Multiple Nerdgasm

Luke goes full cinema hermit and catches two movies in one day — the 40th anniversary of Transformers: The Movie (verdict: fun but makes absolutely no sense, Hot Rod forever) and Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil (verdict: actually good, go see it, the padlock jokes are perfect). Meanwhile Matt is still playing Yoshi and the Mysterious Book with his daughter, who apparently blasted through the new Bluey game in a single weekend like some kind of toddler speedrunner. The internet is mad about Wolverine because Mystique has clothes on. Sweet Baby Inc, apparently. Blizzard announced StarCraft and Diablo 5 at BlizzCon because they had nothing else — both are 4-5 years away, both trailers are purely cinematic. Level-5 admitted they used some AI art in the Professor Layton remake announcement and everyone lost their minds. 007: First Light got delayed again on Switch 2, almost certainly because nobody wants to ship anything near GTA 6. Buffy’s 30th anniversary Emmys segment happened, it got complicated, and also we learned what gooning is. You’re welcome. Plus: a dolphin named Bubbles who has figured out that if you scare a fish enough it will throw up, and then you eat that. Luke has decided he no longer likes dolphins.

Luke’s three VBs in not hungover this week, so prepare for some high energy discussion of the week’s going on!

This week Microsoft quietly kneecaps Xbox Cloud Gaming with new monthly hour limits, and they’re also keeping the tariff refunds. The future of gaming may not be financially viable?

Xbox’s limited-edition green throwback console sold out in under a minute this week, and is now sitting on eBay for $3,300 AUD. Reasonable? You be the judge. Actually no, we’ll be the judge. That’s ridiculous.

Luke’s back from the actual flu (not the fake flu, the ‘couldn’t get an achievement for 5 days’ flu), and Matt’s walking around post-spinal surgery like a champ, albeit with a physiotherapist who apparently learned her craft from a Bond villain

We’re back, baby! Matt had surgery, Luke got sick, got better, went back to work, and got sick again with something different. Classic Luke. Anyway, we pushed through because we missed you.

This week we wonder how Nolan made a $250 million movie that looks like The Odyssey, while Moana 2 cost the same amount and looks like… Moana 2.

Luke is back from hospital where he apparently has built up a full tolerance to ketamine (‘I have no idea what people are going on about’) and Matt is falling apart at the spine. It’s fine. Everyone’s fine. Somehow they still watched a bunch of movies and have opinions.

So Taylor Swift got married, Adam Sandler officiated (yes, really, no one knows why either), and you could buy ‘wedding memorabilia’ off a New York street artist - including a used ovulation test - for $25. We live in a society. Then there’s the Xbox stuff, which is a lot. Like, a LOT. Thousands of jobs gone, Double Fine just… set free, id Software’s programmers shown the door (great for the legendary game engine people, obviously), and Obsidian pulled off Avowed 2 to go make Fallout instead. The good news: this is what everyone wanted since New Vegas. The bad news: it’s happening because Microsoft bought literally everything and then panicked. Sony’s having a bad fortnight too. No disc drive on PS6, and they’re nuking 551 movies from people’s PlayStation libraries because the licenses ran out. You know, movies people paid for. Bought. Owned. Allegedly. Armie Hammer took a role in Uwe Boll’s new film without reading the full script, then rang his publicist crying after he saw it. He did say he’d do the sequel for ’life-changing money,’ which is a very reasonable position. Mindhunter is dead forever and Fincher hates that you keep asking. Ludwig got renewed for season 3 before season 2 is even out, which - watch Ludwig. And Supergirl bombed harder than Blue Beetle, which is impressive given that nobody remembered Blue Beetle existed.

Luke went to see Supergirl and came back mostly flat. His verdict: he laughed once.

Matt beat an innocent stranger to death with a rock this week. Listen to find out what the hell that’s about. We get into the Xbox chaos (Ninja Theory gone, Elder Scrolls 6 still apparently coming in 2028 or possibly never, Tim Schafer potentially going indie), the Commodore flip phone that blocks social media and may or may not be purchased by Luke on the spot, why Ridley Scott doing Treasure Island feels weird, and the very depressing news that Europe can’t legally force publishers to keep game servers alive. Also Matt’s daughter is already better at the Bluey game than he is, which tracks.

Luke spent many hours at the cinema this week, drinking his way through five movies, then got on a kick scooter and came straight to record a podcast.

Luke’s heroics at a pub meat raffle set the tone for this week’s episode. When a man grabs a woman’s arm on the dance floor he’ll be there, like a red bearded Batman. An 83-year-old man’s retirement fund - a warehouse’s worth of vintage Star Wars LEGO he’s been sitting on since the ’90s - is stuck in the middle of one of the strangest internet dramas going right now. Bricks and Minifigs, Antifa, a YouTuber getting arrested in corporate lobbies, a police raid on an Airbnb to search for stolen LEGO, and a Patreon CEO publicly telling a franchise to get stuffed. Nuts. That’s not all: Matt has sunk 131 hours into Dune: Awakening and it’s coming to Xbox and Game Pass in September, which means he and Luke might actually play it together (for about two weeks before their schedules implode). Uwe Boll is back with a potential Batman/Punisher ripoff that Warner Bros. forced him to rename. Luke cannot play Wolverine because Sony exist. And the Buffy the Vampire Slayer LEGO set - the library AND The Bronze, with minifigs - is officially under review after clearing the Ideas supporter threshold.

Luke Skywalker blowing up Jabba’s sail barge is the greatest war crime in Star Wars history. Not the Death Star - a military target, the sail barge full of slaves and service workers. Luke knew exactly what he was doing and he chose evil. This is the kind of analysis you get here.

Somehow a conversation about the Grogu movie leads to the discovery that Neighbours made a zombie spin-off in 2014 and it’s available on YouTube. That’s the kind of episode this is. Along the way: William Shatner publicly calling his own Magic: The Gathering card AI-generated garbage, Matt’s genuine distress over not being able to enjoy Stardew Valley, Luke owning 12 boxes of Heroes of Might and Magic 3 board game expansions and having opened exactly one, and a surprisingly interesting breakdown of why Spotify’s new fan-verification ticket system might actually dent concert scalping. Plus GTA 6 is still November, Destiny 2 is winding down, and Matt is running a local AI agent that reads obituaries so we don’t miss Geek of the Week candidates. ‘Neighbours: Zombies on Ramsey Street’ review coming next week.