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Season 11, Episode 07

We appear as a hologram that only you can see and hear at the following link.

It’s that new console feeling in the air. Except…it isn’t. It’s weird. The Nintendo Switch releases this week and it feels a bit odd. We’re used to having these things release usually in November and usually within weeks of other consoles from Microsoft & Sony. The Wii U bucked the competition tradition by releasing a year before the Xbox One and PS4, but still came out in November.

Regardless, it all still feels a little…off. The lineup of games for this thing available at launch doesn’t seem to go beyond Zelda. I imagine people will be picking up a few titles and you usually do when buying a new system, but I just can’t see myself playing ANY of them. It’s a new gadget and the temptation is completely there, but it’s been easy to avoid. Mainly because of the library.

Outside of the month, this feels really familiar with the release of the Wii U. A system with a pretty weak launch library and releasing without any competition to pull you one way or another. That system is actually the more tempting one in my eyes due to all the great games it has available – plus getting the new Zelda as well.

We’re curious where you stand. If you get the system, we’d like to hear from you in the comments. You can also email us or, better yet, call in to the show on this week’s episode.

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Episodes

Season 11, Episode 06

We’re never doing that again at the following link.

Before you listen to this episode let me first apologize. Sometimes things will play out in our head better than they actually do when we implement those ideas. The song choices for this episode is the VERY best example I can give of such a situation. Never again. I swear it.

Gaming is about to get busy. This past week alone saw the release of at least THREE games I know of that had substantial interests. Sniper Elite 4 – which we discuss on the show, Halo Wars 2, and For Honor. This current week is sort of a…buffer. A time to make use of and get in all we can of whatever we wanted to play. Next week is Horizon Zero Dawn. The reviews and general conversation seems to put this one in a good light. One not to miss kind of a thing. Then the week after is the Switch release which means Zelda. That early March release should give you plenty of time before Mass Effect at the end of the month.

And that’s only the big hitters and even then I feel like I’m leaving stuff out. In between there’s PC releases of all kinds and probably some lesser known things that could come in under the radar and surprise us all.

To the publishers – I know we used to beg you to step out from the Fall/Holiday release schedule and you did that. Keep that going, but now back it off the early year release as well. Summer is still a massive drought of nothing new worth playing. Fill that in from time to time and you’ll see that releasing a good game in ANY month of the year will still get you the returns you want. We’ll buy it. We totally will. But throwing them in the crowded early and late months of the year doesn’t do you any favors.

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Season 11, Episode 05

We’re statistically speaking at the following link.

Sometimes we think we know our audience. Mainly because most of you show up in the chat room during the live shows (if you listen to this outside of the live broadcasts we’d love to hear from you and know you’re out there). But then we have calls like we did during this episode. A much older gamer calling us about Doom posed the question to us about the demographic of gamers these days and one of our listeners in the chat room provided us a lot of information on that very subject. It was necessarily eye opening to any of us – the statistics anyway. The phone call, however, was a different story. There is no defining age of a gamer, I mean, statistically yes there is, but we all know you can be as young or old and still enjoy gaming. There’s videos all over the internet that exemplifies this and proves the point. But…it’s honestly different when you actually have a conversation with someone who exemplifies this.

I’ve seen my interests in things come and go as I’ve grown older. Food that I didn’t like as a kid don’t seem so bad now. Or television shows I enjoyed as a kid seem to be difficult to understand why as I’ve gotten older. Gaming has been one of these things that I’ve wondered and often been afraid about – will I grow out of this? Is this a phase that’ll eventually pass? I don’t ponder too long on the questions cause we really can’t predict these things, but hearing from these callers make me a little more comfortable in the fact that it isn’t likely my love of gaming will pass on or phase out.

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Episodes

Season 11, Episode 04

We’re pretty sure size matters at the following link.

I’m back from PAX South and being under the weather and everyone else is back from their convention locally as well. I love going to the different PAX’s that I am able to attend, but this one afforded me something no other PAX has been able to do up until now – hands on time with a not-yet released console. And you can take that term literal. Hands on this console in particular was something that had been bugging me since the main reveal last month. Everything about it looked small, and while that’s usually in Nintendo’s favor, something about this seemed to be on the extreme side of the size. Yes, it’s small. Very small. Too small. And, oddly enough, they’ve got it backwards when used as a handheld – it’s too big. When you’ve got a 3DS and you need to focus on something else at a moment’s notice you just close it up and move on. You can’t do that with the Switch. There’s no folding. Maybe there’s a bag you shove it into, but there is no quick sleep. This thing has problems up and down and that’s outside the already limited launch library that we’ve discussed before.