Category: Podcasts

This week Zed Games goes the whole hog with news, reviews, community, and culture as CAMERON brings in the hottest in this week’s gaming news! CAROLINE gives us the quick and dirty in a review of The Fantastic Kitty Rue, AND the entire team makes sure YOU ALL ARE INFORMED on the latest in Sonic culture with a discussion of the recently released Sonic Prime series.

Listen in as Paul, Peter, and Rani expose their experience with their balls in this weeks Pinball themed show. Rani mixes magic with paddles in a review of Pinball Wizard, and Paul reveals his ball handling experience with a look into his history of Pinball-like games.

Rani rocket’s in to save the day running the first Zed Games show of 2023! Cameron finds the fair winds in the game Sail Forth, and the team chats their experiences with Rage Quitting!

Join Zed Games in the chaos that is New Years Game Resolutions and a Triple Threat review from Paul where he reviews, not one but THREE games! Plus the last in Gaming News for 2022.

This week Zed Games brings you the chaos of Shiny Friends for your holiday season! With Gaming News and the team’s Games of the Year! Brought to you from the mouth holes of Hazel, Zahra, & Caroline and beamed directly into your government mandated mind control chips.

Death Stranding Movie

Hideo Kojima, hot on the heels of his announcement of Death Stranding 2 at the Game Awards has announced that his studio Kojima Productions will be teaming up with Hammerstone Studios to develop a Death Stranding film. Hammerstone Studio head Alex Lebovici, who recently produced the horror hit Barbarian, has stated the film “will be something far more intimate and grounded” which may be Kojima’s greatest challenge yet!

Announcements at the Game Awards

Last week’s game awards brought with it a slew of new game announcements. Some of the bigger titles included Ken Levine’s first game since Bioshock Infinite titled Judas. A new IP that very much follows in the vein of Bioshock but now it’s about comic space cowboys.

A sequel to the 2018 indie juggernaut Hades was revealed. Hades II is planned for an early access release next year featuring a new protagonist Melinoe, the daughter of Hades and Persephone. The game will deal with the dawn of witchcraft in a battle against the titan Chronos.

With Bayonetta 3 still fresh Platinum Games have announced a new game in the series. This time taking part before the trilogy. With a new fixed perspective and art style Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon will be out on March 17 2023.

The Celeste team Extremely OK Games have announced their next game, Earthsword. Playing to their strengths you can look forward to the exploration heavy, pixel art platformer in 2024.

Many other new games were shown off. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Armoured Core VI: Fires of Rubicon, Crash Team Rumble, Hellboy: Web of Wyrd, Remnant 2 and Transformers: Reactivate just to name a few. We’ll be posting many of the trailers over on the Zed Games Facebook page.

The upcoming Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was also revealed to have one last performance from voice actor Kevin Conroy who passed away on November 10^th this year. He has been voicing Batman for the last 30 years

Epic’s half a billion fine

In a dispute with the US Federal Trade Commission, Epic games agreed to pay $520 million dollars to settle violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and deceptive practices that tricked players into purchases in the videogame Fortnite.  The COPPA violation at $275 million is the largest penalty ever levied by the FTC for such a violation and Epic will need to change default settings in game to better protect children and teens along with policies for their protection. The second settlement will be used to refund players that were affected by unintended purchases due to Epic’s practices.

The majority of these issues were resolved in 2018 but if you believe you’re eligible for a refund you can find information of the FTC website and Epic’s statement on the settlement.

This year Fortnite has generated $5.8 billion in revenue.

Duke Nukem lives again! (Oh wait that’s Blood)

Did you remember to bet on Duke? Fallen 90’s video game icon sees two unofficial releases this week.  The Duke Nukem Forever 2001 Restoration Project has released the first slice of their mod for the leaked development copy of the abandoned 2001 version of Duke Nukem Forever. The project aims to complete the game and make it fully playable. You can find the project on Mod DB.

The other surprise Duke release is that of the cancelled Duke Nukem: Endangered Species which put the blonde action star into a game-hunting style title. The game by Action Forms Ltd was cancelled in 2001 and many of the assets were then used to develop Vivisector: Beast Within. A prototype of Endangered Species has been released online and can be found at thedatadungeon.com.

Nintendo celebrates Christmas with Indies!

Nintendo has been running a Christmas YouTube advent event where they announce 4 indie titles a day for 5 days with each day so far containing an instant release.  We have seen announcements for Risk of Rain Returns (a rework of the original Risk of Rain), The Punchuin (a platformer about a boxing penguin from the team that brought us Fast RMX and The Tourist) and Potion Craft among others. It is heavily rumored that the final two days will include a release of the hotly anticipated Queensland developed Golf Story follow up, Sports Story. Will it make it out for Christmas? Let’s find out.

Carmack Leaves Meta

The legendary coder and founder of id software John Carmack has left his position at Oculus, I mean Facebook, I mean Meta. His internal farewell message was leaked in part to the media so he posted it publicly in response.

“This is the end of my decade in VR, I have mixed feelings.”

“Quest 2 almost exactly what I wanted to see from the beginning”

“We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort. There is no way to sugar coat this; I think our organization is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy.”

“VR can bring value to most of the people in the world, and no company is better positioned to do it than Meta. Maybe it actually is possible to get there by just plowing ahead with current practices, but there is plenty of room for improvement.

You can read his full statement on John Carmack’s Facebook page.

Carmack has moved onto his own startup Keen Technologies, which is working on artificial intelligence.

This week Maylee leads the charge on Zed Games, with Cameron taking over the airwaves for this weeks gaming news! Then Caroline leads the way with their totally impartial review/rant/discussion of the recently bug filled release of Pokemon Scarlet & Violet.

On Zed Games this week Rani unexpectedly takes the hotseat and runs the show while Caroline gives us the week in gaming news, Zahra tells us all about The Entropy Centre, and our dynamic duo also regales us with tales of GO423!

On Zed Games tonight, Maylee brings the week in gaming news while Rani and Cameron expresses concern about Zahra’s review of Sonic Frontiers, with Paul adding his thoughts on the blue blur as well as telling us all about Evil West!