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Season 11, Episode 41

We’re not all there at the following link.

The day has finally come and gone. This past Friday saw the release of a bunch of things. New iPhone pre-orders started, Stranger Things 2 arrived, and in gaming we saw the release of 3 VERY big titles. You could include this past week in that mix just to throw in Destiny 2’s release on PC but Friday itself saw the release of Assassin’s Creed Origins, Wolfenstein 2, and Super Mario Odyssey. This is capping off a month of pretty high profile releases of Shadow Of War, Evil Within 2, South Park, Cuphead, and probably more. My point being is that we have A LOT to play.

And I haven’t played nearly ANY of it. I’ve put just a few hours into Destiny 2 on PC. Just a few hours into South Park. And now, writing this, I’ve spent a tiny, very TINY, bit of time with Mario. The best part of all of this is that even with those short amounts of time, things look promising for everything I’ve played – which is kind of new for me. Normally it takes a while to build a backlog this good, but this isn’t even considered a backlog with how recent these games are. These are back to back to back good games being released. While I wasn’t hopeful for what was to come after, I don’t need to be. These titles already will keep me busy for the rest of the year on into the next. I’m set. We’re good. This is one of the happiest times I’ve been for a fall release schedule.

Everything is awesome.

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Episodes

Season 11, Episode 40

We’re early at the following link.

I wish we could have Sara on with every episode. A female perspective in gaming is something this show has lacked for a long time and it isn’t without me trying to make it happen. That said, if you’re a woman who loves talking about games and can make it to the studio every Saturday we do this, then by all means reach out to us and let us know. The schedule isn’t that accommodating for some and the pay is completely non-existent, but it’s fun and we’d love to have you.

When Sara was talking about Destiny she was referring to her characters with female pronouns and that made me pose the question about selecting gender in gaming. I’ve only ever deep dive role-played with one specific game and that was City Of Heroes/Villains. In other games when given the chance to select gender I go male 99.9% of the time (Sara reminded me of FemShep from Mass Effect, and that may have been one of the times I selected the opposite – the voice acting was impeccable).

It was an interesting and WAY too short of a conversation to have because for some reason I am fascinated by gender selection in gaming. I imagine there’s plenty of stats out there on how it plays out, but I was more curious about the people in the room, the people listening, and the people reading this. Which brings me to the question, when given the choice of gender in a game do you pick your own or the opposite? And, if you feel like saying, what’s the reason behind your choice?

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Season 11, Episode 39

Happy Birthday Matt!! Oh, and the show is at the following link.

How many times do you replay a game? Practically never, for myself. I think of maybe one or two times I’ve replayed a game. Also, this doesn’t count the whole New Game Plus thing you sometimes find in games. After Arkham Origins, I replayed Arkham Asylum and Arkham City on PC to get both of those at 100%, but I haven’t gone back to any game I can think of to do a replay. Oh, the other exception is when beating it once unlocks a harder or different difficulty. When there’s no change from when you played the game before, do you play it again? And I get the movie comparison or book comparison – going back through something you’ve already experienced allows you to notice other details you might have missed the first time. But man, as much as I’ve revisited things in other mediums, I rarely EVER do it for video games.

What about you?

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Episodes

Season 11, Episode 38

We’ll apparently just let anyone on this show at the following link.

We’ve complained before about grouping up game releases. Usually it’s over the span of a month or a few weeks. It’s not really a complaint we mind having, but it’s still an issue since we usually can’t buy everything we want when it releases much less have the time to enjoy it all either. Then there’s the 27th of October. Nevermind that Shadow Of War releases this week along with The Evil Within 2. Nevermind that South Park releases the week after that. Nevermind that Call Of Duty and Battlefront 2 release just mere weeks after the 27th of October. No, on that day we see the release of Wolfenstein 2, Assassin’s Creed Origins, Destiny 2 on PC, and Super Mario Odyssey. Oh, and by the way, the 27th is also the release of Stranger Things Season 2.

So yeah, I’m going to be busy but it won’t be because I’m buying all those games. I’ll stick to one or MAYBE two of them, but not all. I can’t afford it with either money or time. There’s also the personal rule I have of buying ANYTHING so close to the Black Friday sales week. Just don’t do it, folks. You can be sure Nintendo won’t drop in price on that Mario game, but all the rest are even odds we see them fall at least to $30 within a few weeks and at least for a day.

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Episodes

Season 11, Episode 37

We’re making Matt do all the work at the following link.

We don’t normally play games during the show and there’s a very good reason for that. The best example I can give you is the last hour of this show when we broke out the SNES Classic and Matt played it for the entire hour. Meanwhile, I pretty much just gave commentary or let the folks on the phone speak while I watched and gave snarky comments to Matt while he got his bearings playing StarFox so he could unlock StarFox 2 for me.

This past week saw the release of Cuphead along with a few other high profile titles and October (especially near the end) has a ton as well. And here I am, mostly likely not going to play even half of them. Most of these releases will see price cuts not long after the release with Black Friday and the holidays on the horizon. I’ll be there for Destiny 2 and Mario Odyssey. They both release on the same day so it’ll be interesting to see which one I stick with more (I’m guessing Mario).

Nintendo doesn’t really do deals and price cuts like we see with games like Assassin’s Creed and Shadow Of War/Mordor. And Destiny 2 for PC is something I want to be with on the ground floor if only to get more game time in with my PC friends who might be experiencing the game for the first time. Plus, that 1440p, unlocked framerate, and mouse/keyboard shooting is eye opening compared to how many years I’ve been playing this game on consoles.

Hopefully that keeps me busy for a few months since I don’t see ANYTHING coming after October 27th…for me, anyway.