Dynamic duo Zahra and Maylee take the reins in this weeks episode of Zed Games. Tobi brings us an extended look into the week in #GamingNews, Maylee talks teal in a review of the board game Hues and Cues, designed by @wscottbrady and published by @theopgames. Then Paul gets intrigued by the mysteries in Animal World by game engine designer Billy Basso and published by Big Mode.
In this week’s Zed Games podcast Hazel, Zahra, and Caroline talk Gaming News and Microsoft taking the box out of Xbox. Caroline farms pixels with clicks while reviewing Farm Keeper from @NapasGames. And Zahra practices their hosting skills in the late night radio host horror Killer Frequency from @Team17 Also, donât forget the upcoming Indie Dev Night @NetherworldArcade coming in August!
The LEGO-end of Zelda
Yahahaha! The Great Deku Tree, a wise and monotonous figure in The Legend of Zelda series, can be in your home, after significant assembly, for the low-low price of $450. Oh yeah, this is a big one, with 2,500 bricks it stands at about 33cm tall once constructed. Not only that, itâs a 2-in-1 build, with one mimicking the treeâs form in Ocarina of Time, and the other taking after Breath of the Wild. Basically, one has green leaves, the other has pink blossoms.
Included with the build are figures for both versions of Link and Zelda, Hestu, and some Koroks, and thereâs even a little sidebuild that your kids can put together while you put the tree together.
Rainbow Six Siege Subscription
Tom Clancyâs Rainbow Six Siege, the online tactical shooter, will be changing to a monthly subscription system, and the news has not made Ubisoft very popular. The change was announced during BLAST Rainbow Six Major in Manchester, with quite a few boos in the audience. You can opt for a cool $10 USD a month, or $80 USD a year, giving you access to exclusive monthly content drops, Legendary items, access to the premium Battle Pass, and a lot more. Youâll also get to skip 10 levels each month.
This is a separate purchase to each seasonâs battle pass.
Diablo Be Damned
Diablo 4 update released, and version 1.4.1 has had some teething issues. The update was supposed to balance some areas of the game and fix up a few bugs, but instead it disabled Masterworking, an endgame crafting system that was only added recently.
If the fixes worked, then Masterworking was only meant to become cheaper, costing less gold. Oops!
LoL $400
League of Legends has released some special tribute bundles dedicated to the newest additions to Riotâs âHall of Legendsâ, Lee âFakerâ Sang-hyeok. These bundles arenât new, and often contain skins for the heroes, finishers, cosmetic items, currency, and more.
The three bundles are called the âRisen Legend Collectionâ, the âImmortalized Legend Collectionâ, and the âSignature Immortalized Legend Collectionâ, going for $60, $375, and almost $680 AUD respectively. It does contain a âFinal Boss Fakerâ title, themed signature move, 100 pass levels, and more, although some fans commented that they expected an Ahri statue to be included for that price.
What Can $700 Million Get You?
Not Star Citizen, thatâs for sure! Star Citizen, in development by Cloud Imperium Games, is a multiplayer game based around trading and combat simulations. It was originally announced in 2012, when their kickstarter launched and concluded successfully, raising $6 million, with an estimated release date in June 2014. During development, modules of the game have been released to tide over fans, but the extended development time has garnered a lot of criticism.
Through the sale of ships, ranging in price from $20 to a few grand, and crowdfunding, Cloud Imperium Games has managed to raise over $700 million. So maybe a release date is within the foreseeable future. I doubt that though.
News Nibbles!
Destiny 2: The Final Shape is upon us, and fans seem to be pretty hype about it. The newest trailer shows that yes, Cayde-6 is alive (and weâve known that for a while) but also Zavala appears to be having a continuation of his midlife crisis. In unrelated news: Iâm still in love with Ikora.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will be coming to Game Pass at launch, so you could get that CoD fix for a fraction of the price.
Days of Play is here! Running until June 12th, itâs Sonyâs season of sales, and coming with it will be an assortment of bonus games for Premium members, which includes PSVR2 games like Walkabout Mini Golf and Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord, or PS2 games like Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus.
Speaking of game events, weâve got Summer Game Fest and Devolver Direct on the 8th of June, Wholesome Direct, Women Led Game Showcase, Latin America Game Showcase, and Future Games Show on the 9th of June, Ubisoft Forward, Xbox Games Showcase, and PC Gaming Show on the 10th, and of course, most importantly, the Queensland Games Festival at the Brisbane Powerhouse on the 22nd of June.
And now for some upcoming games!
May 30th
June 3rd
June 4th
Thatâs it this week in gaming news!
This week on Zed Games Zahra, Hazel, and Maylee gather for Paul’s Gaming News, and talk modded Witcher and the new king of announcements – Summer Games Fest. Maylee talks picture puzzles in a review of Tell Me Your Story.
Finally we bid farewell to one of our team, Cameron “Gazunta” Davis. A more in depth chat to come next week.
This week on Zed Games Paul leads the team with Zahra And Caroline taking the to the mics to bring us all in gaming news, reviews, community and culture. But first, Cam brings us the week in old man #GamingNews, just so the team can clarify the Helldivers Misinformation Mixup and Paul talks the wholesome surprise stream of the Indie Brew Aussie Indi Showcase. Then Paul is confused at the lovely unique story of Highwater and its Pirate Radio DJ from Demagog Studio, and Zahra gets stuck climbing into the VR title The Pirate Queen from Singer Studios. Paul rounds things off to talk narrative games in the upcoming digital festival LudoNarraCon 2024.
Join us with Hazel, Caroline and Paul to talk this week in Gaming News with some Maple Story Karma & Fallout Fallout. Paul then takes the long way round to look at the stunning graphics of the early access title No Rest For The Wicked from Moon Studios. And Caroline gets religious in the Catholic guilt filled something something soulslike something something metroidvania games Blasphemous 1 and 2 from developer The Game Kitchen.
Does This Count as Rage Quitting?
Twitch streamer niru spent April 25 grinding to become the first level 300 player in MapleStory, a free-to-play online multiplayer roleplaying game, originally launched in 2003. This stream was promoted by the developer Nexon, and had over 20,000 viewers.
After nearly 17 hours into the stream, niru then launched into an hour-long rant about the gameâs economy, and how the gameâs worlds differ.
âOver here [in Heroic] itâs free-to-play friendly⌠Pay-to-win is accepted here [in Interactive World] but the free-to-play experience is awful and thatâs what needs to be improved right now.â niru explained.
He then goes into detail about the number of servers available, the cash shop, as well as a number of other concerns, before ending the stream at level 299. It is estimated that he has spent over 10,000 hours before stopping at 99.993% of the way to level 300.
Niru booted up The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time the next day, apologising for the way the stream ended the day before, but he certainly doesnât regret how it ended.
âI genuinely think that that game is not worth playing anymore in Interactive World, and if I just jump ship over to Heroic, then itâs GG. Iâm running from the problem, and Iâm not doing that. And nothing wrong with Heroic World at all, I have nothing against you.â
Returnal Returns
Itâs the three-year anniversary since Returnal, a roguelike shooter that follows Selene Vassos, an astronaut looking for a mysterious signal on the planet Altropos. If you enjoyed this game, then you might look forward to Dark Horse Comics teaming up with Housemarque, as they revealed an animated version of the first issue of an upcoming graphic novel, Returnal: Fallen Asteria.
Itâs due to be published on October 22, 2024, with 88 pages of psychological-thriller-goodness.
There has also been an artbook teased, but a release date for that has yet to be announced.
Game Changer Made A Game
Game Changer is a game show that combines puzzle solving, improv comedy, a bit of pranking, and a lot of competition, hosted by CollegeHumor CEO Sam Reich. For the most part, the premise of the show usually involves the contestants trying to figure out the game being played, and the rules associated with the game, throughout the episode.
And now one of those games is a video game you can play, for free, right now. Based off the game âDeja Vuâ, it has players navigating a maze by choosing to go left or right at junctions. Make the wrong turn and you encounter a silly death.
Developed by Colin Watterson the game âworks well on PC, badly on Macâ.
News Nibbles!
Starfield will be getting a big update in May, which will include new difficulty options for gameplay, ship-building customization options, and more quality of life improvements. Land vehicles were also announced to be in development, but we donât know when those will join the game.
Roll7, responsible for Rollerdrome and OlliOllie World, and Intercept Games, responsible for Kerbal Space Program 2, will be closing down, as Take-Two Interactive announces its plans to lay off as much as 5% of its workforce in the coming months.
The Fallout TV show has hit 65 million viewers in two weeks.
And now for some upcoming games!
May 2nd – thatâs today!
May 7th
May 8th
Games Getting the Thanos Snap
This week saw a couple of games added to the growing list of paid games ripped from digital libraries and slipped from support and server maintenance. PlayStation has chosen to decommission the servers of LittleBigPlanet 3 following the technological issues which resulted in the servers being shut down in January. The multimedia giant seems to have given up trying to fix the problems and instead has decided to just shut up shop, removing support for core gameplay loop of creating and sharing levels. In worse news, Ubisoft has created a new category in your digital library called âInactive Gamesâ. This is specifically for owners of the purchased game The Crew. When opening the game through the launcher you are now greeted with the message âYou no longer have access to this game. Why not check the Store to pursue your adventures?â. Attempts at bypassing said launcher are met with either game key requests or a limited access demo version of the game launching. Ubisoft claims this was necessary â⌠due to server infrastructure and licencing constraints.â
This trend has been tipped to continue with a report published that claims 70% of game developers are concerned with the sustainability of live service titles. This is also compounded with the overwhelming majority of those surveyed working in teams dedicated to said live service games.
So, what can we do as gamers? The movement to get political is now in full swing with people calling for the preservation of video games. Personally, you can head to stopkillinggames.com and click the âTake Action Hereâ and follow the links, perhaps even signing the parliamentary petition EN6080 calling for the government to enforce our ownership of games like I have.
Fallout Resurgence
In more positive news, in the wake of the well-received adaptation of the Amazon Prime Fallout series â which if you didnât know is all canon to the Fallout lore according to Todd âit just worksâ Howard â the series has incited gamers to return to the base games with sales of Fallout 4, earlier titles, and even the critically panned Fallout 76 jumping up the charts with player counts hitting new peaks or even breaking old records. And for all those living out their postapocalyptic dream for the first time or returning to the series, the games have either received or scheduled to receive next gen updates as this broadcast goes live (April 25th), and probably with all the trademark issues/glitches/problems we have come to expect from Bethesda.
And for the series fans, youâll be happy to know that Amazon has confirmed a second season is on the way.
Game Industry Biz News
This week videogame company Embracer Group announced they would be dissolving the company and splitting their assets into three separate companies; the first Asmodee Group to focus on the companies table top assets, the temporarily named âCoffee Stain & Friendsâ to take over the indi to AA game operations, and the â again temporarily named â âMiddle-Earth Enterprises and Friendsâ to take over the high end AAA assets like Tomb Raider and The Lord of the Rings franchises. The CEO of Embracer Group, Lars Wingefors, is bucking the trend of blaming the volatility of the industry, and is taking responsibility, saying;
“As a leader and an owner, sometimes you need to take the blame and you need to be humble about if you’ve made mistakes and if you could have done something differently.
“I’m sure I deserve a lot of criticism, but I don’t think my team or companies deserve all the criticism.â
Atari is also bucking the trend with the relaunch of Infogrames as a publishing label, with purpose of publishing and acquiring IP outside of the Atari brand, and has already purchased the game Totally Reliable Delivery Services from tinyBuild.
And PlayDate â that niche console youâve heard about from some of our announcers â the maker Panic has shared that of the 70 thousand shipped, over half of the owners have made purchases on the storefront. Because of this support, Panic has revealed that developers of the 181 games have received a sizable payout of over $500 thousand US dollars.
Now Have We Got Some Time for Some Quick Bytes?
Team Fortress 2 has finally gotten 64-bit support, now boasting up to 20% more frames per second! No updates on the bot issues though, but the game has only been out for a meagre 17 years soâŚ
And thereâs a new operating system on the horizon. With Meta announcing its new Meta Horizon OS for the VR ecosystem in partnership with ASUS, Lenovo, and Xbox.
And now for some upcoming games.
On April the 25th the âsah gaaâ continues with Square Enixâs SaGa: Emerald Beyond coming to PC, PlayStation and Switch, while Bandai Namco brings the manga SAND LAND to life in ⌠wait for it ⌠SAND LAND (all caps) coming to PC, PlayStation and the Xbox series S & X.
Friday April 26 brings us Manor Lords, a medieval strategy where you can sit on your high horse, coming to PC. Or if you feel like turning into a spandex clad Beyblade with a sword and flashing lights, join the masses with Stellar Blade coming to the PlayStation 5. Or go for a different kind of spin in the tennis sim with some big names in Top Spin 2K25 coming to PC and next gen consoles.
And to round out the month, after hitting 40 million players, Sea of Thieves is finally coming to the PS5 Tuesday April 30.
And thatâs all this week, in gaming news.
This week on Zed Games, Maylee, Paul, and Peter talk couch party games. Then the team chats the week in Gaming News where Paul talks Xbox Layoffs, Pepper Grinder release, and other new releases. Then Paul goes to the MAX in VR to talk Max Mustard developed by Toast Interactive, before Maylee tries to romance the big bad as a bard in Bard Harder! from indi developer Shark and Pelican Games.
This week on Zed Games, Hazel, Zahra, and Paul talk Gaming News and the Yuzu fallout, Paul takes the historian approach with Cricket Through the Ages developed by Free Lives, Zahra brings in actual pages of the book Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree, then Paul jumps in before the final roll call with a review of The Mobius Machine from Madruga Works.