Plus Pokemon goes horror for its latest trailer and Vivi from Final Fantasy IV is messing up Magic the Gathering
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SIFTER is produced by Kyle Pauletto, Fiona Bartholomaeus, Courtney Smith, Adam Christou, Chris Button and Naomi Jackson. Cat Jahne is Social Producer, Mitch Loh is Senior Producer and Gianni Di Giovanni is our Executive Producer. Thanks to Audio Technica Australia and Apple for their support of SIFTER.
FIONA: Hi I’m Fiona Bartholomaeus
MITCH: and I’m Mitch Loh
FIONA: Welcome to Walkthrough, SIFTER’s weekly recap on the biggest news in video games.
MITCH: This week just about every game is getting out of the way of Silksong, Vivi (vee-vee) from Final Fantasy 9 is messing up the entire Magic The Gathering meta, and EA’s revived Skate series kicks off in mid September.
Here is the news for Sunday 31st of August. Let’s go!
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MITCH: Hollow Knight: Silksong has been the talk of the town this week now that we have a release date, but now other games are postponing their release dates to move away from it.
A bunch of indie metroidvania titles including Faeland, Baby Steps and Little Witch in the Woods have announced that they will be moving their release dates because of how highly anticipated Hollow Knight: Silksong is.
They want to make sure the game they’ve been working on gets the visibility it deserves, especially when they’ve all been working so hard to release it for their fans.
FIONA: It’s totally understandable that this is happening. Silksong is probably one of the most anticipated games since its first game almost 8 years ago.
And realistically most gaming press and influencers are going to be pretty focused on Hornet for at least a couple of weeks, so it makes a lot of sense.
We’ll leave a link in our show notes so you can read the announcements made by those devs and when the games will release instead.
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FIONA: Aftermath is reporting that Vivi from Final Fantasy IV is messing up Magic the Gathering. So much so that he might get banned.
Introduced as part of the popular Final Fantasy Magic card set that made 200 million dollars in a single day, Vivi’s card can be combined with legendary artifact Agatha’s Soul Cauldron to create an increasing feedback loop that is insanely powerful.
MITCH: I won’t go too deep into Magic rules but basically the more powerful the Vivi card gets, the more mana you can add to your deck. Agatha’s Soul Cauldron lets you use mana to put a card in the graveyard (make soup) and share its activated abilities with every creature carrying a +1 token, while also putting a new +1 counter on a creature that you own. This creates a bunch of Vivis, meaning a bunch of mana generators and even if the opponent can remove the cauldron, you still have everything you gained from that loop.
This deck is called the Izzet Cauldron and currently, according to Aftermath, costs around $700-$800 and is apparently dominating the standard format.
FIONA: It will be interesting to see if Wizards of the Coast ban Vivi or the cauldron or do nothing.
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FIONA: The Pokémon Company released a couple of new trailers for Pokémon Legends: Z-A this week and they were not what we were expecting.
The first, was a found footage horror situation where two people were exploring an abandoned house, getting jumpscared by a bunch of creepy Pokemon including a Sableye, and the camera cutting in and out with static.
Eventually they come face-to-face with a Mega Victreebel as it crashes through the wall and scares them away while spitting acid everywhere.
MITCH: And this is just a trailer to introduce Mega Victreebel and reveal that it’s coming to the new game.
What a wild way for Pokemon to announce this.
They did release a more G-rated trailer showing in-game footage of what it’ll look like and how it’ll move around along the streets of Lumiose City.
A lot more silly looking than what the horror trailer showed us.
FIONA: I think now what The Pokémon Company needs to do is release a horror Pokemon game. What they are doing instead though is Mexican wrestling?
That’s right, we got a second trailer where we meet Mega Hawlucha, a flexing, mexican wrestling inspired, fighting and flying type.
But wait there’s more, they also announced that Pokemon will be teaming up with Mexican wrestling promotion CMLL (Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre) to showcase lucha libre - a tradition style of Mexican wrestling.
MITCH: Now that’s a crossover I didn’t have on my 2025 bingo card.
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FIONA: Atari has reached an IP agreement with Ubisoft to acquire the rights to 5 of its games, with a goal to revive them and make them available on new platforms.
The games are Cold Fear, I Am Alive, Child Of Eden, Grow Home and Grow Up.
These games aren’t massive but they are some cult hits that have been sitting dormant for a while.
MITCH: Atari CEO/Chairman Wade Rosen said in a press release that the company is “excited to reintroduce these titles while exploring ways to explore and expand those franchises.”
This could mean anything from new content for those games, to different formats or different channels of distribution. I’m excited to see how these old games get revived.
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MITCH: Grab your deck because Skate, the skateboarding series which has been snoozing for a while, will be back in about two weeks, hitting early access on September 16th.
This new version of the game is a live service, so we’ll need to take everything with a grain of salt for sure.
FIONA: The trade off for this of course is that the game is free to play, and will be in early access for at least a year as developers shape the title.
Free and Live Service is often enough to give any gamer pause, so we’re going to hold our thoughts until it hits pretty much everything in the middle of this month.
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FIONA: That’s it for the headlines…Here are the games coming out this week.
MITCH: Otherskin is a sci-fi action shooter game where you play as Alex, a volunteer Space Crusader, who’s on a deadly solo mission to uncover a planet’s secrets. Guided by your AI suit, explore alien biomes, fight to survive, and absorb alien morphs to evolve beyond human limits. That’s out on PC on the 2nd.
FIONA: Also out on the 2nd is Rogue Labyrinth. A roguelite action RPG where you have to fight through a monster-filled colosseum labyrinth created by an egocentric billionaire colonist. You can make friends or enemies with rivals, employees, fans, and monsters to improve your abilities. You can battle your way through the labyrinth when it arrives on PC on Tuesday.
MITCH: Explore a beautiful origami world in Hirogami.You play as Hiro, a fan-wielding master of the art of ‘folding’, out on a mystical journey to save your home from deadly digital invaders. It’s a super cool concept where you take on different origami animal forms to travel across the land, solve puzzles and battle. It’s out on PC and PlayStation 5 on the 3rd.
FIONA: And of course out on the 4th is the highly anticipated Hollow Knight: Silksong where you play as the lethal hunter Hornet. This game almost needs no introduction, but can you believe it’s actually in our Release Radar finally?! Discover new powers, battle hordes of bugs and beasts, and uncover secrets tied to your nature and your past. It's a local game made in Adelaide so if you want to support some Aussie Devs, and be part of the cultural phenomenon this is it. It will be released on PC, Xbox, PlayStation and Switch this Thursday.
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PROMO: Articles to read, videos to watch and podcasts to listen to on sifter.com.au
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MITCH: This has been Walkthrough by SIFTER, my name is Mitch Loh
FIONA: And my name is Fiona Bartholomaeus, thank you so much for listening.
MITCH: We’ve got a heap of new reviews up on sifter.com.au, Cat has been keeping it cosy with MakeRoom and Tiny Bookshop and Adam has been playing Wuchang: Fallen Feathers and despite being a soulslike sicko had mixed feelings about. Read those and more on our website sifter.com.au that address again is sifter.com.au
FIONA: SIFTER is produced by myself, Naomi Jackson, Cat Jahne, Kyle Pauletto, Adam Christou and Chris Button. Mitch Loh is Senior Producer, and my cohost this week Gianni Di Giovanni is SIFTER’s Executive Producer, and script editor.
MITCH: Thanks to Brian Fairbanks from Salty Dog Sounds for composing the Walkthrough theme tune, and Audio Technica Australia and Apple for their support of SIFTER’s podcasts.
FIONA: We’ll be back with more news next Sunday, see you then.
