The Inner Gamer Podcast

Control Resonant dropped the Service Weapon, swapped the Oldest House for a warped Manhattan, and became a character-action game. We dig into whether Remedy's shapeshifting melee combat and Dylan Faden's story make it one of the boldest sequels of the year, and who it's for now. Then we go back to WARDOGS one season in: why squads are building fortresses instead of fighting for the hot zone, how hard it is to join late, and what the October 15 wipe means for players who can't grind every night.

In the second half, we cover Xbox's biggest reorganization yet. Halo moves to Activision, Obsidian goes to Bethesda for the next Fallout, Forza's studios merge, and Ninja Theory's future is in doubt. With Gears of War: E-Day out today, we ask what's left that makes Xbox Xbox.

We close on Marathon. Bungie admitted it "didn't reach as many people as it had hoped" and is reshaping the game with PvE, deathmatch and better onboarding. Alongside WarDogs, it's part of a bigger shift toward developers being more open with players, and we ask whether that candor should earn a game more of your time.

Show Notes:
0:51 - Housekeeping
2:05 - Control Resonant Is the Boldest Sequel of 2026
43:08 - WARDOGS After Season 1: Is It Built to Last?
1:06:27 - Xbox Just Rebuilt Itself Around Activision: Can They Save Halo?
1:30:06 - Can Marathon Evolve the Game and Win Players Back?
1:43:26 - Upcoming Video Game Releases

Become a part of the conversation! If you donate $1 or more on Patreon you can get exclusive access to the Patreon-only chat and channels on the server.

Visit our website to find our social channels, check past podcasts and donate to the show.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see all of our latest videos as they drop.

Credits:
"Blue Groove Deluxe" by BlueFoxMusic on audiojungle.net
Woman Announcer - Ariana Guerra; Actress
"Wisdom" by Super Nostalgia 64

This week we dig into The Blood of Dawnwalker, the debut RPG from Rebel Wolves, where Coen is human by day and vampire by night and the whole game is built around that split. Different powers, different routes, separate skill trees, and a time system where every quest you take closes the door on another. We get into how the clock actually works, why it makes choices land harder.

Then it's our full review of Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy. Asobo traded the rats and stealth for swords, parries, and a smuggler exploring the Minotaur's Island, with a dual timeline that lets Sophia see through the eyes of Theseus. We talk about what the new direction gains and where the tension of the old games survives.

We close with early impressions of Marvel's Wolverine, including a rage system that turns Logan's healing factor into a resource you spend and a post-launch debate over whether linear design is the same thing as hand-holding. Then we wrap up with Enshrouded ahead of its 1.0 launch: what makes the Shroud, the building, and the traversal click, what's coming October 15, and what the pre-launch price increase says about where Early Access is headed.

Show Notes:
0:51 - Housekeeping
1:34 - The Blood of Dawnwalker: Human By Day, Monster By Night
38:58 - Resonance Traded Rats for Swords — Did It Work?
1:05:57 - Insomniac Made Wolverine Feel Dangerous — Is It Enough?
1:41:37 - Building, Gliding, Dying Towards 1.0: Why Enshrouded Clicks
2:03:00 - Upcoming Video Game Releases

Become a part of the conversation! If you donate $1 or more on Patreon you can get exclusive access to the Patreon-only chat and channels on the server.

Visit our website to find our social channels, check past podcasts and donate to the show.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see all of our latest videos as they drop.

Credits:
"Blue Groove Deluxe" by BlueFoxMusic on audiojungle.net
Woman Announcer - Ariana Guerra; Actress
"Wisdom" by Super Nostalgia 64

Star Wars Zero Company reviewed well, hit number one on Steam, and shipped with roughly 80% of its studio furloughed and unpaid. We came out of it in different places — one of us thinks the story is fine and the mechanics are genuinely great, one of us couldn't get past the characters and the story premise — and the argument leads somewhere neither of us expected. The gap between a seven and a nine here is mostly patch work, which raises an uncomfortable question: who's left to do it?

Then we go smaller. Grain Rot is ten dollars, it's a full 1.0 release in a genre that treats Early Access as a permanent address, and it's close enough to REPO that the gap is worth arguing about instead of dismissing. We break down the Living Spark system, the persistent Outpost progression that actually separates it from Lethal Company, and whether shipping finished was the honest choice or the strategically worse one. WarDogs hits Early Access the day after this episode, and after four hours of getting absolutely dismantled by it, something clicked. The interesting part isn't the guns — it's that total strangers were reviving each other and communicating, which is the thing Battlefield has promised for a decade and never delivered. The reason is mechanical, and it's a lesson the biggest shooters in the world still haven't learned.

And we close on the crater. Every publisher on earth spent the last year rearranging their schedule around a single Thursday in November — Take-Two moved NBA 2K27 to avoid its own game — leaving September and October as a six-week pileup where good games are going to disappear. We talk about what that costs players with limited hours, why the Netflix trailer premiere matters more than anything in the trailer itself, and how to plan a fall when the calendar has been bent around a game that isn't out yet.

Show Notes:
0:57 - Housekeeping
2:22 - Everyone Likes Star Wars Zero Company. Should You?
50:57 - Can Grain Rot Beat Lethal Company And REPO?
1:10:35 - Can WarDogs Do What Battlefield Can't?
1:42:20 - What Is GTA 6 Doing To The Rest Of Gaming?
2:25:50 - Upcoming Video Game Releases

Become a part of the conversation! If you donate $1 or more on Patreon you can get exclusive access to the Patreon-only chat and channels on the server.

Visit our website to find our social channels, check past podcasts and donate to the show.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see all of our latest videos as they drop.

Credits:
"Blue Groove Deluxe" by BlueFoxMusic on audiojungle.net
Woman Announcer - Ariana Guerra; Actress
"Wisdom" by Super Nostalgia 64

This episode, Brett, Austin, and Jason open with Fields of Mistria, the cozy farming RPG that just closed out two years of Early Access with a full 1.0 launch. Rather than just recapping the new features, the crew digs into what two years of visibly community-shaped development actually produced, and why that kind of patience is rarer than it should be. From there, they turn to Mouse: P.I. For Hire, the rubberhose noir shooter that turned into one of 2026's biggest surprise hits — breaking down the critical split between outlets, where the praise is genuinely earned, and where a stretched-out middle act tests the patience of even its biggest fans.

The second half gets heavier. Leaked gameplay footage from Star Wars: Magellan, a canceled co-op action-RPG that never saw the light of day, opens a conversation about what actually gets greenlit in the Star Wars universe right now — and what quietly dies before players ever get a say. The guys close things out with a timely look at the pre-release backlash cycle, using the recent pile-on around Marvel's Wolverine footage as a jumping-off point to ask a bigger question: why does gaming discourse keep declaring games dead before anyone's actually played them?

Whether you've got fifteen hours to sink into a cartoon detective mouse or just enough time to catch up on what's shaping the industry right now, this episode covers the wins worth celebrating and the patterns worth questioning.

Show Notes:

Become a part of the conversation! If you donate $1 or more on Patreon you can get exclusive access to the Patreon-only chat and channels on the server.

Visit our website to find our social channels, check past podcasts and donate to the show.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see all of our latest videos as they drop.

Credits:
"Blue Groove Deluxe" by BlueFoxMusic on audiojungle.net
Woman Announcer - Ariana Guerra; Actress
"Wisdom" by Super Nostalgia 64

This week, Brett, Austin, and Jason cover four very different corners of gaming — starting with Halo: Campaign Evolved. Brett played the entire thing with zero nostalgia, and the remake genuinely won him over. But the three new prequel missions, the only original content in the release, tell a different story: reused assets, thin characters, and a baffling choice to have a new character openly dismiss Master Chief. That firsthand breakdown gets weighed against the discourse, the layoffs that hit the studio a week after launch, and what it all means for a $50 price tag.

From there, the crew takes a first look at Funnel Runners, an early access co-op survival game where the real threat is a terrifyingly realistic tornado — thin on content right now, but building real community buzz. Then it's a generational showdown on Ghost Recon Wildlands' 25th anniversary update: Jason's 195 hours deep, Brett's walking in cold, and the two compare notes on the new 4K/60fps upgrade, the Last Rites mission, and what Ubisoft's silence on Breakpoint says about where the franchise is really headed.

Closing things out, Austin replays Spider-Man 2018 in the wake of Brand New Day's record-breaking box office run, using it as a lens for what Marvel's Wolverine — Insomniac's next big swing — might look like when it lands in September. Time-value takes, honest tradeoffs, and opinions throughout — no hype, just the real talk busy gamers actually need.

Show Notes:

Become a part of the conversation! If you donate $1 or more on Patreon you can get exclusive access to the Patreon-only chat and channels on the server.

Visit our website to find our social channels, check past podcasts and donate to the show.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see all of our latest videos as they drop.

Credits:
"Blue Groove Deluxe" by BlueFoxMusic on audiojungle.net
Woman Announcer - Ariana Guerra; Actress
"Wisdom" by Super Nostalgia 64

Palworld just did something almost no Early Access game manages — it actually finished. Roughly a quarter of Early Access games on Steam ever reach a full release, and Pocketpair's 60-person team crossed the line with a doubled map, a reworked progression system, and no price increase for existing owners. We dig into why the survival-crafting, creature-collecting, base-automation mashup works when it shouldn't, and whether 1.0 is a "come back" moment or a "start fresh" commitment that busy players should think twice about.

Then it's Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, where the critics and the players are pointing in opposite directions. Reviews landed lukewarm while it sold two million copies in a day and set a franchise record for concurrent players on Steam. We make the case that the "inessential remake" take misses what's actually great here: a vast Caribbean built out of bite-sized islands packed with Legendary Ships, Mayan Stelae, caves, and underwater wrecks — a structure that respects a player working with 45-minute windows instead of full weekends. 

Community developer Zac joins us to talk about Garden College, the top-down RPG he's building, and what running and participating in game jams has taught him that solo project work never could. And we return to Sony's disc decision from a completely different angle — not the ownership debate we already had, but the dependency stack underneath it. PSN's July outage was reportedly tied to the same AWS infrastructure that delayed patient care and grounded travelers last October. Halo buyers who paid extra for early access couldn't launch a single-player campaign because login servers were overloaded. One man lost 25 years of purchased games to a hack and only got them back after his post went viral. The through line: how many companies have to be having a good day for you to play something you already paid for?

Check out more of Zac's work here: https://zacmadeagame.itch.io/

Show Notes:

Become a part of the conversation! If you donate $1 or more on Patreon you can get exclusive access to the Patreon-only chat and channels on the server.

Visit our website to find our social channels, check past podcasts and donate to the show.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see all of our latest videos as they drop.

Credits:
"Blue Groove Deluxe" by BlueFoxMusic on audiojungle.net
Woman Announcer - Ariana Guerra; Actress
"Wisdom" by Super Nostalgia 64

This episode, Brett, Austin, and Jason open with Soulframe, Digital Extremes' fantasy follow-up to Warframe — a game that's rough in the first few hours and genuinely unlike anything else once its combat and story systems click. With TennoCon 2026 just wrapped, they cover what's coming next for the game, including mounts, a new Fable, and a surprisingly candid comment from the dev team about building in public. From there, the conversation shifts to Gothic 1 Remake, a faithful rebuild of the 2001 cult classic that refused to modernize the one thing everyone expected it to: the total lack of hand-holding. Austin makes the case for why that trial-by-fire design is exactly what makes it special.

The back half of the episode gets more pointed. Sony's announcement that it's phasing out physical PlayStation discs by 2028 sparked real backlash — and Brett, Austin, and Jason break down why the "everyone already prefers digital" argument doesn't hold up, using Sony's own PS3/Vita store closures and GOG's ownership model as the clearest counter-evidence. They close with Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, a genuinely well-built remake undercut by a storefront that's easier to reach than the save menu — and ask the bigger question: does backlash over monetization actually cost publishers anything when the sales numbers say otherwise?

Whether you've got two hours a week or twenty, this episode is about time-value: what's actually worth your attention right now, and what's just noise dressed up as news.

Show Notes:

Become a part of the conversation! If you donate $1 or more on Patreon you can get exclusive access to the Patreon-only chat and channels on the server.

Visit our website to find our social channels, check past podcasts and donate to the show.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see all of our latest videos as they drop.

Credits:
"Blue Groove Deluxe" by BlueFoxMusic on audiojungle.net
Woman Announcer - Ariana Guerra; Actress
"Wisdom" by Super Nostalgia 64

This week on The Inner Gamer, Brett, Jason and Austin start with the indie story nobody saw coming: Meccha Chameleon, a $6 hide-and-seek party game from a nearly-solo Japanese dev team, sold millions of copies in days with zero marketing spend. They break down the skill-based mechanic that made it perfect for viral clips, the conspiracy theories that followed its success, and whether a tiny team can actually sustain support for a player base this size.

From there, the conversation shifts to Empulse, 1047 Games' early access movement shooter chasing that old Titanfall feeling. The gameplay genuinely delivers — but with Splitgate 2's collapse still fresh, the guys dig into whether a no-microtransaction promise is a real change of heart or just the only move left for a studio rebuilding trust.

The back half of the episode turns to the industry itself. Xbox's "reset" has gone from rumor to reality — real layoffs, real studio closures, and a console price hike happening at the same time the platform is trying to reassert exclusivity. And closing things out, Brett, Jason and Austin tackle the rising cost of being a gamer head-on, using GTA 6's tiered pricing and the Steam Machine's four-figure price tag to talk through what's actually worth paying for — and how to navigate a hobby that keeps getting more expensive.

Show Notes:

Become a part of the conversation! If you donate $1 or more on Patreon you can get exclusive access to the Patreon-only chat and channels on the server.

Visit our website to find our social channels, check past podcasts and donate to the show.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see all of our latest videos as they drop.

Credits:
"Blue Groove Deluxe" by BlueFoxMusic on audiojungle.net
Woman Announcer - Ariana Guerra; Actress
"Wisdom" by Super Nostalgia 64

This week on The Inner Gamer, we tackle a massive crossroad for the entire video game industry. We lead off with an in-depth review of 007 First Light, breaking down how IO Interactive successfully stepped away from their classic Hitman sandbox formula to deliver a tight, narrative-driven James Bond origin story that balances high-octane spy craft with incredible narrative momentum. Then, we are joined by a special guest to brave the waters of Windrose, the breakout Early Access pirate survival RPG, exploring whether its phenomenal "Soulslite" ground combat makes up for its arcade naval physics and the distinct lack of a solo pause feature.

In our main segment, the crew splits down the middle in a fierce debate over Bungie's historic announcement to freeze development on Destiny 2 following the Monument of Triumph patch. Is cutting off a ten-year-old game a necessary, pragmatic evolution to focus all hands on Marathon, or is abandoning a premier multi-billion dollar franchise a critical corporate error under Sony's roof? Finally, we sift through the massive firehose of announcements from the Xbox Showcase, State of Play, and Summer Game Fest. We take around 15 of the biggest upcoming titles—including Marvel's Wolverine, Control Resonant, Halo: Campaign Evolved, and Gears of War: E-Day—and map them into a master thematic blueprint so you can cut through the marketing noise and find your next definitive gaming obsession before GTA 6 arrives to alter the landscape.

Show Notes:

Become a part of the conversation! If you donate $1 or more on Patreon you can get exclusive access to the Patreon-only chat and channels on the server.

Visit our website to find our social channels, check past podcasts and donate to the show.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see all of our latest videos as they drop.

Credits:
"Blue Groove Deluxe" by BlueFoxMusic on audiojungle.net
Woman Announcer - Ariana Guerra; Actress
"Wisdom" by Super Nostalgia 64

Welcome back to The Inner Gamer, the roundtable podcast dedicated to analyzing the ideas, trends, and time-value decisions shaping modern video games. This week, we are kicking things off by driving straight into the stunning landscape of Japan with our full critique of Forza Horizon 6. While Playground Games has delivered an absolute mechanical and visual masterpiece, we examine the concept of "excellence fatigue". For busy professionals with tight schedules, does the game's relentless dopamine loop and identical progression structure turn a quick driving session into a trend-chasing live-service project that you've already experienced?

Next, a special guest jumps onto the roundtable couch to help us navigate the alien oceans of Subnautica 2, freshly launched in Early Access. We look closely at how the development team has pulled off the impossible: adding native 4-player cooperative play to a franchise defined by crushing isolation without losing a single ounce of its trademark psychological tension. We explore the baseline stability of the build, the massive grassroots enthusiasm brewing inside the game's official Discord channels, and how its modular base-building automation and streamlined blueprint systems elegantly respect an adult's limited hobby hours.

Finally, we shift our focus to the structural design trends splitting the soul of the modern industry. We audit LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, evaluating the creative friction that occurs when family-friendly plastic brickwork tries to copy the mature DNA of the Arkham franchise. We close the show by breaking down the newest GDC industry data revealing that over 70% of developers now rely on global co-development pipelines. Using case studies like Fable and Crimson Desert, we expose how fracturing a single game across multiple outsourced corporate entities creates the massive logistical bottlenecks behind modern 6-year development cycles and buggy launch-day builds.

Show Notes:

Become a part of the conversation! If you donate $1 or more on Patreon you can get exclusive access to the Patreon-only chat and channels on the server.

Visit our website to find our social channels, check past podcasts and donate to the show.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see all of our latest videos as they drop.

Credits:
"Blue Groove Deluxe" by BlueFoxMusic on audiojungle.net
Woman Announcer - Ariana Guerra; Actress
"Wisdom" by Super Nostalgia 64