A jump back into the podcast with a recap of my time divided across 4 fronts. Tears of the Kingdom is worth every penny, Diablo 4 makes me concerned for every penny. I was so torn between the new handheld PCs that I cancelled a pre-order and now will wait for the dust to settle. And as always, I have indie games to pile onto the backlog.

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It's looking like a proper sequel to Diablo 3 and not a faithful remake of Diablo Immortal. It's just not the innovative genre changer we would hope to get out of a billion dollar company being developed for 8 something years. I wish it wasn't just a beta because I could have accepted a new ARPG even in an early access state such as this. But as always, this beta is meant to help Blizzard. It sells preorders, it sells double downs apparently, it helps stress test. I played all the classes and it really left me wanting more Diablo 4. I think this is a bit of a redemption game compared to Diablo 3, some ideas definitely taken from other games, which isn't terrible. Real battle pass info and not just marketing keyword jargon is still not apparent so let's focus on gameplay and not speculate on what hasn't materialized yet.

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Portkey Games has a pretty solid Harry Potter universe addition to their development resume, it's simplistic and casual friendly but balanced enough that I couldn't see myself not seeing it through to the end. Performance requirements for this game makes me wonder about ports to PS4, XBONE, and Switch if the majority of PC users are already struggling. High end GPU owners will breathe a sigh of relief the game will run on ultra but everyone else won't be happy with the day 1 patch.

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Happy new year! What did we gain in 2022 worth talking about? You have the Steam Deck cleaning house at affordable handheld PC gaming. You have Elden Ring that was a gorgeous reminder that From Software is still the master at making you suffer. I have 8 indie titles that I got more game play value with than any of the other big AAA titles anticipated for 2022. A lot of games were jammed into the first 4 months of 2023. Blizzard made some interesting game decisions, that shouldn't surprise anyone anymore.

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Tribute Games has released a solid arcade beat 'em up. It hits all of the familiar points of a quality arcade game... unfortunately copied the game length too. But will Tribute games start reviving all old arcade beat 'em ups? X-Men, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, and Alien vs Predator next please!

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