Video Gamers Podcast - [TWIG] EPIC Layoffs, Reveals & Reactions – Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

Gaming hosts Josh, Ryan and Ace are back breaking down this week in gaming, covering the shocking shakeups to what it all means for the future of video games, the guys dive into the biggest stories you need to know. We’re talking highlights, concerns, and what has us excited in gaming right now. If you care about where video games are headed next, this is one episode you don’t want to miss! Like all of them!   Alien Deathstorm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DlVXpef_xY&t=86s  The Expanse: Osiris Reborn - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBxjH-lZjEo  Forever Ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMLqErUolhw  Vaunted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm20lvaoH48&t=1s  Artificial Detective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk5HSbot9Us  Ascend to Zero: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QtVaShYrX4 Grave Seasons: https://youtu.be/0bFyXxSYq_M?si=L3lAD0nlq8UbEbbG   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

Hello, fellow gamers, and welcome to the video gamers podcast. The highs in the video game industry are great, but the lows really suck. And it seems like we're on a roller coaster ride we can't seem to get off of. Fair not, fellow gamers, we've got some awesome looking games to balance out the bad news. But before we get to this week's gaming news, some introductions are in order. I am your host Josh And joining me It's a grave season for the industry

This man joined us forever ago And has been spending years to ascend to zero He's my vaunted co-host Who just wants to be an artificial detective It's Ryan I don't think I appreciate your tone there Now Ryan I got to ask you

did you notice a trend in that intro? Oh, I did. I did. I don't appreciate it. You don't know what, Ace got it because I saw Ace's moment of recognition where he was like, all right, Josh. Yeah, I was impressed.

I was impressed. I'm a little worried that Ryan's not impressed because that means I don't think he's understood what happened. I don't think he knows. I don't think he knows. No. Don't think he. All right.

Well, in about five minutes when he figures it out. It'll all make sense a little bit. bit here. No, no, no, no. It will all make sense. Okay, here's the deal. I may or may not have been signing up for some extra chat GPT stuff so I can make a

picture of Ace with the cupcake. No, not the cupcake again. All right. Okay. All right. All right. And joining us. He's just excited because there's lots of any news to talk about this episode as

well. From the Eternal Life of Goldman to Hades 2 to Super Meat Boy 3D news. He can barely contain himself at all. or maybe it was just the cupcake he ate right before recording. It's Ace. That's right. It's a Sugar Rush, baby, but it's also hype. Oh, my God, dude.

These are some killer games. Indies stay winning, baby. Yeah, it's, I, dude, Eternal Life of Goldman. You and I are both super hyped to get our pants on that. The most slept on game right now, dude. We're going to get, listen, we're going to get to all that. We got a lot of gaming news to talk about. Guys, we've got news.

We had the Xbox partner preview with a lot of games to talk about there. So we are going to just dive in to this because we got a lot to cover. We're going to get the two bad stories out of the way first. Okay, because we like to just say, you know what, let's just get them out of the way. The real, the real crusher is,

guys, PubG Blind Spot is shutting down. That was fast. There's actually a word. story. I was just being done. That's the big one. That's the big one right there. Was that longer or shorter than High Guard's lifespan? Oh. Well, Highguard actually

fully released. PubGy Blind Spot didn't even make it out of early access. Yeah. It's weird because I thought this game actually looked kind of cool. It was a top down like Rainbow Six Siege clone. Made by PubG fans. PubG fans don't want that.

They like their game. They don't. They want their PUBG. They like their game. So, yeah, it had a very poor early access that did not get a lot of attention. And, you know, as we see, they went, okay, I guess we're not onto something here. We're just scrapping it. And so the last day for early access, well, it's over by now because it was March 30. Yeah, it was too late. Well, it's over.

Yeah. I hope you didn't want to try it. Yeah. I mean, that's a game we've talked about a few times on this show because, you know, it looked like it had some promise. but man it's I don't know what's going on with games dude like it is there's been some massive whiffs

this year like you know we talked about how good 2025 was we've talked about how good 2026 is looking because there's still a lot of stuff coming out but man I feel like we've had some pretty colossal like failures so far too yeah it's a saturated market man that's what I was going to say do you think it's because like things have been so good

like it just you know high tide I mean, yeah, are we spoiled? I think we're spoiled, man. We are, we are... Some of them boats got holes in them, though. Yeah, that's true. I mean, that's true. But you know what?

Like, look at the movie industry, right? Like, we all just saw Project Hail Mary. Yes, we did. Loved it. That is the best movie that has come out in a while. Like, if you, like, the other day, it was probably two weeks ago. I was looking, I was like kind of in the mood to just go see a movie. And I looked and it was abysmal, dude.

I didn't recognize half the movies. And then there were like repeats of movies. that came out like two years ago that they were trying to show just to have something in the theaters. And I was like, dude, this makes me sad.

On the flip side, in the gaming industry, we've got so many good games that a game that, I mean, I thought PubG Blind Spot looked pretty good. I didn't play it,

but like it looked like it had promise. But are we just, are we feasting this much that a game like this just didn't even garner enough attention? I think so. I think even though it's a big name developer, if you're not doing something

that's really wowing people and really blowing them out of their minds, they don't care. It's an all or nothing mentality right now for gamers. As sad as that is to hear. The easier it is to develop, the more games that we have out there and the more good games we have,

the harder it's going to be to stand out. So you've got to make something great. And I personally don't think that that's what this was. Like, I'm sure it was fun for people, but this wasn't my style. They should have made him an extraction shooter. I mean, bro, I'm still on that marathon train. A PubG extraction shooter probably would have done pretty well.

Maybe. Yeah, maybe. All right. Well, the really, the truly bad news here. Yikes. This one just sucks. This is bad. Oh, God.

Epic games laid off a thousand people citing the decline in Fortnite engagement that happened in 2025. and I'm sure is continuing on to 2026. A thousand people, dude. That's a lot. Like, that's a lot, dude. Like, we hear about, like, you know, some studios laying off, like, a hundred people. Like, dude, a thousand people, like, you know, Fortnite. How do you even?

It's not what it used to be. I mean, you can't argue with that. Like, it's not what it used to be. No, it is nowhere where it was. Is the age of battle royals over? I think it's done. I think it's getting replaced by the extraction. I think, at least in Fortnite's case,

it's not focused enough on its battle royale to begin with. And it's trying too hard to be this platform for all these other things that aren't the main game. And its attention is so divided and so focused on getting the next big collab to bring, you know, that quick

boost of adrenaline or whatever to the game and bring on the fans of that series that they don't actually care about their game anymore. I don't disagree with you. You guys are crazy. Honestly, I don't disagree with you because it's like, the, I mean, what's the, you know, we're not big Fortnite players, Ryan, I know your son plays a lot of Fortnite. I know you play with him a decent bit, but it's like, as somebody that doesn't play a lot of Fortnite, like, I feel like the biggest change that Fortnite has seen in the last five years, not counting collabs and skins is the fact that they gave you a no build mode.

Like if we're talking the base Fortnite game, right? Like what made, you know, epic games just gobs and gobs of money with Fortnite. It was like, you know, and I know that they had, you know, oh, they had Darth Vader and then they, you know, they had the big, the twisted towers got destroyed or the map changed a little bit and stuff like that. But it's like, I feel like they have just ridden Fortnite into the ground at this point. And when they couldn't ride it into the ground anymore, that's when they went, let's just become Roblox. Right? Like, let's just become Roblox and be a platform for launching a thousand other games, which might very well work for them. But at the same time, it can't be working too well because you just laid off a thousand people, dude. How do you even come to that conclusion that that's what you need to do to be successful, that you need to fire a thousand people?

Yeah. When the numbers don't hit. The thing is like when you have shareholders that are mad at you. Well, that's the problem is how much money is enough. I know I sent this to you guys, you know, a lot of times a little behind the scenes, we talk about our twig stuff and what we're going to cover with the. news and we, you know, have a little bit of discussion. And I was going over, um, you know, what, what they make for Fortnite. And it's, it's in the billions with a B. B, b, b, b billions. Yearly. Yearly. annually. Billions. multiples. Not just one, not just two. multiples. So,

like at some point, how much is enough? I think, I mean, man, a lot of times these, these places run into issues where they over hire and then they have to lay people off and they just use them like you know like dispensary things like they don't care like they're disposable yeah disposable is a better word um they use them like that and it's it sucks for these people i don't know who in this day and age as much as i would love it personally i'm sure you guys would as well to like design and work on and be part of making video games it sounds like the coolest job ever but also you there's no job security there you can work for one of the biggest games ever made. They make

$5 billion last year and they're like, yeah, we're going to lay off a thousand of you. You know, like what? Like, come on. So I get I get where a company has to make money, but like how much is enough? Like, you got to get to some point where you're able to create a company that is sustainable and you produce a product and then you produce, you know, and you supply, you know, work for your workers. And there just

has to be some ebb and flow with it all. And all of this chaos of, of hiring and layoffs in the whole gaming world is driving me nuts. I feel like every other day we're like, all these layoffs and all these hiring. So it's, it's just crazy overall. You're going to see a massive drop in quality to you from a thousand people. A thousand? That's insane.

It's, I mean, was Fortnite. Okay. Oh, yeah. What more have they done in the last four years, three years? like, you know, like there's, that's kind of my point. It's the same game. Golden Goose and they have just abused this golden goose until this goose is about to just crope.

I'm tired, boss. I'm tired, boss. You know, and again, you know, and I mean, this might sound stupid, but like, are they working on Fortnite 2? Right? Like, are they, are they doing anything to try to capitalize on the, this, this name recognition and this market share that Fortnite has? Or is it just, we're running this thing into the ground?

until the wheels fall off, or we're going to pivot and become Roblox. Like, Roblox probably makes more money than Fortnite does on a yearly basis. So it's like, it's astronomical. And child monsters. I mean, becoming Roblox is not the angle that I would want my company to go. But, you know, if you're talking about money and profit, and that's king to a lot of companies, then that's what matters. Money moves, man. Either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain.

Honestly, I think I'd rather die. the hero too. In this case, definitely. All right. Well, there you go. We got the bad news out of the way. We'll see what happens with Epic Games. They did cite a couple of other things. They have these ongoing lawsuits with Apple and stuff, which is draining them of tons of money because they decided to sue Apple. They have cited changes in gamer behavior, in engagement and stuff like that. So, you know, they had a whole bunch of reasons why they had to let people go. You know, maybe you just didn't put enough into your game. And all you did was, was try to just soak money out of people with skins and collabs.

And that's it. And you didn't actually, you know, spend time keeping your game modern and current. Oh. I don't know. I just had a million dollar idea. I'm going to give it away for free on the internet. If they were to link, because my son watches these all time, all the time, through Fortnite, they just link the YouTube videos of people playing Fortnite.

No. So you can play Fortnite and watch people play Fortnite while you're on Fortnite. Like it's just, they're going to make millions. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, the watch hours will skyrocket. All those thousand are right back. Come on down. You're right back here.

Don't worry, Ryan. The peak collab will bring everyone back. Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. Collabs. All right. Well, there you go. The bad news is out of the way.

And now we get to talk about the Xbox showcase, guys. A couple kind of just quick news items before we get into some of the trailers and the games that were shown on this. I love this one. Dispatch, which was fantastic. If you haven't played dispatch, you should absolutely play dispatch. Definitely play dispatch.

You can knock it out. It's like what, like eight hours total? Wait, that's my best TV show. That's my best TV show. That's a pretty good one. But dispatch is coming to Xbox this summer.

And so if you have an Xbox and you don't have a PC and you weren't able to play dispatch, you should be very excited about this because you should play dispatch. You ain't even got to wait for the episode. enjoyable, yep. Oh, that's right.

You get to just binge the whole thing. Lucky. Eternal Life of Goldman is coming to Xbox. And the best part about this, there's a demo available on Xbox right now. You should play this demo. Go play that demo. Do it.

Look, do it. We don't hype up a ton of games on this podcast. All of us have played Eternal Life of Goldman. We have all played the demo. well, all right, I saw that. We do, okay, we do hype games. We get excited. This Eternal Life for Goldman is, is honestly pretty special.

And if you don't know what it is, all the better. It's just go play the demo. Trust us. You will be very glad you did. And then you will be very excited for this game. It will also be on Game Pass. So I love this for Eternal Life of Goldman because this game came out of nowhere. And it's getting a ton of steam, rightfully so.

We love to see it. There's something special about it. Good for them. So, heck yeah. Go play the demo because it's out now on Xbox. This is another win, man. Hades 2. Hades 2.

Quite possibly the best roguelike ever made. I mean, that's not a crazy statement to say. Nope. Is coming to Xbox on April 14th. So we are two weeks away from our Xbox brethren being able to experience Hades 2. do whatever you got to do, save up your money, put some money aside, start doing chores, whatever you need to do to get Hades 2, it is worth every penny that you could scrape up to be able to buy this game. So that's another must play. How much even is it? It's not, it's not, it's not,

it's not, it's not, it's not. It's 30 bucks. It's 30. It's 30. It's 30. 30, it's 30, 30-ish, 2999, I think. Yeah, it was something like that. Honestly, it could be $60 and you should I would absolutely pick up. I would pay $69.99. I would pay $60 for sure worth $60. It's such a good game. 10 out of 10 games. You're, you're, you're, you're, you got some really good games to look forward to over the next few months, man. Like really good.

And super meat boy 3D. We were excited for this game. I played the demo. It plays very, very well. I don't know if I have the patience to die a thousand times on every level. But it's released. March 31st, guy. That means it's out.

It's out when you people are listening because we're recording this before March 31st. So that means that Super Meat Boy 3D is out and playable. It is a lot of fun. The 3D aspect works really, really well. What a fun, just the hard platformer. But it's a blast, honestly. Like I said, I played the demo and really enjoyed the demo too. All right.

Well, that covers news, guys. we're going to take a quick break, and then we're going to get into some of these trailers for some of these announcements and game previews and stuff like that we got. And there's some good looking games in this list. So we'll talk about those right after this break. All right, we're back.

We're talking the Xbox partner preview. This is the best part about any of these shows, guys. Is trailers? I mean, we can't be the only ones that are like, give me them trailers, man. Show me to games. Show me the games coming out, right? So we've got

I went through Now listen there were There were a lot of games But some of these games It's like dude We're not going to talk about some of these But we tried to pull out the ones That we thought were the coolest looking ones

We'll just start at the top Alien Death Storm We didn't get to see a whole lot on this one But like we did see It looks really good Right like how would you do How would you guys quickly like describe What is, is it like alien Death Storm?

Is this the sequel to alien isolation? Like, what, no, it's not. It's a completely different game. It has nothing to do with the alien franchise. What this game even looked like? It's an action horror, you know, sci-fi FPS, basically. Like, you seem to be going through these ruined planets and ships and things like that with monsters hunting you.

You don't really see a whole lot, but the aliens are creepy. It's all get out. Super creepy. And what's the best part, Ace? It's your first person. First person, but the graphics. It looks so good. I say the best part is that it's shortened to ADS.

There you go. That's the best part. ADS, Alien Death Storm. Alien Death Storm. Alien Death Storm, aim down sights, you know. Yeah. Atmospheric is anything. Atmospheric horror, this looks reminiscent of like dead space in a way.

Yeah. It's like first person dead space. Yeah, like it's very atmospheric. The planet has these crazy, crazy storms that roll through and you can't get stuck outside so there's moments of tension there's aliens that are stalking you i think this game looks really good like i said it it definitely looks like they knew what they were doing i'm actually pretty curious about this one who doesn't love a good horror game why are there so many aliens that look like spiders and video games yeah because guess what

is spiders are freaky man yeah like yeah i mean what's worse than a spider is a giant spider. A giant spider or lots of tiny spiders. Yeah. I don't want to come across those. Or a giant zombie requiem spider. Oh, that spider was massive. That's even worse. That was a nuclear fallout spider.

That was a, yeah, that was a. That would be horrible, man. I'm not even really scared of spiders, but if I ever saw a spider, like, can you imagine a spider the size of like your dog? Oh, that would be the most horrifying thing that you've ever seen. Yeah. No, I'd lose my mind. That would be crazy.

I would absolutely lose my eye. Because his legs are going to be like. Oh, I know. Yeah. Yeah. Then you got Leon Kennedy, meaning face to face with giant Iraq and is like, and down came the rain and wash the spider. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay, it's not scared of nothing. All right. This game, I'm just going to call this Mass Effect 4. It does. It looks like that. That is called the Expans, Osiris, Reborn. We got a further look into the gameplay on this.

We've talked about this game before when it was first announced, and we got kind of the teaser trailer for it. I think this game looks great. I mean, every part of this from the presentation to the gameplay, just looks fantastic. Now, the expanse was a TV show or a TV series, I guess. Did any of you watch that? Did not know that.

I didn't know that was anything to do with this. Yeah. Yeah, this is actually based on like a TV show, I think. Oh, I didn't know. it was based on the experience. Had no idea. I'm going to guess that it is. I've not seen the show.

Oh, okay. We're just going to throwing out wild things. Oh my gosh. No, no, no, no, no. Because the expanse was a space TV show. It was, yes. It was, yes. I'm just putting two and two together guys, okay?

Ryan, give us a quick Google. This is based on the TV show. I'm trying right now. Yeah, Ryan's going to be like, Josh, you're such an idiot. Yes, it is. Hey, you put two and two together. Look at that. Two and two is four boys.

It's a, it's a prequel to the TV show. Josh, I did not. I did not put two and two together. I knew of the expanse. I've watched part of the expanse. I did not watch it all. But, um, wow. Yeah.

The expanse is a telltale series, 2023 is a prequel to the TV show. This shares a canon focused on, uh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, no. If, if there is one thing I'm good at, it's jumping to conclusions, guys. Yeah. Okay, so sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. Congratulations. Good job, good job.

Good job. Here's my one question with this game. Did you say it's telltale? Did somebody say telltale? That's what he said. I don't know if this game is narrative-driven or if this is actually, like because they describe it. They describe it as a third-person action RPG,

but then there's lots of like, story moments and almost like telltale type story moments where like if they blend those two together we might be in for a heck of a treat like i love sci-fi mass effect people have been wanting like anything mass effect ish for years now yeah i think this game looks fantastic the combat looks good the the the voice over like the story looks like it's probably going to be fleshed out i'm pretty excited for this one man that's the thing is that is the combat And any type of game like this, like, yeah, you can create a great world. But if you're going to have gunplay and space battles and all that stuff, you have to have good combat.

You have to have the gameplay itself be fun and enjoyable. And it kind of looks pretty freaking sweet, man. Like, I'm watching these gun battles and I'm like, I kind of dig it. Like, I like that. Like, it looks good. It's, you know, room for improvement and whatnot. But, like, I think overall it looks pretty dang good. Yeah.

Yeah. I think it looks really good. I'm hoping the story's interesting, at least, if it's going to be a very narrative driven. It looks like the story's going to be pretty good. I mean, they've put a lot of emphasis, especially in this trailer on the characters talking and interacting with each other.

And you know, you can tell that they're trying to get you involved in the story a little bit, just even in the trailer. So, yeah, I don't know. If you have not seen a trailer for the expanse, Osiris Reborn, Ryan puts these in the episode description. So you can just tap the link and it'll take you right to that.

But this one looks really impressive. And like I said, this is the closest thing to like Mass Effect 4 that I've seen in a while, which gets me really, really excited because number one, I'm a sucker for sci-fi

and who doesn't want futuristic space technology in a third-person shooter at the same time. And it looks really good. The graphics are pretty freaking sweet at the same time. So, all right.

And then we've got this one called what? I was going to say, I was going to say, speaking of stories in a very similar game. Yeah. As a complete about face, let's have a game that focuses on an old guy

that wants to go and relive some memories that he had, which is a game called Forever Ago. This is one of those games is just going to make you cry. It's just one of those, like sad games. You would. I kind of like this. You would. This is Annapurna.

You see yourself in this guy. Do you see you? I, like, I hope not because like, you know, my wife's, my family is still with me and stuff. But like, I love, I love a good, like, walking sim narrative journey. I, like, remains of Edith Finch, fire watch. Like, like, some of these games really, really resonate with me. And there's such a good change of pace from, like, the normal types of games I play. And I'm not going to lie, I was watching this trailer for forever ago. And I just was kind of emotionally invested. And I went, I think I want to play this game, man. and Ace, I think you hit it. It's probably just going to be to make me sad and want to cry. Oh, it's just to make you sad and upset and cry and really connect with the story. As it's a story, you know, about, you know, life, death and the journey in between, like, all of that.

Just like, why, Ryan, because you got to, you got to be sad occasionally to feel happy, too. None of us picked up before your eyes, right? There's no darkness without the light. I never picked that up. I couldn't, but that's another game. I have kids that are. are very close to like my oldest is 18 and she's probably going to be going away to college in another year or two or you know and it's like I that makes me really sad it's just one of those

things you don't even think about so like I'm not playing before your eyes because I will be a freaking just sobbing mess dude like I know better yeah but um I don't know that this is Ryan's kind of game but what did you think on this one Ryan I actually kind of did think it looked cool. Yeah. I did think it looked cool. I just, for whatever reason, like, that, that just weird, like, cells shaded, like, art style. Like, I love that look, and I like that. And I know we talk about it. Ace talks about it a lot of the realism of games and, and sometimes doing things a little bit different works, you know, and I, and I do think that that works with this one. I think if they tell a good story, I'm all in.

Man. So, like, if people like it and it sounds like it's getting good reviews and people are enjoying, just like we did with dispatch, I mean, we hit on that pretty early. But, but, like, if it's, if it's good and it's, I'm feeling like the same vibes from dispatch, you know. I think a lot of games that when they focus on the concept of life and death, they usually can pump out a pretty darn good story. Because I think it connects with a lot of people. It's something, you know, everyone's always thinking about it. They just don't want to write it. put pen to paper.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I think I'm going to be in on this one, man. So that's a game called Forever Ago. Check it out. Like I said, really, it gets you right away. It's almost like the beginning of up.

It's very, very much the beginning of up. You know, where I'm just right away, I'm like, all right, you guys got me. I love that movie so much. I always get emotional. All right. And then then another one, now, Ryan, you can just take a break on this one because this is a turn-based tactics type game. But this one's called vaunted.

And when I initially started watching this, I was like, yeah. But then I'm like, wait a minute. This actually might have some some cool stuff to it. It's a, they described themselves as a sci-fi tactical RPG. So, but this game, it kind of has a mix of like, it's almost like turn base, but then there's cards. You see some cards occasionally, but then you have this party makeup. But then there's moments where there's a lot.

lot of action happening, so I can't tell if the action happening or like quick time events or if it's not fully tactically term based. I couldn't tell. But I'm kind of interested in this one too, man. You guys are trying so hard right now. Well, no, no, I was not. You guys are reaching. First and foremost, I hate.

You're reaching. No, I hate when games give characters like different dialect and you just have to read the subtitles to understand what the hex being said the whole time. Speak alien. Yeah. Like speak, no, I don't speak gibberish,

alien or whatever it is. I, and I also, it's probably more up my alley than either of you guys, but a good tactical, turn-based RPG, I don't love the,

the art style. It's very much like Fortnite art style in a way to me, but I don't know, man, some of the, like the combat

and the skill trees and the party makeup and stuff like that, like there might be something here if you're like me and you like a good tactics turn-based RPG, this one looks like it looks different enough to have me curious

it might be fun we'll see this looks like it should have been shovelware on the Wii you play it on your phone it's mobile game I mean alright so I'm getting I'm getting the sense that I might stand alone on this one you stand alone on this one okay all right all right fine then artificial detective you do not you do not stand alone here you do not stand alone here yeah this one looks great why does it look great ace what do you what do you like about this one uh well first and foremost just when

the humor in general is pretty great but uh the combat reminded me so much of like the last of us or resident evil where you can interact with the environment and also it's kind of slow and more realistic i really like that overall the designs of the enemy robots compared to the main robot you play as was really cool and the entire story idea of like all the humans have disappeared and you're this artificial robot detected who's taking care of a child, it looks like. It seems really interesting. Yeah.

Wait, all the humans disappeared, and yet you have this child as your sidekick, which is a misdick. Yeah. This game looks very cinematic. It looks really good to me. I think the premise stands out. I'm with you, Ace,

and that the combat and just the animation is, is, like, really well done. Like, like, so well done that it actually, like, draws your attention when you're watching this trailer. I'm curious if these are like scripted events and this is more just like quick time event with like some fake action or if this is actually the way that the combat plays out in this game

but I love the premise there's humor to this game there's a seriousness to it like this game has a lot going for it in my opinion as far as like did this drive up my interest level like it drove it up a lot the half robot deer was really cool that was a cool way to start off too see it eating and then you see the backside of it

you're like, whoa, you know, okay, here we go. You know, I think you said it there, Josh, is like, it's got a lot of going for it. It's hitting all the markers on what you would want in this style of a game. So, I mean, we just kind of got to wait to hear more or see more.

I really hope these aren't just kind of like video productions of stuff and this is actual gameplay, or part of it at least, you know, because like, if it, it plays like it shows in this trailer that's awesome i'm all in because like sending your dog to bite oh yeah yeah shooting uh uh down at the the puddle of water and shocking all the enemies that are

standing there you know all of that stuff if it plays that way and in the way it looks i'm all in this thing looks really really cool i'm i'm excited i hope it is yeah i put this on your radar because i all three of us agree that this looks pretty awesome um And it's described as a third person action adventure as well. So it sounds like it's not just going to be scripted events. If they're calling it an action adventure game, I would hope that what we see in the trailer is actually kind of how the game plays as well. All right, we've got two more.

I'll be honest, not a ton to say on these. We've got Ascend to Zero, which is a rogue like. This is another hack and slash rogue like. Anything stand out to you guys on this one? the time mechanics kind of cool it does look pretty neat I'm not a fan of the art style on this one why does it look like this

like it looks like they're trying to rip off Minecraft but not commit to it yeah it's a little weird like some of the action looks pretty cool the time mechanic where it's like you have to hurry up and get through these levels you only have 30 seconds or something but then you can slow down time and stop time and

like I could see this being a neat mechanic the gameplay looks like it plays pretty flawlessly. Like, I just not a fan of the art style. I don't know what to think about this one, because a hack and slash roguelike sounds like it's up my alley but I don't know that I'm fully on board with this one either. So.

See, the first thing I want to compare this to is that other roguelike erosion because it looks very similar, but it plays... Erosion? I don't remember that one. That was the one that looks like voxels. Oh, okay. Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of voxel type

stuff. I prefer that over this. yeah maybe like pixels yeah this weird like not pixel but trying to be pixely I don't know I'm not super in on this one and finally we have grave seasons this is a cozy farm sim oh is it is that all it is why are we closed them on this one

is there another game that's like a cozy farm oh wait like you mean like every other thousand cozy farm sim games that exist hold on there's a twist I see. Aces, like, Josh, stop talking. He's like, hold up. Hold up. Wait a minute. Hold up. Wait a minute. Go ahead. I set that up for a reason. All right, let's let them cook. This is a cozy farm sim like your Stardew valleys and your harvest moons and all that.

But there's a twist that in this town you've moved into, there's a supernatural serial killer that you need to identify before everyone in this town dies. Oh, my word. I will say I was instantly off on this game because I was like oh gosh here we go another just another one in this

genre of a thousand games but then they get into the horror elements and then I'm kind of like oh crap like there might be something here man I don't like the Starter Valley part but there is this kind of weird

throwback like almost like point and click adventure part yeah to where and then people in the town like you see them going missing they have red X's through people you see somebody getting dragged off by a giant shadow hand with blood everywhere and then I'm like wait a minute this might not be as cozy as you think and it sounds like they're leaning into the horror aspect on this one and people are getting murdered each night the townsfolk are even saying don't go digging too much because you might find

things that you don't want to find can a horror aspect deem the cozy farm sim aspect that's the question in my mind I think you can use this cozy settings to sort of give you a false sense of security and safety and then when you think you're safe then the game will strike at you and you'll be like oh god

I still gotta do all the dumb farming stuff also there's dating mechanics in this game so you could accidentally be you could accidentally you're not selling it you're not selling it Josh by saying this you could accidentally be dating the serial killer and not even know it Yeah, but I mean, then what? You're just like, okay.

They'll probably kill you. I don't know. I can fix them, Ace. I can fix them. It's fine. I also, I believe this is being distributed by Blumhouse. So that's also pretty cool. It looks like there's a pretty good video game here.

For people. For people. Honestly, it looks like a pretty darn good video game here for people. Like, I'm sure there's people that would be very excited for this. You should be excited for this. I wish I was excited for this, except it looks like, Starkey Valley so I'm not excited but the horror part looks cool bad take bad take I know I know I don't know all right and there you go people you are now caught up on the Xbox

partner preview all of the cruddy news going on in the gaming industry some things to look forward to if you are an Xbox console owner dispatch eternal life of Goldman Hades 2 super meat boy all either out or coming out very soon and then some cool looking games coming in the future for Xbox and PC as well. Ryan's going to leave these trailers in the episode description for you guys

so you can tap on those and watch those if he remembers which he's been pretty good about it. He's been pretty good about those lately. So we try to make life easy for you so you can see what we're talking about there as well. That's going to do it for this episode, everybody. buddy come join our discord chat about these games talk about them we're going to have a whole bunch of people

playing hades too here soon uh everybody that played it already is going to be just gushing over you know what your play through is like and stuff like that but we've got an incredible gaming community over 1,300 gamers very very active um people of all gaming tastes ages i mean it's an awesome place so come join us there's a link in the episode description for you there as well and if you would like to go the extra mile and support this podcast if you feel like we bring you some joy in your days, or we keep you up to date on the news, or we provide any kind of entertainment or service to you at all, then think about giving back to the podcast so we can keep doing this year over year. There's a link in the episode description for that

as well. Basically, we put everything in the episode description to make life easy because we know what gamers are like. And you're not going to go to our website to find this stuff. We know. So we just put it all in the episode description. So it's right there at your fingertips. Because we're gamers. And we know what gamers are like. We know gamers. Yeah, exactly. Gamer is no game.

Gamer is no gamers. All right, that's it for this episode. Everybody, until next time, happy gaming. See ya. I'm giving this episode two thumbs down. Yeah. Peace out. How dare you.

Yeah, a thumbs down like Rocky.