QCF: Mouse P.I. for Hire

Relax, everyone, I solved the case! Troy Baker is the voice actor playing the role of the hardened, fondue-sipping war hero-turned-private-investigator protagonist of this game. I knew I had heard that voice somewhere, so it was a big surprise when I checked my search engine, er, I mean the board of clues, and came to that deduction. Spending hours of time in the world of Mouseburg in Mouse P.I. for Hire as an anthropomorphic mouse detective will make any player feel like they’ve jumped into a noir crime drama.  In the influence of games like Cuphead and the playstyle of Bioshock with big animated set pieces and exploration of a world out of a time capsule, this title has something for every player.

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PPR 168

Like the twisted version of Santa Claus that he is, once a year, Geoff Keighley comes out of his mousehole to host a grand event in Los Angeles that lets developers and publishers show off their up-and-coming games to the public via a broadcast presentation he calls the Summer Game Fest.

So, it’s essentially LIKE Electronic Entertainment Expo in all but name, and like E3, the event engulfs the first week of June, and has already convinced other entities like Sony and Microsoft to coordinate the airings of their proprietary presentations around the showcase as well.

And we here at Press Pause Radio took it ALL in to talk about it with y’all on this latest episode of the podcast (well, everything except for the Nintendo Direct, since the Big N sort of screwed scheduling-wise on that matter.) This week’s cast sees George, Andrew, and special guest Steve, one of the main hosts for the podcast, Fine Time on Super Pod Network, get together to break down PlayStation’s State of Play, Summer Game Fest, and the Xbox Showcase with their shared impressions and anticipated releases that were teased in the respective events. The discussed games include Mighty Cuphead Adventure, Marvel’s Wolverine, Resident Evil Veronica, God of War Laufey, Final Fantasy VII Revelation, Magician: The Devil’s Deal, Castlevania: Belmont's Curse, Crazy Taxi: World Tour, Stranger Than Heaven, and well, a hell of a lot more. We hope y’all enjoy, and while you’re at it—check out the guys over at Fine Time and their own Summer Game Fest episode when you’re done, OH, and be sure to send them your favorite Jack in the Box menu recommendations too!

Mail us at our new email Mailbag@presspauseradio.com, leave a voicemail at 42-GAMEZAP-4 (424-263-9274)‬, and be sure to stop by at our Forums if you haven’t already registered and post your thoughts about the show. Finally, make sure to rate and subscribe to us on iTunes and YouTube, follow us on our Twitch page and BlueSky, and finally take part in our Facebook and Steam group! This episode has been brought to you by our new friends at the SuperPod Network, be sure to check out all the other rad podcasts they host for Video Games and more! Finally, this episode was also brought to you by our new sponser, Dubby, a new, jitterless, friendlier energy drink made from a formula that contains a slew of vitamins, amino acids and nootropics including their patented NeuroFactor®. Click on the link listed or enter "PRESSPAUSERADIO" and get 10% off of your order right meow!

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PPR 167

One more run right?—Just one more go at it, and this time, things will be different. That’s the allure of the Roguelike genre of video games. It isn’t just one thing to jam through a level filled with beasties and hazards, you also have to improvise your approach with whatever power-ups or drawbacks you’re given, at least long enough to make it to the next area.

What was once a hardcore spin on action games has gradually permeated several other genres like Shooters, Metroidvanias, and hell, even Dating Simulators—it’s grown to a point where we’re seeing enough games lightly dabble with the formula to spawn its own subgenre, Rougelite.

Realizing just how many games we’ve played under this banner, with Hades, Absolum, Dead Cell, Returnal, and several more, we figured it was high time we took a more earnest look at the category of gameplay, and try to see what makes it tick, and whether or not it’s officially reach the mainstream!

Join Andrew and George as they discuss this, plus their thoughts and predictions for what they expect will come out of Summer Game Fest later this week!

Mail us at our new email Mailbag@presspauseradio.com, leave a voicemail at 42-GAMEZAP-4 (424-263-9274)‬, and be sure to stop by at our Forums if you haven’t already registered and post your thoughts about the show. Finally, make sure to rate and subscribe to us on iTunes and YouTube, follow us on our Twitch page and BlueSky, and finally take part in our Facebook and Steam group! This episode has been brought to you by our new friends at the SuperPod Network, be sure to check out all the other rad podcasts they host for Video Games and more! Finally, this episode was also brought to you by our new sponser, Dubby, a new, jitterless, friendlier energy drink made from a formula that contains a slew of vitamins, amino acids and nootropics including their patented NeuroFactor®. Click on the link listed or enter "PRESSPAUSERADIO" and get 10% off of your order right meow!

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QCF: Pragmata

In recent years, generative AI has led a near-inescapable march through every facet of our daily lives. Whether you’re seeking service, information, production, entertainment, or even counseling, the tool has made its ghoulish presence known in just about every corner you can find, and despite the real-world ramifications its proliferation leaves behind, it’s only gaining more momentum.

In the previous decades before the advent of generative AI, however, the concept of Artificial Intelligence had a somewhat less destructive impact on daily living or the beauty of human expression in fictional storytelling, and instead mainly presented as a device to extoll the themes of playing god or asserting faith in the power of humanity. Enter Yonghee Cho of Nier Automata and Metal Gear Revengence fame, who was brought on by Capcom and their development team to approach a new angle towards AI using the Old El Paso answer to Hard Tacos or Soft Tacos—a story that would focus on both the old Sci-Fi roots of AI, and the current dangers of Generative AI, being navigated by the powers of human connection.

This imaginative effort would steadily evolve into a new IP, Pragmata, and much like the other original release from Capcom, Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, the premise places a subtle, yet deceptively deep twist on an accustomed action genre. At the core of its Outré blend of logic puzzles and third-person shooting, Pragmata also manages to tell a surprisingly endearing story about a well-adjusted engineer who stumbles upon an effusive android during a recon mission that goes horribly wrong, and the wholesome bond they build along the way in a world led by AI.

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PPR Presents Limelight: Mina the Hollower Weekend

While we strive to never play favorites at Press Pause Radio, we would be outright liars if we didn’t cop to the fact that Yacht Club games is one of our favorite independent game studios out there, so yeah—you could say we’re a little excited about Mina the Hollower going gold, and now that it’s here, it’s an experience that’s so much more than we could have ever hoped for.

Our review of Mina the Hollower will hopefully be out in the next week or so as we prep our pieces, videos, and podcast to start the month of June off, and we couldn’t think of a better stone to kill two GameBoy Color-inspired bats with than to stream the new release from Yacht Club for y’all this weekend!

Be sure to tune in to our Twitch or YouTube  at 7:45 PM PST on 05/29/2026, and again at 6:30 PM PST on 05/30/2026, to watch what may already be the biggest contender for the Golden Zonkies’ 2026 Game of Year award! You can check out the streams here or directly on our Twitch and YouTube channels, and vibe along with us as we work towards ushering in a new age of Limelight for y'all!

Late to the Party: Mega Cat Studios Retro Game Trio!

Let's be real: there's a lot to loathe about 2026, what with our economic state of affairs, the increasingly robust perversion of the internet via AI slop and constantly shifting weather patterns. Hell, we can't even find solace in the little things anymore, like going down to the store and just buying a damn pack of Pokemon cards (but that's another feature for another time).

That being said, we can at least count on something: there are still plenty of stellar studios that continue to release retro-inspired classics. (And with physical copies to boot – literally!)

 Given the tumultuous curveballs we keep seeing through this already shifty year, Press Pause Radio (or myself, more specifically) is a bit late to the party on some of the early year releases from Mega Cat Studios. So join us as we dive into peeks at Plyuk and Old Towers for the NES, in addition to Super Fanger for the SNES.

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PPR 166

The mind sure is a funny thing—one second, you can find yourself tripping over the gradually increasing existential crisis of modern-day living in 2026, and the next, you’ll find yourself thinking about dumb ways to make peeing for a dog way more fun than it should have any right to be!

On this week’s episode of Press Pause Radio, we tackle some of the news bits in gaming and our current gaming shelves in another “What’s in your console” edition of the show.

Andrew and George are joined by Hugo Award-winning writer and all-around gaming journalist sweetheart, ‪Aidan Moher, who is also ½ of one of the coolest new video game podcasts to hit the web, Fun Factor: a show that takes a retrospective look at retro game magazines that inspired them to be games writers themselves!

In this episode, the cast will go over the news of the leaked internal Xbox memo that would rapidly become the “We Are Xbox” state of the union from Microsoft, and the details of the new Steam controller from a leaked review of the device, including its $99 price tag! On the games side of things, we get real weird with it as we discuss OPUS: Prism Peak, Life is Strange, Division 2, Froggy Hates Snow, Returnal, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, Under the Island, Cobra, ZX Spectrum Next, Saros, Pragmata, Mouse: P.I. for Hire, Invincible VS, Quest: Brian's Journey, and so much more!

We hope you enjoy our busy bodies of work as we have a whole lot more to cover with y’all in the coming weeks here at Press Pause Radio, oh, and be sure to subscribe to Fun Factor, and buy Aidan’s cool ass book, Fight, Magic, Items: The History of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and the Rise of Japanese...

Mail us at our new email Mailbag@presspauseradio.com, leave a voicemail at 42-GAMEZAP-4 (424-263-9274)‬, and be sure to stop by at our Forums if you haven’t already registered and post your thoughts about the show. Finally, make sure to rate and subscribe to us on iTunes and YouTube, follow us on our Twitch page and BlueSky, and finally take part in our Facebook and Steam group! This episode has been brought to you by our new friends at the SuperPod Network, be sure to check out all the other rad podcasts they host for Video Games and more! Finally, this episode was also brought to you by our new sponser, Dubby, a new, jitterless, friendlier energy drink made from a formula that contains a slew of vitamins, amino acids and nootropics including their patented NeuroFactor®. Click on the link listed or enter "PRESSPAUSERADIO" and get 10% off of your order right meow!

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QCF: CAIRN

We all have a vision in our heads of something that we love doing beyond any reproach. A passion that we put on a pedestal, and fabricate this perfect version of what we aspire it to be, and when that drive reaches a fever point, no one else will ever understand your vision. Not family, not friends, and not even colleagues who share your love of the avocation at hand. Everything else starts to lose meaning—or worse yet—become a hindrance between you and the focus you need to lock the hell in for to achieve the goal at large.

Even though we’re all capable of that intense dedication to something we love, there’s a big gulf between someone striving to be the world’s best bowler and someone trying to be the first Alpinist to reach the top of the world’s only unclimbable mountain. A new survival-action title from the same folks who brought us Furi, in CAIRN, from The Game Bakers, aims to challenge the limits of human tenacity, both through the lens of Aava and the personal state of mind she finds herself in, and the symbiotic level of perseverance that players will need to guide her to the peak.

As simple as that all sounds, it’s the execution of CAIRN’s buildup and turbulent framing of Aava’s quest to surmount Mount Kami that sets it apart as an experience that’s unlike anything I’ve played before it—an experience that constantly teeters between being a tale of inspiration and a cautionary tale of self-destruction.

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