In the grand tradition established by one (1) prior release, Supergiant dropped Hades II over the weekend and we at the Electronic Wireless show podcast have all been playing and enjoying it bunches! So we wanted to talk about the game, why we're enjoying it, some of the new aspects over Hades the first, and just generally go 'Ooh, this game is fun, innit?'. Not a complex podcast this week.

James isn't here, so Nate makes up some hardware news that's very exciting and yet disturbing, while he does have a mythology-themed mini game in the tower of jocularity. Plus: the games we've been playing this week, including a cute survival horror and RimWorld, still. Also, Nate asks me to explain what the hap was heckening with Helldivers 2, and if Joel remains safe.

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Over the past while a few gams have had post-launch patches, the exemplars being Starfield and Stardew valley, which have post-launch patches of different kinds and for different reasons. We take some time on the Electronic Wireless Podcast to talk about this patch of patches, and what it was like in the good ol' days, where a broken game came out and stayed broken, gosh darn it!

Nate isn't here today, which means I can make fun of him for owning fish, or whatever it is he does, but in his stead James steps up with an RGB lighting-themed game where I have to guess what accessories people stuck lights on to turn into gamer accessories. This is because Razer stuck RGB lights on a pandemic mask and are in trouble over it now. Naughty Razer. Plus, we talk about the games we're playing right now, and dish you up some juicy recommendations at the end of the show.

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This week saw the first (small) look at the new and upcoming Hobbit-themed cosy life sim Tales Of The Shire, plus the news that Embracer group is splitting into three, including a Middle-earth And Friends subsection. We spend some time talking about The Lord Of The Rings games we'd like to see, plus our favourite Rings games from days gone by (and also Gollum, and also we do impressions of Gollum).

Nate has been playing an impressive number of games, including one that did not allow him to invent the stick and therefore hampered his progress. We also talk about AI NPCs again, because one of them tried to get James drunk. Plus: some lovely recommendations to round off your weekly pod (one of them is a long life meat product).

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Here at the Electronic Wireless Show podcast we're nothing if not ready to jump on a bandwagon, and the hottest wagon in town right now is the Fallout TV show. We've watched varying amounts of Amazon's new adaptation of Bethesda's favourite post-apocalyptic RPG baby, so there are some mild (but not total) spoilers within, as we talk about the show, the show biffing the leaving-the-vault-moment, the best things about the games, the Righteous Gemstones, and how good Walton Goggins is just, like, in general.

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This week League Of Legends teased a PvE Vampire Survivors-like mode, and recently World Of Warcraft revealed a limited time PvEvP battle royale with pirates. What's going on? Is chasing trends a bit of a risky click? Should Age Of Empires II get a battle royale mode? All these questions and no more, just these ones, are discussed in this week's episode of the Electronic Wireless Show podcast.

Plus: I am cursed by scaffolding again, and we recommend some lovely things that aren't video games, as is our way.

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This week you could get two horror games for free! Rental and Content Warning both launched for nada (albeit for a couple of days only in the case of the latter). Nate and I have both done work for free in the hope someone would retrospectively pay for it. Is it worth it? Is this how the internet is going to work from now on? Plus, what are some of our favourite free games? There are a bunch.

We also talk about the science that suggests people process visual information at wildly different speeds (I know I shouldn't have said that some people just 'see more fasterer' or whatever reductive thing I said, please don't email me), Nate teaches me about some weird cryptids, and we recommend some sweet non-video game stuff, as per usual.

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A month ago Arrowheads CEO revealed the existence of Joel (technically J.O.E.L., in game), a game master running the galactic battle of Helldivers 2. A human being who gets up in the middle of the night to throw more robots at players if they're doing too well. We at the RPS Electronic Wireless Show think this is a good thing, in broad terms, and we discuss why (but also hope Joel is allowed holidays), as well as the response the community of players has had, which is also very interesting. Plus a straw poll indicates that only one of us would enjoy be at the middle of a maelstrom of chaos and being the Helldivers GM as a job. Bet you can absolutely guess which one of us it was.

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No James this week, but I am joined by Nate for this week's Electronic Wireless Show podcast to discuss Ubisoft's new NEO NPC prototype - an NPC you can have a stilted, weird conversation with using the power of AI! It's fair to say we are quite partisan about this and do not want it, but we discuss why anyway. In counterpoint, we think World Of Warcraft's new piratey battle royale game mode sounds pretty cool and good, actually?

Plus: I ask Nate to explain cool things that I've seen in Warhammer 40K: Darktide, and Nate tries to convince me to take a devil's bargain where I have to play WOW for at least 12 hours a day, but I get a sort of increasing MDMA high while doing so.

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Much like an early morning bakery or a petrol station forecourt, I can't go past Ready Player One author Ernest Cline doing something without sticking my nose in. This week he announced the start of a new metaverse, called Readyverse, with the reveal of a web3 enabled battleroyale game called Open. Or, technically, Op3n. Ope-thren. I don't know. We discuss this, I make James read a terrible poem, and we also talk about the games we weren't allowed to play as kids. Plus: the games we are allowed to play, right now, cos we're adults, and some juicy recommendations for you all.

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This week Steam unveiled a couple of changes. Your shopping basket from the Steam store is now shared between devices, so if you put something in there on browser you can finish it up on your Steam Deck. But, more importantly, you can now hide single, selected games from your library, so your friends can't see when you're playing them - or even that you own them. Obviously the first thing that comes to mind is that this could usher in a new dawn of secret perverts able to hide their embarrassing 3D sex games, but are there other use cases for it? We discuss. Plus: we've been playing current games! Cheese! And some more booze recommendations from James!

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As with all headlines that are phrased as a question, the answer is "probably not", but in any case, Miyazaki has mysteriously hinted at there being at least one secret thing in Elden Ring that players haven't found yet. On this week's Electronic Wireless Show podcast we discuss this, as well as some of our favourite and least favourite deployments of the video game Easter egg. We also talk about what we've been playing this week (Nightingale; PowerWash Sim, natch) and visiting Scotland. Sadly neither of us got to go to the Glasgow Willy Wonka experience. But we both wish we could have.

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