Hey, everybody, it's not Tuesday, but it is time for a BombCast
revenge it. So I'm your host, Jeff Grub. We're back for Summer
Game Fest. My voice is slowly coming back to me. It took it
took a little while this morning to actually get some behind these words. But
I'm ready and rare and to go. And I'm joined by a cast to
talk about what we played at Summer Game Fest and at least one fool to
ask us questions about that. Let's let's uh, let's start there, Sewn
Turble, Sean McDow, how's it going. Oh, it's going great,
Jeff. I had to do all the work of s Jeff with no the
benefits of being there in person with you. It was wonderful, delightful.
I love the YouTube. I'm on section right now. They're great. I'm
sure there was definitely a time where I was just like, ah, he's
just cleaning up mess after mess. Feel bad for Sean. Right, at
least I didn't have an illness keeping me out and shouts the back line.
Yeah, shouts Backlar who is bouncing back. Yeah, he's feeling Disneyland.
And they made a cake of me. Yes, you had a real time
this weekend, but real top for Mike Manati Mi Costa going. Uh,
it's good, it's good. Traveling does always take a lot out of me,
no matter how much fun I have, So it's always like just a
day where I'm just kind of zombie for a bit, but always very cozy
to be home and nfamiliar settings. My fake dog Penny is back to We
had a good reunion. Yeah, things are good, Disneyland champion Nicki Grayson,
how is it? Hello? Good? I saw my dog also for
the first time in what felt like thirty years yesterday, which was good.
And yeah, I'm feeling good my voice I talked so much and thanks so
much. I don't mean to be like to equate our experiences, but I
do think Jeff Grubb and I spoke similarly because I was really fucking floating.
Yeah, you every between every segment everything, Yes, everywhere. So my
voice is coming back. I'm feeling good. Yeah, tired though. And
Dan Reikert, hey enjoyer of Disneyland. We don't have to talk about it
here, but yes, we were there, had a good time. You're
back wheady to talk about games without caveat enjoyer of Disneyland. Yes, yes,
absolutely, but yeah time. Yeah, we had a pretty decent crew
show us around there, and we will find a spot to talk about that
for sure, but we have work to do. We played video games,
many of which were embargoed until like a couple of minutes ago, so we
figured we do a BombCast revengeance here on Wednesday, talk about what we saw,
talk about what we what we can actually talk about so far. There's
still some more stuff we'll have to get to later, but for now there's
plenty to get into. Does anyone have any place they want to start at?
Astrobot's very good? Okay, yeah, so we played Astrobot at the
PlayStation booth at Summer Game Fest on the campus there. It was very good.
You guys want to set up the scene, the scene of like what
we got to play, what we got to do? The game Sony was
like one of our first appointments, right, and we go down there.
Yeah, and we saw they had an Astrobot and Lego Horizon, which I
think if you watch our coverage you know how excited we are about that.
Now Astrobot was like I literally told uh, it was the studio director I
was like, this is as good, if not better, than any Mario
game I've ever played, which is I don't expect him to know how much
I love Mario games, but I don't say that lightly. It is,
uh, it's exactly exactly what I wanted when I played it. Like,
Okay, VR rescue missions, like, yeah, this is really great,
but it's VR. It's paying the ass to put this helmet on and it's
pretty short. Then play room, which is like, this is fucking incredible,
but it's a you know, a little three hour experience, and this
would be amazing if they made like a full on, like Mario Galaxy Odyssey
style thing, and this is that. And like from the moment, I
was like at the the main screen, there's like a hub you're flying the
ship around, and then you fly to a planet or something, and then
all these levels pan out. I'm like, oh, these are all going
to be so much fun. And there's like there's like main levels that you
would see in Astros playroom, there's challenge levels, there's boss battles. I
think, do we all play the same thing? It was like two standard
levels, two challenge levels in a boss fight, Yes, that's yeah,
that's right, and gosh, it was just all so good. It all
felt so distinctive and visually interesting, mechanically interesting. You know, they're doing
this thing where you know, you get those kind of power up pickups,
like like a dog that's a jet pack, right, it's also yeah,
an inflatable suit, the frog, punching gloves, boxing gloves, also a
grappling hook and yeah, and they're all they're all so good. They all
feel great. They'll like use the haptics really well. And you know it's
like we had that in playroom. But in playroom when you got those things,
it was like that this completely changes how the game works for a bit,
right, Like you're in a spring body and you're using the analyst sis
and it was like kind of fun, but it was gimmicky. And here,
you know, they told me like no, like this stuff's going to
work more with just the normal three D platforming now. But even still,
each of those things they said two levels, you'll get both of them maybe
again in like a challenge room, like so two or three times, that's
all. Often they're introducing new things here. It's incredible. Well, there
was that one challenge level that reminded me of those great challenge levels in Mario
Sunshine where there's all the like spinning blocks and everything, and you get like
a thing you can throw and it like creates like a time bubble. So
it's like here's a bunch of things that are just wildly spinning or a chain
that's wildly flailing around, and you throw the thing and that gives you some
time to kind of hop over the stuff, but it's kind of a time
limited thing, so at any point, the stuff's going to start going fast
again. So you really got a book it. And I was just every
one of these levels, I was going in thinking like, oh god,
this is going to be like a street run level, and it's we're all
obsessed over there and on that I you know, I asked about that,
like, hey, are we getting the leaderboards again, and they said,
like at launch, it won't be right away, and then there will be
a free update very soon afterward that he is going to add that stuff.
That's fine. I'm going to need some time to like play through the game,
probably when I level I get all the bots, got to get all
the gotcha's and whatever, because it's so fun. Yeah, you know,
like you you are like rescuing the bots again, and it is a lot
of those PlayStation cameos, and it's a lot it's a lot of the ones
we did see in playroom, like prop of the Rapper, but then like
Layer level, there's Unjammer lammy okay, yeah, fun, you know,
deep cut thing, and we didn't get to go to the level, but
there's clearly a level on the world map after you rescue rescue Krados and his
son that is like the God of War level, right, So it is
still kind of like this big overall celebration of PlayStation thing that I kind of
find endearing. Well, all these levels are like linear ish in the way
that like a three D World level would be, where it's like, you
know, you're running around pretty space obviously, but it's you know, there's
a start and an end. But every single time I looked off the beaten
path, I was like, I wonder if maybe if I climb climb up
on that crane and go to the top of that maybe, And like I
was rewarded like almost every single time for exploring, whether it was a coin
or a collectible or a bot or something. Three D World us to get
an out because it is like mostly linear, but then there's like the hidden
things that are worth kind of like snooping around seeing it. Maybe you should
go left instead of right, that kind of thing. Okay, that's interesting
because you know, we use Mario's analogy just because that's what people are probably
gonna be most familiar with. And I was gonna ask what kind of Mario
would you most compare this too? And sounds like because I thought Playroom was
somewhat Galaxy esque, and so I was wondering where this one would land if
I think, yeah, I think Galaxy is is what I would compare it
to, because Galaxy, but with the world land, maybe it's like Galaxy
too, where it's like you could they just throw in so many ideas so
frequently that you're gonna be doing something different so often that it's like, man,
this just feels like a team that really had a lot of time to
understand what their game was, and then that gave them a million more ideas
and they put every single one of the best ideas into the game. Because
you think about it, like sixty four Sunshine and Odyssey, I would say,
are more just like here's this big sandbox, like each world is a
big sandbox with a bunch stuff Runner and get whereas like Galaxy Galaxy two.
Maybe Galaxy two is like the comparison because that has the like world map where
you're like going in, you're selecting the level, you have a specific objective
you're doing that level. But yeah, because it's a little bit more open
than three D world, I feel like those levels are a little bit bigger
an Astrobot. So I think Galaxy two is probably the comparison. Yeah,
gotcha. And then like you know, like is it better than Mario?
So hard to say. Mario is so good at certain things, like the
gap closing in Mario is always good. One thing that immediately pressed me here
was that boss fight against this giant squad because normally, like the boss fights
in these kind of games, you know, the boss has a pattern,
hit him three times, the battern slightly changes. This giant octopus was doing
so many different things, so many wild things are happening. You're kind of
constantly on your toes of figuring stuff out, and it was just this big
visual spectacle because it is so big. It was a really cool boss fight,
and we saw from that triller there's just going to be a ton of
those two. Yeah, and you're like yanking his head down and then you're
going up like you're using the frog grapple boxing glove things, so you're like
sank him down and his like I is just like huge and fucked up and
everything. You're going up to the triggers, like it just feels fucking awesome
to wail on this octopus. And then yeah, in between, like you
finished what would be like the Galaxy boss fight, you do the three hits
or whatever, and like Mike said, it's doing a whole different thing where
it's like it backs way up and then there's a whole stage between you and
the octopus with like tidal waves coming in, so you're doing this whole like
platforming sequence to get back to him and continue the boss fight. This is
fantastic. Yeah, I blew me away too. I was surprised to get
out of there and hear him Dan say it's as good as or better than
the Mario game, And I was like, cause I was like secretly shamefully
thinking that I was playing the game. I'm like, well, I just
can't be right. But then we dance, I'm like I think it might
be which is again, this is something holy to me, Like when I'm
talking about Mario, and of course everyone knows I love Astro, but it's
like, you know, for me with Astro Astro's playroom, it was this
is a very slim down, simplified experience, and they just nail everything with
that. So the fact that they are now building on top of all that
with a million new ideas, video game and everything. Yeah, and in
the the early blog post about it, they're like, every ten minutes you're
doing something new. In the fact, when we were playing it, it's
like it feels much more frequent than that, where it's like every part of
that is like they're like what they probably mean is they're introducing one of these
new power ups that that frequently, but I'm like, well, no,
I have this power up and now I'm doing something new with the power up
in those ten minutes very frequently, or just like seeing like a big pile
of of these balls and then running into them and watching the physics happiness I
knocked them down and how good that felt. Remember the magnet with all those
little metal things there, everyone, Yeah, that thing's awesome. And for
the record, first mainline Astro game just in case anyone was wondering, Yes,
yes, as they are. The second one was like a demo thing.
This is the first mainline astrogame. The Deaths are on record as saying
they're they're calling it Astrobot because they see it as a fresh star for what
the astro character is. And there, OK, I think that's probably fair
and probably correct. Yeah. Here, if you're watching now on the video,
you could see the magnet thing and it like you're just the way all
the little silvery pieces attract you. It feels so good. And then the
fact it turns to a giant ball that you can then throw it's great too.
It's just and also does that honestly thing where it's like you get up
to like some platform you think you're not allowed to then all of a sudden,
like coins show up like oh yeah they thought you can get here,
and there are little collectibles and stuff. Just absolutely my most anticipated game for
the rest of the year. Incredible, real quick on the like powers or
whatnot? Is it like a sorry I said, but is this like a
Mario style? You are picking up the power up in the level like a
flower or is a new abuild but you don't lose it like you're supposed to
get you and you're supposed to have it. It's basics just like Astro's play
room, where it's like you get the suit, you get like you walk
into the suit. It's like, all right, now this is the level
where you're doing this. It is not a missable thing. It's not like,
oh I didn't hit that question mark lock Now. I don't like,
you know, three D World, you don't have to get the cat suit,
you don't have to get it. But this one, it's like you're
getting the frog things because you're using that to kill the boss. Okay,
keeping with the galaxy analogy, then I feel like that's when the game like
very clearly wants you to get like the cloud. Uh whatever. Okay,
yeah, absolutely all right, any other final thoughts about it? I mean,
for real, this sounds like hyperbole, but I think it is the
best thing I played this year. In ye yeah, the words that y'all
were using in We're so glowing when you were talking about it in the car
with me, I I put we were at a red light on the way
back from the hotel to the studio, or from from Summer Gamesauts to the
studio. I put the car in park, unlocked the doors, and got
out of the car because I didn't want to hear you talk. It didn't
like, look are they leaving. I honestly don't think I've ever thought or
said on a podcast or off that I think a game is as good as
like a Mario like in terms of platforming. I don't know if I've ever
compared a game to Mario in this way, and like this straight up is
like I think I was saying to one of you or more that if you
put this and like Mario Odyssey side by side and just give it the exact
same skin, you know, it's just like a green character, and like
just the motion and what you're doing and everything, you don't even know it's
Mario. You don't know it's Astrobot. They looked identical. I mean,
I could totally see myself being like, oh, they're both great, but
I think I like this astro game better. Yeah, I think you're right.
Do we mention the developers mentioning that they really liked our reaction to it?
That was that was really nice? Yeahs. Reacting to the trailer was
a what do they say? Like when the studio is having like a down
day. They show this clip of me and you freaking out about it exactly.
I like hearing when teams do that, like when the FF Rebirth team
was like having issues and they would watch Max's reaction because they're like, look
a, how do you think that's what people were saying. I was telling
this story like you're their Maximilian dude. Yeah, yeah, I think I
might be Astro's mac dude. Yes, absolutely, all right, Okay,
so the other thing we did play while we were there was Lego Horizon Adventures,
which I thought was cute and maybe my favorite favorite Horizon game. What
of right now? You saw on your camera me coming up from behind with
a leafblower. I like, that's appropriate. So that's how excited I am
about Lego Horizon Adventures. It's fine. I bet if you had a kid
and you need a co op thing where you can be mildly doing interactive things
and the kids is running around life, and sure. That's the thing for
me is that it's I really like the humor of the Lego games and like
the Lego universe, like the shows they do that like, oh, here's
the Star Wars Lego stuff. They're very good at that, and that all
comes through here where it's like they're retelling the story of the Horizon games in
Lego and then they make jokes about it every thirty seconds, and I'm like,
this is the correct way for me to take down this story. And
then the gameplay is You're right, it's mildly interactive, but it's it's fun.
I suppose the way that they make it look or make it feel like
Horizon is you scan the environment when enemies are around, and that enables you
to see the weak points on the enemies, just like an horizon, and
then you just got to get on the right side of them, and then
you can like shoot your bone arrow or throw your spearit at that right part
of the Lego bricks to break them off, and then they break off like
Lego bricks. It all just makes sense when you say it out loud,
and it's fine when you're playing it. Yeah, and it's simplified in the
way that like, yeah, an actual horizon, you know, there's three
D space and there's a lot more motion and stuff going on like this one.
You said, it's you just gotta get on the right general side of
the thing. And you can break it off and you can like add you
know, fire to your arrows and things like that, Like they are doing
Horizon stuff in this game, but everything is just very boiled down obviously,
so it's very cute, and you know, like sometimes the Lego games are
just so simple for me in the gameplay that you know, I can't this
has a s a sledge. A slige isn't a word A sledge more depth
than that, We're going to go that sledge more depth. Sorry, would
not have audio, so I assumed this would not have audio. There we
announce muted. I'm just wondering Mike sel has a slitter Head on his brain,
which is just the worst game names of all time. No, that
was Jeff's problem. I don't have that issue. He never thinks about Slitterhead.
I can't stop thinking about it. For me, Like, my big
question was, hey, how are they going to have enough content for a
Lego game, because the Lego games are always like, here's nine Star Wars
movies and literally a thousand characters from the Star Wars universe. Isn't that fun?
I'm like, yeah, that's okay. It's it's overwhelming to me,
but I get that that's one of the selling points of these games. Horizon
has two games with some DLC, right, and I guess the climbing game.
But still it's like that's using a lot of the same characters. So
what they're doing here is they're pulling from the other Lego universes. So there's
like Lego City Undercover characters and things like that in this game. So that's
where the hot dog guy comes from in that update. And it's like,
okay, that way, and I think, oh, go ahead, Sean,
Oh just real quick. I think that's where Lego games like should be
personally, because that's how you play a Legos like when your kid or whatever.
You just combine all the stuff that you don't care exactly, so like
you know, they use their like oh ces or whatever, but yeah,
just toss them all in there. Whatever that's your humor. Yep, Yeah,
I think I think the thing that is like so valuable about these games,
as much as we like to dunk on perhaps the horizonness of it,
is that like all these mechanics that y'all were talking about earlier, like the
modification of your weapons and the paying attention to the weak spots if you're nine,
right, Horizon too big of a video game for you? Yes,
right, actually yes, yeah, but like a lego game where it is
it is not spoon feeding is like is too derogatory of a of a term,
I think, But it is like simplifying and pairing down these these mechanics
to their barest bones so that you can master them, so that you can
then take it. Like a kid who was playing this game at nine or
ten years old will be much better equipped moving forward to hop into perhaps Horizon
three when they are thirteen or fourteen. Yeah, yeap, whenever by the
time that game comes out, right, So like it is instructional in that
way, and I think that, like that's it's helpful. Yeah, And
I think that's what I'm realizing now. So like there are there are gonna
be a lot of houses with PlayStations and kids who have seen those games and
had some curiosity about curiosity about them, and this will enable them to engage
with that. And also, yeah, it looks really nice these lego games.
Yeah, it looks pretty Yeah, That's what I was gonna say about
Astro. Like I think that there is like truly such an advantage that you
have when you make the hardware to make the video game. Yep, right,
so I think it's I'm excited about both of them. Actually, all
right, I think maybe we should talk about Monster Hunter next. Oh yes,
yes, I got to see the Uh it was just kind of gameplay
played for me, so, you know, a hands off demo. I
got to see a good chuck of it though, and it is looking good.
That is fair. I mean, it is just kind of like that
next evolution of both World and Wild's right in terms of it, you know,
being like the big open, kind of next gen looking thing. You
still have those nice quality of life features from Wild, including the mounts that
is now more of a lizard and it can kind of float and stuff.
But the big deal here is how much more seamless the camp stuff and the
like mission stuff is. You now just kind of leave the camp and then
you go out you start hunting right away. Even when you finish your hunt.
It's not just like, Okay, now you're gonna be teleported back to
your you know, the camp. Now you can go there when you want
to. You can stay out in the field if you want to just do
another mission or hunt some more monsters or whatever. But you know it just
you know, the monster stuff just looks so impressive still. So like the
last couple of games have had different themings, right, Like Wild was a
bit more Japanese. World was kind of like that, you know, Age
of Exploration, this, you know Age of Discovery stuff, and this this
has maybe a bit more of a Arabian or Mediterranean flare to it, I'm
exactly sure, but you know, lots of sand dunes and oasises and things
like that, so you know they're doing a thing where they're hunting this monster
running across a sand dune, and then all of a sudden, like another
monster pops up from the sand and like wraps around the monster, and then
they start fighting, and then a sandstorm rolls in, and all of a
sudden, you're in the sandstorm and it looks like that scene from Mad Max
Fury Road with lightning coming down and you're dodging the lightning and the lightning's hitting
the monster sometimes and you're still fighting it, and you have like your one
giants or weapon, but if you go on your mount, you can switch
to your other weapon, and now you have kind of two loadouts you have
access to just insanely impressive looking stuff. Like I've been getting more and more
into Monster Hunter each time they release one of these new ones since World,
and like, looking at this, I'm like, this is the one.
I'm like, maybe going to lose a ton of time to it looks very
impressive. Yeah, I think every time I talk to someone about this and
everyone got hands off, I believe I don't know if anyone played the game.
I don't think anyone played it right that there was like some stuff in
the past where like at Judge's Week at Summer Game Test, people like,
yeah, maybe get your hands on it. But I don't think that happened
here. But this is the game that so many people were buzzing about,
and Monster Uner fans and kind of monster even people who aren't like super into
the series alike, we're both like, this just looks fantastic. Yeah,
it's got my eye as like someone who World is the only one I played
a lot of and that did feel kind of approachable. And yeah, I
had my problems with like co Op being difficult to get into, and but
you know, ultimately I was into that one. Do you think that this
could be for me if I skipped the Rise, and I'm not a big
serious fan in general. Yeah, this is definitely in some ways it kind
of is Monster Hunter World two. Really again, it brings in like some
of that stuff from Rise, but yeah, it's just the next one with
all stuff that made that great and a lot of their smart choices. I
don't know how much better that kind of coup experience is going to be for
people who find the kind of current system somewhat abrasive, just the weird shit
where it's like, oh, you have seen this cut scene. I have
not, and like you know, just complicated, like how to even play
it is the thing that I like, and everybody in my group was always
confused, So like, I just want that to be a normal co op
game where people can just jump in and play. Yeah, Monster Hunter is
a weird one because ultimately the multiplayer has always just been basically like MMO raids,
where you don't really do the story of an MMO with your friends,
you do raids after you're done with like the main story quest. That's kind
of what Master Hunter multiplayer is. I would like to see if they just
make it super easy to do a co op campaign with your friends and that
syncs up and everything if they're tying everything into the capcom ID because they have
cross play now and everything. You know, first for a series, I'd
like to think that they would have thought that through a little bit more,
but I guess we'll have to see. I do know that the entries keep
getting more accessible, though, and that's great to see as someone who has
dabbled in the series. Sense three, I put in like a lot of
ours with a four ultimate on the three DS because that's when I was,
you know, sort of at the end of my college year there, and
so that was a great time to play with friends. But I haven't been
hooked by the series since then, you know, for the two entries and
major expansions that have come out. And I think this looks great. I
love how much more interaction there is with the environment in every single game,
and they become so much more cinematic. And that's you can see that even
just by the fact that, as far as we can tell, your player
character is actively involved in the story as like a speaking character and everything.
WHOA so that you know, that's like it. You go from just like
you know, the again the MMO, you know, just like nodding or
like just like grunting along with everything to actually being a part of the story.
And then you have like Mike was matching the turf wars between the Masters,
combined with apparently now more weather effects and everything. I think this looks
great. I'm really excited to see how it turns out. I played Battle
Aces, which is that it's you know, Dave Cam's game, who used
to work on Star StarCraft AFT and you know Dave or David ashks me.
We're on our couch talking about it last couple of years. Eat trailer,
great trailer for like the cinematic stuff, and then I got a chance to
actually get the hands with the gameplay, and I thought they did a good
job sort of capturing the energy of that trailer in the actual combat. A
lot of that comes down to the attack effects having really kind of an anime
look to them. But whatever, when you're playing it, it's it is
what they say. It is a very easy to parse, a real time
strategy game that you could tell is going to have very fast matches. There
is a ten minute timer, so whoever wins at the end of whoever has
the highest score at the end of ten minutes, which you'll get a warning
that at about two minutes about who's in the lead, and then one minute
there'll be even more information. But so it's like it'll never go longer than
ten minutes. But I get the sense that a lot of these times it's
gonna end in five or six minutes because all you gotta do is like beat
the other defeat the other person's sort of mainspire, and it's really excellent and
enabling you to like understand how to move the enemies, get behind enemy lines,
and make sure you have all the information you need to like stay in
the game. And I'm like, oh, I think this is going to
be one that really wins me over. I'm very curious because I've wanted RTS
to kind of come back in the way I remember it, which is it
was just command and conquer. I basically just want more command and conquer,
and like the way I always played that was, you know, very elaborate
base building with like rules where it's like, okay, we get thirty minutes
to build the base before we can start attacking, you know, like agreements
opposite of that, right, And so that's why I'm like, part of
me is like, oh, I want to play this, it looks like
an RTS and then part of it is like, oh, but you know,
I always hated it when people would like Rush online and stuff like that,
so like in like unit management and army management stuff. So like,
I'm curious, but we'll see if it's what I'm looking for. Yeah.
Sure, there's definitely a bunch of these RTS games that are coming out and
trying to hit a different play styles. There's others that are going to have
much more emphasis on the base building still, but this one's all about,
like you have your workers, they sort of are are automated, and they
they just happen whenever you build one of these structures to build like you know,
the air units or something like that, and you have to protect them
still and you have to be mindful of them still, but you're not really
micromanaging that. It is all about coming up with strategies and executing on it.
You know. Ash would keep saying the NBA jam of RTS games,
and I definitely I get that sense when I was playing it. You know,
part of it was okay, you know, I just got to learn
the hot keys about how to control stuff. But once I was getting the
hang of that, and it's very easy to realize the possibilities there. All
right, uh, let's go with uh, let's actually mike Le's go back
you with the Dragon Age. Yeah, that's another one that I just saw
a hands off demo LP. But this was a whole kind of the first
hour of the game. It was one I'm glad I saw because I,
like a lot of people, I did not like that CG trailer was real
weird vibe. It was very you know, kind of jokey and silly.
It was stylized in a weird way that didn't really look like Dragon Age to
me. Then like this at the actual game, Yeah, there's still a
little bit of that irreverent humor, but mostly like, yeah, because Verrek's
talking, he's always been that way, Or is the thing where your character
has three, you know, choices of dialogue and one of them is like
that, but otherwise, you know, the game is taking itself seriously when
it needs to, And it just kind of felt like the tone of Inquisition
for the most part. And it looks very good, like it still was
like colorful in a way that pops, but it didn't kind of have that
smidge of a Fortnight. Look, I want to say that maybe that the
teaser trailer had for me, for whatever reason, very graphically impressive, was
running really well, very high detailed environments, good character animation. So just
in general I thought that the actual gameplay was very impressive. Here it's still
like a little bit of that, I want to say problem, But like
that direction of Dragon Age that as somebody who did prefer when Origin was very
like computer RPG, you know, invisible dice rolls and things like that,
this is like acquisition, you know, basically. Actually, that's what a
lot of people are saying. It look to them, it looks like it
looks like one. Well, it's like when they switched you know, mass
Effect one to mass Effect too, right, and it's suddenly mass Effect was
mostly just a third person shooter with cool down abilities. That's what they did
starting with Dragon H two, and that's been the direction since then. It's
a little weirder now and maybe this post boulders Gate three world where a game
did go back to just being like we're going to be pretty old school actually
and it is going to feel a lot more like a more traditional RPG,
and everybody liked that, and now this game is once again just like you
know, push a tack button, maybe dodge things and then use your cool
downs. Now, there might be more to it, because again this is
very early on, so basically we're running through this whole hour demo and the
guy has one ability, right, so there wasn't necessarily a whole lot definitely
could see. But even still, just from what I remember of Inquisition,
I'm not sure if I'm expecting it to get super intensely interesting on the combat
side, at least for me, but in terms of being this very slick,
story driven dragon Age adventure, and again it is very much the story
everybody wanted, right with souls that character from the last game and what's up
to right and jumping right into that. Yeah, yeah, so we saw
it going on there. Yeah, I as somebody who did not like that
CEG trailer and was a little maybe worried. Not a giant dragon Age fan,
but I would like to play good dragon Age. This is looking very
spiffy. Indeed, Yeah, I'm I'm seeing a lot of reactions. I
think fans are worried, But every preview for the most part, for the
most part, has been like this looked way better than it did in that
revealed trailer. So yeah, the charge should have just been shots from this.
That trailer was just so freaking weird and clearly driven by people with different
goals. I what is it? I don't know we were there any conversations
or did you hear anything about like choices from da I coming over? It's
like for me, I played and beat Inquisition but gotten to my head,
could not tell you a single fucking thing that happened in it. And I,
even when I was playing, I didn't really realize that there was like
a continuity. I didn't because that was my first Dragon Age game. Or
is there any discussion about like what they were. I'm sure the answer is
no, But any conversation about it was in front of me. But I've
seen people online talking about that and somebody somebody has asked about them. There's
some kind of answer there. I don't know exactly what it is. You
know, but in the past Dragon Age games, there has been thinking like
go to a website and say if this character died or not, And usually
all that means is like at some point that character will show up for a
cameo or not. I think largely the experience will be pretty much the same
for you, like you know, and it probably goes back to that last
game again, like guess somebody played Dragon Age origins. I'm like, oh,
it's like, is anybody from that game gonna show up? Yeah,
they'd probably give me like side eye and tell me all right, Uh,
let's see, let's do monkey ball. Yeah that was a lot of fun.
I was watching monkey ball with a live audience cheer and that was fun.
Yeah. That was to watch Dan play monkey ball. Banana Rumble is
that name, And we were cheering him on as he was like trying to
do speed running tactics right there at the demo booth. Yeah we found some
yeah I guess doing skip Yeah you did skips. Yeah, absolutely, you
got set some world records I believe. Uh it looked fun. How did
it feel? Felt great? Uh? Six inches from a screen, it
looks straight up right there. I probably felt woozy. Yeah I was.
I was, And I think it was like a later night the night before,
so it was it was quite a way to play monkey ball. But
no, it's it's just straight up monkey ball. It's everything I always wanted
about monkeyball, you know, like one and two for gamecubeer still my like
Go Tos despite all the like remakes and you know they tried to do that
adventure game and all that stuff and you know the we motion. What's like,
No, this is just classic ass. Monkey Ball has a ton of
multiplayer things that are all online, uh or I think most of them are
online with some of right, like sixteen players, I want to say,
with like a FULLD Mario Kart mode and like these Banana Hunt modes and all
this stuff, and uh, it's I mean it's straight up a monkey ball
game. It's you get a fun store or you can buy stuff. I
think I could probably give my monkey the Jeff Grub Disneyland outfit. You probably
you got your Alan Grant hat and Hawaiian Sure that'd be a good one.
Good And then uh god, what else was? There was a spin dash?
The added like a spin dash right? Yeah, you know Sonic is
in Ye Sons against the Yeah cure you. I believe it's one of the
characters you can put a ball, yeah, like the last one. Yeah.
Uh, spin dash is very much it seems like it changes how things
would work. Is that does that make you worry about complexity or whatever?
Because I got to play this one too a bit. I think I don't
know if there's too many times where you would need to use it. It
almost seems best for almost kind of like those skips, right because it's like,
oh, here's a little ramp here that I can now turn into a
big ramp if he's my dash at the right moment, you know what.
It kind of reminds me of. It's like if you're racing on Rainbow Road
and you have a mushroom. It's like, yeah, it's there, but
it's risky, you know, like there's no edges to this, like you're
gonna fly off. I'm sure for like Speed Run people, they're gonna go
nuts with it, But I'm playing it. I I it doesn't seem like
a thing where it's like some of those games added a jump button or and
things like that that kind of change the base experience. This just seems like
a little addition. But I don't know. I was only able to play,
you know, like one of the worlds. I think it did just
hit me like what is spin dashing in monkey Ball? Like literally what does
that look like? Do you have to be a full stop? And then
you just like it's not. It's not like Sonic style where you like stop
and spin up it just to kind of hold in b and it charges it
and you let go to boost forward, but like you're still moving. It
doesn't inhibit your normal motion. You know. So is this kind of like
I'm trying to picture. Is it sort of like if you're playing like a
pool and like you know, you you hit the ball with the stick,
and it's like you can do that anytime and sort of just like change your
trajectory. You talk about like putting English on it, Like no, and
it's not like a curvature thing. It's not what I'm saying, like like
you're moving like like this way, Like if you like aim the other way
with the spin dash, can you like instantly move in that direction? A
great question if it like totally stops you like some games where it's like like
like Mario Otyssey where you could jump and then you could like jump on the
half didn't get work in the air. I think so, like it's pretty
cool, it's pretty versatile. I think you can also basically use it whenever
you get you know whatever a little bit when it goes out in front of
them, that's them using the spindash. Sorry my go ahead, right,
No, but that's like, you know, that's how it works, right,
It's so it's it's always pointing in the direction that you're already tilting anyways,
right, so I could do things like help you maybe get to a
complete stop faster and even give the first momentum, right, yeah, interesting,
Okay, yeah, it's I mean, it seemed like a nice addition.
It didn't seem like something that changed the experience for me. So yeah,
I'm definitely excited for that when I think it comes out soon, righteah,
pretty yeah, pretty soon, like first or twenty fifth something like that.
Yeah, oh, I hope there's later boards on that. There are
definitely leaderboards boards on Lucky Ball, and uh yeah, I was already thinking,
like, okay, on this level, I'm just gonna play this one
hundred times to try to get in four seconds instead. Yep, this is
coming out on like everything, right, because I had to play the Switch
version, which for like that main mode was fined, but they made play
the multiplayer stuff with sixteen characters on the Switch version, and that was looking
a little rough. Yes, I mean even main mode was kind of chugging
frame, which makes me, wonder, wait, if we're doing leaderboard stuff,
what if people want to play it on here? I kind of want
to play on PC, so I play on deck. Yeah yeah, okay,
I'm trying to only has A listed as switched. Okay, Mike's wrong.
I mean I literally asked, is it yeah? Right question? Yeah?
Yeah? The official Twitter says it releases on Nintendo Switch. Yeah yeah,
dang, all right, Well, I mean, listen, it worked
good enough from what I saw. You saw your planet, but you're right
that there was. I was like, oh, this looks a bit chunky,
and it looks a bit pixelated a little bit, but whatever. We're
also looking at a giant screen from directly playing. Yes, I did have
that thought too, like it's hugging a bit, so hope for the best,
but the very least. It felt good, right, It felt like
a monkey Ball? Yes, yeah, straight up what I want in my
mind? They made one than two than this. Okay, it's hard to
tell sometimes because like Monkeyball freaks because I liked those remakes or whatever they did
like last time a lot, and now people like they've changed the way monkey
Ball feels. I was like, oh, they yes, of course they
did. I notice that for sure, Uh, Mike, let's do some
of the other Sega stuff, Sonic Cross Shadow Generations, the Year of Shadows
here they ran out of shadow shakes. So really it was a terrible summer
game fest. But how is the game? It's good, you know.
Song Generation is definitely one of the better song games from that era. I
maybe don't love it as much as some people, but it's a fun one
to play through. The shadow stuff is pretty you know, uh, it's
interesting, and it is it's it's almost it's a good amount of things.
There's completely new levels, and even though he plays pretty similar to the Sonic
style here with the boost mechanic and whatnot, there's something about it that does
feel a bit more like how the Sonic Adventure games played. There's a it's
a bit less just constant boosting, less of those two D segments that they
throw into the three D Sonic levels all the time. And it's somebody who
like did play Sogo Youre one and two a lot. I kind of prefer
that feel for three D Sonic as opposed to the kind of Sonic Unleashed or
Sonic Colors boost style. So that was fun to see. Still a little
bit of that Sonic jank here, and there still was a boss battle.
Then again, I don't know why these three D Sonic games don't ever have
great boss battles, but you know, it was, it was. It
was fine. No. I specifically asked, was gonna have a gun this
time? So NA not this time? Yeah? Who was? I think
VGC might've got the headline of like, well, why isn't Shall have a
gun and one of the creators is like, show doesn't need a gun anymore.
He is a weapon. Yeah, registered weapon in fifty States. Yeah,
this is neat. This is even more neat than what they do a
Sonic Colors Ultimate, because you know, it is that remaster, but like
this Shadow stuff, you know, it's it's meaty, there's something there.
It is, like, yeah, I don't know how long it'll be,
but it's very distinct. I was gonna ask because it looks like there's a
good amount of content here, Like people are compared something they just didn't really
even talk about until people got their hands on preview stuff and like read the
website and stuff like in Song Generations, there is a two D like level
select quote unquote Overworld Shadows is actually like it's in the same visual style,
but it is like a Sonic Frontiers zone. It's like it looks like this
pretty big thing they can like go around and like go into levels and everything,
and then of course he has all of his own levels and everything.
It does seem like they're adding a lot of content to the game. And
you know, as the other big Sonic fan around here, Generations is easily
my favorite song game of the modern era, So I'm really looking forward to
going back and playing all the old stuff as well as just getting new content
within this game that I already love. That's really awesome. And Mike mentioned
the level design being a little more interesting than Generations has and already see that
specifically, it looks like the level structure of Sonic Heroes, a little bit
more so in that adventure vein, but like basically being linear. But also
there's a path up here if you do something just right, just like I
like that. Yeah, like you see, like, oh there's a platform
up there, how do I get there? Oh there's a ring trail.
Okay, it was a little hit in mind. Get that ring trail and
like get up there and then go down a different path. So it looks,
and they said that it is a lot of the original team working on
this and what like the director of the game is director of Generations back in
the day, So it seems like they are just expanding on this game that
you know, I think this Generations is a song game where we can all
agree, Yeah, that one was pretty good, right, even if you
don't like Sonic, that's the one that people point to. So I think
it's very smart of them to just expand on that one as this like anniversary
edition style thing, just to like help me with this game. So it
is a remake, but the shadow stuff is all new, that's what you're
saying. Yes, yes, okay, so yeah, remaster and then the
shadow stuff is like a new bonus campaign's it's the Bowser's Fury of the Do
you think that's the appropriate of comparison? Okay, Okay, very cool that
that that's pretty neat. I'm glad. And I like what you said about
like being able to find the high part of the level because that is my
favorite stuff to do in Sonic, And again that sort of focuses on that
would be interesting to me at the very least. And I thought I was
watching Iron play. I was watching over his shoulder while Dan was playing monkey
ball. I kept asking, so I'm like, what do you think He's
like, I'm gotta be honest, I'm being entertained. I find it entertaining,
and I think that is the meaty spot for Sonic is the Sonic conversation
on Giant. It's happening. Just be entertaining. If your Sonic just be
entertaining, it's fine. Let's boil it down. This is an AARB question.
Every one of us. Are you pro or anti Sonic. I'm gonna
say pro. No elaboration, you have to say pro or anti. I
am pro Sonic. I guess. I guess I'm anti Sonic. I guess
no, don't say, I don't say. I guess say I am blank,
So I am anti Sonic. Jeff, Mike Manati pro Sonic, Say
I am? I am pro Sonic. Nikki, I am the vegetables that
are sorry. I was trying to record it and I actually Sonics not a
vegetable. Sean, I am pro sonic, Dan soundboard, we have one
anti Sonic and listen. If I could elaborate, I would be like,
nope, nope, that's not part of the deal, all right, move
on, Sonic Meania, all right, metaphort Reefantasia. Let's for the shout
the Sega section. Uh yeah, just another one that me and Jam kept
glancing over at. And I'm like that UX is very good. And then
I couldn't tell anything else that was going on. Mike, you got to
play it? How was it? I got to play maybe forty five minutes
of this at various stages in the game, kind of a beginning section,
a intersection, and something a bit more deeper into the game, like a
boss battle. Oh. I'm like, you know, I love those persona
games, and I was excited for this. It's like, okay, Fantasy
Persona. What I love is like it is that in the best way possible,
is in terms of just being super slick, right, like things like
the transition from the field into a battle and those UI and UX elements,
and like the music just being incredible all the battle song, so guy,
I kind of just sat there and had to listen to that, But also
like does feel like its own thing in interesting ways, like the battlesystem here,
you know, you do have like that, Oh, if you exploit
an enemy weakness, you get like you know, one more turn, but
that way that works is differently. There are like all the all the you
know, your team takes a turn, then the enemies take a turn.
You kind of have points for your turns, but you can use those points
maybe do a team up attack that costs two points instead, and what team
up tacks you have depends on your party. Composition doesn't mean characters because there's
like a job system so and I love job systems. So you could take
this person, they're going to maybe be a mage, and that's going to
give them different abilities. If you have a mage in this other class,
then that's going to give you access again to other abilities. So just the
composition details there seem very exciting. And then the world looks all kinds of
fucked us right, like you know, right, you're in this fancy place
and it's like, oh, look at this. This is a fantasy book
and it's just like a picture of Tokyo or something. Oh, and then
you come across like the first growthesque monster. Somebody's like these things are called
humans. It's like, uh, what's going on here? Ah? So
just it's gonna be fun to see where all that goes. All the characters
already look appealing. There's like a mouse sky with a very deep voice,
and I love him a lot. Like when he has like his like mage
job that he had, he's like think, I know nothing of spells,
do you or something like that. I'm like, oh, excellent delivery,
very much into that. Yeah, this really impressed me. I am I
was excited for this. After playing it, I am very excited for metaphor.
They seem like they're doing an amazing job here. Oh. Like a
really cool detailed detail is when you're running around the field, if you're like
a counter a weak enemy, you kind of have like light attacks you can
do in the field. And in a persona game, it'd be like,
oh, hit somebody of an attack so you get advantage, right, so
you get to attack first in the random batle or whatever. Here, if
an enemy is weak enough, you can just actually kind of hack and slash
them, like it's like a standard action game. And then for the bigger
enemies, if you kind of hack and slash a bar away, that's how
you get advantage. And in the meantime, you still have the dodge attacks
because if they hit you back then they're going to get advantage. So there
is like a little bit of that real time action combat scenario there in between
the turn based battles. It's just, I don't know, it's switches things
up a little bit in a very pleasant way. Okay, I'm I'm interested
in so much of this because I'm really really looking forward to this game as
a big persona guy, and someone who SMT has never really appealed to me.
I'm not mistaken. Yeah, the SMT five embargo lifted earlier this morning,
and I have nothing to say about it, unfortunately, because I still
can't bring to play SMT five. I want to, but between being busy
and then just thinking to myself, it's SMT five it you know, it
never really appealed to me in the first place. I really want to give
it a shot. It's just Lexi said when she was on the couch,
she was like, it's very brutal, and that's always been like a sticking
point is like it's hard to get into those games. This seems like they
very much are playing to the persona crowd with how much more colorful it is
and how character driven too. Yeah, character driven are things structured in a
more similar way when it comes to the combat, because that's something that actually
interests me. Mike, I want you to correct me on this because the
way I tried to explain to my friend who's also into Persona but not SMT
said, it seems like, based on the trailer or the livestream they did
a couple of weeks ago, it seems like you can, yeah, like
wipe out small mobs on the map action RPG style, But then if you
want to engage in like a tougher enemy or a boss fight what have you,
you like switch into the traditional persona style and that's when you do a
tactical style. Yeah, but again it's like even then, you can still
hack and slash them because they have like a bar, and if you hack
and slash the bar to a certain point, then you push the button to
activate the the actual in turn based battle, you have advantage that element there
almost like a stagger gauge on the overworld, where once you hit a certain
point then you can engage in the turn base. It's the poken tournament of
rg's Gotta Gotta Yeah, Or if you don't want to do it, you
can just go up there and push a button and just turn it into the
turn based battle. All right, well I just won't give you like the
they'll give you back right exactly. Yeah, it's like, yeah, like
in Person of three reloaded, all you do is like you steak up and
you just hit them with the sword and that that's advantage. Though it's a
bit more complicated here. I think that's a very very interesting approach. And
he said everything everyone said, I'm just even more excited for this now.
It was very, very very slick. Yeah, it's just somebody who like
maybe at one point is like, oh I kind of wish I just went
strike to PERSONA six instead of doing this. No. I am super sold
on what they are doing with this game. From what I played, I
have a filing. I'm going to love it. Uh, Nikki, I
believe you played hyper Light Breaker. I did. I had a freaking blast
with this. Your big your big hyper Light Drifter, right, that's the
first one your mark for that. Well, so I like the way that
game works. That's where I'm I played ten minutes of it and was like,
I don't think this is to me, but like looking at that game
really like I fell in love with the way it looked. And then when
they announced this game, it was like, Oh, actually, the format
of this kind of seems more enthralling to me. It's a third person character
action ish rogue light a roguelike. And the thing about this game is that
every run, it procedurally generates the chunks of the map and then there are
a handful of different biomes that are all smushed together. You have little sub
objectives. There's there's secrets all over the map. There's these sub objectives.
You have to beat these mini bosses to get keys, and those keys and
lock the door to the bigger bosses. You beat those bigger bosses and that's
how you end the run. There's a bunch of different weapons that are all
randomly generated. Run to run. The way it feels is really good.
The the weapon diversity is really cool. There was a pistol, there were
snipe rivals, there was an assault rifle, esch gun. One thing that
I when I started the demo, it definitely was like, Oh, I
have a gun. How cool. BBB, I'm gonna shoot everybody. And
then I killed the handful of guys that I killed and was like, all
right, it's time for more combat. And then I went to go shoot
and I had no bullets, and I heard the dev that was walking me
through snicker and I was like what, And then I just got lit the
fuck up and he was like, yeah, you're out of bullets. And
I looked up and I was like, oh, I had eight bullets total,
and he was like, yeah, the only way to get more bullets
is to kill people without the bullets, and I was like, ah,
it just so yeah. So it really is like primarily a melee combat with
your your projectile weapon being your kind of last resort depending but it's also like
that was just the way that it shook out for me. That run,
right, It seems like there was a lot of room for variation in the
way that those that that mechanic can work in those conversations that you have with
your weapons can move back and forth. Looked really cool. I think the
procedural generation it reminded me a lot of risk of rain too. Actually,
there's co op, there's there's three person co op, and the all of
your loot is localized to you, so you don't have to fight your friends
or the people that you're playing with for the loot. You get your own
loot that generates on the map. There are multiple systems to carry over certain
items from run to run. You can decide to if you pick something up
and you're like, I actually don't want this or need this, you can
stash it and either pull it forward because it is not advantageous for you on
this run, or you can scrap it and get currency that you could use
between runs, excuse me, between runs. And in the hub world there
are there you have conversations with people, but there are no like traditional cut
scenes, and I think this The preducer I was chatting with mentioned that I
guess this is a thing in hyper Late Drifter, but like all of the
story is ambient, there's no like, there's no cut scenes. So there
are these visual vignettes that don't there's no text. It's just like you you
unlock and decrypt these pictures and then you look at the pictures and then it
has them in order, kind of like a comic or graphic novel. And
sometimes the pictures will be in conversation with other pictures that are also in that
biome, and they're all like character vignettes, and it seems like they will
they the meaning of them will change depending on how how many of them you
unlock. It seems really cool. It's coming into early access late summer is
what they said, so that could be any time between August and September.
But I'm really excited about it. I think we should play it on the
site that co op Mode was watching some of it and I was getting the
same idea. I'm like, yeah, this would be really fun to actually
just straight it on the site. It looked really good. Let's let's do
Path of the Goddess and let's kind of like wrap up the other ones kind
of quickly. Pat knit Sue Gami Path of the Goddess. Who played that
mic? That was you? I played this over at Capcom. This is
that kind of action looking game new IP I believe the debuted last year at
Xbox A showcase. At the time, I was kind of cool on it.
I played it here. I was surprised this is mostly a tower defense
game. It turns out. I don't know if everyone else do that.
I'm just kind of late to the party. But yeah, like you have
this maiden who you kind of have to get from point A to point B,
and then you have these kind of people you can help and you can
kind of upgrade them and tell them where to go. In the meanwhile,
Yeah, like it's like there's like phases of daytime. We were setting up
the phases of nighttime where the monsters start coming down towards the past and you
have like you know, you're there running around too, and you can fight.
And I kind of like the combo system because it's relatively simple. It's
like, you know, push, why do a strong attack X Y.
It's like your aerial X x Y your AoE, so everything is like a
combination of x's and then why is the finisher? But yeah, it really
is just like, yeah, I get this, Get protect the woman while
she dances down the path, gets to the place. There was like a
boss fight specific stage that uh switched up a little bit in terms of like
it almost suddenly felt a little bit more pitmanesque, I guess because because it
was like I was telling my people when to go in and attack the boss
and when to retreat and protect the maiden instead, you know, kind of
things like that. But no, uh, pretty tower defensie in a way
that I even though tour Defense isn't my most favorite John in the world,
I thought that that made this interesting. Again when I first saw this and
it just looked like a relatively generic hack and slash thing. It didn't really
appeal to me. So seeing that depth there was welcome. Uh. Interesting,
Yeah, do you have a question about a Sean before we move on?
I think most people feel the exact opposite of how you do. I
think everyone's upset it to Tower Defense. Actually, a lot of people wanted
it to be onny Musha. And it's not that I've been saying for a
long time now, why is this not just on a Musha Guiden or something?
Oh that's yeah, because it's like it because like Odama with Dante or
something. Honestly, that's watching the gameplay that's Odama. Came to me as
well. Am I just playing as a little guy on the Odama playfield?
What the hell? It's like conquer Renegade about? Yes? Yeah? The
StarCraft Ghosts all right? You guys also played Fatal Fury, City of the
Wolves, Sports Star two games off of MIC. Is that right? Well,
once we figured out how to turn on the simplified controls for Nicko,
it counts listen a dubs a dubbed dub damn right. I looked at that
they presented the move list. It looked like a chi Lee's menu. They
gave it to us and they were like, here's the move list, and
I was looking at it and I was like, I've never fucking seen I
don't even know what to control, Like what the fuck is this? And
Mike so kind, so generous. I can tell Mike was holding back initially
because I was like, I'm gonna press square and triangle and square and triangle,
and I was like, I'm not doing anything like doing the same like
low punch over and over again. And eventually I was like, listen,
I have to call it adult over. We gotta put the ship on the
smart so I can play the game. That's why. Yeah, we did
have a good time. You know, I've played this game's kind of predecessor,
Guru Marco the World Is only recently and enjoyed it a lot. And
it does again, I'm not like the biggest fatal Fury uh knowledge man in
the world knowledge many, but this did feel like that game to me,
which is good because that's a very good feeling. Game feels like a lot
of fun, just you know, the good systems that that they have there,
with the kind of revving up and that thing where you get to choose
like can you do your special moves? Yeah, and you're the first third
of your health, the second third or the third third. That's a fun
decision to make. I still don't love the way the game looks. It's
not some big deal break you're It's like it kind of wants to have this
comic presentation, so it has some cell shading and then like it'll randomly do
those like comic dots as a layer, and it's like kind of non capital
It felt Yeah, that's exactly the word I was gonna use. It felt
noncommittal, It felt confused, like it just didn't. It also felt dated.
Yeah, like this it it looked like an hd PS two game that
S and K is making games on a not huge budget, so okay,
they need to find ways to cover things up. And that's why kof fifteen
looked the way it did with simpler cel shaded art style, and they're carrying
that over into the City of the Wolves and they decide to go with like
a Marvel three art style, which is why Mike doesn't like it, because
he thinks Marvel three is an ugly game, and I quote that's true.
He admitted, but yeah, so that's why this one looks away. It
does. It's easier to do that with like shaders and stuff on a budget
then to do a really really right It is like this is like one of
the great trailers of all said, yes, there you go. Wow,
you're an awful exactly. This is always a hard it's hard pill for me
to just because like there was a time where like Saka made the best looking
fighting games because they were so good at like pixel graphics, and I guess
I get why we can't just go back to that. Before me is like
can't we just go back to that? It's like any company could just go
back to it like it should be. And K people don't want to believe
me on this, but pixel art is like a dying art. Is hard
to find people who can do that for like an entire major game. That's
why you see it more in the indie space with people who are specialized at
it, because you look at something like kof thirteen, they like rodoscoped to
make the pixel art, like that's what they had to do just to get
it looks good. So yeah, I'm really excited though, who Yeah,
you get to play us most of the most of the rosters. Everyone that
was like that was in that demo, okay, Jenny and they weren't in
there yet. No, we had you know, Terry and Rock and the
newer woman with the glasses was that. Yeah, in Rocco or whatever the
guy is, you know again, not the biggest Fatal Fury knowledge Mark Mark.
You know in the Japanese Mega Man series, Doctor Light is known as
Knowledge Man. Yeah, it's gonna be interesting because you know, so we're
getting Fatal Fury characters in Street Fighters six, right, We're gonna get a
Terry yeah, and then my you know, they're gonna look very nice.
Ye oh yeah, God. I think Susie said when the Internet gets r
E engine, my, it's just game over. Which, by the way,
I didn't get a chance to talk about that yet. What a freaking
moment, Like, you know, my guy big Man Finelli mentioned it when
he was on the couch. But this is like a historic moment for fighting
games. Street Fighter is getting its first ever guest characters. It's from Fatal
Fury Slash King of Fighters, which is a big deal because you know,
they've collaborated, they've done all this stuff before. But for a first time,
like mainline numbered street Fighter is getting this, which is just that was
an incredible announcement for me, Like this was a good SGF for me.
I got that, I got b Jenny my girl revealed for City of the
Wolves. This was a great time to be a fighting game fan. I'm
really looking forward to both of those things. I did get to play a
little bit issue first sas. I did get to try out and Bison,
who is the first character season two. Yeah, very fun, very excited.
Season one characters for street Fighter six didn't too much for me. I'm
very excited about the street Fighter six roster, especially a Lena from street Fighter
three finally finally from street Fighter three representation in there. Yeah. Season one
felt like they were all just leading up to a Kuma. Season two is
they're starting off strong with Bison, They're gonna have the two S and K
characters, and they're also having a fan favorite. That's that's a really that
sounds very strong. Yeah. Are they gonna put Mario in st right?
Yes? Oh yeah, I should do that. They should do that,
yeah, or make a new Soul Caliber and put all the Mario guys.
Yeah. I played Yards Rising, which is that Metroid vanea from Way Forward
based on the Yards Revenge Atari game from way back in the way back,
and it had a better showing when I was playing it than it did in
that Nintendo direct. It still looks a little bit like made on a budget
in terms of visuals, but I thought it was It's got solid gameplay,
and I really like the hacking mini game. Is you just playing Yards like
you're just playing the old game, and they add complexity on that late like
as you go through the game. That was pretty interesting. I'm like,
I thought that was clever. What is this for a person who's not eighty
five? Yeah. Howard Scott Warshaw also made Yards for and it's like it's
probably one of the better Atari twenty six hundred games in terms of having a
lot to do, having complexity and depth. But the real reason I remember
it is because on G four every commercial break early on they'd have I'm Howard
Scott Warshaw. I made one with the worst game of all time in ET
and one of the best games all time, Yards Revenge. Howard. It's
not that beloved, but it was cool. It's a good game. So
apparently Way Forward went to Atari and was like, hey, he wants to
help. They're like pictures on a game pick anything, and they picked Yars
and like, hey, we'll make that into a metro vana. It is
you basically are getting these abilities. You could slot them into your little Yards
bug like thing that like is a menu option where it's like you're slotting in
these abilities like a puzzle, and that's determines how many different kinds of abilities
you can have at any one time. And these things to use up your
a sort of currency. So if you're gonna do like the big double jump,
that uses up a little bit of the currency, and then to get
that back you just need to do certain things in combat to make sure you're
like pairying at the right time. So it kind of encourages a little bit
more engagement with the systems than a standard Metroid being yet, but I was
pretty happy with it. Now we've got Marlin is there? So is this
the first Yards game since that Toyota won on Xbox three? That's but yeah,
very close. Yeah, I'm sorry, yes, yeah, Wow,
you're should be really embarrassed. Okay, you're not knowledge man, that's true,
that's true. Claimed to be the knowledge man here Jeff, how did
it like just feel though, because, like as we pointed out, when
it first got revealed, they looked extremely stiff. Yes, it feels good
enough, like it's not Metro Dread, but it's not like it doesn't play
so stiff that it's like, oh this stinks. No, it feels like
a pretty decent way forward game. Like I, you know, I think
people give up. People have a pretty good idea of how those feel,
like Shante. It feels like Shante, which is good. Is fine.
Yeah, last thing I have on the list here, and if anyone else
has anything else they want to shout out a shout out and pop off before
we're doing they can. But Tails of the Shire Nikki was with you.
Yeah, I watched John Warren who was on the couch over at vgb's I
watched it over his shoulder and Bailey also played. It looked really cute,
like I don't really think I have very much to say about it. They
were very That team seemed unbelievably proud of the video game that they had made,
and fining Yes it's a hobbit cozy farming sim animal crossing light right.
They were amped to talk about their game and everyone always is. But they
were really proud of the thing that they had made and excited to show it
off. And I think that, like their love for the source material really
came through in in every bit of the presentation. There's a bunch of foot
options if you're if you care about that and the character creator, they were
very proud of the fact that you can have your own little Hobbit house or
whatever the fuck they're called. I won't be saying that you can have your
little Hobbit house. Mcgrouper now, so he knows the I like holes line,
I like holes line. He knows it. That's good man. But
the thing that they were very proud of and wanted, like really, we're
trying to drive home is that they were like, they had the opportunity and
considered making it grid based when you were putting stuff down like Animal Crossing,
and then they were like, but that's not how any of the houses and
those movies are in this story. Looks that's kind of shit everywhere. So
you can really just like put stuff anywhere, like you just drop anything anywhere
when you're customizing those spaces. And I'm really excited to see what like inevitably
on TikTok right after this game comes out. I think like there's going to
be an explosion of of house tours and sorry, whole Tours, and I
think there will be I think, I'm I'm I'm excited for I'm excited for
this. What does Whole Tours dot Com go to right now? Question?
I leave that one to you. Yeah, nothing, can someone grab that?
Yeah, if we can get Whole tours dot Com, that'd be great.
Jan Uh, we we should wrap up real quick before we do that.
Sean, you were at home. You saw stuff that we might not
have seen. Anything stick out to you that you are wondering about. Oh,
that was a good question, Jeff. I have been like dabbling in
a whole bunch of demos, a variety of different events. I'm trying to
keep track of where everything came from. Uh, Anton Blast got demo is
part of something. Times are like, thank you for knowing our game when
it when it got when it got shown it like a director or whatever.
I'm like, yeah, Anton Blast rules, that's the Warrior where looking game?
Yes? Yeah right, yeah? Did you watch Soka? We may
have all been busy during that, but I actually said it was a bad
show. It was a lot of stuff that was already known, right,
It was basically, yeah, a lot of stuff that was already known,
a lot of people doing weird you be soft talking. I didn't. I
didn't like the vibe of it at all. Yeah, just generally speaking.
Two of the things that did stand out to me that we haven't talked about
it at all yet, and you know they you guys have kind of talked
about them all right, But in the Xbox Show, I thought frag punk
looked really interesting. Oh yeah, yeah, that looks sick as hell.
Yeah, Like I was thinking to myself, Okay, this like one minute
trailer of just the sickest thing you can imagine. That is how you show
off a hero shooter in twenty twenty four, not what everyone else is doing
with like Concorde and everything like that. No, just show me I can
flip the level upside down and turn on big head mode. Okay, see,
yeah, we'll see you next year or whatever. Yeah that was sick,
and yeah the Artistyle is getting everything. That trailer I think looked really
cool. That one gonna be fun. And then Doom. I love Doom,
and that was just an incredible true minor state is the Xbox like Get
Together whatever, didn't have a lot of these games to play obviously dooms alway,
Yeah, they were not playing out and they had like Stalker two was
on the SUF show floor and I didn't play that. We'll be fineing there
later this year. It looked crazy impressive, It looked very pretty Xbox Xbox
had a really good show this. Oh yeah, I think everyone knows that
what I was talking about, but I just felt that worth it was worth
saying again new Mirror's Edge there. It's called Perfect Darkness something, but very
excited. I'm I'm a little down on Perfect Dark just because I think it
looks slightly generic sci fi. I have great news for you. Perfect Dark
is no perfect dark and wacky and wild sci fi. I think they are
setting it up for like the Turn. I think they're setting up with the
Prestige. Yes, exactly. This was just like the initial reveal trailer to
just like make it clear to people who don't know, Hey, this is
our James Bond styles spy game hit manything because's an now is that I think
they were saying up for that, and then at least hopefully there will be
weird aliens in that game. Yeah, and I need forget about that guy
trailer. Honestly, if you had told me that this was like another futuristic
Call of Duty or it was kill Zone or something like that, there were
moments where I was like that, yeah, I could see that, So
that was a little worrying. But yeah, once they got into like the
parkour stuff and some of the art things that they showed, I was like,
Okay, this is looking a little bit better, and I hope they
just keep going down that path with this one something it looked like like the
far sight vision, you know, like looking through doors and stuff like detective
vision. Yeah. I think they just get creative stuff. It'll go a
long way exactly. And Parker, yeah, we really should play Perfect Dark
zero. We should get four people. The multiplayer is actually kind of okay.
Drew Scanlon for an Extra Life a few years ago and it was not
great. You don't have okay, listen, no great? Yeah? Uh,
me and Manati will be all right there. Someone telling me a Golden
id Old demo is that? Okay? That's important. I'm so fucking excited
because I just randomly started playing the last Golden Idol I didn't even know sequel
was coming out, and how there's a new one coming And I looked at
the trailer and it's like seventies Detective Ship and I'm like, oh, I'm
extremely in on this now. I'm very excited. Also, there's a game
in the Steam Next Festival called Pinball Spire, which looks like Betray Vane.
Yet I think we're gonna say, yeah, I got to try that Island
is express what I'm thinking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I played
it for like twenty minutes before bed night or something, and I thought the
pinball physics feel a little weird. It's an interesting are important to pinball typically?
All right, we should wrap this up. We got Black Club happening
in a little bit. We'll take we'll take a little of a break before
we get to that era late coming in. Yes, but thank you all
for talking with me about video games. We will have more coverage from Summer
Game Fest because there's still stuff embargoed. We'll probably just talk about those on
bombcasts going forward. But thank you for watching, thank you for listening to
everybody. Until next time, have a good one, to take care of
yourself, and goodbye.