Video Gamers Podcast - Nintendo Direct Duds, Borderlands 4 Bravado and Rivals is Dying - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

Gaming Hosts Ace and Josh are back with another packed episode of This Week in Gaming. This week the video game world is in a bit of a funk as Borderlands CEO doubles down on it’s performance, Nintendo hits us with another dull showcase, Expedition 33 hits another milestone and gaming hit Marvel Rivals may be heading the the video game graveyard. It’s another awesome, video game packed episode from your favorite gaming podcast! Thanks to our MYTHIC Supporters: Redletter, Disratory, Ol’ Jake, Gaius, Jigglepuf and Phelps   Thanks to our Legendary Supporters: HypnoticPyro, Patrick, NorwegianGreaser and PeopleWonder   Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/videogamerspod⁠ Join our Gaming Community: ⁠https://discord.com/invite/Dsx2rgEEbz⁠ Follow us on Instagram:⁠ https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/⁠  Follow us on X:⁠ https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod⁠  Subscribe to us on YouTube:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@VideoGamersPod?sub_confirmation=1⁠ Visit us on the web:⁠https://videogamerspod.com/⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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or go to explorevolvo.com. Hello, fellow gamers, and welcome to the video gamers podcast. Video game news is a hopping and we ain't a stopping, bringing you the important updates, releases, and news you need to know about. Nintendo had another Nintendo Direct, Borderlands 4 CEO weighs in on the game's performance, and what the heck is happening to Marvel Rivals? All that and more on this week in gaming, but first, some introductions are in order.

I am your host, Josh, and joining me, he can't wait to get his hands on all these remasters of the remakes of the re-releases and at the low, low cost of full price, how can he say no to such an amazing offer from Nintendo? It's Ace. It actually goes a little something like this. No! Oh, man.

Please, anything new. Look, Nintendo, we gave you a break. We gave you a break for like three or four weeks, man. And then you're like, we have another Nintendo direct. Like, oh, sweet. Are we going to get some great announcements? No, no. Shut up, Josh. Put on the virtual boy. Right. That's what, that's, you know, the best thing for your, your retinal eye cornea's is, is red lasers shooting into the game. Red laser graphics, yeah. Oh, man. We'll get to it. You don't want to pay a lot of money to step back 30 years, Ace? Come on, man. Oh, my goodness. Well, welcome in everybody. We have, we have a lot of news to cover, man.

You know, like I said, from Nintendo giving us all kinds of ammunition, look, we were talking pre-show, you know, we kind of do a pre-show thing for people that support the podcast over on Patreon. And, you know, we definitely chat for a while before we actually hit record for the world. And, you know, we don't, we don't come up with the news. The news comes up with itself. We just report the news. And so as we're going through these stories that we're going to talk about, we're like, you know, this doesn't have the best positive spin on it. And then you're like, this doesn't have the best positive spin on it. And it's like, bro, can we find like a happy news story?

Like to talk about what we did find one. So there is good news. Look, I want to do something. This is a little bit of a departure from our normal conversation that we have. But, you know, there is a lot going on in the world right now. Okay. Unless you live under a rock, it is very difficult. to not feel anxiety and some sorrow and sadness and apprehension about everything that is

occurring in our world. It seems like it doesn't matter what country you live in. There's just a lot going on. We do not get into politics on this podcast, but one of our tenants of this podcast has always been and will always be to just treat each other with respect. You know what I mean? like we have always said don't be toxic to each other we're all gamers and if there's one thing that gamers love it is sharing their opinion with each other and if there's one thing that we have seen over the years it's that when you share your opinion on a game there are going to be a ton of people that just jump on you for your opinion and tell you you're stupid the console wars have been raging since the dawn of time i mean these are all things that gamers love to get themselves

into. And an absolutely foundational tenet of this podcast is don't do that. Don't be toxic to each other. Respect that people have opinions. Just because somebody has an opinion different than yours does not mean you need to attack them for it. It does not mean that you need to try to discredit their opinion. You know, if Ace loves Indies and he loves a game and I think it's garbage, you know, it's fine. If we're friends for me to go, Ace, I think this game is garbage. If A's as a stranger, it is not okay for me to go, bro, your game's garbage. Like,

you don't have that relationship with somebody at that point. And so it is, it is a, it is a reminder from us as gamers to all of you gamers out there to just remember to be respectful to each other, man. You know, and, and if your initial response to that is yeah, but, just pause for a second. Be good people. Yeah, but. Everybody's different, man. Everybody likes different things. You don't, that's okay. That is a okay. And if you need any more evidence on anything,

just look at your screen right now. I am a 47-year-old man. Ace is 25. We are generations apart. We very likely have a lot of different worldviews and thoughts on things in the world. But you know what? Ace is my brother. He is my homie.

We get along. I freaking love this guy to death. And we're very, very different. and that's okay people you can be friends with people that are different than you so that's all I want to say about it man like I said we are not getting political on this we are not getting into any of that

this podcast has always been a reprieve from the the trials in life in the world but just please take a second to just remember it's okay to be different all right and it's okay to disagree on things and it's okay for people to just have different opinions than you you can still be friends I promise yeah it's not hard

it's really not it's just treat the treat the person you know not the opinion okay we we are not opinions they do not they are not foundational to who you are or you know a label for people to label you or anything

like that so there you go off the soapbox let's talk some video games ace oh boy that's what I was here for oh man yeah that's what everybody's here for so uh all right I tell you what we promised a good story bro this just warms my heart this warms my heart expedition 33 has top 4.4 million sales

man that is so impressive it's not even been a whole year yet that that's crazy do i sound weird if i say i think that number is low a little bit but also you got to remember expedition 33 was on game pass and things like that so like it's it has a significant amount more players than you realize that was my initial response too here's the thing like silk songs still in the news we're still seeing a ton of silk song stuff we have been playing it we're we're getting close to doing our deep dive on it Ryan is almost back from vacation everybody he didn't abandon the podcast don't worry it's just he needed a vacation from his other vacation that he took yeah what's that about i dude I you know Ryan we love you man but bro it must be nice to just be able to just you know

travel around non-stop shirk all your duties with the podcast leave ace and I to do all of the work while you just go trains around the country you know I'm here it's yeah it's literally it's all right here eat it Ryan oh man but you know here we are just you know holding down the fort while Ryan is just off doing whatever I don't know you know but here's here's the thing silk song you know you hear about they sold five million copies in a very short period of time and there's already conversation about like man the game of the year

indie category has been blown wide open now. Yeah. I will say this. Expedition 33, you deserve 10 million sales. Like I cannot express to people enough and if the amount of times we have mentioned that game on this podcast

isn't enough. If you have not played Expedition 33 yet, you need to do yourself a favor and find time to play this game and understand how significantly good this game is. So I was a little shocked, like 4.4 million sales, don't keep wrong. Sandfall Interactive is probably super stoked with that.

I imagine they've made tons of money by this. But at the same time, I'm like, bro, everybody should be playing this game. Like, that seems low to me. I still see people like picking it up, though, I'm playing it. And they're like, oh, man, this game is fantastic. Why isn't everyone playing this? Yeah. And I get the game past, you know, that's not.

not counting the game pass part of it, which I'm sure is huge, is huge. That's at least another million probably. Yeah. So kudos to them. That is the positive news story of the day. Expedition 33 with 4.4. I love to see that keep climbing.

You know, so again, reminder, if you haven't played it, it's one of the best games that I have ever played, honestly. That's huge for me. Because we play a lot of games, man. We play a lot of games. And I beat it, Ace.

You know? That's even more of a time. Testament. This man doesn't be here. All right. Well, let's get it. Let's get in a throw in some shade on Nintendo Ace. One of our favorite things to do. And listen, you know, we, look, we read every comment that everybody leaves on our episodes. There is not a comment that we do not read. I promise you that. And, you know, there are people that love Nintendo out there. And they have said, man, you guys are really hard on Nintendo. What's with the Nintendo hate? You know, listen, my wife has a Nintendo Switch.

I love convincing her to play games on it. I love having a switch in the house. I like that it's the only console that she has any interest in playing. Nintendo, I grew up on Nintendo. Nintendo gets credit for completely making a home console a thing in our world. So, you know, Nintendo has done unimaginably good things for gaming. But lately, Nintendo has just. on the way of like mega corporation.

Anybody that's played cyberpunk, you know, this is like, this is your mega corporation. Out of touch, dude. They are so out of touch with this market

and with their own consumer base because they've been able to brainwash them to buying whatever the heck they throw out there for them. It's, look, we said it in our pre-show. If you love Nintendo,

we are more than happy. Like, you know, that honestly, and this is not just, you know, like, we're,

vomit right like if you love your nintendo switch i we are we are insane happy for you that's all we want is people to enjoy video games but because we talk about the industry as a whole a lot of times you can easily look at what nintendo is doing and saying guys you know you know you're entitled to a profit we've learned that from john right john hey they're a company they're entitled to profit that's okay yeah but at the same time it seems like you were getting away from what made you wholesome to gamers. So let's talk about the Nintendo Direct, okay, before we rip into them too much.

They announced a whole bunch of stuff, Ace. To you, what is the, what is the standout thing for you that they announced? If you had to say something. The thing that stands out to me is the new Firemline, but I'm a massive Fireblum fan. So it's like, I understand that I'm part of a small market that is going to make them a lot of money.

That's good. But other people look at, normal Nintendo fans look at Fire Emblem and like, ew, Fire Emblem again. Yeah. Like I've seen it all over X. It's just like, oh, the final announcement was Fire Emblem. I don't know Fire Emblem, to be honest with you. I know that people do absolutely love this series.

I don't know anything about it, to be honest with you. You know, that did seem like something that people got excited for. I think the kind of standout thing, or at least the thing that my brain is like really is they announced the virtual boy oh gosh it's like wait a minute guys the virtual boy

was like this oddity that would just burn your eyeballs with red lasers like this was 30 years ago man it did not even get a year's worth of games it died eight months into its lifespan do you know why because the games

absolutely sucked and you're looking at red lasers with your eyeballs, man. There was one good game on the virtual boy, all right? It was a war illand game. It is the only one that people can agree was a good game. This is what we're bringing back, Nintendo? This is what we're bringing back?

Is a outdated, like, they showed the graphics on this thing, and it's like, it's not better. Guys, you want to play your Nintendo Switch and monochrome red with nothing? Like, sure, it has some 3D elements to it, but it's all in red. Like, there's no other. colors is this really what you want I feel like you're missing the best part you're paying for a subscription

to rent these games over time you're not even getting these games okay so you're paying to rent these games and then you're paying for a shell to hold your console in it and you can pay $100 for the plastic accurate version of a virtual

boy or you can just pay 25 for a cardboard cutout version dude what are we doing dude What do we do? What's the point? You mentioned it. These games, they give me this big lineup.

They show like, I don't know, 10 to 15 games, right? And then they say, and here's the lineup of games for the Virtua Boy that we expect to release over the coming years. Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, over the coming years? And you expect to release them? Like, what the heck is this, man? Oh, dude. So this is where this Nintendo Direct is going. Dude, okay, let's just, let's just fire off a couple of these.

Hades 2, awesome. Can't wait to get my hands on Hades 2. I've avoided the early access. That it's got a year of, you know, exclusivity on the Nintendo Switch first for full access. You know, it's PC Nintendo Switch. I don't like that. I don't like that. Cool.

Yeah, Hades 2 is awesome. I can't wait to play it. Like, so that's a standout game. Metroid Prime 4, I think, looked great. We got the first look at this like cyber bike thing that Samis is riding around, shows you riding around this kind of. open world where it was like I didn't realize this was open world like you know she's going to these different points of interest hops off the bike gets out is in some area and shooting things and

I'm like okay metro prime four looking pretty good to me no idea how that's going to run on the original switch based on what I saw I was like oh heck no no I don't it's not happening you know but it's like okay so there's a couple good games and this is where it kind of starts to fall apart a little bit. And I joked about this in the intro, but we are just getting a remake, a re-release, games that are already existing. Guess what, guys, you can play them on your Switch 2.

Super Mario Galaxy, which is phenomenal. I am not slandering Super Mario Galaxy at all, but they are selling it as a bundle, 1 and 2, for the Switch 2. I already have Super Mario Galaxy on the Switch. It was a limited release with Sunshine and

64, and I only bought it because they're like, it'll never come back. Liars. Okay. So, but it's just, this isn't like they're not upping it. Like, if you read the bullet points, they're like, it's with, with slightly improved textures or something. And I'm like, it's not a remake or a remaster. It's just a port.

Yes, exactly. A port of a Wii game. Oh, my gosh, dude. Do you know what Wii games weren't known for? Looking good. Looking good. And then we're not, we know. But don't worry, guys.

We didn't uprate it. We just, you know, let's just be. clear we didn't we didn't remaster this and upgrade this we're just making it playable on the switch too oh gosh this is something this is something that really just bugs me dude when you develop

a game and you intentionally chop off parts of the game to then sell as DLC what do you what do you do it this is this is like a pet peeve and I get that it makes sense from a business aspect it's like oh it's gonna make us a bunch of money so why wouldn't we it's just a gaming pet peeve because you are intentionally

withholding gameplay that you have already developed to then try to sell it as a DLC, which means we are skimping you on the initial purchase that you made. So Donkey Kong Bonanza, everybody that's played it, loves it. I have not played it. Suppose a game of the year, candidate. I don't know anything about it. But they are already announcing DLC for Donkey Kong Bonanza at this plate.

Oh, sure. They just cranked that out in two months, you're telling me? Yeah. No. And this is again, this is again why I'm having these issues with Nintendo. And look, if you're excited for it, we are happy for you. If you want more Donkey Kong Bonanza, that's awesome. But don't you think they should have just given it to you in the $80 game that you had to pay for? Aren't you already just like a little bit suspect of getting a DLC two months into the release of the game? And it's maybe not just the cut content they didn't give you in your $80 release. Oh, and it's a time trial mode. The other part of it is it's a time trial mode. I don't even see that. It's a time trial. Yeah, it's like the Emerald something or whatever they're doing where it's like just a time trial.

It's not even really new content. So again, this is why we have issues with Nintendo. Yeah, you wonder why we get loud and obnoxious about Nintendo and we're not like excited for anything they put out? It's because they do stuff like this. You know what game put out a time trial mode for a DLC? and it was free? It was Astrobots. Yes.

Thank you. Free DLC! We're giving you something for free. You know, dude, the day that Sony is more gamer friendly than Nintendo, something is happening.

Who would have thought? Like, honestly. All right, we got to move on, but look, here's the other issue. Mario, Super Mario Wonder, fantastic game,

played fine on the Switch. It's beautiful on the switch. Oh, guess what, guys, we're getting the Switch 2 edition of Super Mario Wonder, you know? I thought these games

were backwards compatible. I never got to. Well, Super Mario Wonder is great. You should play Super Mario Wonder, but guess what? You could play it on your Switch. You know, so it's like, what's going on here, Nintendo? Yoshi and The Mysterious Book is a new game. Bro.

I don't mean offense to anybody by this, but this game looks like it was made for preschoolers, dude. Most Yoshi games do look like that. From the frame rate, like this game runs at like 10 frames a second. Even in the trailer it's running at 10 frames a second. I thought that was just my PC. No, this looks like a game that is made for your eight-year-old to keep them busy into play. It is the most dumbed-down, simple, slow game that I can possibly imagine if you're excited for it. That's awesome.

Again, this is not, I'm just talking about the game. But it's like, this is what we're advertising in your Nintendo Direct. Also, are we doing a Nintendo Direct every like month and a half now at this point? Because it used to be like, oh, I'm getting excited. And now it's just like another one. And it's disappointing. And it's just remakes and re-releases? What's even the point of listening to Nintendo directs anymore?

You know, there's not going to be Silk Song Deuce. Yeah, exactly. Thank you, Ace. Yeah, that's very true. All right, I'll tell you what, let's, enough bashing Nintendo. Nintendo, they're down for the count right now. No, one more. Pokemon, Pocopia.

I want to talk about that. Ripping off freaking Animal Crossing. What is it? Rules for thee, but not for me, Nintendo. Is that how we're doing things? And not only that, but you are a mimic, a mimicue, right? Which my daughter's think Mimicue is one Or Ditto, I'm sorry, Ditto.

Yeah, so Ditto's not even as cool as Mimicue, by the way. I don't really know a lot, but Mimu is freaking sweet. Are you kidding me? But you are a ditto that looks like a human. Yeah. So I'm a person. Okay, so it's like, there's a Pokemon game, but I'm really just a person? Like, we're not even really making a Pokemon at this point?

It's honestly like unsettling. He gives himself like vine arms and starts swinging them around with the having a human torso. And he's got the smile. on the whole time? You're just like, nope, don't like that.

I don't, I don't know, man. I don't know where Pokemon's going at all right now, dude. Pokemon Z.A, there's another D.L.C.

slash thing where it's mega dimensions where, you know, the mega rite you and mega, I don't know. I just give him, I love Pokemon. I've got Pokemon tattoos.

I have no interest in this new Pokemon. None. I don't, I can't speak on it. Honestly, none of the Pokemon games interest me, but again,

I'm just an old grouchy man. So, all right, I'll tell you what, let's take a quick break. And then we're going to get into some other stories here and give Nintendo a breather. So we'll be right back. All right. Look, we're done bashing Nintendo, people. It's all in good fun. We just, we really want to see Nintendo kind of get back to taking care of the gamers like they used to do instead of being this just evil corporation.

It's all in good fun. But if I find out you bought a virtual boy shell, I'm going to be pretty annoyed with you. I will never. I will never. An ace, that is going to be the key if I'm ever kidnapped. Okay. Just be like, Josh, are you enjoying your virtual boy? And if I'm like, oh yeah, dude, you know I love it, send help. Call the police. Okay. That's our code word right there. Okay, because I will never, ever buy that scene at Terminator. Your parents are dead. I will light the money on fire and record a video before I would actually give Nintendo the money for this hideous virtual boy. Fair enough. All right. We said we weren't going to bash Nintendo anymore. Let's. bash Marvel rivals since day. Okay, look, all right, we, we were all about the Marvel rivals. Ace might still be about the Marvel rivals. I still play it on occasion. This is, this is kind of a, this is a thing in the industry that's really kind of baffling to me.

I mean, we can always explain it away in hindsight, but look, for people that have been listening to this show for a long time, I, Overwatch is one of my favorite games of all time. When it released, we had, you know, months and months and months where we just had an entire six-stack friend group, more than that, actually, sometimes that we're playing every single night. I loved Overwatch more than anything. Overwatch 2 comes along. Blizzard starts being Blizzard. They take things away. They change it.

Then they take basic Overwatch away. There's that whole story. Marvel Rivals comes out. We hop in. We go, bro, this is it. This is the game that's going to kill Overwatch. And it did for a little while. For a little bit.

for a little bit. The story here is that Marvel Rivals is down 86% of its player base since it released in, when did it release? January? It released in December, I believe, actually. December? So it's not even a full year. It has not been a full year yet. And it is down 86% of its player base.

What the heck is going on with Marvel Rivals? Dude, it's just, honestly, it could be from the bad balancing. It could be from where people didn't like the engagement-based matchmaking, even though the rivals devs did come out and say, we don't use that, we don't know what you're talking about. The players all basically said was, I don't believe you. Yeah. It could be the choices of the characters or the fact that they've been focusing on adding more DPS

instead of support and tank players. There's just a lot that rivals has going against it. And it also could just be, like, the short attention span of gamers, not really wanting to stay with these long-term games for a long time. I will say, I think that is part of it. I think the gamers, I am one of them, you know, to where it is games do not hold my attention for very long. It takes a very special kind of unique game to really, to really, really grab me. I have always liked hero shooters. I don't play rivals anymore, but guess what I'm playing, Ace, I'm back to Overwatch.

You still play Overwatch, yeah. And I'm having a, I'll be on, I'm having a ton of fun playing Overwatch again, like legitimately. Now, part of that is, is that I'm playing with my kids, you know, and so it is something fun as a parent to do with my kids. But I'm actually just enjoying Overwatch at the same time. Here's my take on the Marvel Rivals thing. Yes, short attention spans. It took over the world. Everybody in the world was playing Marvel rivals at one.

You know, and it was fun. But you're going to get the kind of people that aren't really hardcore about it that are going to go, okay, that was fun for like a month. And now I'm going to go back to whatever. I do think that the matchmaking is one of the biggest problems in the sense that it is a steam roll fest a lot of times. Now this does

happen in Overwatch as well, but not to the degree that it happens in rivals. The other issue is I think that they are terrible at creating metas that are just not fun to play against. I agree. I would agree. The glaring, glaring issue

with Marvel rivals is that you know, oh, it's the triple healer meta this is this is the worst i hate playing against this oh it's the flyer meta this is not fun to play against you know like and they're very slow to respond to these metas to because they you know well we don't we want to be careful with nerves and buffs and things like that which i understand but when your game is not fun because of that meta you have an issue that needs to be addressed quickly overwatch had this for a while with the goats meta back in the day that really kind of ruined Overwatch. Now, the difference to me

between the two is Overwatch is kind of known as Counterwatch, right? Because there are characters that are hard counters to other characters. So if you are getting steamrolled, you switch to the character that counters the guy that is steamrolling your team.

And as long as you know how to play that character remotely decently, you can counter that guy. You know, and so that stops this unfund steamroll thing that you do see in rivals. And I get that there are counters and rivals, right? You want to counter a flyer?

If there are, no one ever swaps to them. Well, and that's the issue, right? That's the other issue because you are using these iconic characters.

How many Spider-Man one tricks did we come across? Oh, it still happens. It still happens. Everybody wants to play Spider-Man, right? But guess what? Because that's all I play. I'm not learning the other characters

that will allow me to counter these metas. So I'm just going to keep throwing myself because I just want to play this one hero. You know, I don't know, man And it's tough So it doesn't matter Right

You know, that's the thing too Is everyone's quick play dude So I'll be honest I don't like seeing this Because I don't ever want to see a company Or a game fail Especially one that it was as fun as rivals was Yeah

But I mean And here's the thing It's a quality game It has great things in it It's great game dude It is fantastic You know They keep adding these wonderful

Quality of Life updates They make it look better Every patch It runs better every patch It runs better every patch And they're adding freaking Daredevil I'm super excited for them to add Daredevil next month But like

But here's the problem Ace That is that is what they are relying on You know what I mean? They are relying on the fact that oh When we release Daredevil Millions of people will come back To try out Daredevil And then they'll leave again

Maybe But they're gonna try them out for like three days They're gonna go cool And then they're gonna drop off again You have to fix your game dude you have to fix the balance issues you have to fix the things that are not fun for people you know i was talking to my daughter she's a huge overwatch she she tried rival she didn't like it i play overwatch with her and she was saying dad you know the the issue with rivals is just not fun you know and i kind of went

it really was a ton of fun for a little while but now these metas and stuff it's really not that fun i will say this competition makes the world go round when rivals came out overwatch went oh crap we better actually try and they started trying which is great you're going to see people that are going to jump ship they're going to go to overwatch or some other hero shooter or battle royale back to apex or fortnight or whatever and then but then you're going to see rivals go we better do something okay well let's fix our game right let's fix the metas and let's be faster with these balance changes and things like that and i think that's a good thing but if you don't respond you are going to die into obscurity

at that point and that scares me dude because rivals is monstrous now we say all this like it's over it's not over for marvel it's not it's still they still got a huge player base that's the thing it's like still like i think like in the top 10 of like concurrent player counts for games on steam right now so we're we're not trying to be like doomsday about this it's not the end of marvel rivals calm down exactly it's just if it continues it will be it's a warning sign you got to pay attention man and i feel like they are but I feel like they're paying attention to the wrong things you know and it's like my daughter kind of went like it's a what did she call she said oh the thing that's keeping alive is all the gooners right because of the skin and it's like and I and I laughed because it's like okay

number one the fact you said that was funny and it's like there is some truth to that but if your game is not fun for people to play that is your critical failure point and you've got to fix that And if you don't, it's, it's, people are just going to leave plain and simple. So yeah. All right. And speaking of fixing games, Ace, Borderlands 4. Oh my gosh, this game. I, I keep, I literally asked in our Discord server today.

I said, look, I need a game to play. I'm kind of in this limbo. I'm thinking about Borderlands 4 because I have a couple friends that are playing it that I know I could play with. It would be sporadic. Our gaming schedules don't line up a whole lot. or I can play Colt of the Lamb because everybody is saying I need to play that game

and Borderlands 4 for some reason and again we've said this before we haven't been super kind to it I am not hearing great things from people that doesn't mean that it's being slammed but it just means that some people that I trust their gaming opinion or I align with their gaming opinion

have said it just kind of feels like Borderlands like yeah the movement's better but the performance sucks it's really not anything new so it's just like do you are you in the mood for more borderlands at this point and kind of and i my my initial gut response is like i don't think so not right now yeah i mean i think that's fair especially when you get nice little quotes like this i think maybe you're just not a premium gamer you're

not ready for a premium game oh is this is this a quadruple a game it's a quadruple a game you're not a quadruple a experience you're not a real borderlands fan who would have paid a hundred Horses, buddy. I've got a top-of-the-line PC. We have a freaking gaming podcast, okay? I play a ton of games. Like, am I not a premium gamer? Is that what you're telling?

According to the Gearbox CEO? No, you're not. You want to complain about their performance? You're not a premium gamer. Here's part of the issue. Part of the issue is I'm just, I don't think I'm in the mood for Borderlands right now. I think that's fair.

And we've talked about this. We've talked, you and I have talked, we've talked with Ryan. None of us seem to really be gung-ho about Borderlands 4. You know, it's, Battlefield 6 is on the horizon. I say, we've got that on the horizon. We just need something to hold us over until then. Right. We've got a deep dive.

Ryan has to play Dying Light, so we've kind of got that. You know, there's some other stuff where it's, again, like Colton Lamb, I'm kind of curious to play that. So when you hear that Borderlands 4 has major performance issues, even for top of the line 5090 graphics card this is a $2,000 graphics card can't push this game above 60 frames a second you know what I mean there is a problem and instead of acknowledging the problem and saying guys we're going to fix it don't worry we're going to get it on that day seven patch not the day zero patch we're going to get it on that day seven patch the CEO of gearbox Randy Pitchford comes out and instead of apologizing and and saying, hey, sorry, he doubles down and says, guys, Borderlands

4 is a premium game that is made for premium gamers. And if you are playing this on old hardware, this game is not meant for you. Exqueze me? What are you doing, man? You should be trying to drive a monster truck

with a leaf blower. All right? That's what... Listen, listen. Listen, I get your analogy, dude. But at the same time, like, what? What? What? And listen, I understand the frustration that developers have when I'm, I'm still rocking like

an old RTX 960 or, you know, a graphics card that is nine years old at this point. And it's like, guys, you might need to update your PC at some point. And I get the graphics cards are expensive. But listen, that's, we can't, we can't make our game for you at that point. But, bro, these are people that are using mainstream graphics cards, okay? These are not your top end, but they're not your bottom end. This is what the majority of gamers are running, you know? And it's like, and this game is running like garbage.

So when I'm on the fence anyway about picking this game up and then the CEO comes out and doubles down on poor performance and tells me that that's my fault, not their fault for developing the game, like, bro, I don't need any other reason to just go like, I think I'm going to pass, man. I don't need convincing at that point. You've done everything you can. to convince me otherwise as it's like we were saying some CEOs just need to stop talking just you want you you're a detriment to your own game you have to stop talking i i i we were we were talking about this in our pre show as well but it's just like dude the CEOs sometimes just don't don't don't answer just say hey you know we're gonna let our PR guy over here bob bob bob come here i they're asking me a tough question about performance bob what should i say don't don't

Double down on the poor performance, okay? Bob comes over and he's like, hey, everybody, listen, we're really sorry. We understand there's a wide variety of hardware. We're working very hard in the background to make this game run well. We're hoping to have a patch for you in the next few days. Happy gaming. Okay, good job, Bob. Easy is that.

It's, yes. Instead, it's like, where's Bob? Anybody see Bob? This is a premium game, and it's only meant for premium gamers? Is that? Bob hears this. You just hear him screaming in the background. Oh, Randy, what did you say?

What did you say? He's like, uh, our stock's plumbing it. This is the wrong answer, man. Fix your game, dude. Fix your game. I, I don't know. I'm going to pick up Colts of the Lamb. I've really, I've decided to hear your opinion on that one.

I, I really need to play this game. And I'm sorry, Borderlands for you just, nothing you did excited me enough to want to spend $70. again premium game right for premium gamers we're charging a premium price for this and listen I know that people are enjoying it my brother-in-law and my nephew are playing it a good friend slash co-worker at work is playing it and they're all like bro I'm having fun and it's like I'm glad I'm glad people are enjoying the game absolutely absolutely I just I'm not in the mood for it number one number two this stuff irks me and it's the little

teeny nudge I needed to just go yeah I think I'm okay man you know at this point so all right ace that's going to do it we we're not even going to get into the silk song review bombing because of bad translations that's another just sad story there's we're not going to get into the death of Atari a once great icon of gaming that just doesn't even know who they are what they are anymore just like i didn't even know Atari was still around until you sent me this yeah exactly yeah exactly um but you know that's going to do it for this episode everybody thanks for hanging out with us uh you know listen if you you love the podcast and you haven't done so

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