QCF: Hollow Knight: Silksong

t isn’t very often that the cultural zeitgeist of video games just comes together on a subject like the friggin’ Planeteers summoning Captain Planet, right? I mean, thinking back, the last few times something like that happened were the releases of Pokémon GO or Grand Theft Auto V—video game releases that surpassed the typical grand-scale spectacle for their respective audiences and had instead exploded into being these larger-than-life experiences that invaded all of the water coolers out there.

Well, it happened again with the long-awaited sequel to the 2017 sleeper hit from indie studio Team Cherry—Hollow Knight: Silksong.

What was once ranked among the vaporware meme status of Half-Life 3 or, to a lesser extent, Banjo-Threeie (can’t really do Shenmue III or Zach Snyder’s Justice League, because well, those ended up coming out), the highly anticipated follow-up finally emerged from years of silence with a surprise launch date that was showcased in the 2025 Gamescom event. The sporadic appearance of the trailer not only showed everyone watching and in attendance that the game was alive and well, but it also steadily concluded with an eye-opening launch date that was just a mere two weeks away.

No advance press copies or influencer kits—a worldwide release for everyone to experience completely sealed from behind Team Cherry’s doors until its Sept. 4 launch date. The clandestine rollout couldn’t be more thematic for Silksong, as the crux of the game teased a quest that spanned a world far bigger and more daunting than Hollow Knight’s Hallownest ever was, and after spending hours of needling my way through the troubled lands of Pharloom, I can safely say that the hype is real.

Silksong is one of the finest Metroidvanias ever made—a true peak for the sub-genre of “search-action” gaming.

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Late to the Party: Lost Judgment

eing a Spin-Off from a popular series is hard because you’re either as beloved as Family Matters, or as forgettable as The Cleveland Show—the reception to these ventures is rarely in-between.

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s first foray into the Yakuza Universe outside of Kiryu’s story continuity, Judgment, fringes between both ends of that measuring stick. The crux of this weakness fell upon its failure to carve a meaningful identity of its own from the rich source material it pulls from, well, aside from a fickle protagonist who was charming one second and irritatingly cringe-worthy the next at the very least.

Inconsistent delivery aside though, the premise of an Ex-Lawyer turned Private Eye in the world of Kamurcho still carries plenty of merits to re-visit in its own right, especially with mainline Yakuza series shifting into the Turn-Based RPG Genre for the indefinite future. This is where the follow-up sequel to Takayuki Yagami crime-solving caper, Lost Judgement, comes into the grand picture.

The Private Eye’s latest case leads him to the rough streets of Ijincho, and the setting isn’t the only thing that’s new as Lost Judgment is a sequel that boldly builds upon its formula instead of trying to deliver a familiar formula with some forced twists, making for an immensely better experience this time around.

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QCF: Yakuza: Like A Dragon

espite all of the social and technological advancements we’ve made over the last century, there’s an old saying that still gets thrown in the face of anything progressive to this very day—the tired phrase of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” 

There are merits to the sentiment though—it isn’t often that an open-world action-adventure dynamic like that of the Yakuza series is able to work as well as it has for the last fifteen years, as each entry only worked to improve upon the foundation of the 2006 PS2 original. Fortunately, that isn’t the case here, far from it; Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio's Yakuza Like A Dragon is a revival, unlike anything we’ve seen from a legacy franchise before it, taking the series to a new generation of players while successfully carrying it to new heights for longtime fans all the same.

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PPR 128

t’s about to get real come November, the long awaited arrivals of the Sony PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X and Series S will finally launch to the public. Sony and Microsoft have finally unveiled the major details for their next generation hardware after months of speculation and brevity, and well, the hole killer pandemic thing that’s still going on (wear a fucking mask y’all.)

Color us unprepared too because not only is George too broke to steadily invest into both; Andrew STILL doesn’t have a 4K, and Ser is laughing at us in 720p—that doesn’t mean that  don’t have some words to share though!

Join us as we break down prices, specs, launch titles, controller designs, overall value, and more here on this short-but-sweet episode of Press Pause Radio.

Mail us at our new email Mailbag@presspauseradio.com, leave a voicemail at 469-PPR-TALK, 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 Twitch page and Twitter, and finally take part in our Facebook and Steam group!

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