Video Gamers Podcast - TWIG: The Latest News on Fable, Forza 6, and More – Gaming podcast

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

Gaming hosts Josh, Ryan, and Ace are back for TWIG—This Week In Gaming—breaking down the biggest stories shaking up the industry. We dive into Fable’s long-awaited return, new rumors around Forza 6, and the mysterious promise of Kiln. Is this finally the week where Xbox proves its lineup can deliver the next wave of must-play video games, or are expectations getting out of control? We unpack what these reveals mean for players, studios, and the future of gaming, plus a rapid-fire roundup of the other headlines you need to know. It’s a video games packed episode you don’t want to miss, right here on the Video Gamers Podcast.   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/kKA7EMyM 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

And High Guard is out now, so we'll know if it's a flop or if it's actually the hero shooter people have been hoping for. Well, all that. Gosh, darn it. We're never going to get through this. I was actually just improvising. And so I, and then I goofed it. You went off script, Tommy. Hello, fellow gamers.

And welcome to the video gamers podcast, Fable, Forza Six, Beast of Reincarnation. And Kieln? What? And Highguard is out so we'll know if it's the flop the internet predicted or if this is something special like I think it is. What's not to love about this week in gaming? Before we get to the news, some introductions are in order. I am your host Josh. And joining me, he told us last week his busy work schedule was over. And then he told us that exact same thing earlier today.

Or at least it will be in a week or so. We don't know if we can trust him, but we love him anyway. It's Ryan. I can't even trust myself. I keep saying, all right, I'm going to be done. And then I'll be able to play some video games. I don't even know what a video game is anymore. Ryan, do you know how a lot of people call me an optimist, right?

They say, Josh, you're such an optimist. Do you know how much of an optimist I am? I believe you every time you tell me. like oh guys guys like i think i'm finally going to be done working so much it's like i'm going have time to game or or don't worry josh yeah i'm totally going to ping you tonight so that we can play something and it's like every time i believe you ryan and then every time never stop being you yeah so there you go and joining us the man who loves super obscure weirdly named game thing combinations called archipelagos, it's ace.

How many times did you have to try to spell archipelago before you got it right? Dude, I, okay, so little tidbit, I'm actually a really good speller. It's kind of like the way my brain works with my memory and stuff. So it's like I actually knew how to spell archipelago. I'm impressed because I misspell it every time I type it into Google. Spell onomatopoeia. Oh, no. Oh.

No. I don't know either, so that's what I was asking. Well, yeah, that's a weird online. Okay, like, I do know what Anamonopoeia is, but I ain't spelling it. But what we will do is we're going to thank some people, boys. Yeah. Guys, we have three new people that signed up to support the show. And we want to give a huge shout out to Pablo Phoenix, Matthew, and a longtime member of the community.

But now rare supporter, Dr. Joe. nasty for signing up for rare status. Love it. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you so much. You are, well, don't know. Ace, you just ruined it.

No. What did he do? He did the, he did the part thing. He did it. I'm not even going to show you. Don't, no, don't do it. Literally made that an emoji now. That's a meme.

That's a meme. I thought about banning it. I like, I legitimately thought about like banning that emoji, but then I was like, no, let the people have their fun. They react to every message you send with that emoji. Oh, I know. Yeah, I know. Trust me.

They know what they're doing. I've seen it. Yeah. And then Ryan, before we get to the news, I think we've got a couple of reviews because we've been a little lax on this. So I'm going to read one. You're going to read the other. I'll just, let me just grab this one, Ryan, since it's short and sweet. It's titled Love It, Five Star Review comes in from Minecraft and it says.

I'm seven. Thank you for the review. Thank you, you, Minecraft. We appreciate it. And hey, you know what? I started gaming when I was four years old, so you were in the right place.

This is a family-friendly show so you can listen to this podcast and your parents will not be upset or worried about that at all. And thank you. Listen, if a seven-year-old can leave us a review for this show, you have no excuse.

That's your, no excuse at this point. So listen, we're going to be watching these Apple reviews over the next few days. And listen, don't let a seven-year-old beat you, okay? All right. So just take a second. Leave us a review, and there's a good chance we'll read it on the show. And listen, we're not shy. We don't shy away from reviews.

Ryan, I think you've got one, right? I do have one. This one, it's a little bit longer. I don't know the quality of the review, but we did get five stars. This one is titled, Ryan's an idiot coming in from your casual clasher. And it says, when Ryan said E33 is overrated, I considered never watching the show again, but decided to insult him here instead. Ryan, you got issues, bro. Get help.

Yes. That's the best review ever. Vindication. Oh, man. Thank you. Listen, number one, thank you for sticking with this. podcast number two, thank you for calling Ryan out for being a doofus. Hey, you know what it did, though?

It got the review in. We got a review out of it. I'd rather, I'd rather just not risk it. You know what I mean? At least there was a positive review. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't risk it, Ryan.

Ryan just rage baiting half the planet at this point. It's only rage bait if it's not true. Oh, my goodness. All right. We don't have time to get into this. We don't have time for that. We don't have time to get into this guys. All right.

Guys. Okay, we've got to talk about High Guard. All right. Now, listen, we're recording this Sunday night. High Guard comes out tomorrow. All right. We're recording this so that we can actually play High Guard tomorrow and not have to record tomorrow. We are gamers at heart.

This is what we do. You know, here's the deal. For those that don't know, High Guard is the game that got revealed at the end of the game awards. That is the coveted spot. This is where we were all hoping for the Half Life Three announcement that we didn't get yet. Uh, uh, so,

and then we got high guard. And this was one of those moments where I am like going like, bro, this game looks sweet. And then, you know, I do what a normal person does. I turn to social media and I see hero shooter trash,

not another hero shooter. This game's AI slop. This has got to be I. It's garbage. Oh no. This will be Concord 2.0. And I'm just like, why do we get?

gamers hate video games, number one, you know. And then number two, like, I thought this game looked pretty good. Like, what did you guys think about Highguard when you initially saw it? I thought it looked great. I mean, it's from, you know, the pedigree of the apex devs and things like that. And it's a promise to be, you know, a mix of Valorant and Apex Legends, which those are both very popular games. So why wouldn't this work? And can I just say how tired I am of everyone just calling things they don't like AI slop?

Like it's clearly not AI I know Quit diminishing someone's hard work By just calling it slop because you don't It doesn't work for you like It's still someone's hard work It's still a game yeah That someone worked on that they want people to play

Rant over but It's just funny to me like Because it's it's um Nobody hates like the thing Their own hobby more than like Oh yeah anime people or like video gamers Like they just hate everything unless it's the one or two things that they love

and then everything else is garbage and trash. I never understood that, but I love everything, guys. There's nothing I don't like. Let's go back to that indie episode and we'll test that theory. I got so many messages about that. I don't give up.

They're just joking. I got a lot of support. And I was like, dang, Ryan and I must have really been down on it. And then I listened to the episode and I was like, okay, well, we were down on these a little bit. I mean, one of the things we've always promised, we will always give you our honest, natural reactions to things.

You know, we go with our gut. We go with what 40 plus years of gaming experience have shown us. Maybe not ACE. He doesn't have 40 years, but, you know. Not quite. No. He's got a lot. I'm not even 40.

We'll round up. All right, we got to move on. It's fine. All right. So I do want to talk about this real quick, right? Because, you know, this is, we're. we're recording this the day before it releases. Everybody's going to be like, it's going to be out.

People are going to have their first impressions. And then this episode's going to be like, well, duh. I have said from the beginning that I think High Guard looks really good. Ace, you mentioned it, the pedigree. It is the original developers of Apex and Titanfall. They worked with Vince Ampella, RIP Vince. RIP. You know, that that guy helped usher in like, you know, some incredible games.

So Apex, Vince, Titanfall, this pedigree could not be better, guys. And then they make a game that gets shown off and we go by what trailers show us. Sometimes we're skeptical of it, but we go, dude, I watch this trailer like four different times. It looks incredible to me. You go to the internet. The internet is absolutely has called this game dead already. I mean, everywhere. It's Concord 2.

It's Concord 2. That's what people keep calling it is. The fact that the devs aren't promoting their game and that we've got nothing other than the trailer at the game awards means there's nothing there. This might even be a myth. This is how the internet goes.

I want to address one of those things. Not how dumb the internet is, but the not another hero shooter. All right. So guys, I did some research for everybody out there that goes, oh no, not another hero shooter. Let me say this. How dare you?

How dare you take one of my one of my favorite genres and slander it by saying not another hero shooter. Guys, you know how many hero shooters? Well, don't worry, I'm going to get to that, Ace. Don't worry, I'm going to get to that. So, guys, do you know how many hero shooters have a player count of more than 10,000 concurrent players?

That's a low number, by the way. I'm going to say at least two. Five. Ryan, Ryan, you're pretty spot on. I can't even think of five. Oh, am I? So I'll just give you the list, guys. Marvel Rivals is up there, 164,000 concurrent players.

It's number one, all right? Well, that we can get that we can get stats for. Overwatch 2,000 concurrent players, Rainbow Sixth Siege, which I never think of with a hero shooter. It's considered a hero shooter for the purposes of this. Never thought of it that way. I haven't either. All right, so 78,000 concurrent players.

Apex Legends, I don't consider that a hero shooter. that's a battle royale with heroes but even if we account for that 62,000 and then Team Fortress 2 at 58,000 and Valorant which I can't get player numbers for because it's not on Steam. So this is one, two, three, four, five, six.

If you count Rainbow Sixthage and Apex Legends, which don't count. So really four plus Valorant. So five. And yes, I know that Paladins and Phragpunk exist but they're like under 2,000 current players those games are dead. So we have five viable hero shooters.

Do you know how many games on Steam are tagged with Metroidvania? Do you know how many? 40,000. I'm going to get. I would say probably like a thousand. 2,839 games are labeled as Metroidvania games on Steam. Oh my gosh. There are five hero shooters.

Five. There are 2,839. Metroid Vannios on Steam, but we get another hero shooter. And Ace has made us look at all of them. Yes, and Ace has shown us. No, no, we've almost seen half, boys. We've almost seen half. Is, is for honor considered a hero shooter? Is it for honor? Yeah. No, it has like character classes and teams and things like that. There's a difference between having a cast of characters or selectable playable, playable

characters versus being like a hero shooter. I'll be real. I don't know what makes something a hero shooter then. Yeah, I'll be honest. I have no idea. When I think of it, I think rivals, Overwatch. Yeah, that's the hat's where my brain goes. I can acknowledge Rainbow Six Sege in a weird sort of way. Team Fortress 2 is the other big one. And then FF2 is big. I would absolutely consider it.

All right. So there you go. At this point, we will have played High Guard. We will be covering it. We're going to be doing an episode with our kind of early impressions for people that want to know more. It's a free to play game. Number one, just jump in. You know, Give it a try and see what it's about. But, you know, don't always believe what you see on the internet, people. That's the hopeful takeaway.

Except us. And listen, if this game sucks, everybody's going to say, I told you so. And what's that going to count for? You know what I mean? What's that going to count for? A bad game that doesn't help anybody at that point. So, all right. Guys, we got the Xbox developer direct where the highlight and the anticipation for this was a thousand percent.

fours a six for some people those cars man they'd be looking good oh we got some messages that no we didn't draft it and stuff thank you Ryan that's exactly where I was going

seriously oh dude when when none of us drafted fours of six in our game of the year draft we got a lot of comments that were like how could you guys forget about fours of six so I wanted to give

fours of six its moment in the in the spotlight for everybody. I've never played a fours a game. I played fours of five, believe it or not. Did you like it? No. I mean, yes. Listen, okay.

That's going to sound, that's going to sound bad. The game itself is super impressive. I am not a sim racer. If I want to play a racing game, I want arcade racer. Give me. I want to feel like I'm going

a thousand miles an hour, turbo boosting, jumping over buildings, that kind of racing game. not, I spun my wheels out at 35 miles an hour, which yes, I know that's real life, but that's not the kind of game I want to play for a racing game. So, so we're, guys, this episode, oh man. All right, so four is a six, Fable, Beast of Reincarnation, and Kieln, all right? Those are the four games that were shown off. Fable was actually the game. I just wanted to kind of, you know, give

Foursa six. It's nod there. Fable is the game that everybody was like, Okay, we're finally going to get another look at Fable and more in-depth look at it. You guys watch the 13-minute dev trailer making of video that's become a thing now. I don't, I don't know how other gamers feel. I don't like this, guys. I don't like these super long videos where we hear about, like, the studios. They're all going to say they. Yeah.

Make something separate for that. Give me the gameplay. Give me 13 minutes of gameplay. This is, you know. why we need gameplay trailers and dev diaries. So they need to be like separate things. So people who are looking for dev diaries can go watch that. And people who just want to see the game can go watch the game.

Yeah. Personally. Yeah. No, it's, it may be that's a thing with us because we watch so many trailers where it's like, just give me the game play. Give me the goods, man. Give me the kids. Yeah, it could be our issue for sure.

All right. What did you guys think about the fable like look that we got? I, I think it looks really. good as someone who has never touched the fable series knows nothing about fable because it was not in my house it was not with any of my friends or family nobody had it around me no one ever talked about it i'm intrigued to try it but this game has some of the most millennial humor i have ever encountered in a video game which is fine uh because i looked it up and it said like in the past games you had a butler who was literally a character from monte python so i was like okay so maybe

that's what they're going for here is like it's yeah they are it's not a serious game. It's not. Fable is very cheeky. It is very like you do what you want. The game reacts in funny ways. It kind of has, it definitely has a sense of humor to it. This was the four, I actually like this is a choices matter game, right? Yeah. See, it's, that's what I was about to say is like Ryan and I, we grew up with Fable, dude. Fable was groundbreaking, dude. Like, it was, you know, an Xbox classic, dude. Like, everybody played Fable. Like, everybody played Fable. Like, everybody played fable um so it's actually kind of cool to get the like the viewpoint of somebody that hasn't grown up and has that nostalgia and that kind of bias already um towards this so yeah fable was

the game that pioneered i i say that because i'm not going to go digging through the annals of gaming history to see if another game did it but fable was the one that put it to the forefront where everything you do and all of your choices affect you and the world around you it was like the first game to really nail that. Yeah, all my girlfriends got mad at me for, because I had too many of it. It's ridiculous. Yeah. How do you know about each other?

Yeah, it gives you a ton of freedom. You can get married. You can, you can, like, you can murder your wife in this game and, like, divorce her or something like that. Wasn't it Paul that, like, divorced his wife and they, like, kicked her and killed her or something? It was something like that. Yeah.

It was, yeah. But so, like, yeah. So, Fable gives you a ton of freedom of choice. Play the game you want to, the way that you want to play the way that you want to play it and the game will just react to that. Like you, if you were, if you did everything evil, your character would actually kind of get this like dark aura around them and grow horns. Yeah.

And like the more evil you were, the more like your outward appearance of you being evil. And the townspeople would actually like scream and run away when you were walking through your hometown. Like, you know, or you could be the hero and then people would cheer you as you're walking down the street and stuff like that. I think you'd even get like a halo, wouldn't you? Yeah. You got like high enough.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Your guide start glowing and you'd have a halo and stuff. and you're like, look at me. And I'm sure they're going to integrate it even more and make it so much more detail, because you saw even in the trailer where, you know,

you can actually be like a landlord and have property and then you can have tenants. And if you evict them, if they don't have anywhere else to go, then you just see them in your town on the street. And they're just like chilling there and they just are a beggar now. And then you walk up to him and he's like, oh, it's you. And it like tells you,

you know, you evicted this guy and stuff. It remembers a lot. Yeah, I'm so excited for. for the layers of this, because this is just one of those, not to rage anymore and get more people upset because I know the Zelda people.

But for me, like with how people feel about Zelda, like this is how I felt about Fable. I love Zelda. Zelda's amazing, but Fable was like that kind of fantasy cartoony style, but I loved the ability to make these crazy choices

and do these crazy things and play the game that I wanted and then the world reacted to that. And it wasn't as scripted as a lot of the other games. So to me, that was like, always my throwback kind of cartoony fantasy game that I just absolutely loved. So I'm so excited

for Fable. Did you like what you saw from the trailer, Ryan? Like, is this like the next evolution of Fable for you? I think, um, I'm not sure what they could do with having such a good base already in a blueprint. Like with the upgraded graphics. As long as it runs properly, I don't see any reason why I wouldn't like it. Like I'm, I'm so excited. Yeah. I, this, This new trailer we got, honestly, it really didn't show off a whole lot more. I was a little disappointed and like we didn't get a ton of new gameplay. But what we did see is the combat system, which I think looks really good. You know, I think that they, that part of the game is going to be fun.

They showed off a lot of the variety of like the way that you can customize your character and kind of how the world around you reacts to you, which is things that we assumed that Fable would have. And they kind of just said like, yeah, we've got all that, which was reassuring. It's next-gen graphics. I think the game looks, you know, incredible. So my hype level has gone up big time. Did any of us draft fable? I think I did.

I think I did. I feel like one of us did, dude. And I don't know. Yeah. I'm pretty sure. Yeah, you did, Ryan. Dang it. Dang it.

That was a shot in the dark because, and they did confirm that it's going to release in 2026 as well. I have a game. You have a game on the board, Ryan. You have a good game, dude. You have a good game. All right, listen, we're going to take a quick break. Then we're going to talk some Foursa 6, some Beast of Reincarnation and Kieln.

And then if we have time, we'll take one quick jab at Marathons, Collectors Edition. We'll be right back after this break. All right, guys, we're back. Look, we got to talk Foresa 6 a little bit. You know, I know there's people out there that love these kind of games. I think they're cool, dude. Like, honestly, I've got nothing against, like, these kind of Sim racer type games, other than just acknowledging that they're not my favorite kind of game.

And I can play them, but I can't play them for, like, very long. I think I'm just like you. None of you guys like Sim Racers. No, I think I'm like you. I prefer the party arcade-style racers over Sim racing. I'm probably out of the three of us, the highest on. I'm like, I've always been a Grand Tresmo guy for sure, because I always had Sony and stuff. But I even had the last one, and I'd sit and play it.

And that's, I know I said, like, I'm not a big, chill game guy but those are kind of the chill games i have to be in the mood for it but when i am i go through all the cool cars i'll check the different races and go to the cool areas because they are they're always so beautiful and i don't mind the technical aspect of like real racing um so i do enjoy them so i just it's one of those i got to be in the mood and i they're not anything that ever like i get super excited for but i but i do enjoy playing them and i mean this game looks it looks beautiful it looks insanely good dude Yeah. This is the thing, and this is not slander to Forsa at all because I know people love it. But like, I, if you showed me Foursa five horizons and Foursa six horizons or Fours or Horizon Six or however they name it, I wouldn't be able to tell you the difference.

They're so different. They put a six on the box. I mean, you know, as people that are ignorant to it, that's what it looks like in all honesty. And so, you know, I think the game visually looks impressive. I think it's going to offer a ton of what people are looking for if you like this kind of game. I just, this is such a blind spot for me where it's like, I don't know what I can say that's going to inform people. Yeah. Other than I think it's a beautiful game, you know, and that a lot of people are excited for it. A game that I'm excited for with a touch of like, is it going to be good?

is Beast of Reincarnation. Now, Game Freak, Ace, you might be able to confirm this. Game Freak is the developer that makes the Pokemon games. This is the developer behind the Pokemon games. That's not a, that is not a vote of confidence for me.

I wouldn't, I wouldn't tell anyone that if it was me. Yeah, like, honestly, like, the Pokemon games are known for being, like, very poorly developed and, like, stripped back. I mean, a lot of that, though, If this game is good, we can all later now point to the Pokemon games being bad on the Switch's limitations. A hundred percent what we can point to. Because Pokemon games didn't used to look bad and play bad when they were on handhelds.

They worked fine. But you got Zelda. You have Zelda. Zelda's a clean game, man. I think it's just the development of the time. When have we ever, the best Pokemon game that I ever remember was Pokemon Snap. And that was on like N64, a million bajillion years ago. You didn't play any of the like, you know, Emerald, Omega Ruby, Alpha Sapphire, any of those?

Honestly, after like the OG Pokemon's like, you know, yellow and red and stuff, I never really played anymore. It's the only one I know. It's the only one I know. Scarlet Violet was fun, Josh, but man, was it rough? Yeah. I feel like you could say that about any of them, though. Like, that's the problem is like, name a Pokemon game and I'll be like, I remember people being upset with the way this game looked or the way it played or how optimist. it was or the jenky graphics or

Pokemon fans don't vote with their wallets, I'll tell you that. They just buy it if it's Pokemon. That's what happens. Well, again, that's why because they have so, I mean, I'm pretty sure we talked about this in the past. Like, Pokemon's like the largest IPs of all time. Like, they are the largest IP that ever exists. One of the largest IPs of all time.

And so to not, I just don't understand why you wouldn't be able to do that. Hire the right people and, like, develop a decent game. I don't know. I mean, like you said, people will buy it up and they love them and stuff. Why bother if you're going to buy it in the state it's in? Yeah, they just keep buying them. There's truth to that, honestly. So, well, then we get this look at Beast of Reincarnation, which we got a snippet.

Look at this a while back, if you guys remember. And then so this is the longer 13 minute trailer again, where they kind of showed off and the studio kind of talked about their love and their passion that went into the game. I think, I think this game looks really good. I am very interested to play it. but like let me ask you guys a question phantom blade zero or beast of reincarnation

phantom blade zero yeah same way i just that's my and like these games look so similar to me in they look very similar i was going to say it's another eastern style souls like like yep i get i get that what we're trying to do here i do but you're starting to oversaturate the market with games that look at exactly the same. Yeah. And my biggest red flag

for me was watching this trailer. Did that music make you want to just like gouge your ears out? Oh. That music was like the worst. I think that might have been the YouTube channel. I think that was the worst music I've ever heard.

That was some stock music. I don't, that wasn't the actual game trailer that was shown. I was like, did they really put this on here? No. No, I don't think that was. Wait a minute. This is funny because I. Did you guys also hate the music that this YouTube channel used?

Okay, so I sent Ryan a link to the Beast of Reincarnation trailer because Ryan was working all day and I was like, hey, make sure you know, have a chance to watch this. So, but it's some rando YouTube channel. It's not like from the next box. Oh, you just send me a random link? Yes, I say you a random one. That's funny. And so the problem is, is that it plays like the loudest, most obnoxious elevator music the entire time that this trailer is playing. and my wife in the other room goes,

what are you doing? I'll match it in this trailer. So the fact that Ryan goes, guys, this music. I muted it. I muted it and just lost the trailer. I was like, this is so bad.

I'm like, did they really do this? I was blown away, but I was trying to scramble to watch through all the trailers. Oh, man. Oh, my heart. Oh, that got me.

It's really that bad. That's not, don't worry. That's not the actual game music, thankfully. Well, your wife and I agree, at least. That's good. Yeah. I, like, I'm excited for this game. guys, but like I, I'm skeptical because it's, it's starting to look like all these other games. And the thing like we always, that's not a bad thing necessarily, but like. Yeah, just like we've

talked about before, like there's so many games released now every month that what are you going to do to stand apart? What are you going to do to make your game enticing to people? And it's going to be harder and harder every year. And, you know, I wish everybody the best. Like you said, we don't want anyone to fail, but like I just don't know if they've done it, you know, for me. Like some of the stuff is cool. Am I going to go out of my way to play it? No, probably not. Yeah. I think this game looks really good. Like it's, it looks like a really good video game. The developers give me pause and the fact that I would rather play Phantom Blade Zero over this like 10 out of 10 times, but it doesn't mean I don't want to play this either. So this one's a little weird for me. A very

impressive looking game. I would recommend it to anybody, but it's just, we're starting to see too much of the exact same, in my opinion on this. But if it's really that good, then that's not a bad thing either. I can't believe I thought the music was. That's so funny.

It took me a second to realize what you were saying, and then I was like, I got to tell people this, because otherwise they're going to think you're really crazy. We're going to get another review that's like, listen, tell Ryan he needs to stop watching trailers. I will say Beast of Reincarnation does get me very excited for Phantom Blade Zero. Yes, there you go. Exactly.

I mean, yeah, so. The inverse effect. I'm not trying to slander the game at all because, again, I think it looks like a very good video game. I am very interested in playing it. I just, if you put them, I might even make a little cut just to weave the two games gameplay in to see if you can tell the difference. You know what I mean? Just to see. So maybe I'll do that to put on our social media.

that's hilarious. Yes, do that. So we'll see. All right, guys. And then listen, we're always talking about a game that looks different. Killed? What? What is this pottery-based party brawler game? This looks fun to me. It just looks weird, but it does kind of look fun. At the same time, like, I mean, like a little Splatoon DNA in there with like the kind of, like, I don't know, man. I'm, I'm very curious about this and I'm optimistic about it.

this one. What do you guys think? I love online party games. Like Mario Party is I love to get a group together and play Mario Party. So having an option for the PC that I could play where I get to make my own character out of pottery clay and just go crazy attacking one another. It just sounds fun. It sounds like a good time. And it's so unique too. Like we're always begging for something unique, some innovation. This doesn't look like every other party clone that exists. This is just its own thing and it's super impressive so far to me yeah i liked what i saw too it just looks like it's like you said it just it's a fun time it'll it'll be a good and i love those online games it'll be laughing and then oh you put out my kiln you know and everybody freaking out all i know is that josh i

better get some uh uh ghost style action where you like put your hands on my hands and we can oh dude trust me don't you worry man you can you can wear a wig so you look like Patrick Swayze and then we'll just tell me there's going to be a VR port you know what I mean where you just see another set of hands come in right the music starts up and everything there you go yeah

oh my gosh what's what's interesting about this game is they put so much emphasis on actually making the pottery like the shahms matter simulator meets Mario Party like I don't dude this is bananas and yet I think this could work

like I'm not a sim guy but like the being able to make your own unique piece of pottery that you then take into the game that also matters the shape that you have. Like they went into this big thing about like you need somebody that can carry a lot of water, but then you need somebody that's fast and can kind of like fight people like a, you know, like a tall face or something that can like knock people out of the way. There's strategy to the shape of your pottery and how you use it as a team and your the goal is to scoop up this water and then carry it to the enemy's kill. and then like douse their kiln with the water that you picked up. It's like reverse spiltoon in a way. It's weird. But yeah.

I'll play with the ace. Yeah. I think, I think this looks like fun. It's just really weird to take time. All right. Listen, we got time for this.

I was hoping we'd get to this story, guys. Yes. Man, listen. Listen. You know, we are, we're gamers.

We, we don't like dumb things. We call out dumb things. stuff when we see it, you know? And Ace, I think you shared this first where you shared a screenshot of Marathons, a $190 collector edition. And it's got the cool looking statue. It's got all the unique stickers and cards and all this stuff. And I'll be honest, I didn't, I didn't click it right away because it's like, I don't care one whit about Marathons Collector Edition, you know? And then you said, this is crazy, guys.

it's $190 and it doesn't even come with the game. And I went, I did like the double take where I went like, what? What do you mean? It doesn't come with the game. And then it doesn't come with the game. It doesn't come with the game, man. What else is there to say? Like, that's crazy to me.

I love collectors editions. I'm not buying your collector's edition. If I have to buy the game separately, I'm not buying your collection. Electors Edition. Like, that's ridiculous. Holy crap. I don't, I don't get it. Like, we're all speechless because it's like,

this just doesn't make any sense, man. Not even like a game code. That's the thing. It's like, I understand not always including the disc. I get that. Not even a game code. Do they understand it doesn't actually cost them money to give away a copy of the game at this point?

Like, you're in the net positive. Is my brain working right? Like to where you realize you've made the game. Like if you give somebody a code, that doesn't hurt you at that point. Especially if they're spending $190.19. Yeah. That's a lot of money for a collector's edition with no game.

And more than likely. For a soundtrack and concept art and a statue. You should have given two copies of the game. If it's 190 collector, like you should have been like includes a gift copy for a friend so you'll have somebody to play. with. It's a first collector's edition.

That would be so much more genius than it did not even put a copy of the game in here. Like, or a digital code at the bare minimum. Yeah. The thing is like if somebody buys this collector's edition, they're more than likely going to buy the game as well because you wouldn't spend almost 200 bucks or probably 200 after tax for this if you're not going to play it.

But if it did include the game, maybe people that weren't going to buy it will be like, oh, okay, well, this is cool. I'll get this as well. so they may have sold a little bit more because of that. To me, it just adds on to all the interesting decisions, and there's already been so much kind of trepidation and people are just worried about how marathon's going to release and how it's going to launch and what the game's going to be like,

and if it's going to flop or not, there's a lot of people worried about it. And to make another decision like this just doesn't make sense to me. I don't get, you know, I don't get why they would do this, this course of action. It's wild. I don't know. They didn't have enough controversy, I guess. I know, right? They need one more before launch.

All press is good press, baby. Yeah, we're talking about it again. It's just one poor decision after another, poor decision after another to where it's like, it makes me stop and go, did those poor decisions carry into the gameplay and the development of the game at the same time? because it's like, I'd love to separate those two, but I think that's what people worry about is it's like, if you're making all these poor choices, like, what did you do in the game as far as like poor choices of development too? So I don't know. Yeah. I'll wind up playing marathon.

I'm, my curiosity is too high to not play it, but. How much is it? It's, it's 40 bucks. Okay. That's not that bad. You know, that's the only good. I'll be, okay. The one good decision they made is not trying to charge 60 or $70.

I'm glad that's not $70. I wasn't paying $70. from a marathon. $40 is the right price. Or even make the collectors like $200 and then you then throw in the game or something. You know, I don't, yeah, this is wild. It's a weird choice. I don't think people should make that standard by any means.

Don't do that. All right. All right. Listen, real quick, everybody, Banjo Recompiled is a PC port that is out now for the people that love banjo. We did it. We did so many stupid banjo noises before we started recording. It was ridiculous.

People are listening to be like, what the heck? You guys are pretty good at that. I'm not going to lie. Oh, my gosh. All right. So it's out now for those. It's on PC. It's got a lot of updates.

It looks cool. They even did a thing where they're leaving it open to the mod community to work with some preexisting big mods for this game. Check it out. I think it looks great. I love banjo kazooey. so we wanted to mention it for you people. Very impressive.

Yeah. So, all right, listen. Guys, let's go play some High Guard. All right. Yeah. Yeah. That's going to do it for this episode, everybody. If you have not done so already,

make sure you follow the podcast. Hit that plus button, that follow button in your podcast app. You know, if you want to leave us a review, like we read at the start of the show, you can do that on Apple. If you listen on Spotify, make sure you rate us five stars there. And come be a part of our.

our incredible gaming community. This is where we had so much fun playing Battlefield 6 Community Night. I'm sure people are going to be playing High Guard and checking that out. There's people playing satisfactory. There's people playing repo all the time. I mean, it's just, it is an awesome place to be. There's a link in the episode description. Come be a part of that.

We'd love to have you. That's going to do it for this one, everybody. Until next time, happy gaming. See ya. Peace out.