Video Gamers Podcast - Diablo II to Sony State of Play – TWIG Breakdown – Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: February 17, 2026

Gaming hosts Josh, Ryan and Ace are back with another fast-paced TWIG (This Week in Gaming), breaking down the biggest headlines shaking up the world of gaming. From the shocking news surrounding Ashes of Creation reportedly shutting down, to major mass layoffs hitting the team behind Highguard, the guys dig into what these developments mean for the industry and for fans of ambitious video games everywhere. Is this a rough patch for gaming studios, or part of a bigger shift in how video games are made and supported? They also revisit the legacy of Diablo II: Resurrected and why it’s still a benchmark for how to properly revive classic video games, plus break down all the biggest reveals and surprises from the latest Sony State of Play. If you want sharp takes, industry insight, and real talk about where gaming is headed next, this episode of the Video Gamers Podcast delivers.                   Kena: Scars of Kosmora https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12EQpTwn4lY (2026)                                 (PS5/PC) 2026 Release (a pixar game…)                 Silent Hill: Townfall https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvN3dP92wxU                                  (PC/PS5) 2026 Release                 Project Windless: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HD0dMr3kAQs                                  (PC/PS5/Xbox) No set release date                 4:Loop Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoXXNPgqYkw                                  (PC/PS5) No set release date                 Star Wars Galactic Racer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDBc-kbL-Ic                                  (PC/PS/Xbox) 2026 Release                 Castlevania: Belmonts Curse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3-SJLWzjmE                                  (All platforms) 2026 Release                 Saros Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcLGdMG0L8Q                                  (PS5 only) April 30th Release Marathon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aovqnB1fUp0   Thanks to our MYTHIC Supporters: Redletter, Disratory, Ol’ Jake, Gaius, Jigglepuf, Phelps and NorwegianGreaser, and Dettmarp   Thanks to our Legendary Supporters: HypnoticPyro, PeopleWonder, Bobby S.   Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/videogamerspod⁠ Join our Gaming Community: https://discord.gg/h2cHKAvSmu 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

fellow gamers and welcome to the video gamers podcast. Boy, do we have a lot of gaming news to catch you up on from studio shutdowns to Sony's state of play to old games getting new DLC and a bunch of hot new trailers. And is it possible that Marathon is winning us over? We'll get to all that in a minute, but first some introductions are in order. I am your host Josh and joining me. He got a late night text from his ex-girlfriend named Diablo to remastered, and within moments he was shacking up.

It's Ryan. See less, baby, girl. I'm on my way. Didn't like that. Unpleasant. I'm back, baby. I'm back. Hey, Ryan, I'm lonely.

What are you doing? I didn't like that at all. I'm on my way, baby. Oh, man. And joining us, he's the mattress king himself, the diver of dumpsters and the foreman of foam. It's ace. That story's Patreon exclusive. If you want to hear it, you better get the Patreon.

Listen, look, look, I'm going to tell people right now, we've been hyping this up. You guys, you guys trust us. You trust us for our game reviews. You trust us for this podcast. You trust us, you know, for the, how awesome our discords. servers. Just trust us people. You it's worth the $5 a month to get access to the pre-show where we talk about crazy stories and things that are happening in life. And it's, it's very off the cuff.

And Ace told the most amazing story about his weekend and the battle that he had over a new mattress for, for he and his spouse. I can't imagine, dude, I, like, I guarantee you the pre-shows are worth $5 alone. I'm not even counting all the other perks that come with being a Patreon supporter, okay but just trust me that intro was in direct relation to that you think mattress mac mac is sweet we got mattress mattress ace and he's

another level right here yeah I hate the word mattress right now what this guy won't do for a new it's a band word in the ace of shame household I'm banning that word I'm banning that word in the discord before this episode goes up tomorrow yeah oh man

all right well listen as much as I would love to retell the story of ace's mattresses Escapit. Oh, that doesn't sound. Aces, mattress, um, shenanigans? That's, that ain't much better. That's not bad. Okay. It's a completely wholesome story, people, but you just, it's worth it. Trust me. Uh, anyway,

let's talk video games. Yeah, let's talk about video games. Not my mattress. That's drastically wrong. Um, all right, so we got some news stories. We have to cover. We, we miss these last week because, hey, some weeks we like to do kind of a, not always do the news every single week. Um, yeah.

Catching up a little bit. So, but we got to talk about some of these. This one, this first one really bugs me, guys, because this, this game was the MMO that I had all of my hopes and dreams on. And I have told people this for years. You did. People like, hey, what's an MMO? And I say, bro, Ashes of Creation. It's the greatest looking MMO since World of Warcraft came out. Like, this is the one. Yeah. Oh, crap. Well, the studio shut down, boys, and it's, uh, it's no more. So, uh, There you go. My hopes and dreams are crushed by the gaming industry once again.

Get rug pulled. It kicks the legs. Yeah. So you're not alone too, dude. Like I was watching stuff just to get a little more in-depth knowledge of it. And, you know, I stumbled upon this dude's YouTube. And I felt so bad because he's like, you know, and he's describing it. And he's like, I spent the last few years, like, just covering this game.

And now all of that time is gone because the game's not even going to launch. Like, I was so. excited. I was so stoked for it. All of my content has been about this game. And now it's, it's kapits. Like, it's gone. It's not going to be anything. And, you know, so you feel bad and, like, all this people putting all this time into these things. But man, what a bummer. Yeah. This was, yeah, my hopes and dreams, boys. This MMO looked ridiculous. It did. I actually would watch the developer, like, diaries that they would do in the videos talking about the new characters and the multi-classes and the abilities.

And I was like, this is everything that anybody that played EverQuest and World of Warcraft, the OG MMOs have been waiting for in an MMO. And then it's just all just down the toilet. I've been craving an MMO for like 20 years, dude. You know, like a good one. I said, dude, this will be the game that I play for like years, like years to come because it looked that good. And then apparently they had some inter...

So the story behind this is there was some kind of internal dispute between the CEO or the lead guy of the company and then the board of directors. And then apparently the guy claims that the board of directors was starting to ask them to do some shady things, probably micro transactions or something, right? To where the guy was like, no, we're not going to do that. And then the board was like, oh, yeah, well, you have to. And then the guy was like, I won't be a part of this. I'm leaving. And then he did the whole Jerry McGuire thing where he's like, who's coming with me? And apparently everybody went like, yeah, we're going with you. And then the board of directors is just like, just flip the table and said

screw all you guys this is done and they shut the whole studio down like literally everybody's gone and it's just a notch on their ledger and that's just it I mean that's all your that's everyone you can't come back from that best in peace Asthmaest of Creation I almost guys the crazy

part is I all because they just came to steam and there's a lot of people that think that they scam steam people yeah like knowing that they were going to shut down and then they came to steam after all this time and I almost I almost bought into the early access, dude. And I'm so glad I didn't because it was like, nope.

You know better. You know better. Steam is refunding all those people. So that's the good news. This is why we love Steam, dude. We know they take a hefty price from developers. We understand that. But at the same time, like, Steam looks out for gamers and they take care of stuff like

this. And yeah, don't mess with Steam people. No. And then another round of depressing gaming news. So let's just get this out of the way. high guard this one this one hurts boys it hurts it hurts because we played a lot of this game

we enjoyed this game we can understand the flaws we're not saying the high guard was perfect but it was not what the internet would have you believe and if you don't like high guard that's fine like honestly like I said we you know we've always said people like different things but high guard did announce that they had mass layoffs

there is only what they are calling a skeleton crew left to just keep the game functional for people, but they let go most of their developers on this game, and it's you know, we all know why, right? Yeah. They don't have a good enough player count.

There's not enough hype for the game. People, you know, it spiked it, a hundred thousand concurrent people and then promptly dropped off. And that's where high guard is. It sucks. It sucks. But the nice thing was at least, like, the lead dev said, I don't care how many people play

the game. I'm making this game because I love this game. It's like, okay. I'm making this for the people that love this game. And that's nice to hear and it's a nice sentiment, but that doesn't mean you can keep going indefinitely. That doesn't make money though. That's the problem is that right now, right now on SteamDB, there's

1,326 people playing. That's gross. Ouch. I mean, that's bad, dude. And this is not a bad game. It is, it is not a great game by any means, but It's not a bad game. And they just got nuked from the get-go for whatever reason.

And it's a bummer to see, in my opinion, like, I think they were just a victim of circumstance with whatever happened. Their peak was the 97,000. But yeah, right now, 1,300 they're sitting at. Well, it was a bad launch, but then also, not even a month later, Overwatch relaunched. And everyone just went back to Overwatch. Yeah, good timing on Overwatch. And don't worry. we're going to be talking about Overwatch on next Monday's episode.

Yeah, that'll be one Monday. We're going to let you all know if Overwatch is back as well. So yeah, Rip Highguard. Honestly, you know, people say this happens in the gaming industry all the time. You know, here's the problem. We saw so many, or I at least saw so many posts from the developers, people that worked on High Guard, you know, because there was something like 200 people, I think, like 100 to 200 people that worked on this. And so I saw a lot of posts where it was, hey, I was one of the,

the developers for High Guard, we thought, we thought we had something magical here. Like, everybody that saw the game and told us about the game, you know, behind the scenes was like, oh my gosh, you guys, this is, this is awesome. And then it wasn't awesome. And then the internet decided it wasn't awesome. And again, this game absolutely had flaws. Like, there's, there are parts of the game that led to this happening. But I don't think it failed solely off of the content and quality of the game.

Let's just, let's just put it that way. But that's the hard part for me because it's like you had this dream of this game and then you everything just fell up to pieces. And that's got to hurt, man. Like there's humans behind these projects, man. And to me, that's like the empathetic part is like I feel bad for these people to think that they had this like hot new game just to have everybody take a steaming dump all over it, man. Yeah. I think that's what's easy to forget with how disconnected we are from people with the internet is that there are people behind the projects you dunk on all the time. Like there are people who have to go back home to their families,

people who live alone and just have to sit with that, whatever you said about their game, that they probably spent probably the majority of their career working on. Like genuinely. I mean, gamers are tough. It's the industry you're in. We dunk on games we don't like, you know, but we do also try to say,

hey, this game might be for this person or, you know, if you like this type of game, maybe this will resonate with you a little bit more. But, you know, I think it's just part of being a gamer. So, yeah. And then we've got even more bad news, guys. Continue.

I was trying. I was like hesitating to be like, gosh, guys, is this really what we're doing now? And then to XCO, they laid off half their staff as well, guys. So this is the fighting game from Riot Studios that went with the, What is it, the League of Legends? Yeah, it was the League of Legends fighting game. Yeah. A lot of people were highly anticipating this.

The fighting game's not doing well, apparently. And I played the demo on this one. It was fine. I know there's some people in our community that really cracked out on it and had a lot of fun with it. But the fighting game genre is a difficult beast, man. That's a tough not to crack. It's just, it's already got its giants and it's hard to innovate on it. And this is the thing I was going to say, too,

like even its giants are struggling a little bit. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's just not street fighter. Yeah, it's not that, I mean, there's the two that are always the ultimates. And even those, like, really aren't like the mainstays or the top levels of just overall games. Like, they're the top of fighting games.

But anybody trying to enter into this world, like, it's, it would be so scary to me as a, like, developer or game designer to think, like, I, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to design a fighting game, you know, when you're going against those, you know, that's, that's got to be so... Not a competitive fighter. Yeah.

I would never recommend somebody trying to go. No, no, not at all. Like, you want to make a fighting game? Make Absalom. Like, there you go. That's a gun. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just, oh, man, okay, this is such a blast with my friends. But to get into the, like, e-sports competitive fighter game, I is a, I would not ever attempt it personally. So, all right, well, guys, listen, that's all the bad news. Yay! Now that we've gotten everybody nice and sad and depressed about the gaming industry, let's talk about all the good stuff, boys.

And we're going to start on Ryan's rub. Ryan, why don't you just tell us? Why don't you just tell everybody, Ryan? I'm going to let you tell people this little news story. So I don't, I don't know, I don't know if your description is, is apt on this. I guess you can say it is a necromancer class. I would say, but Diablo 2 remastered, uh, the, the great. entity that it is decided

in its infinite wisdom to give us an update, give us some new DLC and we have 15 years old. It's like 25 years old dude. It's like 20, 25. Like this is

like like I think Diablo's 2 was like 98 or something and then Lord of Destruction was like 2000, 2001. But Diablo 2 remastered, released the warlock. Resurrection. Is it? remastered or res i think it's resurrected is i think it's resurrected which is just fancy word for

remastered yeah whatever d2r d2r d2r because there's going to be somebody oh somebody's gonna be like oh no no no you guys said it wrong you idiots you don't know yeah no i don't basically just just for just for the sake of our fact we're not we're not arguing with you at all yeah um yeah yeah it's resurrected but like basically we got a new character he he's very sassy in a stance but you got a warlock uh which is super cool and then also absolutely amazing to get a new character to a game that's 20 plus years old, 25 years old.

Man, what an awesome thing. And from the developers, if this hits well and takes well, they are potentially looking at adding more content for B2R. So, I'm pretty excited. Blizzard?

Blizzard is going to remaster more content for us, Rogan? I find that hard to believe. Isn't it crazy? This one, Okay, this one I'm actually excited for. This one I'm excited for, dude. Yeah, that this mega AAA Studio is just going to keep remastering stuff for us. Dude, I still, I bought into the, the wow classic, the vanilla while.

I totally bought back in. I'm like, yep, I'm in. And I went and I ran through all. I ran to like level 30 or 40. The old school, that was hard, dude. So I put in like 60 hours to get back to like level 30 or whatever. But, uh, but yeah, man, dude, I'm, I'm all for this. I'm so stoked.

I think they added some more stuff to Diablo 4 as well, but, uh, but this D2R stuff is, is top notch for me. Dude, we've seen people in our community playing. We're getting highlight videos and screen grabs from, from this showing off the warlock class, I guess. I think I called it Necromancer. Although, yeah, that is a difference. I mean, he has a, he has a summon.

And in Goatman, the Goatman summon is like, O.P. Dude. It's so sick. So they're going to, I'm sure they're going to adjust stuff. But like, I tried it. I'm, uh, I hopped on. just a little bit because the new ladder starts Friday. This episode releases tomorrow.

So yeah, so Friday the new ladder starts. I can start a hardcore ladder and just go all out with the warlock. But yeah, dude, he's got this summon. We just got Ryan off of Diablo 2 resurrected. And then you go and you pull him right back in again. He just pull me right back. Ryan, I'll say this. You have two weeks until Resident Evil Reck.

Less than two weeks until Resident Evil Requiem comes out. So you just get all your Diablo 2 out of your system over the next couple weeks. Yeah, that's how it works 25 years later. Yeah, I'll just get it out of my system. Yeah. Yeah. So there you go. All right, listen, everybody, we're going to take a quick break and then we're going to come down. We're going to talk about everything in the Sony state of play.

Well, most things, the things that bear mentioning because some of them don't. But we're going to talk about the Sony state of play right after this break. All right. We are back. It's time to talk about the state of playboys. and before we dive into the state of play, what are your overall thoughts on this one? Did it cook?

Did it suck? What did you guys think on this? This is a significant improvement over the last several state of plays. Yeah. Like, oh my gosh, actual things I recognize and can be excited for. Yeah, I think the same thing. I wouldn't say this was like an amazing showcase, but I do think that it was actually worth having a showcase for.

It's better than bad. Some of these showcases, we're just like, you know you don't have to do this, right? Like, you don't have to have one of these. all the time. I love those. You can still delete this. You know, you know that, right? Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. So some of them, it's like, okay, why'd you do this? This one, it's like, okay, okay. Like, there was some things here. Cooking a little bit. I like it. I like it. What we're going to do just for the sake of time is I'm going to go through some of the, like,

to just the quick news hitters from the state of play. And then we're going to get into the game announcements in the trailers and kind of break those down a little bit more for you. So some news that was announced at the state of play, the sons of Sparta, So this is a god of war side shoot. Just say it. Say what it is. Say the word. Say what it is.

Say the word. Do it. You know what it is, Josh. That's a Metroidvania. It's a God of War. You got a god of war. No. No.

The second I saw the trailer start, I'm like, dang it. Oh, I know. That's exactly what I said. And I even went to our Discord server and I said, Sons of Sparta just disappoints me, man. I'm like, a parent that's just disappointed. And I'm sorry, T. Foles, we love you.

And I know T. Foll's longstanding member of the community and listener of the show is having a blast with Sons of Sparta, which we love seeing. But as a huge God of War fan, I'm just like, why? People like, why? Just because you can make something. Doesn't mean you have to make something. And I'll be honest, like, most people that I have seen that are talking about Sons of Sparta went, this is a very basic game, dude. That's what I've heard. It's a very basic Metroidvania.

And someone like me who plays a good bit of like very complex Metroidvania's would probably get bored of it pretty quick. But I do like that it has lore and story before Cretos became, you know, Cratos. Yeah, I just want Cretos, man. If you take Cretos out of God of War, guess what? I don't care. I don't care anymore. You know, I mean, yeah, whatever.

So anyway, but it is out. You can play it. This was kind of like a surprise drop, Sons of Spartan, if you're in the mood for a God of War, Metroidvania. We also got news that the God of War original trilogy is getting a remakes for all of them? I want to see gameplay because

I've seen some AI videos where they take it and they make it look like God of War 2018 but it's with young Kratos and it's that kind of over the shoulder hyperviolence. When he's crazy and angry? This is why I like AI because I get to see. Now if this is just

we're taking frame for frame the old god of war games and we're trying to like smooth some of these polygons and stuff like i mean i'll probably still play them but that doesn't excite me nearly as much i don't think that's what it is just because they brought all the old voice actors back in which tells me that they're doing something yeah they have the original so not michael judge i can't remember his name but yeah yeah so christopher judge we that's all we know i'm very excited but i'm trying to temper that a little bit to go like you know what kind of remake are we talking about you know, this isn't, they didn't call it a remaster.

So that lends me to think that they're actually going to like make these in the vein of like God of War 2018 maybe, which if they do, oh, baby. Like, oh, baby. Yeah. I just hope they do that. Do you think they're going to cut some stuff? If they, probably, yeah. Yeah, I didn't know. For this.

2026. Listen, do not cut. No, because that's dumb. You made these games like just be truthful to the recreation. You know, be true to the art. True to the art, babies. Thank you. It's got a freaking war, man.

Don't dumb this down. Yeah. Don't dumb this down. We need that mini game when we knock the vase off the bedside table. Yes. It's part of the original games, Ace. And that's what made the original games, not that particular. But it will be upgraded.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. This time with haptic feedback on your control. I could not say it. That was my brain. This was the one where it was coming out. My brain's like, you probably shouldn't make that. joke man and then i was like i do they be bro you ever knocked off the vase in olad come on

oh man um all right and then beast of reincarnation uh we've covered this game several times now it did get a release date of august fourth of twenty twenty six death stranding to the pc release which is going to be freaking gorgeous man i can't imagine how good this game is going to look on PC. I'll just never play it because I don't like Death Stranding. But the PC release is coming March 19th. So guess what, guys? The most packed month of the year for games, let's just throw another one on there, man. Let's just really stress everybody out on which games they're going to pick up and play. March going to be wild. Come on, man. You could just release it in June or July when nothing was happening. Like, come on, man. And then and then this one,

and we're going to talk about this when we talk about the trailers and stuff, but Marathon, which releases, I believe, March 5th, so that's coming up real fast, Marathon announced an open play test that is available to everybody that is going to be happening from February 26th to March 2nd. I will absolutely be checking this out at this point. I have not played a lick of Marathon. I've watched a lot of trailers and stuff like that, but I will absolutely be trying out this play test because I'm very curious about this game.

26th, uh, with nine days from today, uh, from when this releases. Um, yeah, do you, I'm, you have fun with that, buddy. I'm playing Resident Evil. Yeah. Well, I mean, I got to dabble. Yeah. I'm playing WrestleMania. You can't play one game. Yeah. Can you, Ace don't want no triple A shooter anyway. This is, this is, this goes against like, yeah, he's DNA. He's like, you want me to play a AAA shooter? I ain't playing that. Oh, gross. Get it away from me. Not wrong. Get it away. Yeah, I know. all right boys let's talk some trailers uh and we got a lot to talk about i know look i know they announced a bunch of stuff but we what we you know we're gamers we're gonna talk about the things that we think are interesting and and that we think might interest you yes there were some niche

games they talked about we're sorry if we don't talk about them now but you know we only have so much time too so uh kenna scars of kosumora guys we i forgot all about kenna bridge of spirits was the original yeah forgot about this game and until Ace, you did the indie games episode. And then I was like, God, this game looks incredible. I've never played it. I might need to remedy that at some point. But Scars of Kusmore is the second game to this.

And visually speaking, this game looks amazing. It does. Pixar's dabble into video games. Honestly, kind of looks like you were playing a Pixar game. And I am, I am kind of here for that. Yeah, no, it looks good. It's not disparaging comment. I'm just saying, like with the way it looks.

No, it definitely looks It looks super cool Like there's not much to be said Like bad about it Like from what I've seen Video-wise and gameplay-wise It looks really neat And I got a same as you Josh

Remedy that lack kind of there Of gameplay Yeah I this also like moves Kind of up on my backlog Of games I need to play Like I need to get to Bridge of Spirit So I can play this

This looks really good to me It kind of looks like a mix of horizon and Breath of the Wild. It was so interesting and unique. It's a gorgeous game that looks like it actually legit has good gameplay and a good story. This is one, like you said, I never played Bridge of Spirits,

but it got really, really good reviews and ratings. And then this game is coming out in 2026, so it's coming out this year. Oh, man. And it's coming out for PS5 and PC. Oh, we win. Because if I remember right, Bridge of Spirits was a PS exclusive for all the first.

That was a PlayStation exclusive for a year. And then it came to PC. Right. Right. So this one, we're getting a simultaneous release at least. Which is kind of cool. This should be on your radar. This game looks incredible, guys.

A game to me, Ace, I confess this to you, and I'm sorry. There's going to be people that it'd be like, Josh. What? Silent Hill Townfall. We got to look at this. This is a new announcement. I didn't know about this game, at least, before this.

state of play. I'm kind of off on the Silent Hill, guys. I don't know why, man. I don't play a ton of horror games, I think, is what it is. I'm not saying that Silent Hill is bad, but I'm just saying that now that we had, like, Silent Hill F and Silent Hill Townfall and the Silent Hill remake and Silent Hill this and Silent Hill that. And I just kind of am going like, cool.

Like, I think that's my answer to that is like, cool. Like, I don't know why I've kind of fallen off on Silent Hill. Like, but I didn't, I've never gotten into. Island Hill. But I will say taking it from the third person perspective into the first does interest me with it a little bit more. I do like that. Being like up in the face of these horrific monstrosities that some twisted mind created somewhere. That really elevates it. Kind of like how Resident Evil starts to lose you near like five and six. But then you go to seven and now it's all first person and you're trapped in a house in Louisiana being haunted by like.

crazy people. Yeah. First person is more immersive to me. And in a horror game, I want that immersion. Yeah, yeah. I think the other neat thing with Silent Hill Townfall is it's being co-developed by an indie game studio alongside Konami. This is cool, dude.

Yeah, this is cool. This is one of two of these instances where Konami is working hand in hand with an indie game studio on a game. And in this case, they're working with Annapurna, which we know Anapurna from Stray. Yeah. Among other games. good. They're, yeah,

Anapurna makes good stuff, man. They do. Yeah, so there you go. People that love Silent Hill, Silent Hill Townfall, 2026 release and on PC and PS5 for that one. Guys, this next one.

So Project Winless. We got this, we got this announcement. We got this trailer. For my old Looney, is it Looney Toons? Looney Tunes, if you're talking about.

Foghorn, Leghorn. If you ever wanted to see Foghorn, like him pissed off, just slaughtering everything. That's what. Project Winless is. I know this is based on some lore from some book or something that people were very excited for.

I don't know what that is. Sorry, I'm dumb. This doesn't do it for me, guys. I'm not a fan of Dynasty Warriors. I say this is like Dynasty Warriors mixed with like Black Myth Wukong. And also, whenever I look at it, I just think, Kentucky may cry. Kentucky may cry.

Chicken. Yeah, there you go. I mean, how many chicken jokes? can we make, right? Like, I do think it actually does look very good. I just don't know if it's something I'm interested in personally, just because I've never gotten super into the warrior style games. Yeah.

But it looks really good. It does. It looks beautiful. It's a good looking game. It seems like it's going to be a lot of fun. It's just not my style of game. And I can't help but laugh at this really, really giant chicken runner. I'll say, I'll say, you will not escape this battle.

All right. Another one that we got, we got to speed up a little bit here, boys. Four Loop. I never seen this game before. This game look, I mean, you talk about a co-op shooter with your friends.

These games are made for me. They're one of my favorite games ever. I have a blast on almost all of them. I didn't know what to make out on this one because the art style and the graphics and stuff are like really futuristic, but then there's a lot going on at any given moment.

moment like a lot going on but then at the same time like my brain was tingling and kind of going like this looks pretty cool like I can see this being a lot of fun boys they talk about the randomness they talk about the it's almost like a rogue like in a way where you know the levels and the battles that you go into are going to be random they talk about infinite replayability and stuff like that what you guys think about for loop I think it looks great and as a group of people who really enjoy these like PV extraction games like hell divers like far far west like we really enjoy these kind of games and having one be a roguelike where things are constantly changing i think that'll keep things fresh and interesting along with they kind of mentioned there's multiple ways to

tackle everything so i'm kind of excited for four loop i think it looks great ryan this is the kind of game i know you would absolutely love like if you started playing it but i don't know what you think about it like up front so what are your what are your thoughts after i think you're pretty spot on I'm like, I don't know about this. That's how you thought about Far Far West. I'm sure if I played it, I would love it. I know as Sue, the Ace pulls out Far Far West and doesn't say Arc Raiders. I didn't play Arc Raiders and that's PVE, PVP.

Yeah, but it's an extraction shooter. It's an extraction shooter. Like, come on. But I mean. Do you extract on it? I don't think you extract in Forloup. Do you? Yeah.

It said if one person can make it out, you win. Oh, that's right. They did as long as one person gets out. Yeah. Yeah. So what is that one with Elysium or something like with Matt Damon where he's got like the backpack with all the stuff and he's like kind of a me met guy. That's what this reminds me of for some reason. It's like slightly futuristic.

I think I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. Something I don't know. I'm sure the name's way off. But yeah. I think Elysium. That might be Matt Damon.

It's either Matt Damon or Tom Cruise or I'm thinking of oblivion. Oblivion is Tom Cruise. Elisium is Matt Damon. There you got the one. Okay. I sure there's a lot of names you guys are thrown around. All right. Well, just, you know, friends of the podcast is all.

Okay, so for Four Loop, no release date, but they did confirm it will be coming out on PC and PS5. Guys, this next one. I'm so excited for this one. I'm so excited. I'm so excited for this next one, boys. Star Wars Galactic Racer. We got another video. We got a confirmed 26 release date on this one.

It is coming for PC, PlayStation, and Xbox. And this is, guys, this is pod racing. This is Podracer. It's Podracer in 2026 and I could not be happier about this game. It is everything I wanted from a racing game. It's freaking Star Wars. It's Pod Racing. They can't call it Podracer for some reason.

I don't know why. But this game looks great. I wholeheartedly agree. Ace wasn't old enough for pod racing when it came out. Nope. So I don't care. Dude, there was nothing. There was nothing.

Like booting up the old N-64, kicking it on, blowing into the pod racing game, throw it into the slot, and then starting that and just playing for hours and hours and hours in racing. This looks so cool. I miss a quality. Everything's a lot of real, no shade at them at all, because I love it.

I love Grand Turismo. I love all the other ones. Racing Sims are awesome. But I want a good arcade, like Star Wars racer, so bad and this is like fits the bill dude and i'm so excited for this to get to get the option to race speeders or or bikes or pot you know whatever it may be they were racing in the star wars universe i am all for it looks beautiful it looks like the racing is crisp and clean they have i mean a million template templates on how to do it so they there shouldn't be a problem on designing

something that that works uh i think this is going to be awesome i'm so stoked i i i This might be the game I'm most excited for out of all of these guys. Like legitimately, Dave, Ace is giving me that look, but you don't understand Ace. Podracer was incredible. Yeah,

but the game below. No, I get Suboba. No, I get Suboba. The game below this is way more exciting. I mean, I'm excited for that one too, but I'm telling you,

dude, Galactic Racer is hitting, it's like, it's hitting that cord that, like, I haven't felt in a long time, man, where it's this like arcade racer,

pod racer, I mean, I'll take your word for it. I don't, I don't know what the limit on racers is, but we're going to be having some crazy community. 40 racer community. Like 20 man racing going on, dude.

Just crashing through people. The speed that these things go at, like PodRacer was hard, dude. Yeah. It was super hard. It was amazing. I'm so stoked for Collactic Racer movie. I am also stoked for this next one.

And you guys know me, I'm not that big of a Metroidvania fan, unlike our buddy Ace here. But guys, we're back. We got the announcement. We're back. Castlevania. Belmont's curse, this is my kind of

Metronia. What is a man? I'm so excited. Pile of secrets. How about the? It looks incredible. The art style, the combat, the visuals, the the crispness of the gameplay, the Castlevania

feel, they show off the whip that you loot at in one of the chess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It looks so good. Yeah. I'm so excited for this. I love Metroid manias. This is where. That love for Metrovania starts is with the Castlevania franchise, like generally.

And having it back on its 40th anniversary, it's just so nice to know that Castlevania is like here to stay if this succeeds. And this is the other one I was talking about that is in collaboration with another indie dev. Alongside Konami, Motion Twin will be working on this game, which are the developers behind dead cells. No. You know the combat's going to be tight. So you know the combat is going to be so good. So I'm very excited for this. Yeah.

If you, yeah, everything they showed, dude, looked so good on this for me. And it takes a lot to get me interested in a Metroidvania because we see so many of them. But this one, I was like, ooh, okay. All right. I'm in. You got my attention on this one. That's coming 2026 for all platforms, all platforms. So Switch included on that one.

Oh, wow. Nice. Yeah. All right, this next one, we got more of a look at Saros. This is the spiritual successor to Returnal by Housemark Studios. I think this game looks fantastic. I love the pace of gameplay on this. I love how crisp everything is.

I love the difficulty. If you haven't seen Seros gameplay, you're missing out. This is the next evolution of Returnal. We got a deeper look at the gameplay on this one. Here's where it breaks my heart a little bit. this will be a PlayStation exclusive only for at least a little while. I know. Don't worry, Josh.

You can just keep waiting for it to go on sale. I can just keep waiting. Ryan's not going to play Seros. So, you know, that's one of them. You don't know my life. You don't know my life. We did get confirmation of the release date on this, which is April 30th. So that's not that far away, guys.

Saros looks incredible to me. I also drafted it for my game of the year, so I'm really hoping that it holds up to you know, being what it looks like at least. All right. And then last one, guys, I promise this. Marathon. You know, people have heard of Marathon. This is not any, you know, breaking news.

However, we got a new trailer for Marathon. And I will say this. What do you think, Josh? This is the first trailer where I went, bro, I think this game might actually be pretty good. It's looking pretty good. It's looking pretty good. We have been critical.

We have been skeptical. We are not rooting for failure. Let's be very, very clear here. Marathon, I want nothing more than Marathon to be an absolute blast of a game, dude. We've been saying that since the beginning. We've said we have some hesitation about that actually being the case. But this is the first time I watched a trailer for Marathon and I went, oh, oh, baby. Like, this looks real good to me.

So I don't know what they did. I think they showed the trailer off in four. I noticed like the visuals were cleaned up. That's one of the things that a lot of people talked about is they cleaned up the UI a whole lot. They showed some of the gameplay and the combat like breaking out. And I'll say this. This was the first time where I saw the gunplay and I went, this is bungee. Like this is the bungee gameplay on this one.

And that got me real excited. I don't know why none of the other trailers landed for me, but I'll tell you this one knocked it out of the park and got me real excited. And I think I even messaged maybe I was chatting with Ryan last. night when we were playing a real-a-old. But I was like, bro, I'm beginning to turn around on my thoughts on Marathon, and I think it might actually wind up being real good. What did you guys think on this one? A-A- what do you think, buddy?

It sure is another multiplayer arena shooter. That sure is what it is. I like the style. I do like that it's not just a basic plain, boring style. I like how Ace is like, this is just another AAA shoot. another one in the mix of all. Ace, you've played 5,000 Metroidvanias. Yeah, and this is the same thing. This is the same thing. All right.

You know, you get to talk about how all Metroidvans are the same. All first person shooters are the same. All of them. Yeah. Which means you can't slander one and then you can't slander Metroidvanias. I can't. I slander neither.

I just compliment a Castlevania Belmont's curse. I literally was just like this game looks awesome. I was just about to give Marathon its flowers until you interrupted me. that a triple A shooter looks great to you, A's. Never. It's only because he's bad at him. That's the reason. I'm terrible.

That's partially. I'm awful in competitive shooters. This one actually, for somebody who I have thousands and thousands of hours, like unfortunately multiple of thousands in destiny, Bungi knows how to make a shooter. Their gunplay is the most, crisp and clean that I've ever had to deal with or play on. And the idea of them making something that looks like it's finally starting to develop into what it could be is exciting to me. So I'm

super stoked for this. I was, we were some of the biggest, I mean, like, we had bungee on and like, like, you know, we give them a donation and stuff like that. And like, we want this to succeed more than anyone. We were very critical on, on what it looks like from the get-go. We've been talking a lot about the issues with AI and then the other issues that they've had. But the latest stuff we've seen, it looks pretty good. So, you know, I'm hoping, I'm hoping we get something decent. You never want a game to fail. We want everything because a high tide rises all boats.

We want all these games to be the best they can be. I hope, I hope this game is that. I hope marathon succeeds. And it's something that I can desperately cling to for a really quality crisp shooter. And it may be it. Who knows? Well, we're going to get a taste of it between February 26 and March 2nd. So again, that open playtest, that's open to everybody.

So, you know, if you want to get your hands on Marathon to see what it's like, which I'm very curious for, I'll go so far as to say this, if the play test goes good and we walk away going, you know what, we will absolutely be buying marathon and then deep diving it and saying, hey, okay, let's put some time into this and let people know. if you if we get in there and we kind of go like yeah i don't know man like that like it's it's make or break time for marathon oh yeah so i think this open play test is literally going to be what and for bungee dude and for bungee all the streamers they've been having played ever been enjoying it so clearly oh there's something yeah we know about paid streamers we know yeah we know about paid streamers since everybody you can't pay off the bird peanut rise he said it's a good game and now everyone agrees. All right.

Well, listen, there you go, everybody. You are all caught up on your gaming news for this week. Sorry for taking a week off of the news, but we had, you know, we wanted to have some fun episodes for you guys. We like to mix it up as well. So there you go. Just make sure you put Galactic Racer on your wish list,

people, because that's the one that's really going to be. Honestly, all these games look great. If you are not part of our community, we reference it all the time, join our Discord server. We are officially over 1,300 gamers strong. It is super active. There's always people chatting about something playing games together. There's no toxicity. There's no opinion shaming. There's no politics. This is gaming nirvana that you have been looking for. So come

join the server. You're allowed to lurk. We love our lurkers. We love people that are chatting and making the community better. But this is also where we plan community nights, which, hey, we're going to be having an Overwatch community night. this weekend. Maybe we're going to do it for our European friends, and maybe we'll do it like a Saturday morning this time, maybe. But this is where all the fun and the camaraderie and the gaming happens. So join that.

There's a link in the episode description. If you would like to know what Ace's crazy pre-show story was or any of our crazy pre-shows, sign up on Patreon people. It's only five bucks a month. It is dirt cheap and it's super easy to do. You can cancel any time. We all know people hate having a bunch of subscriptions, but it's super easy to just say, hey, that's it. I got what I wanted.

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All right, boys, that's going to do it for this one. Until next time. Happy gaming. The key waits in silence while the lock dreams of noise. See ya. Peace out. I can't follow that.