We’re back with another episode of The Gamesline Podcast. This week, John is joined by Maverick and Lorelai to talk about all the games they’ve been playing in the new year. John’s been playing Pokémon: TCG Pocket and Hey! Pikmin when both he and Maverick haven’t been digging into the endgame of Metaphor: ReFantasio. Maverick also bought himself a Steam Deck with what money he had left after dealing with the scam that is american Gachapon. Lorelai has spent her time revisiting games from earlier in the year with Dungeons of Hintenberg, part 2 of Fantasian: Neo Dimension, and a ton of Mahjong in every game that had it. In the news it looks like we’re going to get a Recettear HD, Punch-Out!! just might be dead as a franchise, and the Team Fortress 2 comic has ended.

You can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on Social Media @TheGamesline, @JudgementScythe, @John_Michonski, and @MaverickDrifter

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show!

If you want to send in questions send them to our ask box at gamesline.tumblr.com/ask.

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Edited by Lorelai

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It’s Tuesday, which means it’s time for another podcast. This week, John and Solon to sit down and talk about the news and the myriad of games Solon’s been playing. John’s been getting up to a little bit of thieving action with Octopath Traveler 2, while Solon’s been digging into Homestar Runner Hide & Seek, CRYMACHINA, and Like a Dragon: Gaiden – The Man Who Erased His Name.

In the news, the Overwatch League is done, multiple press outlets have all been shut down by their venture capitalist overlords, while Aftermath is here to fill what void they can. We’ve got a new Steam Deck with an OLED coming as well as an announcement for the announcement of Grand Theft Auto 6. We’re also getting a live action Legend of Zelda movie and the team could not be more enthusiastic about it. Our hearts are also with Scott Benson and the Glory Society as Scott deals with some serious health issues.

You can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on Twitter @TheGamesline, @john_michonski, and @ChorbySP.

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show! If you want to send in questions send them to our ask box at gamesline.tumblr.com/ask.

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or directly to our RSS feed.

Edited by Lorelai

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New Games Coming Down The Track:

Zelda is out! The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Breath Of The Wild 2 if you’re nasty) is real and in folks’ hands. Immediate reviews are glowing as you’d expect, but it’s hard to tell what that really means this early in. Press around it has been highly guarded and handled by Nintendo as well as by deliriously ebullient fans whose identity depends on this game being a massive success. Luckily for you, Scott is live tonight playing it for the first time on GameslineTV. Come in tonight and see the Takes of a Gamer.

Hollow Knight: Silksong has been delayed once again to… later this year? It’s unclear currently when it will be released but there is still much to be done to prepare for a release way larger in scale than the original Hollow Knight. Will they be able to meet the lofty demands of fans? The pressure is clearly on and this is a sign they are taking it seriously.

Growing up, I played a TON of games on Kongregate and FlashGames. Some were regrettable, and some were jmtb02’s Achievement Unlocked series. A fun lampoon of the burgeoning design trope of the era. Now, Armor Games announced the blue platforming elephant has returned after a decade of absence in The Elephant Collection. And somewhere deep inside my soul, a younger me has lit up again for the first time in a decade.

Private Division is officially publishing a new action-adventure game by Game Freak. It’s not Pokémon though. Project Bloom is the codename for this new IP they have just started development on. While that may sound exciting, Game Freak’s track record has been shaky outside of Pokémon‘s unflappable IP with the lackluster Little Town Hero (2019). Private Division also has struggled as a publisher through many of its releases leading to a lackluster library, especially the recent Kerbal Space Program 2. So we’ll see if they can turn out anything from this vaguely potent combination.

“We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to create new IP that is bold and tonally different from our prior work,”

Kota Furushima, Director at Game Freak. 

Is French-Bread cooking again? The Korean Ratings Board seems to have rated what could be a sequel to Under Night In-Birth. There is a lot of speculation surrounding a sequel to clearly the greatest fighting game ever made but it may be titled Under Night In-Birth 2: Systacelles based on Gematsu’s report. Either way, your Eltnum loops better not be caught lacking anytime soon or my scrub ass Merkava will eat you.

Finally, Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon teased a new Mortal Kombat-related project on the way. Is this Mortal Kombat 12? The clock’s second-hand stops before striking twelve. Perhaps we’re moving past a twelfth entry and returning to another reboot of the franchise, but that’s the only heads or tails I can make of whatever this is suggesting. If you have ideas, let us know on your favorite social media, Discord, or in the comments below!

Merging The Green and Blue Lodge

Outside of new games announcements, we continue to follow Microsoft’s efforts in the acquisition of Activision-Blizzard. The EU’s European Commission may be finalizing it’s decision as soon as next week to allow the merger of the two corporations to happen. If that were to happen, it would make the current score Yes from China, Japan, and the EU’s trade commissions and a No from the UK and the US’s federal commissions. What does this mean for the $69B acquisition? It’s still too early to say, but Microsoft and Activision are exhausting all possible avenues before they finalize a deal. One thing is for certain, both corporations are so desperately hungry for this merger.

ASUS has revealed all the details to their Steam Deck competitor: The ROG Ally. The base price $599 version features an AMD Ryzen Z1 processor, 7-inch 150hz display, and 512GB Storage. This makes it stronger than the Steam Deck for a very comparable price. Pre-orders are up now (I won’t affiliate link you here, I promise) and it sounds like other than a very short battery life that this will be some substantial competition for the previously unchallenged mobile PC gaming space.

The developers of narrative game Open Roads has officially removed any recognition of the Fullbright name from their game. This follows reports of employee mistreatment from Fullbright’s co-founder Steve Gaynor in 2021. Gaynor was removed from development shortly after the reports were published, but Open Roads is now pushing forward with less baggage. The team is currently referred to as “The Open Roads team”.

In lighter news, Mark Frost confirms he did consulting on The Legend Of Zelda: Link’s Awakening while working on Twin Peaks?? In an Iwata Asks blog posted on Nintendo’s website around 2006, Zelda-series director Takashi Tezuka spoke about how he was inspired to make a followup to A Link To The Past by the runaway success of the surreal serial drama. I don’t know how Collider found this old blog post or how Mark Frost found the Collider piece, but he quickly tweeted out his collaboration on the project which confirms this whole story. This is a fascinating new wrinkle that somehow ties the beach-loving Marin to the beach-lying Laura Palmer.

The post The Bulletin: Games That Aren’t Zelda? appeared first on Gamesline.

Google’s Doodle on December 1 featured an interactable tribute to Jerry Lawson, a Black computer engineer credited with developing the first video game cartridges. The International Game Developers Association has acknowledged and honored Lawson as one of the first few Black engineers who worked in Silicon Valley during the 70s.

The Steam Deck is shipping to Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan later this month. Pre-orders can now be made to customers in those said regions.

Meanwhile, stay tuned during The Game Awards this upcoming week on December 8, because they are apparently giving away Steam Decks during it too.

Maxis is looking ahead for the future and growth of The Sims to possibly expand locations to Europe. Maxis has been through a turbulent history and has been a division of Electronic Arts since 2006.

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet sadly has been riddled with a slew of technical issues and bugs since release, and Nintendo has finally released a statement on addressing these problems. A patch update for the game has been released.

More content for Sonic Frontiers will be happening into the next year of 2023. You can check out Rose’s review of the game here.

CD Projekt says their remake of the first Witcher game will be “open world”. That said, it likely won’t be out until the fourth game of the series comes around.

Co-founder and former CEO of Tripwire Interactive John Gibson has returned to publicly air grievances that “cancel culture” ruined his life on a show with pundit Tucker Carlson. Gibson infamously tweeted anti-abortion comments in the wake of the controversy of the Texas Heartbeat Act that was passed in 2021. He has since resigned from the company, and his opinions has stoked ire from many industry colleagues.

Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios has released a public apology and is pledging to investigate their hiring practices following a controversial hire back in 2021. The hiree in question has since resigned of this year, and their name has never been disclosed publicly.

Twitch releases “Shield Mode”, a new feature for streamer that hopes to mitigate issues of harassment. Shield Mode will give way to more finessed settings that will allow streamers and their mods to adjust things like commenting privileges and verification options.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has squashed Activision Blizzard’s efforts to impound upon the Blizzard Albany union’s vote. On all occasions since Blizzard Albany has announced unionization, Activision Blizzard has refused to voluntarily recognize the shop and by attempting to file motions that the shop should be expanded, impeding the QA tester union’s numbers. The NLRB has denied these attempts.

The official trailer for Illumination’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie is out, and you can see it for yourself:

The post The Bulletin: Give Peach More Weapons appeared first on Gamesline.

Sony has bought Bungie.

While Bungie is suing a Destiny 2 player for cheating and harassment.

Co-creator of The Last of Us and former employee of Naughty Dog Bruce Straley returns to the games industry.  Straley has been transparent about bowing out from games due to burn out and has opened up a new studio, Wildflower Interactive, that hopes to do things much differently.

A new Yu-Gi-Oh! Rush Duel game is coming into the foray! Dawn of the Battle Royale!! is expected to release on the Switch around this coming winter.

Nintendo Japan vowed that they will provide benefits to same-sex partnerships. The company’s policy introduces a new “Partnership System”, that writes, “employees who are in a domestic partnership with a same-sex partner [will] have the same benefits as employees in an opposite-sex marriage”. Same-sex marriages currently remain unrecognized in Japan.

Blizzard Albany, formerly known as Vicarious Visions, is unionizing. This publicly declaration is not that long after the studio’s respective name change and pivot after being acquired by Blizzard Activision.

The FaZe Clan is now officially a publicly traded company and is on the stock market. This is not that long after several members have been long kicked out of the group for promoting cryptocurrency fraud. 

Sadly, speaking of even more crypto—

Square Enix is beginning to implement NFTs in their merchandise. Although there are chances that a variant of the teased Honeybee Inn Cloud (in a dress) figure will not be subjected to the company’s new marketing strategy, it has become increasingly clear that they are sadly committing to it for all intents and purposes.

Meanwhile…

Minecraft vows that there will be no NFTs associated with or within the game in any foreseeable future.

The post The Bulletin: Taking the Heat appeared first on Gamesline.

It’s another big news week this week and Scott and Maverick are here with the proper Host/not host dynamic to go through all of it. Our biggest story of the week is the incredibly disturbing story of abuse coming from the developers of Fight Knight. You can find Wren’s post Why I Left The Fight Knight Project here and the record of abuse at Dangen Entertain and from CEO Ben Judd here.

With the heavy stuff out of the way, we go into Discord’s tease of NFT’s, X-Box’s twitter getting deleted, Among Us and Baba is You are getting updated, and the complete messes that are the Popeye game and the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy remasters. Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 along with Jump Force are being removed from digital storefronts while 1 vs 100 is coming back. The Hat in Time developers are teasing something and I Maed a Game with Zombies In It just popped up for free on steam.

The dynamic duo have also been playing a few games, with Maverick digging deep into Trails of Cold Steel 3 and Scott really just wanting to spend all his time in Inscryption when he’s not playing Cruelty Squad.

As always, you can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on Twitter @VGChooChoo, @scottblah, and @mavsplaniamania.

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show! If you want to send in questions send them to our ask box at videogamechoochoo.tumblr.com/ask.

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Subscribe via iTunes, hipcast, direct download, or listen below!

The post VGCC Episode 379: Don’t Buy Fight Knight appeared first on Gamesline.

It was a massive news week as well with the new Steam Deck, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl‘s rollback netcode, and a Warthunder player leaking actual classified material hoping for buffs. We also discuss the potential problems facing the future of Judgement as well as the new Shin Megami Tensei 5 trailer. We cap it off with some quick news hits looking at the Monster Hunter Netflix animated series trailer, the Ghostwire Tokyo delay, Shrek being in Hunt: Showdown, Final Fantasy X-3 potentially existing, and Netflix starting a gaming division.

As always, you can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on Twitter @VGChooChoo, @scottblah, @lvmaeparian, @mavsplaniamania, and on Instagram @Fataleflare.

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show! If you want to send in questions send them to our ask box at videogamechoochoo.tumblr.com/ask.

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Subscribe via iTunes, hipcast, direct download, or listen below!

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