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Sacred Symbols, Episode 110: Gatekeeping

Next month, the long-in-development Avengers game comes to PlayStation 4 (it'll come to PS5 when the console launches, too), and there's a special sort of catch for Sony gamers: When Spider-Man arrives in Crystal Dynamics' long-awaited multiplayer adventure in 2021, he'll only be available within...

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Side Quest, Episode 75: Should PlayStation Worry About Xbox?

Complacency?

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Sacred Symbols+, Episode LIII: High on the Hoeg

Meet Richard (or Rick!) Hoeg. Mr. Hoeg is a Michigan-based lawyer who has made quite the name for himself in recent years in some hardcore portions of the gaming industry. Why? Because he gives rock-solid legal analysis pertinent to our beloved medium, talking about everything from developer acqu...

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Sacred Symbols, Episode 109: Popularity Contest

We may not have any idea when PlayStation 5 is coming out, what it'll cost, or even if many of us will be able to get our hands on one at launch. But what we do know -- thanks to a recent consumer survey conducted in the UK -- is that Sony's upcoming console is far, far more eagerly-anticipated t...

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KnockBack, Episode 129: BioShock 2

Whether in television, movies, books, or games, it's always hard to follow-up a smash-hit with a worthy sequel. But publisher 2K endeavored to do just that when it launched BioShock 2 in 2010, doing so -- mind you -- without the series' creative visionary Ken Levine, whose team was off working on...

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Side Quest, Episode 74: Five Things PlayStation 5 Must Get Right

Getting ducks in a row.

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Sacred Symbols+, Episode LII: Et Tu, Brute?

Last week, Microsoft unleashed an hour-long showcase revealing (or otherwise elaborating on) a bunch of its upcoming games: First, second, and third party alike. Some of these games are coming to PlayStation, yes, but most of these titles will be temporarily or permanently tethered to Xbox One an...

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Sacred Symbols, Episode 108: Peak Performance

We already know PlayStation 5 was primed to provide a technological quantum leap to AAA projects, but what it'll be capable of in its first round of games is fairly surprising. Sony-owned Insomniac has revealed that its launch game -- the kinetic Spider-Man: Miles Morales -- can run at 60 frames-...

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KnockBack, Episode 128: Back to School

For nearly five decades, Rodney Dangerfield was an American comedy legend. But it was in the 1980s that he rose to mainstream prominence not through his stand-up act as popularized on late-night TV in the '60s and '70s, but because of films like Caddyshack and Easy Money. Come 1986, however, Dang...

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Diving Deep Into Ghost of Tsushima

Matty goes to 13th century Japan. That can change a man.

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Sacred Symbols+, Episode LI: Checklists and Candles

When did side quests become such an integral part of game design? Back in the day, side quests were truly that -- often scarce, usually unnecessary, and mostly additive -- but today, they are often central to an experience. Just what's the definition of "side quest" anyway?! On today's mailbag-ce...

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Sacred Symbols, Episode 107: Impropriety

It was a really big week for Ubisoft. They revealed (the admittedly leaked) Far Cry 6, stamped a couple of release dates on Watch Dogs: Legion and Assassin's Creed Valhalla, and gave us some more details on the upcoming battle royale Hyper Scape, too. But the company has also been persistently do...

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KnockBack, Episode 127: The Witch

Robert Eggers' 2015 debut film The Witch isn't exactly old, but its subject matter certainly is. Taking place in the early 1630s in New England -- a full 60 years before the Salem Witch Trials -- The Witch tells the story of a banished family of devout Puritans who go into the Massachusetts woods...

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Side Quest, Episode 73: Goodbye, Ready at Dawn

An orderly exit.

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Sacred Symbols+, Episode L: The Last of Us 2 Spoilercast and Review Discussion (Part II)

As you know, we didn't feel like our two hour-long spoilercast and review discussion for The Last of Us: Part II from a couple of weeks ago gave us enough time to explore the game to our satisfaction. So we sat down to record another nearly two hours of content all about it, driven -- as always -...

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Sacred Symbols, Episode 106: Epic Moves

Until Fortnite, the primary fuel that made Epic Games run was Unreal Engine, its ubiquitous and flexible framework on which hundreds of notable, successful, and popular titles have run for more than two decades. But these days, Epic's many initiatives have the North Carolina-based company acceler...

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KnockBack, Episode 126: The Things We Wish We Knew as Kids

Ignorance is bliss, or so the saying goes. But when we're kids, ignorance is also a way of life. In our tiny worlds, everything was magnified or understated: The glorious ups, our mundane everyday lives, and especially the seemingly-tragic downs. Little did we know then what we would learn later:...

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Sacred Symbols+, Episode XLIX: Missing Ivalice

Final Fantasy Tactics fans have been more than patient. It's been a staggering 22 years since FFT launched in the west, and in the time since, it's been pretty quiet. Yes, we got a couple of handheld iterations -- and they were fun -- but they weren't Final Fantasy Tactics per se. So what's stopp...

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Sacred Symbols, Episode 105: Dollars and Sense

Now that we've gotten a limited look at next-gen, a few major unknowns remain. Perhaps the biggest mystery -- apart from the cost of PlayStation 5 itself -- is how expensive AAA software running on the new hardware will be. Thanks to 2K, we may have an answer, marking the first price hike in well...

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KnockBack, Episode 125: St. Elmo's Fire

We recently lost American filmmaker Joel Schumacher to cancer at the age of 80. With a diverse filmography dating back to the '70s and running through to just a few years ago, it's hard to put Schumacher in a box, but it seems a lot of people wanted to memorialize him by focusing on his two malig...

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Sacred Symbols+, Episode XLVIII: The Last of Us 2 Spoilercast and Review Discussion (Part I)

The Last of Us: Part II isn't only one of the PlayStation 4's swan songs; it's also likely going to go down as its best-selling exclusive, when all is said and done. And there's good reason for that. Naughty Dog's 25-30 hour epic is a master class in production, animation, design, and gameplay, a...

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Lillymo Games, Side Quest, Taxes, and Mailers: A Note From Colin

Hey All,

I hope you're all doing well, that you're enjoying your summer (if you're in the northern hemisphere!), that you and your families and friends are staying safe, and you're having a good time here on Colin's Last Stand's Patreon.

There are some things (four, in particular) I...

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Sacred Symbols, Episode 104: Crashed

As you probably know, Chris has a very specific arcane power: He can seemingly wish games of his choosing into existence. So when Crash Bandicoot 4 was revealed, it appeared that the planets aligned for Ray Gun (it's one of his favorite series, after all), and so we have much to talk about with t...

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KnockBack, Episode 124: Mass Effect

When Mass Effect launched on Xbox 360 in 2007, it promised to be not only one of the most ambitious RPGs of all time, but the entry point to one of the most ambitious gaming trilogies ever. Designed as three games from the get-go, the original Mass Effect propelled Commander Shepard and his team ...

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Side Quest, Episode 72: The PlayStation 5 Games We're Most Excited About

Anticipation.

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Sacred Symbols+, Episode XLVII: The Reappearing Legacy

A not insignificant portion of hardcore PlayStation fans long for the return of the Jak and Daxter series. Yet, the franchise has remained dormant for more than a decade, and Naughty Dog itself hasn't released a Jak game in 15 years. It's ancient history... but should it be? In this week's mailba...

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Sacred Symbols, Episode 103: Vanguard Squadron

Publisher Electronic Arts gets a lot of grief -- much of it earned -- but it also announces something truly exciting and different on occasion. Star Wars Squadrons is one such game, a dogfighter in the same spiritual vein as beloved Star Wars-related franchises of the past like Rogue Squadron and...

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KnockBack, Episode 123: Django Unchained

Writer and director Quentin Tarantino has long been a divisive and controversial filmmaker, primarily because of his seeming, unapologetic glorification of gore. But something deeper typically rests beneath his portrayal of human brutality. This is perhaps most true in his 2012 picture Django Unc...

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Sacred Symbols+, Episode XLVI: The Black Gaming Experience

In America as of late, racial tensions have been running high, and while there's plenty of room for the political and social discourse surrounding recent events, it makes a lot of sense to explore the question of race from other perspectives, too. So, since this is a video game podcast, why not d...

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Sacred Symbols, Episode 102: Play Has No Limits

It's hard to believe, but the time has finally come, for Sony hasn't only shown PlayStation 5 games galore, but PlayStation 5 itself. That's right: The box. Now that we know what the console actually looks like, it's time to discuss its aesthetic. But more importantly, it's time to discuss the ti...

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