This week Paul takes Zahra and Caroline on a journey through Escape Academy, with a review by Zahra, and The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, with a review by Paul. Maylee brings it all together with the week in gaming news!

Mario is no more.

Nintendo has revealed that Charles Martinet, the original voice actor of Mario who has played the role since 1991 will be “stepping back from recording character voices for our games” and will now serve as a “Mario Ambassador.” The post continued that “With this transition, he will be stepping back from recording character voices for our games, but he’ll continue to travel the world sharing the joy of Mario and interacting with you all!”

Charles Martinet quote tweeted the post, adding “My new Adventure begins!  You are all Numba One in my heart!  #woohoo  !!!!!!!”

Slime Rancher on the big screen

A recent announcement, shared by Deadline, revealed that Monomi Park’s Slime Rancher games are being adapted into a feature film.

The first Slime Rancher, released in 2017, is one of the highest-rated games on Steam of all time with a 98% positive average score and has sold over 6 million copies across all platforms with over 15 million players worldwide. In it, you play as Beatrix LeBeau, who moved from Earth to the Far Far Range to become a slime rancher. The second game, currently in early access, also follows Beatrix and features plenty of adorable slimes.

It’s unlikely we’ll get more details on the production anytime soon but that hasn’t stopped excited fans from speculating.

Gamescom 2023

Early Wednesday morning we same the opening ceremony of Gamescom 2023 and were treated to a closer look at some upcoming titles and the announcement of several new games. Here are just some of what was there:

Bandai Namco’s Little Nightmares series is getting a 3^rd installment, sometime in 2024. It will feature two characters and will be a cooperative game with online multiplayer. The developers came on stage to also reveal The Sounds of Nightmares, a narrative podcast series based on the world, which is available now.

We got a closer look at Black Myth Wukong, in a new trailer featuring gorgeous visuals and intense gameplay. It will be releasing sometime next year.

Dustborn is coming to PS4 & PS5 in early 2024. It looks like a colourful road trip through Americana and in it you’ll use the power of words to shape relationships with your crew, get out of trouble and reach your final destination.

We saw a trailer for Diablo IV: Season of blood, a vampiric expansion dropping in October, promising a new quest line, vampiric powers, and 5 additional endgame bosses.

We also got a trailer for Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, showing off the numerous features that will be added to the game, like vehicle combat, overhauled combat AI, and a new district to name a few.

Upcoming Game Releases

August 25^th

• Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon (PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One)

August 29:

• Goodbye Volcano High (PS5, PS4, PC)
• Sea of Stars (PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Switch)
• Samba de Amigo: Party Central (Switch)

Grab your bootstraps gamers, it’s RADIOTHON!
Join us in our Radio Against The Machine Subathon Special as we pack the studio with Maylee, Rani, Caroline, Cam & Hazel to spruik, hawk, pitch and otherwise tout the prizes, satisfaction, support, and warm inner glow that subbing to 4ZZZ gives you. Not to mention it’s the only reason we have this show, so show up, and show your bling, in this years subathon!

Embrace this!

While parent company Embracer is currently in crisis, laying off developers and cancelling projects in a major restructure, THQ Nordic put their best foot forward in a showcase of their upcoming games this week.

We got our first tease of TMNT: The Last Ronin. A darker story based on the 2020 comic run of the same name in which all but one of the turtles has perished.

South Park: Snow Day is a 3d co op multiplayer game, leaving the style of the popular rpg games behind it.  Few details are known currently but they style has brought comparisons to the N64 South Park first person shooter.

Titan Quest 2 has also been officially announced finally!  The classic, mythology themed ARPG was originally released in 2006 so let’s see if a sequel 17+ years later can live up to its legacy.

We also got updates and new footage for the Gothic 1 remake, Alone in the Dark, Outcast: A New Beginning, Wreckreation, Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy and Tempest Rising.

Tremors of the past

Did you feel a rumble in the earth? It wasn’t the end of times, it was Quakecon 2023 the annual celebration of all things id software. Which now also includes the wider Bethesda and Microsoft’s universe.  But Quakecon keeps it old school as mostly a giant LAN party for fans of shooters. As a surprise this year there was an announcement and drop of a remaster of Quake 2.  What did they improve?

• The original campaign
• Both mission packs
• Quake II 64
• An entirely new campaign by MachineGames
• Visual upgrades across the board
• Restored content missing from the original release
• Gameplay improvements
• Local, online and crossplay multiplayer
• Bots

If you own the original on Steam, GOG or Microsoft store you automatically own the remaster.  Otherwise it is available on all major consoles.  Not a bad glow up for a 26 year old title.

Press F to pay for purchase

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 charted at number 5 in the UK sales chart last month.  This may seem like uninteresting news other than the fact I’m not referring to 2022’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 but rather 2009’s game of the same name.  2012’s Black Ops 2 did even better hitting 4^th.The game saw a surge in popularity after work was done to fix the matchmaking in the backwards compatible versions on xbox platformer. The move along with some aggressive sales has given the older titles a new lease on life as players old and new flock to revered online shooters.

Remember remember the 23^rd… of August.

A quick reminder for all those who celebrate gamescom’s Opening Night Live you can catch the show live on Wednesday, August 23rd at 4AM AEST. So you’ll probably just watch it later.

Upcoming game releases

Red Dead Redemption (PlayStation 4, Switch), Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC), Vampire Survivors (Switch) – August 18

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk (Switch, PC), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC) – August 19

Fort Solis (PlayStation 5, PC, Mac), Immortals of Aveum (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC), WrestleQuest (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – August 23

This week Zed Games levels up its social standing talking this week in gaming news, the marathon effort in a recap of Netherworld‘s Mario Kart Speedway Event, and Zahra betrays the fan within in a review of Sonic Dash.

Hold onto your overpriced gaming chairs folks because this week’s gaming news is coming in hot!

Gotta Catch ‘Em All – Again!

Nintendo announced a bunch of Pokémon-related stuff the other night, including more details about their upcoming The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero, which is the DLC for
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet on the Switch. More importantly though…they’ve brought Pokémon Trading Card Game and Pokémon Stadium to Nintendo Switch Online! Yes!! Now
you can relive your childhood with these classic games on your gigantic television that was not designed for this kind of stuff! Hooray!

Red Dead Back From The Dead

Red Dead Redemption is coming back! What everyone was speculating to be a high quality remaster of the original Xbox 360-era sequel (if that makes sense) is actually a port to the
PlayStation 4 and…the Switch?! How that’s going to work remains a mystery, hopefully better than the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy Switch port at any rate. But I guess it means technically it’s coming to PlayStation 5 through backwards compatibility, so quit complaining!

EVO was a smash hit

The world’s biggest fighting game tournament, EVO, was held again in Las Vegas this past weekend, and it was the place to be if you’re a fighting game fan. Perennial favourites like
Tekken 7 and King of Fighters XV were joined by new contenders Guilty Gear Strive and Melty Blood: type Lumina. I was personally hyped to see the return of Ultimate Marvel Versus Capcom 3 on the stage, but the big event was the debut of Street Fighter 6 to the Evo stage.

Over 7,000 people took part in the Street Fighter 6 tournament alone which is a new record, and congratulations to AngryBird for taking home the ultimate prize. The show’s also the
place where new sequels and characters are announced, including Tekken 8’s first ever Peruvian character “Azucena”. As of press time it’s unknown if Triple Zed will be sending us
all to next year’s show.

Shocking news – Baldur’s Gate 3 is Popular!

The hot new RPG of the moment, Baldur’s Gate 3, is the hottest thing in games since a Steam Deck that’s been left on for more than ten minutes. More than 800,000 people were
playing at the same time the other day, making it one of the ten biggest games of all time for that achievement! So there’s a lesson for everyone, put bear sex in your game and start
cashing the cheques.

And now for some hot new gaming releases!

August 10
Sherlock Holmes and The Secret Weapon (c64)
Stray (Xbox Series S/X)
Atlas Fallen (PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S)

August 15
Moving Out 2 (PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch)
Party on dudes, and be excellent to each other!

The week Paul and Zahra pull in Tom from Netherworld to talk the Mario Kart 8 Tournament happening this weekend! The crew also chats Gaming News and Paul takes to time weaving radio waves in a review of Oxenfree II: Lost Signals.

Who Wants Activision’s Transformers on Game Pass?

Does anyone remember those Transformers games for the Xbox 360 developed by Activision? The ones you can no longer buy digitally? Well, Hasbro has expressed an interest in bringing it up for the Game Pass. The problem? Hasbro initially claimed that it was because, “apparently Activision’s not sure what hard drives they’re on in their building. When a company eats a company that eats a company, things get lost…”

They did also follow-up with an apology for saying that Activision lost its Transformers games, stating that the comments were “made in error”.

Hasbro do really want Transformers on the Game Pass however, “Hope is that now that the deal is moving forward with Microsoft and Xbox they’ll go through all of the archives and every hard drive to find it all because it’s an easy Game Pass add.”

So, who knows?

The Last Of Us Knockoff Is Dead

A budget Switch game called The Last Hope: Dead Zone Survival, bore a striking resemblance to Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, down to the gruff-dad character with an Ellie-like companion. And as you can imagine, it did not last long, with the game being pulled from the Nintendo eShop, and the game’s trailers disappearing from YouTube.

The game’s trailers were less than awe-inspiring, and for those who decided to give The Last Hope a try found their hopes dashed when the entire game is around 20 minutes long and horribly buggy.

While the trailers being pulled can be clearly attributed to Sony submitting copyright claims, The Last Hope’s disappearance from the eShop might be due to caution from the developers, Sony themselves, or Nintendo covering their six o’clock.

Mutant Turtles Invade Minecraft

No no don’t worry, the sea turtles in Minecraft are fine. But our favourite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will be crossing over with Minecraft, which includes a special DLC texture pack featuring Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo, special maps for exploring the turtle’s favourite haunts, and you’ll even be able to battle enemies such as Shredder and Krang.

This is of course on top of the pizza-scented Xbox controllers we mentioned the other week. All leading to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film coming out in a few weeks. Hype!

Zoom Zoom Guardians

If you’re participating in this year’s Solstice in Destiny 2, you will be thrilled to learn that you can now use Sparrows in the European Aerial Zone, so you can get to the bad guys really, really quickly, and beat them up quicker than it took me to finish this story. Happy Solstice!

And now for some upcoming games!

August 3rd

• Adore (PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO, Switch)
• Flutter Away (PC)
• Tiny Thor (Switch)

August 4th

• Death Becomes You (PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO, Switch)

August 8th

• Gord (PC, PS5, XSX)
• Tower of Fantasy (PS5, PS4)
• WrestleQuest (PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO, Switch)

August 9th

• Legend Bowl (PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO, Switch)

August 10th

• Atlas Fallen (PC, PS5, XSX)
• Stray (XSX, XBO)
• Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical (PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO, Switch)

That’s it this week in gaming news!

The Queensland Games Festival (formally known as Game On/GO 423) is the biggest celebration of games made right here, in sunny Queensland. Held on the 22nd of July at the Brisbane Powerhouse, this year Zed Games got to witness more games, more developers, more teams, and more interest in this wonderful event.

Our role? To host the Game Dev Hot Seat throughout the day, interviewing devs live on stage so that they may tell us all about their projects. With a massive variety of games, from narrative to first person shooters, to VR games to board games, and games that blend the borders between them all, at this year’s Queensland Games Festival we got to see it all! And after a long day of gaming, it was a tonne of fun to wrap up with an End Game session, with notable figures in the games industry duking it out against the game-master (with a bit of help from the audience!).

On top of that there were also a number of workshops, and discussions, such as the Emerging Developers Room, for those taking their first steps into the industry, and Gameloft Creative Kids, where children had the chance to meet the artists behind My Little Pony, and create some art of their own.

Missed out? Want to know what was shown? Got there and had so much fun and want to check out the games? Here you go:

Sea of Survivors by Nah Yeah Games

Verbal Void by EnderLost Studios

Crash Course Builder by Wombat Brawler

Go-Go Town by Prideful Sloth

Sumorbit by Tournameta

Frogreign by Arkanpixel

Fire Noodle Eating Champs by Jason Tam

Knight by Mark Baker

Isle of Feathers by Daniel and Juno

Ribbet

My Little Pony: Mane Merge by Gameloft

Bears In Space! by Broadside Games

AND Metal Evil, Halloween Cat-tastrophe, On Point VR, Maiwar VR, Curses and Covens, Gem Hunters, Battlemage vs MechaDinos, Scarlet Pages, and Fossil Diggers VR!

The Queensland Games Festival is made possible with government support through Screen Queensland’s Culture Funding program.

It’s a new week, so lets go #Glorbo
This week Zahra, Hazel and Caroline go (hedge) hog with gaming news, a recap over the who, what, where, when, and that of this years Queensland Games Festival, and then the team talks of the sadness that the lackluster new series of Sonic Prime brought them.