One of The Unusual Suspects for Games N Moorer, DJ Coolbreeze, is a sponsor for the show. It was because of him, that we got early access to Conan The Barbarian for Mortal Kombat 1. He got us the Khaos Reigns expansion, and we have thoughts from our casual turned competitive session. 

As we admittingly don't know the reference material like we should, we do know who Conan is, and who is NOT voicing him. We do scoff at the internet referring to him as Temu Tusk (Killer Instinct), and we won't allow it, seeming that Conan The Barbarian predates Tusk by 14 years. Also, the resurrection move is kind of cool, as it is a cross between Mercy from previous games, and Jason from Mortal Kombat X. Conan does feel a little stiff, but the whole game does, so that complaint isn't new. 

The Fatalities are ok, as they are also references to the movie, but the Animality, as all of them are, is really really good. All this, topped with a conversation about The Ohio State Buckeyes conversation, all in one jam packed episode. Now all that remains is the T-1000 for this DLC, but with the looming MK1 tournament, and Ed Boon hinting toward more DLC, it seems as if Liu Kang has some more tricks up his timeline. Stay tuned. 

Yesterday 2K released a video teasing the possible return of Intergender matches to the WWE games series in WWE 2K25. Well the teases continue as they released another video today but I would say this one is probably a little more than teasing and borderline straight up confirmation. 

The video today shows Jey Uso hyping up the release of WWE 2K25 and just like Rhea getting cut off when she said "Inter", in this video Jey Uso gets cut off right as he says "Showcase". I love Jey Uso but I don't think he's getting a showcase all about himself, but he certainly belongs to a family which is perfect for a Showcase mode.

My assumption is the Showcase mode this year will focus on The Bloodline and will feature matches from history with WWE wrestlers past and present including The Wild Samoans, Yokozuna, The Rock, Umaga, Rikishi, Roman Reigns and The Usos. 

Showcase mode has been a lot more fun in recent years since we aren't locked to playing as a single person throughout the mode but it really does have issues, especially with the "slingshot tech" where it transitions to footage of the actual match you are playing. This is cool in small parts but last year's mode had A LOT of issues where you are just sitting there for literally minutes watching the actual match instead of playing it. If I wanted to do that I would just watch the match on WWE Network. Either way, Showcase is fun for unlocking classic arenas, gimmicks and attires for wrestlers so I am hoping we get a good variety of matches throughout multiple eras of WWE for this years Showcase. 

As we prepare to be delivered once more from kingdom come, Warhorse Studios has revealed the post-launch plans for Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, and it’s quite robust. A series of paid DLC will be interspersed with free updates starting this Spring and continuing over the next year. Premium content can be purchased a la carte and is also included with the $89.99 Gold Edition of the game at a discount. The first update will add a barber feature that allows you to customize your version of protagonist Henry, as well as a hardcore mode to truly test your medieval skills, and the addition of horse racing.

The full roadmap consists of the following:

• Spring: Enjoy a selection of updates, free for everyone, introducing a Barbers feature to customise your look, a Hardcore Mode for those seeking a greater challenge, and Horse Racing, where you can hone your mounted skills and uncover hidden surprises.
• Summer: Brushes with Death – Embark on a thrilling quest as Henry aids an enigmatic artist with a shadowy past. Journey across the lands of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, facing perilous encounters and unravelling a web of dangerous schemes.
• Autumn: Legacy of the Forge – Dive into Henry’s roots by exploring the legacy of Martin, his adoptive father. Work to restore a once-renowned forge and prove your skills in the art of blacksmithing as you uncover forgotten tales of the past.
• Winter: Mysteria Ecclesia – Enter the Sedlec Monastery, where intrigue runs deep. Tasked with a covert mission, Henry must navigate the complex dynamics of the region, discovering hidden truths and navigating a maze of conflicting interests.

Indie publisher Yalpakor Bou-tique has announced that social media sensation, A Game About Digging A Hole, will release on Steam on February 7th, with console versions still in the works. Created by a single artist from game developer Cyberwave as a side project, A Game About Digging A Hole is, well, a game about digging a hole in the backyard of your new house. The deeper you dig, the more mysterious the hole becomes, as you can see in the new trailer below.

The game took a mere 14 days to develop, but has amassed over 100,000 wishlists on Steam, which is nothing compared to its more than 20 million social media views since its original announcement. I feel like I cannot ignore this game, especially for its meager $4.99 asking price. My wife says I’m pretty good at digging holes, so what’s one more?

Well this is a huge shocker if this is what I think it is. The official reveal for WWE 2K25 is coming a week from today but 2K dropped a teaser which hints at a major feature returning to the WWE games series.

On their official channels 2K posted a video teaser from Rhea Ripley herself. What was interesting is that there were two symbols in the description of the video. The two symbols being "male" and "female". The video has Rhea Ripley talking about WWE 2K25 and she says "inter....." before getting cut off. This leads me to believe that we will be getting intergender fighting back in WWE 2K25 where men and women can fight each other in various match types. 

If this is true this is huge as this is something that hasn't been featured in a WWE game since I believe Smackdown Vs. Raw 2007 and this is something I thought we would never see again. Perhaps we have AEW Fight Forever to thank for this as that game featured intergender fighting as well. Maybe WWE and 2K saw that there wasn't any backlash to that and decided to implement it in WWE 2K. This is all just speculation on my part but if this is coming I am very excited. The less restrictions we have the better. Plus Wrestling games are almost like fighting games. It's like if Chun Li could only fight other female fighters in Street Fighter games. It's a videogame, let us have fun. Obviously we don't see this on WWE tv but who cares? Let us go crazy and do wacky stuff like we used to. 

Again this is all just speculation and nothing is confirmed until it comes from 2K themselves so we will have to wait one more week to see if this is true or not. 

The time is almost here to see what a monster the GeForce RTX 5090 is, but today we can only show you pictures of the card and the box itself. NVIDIA's always looking to go more eco-friendly and this new box really shows the progress they've made. There's no ink on the inside and the GeForce lettering is embossed on the cardboard box holding the card.

As you can see, there are many layers that make up the box that houses the card and there are two pull apart sleeves that you remove in order to open it up. Inside is the card itself, that measures the same length as the GeForce RTX 4090, but it's a dual slot card instead of a three slot card.

Included  is a four to one power adapter, which is really flexible because of the strand design on each connector. You should have no problems bending these cables to fit your case, but you can use a 12VHPWR connector of your power supply should it already have one.

We should have a review for the GeForce RTX 5090 soon, but for now enjoy the pictures of this very nice looking Founder's Edition card.

The SMITE 2 Founder's Series grand finals are happening right now in Las Vegas and Hi-Rez Studios held a special Titan Talk stream to discuss the plan for SMITE 2 for 2025.  

The first thing they discussed was the Wandering Market which will serve as this games season pass system. It seems they are moving away from the battle passes like they had in the first SMITE and will be utilizing this new system which functions smartly to games like Helldivers 2 and Marvel Rivals. Each season there will be free and premium items you can unlock including skins, diamonds, emotes, stat trackers and more.

Completing daily, weekly and seasonal quests will earn you coins which can be used to unlock these items. Best of all is your coins and the items won't expire so if you don't like the items in the store that season you can save them and use them in a future season. Or if you were late to the game you can go back and purchase previous items. This is a much better system and I am so happy to see more and more games moving away from FOMO and battle passes that expire. 

Then we got a major announcement and that announcement was that a SMITE 1 god will be ported over to SMITE 2, every week, for the next 32 weeks. Along side that, every 8 weeks a brand new god will be added to the game including Bari, the first god from the new Korean Pantheon. 

Classic skins from SMITE 1 which can be purchased with Legacy Gems will also start appearing every few weeks in game. 

Also announced was the next set of SMITE 1 gods being ported over to SMITE 2 over the next few months which includes... 

• Vulcan
• Hun Batz
• Artemis
• Rama
• Achilles 
• Awilix 

While they weren't given release dates we did get confirmation that Scylla, Sylvanus, Apollo, King Arthur and Mercury are confirmed to be coming in 2025. 

SMITE 2 had a very rough 2024 but man Hi-Rez is cooking fine dining cuisine here with all these announcements. There was a lot of doom posting and even I would say it was rightfully deserved but after the last couple of patches, the launch of the free to play open beta and the roadmap for 2025, we are so back!

SMITE 2 is free to play and available now on PS5, Series X, Steam and the Epic Store.

Like Dragons and Undead, Monstrosities is a category of creature in the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Monster Manual. It just so happens to be one of the most famous collections of creatures in D&D's 50-year history. We're talking about:

• Displacer Beast
• Doppelganger
• Drider
• Mimic
• Owlbear
• Rust Monster
• Stirge
• Tarrasque (while neck and neck with Tiamat at Challenge Rating 30, Tiamat is instead found in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons and the Rise of Tiamat, not in the Monster Manual)

There are some new faces to the Monstrosities category. Many of these new faces migrated from the Humanoid category. The most notable migrants into Monstrosities used to be categorized as Humanoids. For example: Lycanthropes, such as:

• Werebear
• Wereboar
• Wererat
• Weretiger
• Werewolf

Werewolves and such may have started as Humanoids, but they're not Humanoids anymore. There are also things that affect Humanoids that the designers didn't want affecting Were-creatures anymore (like the Hold Person spell now requires Hold Monster instead). They've added the curse of lycanthropy into the stat block itself, instead of making you look elsewhere in the book for what lycanthropy does.

So, taking were-creatures as well as the aforementioned creatures (e.g. Owlbear, Rust Monster) into account, what is a Monstrosity? It's classic D&D. Storybook creatures—Dragons notwithstanding. Monstrosities were either crafted or distorted by magic ("A wizard did it," or, "This used to be another type of creature because of a curse.") That's the common thread among Monstrosities.

Also mythical creatures, such as the guardians of the gods. This is the category for:

• Medusa (male options now, too)
• Hydra
• Chimera
• Basilisk
• Minotaur

There are a few creatures that moved out of the Monstrosity category, too. Gnolls were Monstrosities but are now Fiends. And if the Internet has ruined you, too, you can be forgiven if you get a chuckle out of a new variant of the Cockatrice that is a giant Cockatrice.

Many of the creatures found in the Monstrosity category—even if they've just made a lateral pass over from another category—have been in the Monster Manual from the very first edition of D&D.

As promised, every creature found in the 2024 Monster Manual has gotten a tune up. Whether from buffed stats, broadened abilities, easier to use for Dungeon Masters, or even just sensible categorial shifts like the creatures that've moved in and out of the Monstrosity category. 

"Everyone likes undead," as they say at Wizards of the Coast, designers of the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Monster Manual. But why do we like undead? What's compelling about a mob of zombies, a clatter of skeletons, a brood of vampires, or a lurch of liches?

Because you, as a player, know instinctively that these are enemies and they must be vanquished. None of these namby pamby morally gray areas to get in the way of you and your experience points.

I say that knowing full well there's a lot of gray area in D&D—having completed Curse of Strahd taught me that much. (And if you want to flip the Alignment discussion upside down, then add Descent Into Avernus to your playlist as well.)

But there can be a welcome clarity to facing undead. Not only is it clear that that thing is chaotic and/or evil, there's the added horror of potentially becoming one yourself. "That's part of the deliciousness of gothic horror. There's always a psychological element to it," says designer Jeremy Crawford.

Being those designers, the aforementioned Jeremy Crawford, along with his monstrous partner in crime, F. Wesley Schneider, are here to make things harder on your players. Here are some of their favorite new creatures added to the Monster Manual:

• New types of vampires (more vampires at more Challenge Ratings)
  • Vampire Familiar – A lower CR than Vampire Spawn; still living, but on track to become a Vampire
  • Vampire Spawn
  • Vampire Nightbringer – Between Vampire Spawn and full-fledged Vampire
  • Vampire
  • Vampire Umbral Lord – Beyond the full-fledged Vampire

These multiple tiers of vampires now do for vampires what increasing age does for dragons. It also makes it so you don't have to wait until X level to tell your vampire story. You can even run an Oops! All Vampires campaign top to bottom, if you want to.

Also:

• New Skeleton: [no further info]
• New Ghast: the Ghast Gravecaller – A bridge between Ghasts and Liches (or rather, a botched attempt at becoming a Lich)
• New Crawling Claw: the Swarm of Crawling Claws
• New Death Knight: the Death Knight Aspirant – Now you don't have to wait until such a high level to use one of D&D's most classic monsters
• New Revenants:
  • Graveyard Revenant – Not just one vengeful spirit, this is an entire graveyard of vengeful spirits
  • Haunting Revenant – When a vengeful spirit aims for, say, a human but instead hits an object...like a house

They love the art for the Haunting Revenant so much. In fact, when it was looking like they were going to have to cut it out because there was no room left in the book, the writing and editing teams bent over backwards to make the space in order to keep it. 

Some monsters aren't new, per se, but have had their functionality enhanced:

• Dracolich: No longer a template to overlay on top of another dragon, now the Dracolich has distinctive abilities
• Ghost: Jeremy Crawford's Ghost hit the Acquisitions Inc. players so hard that the players were like, Wait what just happened?!

With the D&D 2024 Monster Manual, Wizards of the Coast wants to make monsters scary once more for your players. Sometimes that because the numbers went up. But other times that's because the behaviors have changed to make them more scary. 

The new Monster Manual comes out February 18, 2025. Read our review of the D&D 2024 Player's Handbook here, or the D&D 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide here.

Sharkmob has announced that Exoborne, its upcoming PvPvE tactical extraction shooter is getting a Steam playtest February 12^th – 17^th. Interested players can sign up directly on the game’s Steam page for a chance to access the test. In Exoborne, players dive into the fictional American location of Colton County, which has been devasted by extreme weather events, as they fight to secure valuable resources to aid humanity’s fight for survival. What remains of humanity are known as Reborn – special survivors equipped with powerful exosuits that can survive the harsh elements. Exo-rigs can be customized to suit your individual playstyle and loadout preferences as you battle other humans and the environment for the best loot.

Check out the new playtest trailer below: