it was mind blowing at the time.

I have an older brother and we had the two little controllers with the dial on it that you would spin to move your little paddle. And I remember playing Pong and thinking this was the greatest thing that the world has ever seen. And that was what started my video game passion. I was four years old, literally four years old, man, when I remember playing Pong for the first time. So if anybody wants to figure out that Then you'll know how old I actually so you played pong a lot more current than me But like I also my first game I remember playing was also pong

I remember the dials my dad just happened to show up with one He worked a lot of trades and odd jobs and sometimes people would like give him stuff you know or stuff as payment and and sometimes people would like give him stuff, you know, or stuff as payment and We he came home with an Atari and lo and behold they had a pong on it And I remember sitting there probably at four or five as well, and I remember just doing it. I'm like, this is pretty cool I'm gonna dedicate my life to screen screen games. So you played pong remastered. I played the original Mine was also pong I played the original Pong. There you go.

Yeah, there you go. Mine was also Pong. What? No way. I know. This is the most uninteresting set of answers to a question ever, but yeah, my cousin had an Atari. They were set up better than I was, and it was Pong.

All right, well, there you go. Super exciting. The world doesn't know what Pong brought to it. You all get us now. Yeah Panzer I wish we had a more interesting Answers to your question, but as soon as we get a stay up late to hang with the boys merit badge You're getting the first one absolutely well in a little birdie told me that instead of a community night We're actually going to be doing a community morning for all of our overseas

Listeners so that all of you don't have to stay up till 4 a.m To play rivals and halo with us. So that's coming here in the near future You can all get your butt kicks in the morning. That's true. Yeah, we'll be we'll be wide awake man You know no tire for us and then guys we do have another amazing Review to read this one comes in from the one and only Lucy moon Yeah, who had a birthday recently that may have gotten You know these guys to dance and twerk Which was also part of the intro for John there also

But Lucy Moon did leave us a review and it is titled best gaming dance and Podcast and it says as someone who has strictly lingered on the true crime side of the podcast world, I decided to branch out and expand my interests. I cannot express how happy I am to have found the Video Gamers podcast. Josh and Ryan have incredible chemistry that leaves me feeling like I reconnected with an old friend after every episode. I look forward to going through the entire backlog and perhaps breaking out of my Discord lurker role someday

spoiler she did Haman strong Thank you for all the laughs And maybe I don't thank you for the countless additions to my gaming wishlist PS the indie gaming episodes are a 10 out of 10 addition you guys are the best Yep, silent golf clap for ace well done It's funny cuz you could tell how old like we're so backed up on these reviews that it's like Lucy moon is Talking about maybe not being a lurker, you know, and then John's with us now doing shows aces

I'm used to being excluded from conversation. These are like two months old man. We're a little behind We're sorry. There's been a lot, you know, just you guys love us That's what the listeners the listeners have stepped up when we said hey, man, you know remember to leave us a review They really did step up. And so now it's our chance our turn to step up and get you know, get through some of these reviews also Okay, so one other thing that we we need to talk about guys before we get into the news for this week is we did cover last week on last week's twig. We covered the story that a drug dealer simulator was suing a schedule one because they said, Hey, this is copyright infringement. We make a drug dealing game. You can't make a drug dealing game. And so we covered that story. And normally we don't go back and say, Oh, well, Hey, that's, you know, that's what people were talking about.

But in this case, we did get something wrong or we got actually a little bit news after that that broke that's that came from the actual developer of drug dealer simulator one and two that said, whoa, whoa, whoa. I am not suing schedule one guys like I'm happy for these guys. They made a game. It's doing great Please stop review bombing my game because that's what gamers were doing and he said That's not me. I am NOT suing schedule one So then the news came out that it is actually the publisher of drug dealer simulator one and two that is not happy about Schedule one so it is the publisher that was looking into taking legal action against schedule one. The developer of drug dealer simulator had nothing to do with that.

And the news has come out at this point that they're not actually actively being sued. They are just looking into a copyright infringement to see if maybe they might have a chance to sue schedule one in the meantime. Yeah, sounds like a publisher. But you know, somebody getting sued, that's not something that should be taken too, too lightly. And we don't ever want to, you know, kind of tell people like fake news or news that isn't accurate.

So we've always said we're gamers, we're not industry experts. So you know, there are times where there are things that you know We get the news that that is put in front of us and in this case It wasn't a hundred percent accurate And so we just wanted to clear that up because it really does seem like the developer of drug dealer Simulator one and two is like dude, please this is not me Yeah, and I think that's fair to kind of point that for sure people too. So oh Boy, they really go sweet. Oh boy. Here. We go John. How you feeling buddy? I feel good

I actually feel so good that even though I know what you're gonna say is negative. It's not gonna tear me down Let's hear it okay, so we Let's hear it. Well, okay. So we got, all right, Marathon, Bungie's next big game that they have been working on, which seems like an eternity. I think it's been like five years, but it's funny because I think they announced this like seven years ago. Yeah.

It's been in development for a long time. It's been in development for a long time. Now we love Bungie. I mean, Halo, Destiny. I mean, some of the best games that we have ever played have come from Bungie. And we got to interview Bungie. Fantastic people. I mean, legitimately, if you haven't seen that episode, they are. They are awesome.

And so we really appreciated being able to interview them. And for the time in the things that we learned about the Bungie Foundation, what it's like to be a developer and that kind of stuff. So. Mad respect for Bungie for what they've given to gaming Marathon. We get the announcement of the announcement, right? We got an announcement guys. We're going to announce something. We're going to announce Marathon Ryan.

You kind of joked about this. And so we got a gameplay trailer. We said we finally get the unveiling of Marathon from Bungie. We get to see what this game is all about. And what do you think? It's a, it is a, it's an extraction shooter guys. It's a game. It's a game.

It's an extraction shooter. Now, John, have you ever played an extraction shooter? I don't know what the term means. Okay. Probably. Have you heard of escape from Tarkov? That's probably the most famous extraction shooter. but probably have you heard of escape from Tarkov? That's probably the most famous extraction shooter Ryan. Have you ever played escape from Tarkov? Yeah, I do like Tarkov The general pitch for what an extra general pitch general pitch for an extraction shooter escape from Tarkov is probably the most well-known one

But in in that game you guys PS plus what? FPS plus permanent permanent gear loss. If you die. Oh, okay. So, so if you go into a match, you go in with gear and if somebody kills you, they can take all your gear and you lose it permanently. Okay. So that's kind of the gist. Very high stakes, very tense, very sweaty because people don't want to lose their hard earned gear. If you jump a dude that has some super high end sniper rifle that's completely decked out, he's probably crying in the corner while you are rejoicing because you got this amazing weapon

that you can then try to extract with. So the key is you don't get to keep the gear unless you actually go to an extraction point and leave the match before getting killed. Usually when somebody is extracting it alerts everybody on the map that hey somebody is trying to extract and so that creates a lot of tension as well. Oh yeah. Okay. All right.

I like the concept. Now, you know, we've had some extraction shooters. There's Rainbow Six Siege. They had their new game, which I can't remember the name of it, but they were getting into the hey, we're kind of turning Rainbow Six Siege into an extraction game. It's a side shoot. It's not changing the whole game itself. Famously, a game that I have talked about an awful lot

called The Cycle was an extraction game that I absolutely loved. Now I will come out and say, I absolutely despise Escape from Tarkov. So that type of game is not necessarily up my alley, but I absolutely loved to the cycle. So we get this gameplay reveal for Marathon. I want to ask you guys first, what did you think of the gameplay and the reveal that

we saw? I mean, it had some crazy art style, the gameplay looks interesting. What do you think, John? So my big unresolved question is whether or not there is a campaign mode. I don't know how that works. There is not. Well, that sours a lot of things for me. Unfortunately, cuz I'm not a big shooter guy I love shooters in campaign mode like some of my favorite gaming memories were frankly halos Campaign like halo to halo 3 campaign. I love them

Absolutely, and honestly like rainbow six games a lot of the old Tom Clancy games which were shooters. I grew up on I loved them They're fantastic and at that point in my life. I was also doing a lot of the LAN party stuff it didn't translate into the Online, you know, you know multiplayer things so much for me. But yeah, I enjoy a good shooter I really like a good shooter. Do I want to play a game that's only a shooter like like multiplayer? Probably not that actually that changes that changes things for me quite a bit the art style though. I thought looked really cool I was actually concerned initially out of the gate that they were gonna be leaning too heavy on that sort of clunky mech Spartany kind of look that they're known for with Halo and I didn't feel

like Destiny was that big of a departure. I think that there's a lot of cosmetic similarities. But I really liked it. I thought it looked very sleek and kind of elegant and stuff and something new. So I don't know. My look was, even though now I probably won't be playing a lot of it unless it's for like a community gaming night that it looked like a good game for its genre. Okay, Ryan.

That's fair. Okay. Okay. So what? Don't you steal my thunder, Ryan. Hold on. I saved myself for last for this on purpose. I'm the bungee guy though, cause I played 17 at a hundred hours of destiny. So I have had my fair share of it. Um, I just, I personally with the art style, I didn't like it. Okay. I did not like the look of it. I thought that it was kind of half baked. I thought that it was, they made it look like that. So they didn't have

to spend as much time on it and they could focus on some other things. Yeah, to me it was, it was not, cause Destiny came out in 2016, 17, something like that. It's been a while, a long time ago and I thought it looked 10 times better. Destiny is a beautiful game. It's a beautiful game. Yes. The one thing that I have hope for is if Bungie can do anything It's shooter mechanics crisp clean FPS action is what they can do. I would say some of the best shooting ever any game. Oh, yeah Halo redefined it. Yeah They double down on destiny. It is some of the most crisp shooting gameplay

you will ever get in a game. And I don't know if I saw that translate into this trailer and the gameplay that we saw. I hope it does, because that would be the only saving grace for this game for me. Not the biggest extraction shooter guy, but if this one kind of fleshes out to be something

that is really clean and it's an enjoyable, precise shooter, I probably would fall in love with it, but if it doesn't kind of pan out to be that way, man, I don't know where this is gonna go. And I think with what happened with Bungie and Destiny 2 and kind of where that tailored off They're just gonna get cooked man All right, so I'm gonna I'm gonna preface this by saying I don't want to see bungee fail like we never and we've said

There's time and time again. We never want to see a developer fail. We never want to see a publisher fail You know, there are people behind the, the, these video games that pour their hearts and souls into it. We saw this with our interview with bungee where, you know, these are awesome people. It is their passion in life to do this. Um, you know, but there, you know, sometimes it's not up to the developers and the teams that are working on the game and stuff like that. So with that said, and with the preface that I am

not a fan of extraction shooters, my thinking when I saw this is bungee, what the heck are you doing? Why? Why would you copy a genre that is not a popular genre? Like I had this discussion with my coworker today because he is a huge fan of escape from Tarkov huge I mean he plays more escape from Tarkov than just about anybody I know I know that people that love escape from Tarkov really really love that genre and it just clicks with them about the The high stakes and the shooting is usually good and things like that but we already have Escape from Tarkov we already have extraction shooters andarkov. We already have extraction shooters.

And where I really started to get a little triggered by this is they have copied escape from Tarkov in so many ways, even from the inventory screen, right? So when you pop up and you loot somebody in the little inventory screen pops up, it looks like a just gigantic mess of inventory. There's a 50 objects on the screen and it's like, I don't know what the heck any of this stuff is. That's escape from Tarkov.

When you go to loot a container, right? And you open it up in most games. The loot's just right there. You're sweet, man. Nope. And escape from Tarkov. You have to wait a few seconds before you see what's in the container because that is mimicking your guy rifling through this container and trying to find loot. And

they copied that a hundred percent, dude. And so my biggest, my biggest gripe with Marathon is you, where is the innovation dude? Like we talk about innovation all the time, right? Like if this was some indie developer that was trying to like make waves in the industry and saying, guys, I am a huge fan of extraction shooters. I'm an indie developer. Made my own. Yes, I'm going to make my own. You know, I can I can get behind that.

I can say, cool, it's not my favorite genre. But if this is your passion in life, awesome. Bungie is the studio that gave us Halo. Bungie is the studio that gave us Destiny 1 and 2 and now they have this chance to come out with this shooting game that we've been waiting years for years for it. And what do we get? We get a clone of Escape from Tarkov. Why? Like what the heck, Bungie? You're just copying something that already exists. That's my problem, dude. It's not that I don't think that the game looks good. Okay. And we've seen previews. And so after the gameplay reveal, we had a

lot of streamers and big names in the video game review, you know, thing that got a chance to play it. Right. And they all made their videos for it. And they all came out and they said, dude, it's Bungie. The shooting like you were worried about is top-notch, dude. It is the top-notch Bungie shooting like you would expect. The art style, I think, is preference. I'm not a huge fan of it, but I don't hate it so much that it's distracting.

I could see it. It would be divisive. I will say that I thought the resolution looked kind of low, but maybe this was just in some of the videos that we saw. And you bump up that to 4K and you get that plasticky look to it. And I think that could actually look pretty good. But the art style to me is kind of Matt's whatever, right? Like, but when you strip all that away,

you're just left with a clone of escape from Tarkov. And this is what all the streamers talked about. All the people that got to play this game and get the preview, and they were saying, oh, I played Marathon for eight hours, and here's my thoughts. Almost universally, they said, dude, the game's neat. It plays incredible. The gunplay is the bungee gunplay that you would expect.

But I feel like I played this game before. Yeah. You know But I feel like I've played this game before. Yeah. And not only have I played this game before, but this is a sweaty, sweaty, super competitive, high stakes game that generally tends to put a lot of people off, myself included, because it's not the kind of gameplay loop for me. I don't want to lose all of my stuff

because some cracked out dude snide me from across the map, you know, and then now I just got that. Yeah. I mean, legitimately I don't like that. I so yeah, I'd be at like base build basically forever. I mean, and so when I saw this, I just, I think I literally screamed like, what are you doing? You have to be kidding me. Like, like, what are you doing? You have to be kidding me. Like, this is Bungie, dude. Where is your innovation? You're telling me we waited five to seven years for you to just

copy Escape from Tarkov and make it look different? Like, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Because I know there's fans of Escape from Tarkov and they're saying Josh quit slamming Escape from Tarkov. It's a great game. And if you game, it is a good game.

And again, I think it scratches a very unique itch that a lot of people have. And I will say that Bungie, you know, there's classes in Marathon so you can play six different classes. There's tanks, there's really fast people, you know, there's stealthy people. There's, you know, you have, you know, they have all these different abilities. Ryan, they have a little spiderman guy that I know you loved. Yeah So, you know you you can play these classes they have abilities There's lots of different guns and loot and things like that that you can get

But ultimately it is all going to boil down to the same gameplay that we already have Yeah, we already have these games dude And so I'm having a very hard time wrapping my head around why Bungie would spend five years developing a game that already exists. And. I'm going to end my rant very soon here

because I do want to end it on a positive note. I am a huge fan of the cycle. Now, the one thing that I really love is that this is a PVvP game, right? You know, you have to worry about people just as much as you have to worry about the environment and what a lot of people said is the AI in this game is bananas and you have to worry about the AI almost as much as you need to worry

about people and sometimes they're actually better than squads that you'll come up against. The cycle had that PvE element locked down. Now the cycle failed because it was an epic game store exclusive and the devs legitimately ruined their own game with some patches that took away all the fun out of the game. The movement in that game was incredible. Some of the in the devs just tried to patch it out and equalize

things in a completely ruined that game. And when they realized that the game was ruined, they turned it into the cycle frontier. And you guys know what the cycle frontier was? It was an exact clone of Escape from Tarkov! Legitimately! It's an exact... So we've been down this road! It doesn't work! I'm so just like... like, flabbergasted, man,

where it's like, why is this the route that you went? Like, make it make sense to me. So, as somebody who hasn't played anything, obviously, and I'm gonna be reserving judgment until we get the opportunity to play it. I know this about Bungie. When they were pitching Halo initially, the people that they were answerable to

had lots of opinions. They didn't like the name, they thought it was confusing, they didn't like any of the aesthetic designs, they thought why another shooter? There's lots of shooters that are already successful in this space. And Bungie said, no, we've got a very crystalline, singular focus on this, we know what we're doing.

And they delivered it. And I think what they did was they took a pretty unnovel concept of a shooter, and they really, really dialed it in and refined it. I think that it is possible that Bungie saw that there's an opportunity in this extraction shooter space where they said, you know what, there's something to this, but nobody's really done it right yet. Perhaps we can do that. Yeah.

And that's where I would hang my hat at this point. I have faith in Bungie. I think that they will pull out a banger. I think this is going to be popular. I think that there are probably novel innovations in this that we just haven't been able to realize yet at this stage in its reveal and development. But I have faith. I think Bungie, I'm rooting for you. We all are. I think we all are. And the thing is like, my only counter to that is, you know,

how many of the people that made those decisions for Halo are still there. That's the thing, you know, because that, I mean, you can cheer for a sports team and this team did this and that and this and that. That was five years ago. There's only one person on the team left from there, you know, like they're, it's just that's who matters. The core that's developing this game is what matters. I mean, I hope it's amazing because I had some of the best times of my life playing Destiny and I want to continue that and I love Bungie for my life playing destiny and I want to continue that and I love bungee for what they gave me and, and I want that to continue, but pan 30, 40 bucks for that's what's rumored is it's going to, it's a premier, it's premier tile 40 bucks

with a bunch of transactions and micro stuff in there. Like, man, I don't know. You know, I'm just going to bleed me dry if I want to keep up. So we'll see. I hope it's good. Those are valid points. I have absolutely valid points guys. I hope it's good. I again, a lot of people have said if they can take escape from Tarkov and they can simplify it and make it more approachable for people, maybe they're onto something here because now you have a genre that is dominated by a game that most people don't like when they jump in and play it. And so if you can take that barrier of entry away, I think you could blow that genre wide open.

I just, by its nature, it is a competitive, difficult to stomach when somebody kills you genre. And there's no campaign. There's they do. They do talk about story building, but you find these like little things as you play and it's like, I don't know about that either. So Jared, we're looking at you, buddy. Jared was a host on the, or was a guest on the show from bungee.

He's a, he was one of the devs on it. Jared, come on, buddy. Help me, Jared. Help me make sense of this buddy. Get me hyped for this because I want to love this game. But I'm very, very concerned about about this. This kind of angle that they're taking. OK. That's my marathon rant, everybody.

So again, if this winds up being the cycle that I always wanted, I can't tell you how happy I would be, dude. And there is a chance that it winds up being that. So we'll just we'll leave it there. Okay. Take a breath, baby. Onto better news. Hades 2, guys.

Yeah. Hades 2, we're getting Hades 2. Now Hades 2 has been out in early access for a while. I have held off on playing Hades 2 because I love it so much that it's one of those games. I say, hey, I'm not playing it until it's fully released. I want the full peak experience boys. And we did get some news that Hades 2 is going to be a timed exclusive for the switch to.

Yes. How does that make you feel? Nintendo, Nintendo, Nintendo. Is that John over there? No, no, no, no, no. Nintendo. What the, what is going on here, man? All right, John, as the Nintendo fan. I love it. Frankly, the Nintendo Direct wasn't like mind blowing for me.

There were some nice reveals and stuff, and they spent a lot of time talking about the hardware, which wasn't terribly interesting to me. But what I thought they needed were some really good exclusives, some compelling reason other than ports of games that have already been out for a while to pick it up day one. Donkey Kong, not it for me. We got a lot of contrary feedback again on social media when we Love donkey. Yeah. Yeah, apparently there's a really really big donkey kong community and they're good games We've never said they're bad games during donkey kong. Just is it gonna sell consoles is all I

loved Hades I It is rogue like Perfection to me. Absolute perfection. And I, like you loved it so much that I've been putting off playing the pre-release. I want to play the full game. And that, this is a very compelling reason for me to get a Switch 2. I'm stoked.

All right. That's awesome. I mean, didn't the original Hades release on the Switch as well? It did, yeah. So this is not for people, their initial reaction is- It's kind of standard. So this is not for people that their initial reaction is. It's kind of standard. This is what they already did. And I know we always go over kind of what

we're going to talk over the show. Me, I was like, oh, that's kind of normal. But I guess people that don't know, this happened before the last time. So I mean, it's news, but it's not news. But it's also for people like you guys that, you know, you're a PC player I'm a PC player for the most part. I have the switch and stuff, but

It is kind of man. I got a weight You know we're not used to having to wait for stuff like that so having that timed release if you don't have a switch You know it's it's definitely a little different But it is cool for Nintendo to have some sort of top-tier Game release that they can kind of pair up and be like Hey, you know now you can buy a switch to you know, here you go. And we got this game coming out you can only get it with this system so It's smart for them and it's good for them. Yeah, and it's for me

It's a game that makes sense for their platform to you like the from soft title that's coming out What does dust born or dust? Like the FromSoft title that's coming out, what is it? DUSKBORN or Duskblood? That's it. Yeah, it's cool that they got that agreement from FromSoftware, but I'm That's not that's not the right type of game for the Switch for me Hades is like the perfect portable game. It was great for me at the time when I was playing it I was traveling a lot. I I was in a lot of airports I was in a lot of bus stations train stations. It was awesome it was deep and it could keep me engaged as long or as short as I had time for and

That is a selling proposition for Nintendo for me. Yeah. I am NOT a fan of exclusives I'm one of those people that think I just want to play video games man Like, you know, I don't like that God of War was PlayStation exclusive for a while. I don't like that Halo was Xbox exclusive for a while. I get it from a business aspect. It makes sense. It's just my personal opinion. I just want gamers to be able to play games. And when you lock one behind a console, I'm just not a fan of that.

I can I can understand why they do it. And I mean, let's be honest, Nintendo is the king of this because, you know, you're not getting their games on any other console, no matter what. So this is on par for Nintendo. This is on par for what Hades did with their initial release. I don't like it personally,

but it's also a timed exclusive. So it just means I'm gonna have to wait. You know, John, you're, you know, you were probably gonna buy a Switch 2 as soon as you can get one anyway I mean you're a huge actually no, no, no the directs got me a bit lukewarm. Okay, if I'm being honest I was I was hoping for something like this to some compelling reason Is it release with the LG switch to or is it just switch to? Like what do you mean just just the original switch as well? Or is it only switch to like what do you mean just just the original

switch as well or is it only switch to that's a good question I thought of that I read that it was as switch if it's backwards like if it's on both yeah that's kind of a little bit less of an issue then because yeah everybody in the world owns a switch at this point yeah so mmm is Haiti okay so John on that on that vein you know we went from my wife was super, super excited for the switch to, to when I told her what the release lineup was, you're getting Donkey Kong, you're not getting Mario or Zelda, you know, and she went, Oh, well I'm fine.

Just waiting then, you know, and it sounds like you kind of had the same reaction where it's like, give me that hot, hot title, and then I'll spend my money on a Switch 2. Is Hades 2 enough of a hot, hot title to get you to change your mind on the waiting part? Assuming it is Switch 2 exclusive, definitely yes. Even if it's backwards compatible, still probably yes. I know there are going to be titles that come out for the switch that I'm going to want at some point You know, whatever the next 3d. Mario is is one of those. I love the Mario games It'll probably be a holiday

2025 release that they just haven't put out yet Nintendo Nintendo Announces their releases in a much shorter window, typically. Which is nice. Yeah, which I love. I love too. And so I have faith that, I guess it'll depend on how many switches they're moving

or how available they are. You know, there's socio-political economic things happening right now that might choke that a bit. But in short Yes, I have the first Hades was man. It should be in my top 10. It's definitely like a top 12 or something It's tiptoeing around the top 10 and I love my switch. I still play it all the time That that would be a mover for me. Certainly So according to IGN the Hades 2 will release on the switch According to IGN the Hades 2 will release on the switch

And then PC will be like an early access But I don't really understand that because it's already an early access on PC So maybe it's just they're not taking away the early access. I don't know so but yeah, it'll be on both That's kind of weird though because like you want to sell your new system, but you're not making an exclusive view new system But if they did then they would probably get such a bad backlash. Like, what do you mean I already got a Switch? Why can't I have it on the normal Switch? Yeah, I don't know. Nintendo's a gigantic company.

Oh yeah. But we've even today found out that there are some things that just don't make sense to me from a business perspective. If I was trying to move consoles, that would be exclusive to that console. And I would take the backlash Hey look guys, we're moving on to the next generation. Yeah, you coming with us or not deal with it

Yeah, if not, you still have Hades one. It's a great game So if we if we go by the Hades one It's about a five month gap between when the timed console exclusive part of it So I would assume it's probably gonna be about the same. I'm just gonna wait five months and then pick it up on PC. As much as I love Hades. Oh yeah, on PC. All right guys.

Zero company. Star Wars fan. Big time. Yeah, Star Wars fan? Oh yeah. Yeah boys. So today, literally this morning, we got the announcement that, uh, and I believe it's respawn came out and said, Hey, we are announcing zero company. This was a code name.

They talked about this before, but it had a code name like previously, but star war zero company is going to be shown off on April 19th. It is a Star Wars turn-based tactics game, a la XCOM, a la Baldur's Gate 3. Ryan is like, man! I love it. Dude, the idea of having like an AT-AT on the field of battle and a Jedi over here and a little land speeder over here.

Heck yeah, man. You know, a stormtroopers or something all duking it out in tactical combat. Dude, this gets me so amped. I cannot wait for this game play. I know you're excited, John. Ryan's like, I was real excited until you said turn-based. We got to change your mind on that. No, I don't know. It's just, I like, I, that's why I love action RPGs because the fluid movement movement of transition between the world into combat, like it's just fluid and it goes and you don't have to stop. And then I'm looking at the 80 18.

I'm like, but this is a little, I mean, this is more, this isn't like persona or final fantasy. This is like XCOM or like I said, like Baldur's Gate is a lot more modern game that a lot of people would be familiar with where, you know, your, it's a top down perspective. You're moving, you're, you're planning your attack, you're strategizing, you know, it's not like final fantasy where it's just like, yeah, three people. I know. I get it. I get it. I get it.

It doesn't change. It doesn't. It's just, it's, it's just not for, I'm sure I wish I could get into them because I know a lot of them have some really great stories and in their, their amazing games that everyone just loves, but I just can't get behind it, man. They just do not do anything for me. It's your loss. Yeah.

I agree. Yeah. I'm sure it is. I wish I could, but you know, it's just not for me. It's your loss. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. I'm sure it is. I wish I could, but it's just not for me. Yeah, and that's fair. You're a pretty kinetic keep going kind of guy, so it makes sense. I grew up on tabletop gaming, so this is like. I want that strategy.

This is great. And I like to, anybody who's watched our Instagram, I like to play games while I'm walking on my treadmill and our turn based RPGs, specifically tactical turn based RPGs are the best for it. Yeah. And I love Star Wars. It's one of my very favorite IPs and all of fiction. And for as good as that IP is, there's not, there's as many good games as there should be so I'm really looking forward to this literally could be good literally rewatched Rogue One yesterday awesome nice awesome so good I'm one of the best people in our community we're talking about it and I was like dude it's been like two years since I've

watched Rogue One so I rewatched it and then Andor season 2 is coming out in a little while and so my wife and I don't have a show to watch right now. And so I was like, would you want to rewatch Andor season one with me? And she's like, what do you mean rewatch? We've never watched that. And I was like, no, no, I want to rewatch it and I want you to watch it with me.

And she agreed. Yeah. She's locked in, baby. She's locked in. I'm pumped, man. Is she into Star Wars at all? No. So I would love to hear what her opinion is.

I've been trying to pitch it to my wife, too. She has zero, nah, I wouldn't say zero interest in Star Wars, but next to zero. But I think that that show is so good on its own merits that you don't have to be a Star Wars fan. It's so well written. That's how my wife was with Rogue One. She is not a Star Wars fan, but she's like,

this is a really good movie. And she'd be like, let's watch Rogue One. And I'm like, old, say less, homie. Like, let's go. All you had to do was tell her it wasn't filled with Jedi and lightsabers and droids. And she was like, OK, that sounds a little bit better to me. So yeah, I'm excited.

So anyway, we don't really have that much information about this. The gameplay reveal, April 19th, we will absolutely be talking about this, you know, after that, but I am hyped for that. You might lose me on that one for a while. Me too, me too. All right, another really quick story,

cause I know we're running long here. This, dude, okay. I know that we are mega fans of Marvel Rivals. Yeah, we play almost nightly and John admitted to us before recording. He said, guys, the last community night, because again, for people that aren't aware, we try to get together with our community, which is almost a thousand gamers strong once a week, if not once every two weeks to come together and play video games, because that's just a blast. And so this last

week we played Marvel rivals. John was there with us. He was struggling. Somebody said, John, maybe you should try Scarlet witch. And it just clicked with John and he admitted before we started recording. He's like, guys, I think I might actually like Marvel rivals now. Yeah. And this is right.

And I lost our minds and we were like, yes, but I got it. So listen, this is the whole thing. This game does not take itself too seriously. The venom twerking emote is one of the funniest things I've ever seen in a video game. To the point where if somebody says, meet me in the middle of the map and let me twerk, both teams will come together and not kill each other

and sit there and watch venom twerk for like 60 seconds before it's like, okay, now let's kill each other. We had a jet battle for the point earlier too, like a week ago. I love it. I love it. So I love the fact that rivals does not take itself too seriously. You know, there has been some, I don't want to call it controversy, but you know, there's a lot of cake in this game. There's a lot of cake and you know, the cake, a lot of people have said, Oh, well, when invisible woman was released, this is a triple layer cake, you know, and, and, you know, and then now, uh, Emma Frost comes out and, and that's just a German

chocolate German chocolate cake. Uh, and so, you know, there's a lot of conversation about all of this, but man, if they didn't, if they didn't secretly also buffed. This is the story is that the developers Secretly buffed a lot of the male heroes will call them assets And didn't tell people and people started to realize like dude venoms looking kind of Up man, I was kicked up anyway Kind of good. He's up man. I was kicked up anyway But he's like and then I've been playing a lot of Captain America and people have been being like that's America's butt right there And then people my man representing and sure enough they came out and they said yes

We did enhance a few of the male assets in this game to go along with some of the female assets that are in this game we all had a fantastic laugh, but I mean, this is the dumbest story ever. This is equality and I love it. That's exactly the part of the reason is, is that people that are mad at the female characters, they kind of like quieted that by going, well, we did it to the male characters and everybody goes, all right, now everybody's happy. We got to give the people what they want. That was kicked up. Everybody's checking out the venom, too, man. It's just like moral. The score is squat.

Everybody's squat. Don't do it like that. Don't skip like that. That story was the funniest story I've seen this week. So all right, guys, one last story that we've got to get to. And again, this is an intent to switch to. I mean, it's in the news. It's a hot conversation. You know, this is what a lot of people are talking about. We actually did touch on this very, very briefly in our switch to reaction episodes.

So if you haven't heard that one, number one, you're missing out on another great rant. But make sure you check that one out. But it has been confirmed and I love Ryan. Ryan put this story in our show doc and he literally put in huge capital letters, are you kidding me? And that is, as every Switch owner in the world knows, you're going through those joy cons like crazy. You are getting stick drift no matter what you do.

You're lucky if it maybe takes six months. I have personally bought brand new joy cons and a month later, a month later had stick drift show up in those joy cons. This is a known issue. It's not exclusive to Nintendo. I will say that this we get this on Xbox controllers. It's just a kind of a nature of the technology, but it's something that every gamer in the world hates.

And it's probably something that every console controller manufacturer loves because then they sell a whole bunch of controllers to people, you know, and Nintendo people have been complaining about this. There was a class action lawsuit against Nintendo about this very issue. And so when the switch to was announced and all the specs came out, people said you're fixing the stick drift, right? And there's a technology and I'll be honest, I don't know what this technology is because I really haven't looked into it called hall

effect joysticks and the hall effect technology will prevent stick drift from ever happening. You will never have to experience this again. And Nintendo said, nah, we don't wanna do that, man. You know how much money we make selling these stupid Joy-Con controllers? What do you mean hall effect? Hall effect, what? So... Just go ahead, go ahead.

It makes sense, right? Well, I am a corporate sympathizer. I am the corporate sympathizer of the three. I would hope... Yeah, come over here. Come over here. Good video only content there. It's very clearly two on one now. I am the corporate sympathizer.

I would like to hope that this is not in fact deliberate obsolescence where they're like... How can it not be? It is deliberate. the corporate sympathizer, I would like to hope that this is not in fact deliberate obsolescence where they're like, how can it not be? It is delivered. How can it not be, dude? There's no possible way this is not deliberate. When you have a manufacturing problem or an issue that's coming from like, like your hardware does this problem, everybody has this problem with your hardware and you don't fix it on your next iteration, your next release, like when you can and you raise Well they didn't fix it with this specific technology. I don't know that

they haven't figured out some other way to fix it. I don't know one way or another. We'll have to wait and see wait this is all speculation at this point I will say to your point that I have never had to replace a controller from any other system I'm an exclusively a console gamer except for the switch yeah so which is the only one that I've had and I like you I've run through I don't know I'm probably I'm like fifth pair of Joy-Cons or something like that. So it seems like really prevalent, like, oh man. Almost like they really know about this issue. So, you know, it's certainly a known issue. I have faith that it is a Japanese-built company and that they are an integrity-based society

and that they're going to fix this and I'll eat my words if I'm wrong. Well, I hope you're hungry. My takeaway on this is if you're already charging $450 for the switch to which I think is a very high price. Number one, just tack on 50 extra dollars, call it 500 and then announce to people that you've fixed this stick drift issue. You know what I mean? Why do they have to charge more because it's probably make it work just make it like that is insane to me You're already we went over this no last year there might be more expensive Manufacture there now, but their net revenue was over three billion dollars on

No, no that was their profit on what? revenue because I think it was like I Don't know 60. I think it was like 60 billion dollars in revenue something like that and three three billion dollars in profit or something like that Something so they kept five pennies out of every dollar three billion is a lot of dollars It's okay. It's it's a lot of dollars until you factor in EBITDA you fat you have to factor in amortization and Taxation you have to figure in dividends that you have to pay your shareholders There's a lot of things that go into that three three billion dollars on paper doesn't necessarily translate none of that matters to me as a consumer

I want a system when I pay four hundred and fifty dollars to not have the controllers drift So I'm going like this and within a month like that, that does not seem like Tendo's the worst. That's so bad problem. Nintendo is the worst. Now I will say in this part of this is my 1800 hours that I have in rocket league, you know,

but like I've been through probably four Xbox controllers, you know, in the past five years, right? And again, I was playing a lot of rocket league, so it's kind of expected. We've been through like five or six pairs of joy cons for the Nintendo switch. Whatever Nintendo is doing, there's a quality control issue. Maybe it's how small they are, but they are the prevalent, like, you know, when you think of stick drift, you think of without a doubt, without a doubt, absolutely. How many PlayStation dual sense controllers have you had to replace Ryan because of stick drift, because of stick drift, you think of without a doubt, without a doubt. Absolutely. How many PlayStation dual sense controllers have you had to replace Ryan because of stick

drift, because of stick drift one one and that's after 1700 hours on destiny and all that stuff. And I have an Xbox elite that I got used and I got to use it for another probably year before that had stick drift. So I don't know how much time we've never had to replace. No. Right. Especially my Sony products have all been tanks.

There is a known issue here. The fact that Nintendo didn't fix this. Now I looked up Hall effect and I'll be honest guys, this sounds expensive. I'm just going to read this. Hall effect sensors have a preset threshold and when the magnetic flux density exceeds this limit, the device is able to detect the magnetic field by generating an output called the hall voltage. This force causes a movement of electrons, creating a measurable hall voltage and activating

the hall effect sensor. We lost half the audience. Sounds like nuclear technology to me. I mean, again, I don't know the cost of this. I'm with you that, you know, how do you not make this a thing? But again, if it increases the price of all the Joy-Cons by a hundred dollars to where, you know, is that a solution? Charge 500 for the system and make a system that works.

Like that one. I agree. Charge what you need to, to put the thing out correctly. Yeah. I mean, you have a class action lawsuit against your company by people because this is such a known issue that people have come together And said hey, dude and Nintendo's like sorry Billions were making selling these joy cons Yeah, but I mean that's gonna be leveled if they end up having to pay out this class action lawsuit

That's what I'm saying is that like if I'm thinking about this from a corporate perspective they go Hey, we like we in a very real way are liable we have liability because of this like we're being sued They can't say they didn't know now like the switch one they could well now they can't what I guess what I'm saying Is is that if if the initial argument was hey, we're going to make a lot of money by selling all these Additional controllers because we have built-in obsolescence in our controllers. Now they also have to contend with the fact that there's this lawsuit, and this lawsuit could end up costing way more than they made on these additional controllers. So if I am a big entity like Nintendo, and I'm going, people are relying on me to release a quality product and I know

that there's an issue with this. We have to figure out a solution for it. And I get again, it may be ill guided, but I have faith in them as a corporation. You're gonna start hearing those commercials online like, have you been wronged by Nintendo joy con controllers like call one 800 has John at the video gamers podcast led you wrong. Showing us in this. I will say this.

I think that there is a compromise solution where and razor did this right because I've I loved razor mice for the longest time and the like a lot of them have a like a double click issue right and I remember I spent a lot of money on this razor mouse and it started double clicking to where I couldn't hold to zoom because it would zoom in and zoom out real fast, start doing some Googling and it's like, Oh, this is a known issue with the sensors that razor uses. What does razor do? They don't stop making that mouse.

They just make a version that has a pro sensor in it that uses lasers instead of whatever the clicker things are. And now you don't have to worry about double click issues, right? So it, but then now they charge a premium for it and they say, oh, you want the Razer V2 with the optical sensor? Okay, well that's $90, buddy. Oh, you want the old Razer that is probably gonna have double click issues?

Only 50 bucks, which one do you wanna buy? And most people go, well, I don't have $90 to spend on a mouse, so I'll buy the $50 mouse and then I'll just deal with the double click issue. So what Nintendo could do is say, Hey guys, hall effect joy cons. You want them, you're going to pay for them. A hundred bucks.

We'll call them pro controllers or whatever you want to, I guess I can't call it that because that's a different controller for that, but you can offer the option to people that want it. And if people don't pay for it, then you can go, I mean, we, we offered it. We gave you the choice, you know, and then that would be the solution to gross. I feel like I stood up for Nintendo right there. All right. Who are you? Goodness gracious. All right, guys, listen, we are out of time. This has been, I mean, this has been a blast. If you have ever wanted to watch a video of

this one, this is the one to do it because we are all together in studio. I mean just having fun to talk in video games is a blast. It is really the best. It is why we do this podcast. It is why we have the community that we have if you are not part of that community you are missing out. I mean we read the review from Lucy Moon who said hey, I was a lurker for the longest time.

She is very active now. We have gamers of all ages in there. We have men, we have women. I mean, everybody is welcome in this community. From around the world too. From around the world. I mean, you know, and so just come be a part of it. We welcome you to Lurk and just check it out for a while,

but it really is the best place on the planet for gamers. So if you are a gamer and you're like, man, I really wish I had other gamers to hang out with and just talk games. Sometimes we get lurkers that pop up and they're like, dude, I got a buddy, we're looking for a game to play together. Can people recommend us a game? A bunch of people chime in and then they just disappear

into the ether again and that's fine. Like, you know what I mean? Like the fact that they're there is awesome. So link is in the episode description. If you would like to ask us a question for the show or just support the podcast in general, you can head over to multiplayer squad.com to do that. We have different tiers. Our epic tier gets to ask a question for the show, which we will absolutely answer at the top of an episode. So that's a fun little perk there. You also get a bunch of discord perks and stuff also.

And don't forget to leave us a review. It really, really does help the podcast. If you're listening on Apple, it's a five-star or I'm sorry, if you're listening on Spotify, it's a five-star rating. If you're on Apple, you can actually leave us a written review and we will read that on the show at some point. That's our guarantee to you. We're getting there. We're getting there. We swear. We just, we don't want to spend 20 minutes at the top of a show reading reviews to try to get caught up either because that's not fun for anybody either. So, all right, that's

going to do it for this episode, boys. All right. Until next time, happy gaming. See you. Toodles. Until next time, happy gaming. See ya toodles!