Half-Life projects, Comic-Con program guide, Playstation Factory & Esports Mental Toughness

First, Dev-i-boy found a list of Valve games that never came out. These games were created in the dark times before Half Life: Alyx was announced, and include some interesting looks at what Half Life 3 could have been.

You can't go to Comic-Con this year, but you can watch it online. There's a great program with tons of shows including comics, television and gaming news. It's also probably the most accessible Comic-Con ever, since you don't need to leave your house and the shows are free.

First the robots came for the car factory jobs, and I said nothing. Then they came for the Playstation 4 assembly jobs, and I said "Cool, that's some nice tech". Sony has almost fully automated their assembly line and only use four people on the ends of a single assembly line that makes one console every 30 seconds. It's awesome.

Esports are stressful, and high skill players show the same signs of stress as their analogue counterparts. This doesn't surprise the Nerds at all, but it's an interesting study.

This week, Professor played a chaotic real time dice rolling game, DJ kept the peace in Agents of Mayhem and Dev-i-boy got distracted by job applications. Wish him luck.

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Error, Atari VCS, My Friend Pedro & Dead neurons

Flash is dead. Long live Flash. Kongregate has decided to shut their doors to new releases. This is truly the end of an error. Let's move on to something more secure now. After decades of trying to get around the web filter at school to play weird indie games, kids will have to find something else to do.

The Atari VCS is due to come out soon, and it's a horribly overpriced set top box. The hardware sounds hackable, but if you're buying it to play VCS games you're wasting your money. Seriously, you can get original Ataris much cheaper.

My Friend Pedro is coming back to haunt the nightmares of evil gangsters everywhere in a TV series from the creator of John Wick. This series will only be worth watching if they manage to pull off the wild stunts and action of the game, but they've got a pedigree.

The first video footage of a dying neuron shows the way your brain breaks down. The footage clearly shows a hit being carried out by the Glial Cell gang, famous for killing any brain cell that gets in their way. Check it out, this could lead to some cool medicine.

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Indiana Jones, Youtube, C.O.D Humvee & Lizard Eggs

This week the Nerds invited Dev-i-Boy on again. He'll be joining us for the next while.

First up is a discussion about Indiana Jones 5. Can Indy swing himself back into relevance for a new generation? Not if COVID-19 has anything to say about it. Indiana Jones 5 has been pushed back again due to the pandemic. The Nerds are hoping Actual Cannibal Shia LaBeouf doesn't make another appearance as Indy's son, but we'd be ok with him appearing as a cannibal tribesman. This of course leads into a discussion on Disney's other properties, including the notorious Pirates of the Caribbean and Jungle Cruise. This looks like a rough year for Disney.

Dev-i-Boy has heard that Russians are behind everyone's favourite YouTube channel, Five Minute Crafts. In a story reminiscent of bad Cold War fiction, Russian propaganda is slipped into innocuous seeming YouTube videos. Now we just need a team of teenagers to sneak into the secret Russian video studio lab and uncover their plot.

Activision has pulled off a major win in court against the maker of the Humvee. Modern warfare needs modern weapons, and the US courts have ruled in favour of realism over licensing fees.

Finally, DJ and Dev-i-Boy can't handle the knowledge. An Australian lizard joins the tiny group of reptiles that both lay eggs and give live birth. This revelation is too much for them to handle though, so we move on to the games of the week.

Professor and DJ play Generation Zero, a game about Swedish battle mechs and robot dogs that want to kill you. It's buggy, but generally a good experience. Dev-i played LoZ: Wind Waker again but breaks into a new dimension in VR Chat. Of course, he picked an anime girl avatar. Of course.

On to the usual shoutouts and remembrances, and DJ refuses to wrap up the show by performing Waterloo. Maybe next week.

Stay safe, and we'll see you all next week.

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