Apologies for our time away from the airwaves, but we've had a pretty hectic summer to contend with, and that's not even including the carnage caused by Mr Donkey Kong in his debut Switch 2 offering: Donkey Kong Bananza. We've also had summer sales dropping the price of Ubisoft's latest Assassination adventure, Assassin's Creed Shadows, to an acceptable enough price for both Rob and Will to compare notes on it, while the Rogue Prince of Persia finally emerges from early access and Giant Squid's aquatic surfing odyssey, Sword of the Sea, arrives on PlayStation Plus Extra in all it's haptic-fuelled glory.

But before all that there's the ten-ton elephant of Gamescom to get through, with well over 100 games featured across the various presentations hosted by Keighley, Future & co there is a whole mess of things to try and process, so allow us to dig out the highlights on this back-to-school edition of the #NOTplaying Podcast!

Contact us on Email at: [email protected]

Follow us on Twitter/X/whatever: @notplayingpod

If you're listening on iTunes or Spotify, please give us a review!

Music kindly provided by Miracle of Sound https://www.youtube.com/miracleofsound

If you like movies & TV, why not checkout the #NOTwatching Podcast

It's all kicking off this week on the #NOTplaying Podcast, with not just the unholy avalanche of game announcements we usually brace for this time of year, but a whole new console launch too!

So quite apart from the usual duking it out between Xbox Showcases and Sony State of Plays, and the barrel-scrapping nonsense of the Summer Game Fest and PC Gaming Show events, there's the ever so not very small at all matter of the Nintendo Switch 2 launch.

Have no fear - we get into it all. Rob has one. Will has one too, but can't play it til Xmas. It's very hot and we're all exhausted. Enjoy!

Contact us on Email at: [email protected]

Follow us on Twitter/X/whatever: @notplayingpod

If you're listening on iTunes or Spotify, please give us a review!

Music kindly provided by Miracle of Sound https://www.youtube.com/miracleofsound

If you like movies & TV, why not checkout the #NOTwatching Podcast

There's only really one big story this week and that was the grand reveal and pre-order drama of Nintendo's highly anticipated new console. Suffice it to say, Rob & Will managed to get their pre-orders in, so expect a whole bunch of Switch 2 related coverage later this year.

Meanwhile, the gamepass tsunami rages on, Will was looking forward to Atomfall so much he completely devoured it, while Rob's progress has been somewhat hindered by both South of Midnight and - from almost out of nowhere - Blue Prince also both arriving on the same service. Those Microsoft folk really are spoiling us...

Contact us on Email at: [email protected]

Follow us on Twitter: @notplayingpod

If you're listening on iTunes, please give us a review!

Music kindly provided by Miracle of Sound https://www.youtube.com/miracleofsound

If you like movies & TV, why not checkout the #NOTwatching Podcast

We had all the news from Microsoft last episode, so we figured Sony might have dropped some by the time we reconvened and sure enough we've not only a fairly jam-packed State of Play, but an equally lengthy Death Stranding 2 panel from SXSW featuring Kojima himself!

Our main event this week though is the launch of Monster Hunter Wilds, which Marcus has been consumed with recently and will likely be reporting back on for the rest of 2025 and beyond. Will he top his 1000 hours spent on the previous iteration? Stayed tuned to find out. Meanwhile, Will leads the charge on Obsidian's latest RPG, Avowed. The Gamepass avalanche continues...

Contact us on Email at: [email protected]

Follow us on Twitter: @notplayingpod

If you're listening on iTunes, please give us a review!

Music kindly provided by Miracle of Sound https://www.youtube.com/miracleofsound

If you like movies & TV, why not checkout the #NOTwatching Podcast

Here we are at last with our first proper episode of 2025, but it's far from business as usual with the first official reveal of Nintendo's imaginatively titled Switch 2, which means it can't be long now until Rob get's all his games back - and this time in glorious 4K! There's also been another Xbox Developer Direct to reassure us that 2025 won't revolve around the release of GTA VI quite as much as were led to believe, with the surprise reveal of not just Ninja Gaiden 4, but a super shadow drop of Ninja Gaiden 2 Sigma on Gamepass NOW!

As if Rob doesn't have enough on there to play, even having wrapped up Indiana Jones & The Great Circle since last episode! He's not even got round to fighting Ninjas thanks to the release of Citizen Sleeper 2, which builds on the foundations of it's first iteration to deliver a more complex and episodic experience this time around. And Will's trying desperately to get Marcus and Rob to join him on Helldivers 2. There's just #toomanygames on this week's #NOTplaying Podcast!

Contact us on Email at: [email protected]

Follow us on Twitter: @notplayingpod

If you're listening on iTunes, please give us a review!

Music kindly provided by Miracle of Sound https://www.youtube.com/miracleofsound

If you like movies & TV, why not checkout the #NOTwatching Podcast

Happy New Year all! We hope you got all the videogames you wanted and most importantly some well earned time to enjoy them! We certainly did, in the gift of Machine Games' remarkable Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which really didn't need to be anywhere near as good as it turned out in the end. So good in fact to receive full honours from at least one of us in our regular games of the year segment as is tradition.

We also go over the big winners from the recent Game Awards show just before Christmas, as well as a detailed analysis of the big announcements. We'll be back in 12 months to see how right we were about the success or indeed, actual release, of said phenomena. Hopefully with less technical gremlins this time, which I shall leave for you, dear listener, to discover and enjoy in this most festive #NOTplaying Podcast!

Contact us on Email at: [email protected]

Follow us on Twitter: @notplayingpod

If you're listening on iTunes, please give us a review!

Music kindly provided by Miracle of Sound https://www.youtube.com/miracleofsound

If you like movies & TV, why not checkout the #NOTwatching Podcast

After that disaster-piece of an episode last time around, we thought we'd try super hard to make this one a success, it could be argued even, that we overcompensated. Rob even took one for the team and shelled out an exorbitant sum for a PS5 Pro just to make up for it. He's even had to play Star: Wars: Outlaws in it's newly patched 60FPS + DLC glory. Oh and the new Dragon Age. It's been a tough old time. It really has.

And then there's poor old Marcus, with his time on the Monster Hunter Wilds Open Beta only for it to be taken away until it's proper release date early next year, at least Will was man enough to tackle S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 - Heart of Chornobyl.

We hope you find this episode more acceptable, or at least how much we suffered for it :)

All this and more on a somewhat glitchy #NOTplaying Podcast!

Contact us on Email at: [email protected]

Follow us on Twitter/X/whatever: @notplayingpod

If you're listening on iTunes or Spotify, please give us a review!

Music kindly provided by Miracle of Sound https://www.youtube.com/miracleofsound

If you like movies & TV, why not checkout the #NOTwatching Podcast

We can only apologise for this one. If it wasn't connections dropping or random things banging around, it was furiously typing to look things up. It's all a bit of a mess this week sadly :(

Amidst the Chaos however, we were able to lay down our highlights from the most recent online presentations from Microsoft & Sony, as well our thoughts on a couple of cool indie games which recently came out: Devolver's delightfully artistic The Plucky Squire and UFO 50, a proposition so bizarre extreme measures were implemented to deal with it.

All this and more on a somewhat glitchy #NOTplaying Podcast!

Contact us on Email at: [email protected]

Follow us on Twitter: @notplayingpod

If you're listening on iTunes or Spotify, please give us a review!

Music kindly provided by Miracle of Sound https://www.youtube.com/miracleofsound

If you like movies & TV, why not checkout the #NOTwatching Podcast

We're back! After an extended summer break in which Rob actually succumbed to the great videogame staff cull of 2024 and therefore played the most disgusting amount of actual videogames possible.

And who can blame him the summer took so long to actually begin, but begin it finally did and off went Marcus and Will a frolicking...

So yeah - it's mostly Rob who's bringing the games this week, namely Star Wars Outlaws and Space Marine 2. Will & Rob have BOTH played Thank Goodness You're Here though, to varying levels of success.

All this and everything we missed at Gamescom, the Playstation 5 Pro - which will hopefully reverse Sony's fortunes after the disastrous launch(?) of Concord and much much more!

It's good to be back :)

Contact us on Email at: [email protected]

Follow us on Twitter: @notplayingpod

If you're listening on iTunes or Spotify, please give us a review!

Music kindly provided by Miracle of Sound https://www.youtube.com/miracleofsound

If you like movies & TV, why not checkout the #NOTwatching Podcast

E3 might be dead, but we still got a boat load of trailers last weekend and as usual we're here to talk all about it. We all loved the look of Ubisoft's imminent Star Wars Outlaws, which got two enormous gameplay reveals at their conference, while Monster Hunter Wilds cut through with it's unique beasts and intense weather conditions. Not to mention a whole host of surprises we cover at length.

Before all that though, Rob got himself a month of Gamepass to play Ninja Theory's long awaited yet somewhat underwhelming Senua's Saga Hellblade II as well as a whole grab bag of treats also on the service.

Not sure when we'll be back, summer commitments allowing, we may do a spoilercast on Baldur's Gate 3 or something... if Rob & Will ever finish it.

Contact us on Email at: [email protected]

Follow us on Twitter: @notplayingpod

If you're listening on iTunes or Spotify, please give us a review!

Music kindly provided by Miracle of Sound https://www.youtube.com/miracleofsound

If you like movies & TV, why not checkout the #NOTwatching Podcast