Playstations, Cocaine Bears, and Mike?

Good news for those who all finally got your PS5s! They’re going to make a newer, better version that you won’t be able to get until much later when they start working on the PS6. Haha. Gaming. Oh, there was a Day 1 release of a neat game if you’ve got Playstation Plus, and Cocaine Bear is now on digital for your fear, I mean enjoyment. And * checks notes * it looks like Joel is being replaced. I dunno, I thought he was a nice guy. Definitely a great addition to Binge Buddies.

What?

Not that Joel? The other Joel? From The Last of Us?

Haha.

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Mind the Messy of PsychOdyssey

Here’s a newsflash for you that is probably super obvious: game dev is messy. Like, extremely messy. It’s all chaos all the time and then suddenly WHAM, out comes a game. Even throwing super regimented and organized individuals into the fray doesn’t seem to stem the tide of just pure, unadulterated chaos. I read books like Press Reset and Blood, Sweat, and Pixels and see some of the fallout from all this chaos and I can’t help but wonder…why? Why do people subject themselves to all of this…(please don’t say chaos again…) disarray for some pretty bleep bloops?

Enter PsychOdyssey, the enlightening 32-episode documentary series about Double Fine during the creation of Psychonauts 2. You read that correctly. Thirty-two. Episodes. 2 Player Productions, the documentarians in this venture, followed Tim Schafer et al. around for seven years, recording the ups, downs, and all the diagonals of the video game creation process. And boy are there a lot of diagonals.

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Dumb Money, Racist SNES, and a Witcher Patch?

A slower news day yesterday, but no less strange. We’ve got a movie about GameStop being evil, a news report about counterfeit SNES Minis that are NSFW and extremely racist, and a next-gen Witcher 3 patch that begs the question, “where’s the next Cyberpunk update?”

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Oscars? Mario Boots? Cocaine Shark?

I, Jon from ATH Network, completely missed that the Oscars happened this past weekend. Like, I was surprised while compiling the stories for today’s post. Anyway, it sounds like the best film dominated and that’s a-okay with me. Of course, other stuff happened over the weekend and I GUESS we’ll share those with you below.

(Oh yeah, that thumbnail of King Shark from the hilarious James Gunn romp Suicide Squad? Seemed fitting for a news story about a cocaine shark.)

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More Like Suicide Blah, and Other News

Sometimes news happens and you have to ask yourself why. Well, apparently yesterday had a lot of that thanks to some rather strange news like a remake of The Room, a KFC and Diablo 4 collab, and a Capcom presentation that had no mention of Dragon’s Dogma 2. What’s next? Finding out that the Suicide Squad game was bullshit? God, I hope not.

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More Hell, More King, and More Phantasm?

Yesterday was an interesting day for entertainment news, as you’ll see below. We’ve got all kinds of stuff like game announcements for games DEFINITELY COMING OUT THIS YEAR, and a possible sequel from Sam Raimi. Oh yeah, Phantasm is also coming out on UHD. I feel like I’ve heard people talking about that franchise before.

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Mario, Mutants, and a Star Wars?

Trying a new thing here at the ATH Network. We’re going to give you old news. That’s right, it’s the news you may have already encountered out in the wild, packaged into a bite-sized link collection post with the catchy title “Yesterday’s News Today.” Now, you might be asking, “Why this? Why now?” It’s a good question.

Now without further ado, let’s see what happened yesterday.

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Ranking the MCU Through Phase 4

Now that Phase 4 is totally wrapped up and phase 5 is set to start this week, I thought it would be an excellent time to rank ALL OF THE MCU!  As a constant critic of all things Marvel, my list might differ from some. Still, I can honestly say I don’t think they have released a truly bad product yet. Even if your favorite is way down the list, remember even at its worst, MCU delivers entertaining movies.  So let’s get to it!

Note this list will only consider things that are still canon, so no Netflix shows or Agents of Sheild.

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James and the Giant Problem

Being a fan can really suck sometimes.  You find something which speaks to you on a level you yourself don’t fully understand, it brings you joy.  You start buying stuff related to it.  You own the movies, the comics, you watch the videos of the games because you don’t have time to play them all.  It becomes part of your identity, loving anything even remotely related to it.  You see more people start loving it, or maybe they already did, and people with money notice.  Now they start pumping serious money into it. The real test begins, do enough people love it for the same reasons you do?  If so, you are in luck, you are going to be getting so much content you won’t be able to keep up, I promise.  If not…well, then you are in a tight spot.  God help you if the general audience doesn’t just “not care” but actively condemns what you love.  Now you can get ready for an onslaught of, you’re wrong, I don’t trust your opinion, and the general assumption that you don’t know what you are talking about.

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A Review of Stranger Things S4, Part 2

After initial worry about the second half of season 4, Stranger Things returns with a strong conclusion to the season finale. With the cast on various journeys to stop Vecna, it gives a powerful and entertaining demonstration to each individual character and their own roles in stopping Henry/One/Vecna.

From the very beginning of the season, we see some development between Steve and Nancy as they show sparks of their old romantic feelings for one another. As Nancy and Jonathan drift further apart, as we find out in a moment of dramatic irony that Jonathan decided to attend a different college than Nancy, unbeknownst to her. Just as the viewer becomes resigned to any hope of rekindling the flames of Steve and Nancy, we can see a definite foreshadowing of Nancy and Jonathan coming to an end and the romantic feelings between Nancy and Steve grow stronger throughout the season and Nancy jumping in to save Steve from the Upside Down. Though nothing officially happens between them, Eddie points out to Steve how Nancy did not hesitate to jump in after him. Nancy’s courageous act shows her love for Steve as well as her undeniable character development from a meek girl to a strong, independent woman.

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