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!

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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!

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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...

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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...

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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!

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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!

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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!

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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!

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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 :)

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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.

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We don't normally bang on about TV shows (We'd be a man down if we did), but while we have been playing some new stuff, the biggest single event in videogames for the past month or so would have to be the miraculous conversion of Bethesda's beloved videogame series into passive televisual entertainment and who are we to argue with the alleged 65 million people who watched it!

Back in actual videogame land though, Will has been leading the charge with his time on Dragon's Dogma 2, while Rob and Marcus are still knee deep in Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth and Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden respectively.

All this and more on a most post-apocalyptic #NOTplaying podcast...

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So much for a fallow year, for here we are with a brand new potential GOTY contender EACH! And so early in the year we are too!

As was very well signposted in our last episode, Marcus has finally polished off 2020's FFVII Remake just in time for it's follow-up, Rebirth, which he has so far been sacrificing sleep for, Will has been diving into hell, with sleeper hit of the year, Helldivers 2 and Rob decided to roll the dice on Dontnod's Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, which features a pair of protagonists who mostly like to curl up by the fire and...

...it's all about the sleep (groan) on this week's #NOTplaying Podcast

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2024 is off to quite a start with extensive showcases from both Microsoft and Sony within the first few weeks of the year as well as a genuine GOTY contender in Ubisoft's latest refresh of the Prince of Persia franchise, which goes back to it's roots in a supremely slick take on the classic 2D 'metroidvania' action platforming genre.

Will's also had the chance to finish God of War Ragnarok as well as have a quick peruse of it's recently released Free DLC, Valhalla, while Marcus has been foaming all over the imminent FFVII Rebirth and the demo that came out along with that dedicated State of Play last week.

All this and loads more of the usual waffle on this week's #NOTplaying Podcast!

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We were all a bit too busy and/or poorly to get this done over the Xmas break, but we're back in the game now to deliver Rob's Games of 2024, Will's annual Quiz & a special report on the Skull & Bones beta from Marcus. It's that time again, for our review of 2023 and our thoughts on the year to come!

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The games are coming thick and fast as we approach the end of another year in gaming. And it only feels right that such an incredible 12 months should come to such a crescendo, with Rob having already completed Spider-Man 2 since last episode and moving straight on to Alan Wake 2. On the other hand, Will still hasn't settled on his 'perfect character' to finish Baldur's Gate 3 with and Marcus is still bossing mechs around in Armored Core VI.

We all have lives to varying extents it would seem. Enjoy this our most penultimate episode of 2023! Back soon for Xmas japes and GOTY discussion!

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We're emerging from underneath a gigantic pile of gaming rubble this week to share our thoughts on just a handful of titles amidst the current tidal wave of autumn releases.

First up is the almost podcast shattering paradox of Starfield, then we've got the latest (albeit significantly paired back) installment of Assassin's Creed and even Marcus has something new to play in From Software's non-dark-souls-but-still-hard-as-fuck mech resurrection, Armored Core VI.

There's also more futuristic ultra violence in the recently released Robocop: Rogue City demo and the new Cyberpunk 2077 DLC/(MASSIVE)update, Phantom Liberty.

All this and somehow even more on a typically stuffed October edition of the #NOTplaying Podcast!

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On this week's show we're catching the last rays of summer from the comfort of Rob's sofa once again as we meet up in person for a change to discuss our usual winning combo of recent gaming news and the games what we have recently been playing.

And this time around we're talking Baldur's Gate 3, which recently exited it's state of early access to equally insane amounts of acclaim and concurent Steam Users. We also highlight some of the moments from Geoff Keighley's ONL Gamescom spectacle and see how Marcus is getting on with Final Fantasy XVI after Rob's valiant attempt at finishing one RPG before the next one turns up..

...speaking of which, what's the in the sky? Is Starfield finally here? See you on the next one! :)

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Rob was going utterly insane at Marcus for buying a copy of Final Fantasy XVI without anything to play it on, but it turned out to be an elaborate hilarious joke! For Marcus has actually joined the PS5 space race after all! Listen on for our thoughts on Square's latest entry in their long running franchise! Meanwhile, Will has been performing open heart surgery on Nazi's from distance, in Rebellion's similarly storied series.

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E3 may not have happened again in 2023, but it's still that time of year again where we are inundated with showcases and trailers. All the main platform holders more than delivered, with Microsoft devoting almost half of their 90+ minute event to the monolithic Starfield and Sony showing off a good 15 minutes of the imminent full sequel to Spider-man. There's even a surprise news story to finish things off....

We'll be back with our thoughts on Final Fantasy XVI very soon!

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Games games and more GAMES. That's all we're talking about this week simply because that's all we have time for, aside from perhaps a quick update on the whole Microsoft Activision saga, which likely will continue to rage on for the rest of 2023.

Like I just said though, there's no time for that though on a episode that features likely more than one GOTY contender and there can be no more likely candidate than the 20th entry in Nintendo's storied Zelda franchise, which builds on the previous game, Breath of the Wild in some unique and interesting ways. The same could be said for Respawn's second Jedi game, unlike Capcom's new Street Fighter game, which is arguably it's most unhinged version to date.

Anyway, I barely have time to continue typing this now. I have Zonai devices to catch... or something.

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