From last week with an abundance of topics, or at least having topics with plenty of discussion to be had…to a show with very little to be discussed. We do, in fact, run out of content well before the end of the show.

The dominating topic is, obviously, the one that’s currently dominating all discussions. Locally, here in our state (and city) where our broadcasts originate from, we’ve only started dealing with the effects of COVID-19 since Friday with our first confirmed case being that morning. It’s grown since then and as all of you know, it grows hour by hour. Either in cases found or new closings or shut downs to prevent the spread.

And that’s a little bit of where gaming steps in. After so many other cancellations or postponements, the really big show of E3 finally made their choice this week to cancel. This leaves so many windows open as to what will happen. A few companies were kind of on a timeline to reveal some pretty big things and now they aren’t. Now they all get to pick when to have their E3 moment.

It’s an interesting time, to be sure, and could become MUCH more interesting in the months ahead, even past that of June. Like pretty much everything and everyone else, we’re just going to have to take it day by day to see how things play out.

Leave it to some survey to bring out a topic that could last us an entire show. I mean, it doesn’t last the whole show, but we easily could have squeezed an hour out of discussing video game movies. And we were just talking about ones that haven’t even been made yet much less the talk we could have had on the ones already out there and upcoming.

I’ve been recently getting back into DOOM from 2016. It’s fun, of course, but there isn’t much to say about it outside of that. I could say it’s all style and no substance but that wouldn’t be correct either. It’s got both, but not much of either. It isn’t a bad game at all. It does pretty much one thing and it does it well. I mean, it’s practically the best at what it does, but I can’t go much further than that. I’m not very far into it, actually, so maybe I’m being a little too hasty with the comments and this thing will blow my mind in a few levels, but so far…it’s DOOM. Again, let me stress, it’s not bad. It’s not boring. It’s absolutely fine and fun and enjoyable. There’s just, so far at least, not much to it.

So, what’s the appeal of DOOM Eternal? I honestly haven’t looked much into it and that’s something that will change here not long after I post this, but I’m guessing it’s just more of the same and, really, for a game like DOOM – that’s all it has to be.

Video gaming confession: When a game lets you pick sides of good or evil (Mass Effect, Infamous, etc.), I have ALWAYS taken the good path first.

There is always the intention of going evil on a second play through, but there is rarely ever a second play through. I may dip my toe in the evil waters for a bit to start with a second time, but it almost never ends up that I play the whole campaign again.

And honestly, I feel like I’ve missed out. I’ve talked about this before but the evil side of things is usually the more fun play through. In Infamous, I’m too concerned about collateral damage when playing as a good guy, yet when going the evil route – nothing matters. And honestly, that’s more fun for me. Or maybe it’s more fun because I just spent days and hours being so cautious as to what I was doing that finally having that off my shoulders just makes it more fun.

An example for Mass Effect would just be that you put an ungodly amount of time into that game that going back to it isn’t all that fun of an idea. Maybe years down the line you may take another look, but the investment is so great it isn’t the most exciting idea to be starting over.

Someone once said, and I guess they were right: Evil will always triumph. Because good is dumb.

I know we’re going to be getting new consoles this year, but that’s about all I know. There’s details on each, yeah, but the things like a release date and price are yet to be determined. And while normally we’d expect these things at E3, that hasn’t always been the case. And especially now with Sony saying they won’t be at E3 or even have a press conference, it puts their reveal up in the air.

I’m okay with this. They’ll do it on their own time and that’s fine. Microsoft has done this as well, so to speak. I think we got a ton of details about the Xbox One at a special event in May of that year (boy did they push that whole TV aspect) before E3 and then they used E3 to highlight the games. I’m not sure Sony has ever done anything like that but it seems this will be the year they do, since they won’t be at E3. Now the fun part is when. Who shows their hand first? Release date isn’t so much of an issue as price. Being first on the shelf doesn’t really mean anything if you aren’t the cheapest on the shelf. And honestly, if ANY of these companies are looking at a five hundred dollar price tag, Nintendo is going to look awfully good at $300 come the holiday season for parents. Which, by the way, is all I’m considering here. The die hards and enthusiasts, they’ll be out in full force for the console of choice they want and price be damned. But the holiday season and sales, when the kids are asking for a new game console and parents look at the options – that five hundred dollars will NEVER win over something less than that. I get that Nintendo is an outlier, but five hundred may be a bridge too far for a lot of families.

Five hundred, so far, seems to be the cap on a price people are willing to pay for a gaming console. But that’s hard to tell, really. When the Xbox One was released it was five hundred and Sony was four. People went the cheaper route. Had Sony also been five at the time, I don’t know what would have happened. The first SKU’s of the PS3 were in the six hundred dollar range and that was a disaster.

This part of the new console release cycle is always my favorite. Who pulls the trigger first and what happens when they do?

And now, pardon my rant. I spend FAR too much time in this episode discussing E3 and probably retreading over ground I’ve already spent far too much time on in the past. Even worse, I could have continued on were it not for the need to take a commercial break. In a way, I’m thankful we have those so it can pull us off one track and set us on the path of another.

All that time spent on E3 kept us from getting to something else I could have ranted on and that’s the price of the next generation of consoles when they release later this year. Sony has already seem to let slip their issues with keeping costs low but I have plenty of thoughts and ideas on that which will have to wait until next week because, again, spent far too much time on E3. More than E3 should get, to be honest. Anyway, yeah, I’m just retreading it all again if I tell you here but I do try to explain some of it in the episode and, more than rant, I try to find possible solutions to whatever it is I’m complaining about. Something I wish more people would do, actually.

I don’t mind the complaining, but at least try and find something constructive to give back. Even if the folks at E3 won’t listen.

They never do.

Pardon our delay. It was completely unexpected but as you can tell from our little video on twitter last week, I was still in no condition to run the show. Thanks for sticking around, however.

Given the situation, the discussion leads into the kind of games we play when we just aren’t feeling all that well. How do you handle it? Obviously, for some and depending on just how bad you feel, no gaming is a valid option. But, for me, I could easily stand to play…something…just so long as it didn’t require a whole lot of work on my part. A city sim, or something ultra casual without a timer or quick reflexes and I was good. And a “timer” could be anything…just so long as it didn’t put some sort of needless demand on my part. Tower defense would be another good genre to play with while out for the count with a cold or something. We all have different ideas of what that is for us and I’m curious what it might be for you.

We try to catch up on the past few weeks of missed news, but just catching up with ourselves pretty much takes up the time. Still, we give a quick rundown of what’s gone on lately – even if we have very little to say about it.

Mainly because I was totally under the weather something horrible.

Thankfully, Plague, Inc. was there to comfort me.

Games Done Quick wrapped up last night after the show. If you aren’t familiar with that it’s a gaming charity where people raise money while playing games as fast as they can, usually with exploits and glitches. And oh man are there glitches. I’ve watched a few speedruns from time to time, but this was a marathon of speedrunning and it was insane to see some of the things pulled off. If you have a chance, take a look at some of the highlights from this year’s runs. Also, look for anything with TASBot – especially the run for Super Mario Bros. 2. That’s a game I hadn’t given thought to in a very long time but was blown away by the speedrun of it…and done by a robot no less.

Ultimately GDQ raised over 3.1 million dollars (a new record) for a cancer charity and I couldn’t be more proud of the gaming community for doing so. Seeing this all come together last night reminded me of just how much gaming gives back. There’s a stereotype of gamers and the gaming community and some it is, unfortunately, spot on while some of it is also completely insulting and has no basis in any sort of fact at all. There’s charity gaming events throughout the year that raise millions of dollars for all kinds of great causes. Extra Life, Child’s Play, GDQ twice a year, and plenty of others. Currently there’s been a lot of gaming devs and publishers who are selling special in-game items with all the proceeds going to the Australian wildfire efforts.

The whole point here is – there’s a lot of good in gaming. And if you’ve chosen to believe those negative stereotypes or for whatever reason look down upon the hobby, try finding the good in it, because it’s there. And you might be surprised.

New year, new episode! Or, whatever that’s supposed to say whenever a new year rolls along. Actually, welcome to season 14! News over the past few weeks, in regards to gaming anyway, has been rather slim. So, we’re mostly looking at what’s to come in the year ahead. Also, this gigantic Witcher resurgence we’re seeing thanks to the excellent (in my opinion) Netflix series. It’s fantastic when a video game series can get proper representation when translated to another medium. And yes, I know the show’s source material is the books, but rising tide and all boats and the like – it’s just good to see, really.

It’s the beginning of 2020 and I’m not sure we’ve ever been this early in the year and already know for a fact that we’re getting new consoles from Microsoft and Sony THIS year. Usually we have hints and whispers, but even before this year started, we knew we’d be getting them. I cannot wait to see how this plays out over the year, especially when it comes to launch dates, pricing (more than anything else), and launch exclusives. Plus all the other bells and whistles both companies will tout to get you to buy their console over the competition. Microsoft is already doing this with a massive backwards compatible campaign and not only with the games but also the controllers as well.

In the meantime, I’m probably going to do a second re-watch of the Witcher. If only for the music.

Welcome to our final show of the year, and, as it turns out, our final show of the decade, I suppose. It’s our annual Christmas episode but all that means is we play holiday themed music from video games that have winter/holiday type levels or special DLC or whatever. Otherwise, we’re still just talking about the news of the week and the games we played.

As we come to the end of the year our thanks once again goes out to everyone who listens and supports us. We know there’s probably plenty of you who don’t listen regularly or even at all but you’re liking our videos or social media posts just in support of what we do and we thank you for that. And for those of you who do listen, on your own time, or make it a point to show up every week for the live show and chat with us in Twitch Chat, we cannot fully express our gratitude for you being there. However much you enjoy the show, we enjoy seeing you there for us that much more.

We thank you for this past decade of your support. So long as you’re there we will be too. We hope you all have a fantastic Christmas and a wonderful new year.

Thanks for listening.

We’ve been doing this show for a very long time and I’ve been doing radio broadcasting for even longer. In both of those time spans, I have never done a show by myself. I’ve covered for a few folks for a short amount of time or something but never have I done it alone and tried to fill out a full hour or two just by myself. It was never really out of the fear that I couldn’t, but more because I like there to be more opinions than just my own.

Well, it can be done and was done for the first time with this episode. We’re hoping it’ll never happen again cause that’s just way too much of me, but I was lucky to have something to talk about with the reveal of the new Xbox Series X console from the Game Awards earlier in the week. In fact, that’s pretty much all I spoke about. The reveal and all the new games announced at Winter E3, as it were.

Thank you all for the encouragement and the confidence and for putting up with just me for nearly two hours.