Mmmm. Hey, it's Tuesday, March the fifteenth, twenty sixteen, and
it is all hands on deck on this GDC edition of the Giant Bomb Cast.
I am bred shoemaker. I'm just gonna go around the horn here.
Jeff Durson is ear. I brought both my hands because the sides of march
put them on, put them on the deck. That's not how the song
goes. But all right, I'll put these hands under the table. Wait
what did you say? What you do with your hands is your business?
That's right, and your business this. You're lucky. Respect my personal space,
please no, Jason ay Striker left hand, check, right hand,
shack, Okay, both hands, yeah, functional, yep, ready to
fight so forth. Yeah, they're they're balled up. You're scandling personal space
at a premium in this room right now? Do you think so? I
actually crammed. We could get one more person in here. There's one more
mic at the table. I don't feel violated just yet getting there though,
Yeah, because Dan Rycherd is here. Hey, I'm cozy in here.
Yeah it's nice. I'm feeling good like the lighting. Yeah, yeah,
it's it's moody. Yeah, for sure. I've always liked this and then
straight out Japan, John Riccardi and Mark McDonald of eight four. We brought
kit cats, Yes you did. Yeah, there's a pile of rappers in
the middle of the table. What what what are you favoring us with today?
I heard wassabi isn't there? So rum raising think is one and uh
one and wasabi is the other. Yeah, I have actual rum in that.
As far as you know, there is a sackey. There are sacke
kit cats more recently, which which we haven't tried, but I haven't actually
how are they? I haven't tried to either of these. I was worried
about the wassabi one because I don't like was sabi. But it, like
Jeff said, it's more like white chocolate. I think I said that,
Oh you said that, Jeff said it. Actually there's a bit that you
can get there. It's a mild one. I got no was sabi tastes.
I got maybe something like a little tickle in the back. You're over
there like drinking energy drinks and like burning all the like skin off your tongue.
I don't have any skin left in my mouth. It's just yeah bone,
So I drink my energy drinks on the way in normally, so you
know what time for it to recover. So I brought one just in case.
I have your coffee. Now. It turns out coffee's pretty good,
no, I mean the coffee is a guy like, serves a purpose.
I wouldn't call it good. I do they the iced coffee, and I
put the half and half in there and the two of the sugars, and
it tastes great. I think it's really good. All right, I don't
do the hot one. You do, right, It's just say it's just
like chocolate. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, chocolate. It's like it's
like a bisabi kit cat tastes just like white chocolate. Yeah. Yeah,
but how was the room raising good? Too? Very good? I like
that. My favorite Japanese kit cat is the strawberry cheesecake. That's pretty good.
That one's really really good. That comes in like a blue mount Fuji
box. Yeah, it's a nice little does that stuff like? Is it
seasonal or because it feels seems like, you know, when when we were
going to Japan a lot, it seems like every time there would be different
flavors of kit cats and kind of come and go. Yeah, and you
would never see the same one twice. Yeah, banana or whatever. They
kind of caught on too, So like you're talking about maybe like ten fifteen
years ago, is sure, Yeah, because two thousand and eight, I
guess actually was the last time we went okay, right, well, so
they something happened that ago. You're overdue. We can talk more about back
in the nine later. But but I mean, yeah, because I used
to go back when I was going for for Ziff and it was you know,
there would be a new flavor or two every once in a while a
year. But they caught on and now it's like a thing where every every
pre prefecture in Japan has their own like special kit Cat flavor, and you
know they turn over pretty pretty quick, but then they come back. Okay,
that makes sense. People twenty flavors that store. Now there's a kit
Cat store one of them somewhere that has like all of the flavors as well
as their own. You know, the people people travel to the other prefectures
to get the get the exclusive stuff and keep paying that. I'm sure somebody,
somebody, some people are just there a Pokemon center. Kit Cat can
I go on the side. What is actually probably has been what is?
What is? What does grninja taste? Like? Nobody wants to know?
Those are in box? Well two of them are, okay, German graninja
taste. The tasting of ebos is gimmick infringement. I can't get into I've
never tasted the sign. Oh my god, you just gave somebody an idea.
Now now edible, edible and ebos. It's all over. So yeah,
the Game Developers Conference isn't town. It is and that's with it.
Yeah, what's what's going on? What do you guys got happening? What
are you what are you expecting on this week? Uh? Lots of VR
stuff for one thing? Vs. The theme right for the season this year.
I feel like, yeah, because we were on almost one year ago
here, you guys had us on then as well, and I remember talking
about like, oh yeah, VR is is going to be the thing,
and I think it was last year, but I think it was more you
know, theoretical still at that point, and I think this year is really
like, Okay, what games are coming out this month? You know what
games are coming out next month? Like two weeks right at this point,
right on the cusp of this hardware coming out, which seals ste still seems
I don't know how it feels to you, guys. It still seems crazy
to me. It doesn't feel like a hardware launch. It feels like it's
happening all at once, like official like launch line ups out there, Like
can you see a list of this stuff? Because I don't even know what
there hasn't been, because I know, like there hasn't been like Lucky's Tail.
I think I've heard, yeah, that's a launch game. Draft will
be a launch game for Oculus, but you know, there's been individual announcements
from third parties and stuff like that. But until I feel like, until
we get the Oculus in here and hook it up and connect to their store,
right because that's how they're going to sell primarily be selling their games,
we won't know. And and some of the yeah, some of the stuff
has been weird to just from like a coverage perspective, because it's kind of
been everywhere. It's hard to show, right, uh, you know,
And and so like us getting the stuff in here, like we're on the
cusps, but finally being able to figure out, like how the fuck do
we put up video video games? I think I think we're gonna start answering
those questions this very week, and I think a lot of it maybe too.
Is it coming pretty hot off the presses in terms of you know,
so both Oculus san Vibe Right launch in the next couple of months, but
they're both first time kind of first time hardware for both of their people,
and so I don't feel like you have the I mean, there's definitely been
anticipation and people were watching when the prices were announced and stuff, but I
feel like there's not the normal like cadence of leading up to a hardware launch
like we're used to, right, well, like here's the launch lineup,
and here's you know, well, it's like there. If you look at
it, it's just like here's the thing you could hook up to a PC.
Like it's it's kind of following in the video card model of launch as
opposed to like exactly when you think about like a console launch, like there
is that cadence of like, hey, they just started taking pre orders months
ago, right, you know, and hey, you're gonna go to game
stop and line up at midnight and do your fucking shit, you know,
Like like that's not happened, and they still even said if like, are
you gonna be able to buy an Oculus in a in a game stop?
Not? Probably not on day one. I mean, I don't know if
they have any retail presence. I think that target and eventually, but they've
they've taken pre orders months, you know. It's like, I don't know
if they're planning a retail launch for this month or if that's just like they
started taking pre orders on their website for kind of the day one or but
even that it's not day one because it's not the point. They were doing
the Apple thing of like you'll get it in May. Yeah, they were
doing like like thirty minutes after pre orders started. It was like, all
right, you're in the third wave now, which it seems like they might
just be kind of supply constrained. Yeah, I haven't seen any signage at
any retailers or anything. Right, so that my whole plan was to buy
it at retail. So it's like eighty dollars shipping or whatever. So right,
wait, so I don't I don't know if it's gonna feel more like
a if this launch is really gonna feel like a launch, if it's gonna
feel more like a like a soft launch and just games will be kind of
coming out, you know, here and there, random weeks and stuff.
Everything's been so speculative on some level, you know, like, yeah,
the way it's priced, like this isn't something that a ton of people are
going to go line up for anyway. I mean, they're obviously there are
a lot of people who want one and have the means to get one because
they're they're super pricy. But this isn't like selling this thing at Target for
eight hundred bucks or whatever it is. That's you imagine that that's not gonna
I feel like, I feel like once the PlayStation VR comes out, it's
going to be the first time we see like a mass consumer like marsh to
buy it on day ones where Yeah, because console gamers are kind of used
to that sort of thing, and they know how to like market a launch
like that they do that consoles. For that one, I think will feel
more like a proper or regular like console hardware lead up. And so that
announcement is today too, that that press conference is happening, is that this
is a hot scoop. It's today, Okay, if I had to put
money on, will there be when this day announcement when this podcast goes out,
I think, okay, yeah, if they didn't announce it today,
like when would they you know, like it's kind of coming down to it.
Well, yeah, they have a big they have a big press conference
anyway, So I think that, yeah, that's what people are assuming.
They said, like we will have lots of information or some strown Layden said
some something that people are like speculating about. But crash Bandicoot VR obviously that's
probably probably what it is. Buddy's Chair, Yeah, but that man,
where's my jumping flash? Yes? That would be old. You want an
old PlayStation game? Ready? May it's for VR. That's I think that's
one of those games that everyone's like, yeah, that would be perfect in
VR, and then if you actually did in VR and be like, what
the hell is going on? I have no idea where where I am over
your new headset. But so I think, yeah, I think VR is
going to be much more like, uh, less theoretical than it was last
year and more like, so are you coming out on pr is You're you
know on VR? Uh is your little studio doing only VR games? There's
like a lot of little It's very much like a buzzword right now, and
so I think you're seeing a lot of like especially around here, like Silicon
Valley investment and stuff like that in VR because it's the hot word. There's
a lot of money going around. Like it seems like if you're a small
studio that can say yes, we're doing VR, like it's possible for you
to just get funding right right, or or you're doing like some kind of
new hardware like hands you know, glove motion tech or whatever. Because everybody
still doesn't know exactly what form control is going to take. Perhaps a bodysuit
made out of vibrator type vibrating on things. You know, where would you
get that idea from? Ideal Worth Explorer? Does that suit here? It's
not only that suit is on the fifty third floor of the Mori Tower right
now. There's a special exhibit going on right now. It goes on this
month. Yeah, it ends this month in Tokyo. But it's like this
uh, this new media like art exhibit and yeah, it only happens at
night and you can see like the city in the background. It's pretty cool.
They have a giant screen up top where you see it and then you
can like people can make appointments to play res Infinite the demo that we had
at did you guys try it at at PSX with at this point, it's
fine, it's it's for Breeze regularly. It's still one of the time I
assume it is. Yeah, yeah, I think they're making a second and
third one because the school that worked on it wants to have one for themselves.
And like, I don't know if you guys uh saw it, but
the amps for it are huge, and they figured out a way to make
them smaller, and so they're like, yeah, they're still like tinkering with
it, but but hopefully that suit will reappear at some point between now and
when res Infinite comes out, hopefully with some other ship to go along with
it. So yeah, yeah, so no suit here. We we really
wanted to have it here. We were hoping to have it here, but
yeah, only one still. Now that's precious. So yeah, it's too
dangerous it is. You have to bring like a crew of three people along
with it too, so it's kind of difficult too. It's like, oh,
it'd be hilarious to have that at the party, and then it's like
it'd cost ten thousand dollars. Tom, Okay, maybe not that hilarious to
have drunk people jump in a swimming pool with it, or right, yeah,
for sure, ye's three. I'll save that for you three. Yea.
All right, Well, GDC will happen this week. We'll all have
a bunch of meetings. That's right. Little sleep we'll be had, but
it'll be a good time. But in the meantime, what have you guys
been playing? What have we been playing? So by what have you been
playing? I mean, let's talk about Clash Royal? Okay, there you
going? Oh no, John, tell me how much money you put into
Clash Royale? Actually only like twenty bucks. I basically I'm gonna check a
lot last value. Last I checked, you were number one on my friends
leader board. Oh really, yeah, you mean your friends. But right,
we're we're we're basically you're in the you you guys have your own clan?
Yes, yeah, okay, we I'm in the Neogath clan. Oh
you're number two now, sorry to tell you I lost a bunch this week.
Yeah, it's it's it's game. It goes in streaks. You go
in to wind Streak and you're feeling really great and then you lose like five
in a row and you never want to play again. And that's kind of
how it is. But I only spent twenty bucks, okay, and I'm
trying to respect you put more money. I wanted to put that in because
I feel like, at some point, when you play a game this much,
you got to give the developer some love. And but I'm not going
down the Monster Strike rabbit hole. I went where I spent way too much
money. It's more than love at some point. That's that's a problem.
Yeah, it's healthy, are you? How about yourself? Bred? I'm
playing a bunch yes, way too much. I haven't spent any money yet
because it's that crappy psychological thing of while I'm buying a finite resource and it's
going to run out at some point then I would have to buy more of
it. So I'm just not going to do it. Have you have you
spent? Like, have you like gone through all the currency that you got
out of that twenty bucks? Like are you ready to? I did,
yeah, And in fact, I didn't even really do use it for much.
Like it's one of those games where I feel like you don't really you
can't really pay to win. I mean, I guess if you paid a
lot, you could just get ahead of everyone a lot faster, but you
still have to rely on what are you buying your mind strategy currency gems or
whatever they call them in the US version, basically like, yeah, the
currency, and then you use those either to like trade for in game money
or to just like open up chests or do yeah. So basically chests drop
after every match, and they have timers on them which range from like three
to twelve hours, or you can spend the gems on the spot and just
open them right there. So if you bought a zillion gems, then you
could be opening chests after every single match you play. So how bad are
you? Like setting an alarm to wake up in the middle and I had
to open your chests and go back to sleep. I've been doing almost exactly
that. You have pretty brilliant about that, though, I mean, they
kind of have it set up where so you can only get four chests at
most at a time, which some people are pretty unhappy about, but like
it's it's kind of key to the keeping the game sort of flowing and balanced,
and but they generally will set it up where you get gold. Chests
are higher that take eight hours and more to unlock, and so you just
wait for mid for nighttime for those and you set them up before you go
to bed. Yeah, so I basically opened the three hour chests throughout the
day exactly in the start an eight or twelve when I go to bed.
Yeah, games stupid. There really actual game play in that game. It's
a it's a head to head tower defense game. Okay, like it's it's
just spawn units at the other guy faster than they do. There's a lot
of strategy involved. It's actually are really asymmetrical. No, it's the exact
thing like you have. There're three towers. You have like a main tower
and then two kind of guards towers. It's happen. It's happening live you
making your findings. Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah you were it is
It is real time. Okay, yeah, it's real. It's super fun.
It is really really fun and there's like a lot of strategy involved,
surprisingly deep for something that that just seems like, Okay, I just spawned
my troops as fast as they I only played it a little bit, and
like the beta, because there's you know, there's like it's there's like single
target versus AoE attackers. There's air versus grounds. You know, there's like
all kinds of kind of rock paper scissors like ballace stuff going on. Yeah.
I find the more you play, the more you're you're like any good
strategy game, I guess your your your own personal approach to how you play
kind of evolves and you learn new ways to deal with with people. And
it's a card game, right, So you have your deck, but you
you have like I have like thirty something cards, but I really only use
the same eight over and over and like, but you really could like as
you learn to play the game, Okay, I'm gonna take this card out
and go for this one instead, because I notice it's you know, my
my my my deck, you know, my my weak point or whatever is
that people keep nailing me with, you know, X attack, and so
I'm going to bring in this card to try to counter it. And you
kind of basically like learn to play that way, and you're growing your cards
and everything, and it becomes like really really addictive, and it's like the
classic strategy games where it's like it's super super simple to get into, but
just you feel like the layers of death just keep going and going. It
makes you want to keep playing a ton of ambitious ideas. And it too
for a mobile I mean maybe other mobile games have done this, but it's
got like Doda style like spectating features. You can watch tournaments, like yeah,
they hold tournaments that give out like huge prizes and gems and stuff like
that for like the leagues like reset every like a couple of weeks or something.
Yeah, it seems like more and more of those types of features.
Well not just that, but like also like you're starting to see people integrate
APIs that let people like stream their mobile games, right Yeah, Google is
pushing that pretty hard right now, and and I hope I know it's a
little harder on iPhone because Apple's kind of restrictive about what you can do,
but I mean they really need to open it up so that people can just
like stream their games, because it's that's where the future is going with that
stuff. I mean I kind of like and it people call it a tower
defense game, but I kind of think you can kind of call it a
tower offense game in a way too, because it's not just the defending part.
You're actually going on the attack as well. It's a little bit more
you know competitive. Yeah, that just sounds like a card based mobile to
me, except I guess hearing a hero. So you don't control the units.
You spawn them and then they just do what they do. So the
cards are all REUSA. Well you're not like one time use, Okay,
so once you get one, you're good. Yeah, you basically build a
deck and those are the units you have to bring into the match. It's
super fun. It's just the payment models, that's Yeah. I think the
big turn off should give it a shot, though I might, I might
like a look. I think it's reaching and it's reaching out to more of
an audience than most because I've always you know, got you know, I
play mobile games, but like most of my friends don't and hate them.
But like I feel like a lot of people who were also in that I
hate mobile games group are playing this game too, So it's definitely kind of
reaching out beyond the typical I mean, like you said, it's got like
like actual video gaming depths to it, you know, like it's not I
think live multiplayer is one of those things that's like it's a lot easier for
people that play traditional games to wrap their minds around, like Okay, I
go fight this person. Also it is instead of fighting their AI or or
whatever. It's fucking crazy to me how well it works. Like I play
it on the bus every day, and like I've never had a match drop.
Like it feels there's no lag whatsoever. Like it's three minutes, three
minutes with one minute of death, yeah, one one minute of over time.
It's you. Yeah, I get a lot of yeah mobile time on
on like bart, but I've only got like a seven minute rides. So
do you get reception down there? Uh? It depends on the game.
Actually, yeah, where's some games yeah that will get reception through there,
Like I can go through four G but others just like failed to connect every
time. But so let's hit or mess. It's a it's a beautiful,
wretched, wonderful, awful game that is incredibly rage inducing feeling. They've got
those emotes in there. There's like four emotes. There's like a this little
king dude. Like one of them is like laughing and doing a thumbs up,
one of them is super mad, one of them is crying. I
have almost thrown my phone across the room a couple of times. That's the
way that people use those emotes after certain matches. I start every match by
just saying good luck, and I find like some people respond to it positively
and other people just get kind of piste off because they feel like you can
read I need many different ways. Yes, they're very open to interpretations.
Again, this is just sounding more and more like a mobile. Yeah,
it's totally. Yeah, it totally is. I always like the Hearthstone emotes
like that. That community always seemed pretty positive, like if you did a
good move or something, they would actually be like, oh, good work
or whatever. They're they're totally friendly people playing this game. But there are
some real assholes out there, I'm sure. And it's always like the ones
who have clearly put a bunch of money into their techs seem to be the
ones that just like, you know, some investment bank or somewhere right,
you know, I'm just some guy that dropped five figures on this fucking thing.
Yeah, exactly is the matchmaking? Do you feel like you're paired up
against? It's all who list, But so it's all based on you earned
trophies. Every time you win, you earn like roughly thirty and then you'll
lose like fifteen or twenty every time you lose, So you're going up and
down a ladder every time you win and lose, and inevitably you're gonna win
enough that you will bump into the ceiling where like somebody's a higher level than
you, or they just have cards you don't have, or something like that,
and then you've unceremoniously get busted back down. Yeah, but generally they
will not pair you with someone whose trophy count is more than twenty or thirty
away from you or so it's pretty good. There's just enough people playing that
game that they have a nice I get every game and said they they've got
like one hundred million players already or something with it. Its fucking crazy.
I mean, I guess they probably like are pivoting off of like they probably
marketed it inside of like Clash of Plans. I've never I've never played Classic
Clans, but I guess this this supposedly has like a lot of characters and
like they do market it inside Clash of really would as a Clash of Clans
player, you can would say, what did I go into that? I'm
sure? Okay, have you been playing Clash of Clans uh suddenly and then
proceed. Since being in Chicago backstage at Monday night, raw, I spent
most of my time. I flew at Chicago to shave Patrick Kleppis got New
Day, I saw the video yeah, and spent a lot of time with
the Cody Rhodes backstage. He's one of the wrestlers and he asked me.
He's a big gamer and asked me do you play Clash of Clans? He
has like the try Force on his boots, you know, he's yeah,
he's a huge Eelda fan. Yeah, awesome. We talked about Remember he
said he loved or hated Twilight Princess, but we talked about it for a
bit. But he asked me about Clash of Clans and I was like,
no, I don't really play a lot of like free to play mobile stuff.
And he's like, well, we've got this clan that you know,
we take it real seriously here and a ton of the wrestlers are in it.
And he's like, yeah, well we'll send you an invite, you
know, if you want to be in it. Are you how to talk
about this? I cleared this with Cody Rhodes this morning, so yes,
and it is public. They've raised a bunch of money for like Stephen Amel
isn't the clan the Arrow guy? Yeah, and so yes it is public.
So guys that are in it publicly there are Russev Cody, Rhodes Cesarro
whose Czaro writes these giant documents about how to handle war and everything, like
he's the top ranks, right, Yeah, he's ridiculously good. Let's see
aj Styles, Xavier Woods, Biggie Tyler, Breeze, Baron Corbyn, ty
Dillinger, the ascension to tons of people, some referees, some significant others.
I just changed my WrestleMania flight to go to a Nikki Clan party uh
in Dallas, So I will be meeting with these guys and discussing strats.
Yeah, well it's it's way deeper than I realized. Like I kind of
expected it was going to be this, like the only game like that I've
played, like Free to Play Building whatever is like Simpson's tapped out, and
I was like, this is bullshit. All I'm doing is waiting and building
a thing and waiting more. Yeah, until I got into this and these
guys, the Nikki Klan do these wars like every damn day. Like Cody
warned me that they wore a lot, and I had no idea how much
like Preparation Day and Battle Day, and you know, we've got this whole
chat that everyone's you know, requesting units and all this stuff, and I
do my battles, and I assume it's just like, oh, build as
many strong dudes as I can and tap around and hope to destroy their defenses
or whatever. But it's totally not this like poor Man's RTS that I kind
of assumed it would be. Yeah, it's this weird thing of like,
well, you gotta draw these units out with these and then once you've drawn
them to the edge of the map, you circle archers around them, and
all this stuff that you wouldn't know in any way by just playing the game
necessarily. So I've got all these guys texting me constantly like no, you
gotta do this and this, and then you know, don't be afraid to
ask for balloons, and like there's a valkyrie you need to do this,
and there's all this weird I'm never afraid to ask for balloons. So yes,
I'm learning. I feel terrible because you know, every war we've done
so far like the guy you can watch everyone's replays and so like this morning,
Cody was watching my replays and texting me like, Okay, I can
tell within five seconds you're doing this wrong. You gotta do this, gotta
do this. And so I'm learning through this stuff. But you know a
lot of people have told me like, oh, don't worry, like everyone
sucks at first. So I'm learning. I just don't want to let the
Nikki clan down because this is a very serious thing. Yeah, yeah,
so how many people can be in a clan? Fifty? Oh wow?
And despite that, you got into this like super league. Yes, yeah,
for now, I know. I know I if I don't perform,
if I don't learn, I am afraid I could get kicked out. He's
a legitimate manager at this point. He is in the biz. Now,
I've worked a few shows. Yeah, I don't want to say in the
biz okay, because that actually that's something I could say. Well, I'm
not you, I could say whatever. I can say, whatever the fun
I want. I'm no weathered wrestling better or gone a few shows, but
like you haven't paid your dues yet. By no means no. These are
actual wrestlers that okay, everyding, Okay, I'm just a fan that stuff
they do. There's a little secret handshakes and stuff, and uh yeah,
it's it's pretty great standing on what's that who's the head of that clan?
Like? Who could kick you? Since it seems like Cody, Cizarrow and
maybe Tyler Breeze are three of the most active ones. Russev, it's pretty
big on it. It was so surreal standing on the raw ramp, like
on the stage like where the pyro drops and everything, standing there talking about
this with russevn Cody Rohods and this is and then then this this party thing
should be pretty amazing in Dallas. So pretty great. Yeah, it's it's
real, real interesting. It's a very surreal weird thing. But I don't
want to let him down. Now you're on the road, right, you
gotta have something to wait to Chicago. No, I mean I mean those
guys, I mean the road all the time. You gotta find something to
do between from city to city, right, Yeah, they're just like us.
Oh, I forgot to say fit Finley. I talked to fit Finley
Clash of Plans. Of course, he's also in the Nikki clan awesome.
So, yes, I'm in a video game plan with fit Finley. I
don't know who that is, but that sounds he's awesome. He's a badass,
all right, good to know. So yeah, that's been a weird
thing. So it's just been that. And uh, in the last week,
I played forty hours of Stardo Valley. Yes, because you guys a
man yet, and I want to hear about it because you guys playing it.
It's so good and through our office right now. Basically I remember intern
Sarah turned people onto it, and I know JJ's playing it now and Roy's
playing it, but I haven't gotten it yet. Yeah, you were not
a Harvest Moon guy. I had never played Harvest Moon, any Harvest Moon
because like back in the day, back like sixteen but air and everything,
I just didn't give JRPG as a chance ever, right, And so I
just saw the box and I was like, that looks like a JRPG.
I'm not gonna play it. Yeah, yeah, we're now. It's like
I realized, like, oh man, I was missing out all these years.
But I'm also kind of glad this is my first experience because even like
Harvest Moon fans have been telling me like this is everything that game had and
a million times more. So totally yeah, and uh it's incredible, Like
it's got it tooks in me the way Animal Crossing always got it hooks in
me. But it also the dangerous thing is that it's not limited by the
days. So I Animal Crossing, you'd sit down for thirty or forty minutes,
and you know, you'd get to your bugs and your your fruits and
talked to everyone and do some bullshit, and then there's only so much you
can do in a day, whereas Start Valley. I mean, I can't
tell you how many times I've sat down for six or seven hours to play
it when I want them to just play like one endgame day. Wow.
Wow. So it's gotten all that stuff that I loved about Animal Crossing,
you know, the neighbors, you know, kind of the quirky humor and
everything, collecting things from a museum, buying house upgrades. But it's also
got more direction as far as you know, you're trying to get married,
you're trying to restore this community center, You're there's a lot more going on
in that game. There's there's combat, trying to keep the Evil Corporation from
coming in. I was gonna say, community center, you're trying to get
the kids off the street. Well, it's basically you know that. I
feel like the word is going to culminate in like a breakdancing competition to save
the Team Center run the Evil Corporation because the Joja Martin moved in and it's
really convenient and the prices are much more affordable. But uh, you know,
the Community Center is getting kind of run down. I don't know why
that was competing because it's not a store, but anyway, they want well,
Joe Demart wants to purchase the Community Center and turn it into the Jojo
Warehouse. And if you pay for a membership at the Joe Ja mart they
demolish the Community Center and they build the warehouse. So by trying to restore
it, you're basically making it so like they can't you know, uh turn
them to wars. So that's a real fun thing. Yeah, there's combat,
Like I just finished, there's one hundred and twenty floors of these mines,
and then there's a whole other thing. If you can restore the bus
to go to the Calico Desert and what is the combat like? Forgive my
ignorance. I know, I've seen like a couple of screenshots of this game,
but nothing else. Like I just imagine you were planting crops, and
I mean that's what you do in the morning stuff. But as you go
further and you get sprinklers and seed makers and all the stuff, you can
automate a certain amount of the process. Combat is pretty basic. I mean,
you have a sword or a club or a dagger, and you know
it's got different speed and and everything, and but it's real time. It's
not like Turn Base. They're walking around kind of okay, yeah, I
kind of like top down link to the past, you know, you know,
slimes and stuff, breaking rocks, trying to get ore and stuff.
As you go down one hundred and twenty levels of these mines, sposs fights
and stuff like that. Not really, No, every five floors you unlock
an elevator, so you can access any floor and like, well there's only
you'll get cold mostly between floors one hundred and one, one hundred and three,
or gold is mostly over level eighty or whatever. So depending on what
you need, you can take the elevator to whatever floor you want. But
it's it's pretty simple. I haven't died ever. I heard the death penalty
is is pretty rough, Like you lose a lot of the items you have
on you, including watering cans and axes and pick axes. That costs a
lot to depth grade. So I've been playing it really safe down there.
You almost ate it on the show on Friday. Yeah, yeah, I
remember that. But yeah, I'm I'm forty hours, forty plus hours in.
I'm starting my second year now, and it's just it keeps getting its
hooks and more. I heard more people move in. A bunch of stuff
happens in the year two I got. I went to my grandpa's shrine because
my grandpa died, and I got a note saying like, hey, if
you're dead, Grandpa, come visit me on the first day of your third
year. So I can't wait for the third year to visit the ghost of
my grandpa or something. See you in another eighty hours, I guess.
Yeah, it's it's such a weird game. Like you know, I've been
courting this Abigail girl and giving her a bunch of fruits and stuffs, and
what happened to more penny? You don't have the penny? Oh boy,
I like Penny's a nice girl, but a friend's a friend. We're friend.
I want to be friends with everyone in town. Abigail invited me into
her room at shot to play co Op March of the Prairie King or something,
and so we played a co Op twin stick shooter together on her like,
you know, it looks like an S and e s in her room
and I was like, man, this girl seems pretty cool. And she
eats rocks. Yeah, you'll hand her stuff and like you'll hand her flowers
or rocks, and she'd be like, thanks, this is delicious. Yep.
A girl's a quirky girl, a little the old March of the Prairie
King and chill. Yeah, yeah, okay, So she's great. I'm
kind of going after Abigail here. So I'm at five hearts with Penny.
I'm at three or four with Abigail. I'm trying to get Marnie to like
me because the mayor is sleeping with her and he wants me to retrieve his
shorts from her bedroom and I can't go into her bedroom unless I'm good friends
with Marnie. But my gimmick now is I got a horse. And so
in the morning, I make I have a bunch of chickens, and so
I fry a bunch of eggs, and I ride into the town on my
horse and give everyone Fridays. So that's my I think dream. Yeah,
I'd be the fucking best man. I wish that I could just like just
on my street, just someone or horseback. Breakfast is served. Yeah,
seven o'clock every morning. I can buy it with like eight Fridays. Seven
is way too early. Really, I wake up. I don't want to
eat like within five minutes of waking up. That's okay, all right,
maybe I'll fix that. I'd let you in my bedroom after that. Thanks
Jason. Yeah, no one liked my pancakes, so I stick with Frida
eggs. But Marnie hates eggs. So I gotta figure out a way to
get those shorts back for the mayor. It's a tough road to ho I
guess it's the best if you if you're trying that egg King of Star New
Valley, Yeah, if you checked on any of the mod Like, it
feels like mods are just coming like fast and furious for this thing. Somebody's
adding a tax system to the game where you have to like pay taxes on
your crops and stuff. Sounds great, there's awesome. Fine, there's like
a there's a bunch of Animal Crossing inspired stuff that people are adding. I
saw, Yeah, people did like a Pokemon mod. Yeah, they did
stuff to get rid of the fishing mini game, or like to make it
harder, depending on Yeah. I like it the way it is, you
know, honestly, I like the whole game the way it is so like
I have not dope into that stuff at all. So it's like there's like
just so much crammed in there that Yeah, and it's made by one It's
insane. It's made by one guy. It's one guy. Yeah, it's
fifteen dollars. It's there's so much game in there. It's so impressive in
so many ways. That's yeah, that thing is really taken off like a
rocket. They're pushing. They're pushing like half a million copies. Now,
is there an end goal to the game? Like, do you? Is
there like a final boss or something? For me? I want to get
married and I want to restore the community center and then I want to find
out what's like Yeah, yeah, and if you beat the arcade games,
they send you an arcade cabinet or might be the console version of the game
to your house. So I'm trying to beat h Juno, Super Juno Moocart
and a ballot of the actual mini games that you can play. Yeah,
in the game, Yeah, it's if you go into the saloon, you
can play the arcade. Well, you can only play a super junomocart if
you get the skull key from the caverns and then you can go in there
and you can play progress mode of Super Junomocart. So you did get that
skull key. Yeah, okay, I have that now, all right?
Speaking of console version of the game, does it seem like the sort of
thing that would be pretty easy move over to the dyes Rovita. It'd be
awesome, it'd be great. It has seen playing sport, but it's a
little hacked in right now, like its kind of last Yeah, it sounds
like he's still working on that aspect. I mean it works. I mean
I play pretty much exclusively with the controller, except for like sometimes you have
to shift right click and I'll switch to my mouth for that. But man,
I can't say enough about that game. It's, without a doubt,
my favorite game of the year. It's one of my favorite games in a
long time. Like it's it's really something else awesome and it's so like not
in my wheelhouse. Like I started checking it out for a quick look,
and it didn't take long to be like, oh, this is really going
to be a thing for a while. So yeah tonight, so seasonal,
seasonal, start your valley updates for the re I feel like it came out
of nowhere. Yeah, like I love it. Just yeah, just just
it came out. You started hearing like just a little bit, Like more
and more people started like falling to it in a weird way. It was
just like, oh, you playing it yet, Like no, and the
people that are playing, like Mary Kish is playing it, and like every
day it sece updates. So I guess she's this recluse, you know,
crazy farmer that's like super rich, but everyone in town hates her, like
right, So I'm trying to get everyone to like me. I was being
a dick at first to a couple of people, but they've shown their human
side and I'm giving them cakes and stuff. Now. I want to play
it real bad, but I've got other stuff that I need to play.
I'm afraid of know what that game will do to me. Yeah, that's
this weekend. I wanted to play a bunch of Hitman and The Division,
and like you know, I loaded both of them up very briefly, and
it's like, no, I'm just I just need to play more Started Valley.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's great. And the amount of music coming
from my living right now because my girlfriend's playing on her laptop and I'm playing
on the big screen right there, and we're both just tending to our farms
for hours and hours at a time. It's it's so good, sounds terrifying.
It's the best no multiplayer right, Uh No. He has said in
an interview that he's open to the idea of putting in like co op and
stuff like that, but nothing necessarily interesting someone else's town. Thing would be
yea crossing, yeah, because there's so much customization for how you like lay
things out. So like I've got two huge rows of kegs that you know,
for the winter you can't grow crops, they won't grow, So I
make a shitload of hops in the summer, and then I'm just making ship
tons of pale ale in the winter, which makes me tons and tons of
money. I've got a bunch of mayonnaise machines and cheese presses, and I've
got a Trufle I've got a Trufle oil machine. I've got chickens. I
just got my horse. I sound exhausted. Yeah, it's so good.
I just thought I would get burnt out at some point. I did a
full year and I was like, Okay, I've kind of seen all the
festivals and you know, all the different crops that grow and what each season
brings. But nope, I'm diving right back and I'll easily do another one.
Wow. Wow, that sounds crazy. Yeah, Clyde, you're enjoying
it. Oh, it's the best. Yeah. Speaking of the Division,
yeah, we are, we are. We are now one week out yep
from the launch with that game and also from us getting access to it.
Right. Yeah, it sounds like you guys have been the at least mark
you've been. I have been putting, putting some hours in and we need
to can like convene some kind of like Destiny counsel. I will say like
that. I do see a lot of stuff in the Division through the frame
of Destiny, like they're they are similar games in a lot of ways,
and I notice a lot of things that I in retrospect, like I didn't
really notice we're good about destiny that the Division does wrong. And then it
also like vice versa, like I think I'm glad now Division exists because I
think it's uh, they will push each other towards to get better in a
lot of ways from now. Yeah, it's a it's a weird man that
game. So I'm at the level cap. I beat all the story missions
and basically unlocked the ability when you hit the when you hit level thirty,
it unlocks dailies at that point. Oh, you can't do that at all
until they didn't get a wi okay, because I saw people talking about dailies
and I'm like, am I just missing it in this like mess of yeah
you just yeah them? It is kind of it is kind of a dense.
It is a Ubisoft ass map in that game. It is very watchdoggy
like giant map of bells and whistles and lights and colors. And also like
most of those side missions are almost identical. Like they said, like,
well let's just make one rescue mission per district. It's like, okay,
well one of them is not fun, so putting nine of them in the
game doesn't seem like a great idea either, and so like the side content
I think is like repetitive and drab in a way that like you kind of
think when you think of you'd be soft open world games, like this is
the sort of stuff you think of. In some ways, it's like the
most distilled version of that yet, but they've bolted on this, you know,
four player multiplayer and this other stuff to it, like it like it's
I started playing The Division thinking a lot about Destiny, and as I kind
of got deeper into it, I started just pulling back a little bit more
and realizing, like, no, those games are just both in a lot
of ways, just Diablo or actually Helligate London, Like at some point they
just and I started thinking this morning, like I wonder if people that worked
on Helligate London are just pissed because I had the idea to make a Diablo
first person shooter years ago, but it was kind of ahead of its time
and broken in a lot of ways that you know, just people hadn't figured
out the right way to solve some of those network problems and stuff. The
Division is not a great game, but I really I really like it,
and I'm super conflicted about it right now. Like I started trying to write
the review on Sunday, and like I'm just like kept erasing it and starting
over. Like no, no, it's not like finding the right way to
convey that. Like this is a game with like like real issues in terms
of like the amount of content and the repetitive nature of that content, and
like the way the crafting UI is and there's just like all this stuff you
can stack up, and it's like there's a bunch of stuff in this game
that like is actually kind of bad or at least like missteps that like you
look at and go like, this is there's a better way to do what
they've what they were going for here, yep. But at the same time,
I actually really enjoy a lot of what it's doing the same same exact
thing. Like a lot of times when I get together I'm playing online with
my friends, will just be like why did they do this this way?
Why didn't they do that that way? And but but at the same time
we're playing it, like in World, it's really enjoying it. It's a
bad story, like there's barely what what story is there is actually is kind
of terrible and but at the same time, it's like, you know,
and it's all this like side content that has a little bits of dialogue and
little things that are just like a one hundred different ways to say, Man,
New Yorkshire is fucked up, right, and that's it. That's the
only thing it really has to say until like the very end of the game.
It tries to do a little bit of something and by that time you're
like, dude, it's too late. Uh, But that game is a
podcast game. That game is is like a I'm watching TV on one monitor.
Like if you're paying close attention to the division, you're playing it wrong
in a weird way where like you need to be playing it with a group
of people and having conversation, you know, voice chat talking talking for like
team up with people that you don't mind talking to for a dozen hours,
you know, and then I think you'll have a good time with it.
But like playing it alone is really Yeah. Yeah, I didn't play it
too much too much alone, even playing with random people like you, because
even you can match make before the story missions, I thought that works pretty
well. Yep. Yeah, I just like the thing that kept getting me
about it because I was really wondering too, like why what is it that's
really grabbing me about this game? And I think that a lot of it.
I think the real world, the real world environment, the setting of
it. Yea. Like again, I compare almost everything to Destiny, and
I think it's a huge plus and a huge minus to it. But like
running down you know streets, like recognizable streets with cars and taxi cabs and
like a million different models. I mean I think there are more. I
kept saying this at the office, but like there's not that many different player
models to choose from. It's like surprisingly little, but there's like a bazillion
taxi cabs. There's like probably like literally like two hundred different trash backs were
modeled in that game, and yet there's like ten player faces total. But
anyway, the amount of detail in that they use and fleshing out the world,
and you just like run into an apartment building, no loading, You're
right in the apartment building, and in the apartment building there's like a last
of Us level detail to like every room. It's like there's a mattress where
somebody was sleeping and there's like a bloody baseball bat next to it, and
like a bottle of wine and it's like, okay, I kind of can
put together a story that happened here. But just like that, you know,
Okay, this is a police station. I recognize this going down into
the parking lot of a police station and you're fighting room to room and a
police station with a bunch of your friends and people are going through other rooms
and you're fighting through windows and like recognizable, Okay, this is where the
reception would be. And like that actually adds a lot to the kind of
destiny type of gameplay where you're just shooting things with your friends is inherently fun
on its own, but I think then the flip side of that, and
that's super exciting. So like running through the streets of New York with its
snowing and you hear gunshots in the distance, Like that's just it's fun.
And I like like, yeah to like some of the environment stuff, like
you have those police stations or just even apartment buildings that have been kind of
taken over by gangs or whatever, and you see that they've like been like
like there's a logic to it, Like you understand from a gameplay perspective,
why the staircase doesn't go all the way up. Why they would barricade it.
Yeah, Like tons of games do that, but here like the way
you walk around it or have to hop out a window. Like, there's
a logic to like, well, we wanted to fortify this building to stop
someone else from coming and taking our ship, right, so we we put
this ship here, but we had to leave a path for ourselves to climb
out the window, hop up the fire escape, go back in, right,
block the staircase again. Right, There's there's a logic to that that
I had, Like the environment that I that I kind of appreciate it absolutely,
Yeah, and I think the flip side of it now, which I'm
curious because you've played it more than I have. But the thing that I
started thinking, I don't know, maybe this will become a problem is that
because it's so grounded and established in the real world, there's not like,
you know, the destiny equivalent of like, whoa, that guy shoots a
gun that like you know, has Neon Crean shit flying out of it and
whatever. That was my concern going into the the beta they did. From
an aesthetic perspective, I was just like, oh, I'm gonna get bored
of looking at this trab real world setting for for so long. But it
actually it sounds like it's even more of a mechanical problem, just in terms
of like lack of variety on the enemy side. Things get Our three of
that game is identical to our thirty five of that game, you know,
because you know you're leveling up, they're leveling up. The number of bullets
it's taking to drop these guys is is roughly the same. The thing that
changes is, you know, the encounters get a little more hairy, you
know, because there are more people in them. You're playing on hard or
challenging difficulty, so a lot more of the guys will have armor and stuff
like that. But all that means is the bullet spongee enemies become more bullet
spongee. Sounds like they need like DLC filters like a seventies you know to
or whatever. Yeah, yeah for you just but or I mean, you
know, and they could go in this direction with the story if they wanted
to. I think they would be a weird stretch for them to like do
it and add on content. But this game needs. This game needed like
some kind of big twist about out halfway through of like, oh, by
the way, the virus made all the spiders giant or aliens invaded and they
brought laser weapons. Guys showed up right exactly. But it's it's four factions
of enemies and that's it. You know. It's like there's the and they're
all human. They're there's it's you want like an uncharted ending where they all
all of a suddenly like blue guys would actually be a good thing here.
But it's you know, it's the it's rioters, who are just like fucking
dudes. It's uh, the cleaners, which are flame throwers. Yeah.
Uh, it's the Last Man Battalion, which is a PMC. Haven't those
guys yet. So those guys are kind of like you. They're kind of
like division guys. They have their own they're just there's like military guys that
I mean, No, there are other dudes with guns. There's more life
with that armor, like there's nothing. Everybody in the game is just exactly
yes, and most of them are dudes. There are you encounter some ladies
here and there, but but and even then, you know there are enemy
types that you'll see. You know, they'll put icons next to the health
barers, so you see like this is a sniper, right, this is
a guy with a shotgun, and those enemy types are just mapped across the
different factions, so you know, fighting one crew is not that different from
the other. You know, tactically, it's not a it's not a huge
difference. It's more that like the AI can be interesting that I will try
to flank you as you should be trying to flank it. Yeah, it's
it's a really stark contrast when you think about like the factions and Destiny and
how differentiated they are, and even within one faction, how different the types
of enemies are in the things that I would say do to you. But
the Destiny factions do have that thing of like there's like the roles, like
they're feeling similar. That's true within the faction. Yeah, what about your
character though, so you've got like a fully leveled up character, Like,
how how have tact exchanged? How have like your abilities? I'm using the
exact same abilities I was using from the beginning. Because because you unlock that
stuff relatively early on you and you can choose which order you unlock the things
on the tech tree in so if there's like an ability you know you want,
which you might not know that, but like you know, you're not
making any hard voices, so I can respect my entire character and at any
times. And I have everything unlocked now to do that. So every single
talent, every single uh different ability, and the mods on those abilities,
I can just do that kind of at will. So you found something that
worked and you're just kind of sticking with us. Yeah, And what are
the abilities that you find that you I'm using. There's it's one of the
first ones you have the ability to get is a pulse that will kind of
mark everyone on the map, and there's a mod for that that makes it
to when an enemy is pulsed, they take more damage. Yeah, so
that's useful. Ye. And then there's a heal which if you tap it
it heals yourself. If you hold it, it becomes a gun that I
will heal you out the heal gun. And I've been using those two pretty
exclusively. There's a healing station that I've seen other people use that seems like
affect. Throw it out and it's like, yeah, there's a radiation of
healing. Yeah, that's been that looks pretty good. The nice thing about
that is, you can modit to where if people go down, it'll back
up. And then when you I guess it's when you complete the base upgrade
stuff and each one of the upgrade wings in your base, you have three
different wings that you're upgrading to get these skills and perks and stuff. When
you feel one of them out, there's a master skill that unlocks. Oh
okay, so there's a kind of a third skill, a signature signature skill
they call it. And with that, if there's one that I one I've
been using is the uh it's a it's a resistance spuff okay for your whole
team. I thought that mechanic was interesting, the upgrading your base, and
also again it's it's grounded in like real world stuff. So like, okay,
you're unlocking the armory so that you can unlock at crafting station. Like
that actually makes sense, Yeah, and also gave you a reason to do
a lot of little shit in the world that I wouldn't normally care about at
all totally. Like even every NPC that walks up to you that asks for
like a bottle of water or something like, they will give you clothing as
well, but you also get even though it's just a little bit of experience.
You get a little bit of experience. So every little story dropping,
no matter what it is, gives you a little bit of experience scanning stuff.
There's like a lot of reason to do stuff that there wasn't in like
Destiny or whatever, because it's all kind of leading into at least a little
more experience. And the thing that I would say there is like this would
work a lot better if the side content was more differentiated. But like that
notion of like, well I need to get more security supplies to upgrade the
security wing means I'm doing a ton of security side missions and it's a lot
of like, well, I need to go assault this stronghold, which is
just you know, everything is a form of like go shoot all these guys
and then maybe you have to do something afterwards. And then there's just dumb
stuff in there, like supply drops that have to be guarded. So you
run up to the supply drop, you know, and you stand there and
guard it while waves of guys come at you. Sometimes there'll be multiple supply
drops, so you have to kind of run around and you know, guard
them in order. Basically, so this is like quarantined New York. Everything
is at a hard to come by. Everyone's kind of trying to hoard as
many supplies as they can get. Uh, when you're guarding supplies, the
thing you're guarding it from is enemies walking up and shooting the supplies. And
they just walk up, stand there and start unloading their gun into these supplies.
Like, what the fuck are you doing? Like what why would you?
This is the dumbest shit ever. Like, yeah, how's the fast
travel system? You can fast travel to the any Uh, there are safe
houses the unlock as you go, so the big safe houses you can fast
travel too, Yes, okay, Yeah, and uh, every mission start
point once you've been to that mission is also a fast travel point okay,
okay. And you don't necessarily have to like start the mission again to go
there, you don't, okay. One of the other things I like that
that reminds me of is that you can see even though you're not running around,
seeing a lot of random players in the single player game. For whatever
reason, it's just not it's it's yeah, it's not why it's instanced.
You know why they did that. Yeah, they'll see like your friends on
the map, but you will see your friends on the map even if they're
not in your group, which is kind of cool because it's like, oh,
okay, there doing something. I'm going to join them. You can
just join on them. It will, Yes, you can't that way,
yeah, if they're set that way. And there's a lot of loading times
associated with joining and quitting groups, I think. But yeah, so the
thing, so I did that to someone, you know, I was max
level and you know, friend of mine was like level nine, and I
was like, well, jump in there and help him out. It made
all the enemies in his world level twenty. That's right, that's right,
it does. So I was like, okay, well now I can carry
you through your own game. Or I ended up quitting and then when I
quit, everyone stayed level You're welcome, So he had he had to basically
drop and join. Were you level twenty five or was that some I was
thirty? Yeah, so it was. But but in the world, you
don't always see people that are at your level, Like they try to have
a leveling range around like it's a U shape basically, so you're kind of
starting in the close to the upper left and work your way down and around
and up to the right, uh, and the level of enemies increases as
you go through that part of as you as you move deeper into the city.
Basically okay, but yeah, you never I guess if you get to
the final when you can finally get to the final area, I think those
guys are level thirty, but generally out in the world, Like there's a
bunch of side stuff in lower level areas that I went back to do and
it would at least like level the guys up to where they weren't a total
joke, but they were mostly just like it was just me just I stopped
taking cover at some point, I'm just walking in the middle of these guys
and gun you all down, right, because you're standing there, And that's
what I do because I'm a gun. Like that's if you think about the
division too hard and try to apply logic to what you're doing. It's also
completely insane, right because it's like, how do you okay, okay,
these guys are just standing here, How do I know that they're looters?
It's just they're flagging them as enemies. Just yeah, they're they're really but
like, but these guys who are trying to break into this car or actually
you'll see a lot of people fighting in the street, like struggling back and
forth, and when you run through to like if you touch the the NPCs,
they kind of like stop what they're doing. So I, you know,
the first few times I see that, I'm like, well, I'm
gonna run between these two people and break up this guy and this lady because
he's like, fucking I don't know what he's trying to do. Uh,
And and then they both get mad at you, at me for touching them,
and it's just like fuck this. But again, it's one of those
games that like if you if you stare at it really closely, there are
a billion things you can look at and go this should be better, Like
it's crazy that this is this way and all this sort of stuff, But
there's something to the core of it that works, just just a loop,
like just the upgrading and the well yeah, yes, but at the same
time, like the upgrades are not necessarily that rewarding because you're you know,
I beat the final level in the game, and I got a slightly better
AK forty seven than the one that I had, you know, And and
the thing is is, like you you look at the high end crafting that
starts to unlock, and you know, you can go into this PvP area
of the dark Zone and try to extract items, and the theory would be
that there would be even better AK forty seven's out there than the one that
I have. Right, even though I'm at the level cap and have a
and have a level thirty AK forty seven numbers game, I mean, you
are you are. Yeah, the weapons are all, at least that I've
seen so far, pretty similar, but you are getting little bit better numbers
constantly, at least at the start of the game, like constantly, constantly,
constantly. And it plays with range a lot, Like you know,
the optimal range of a weapon factors into like the basically the damage drop off
when you're not in that range is really significant. So yeah, it's a
case where like, you know, I have a submachine gun that is way
more effective than my AK forty seven, but the range is shit, right,
So you know, most of the time I'm still using that AK forty
seven, and then it is switching over to the submachine gun when guys get
close, right, So there's there's tactical interest there, which that's not unique
to the division by any means, but it works. It does, It
does work, and the game does reward it. Like I have a I
use a rifle that actually is a much less powerful gun numbers wise DPS,
because it gives you the numbers in DPS uh DPS wise is way lower.
But I have like a fifteen times zoom scope on it, and I can
just headshot guys. So I just stay way back and the other guys will
go up and flank and push guys out, and then I just head shot
him or blow up the explosive tanks on the guys, which is super satisfying.
Yeah, are you guys? Are you guys bumping the difficulty when you
play with people? Or I mean, I guess it does that on it's
so many scales. But it also has variable settings like it is that it
does. But that's so when you unlock the dailies, like the daily will
be what are the dailies? It's the story missions, So it's just like
Destiny. They just pluck three of the missions out per day though on Saturday
and Sunday, like they didn't reset, so I don't know what the deal
is. So like special special rewards, Yeah you'll get well, you'll get
more stuff, not even that special. It's like you'll get a level thirty
gear blueprint or something, or piece of gear, not even a blueprint,
and and so and you oh, you'll get Phoenix credits, which are used
with a special vendor that sells the high end, the true high end stuff.
So that's kind of it's a separate currency for the high end loot.
That's a lot of like different vendors and Currenciason stuff because there's like the regular
vendor, there's the high end vendor that you can unlock, and then I
guess this is like the super high end basically, so what do you do
with that stuff? But what is the greater challenge that you apply? That's
the thing is it is right now there isn't one. And in fact,
after you beat the game, there's an icon on the map for the next
piece of content that is not in the game yet. It pops up and
says coming soon in a free update, like it's the raid. Basically like
really, yeah, oh I didn't okay. Incursions they're called Oh, I
have no idea this was going to have anything like a raid. Yeah,
so they've got They put out a trailer that says here's what we're doing for
the first year, and it's the stuff that's coming as part of their season
pass. But they're also free updates. So it seems like the first raid
will come as for free, and then there's another update that they said will
be free, and then they've got three chunks that are part of their season
pass. They sai how many players that incursion is going to accommodate? I
don't know. I don't think so, but I would be shocked if it
was over for really, I would be shocked if they if they went with
a higher player account than what they've got. Did they didn't They say something
as part of that their first year plan that they were going to have item
trading. Yes, yes, lute trading amongst players, which is not in
yet. Sets so like armor sets and stuff like that, it's not in
And that's so that's what the reward you get when you hover over this first
raid. Uh it says set item, so like sets will come with that
thing. What about so what about multiplayer and dark zone stuff? If you
messed with that, Yeah, I have It's it's really cool and I wish
that there was more of it. I wish that it was something that they
actually layered and it'll be divisive. Like it's one of those things that I
think, like some people will totally hate the way the Dark Zone works and
like it could be frustrating, But I think it would be a more interesting
game if they just took that and laid it over the entire game, yeah,
instead of instead of confining it to this area. Right, have you
had the guys who try to get in front of you while you're shooting uh
NPCs to try to make me go you? That does not happened to me
yet, but that's that's a good trick start, and I might do that
to someone. But what I wish I could do is, because there's load
times associated with leaving a group, I wish I could just be in a
group, drop from the group, and before they notice what's going on,
I'm behind them shooting them. Like I would love to do shit like that.
Like it needs to be devious, right, Like for that thing to
work well, two things. It needs to be devious and the lout needs
to be good. That is one thing. Yeah, the loot needs to
be I've extracted fifty or sixty pieces of lute out of the Dark Zone over
the last three days, none of it's been anything special, Like it's been
like, oh well, here's a kneepads that are slightly better than the ones
that I have, Like it's that's cool, Like the numbers are get higher.
Yeah, but in terms of it actually being like a meaningful difference,
like no, it just hasn't been so early on. I got that cool
like sticky grenade launcher thing, and I like the way that works a lot.
But since that's a perk, can you level that up individually so that
just stays like they have the whole game. Yeah, I mean it'll do
more damage because you do more damage as you level of right, Okay,
you know. So then functionally it's the functionally up. So there're mods,
Yes, there are MODSI tech Tree, there's ability, talents, talents,
and purse, but in all of those tied to lbn RB right. Not
talents are passive, so you can you pick up to four passive abilities that
you want to have, okay, uh and then the so the abilities are
the things that are on your your l one R one like the sticky thing.
Yeah okay, And and so with that there are for every single ability,
there are mods for that ability. And there are three perability that once
you unlock a certain part in the tech tree, you gain the ability to
modify your ability. Okay, uh and and so yes there's one. There
are changes that you will be able to make to that, but that's the
only change, just like bigger radius and basically and and then there's a master
mod that unlocks when you fill out a full tech tree. The master mod
automatic is automatically applied to all of your abilities in that in that tree,
in that section of the tree. What do you think about the perks and
ability Like the skilled tree of the game, I found that the passives,
like the talents, I thought most of them were not a lot of them,
like bit to the way I would play. Yeah, it was like
when you move from cover to cover you get a bonus for ten seconds or
something. It was like pretty esoteric. Yeah it take it or leave it
stuff. Yeah, it's it's yeah. There was one. It's like for
every like headshots have a fifty percent chance to not use AMMO, right,
and I was like, well that might actually be useful because when guys get
up close, you're just shooting them in the head over and over again until
they die, right, And if I had more AMMO, that's true,
you know, then it's just more DPS, Like there's there's math to that
that you're just like that probably actually would would be okay to have Flashy,
you know, they're like that. None of the bills actually are like,
man, look at that guy. He's like shit, Jeff just uses super
and fucking cleared out the block. Ever, like that just kind of doesn't
happen. It's no flaming hammers. Right in this game. Shooting guys in
the head multiple times thing bothers me, Like I know what to type of
again, like yeah, if you take like real New York and like,
you know, it's like this could happen. Man, I had to shoot
that guy in the head fifty times, Like I get it in Destiny,
you know that that makes sense. But when it's just like a dude in
a hoodie or something, it's like, all right, well this feels weird
and shooting that many times, and especially you get into the bosses, and
again that's another thing, like they're very limited by the real world setting,
I feel like in terms of what they can do for bosses, and so
it becomes more arbitrary, you know, instead of having a guy who's like,
okay, that guy's thirty feet tall. I understand why it takes six
million bullets to kill him. It's like, well, that guy looks about
the same as everyone I've been fighting, except his health bar as a different
color, and he has a bunch of things. So it's a little bit
of it. If he has a name, he's trouble. That's that's the
rule in the division. But I am find I do find myself really like
I'm sad I'm gonna be away from my PS four now for like the next
two weeks because I really do want to be playing it. All my friends
are playing it right now. It's kind of that same thing his Destiny,
where when I get online, I have like five or six or seven other
people who are playing it. And the dark Zone stuff too. I really
like just a lot of you know, situations came about organically that I thought
were really interesting there that I haven't seen a lot of games, you know,
Like, well, we were I was playing with a couple of friends
and we were at an extraction point that we had extracted our stuff, and
then we were another guy came up and was extracting. We're like, oh,
let's help this guy, like while we're here and we were like killing
NPCs and as he was starting to extract, somebody was like, wait,
why are we Why are we protecting this guy? And we're like, yeah,
yeah, wait, if we kill that guy, we get his stuff,
right, And so like immediately, like right as he's going up,
you know, your most vulnerable pants down moment where you're right about to tie
your stuff onto the helicopter, just everyone inexplicably like to this poor guy.
You know, we were helping him this whole time. It was like we
supssibly just turn on him. Yeah, it's like wait a second, this,
why don't we just do that? And real harsh life lessons taking place
in the dark zone. So yeah, yeah, I've had moments I've only
I haven't been into a four person group. And my understanding is that's the
way to do it because most people are not. So if you're four people
on the same side, you can just number roll. Yeah. Can you
go in the dark zone at any level? Yes? And there's any correction
from that, yeah, so it brackets you. Okay, So right now,
So that was the thing that I had is I didn't spend a lot
of time in the Dark Zone until I hit the level cap and now I'm
forced into the level thirty version of it. So it's just like you know,
so you see thirty twos, you see a AI thirty twos in thirty
ones in the higher dark Zone areas and stuff like that. I hear you
say something about level fifties. So you have a Dark Zone rank as well,
and so there are things that and that's that's determined that basically prevents you
from buying stuff because unless you're the right Dark Zone rank, you can't purchase
from the Dark Zone vendor. Is that is that the equivalent of like what
is it Indaba three, like your paragone rank or whatever? Is that like
your your second leveling progressions thirty? So it can go up and down.
It's almost like a skill ranking because every time you die in the Dark Zone,
you lose Dark Zone next realize, Yeah, okay, so it's it's
it's basically a factor of like what you've been doing in the Dark Zone lately.
Uh. And so I got in there with a dark Zone level of
like six and a player level of thirty, so I couldn't buy any Dark
Zone loot because the vendors won't even sell it to you unless you're an appropriate
level, which is frustrating because I have like twenty thousand Dark Zone bucks and
you lose a percentage of that money every time you die, and I can't
spend any of it, So I'm just fucked until I hit level thirty in
this thing. And I guess they expected you to be kind of get but
they don't necessarily, like like the game's progression doesn't do that. It doesn't
point you in that direction. In fact, like when you beat the final
story mission, there is this final thing that says like you should go see
the Dark Zone for yourself. Like it's they're kind of like, hey,
here's something for you to do until we make new shit, right, That's
that's there, Like the real game begins at thirty kind of yea, but
I think that's that's that's not true here, it's it's yeah, I wish
that would have been better about kind of having like more things to do in
the Dark Zone, like missions that send you in there for a reason,
like hey, you've got to extract this guy or this stuff to to just
like kind of force players into that scenario. I guess they have to tread
lightly with that stuff though, without being able to count on you being able
to get people together at a given time, or like maybe your connection to
Spotty or something like right core story progression relying on a multiple I wonder if
if if you're not a place, like if you're not a Xbox Live Gold,
I wonder if you like where the limitations are there, because maybe there
might be stuff around that too. But uh, yeah, the dark Zone
stuff is like really fascinating. It's the stuff that like made the Kane and
Lynch multiplayer sort of interesting. It was that thing of like, is this
a person going to turn on me? Right? It's like whereas Kane and
Lynch was that thing of like, well, there are three choke points in
this level, and someone's gonna turn rogue every time because why wouldn't you?
H This is now a lot more tense and a lot more like I don't
know. Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean sometimes you're like you find
a guy and you'll be like oh, and you'll be like kind of doing
a circle and then like, oh he has two friends, Okay, yeah,
like hanging out. I was I was just looking at your loot,
like I was in a parking garage, gunning down looters as you do.
Uh, And there was another human player there and we we wiped everybody out
and that was that. And I looked and saw he only had two thirds
of his health and he had and he had stuff. Yeah, and I
was like, oh man, fuck this guy. I'm just like like that
was that. And but when you get marked as a rogue, everyone that's
on your server, yes, sees you on their radar. So like I
had basically have like I had ninety seconds that I needed to survive before I
could be unmarked as a rogue and kind of flip back. And there's like
a bounty on your head, not only the loot that you have, but
there's also the bounty. And so what's stopping you from going rogue, you
know, getting the benefits from that? Leaving the dark zone? You can't
leave. No, you can't leave the dark zone period. You can't leave
the Dark Zone. If you're in combat. You have to extract with a
helicopter. No, no, there are there are doors in and out,
but if you can't take your loot with you unless you're extracted by helicopters,
you have to go to to a point fire off a flare, and then
there's a minute thirty countdown before the helicopter gets there. As soon as you
fire that flare, all the players know that someone is trying to extract,
and sometimes a wave of AI will spawn to descend upon that extraction point,
right and the point that I'm at right now, like every single enemy is
at least like blue, meaning they at least have armor, and they're all
level thirty bare minimum. So like, everyone that shows up is fucking savage,
whether it's a player over fucking AI. It's something I don't want to
deal with. So running around alone is actually like fucking harrowing. But but
I've done it. I've actually like run around alone and actually extracted a bunch
of shit. You just have to be fucking super careful about what you're doing.
The whole dark Sune thing sounds super fascinating and exciting, and I can
see why you would wish they had built the whole game around there, yeah,
because it'd be a thing that like it would turn off the players because
it is, like, you know, it can feel unfair because I feel
like, oh, these four guys rolled up on me and just smoked me.
It's like well you need to run with a fucking pack, right,
It would be a much more interesting game, even if it would be like
far more divisive than it already is. If they had rolled that out,
it would be way more realistic. Yeah, for for damn sure, if
you're gonna go out in the streets of like post apocalyptic New York, like
yeah, looting instead, it's this thing of like, well, the contamination
is really bad, so we don't know what's going on in there. We
don't know if you murdered a bunch of your own people in there or not.
Right, Yeah, which is you know, fine, Again, the
longer you look at the story that game, the dumber it gets. But
right, uh yeah it's but yeah, there is something like the super super
compelling about the game and to me, and not just the dark Stone stuff,
as much as it is repetitive, Like I will say, the the
environments, like I don't see a lot of stuff repeating in the in the
environments of the different I don't know it's what they're called, like strikes or
missions or whatever whatever kind of they are. It's like, oh, now
we're going into the subway. Story. Missions feel like this very like crafted
campaign you know, it feels like a lot of the game feels you know,
if you remove the online nature of it and stuff like that, this
feels like a game that would have come out when Gears of War was real
hot, as like a Gears of War knockoff right the cover, it would
have been like fifty cent Blood on the Sand too. If this was a
fifty cent game. If this was Blood on the Sand too, with all
this online multiplayer ship, this game would be ten times as good. Yeah,
Like I did the story mission last night where you go into Madison Square
Garden. Yeah, they've set up like a massive like triage kind of stationed
in there, and yeah, it felt like it was like, dude,
this I'm in the middle of this giant arena fighting these guys on like the
basketball quarter exactly. And there's another mission where there's a like a I forget
if it's like the underground tunnels or something. They turn into a giant morgue
and you walk into one place and it's just nobody makes a big point of
it, but there's just body bags stock everywhere, and it's just like holy
shit, Like there's a real feeling of place. Some heavy heavy imagery for
sure, yeah, everyone's in sounds like they don't do a whole up with
No, they don't story wise, story wise, they don't, like they
kind of leave it to you to go, like this is pretty fucked up.
But then like the it's even hard to tell, like there's a bunch
of Christmas stuff up, so like the virus hit on Black Friday, but
like it's hard to get a read on win this game, like how many
months have passed if this is like December after Black Friday or this is like
it's just that they happened before Christmas and now it's it's still winter. But
like so, so it couldn't have been that much time, and society has
deteriorated at such a rapid rate that you're like, there's no, I don't
don't know that this would be this bad, could be like a year this
next Christmas. No I think. I don't think so I really recent.
Yeah, I mean there's like TVs and stuff. You'll see a broadcast every
once in a while, but it's all like messed up. But it's like,
Okay, there's somebody in a studio somewhere, so it's that stuff's very
strange. And then you know, all the you you find people trying to
make money off of the recent happenings, So it seems like not that much
time has passed. But it's like again, like it would take a long
time to fucking blow up all these cars and fucking block all these staircases and
do all this stuff. Like you know, there aren't that many looters,
especially if this like virus killed as many people as it did. And the
streets are is barren as they are, like the game is empty, like
large parts of you running from one place to the other in the single player
part of the world and there's nothing to do except look at it and go,
this is fucked up. But like, there aren't that many enemies out
on the streets, uh, except for this is where the side missions are?
Are there many real world cut scenes because I like the one at the
very beginning with all the real world footage. It's really good. No,
there aren't that many, okay, but there are some within the game.
There might be. There's a few. Yeah, there's a few, okay,
but not not a bunch. I think you guys will keep up with
it, like you can come back for the incursion. Is it something like
it would I would like to see what they do next. Yeah, like
they the game is good enough to where I want to know where it goes
from here, but I'm not, you know, it's there's no the dailies
are not enough, and the thought of like slightly better loot is not enough.
It has to be something dramatically different, and I just don't know,
like the setting of the game being is realistic as it is, it is
trying to be, not that it's you know, that realistic, but yeah,
but for it to be a game where aliens would be out of place,
for like a new class of weapon to be somewhat out of place,
like, it's I don't know what they'll do, so I really want to
see what they will try to do, right, Yeah, it seems like
the same ongoing problem with Destiny and stuff of like console games with an MMO
like framework but a console game like amount of content and just the distance that
occurs between those two things. Well it's yeah, it's one of the things
where it's like you yeah, you know, And I think Destiny courted this
in a lot of ways with the mmore like trying to seem MMO like when
really it's just Diablo, right, Like that game's just Diablo. This is
just Diablo. This is just Borderland's Diablo, Hellgate London, like all that
sort of stuff. It's just the differences. Now it's a forced online connection
like Diablo three was, except they don't have an auction house to justify why
it's an online connection. Like, there are large parts of this game that
like if they've they don't because of how poorly they take advantage of its constant
connection. Like I feel like if you're not in a group, then you
shouldn't have to be online. Yeah, it's weird, Like when you get
in those communal areas, the safe houses, it does feel like cool and
exciting seeing the other players around and you're in like these little all the safe
houses are different and the one is a Ubisoft office. Is it really later?
Like actually, actually the grow Home guy is hanging from the rafter Ubisoft
logo on the wild that's unexpected. I would I wouldn't. I wouldn't have
been surprised if it had been like an Abstergo office or something. But to
straight up no, it's just straight up wow board game. Yeah, but
it feels it feels because it feels like you're part of a larger something.
It feels like the fiction of the game in that spot, and it does
feel like I wish, you know, public events are one of my favorite
parts of Destiny, and I do wish that they would bring that aspect into
the single player outside of the would go a long way, because even even
pulling up like that map is really striking the first time. It's like,
this is fucking Manhattan, Like the streets are laid out, like here's the
landmarks, like it's it's the sort of thing where like I didn't realize at
first that there wouldn't you wouldn't see other humans out in the world unless you
grouped up with them, so like I would be in these side missions,
and I kept thinking, like, how come no one's just running up to
shoot these guys with me? Like where the fuck is everybody? Like before
I kind of realized like, oh, because they're totally not connected to this
game, right uh. And and the game needs that the game needs like
you need to walk by and see ship jumping off it actually has another human
involved and you run up and go, dude, I'm I'm with you,
I'm gonna I'm gonna do this, because when that happens in the dark zone.
It's it's fun sometimes, like you be fighting guys from the other side
and at first you won't even realize it's another human. You think it's an
NPC, and then you kind of figure them. Before you know it,
you've put four rounds into them and they're like, oh, well, I
guess we're doing this now. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's it's really neat,
but it's I wish it was better. There are parts of it that
I'm just like, man, it's so close. We haven't really talked about
the UI and stuff like that. To me, the drafting UIs is like
disgusting, just that UI everyone. It's just like million numbers. It's a
million numbers, and it's missing some numbers that are actually crucial, right,
Like an aggregate armor value would be real helpful. Yeah, something that says
doesn't have that, Yeah, because like it's hard to know. So it'll
have a bonus health on an item, right, and but maybe it's armor
stat is lower than your current armor and you're like, well, does this
bonus health offset what's the trade off? Yeah, what's the percentage of damage
mitigation that this armor provides? Like they just need like they need a couple
more arrows in there because they have a ton, but they're missing that one.
They take the step that Destiny should have of showing you your raw DPS
on your weapon stuff. But on the defensive side, nuns and like comparing
weapon mods is not in there, so you'll have cases where like, you
know, the right weapon mod will change your DPS significantly because you have more
shots in a magazine, you're doing more headshot damage. Like all these will
affect the overall number, right, But you when you go to like look
in a store at a modes, it assumes your gun is unmoded, even
if it is, so it's like this is gonna be way better for your
gun, and I'm like, okay, awesome. Then I get to go,
oh, it's way worse than the one I already have equipped. Thanks,
I had that problem. And equipping and unequipping mods in general is kind
of a pain and moving them from one to the next. And there's just
a lot to the game, even even the map, like there's just a
ton going on that's not necessarily waited really well. And so you know,
especially like the first ten hours, just like finding missions, it's like really
difficult. I've only played the game for like maybe ninety minutes so far,
but even like I'm, I feel like I miss I kind of like,
okay, I'm because I'm not one of those guys who plays a lot of
games like this all the time. Maybe it's just me, but it's super
overwhelming at the start. I'm just like when they first put up the menu
that the sub menu where you can like equip stuff and everything, I was
just like completely lost. They don't help you at all. And then I
was like, okay, like maybe it's again because like I just don't play
these all the time. But for me, this is like a huge turn
off because I feel like, oh, I guess if you didn't play all
the games leading up to this, you're not going to be able to get
into this one because they expect you to have some prerequisite knowledge of how these
things work. But to me, it was just like, okay, I
gotta take a step back. It's it's definitely like the just the equip interface
and all that stuff is not like super busy, nowhere near as elegant is
like the way the Destiny handles it, right, Yeah, So that that
actually gave me new appreciation for the Destiny UI. Like I will say,
like and and even like the perks and the mods on the perks and knowing
everything of what you have equipped and what you can be equipping and stuff like
that. There's just there's a lot to it in the game, which is
cool in a way, but also like when you're just trying to navigate through
it and switch things and get to a vendor and figure out is a better
than B or not, Like, then it can get a little a little
annoying. Yeah, and the crafting system does stuff like there's three tiers of
crafting materials and it won't tear it up for you. Like, if you're
trying to craft a high end item, you need high end materials. You
can take five mid tier materials and turn it into one high end material,
but you have to do all that process manually. You can't just go like,
well, I haven't a raw low level materials to tear up to the
high end materials and then make the items. Just do it form button and
it all happen. And it's not even a press. It's a hold you
have to hold and let a meter to like create one mid tier Like it's
it's stuff that you're just like, man, I get why you don't want
people to accidentally tear their ship up, because there's no way to tear it
back down. But fucking come off. You're pushing in those thumbsticks a lot.
Yeah, yeah, just give it, give it like one extra prompts,
just be like, are you sure you want to break all this stuff
into it? Right? It's got a lot of cool things too, like
like when you're matchmaking, you can go about your business and once it finds
a game you just a little thing will appear on your hud saying push in
the thumbstick. But it's again, it's one more thing on a big screen
of a lot of it. The first few times, it's like where,
how do you even get it? To get it? Oh? Oh it's
okay, won't You won't even notice it. And a lot of stuff is
going on down in the corner. There's messages coming to you that are completely
missible. The PC version has chat doesn't. In the lower left corner there's
just straight up people just spouting show just like chat yell. It's just like
wow. And so by default it's turned off when you're out in the world.
It's only on in social spaces, but I decided. I mean I
sort of sort of did it to myself on that version of the game.
I was like, I want to see what's what people are actually talking about,
and it's all just it's straight up Barren's Chattel exact. It's yeah,
it's weird, it's a it's a it's a weird interesting game. It's fascinating
something, and you go back. I went back and watched that twenty thirteen
trailer that they put together and like, doesn't look that good. That was
that, But that stuff is in the game. It is Yeah, And
even the door they make a big point of calling out the trophy for door
shutting trophy and then like your creative care. Yeah the first thing on the
door, it's like, no, we really got the door shutting thing.
I think at some point that was them realizing that this thing is a dumb
fucking joke, that their door closing thing had become stupid, and the nut
Bucket just own it own our dumb thing, all right. Fine. I
wish that there was actually like a layer of like stupid stat tracking game of
like how many doors have you closed? Right? Yeah, trunks have you?
Yeah? Jumped on? You know what actually now that I think of
that demo, what about the drone thing with the with the so yeah that
that that's it's not there. I guess that was That is the one thing.
Yeah, I forgot about. I wonder if they would have dropped that
because it's like there was that era where that was like kind of happening.
Like I thought four I think doesn't really well for like just like HUD or
just you know, offloading your menu screen. It's at DS at that point,
you're just doing your inventory ship down here. But like that Need for
Speed game had an iPad thing that was just like map of the game and
you could tap on another racer and like give him more nitro or take it
away, like depending on what you're into that moment. And it was just
like like I'm gonna make a helicopter with that dude, and it's like to
what end? Like it was just seemed like this thing that they didn't really
know why they wanted it there. Like Watchdogs had it pretty heavy, right,
didn't they have a sex screen. I don't know that that actually shipped,
huh, because I definitely I definitely saw it at the view event for
watch I remember kind of tablet they're going like, hey, you should really
try out this app. Yeah. I don't know that that actually made it
into the final game or not. I don't remember. Uh, but Watchdogs
tried to do multiplayer stuff where it was like you were never you weren't quite
sure if that was a human or not. But that, I mean,
it's a it's an idea with a ton of merit and like a ton of
potential depth. Yeah, if they get it right and flush it out,
all right. But it's like, you know, I'm not gonna I'm sitting
on the bus and I'm calling in air support for my friends, like no
one, you know, No, No, that's not happened. Too busy
opening chests on the bus exactly. Yeah you got chest to open. Yeah,
I've got pornography to look at like this. You know, phones are
like important tools. Sure, I will say, even though even though it
does not look as good as that trailer which looked unlieve that he's the PC
version though, looks really really nice, I mean looks amazing. Yeah.
I think it looks good on PS four, like there's some some level of
detail like stuff like I'm staring at a wall and it's taking twenty seconds for
the right texture to pop in. Uh, you mess with that, But
I mean the level of detail in the environments and the level of non repeating
or just like how things are used like that constantly has been impressing me with
the game just like really really like you know, it's really I think hard
to do that kind of like Last of Us stuff is destroyed and there's paper
everywhere and whatever in a convincing way that doesn't repeat every you know, yeah
ten yards or something like that, and like that that has really like super
impressed me with this game. Like just exploring I'm really enjoying just because of
you know, exploring fucked up destroyed New York like on its own, it's
pretty cool. But we will have to check in with the division periodically.
Yeah, forward, I don't know, some number of months. We'll see,
as more stuff comes out, we'll see. Really the next update is
pretty soon, right like next month they're talking about for update is this is
the Incursion the first thing that's coming out that'll be a free update, because
that's straight up how Destiny did it? If you remember, like Multiclass wasn't
available for a week or two for launch, Yeah, I would hope that
it would be coming quick because like it needs a thing, it needs an
endgame things, especially as more and more people hit the cap. Yeah,
I do people do people that hit thirty like a day or two after it
came out. Yeah, it took me. I mean I've I played that
game about forty hours. Uh. And if I had been way more focused
on just like getting shit done, like I probably could have hit the cap
in thirty. Yeah. Well we will have to check back in sure.
All right, Jason, I understand that you have brought something for the class.
Oh yeah, actually yeah, Salt and Sanctuary. Yes, sooks in
me pretty hard. Actually, that just kind of snuck up out of nowhere.
Yeah, I's sound real soon right, Yeah, it's out today week,
Yeah, I believe so. Yeah, we said we did an unfinished
of this, I think last year during GDC. It's been in development for
a couple of years. But the real quick pitch is that this is a
two D Dark Souls and they are completely unabashed. Like a lot of those
mechanics have carried over to this, like two D like platformer as far as
like you know, weapon scaling, you know, you get like decks based
weapons and stuff and you know, string scaling and whatnot. A lot of
the classes are the same. The dark Gothic you know, esthetic is still
the same. I mean even the UI. Like I did the playing on
that video we did at GC last year and I was just like struck by,
like even the equipment interface and stuff. It's just like, yeah,
this is the Studios game, right. Yeah, it's one of their joints.
So, you know, love or hate like their art style that's still
you know, prevalent in this. I kind of like it. It's kind
of like a sketch uh style of kind of nitty gritty, you know,
but where it starts looking looks a little bad as when stuff scales in and
you'll see kind of the rough, rough edges. But for the most part,
you know, but it's scaled it one hundred percent. You know,
it looks I think it looks great. So and a lot of the environments
are you know, very well varied. Does the combat happened at the same
like pace as a Dark Soul can so at first, you know, it
felt a little mashy and almost arcady, kind of similar to their their other
games. Yeah, that's just like cry type thing almost. Yeah, there's
a little bit of that, like you know, air juggles. But so
I was mashing my way through it, I think, you know, the
first like hour or two and I'm like, wow, this doesn't really feels
like a Souls game. But shit changed after a while. You know,
attack patterns of enemies, you know, they start putting up the shields,
that start dodging. You'll find other enemies that start casting magic and you know,
specific patterns, so you're not like running around to their back or anything
like in Dark Souls you can actually, So there's like an invincible role and
that's kind of how they work that into the into the system. So because
you know this is role, there is fat Yeah. So it's yeah,
it's based on you know, your weights and you know you're encumb rents and
whatnot. So yeah, if you found too much shit, you you fat
roll and the screen will shake and everything. But yeah, I'm looking for
like, you know, tells and attack patterns now and I'm getting worked until
I start learning that stuff. So in that respect, it's very very Dark
Souls combat wise. And you know, all the environments, you know,
all the different areas are interlinked, you know, between you know, different
passages, you can walk from one end to the other, or you can
fast travel as well, climb up thing, drop a ladder down. Yeah,
exactly, you don't have to climate again, is there is there a
risk reward thing in terms of when you die getting your stuff back totally.
Yeah, So you'll drop all your salts, which is your souls essentially,
and and the like. It'll actually manifest in the enemy that killed you.
If you if you happen to like full pit or something like, there'll be
this other worldly creature that will pop up that has your soul, so you
can go back to that area and then get those specially called dark salts.
Yep. So it's like in Dark Souls when like sometimes you go back and
one of the guys has like glowing eyes and it's actually right yep. Yeah,
so if it's yeah, if it's not just lying on the grounds,
it's in an enemy. But this is like a two deep platformer as well,
so it's not particularly challenging platforming, but there's it's it's very prevalent and
it's not it's not harsh, like there's not a lot of platforms. It's
just like fall out underneath you or anything like that. But there's a lot
of like gated abilities as far as like a map traversal, like eventually you'll
unlock the ability with these brands where you can like reverse the shift of gravity
and like walk on the ceiling or unlock wall jumps. So that's that's that's
very very different from type stuff exactly. And I didn't want invoke the metroid
vein, right, but there's there's certainly yet it's it's deep in that sounds
very Symphony of the Night exactly. Yeah, I get that vibe as well.
So it's yeah, it's got a cool, cool look. It feels
really good, and like all these bosses have been just amazing and they're not
like on the really cheap side, which is you know something that I was
afraid of with this being you know, like you know, like a two
D kind of game. Yeah, everybody's got you know, a very distinct
pattern stuff you can you can get through this game without getting hit essentially.
So, but the first time getting to a boss like a dark soulds you're
gonna get killed, You're gonna get okay, yeah, yeah, okay,
And yeah, there's been several instances in which I've actually had to like change
up gear. There's there's a situation where like I got this blacksmith gear,
which it doesn't do shit against like you know, the physical attacks, but
it's got a really high uh like fire resist, so I thought a drag
it. Actually that was just like primarily fire attacks. So I had to
equip that stuff. I had lower defense, but I lived through through that
stuff. So there's some tactical stuff going on. Does this have even kind
of the like vague dark souls items where yeah, I was gonna touch on
that too. So there's a lot of cryptic shit in there, and I
don't know exactly you know, what a lot of the stuff does, and
you know, perhaps so you know, for for good or for bad.
You know, it carries over that cryptic stuff. So I'm anxious to see
people experiment with certain items to find out exactly what they do, because I
don't know for sure. Is there any kind of dark souls, you know,
like summoning other players to help you sort of thing, any kind of
multiplayer There is a little bit of co op, and I don't think it
drags in additional players, So you have to let me, let me step
back. Actually, So each sanctuary or like Bonfire as it were. You
can offer up these stone idols which serve as NPCs, a blacksmith, somebody
that will transmute stuff, some get that just sells items or whatever. But
there's also a stone cell sword which acts as like a multiplayer component, so
you offer that up and then a second player can jump in, but I
think they're tied to, like it, a pregenerated character, so I don't
think that you can. You don't bring your character in exactly. So,
so they do have, yeah, a small multiplayer component, to what extent,
I'm not exactly sure. I haven't been able to test that yet,
but yeah, it's it's like almost as deep as a regular Souls game and
it plays well. I'm dude, yeah all weekend PC? Or is this
coming on PS four? Yeah? This is just PS four right, nice,
So it's not out yet, not not on PC. I think there's
some exclusivity, so going on okay, but yeah, Vida's coming soon,
I guess, and then I assume PC later on. I don't know the
extent, but what was the name of the super crappy, super quickly released
actual two D Souls game that Namco put out Like a couple of weeks.
Yeah, I never I never bothered with that is I saw people saying not
not very nice things. I was curious if anyone ever tried that. It
looked it was like a Runner pious. Yeah, OK, basically, well,
I mean it had combat in it, but it was Yeah anyways,
actually did that because I I heard about it and figured it was like someone
trying to like, you know, make some kind of bootlegs it. It
is totally games. It was just spot somebody thought, but it was the
people trying to cash in on a quick buck was actually I mean, it's
free, but are there in that purchases and stuff? I don't even want
to know. I kind of assumed it was just like an advertisement, like
a promotional game. Yeah, basically it kind of was, even though it's
not really released around any but I think the idea with those, they're supposed
to be fun, you know, like it kind of works the other way.
If it's no good, you just kind of well. There was that
weird tech and galaxian thing or technic gallic thing where you just like, yeah,
it's like here's Heyachi's head shooting, its space shifts. I'm like I'm
into this. Yeah, And it fits right in with the tech and lure.
Yea, so well, great lord goes deep. I'm downloading, I'm
downloading slashy So all right, it says it's straight up says tune in next
week, Endless Death, Endless Runner game play. There you go, So
there you go. There you go. They should have made it. They
should an idle game. If you made something where they can tap slash you
know, how could a game you know, with its name pattern after Flappy
Bird souls not be amazing. I don't know the dark souls of Flappy It
already it already finished downloading in the time. And then since I said that
I started as the real Flappy Bird starts here. I must be an elaborate
experience. Flappy Bird ever come back? Now? He was talking about bringing
it back, so yeah, really, okay, I remember that break like
two weeks I think it came back. Yeah, people were selling like iPhones
for like fifteen hundred bucks. That had it all. Then he did he
did a different game, but was it didn't really set the world on fire
the way Flappybird did. That came was cool though, Yeah, all right,
it feels a little bit like folly to do a new session on the
at the beginning of GDC week, when all of the news is yet to
follows why we have two podcasts but yes, and why we do one every
week? East course, East Coast Correspondence can pick up some of the slack
later this week. But stuff is starting to come out of GDC. Chris
Charlotte from Microsoft posted U a little I don't know what was it, kind
of just a id at Xbox. Yeah, he was going on with ideat
xbox kind of thing. Uh And the big kind of the only real big
piece of news out of that is that they are now going to start allowing
cross network play between Xbox PS four and PC. Oh really yeah yeah P
four Huh. Well, Sony agreed as well. I My understanding was that
Sony was always kind of into the idea, or at least like not opposed
to it. I feel like I've heard developers say that, like, yeah,
we would love to do it, but Microsoft won't let us, right,
And it was all and it was always it was never Sony won't let
us. It seemed like it was always Microsoft won't let us. So maybe
this is just one of those things where they finally just said, like a
screw it. There's been some like PS four PC, Cross Capet Right Street
Fighter, Yeah, yeah, yeah, stuff. Can't remember there an Xbox
One games that do this. Yeah. I think Rocket League League said yeah,
idar b will or dar visits Yeah, in some kind of public test
right now. I guess it's not out on PC quite yet. In the
in the grand tradition of Shadow Run, yes, it was a Shadowrun.
What was the other one, University War? I think that's right there.
Their two games experiment from like a decade ago, Gas Windows Lives speaking of
heel spheres, yes, indeed. Well yeah, with Division We're which we
were just talking about. I've seen a lot of people being like, I
wish you know these people are playing on PC even just yes four PC on
that one, but totally I just got fucking Rocket League on Xbox and we've
been just wiping the floor with people over there. But how it's gonna be,
They're gonna open up the damn. I want to say that the part
of this announcement came with something that was they said, like, you'll always
be able to restrict it to just xboxes if you want, so, you
can always beat up on Xbox players that haven't had Rocket League as long as
you have. We went fifteen and three this weekend. Oh godown's proscited about
that. That March Madness basketball that looks great, that looks crazy. Yeah,
like all of their experimental maps and stuff, that's really cool. That
is really smart of them, because I'm like, I don't Okay, Rocket
League is Rocket League. It's great, but where can you really go with
it from here except the back to the future car car. They've almost been
like doing this telltale thing of like let's just get every other ip we can
into our engine Superman car or whatever. We get the Turtle van next.
Oh yeah, I was, I was in the same spot. I'm like,
man, they've really refined this gameplay. I'm like, you know,
how do you change this up other than just kind of like elevating the surface.
And they did that with like the Big Chaos a Chaos map or whatever.
But but now with like the Chaos Labs, like fucking shit is like
in a big circle. It's it's crazy and it definitely in there yet or
will that inevitably come out when the new movie comes down? Okay, that's
going to have They're kind of all over the place now, like the buggy
from that new Dying Light DLC is now being added to Rocket League like kind
of like any any and every car they can get their hands on the show
web application for me. You just fill out your car make it. Yeah.
I just took a look at this thing that Charla posted and it's amazing.
They spend two paragraphs on this thing without ever uttering the word PlayStation.
Yeah, how do they allude to other other consoles? Is that what it
says? And yeah, I'll just read the first part. In addition to
natively supporting cross platform play between Xbox One and Windows ten games that use Xbox
Live, also, they keep referring to Windows ten in this So is it
gonna have to be a Windows ten store game? Probably take advantage of the
stuff. Yes, so far that has been where they've where they have placed
it. Yea, so yes, well but the Rocket League is but but
it's so but they did all that work themselves, right and on the PS
four originally. So this is this is the change, right is that x
like Microsoft is now like okay, you can figure it out, but the
lot to come up without that same metal layer. That's like the Street Fighters
did, right of, Like here's your Rocket League name. But they're not
going to prevent developers from doing that themselves if they want, right, sounds
like it, Okay, sounds like it anyway, I'll Yeah, this means
players on Xbox One and Windows ten using Xbox Live will be able to play
with players on different online multiplayer networks, including other console and PC networks.
Just three ds, will you? Yes? Yes, yeah, Rocket League
coming in And then yeah, they straight up say Rocket League is going to
be one of the first games will offer this. Yes, I've purchased the
game three times now, well that's that's all three right, So yeah,
done? Covered? Yeah this this this is cool. Yeah, this should
have happened a while ago. Totally. Then it's probably only happening because of
Microsoft's place in the market, I think, so I have to assume,
right, yeah. I mean when you take this into account with the stuff
from Spencer talking about like maybe the Xbox One is not as lockdown as you
think, maybe we would make a better one someday, right, Like this
just seems like, well, these are all policies that my predecessors put into
place when we were the dominant platform in the marketplace. That is not the
case. Let's give people more reasons to work with us and play here and
do all this other stuff. Like they're they're doing things that they would have
done. They're doing things that they didn't have to do because they were the
leader last time around, you know, and they're just like fuck it,
man, people are gonna come to us no matter because we're number one.
Yep. Now they're kind of not. So it seems like every major you
know, at some point when you're the number one console, you kind of
go through these life lessons. I mean, PS four was a result of
PS three being just the total clusterfuck for the first few years, right,
and so but the I guess the question is whether you can bounce back.
So you kind of got to hope they can do that without Xbox just turning
into a total PC platform, because that's not what I want anyway, Yeah,
like losing what makes it unique. But it's at this point, like
you know, most console games make their way to the PC. So at
some point, like you know, you just want something that would be easy
to use for people that don't want to dick around with a piece right right
right, And at some point you have to wonder, like, well,
Microsoft just start making the equivalent of like a steam Box just for their Windows
ten store, which sounding more and more like that, Yeah, yeah,
these days especially, But yeah, that was a lot of the underhood stuff
that they did the Xbox One by making it run Windows ten in the background
and all this other stuff like to allow them to kind of unify these platforms
in a way. And I just think they're realized it in a way that
maybe no one anticipated, or faster than maybe than anyone thought. I always
thought it would be like you know, some late Xbox One thing or maybe
like hey, we're laying the groundwork for whatever the next platform is, but
because of you know, you know, the business and where they've ended up
and just kind of the overall console business and where that's at and where that
will go. Like in some ways, like it feels like this is like
both a reaction to maybe their position in the market, which is, you
know, not huge underdogs or anything like that that you know they're not,
they're not the lead platform, but also maybe trying to anticipate where things are
gonna go, right, and it's this weird I don't know, if they
pull it off, it could be really awesome. And and and moves like
this or you know the benefit of like, you know, hey, let's
just fucking play video games together and stop fucking around. I know, if
I was, you know, solely an Xbox guy, you know this,
this would make me feel a little bit better about my purchase. Sure,
I've got a ton of friends on PlayStation that are in the division I would
love to be able to. Yeah, I think the proof is going to
be once those big games, the destinies, the divisions, stuff like that
actually does implement it. Like I don't know if there's other politics or other
things involved where they that would still not happen. But if that exclusivity can
happen, if that happens for Destiny too, that's like, that's that's the
ultimate goal, right, Like you can just play with everybody that's playing the
game and don't have to worry about people like I'm never gonna play Destiny characters
on two platforms, you know, right, but if I could play with
the people I know that only play it on the Xbox like that, that
is gigantic. The sort of stuff where you almost want like this to extend
in a weird business way, like you know, this is what rock band
delC should have been it should have been by it once play it everywhere right.
The licensing on that end is a nightmare, right, and they didn't
do the deals that way to begin with. But it'd be great, should
be too, right, Yes, exactly, like cross play cross by like
for as many platforms as that makes sense, like rope everybody in like.
There's no reason to block people out anymore. It's just the business is not
the same as it used to be. It doesn't, it doesn't work like
that. When you started that announcement, I thought you were going to say
they were finally doing the because it is GDC, they were finally doing the
like flipping the switch or whatever they have to do to turn every console into
a death are supposed to happen. There was a recent quote from Spencer I
think out of this maybe out of the Spring showcase that where he was like,
I still think that's a really great idea. We have nothing to announce
a great idea. What happened to its three years ago? Yeah? Yeah,
it was a great idea, yea, And totally what happened? Is
it like a technical thing? I think that yes, yeah, yeah,
but I think it's one of those things that they probably will eventually do.
But yeah, okay, I don't know. People make games on the PC
and then they bring them wherever they want, like you know, it's and
it sounds like that they originally thinking that this would be the way to like
get dev kits to everybody quickly, but instead they've just been sending dev kits
to almost anyone who asks. So it seems like, you know, Xbox
One dev kits have not been hard to come by for like developers that are
paperwork and doing all this stuff, so it seems like that they're at least
doing right by those people. But then you end up like this was supposed
to be like the XNA replacement, like anyone can develop. That's what I
thought it would be, this big grassroot, and they just haven't done.
They took a step backward in that area in a lot of ways also with
like Live Arcade just kind of going away, Like I thought those were all
things they did really well last gen that they sort of just dropped the ball.
What's hard? I mean, you know, how do you guys think
it works over in Japan these days in terms of just like like everything's flattened,
you know, the everything is downloadable so like you can't really have an
XBLA. It's just a brand at that point, because every game is something
you could buy digitally. Yeah, I think that's all it is. But
even so, I think the brand was just really powerful. Like you just
even though at the end of the day, Xbox Live Arcade is no different
from the regular games, it's just something about it was appealing, right.
It still is to me, Like I just find like the whole in the
summer of Arcade, those promotions and stuff, we're all really cool. And
now Sony's got like the Salt and Sanctuary is part of like some six game
promotion that they're doing for They happened almost so often now that they're not as
big of a deal, I feel like anymore. I mean some of our
kade used to be the first year or two, Yeah, it was just
like guaranteed that was gonna be a really good game and I was gonna sell
really well. And now they happen like three or four times a year.
I think on both came along, Yeah, came along room all. No,
there was that level of curation for Xbox Live Arcade, you know that,
like it felt meaningful, but also in this weird exclusionary way, where
like now that everyone can independently publish on all these platforms and all that other
other stuff, like at some point, yeah, I guess it just becomes
a brand or like you know, hey, these are the games we've thrown
co marketing money at, which I think is what those so many things probably
are. I kind of feel like that curation stuff, though, is actually
really important. Like I am sad to see it go because because especially now
we were talking about this earlier. I think with mobile games, how like
so many new games are coming out every day that if they're not curated,
like it's just a mess. Steam last year there's like a bunch of games
that are like a dollar forty nine, Like it's it feels like this weird
elitist thing to say, but I've been feeling this way for a long time.
Like Steam needs a filter for price that lets me filter out games that
are under five dollars, which is like a really crazy concept, but like
with the ship that's coming out on there, or if you drop into like
a like a dollar ninety nine would filter out all the Android point games to
PC whatever, Yeah right right, yeah, but like a range of like
sort by price that lets me eliminate low price, not just high price.
Uh, would actually be super valuable for Steam, and it's that's a weird
place. They've got like Outlast on there for ninety nine cents right now,
right, Yeah, but yeah, they're always gonna be outliers like that.
But like generally speaking, yeah, in a sense because filter my original price
not current sale price, you know, just because there's not curation. This
is just sort of like a cheap you know, like a cheap code to
kind of get your own curation a little bit, right, Yeah, like
let me. You might lose a couple of great games in the process,
but you're also gonna get rid of a lot of trash. Yeah, because
it's every day. It just seems like it's just like iOS and Android stuff,
where it's just like every day there's like it just feels like there's twenty
new things and you're just looking at them because we're looking at stuff for coverage,
like what's yeah, where's the line. I spent an hour, like
you know, every Monday, trying to get a list together, just trying
to sift through all that stuff. Yeah, so I imagine being a consumer
just trying to find something to buy and having to throw at least with consumers
because they they have all that stuff with like recommendations from friends and they try
to curate that top Unit, But like, I feel like I've played so
many different games on Steam over the years, did that top unit is just
recommending garbage, Like here's some free to play Minecraft clone shooter thing. Well,
the dangerous thing I think is now. It also kind of makes developers
want to stop making it like you lose your inspiration to make games when you
feel like you're just gonna get lost in this season wraps, So you kind
of need something because you could just see the Toky Tory developers. Yeah,
just announced that they are getting out their next game is their last, the
game they're working on now, and it's coming out in a few months.
Like they said, that's it, like it's the market place is too crowded
now, Yeah, what does that say about their faith in this game ability
to sell the You know, I don't know if you're announcing before your games
out that you're getting out, it's premature, but that's I think they were,
like, you know, like they're saying, like we'll stick around as
a company, like we've still you know, we'll support our games or doing
all this stuff. But like in terms of like making new stuff, that's
sad. Yeah, such a such a craps. You're just trying to get
noticed, you know. Yeah, yeah, it's and even the iOS store,
it seems like, you know, it used to be a developer,
especially the bigger ones, like courting Apple to try to get placement, and
now I don't I don't even know that I hear much about that. No,
definitely not. That's changed radically, I think because placement used to be
store placement used to be kind of like, yeah, you're you were you
made it, like you were going to at least break even or whatever.
But that's not the case now anymore. Yeah, free to play has become
such a crazy prevalent thing. You got all that you know, user acquisition
stuff, and like it, mobile market is just completely Everyone was so busy
democratizing the tools to make games that no one stopped to think if they should
exactly, thank goodness, upsites like Giant but that's the that's the exactly or
the curation layer. Yeah, comes and says, well, apparently we just
talk about Clash of Clans. Now, fuck, they made it. They
made it. So everybody can make games and now dinosaurs are rampaging across the
landscape. Uh that's uh. I don't know. Maybe those guys can can
go and do what Radiant Entertainment did and just get themselves acquired by Riot.
Yeah. Soon soon, every soon, soon, Riot will just own the
entire world, and then it will be a problem. Pretty much every game
will launch out of the League of Legends client just Chinese money. Is it
gonna be the Epic Games launcher or the Riot League? That's gonna be?
That will be the twenty first century fight. Who is the Riot owned by
the ten cent or Yeah? I believe that they think I think I think
they outright. I think they went and bought the rest of it. So
do they own Epic ten cents? They own a portion portion of Epic,
not a majority share, like but forty five percent believe that's not I believe
so. But yeah, Riot has has acquired radio entertainment, maker of Rising
Thunder the Free Well, well, I mean fu yeah, that game,
well they canceled it. So crazy. Part that I think got lost in
this news though, is they just canceled that game. Well, so did
they? So they canceled that game? That name. Look, but they
said, but they said that team is now going to work on something new
and excited, right, And I saw like a Legends thunder right. Yeah,
I don't know. I saw like a something on Twitter from Seth Killian
that was like that he seemed excited, not like, well, I guess
that's that. So like you have to assume it's gonna be a fighting game
like that. That game is too good to die, right, Like,
you know, we I think a lot of us played it. We really
liked the engine, We really liked you know, where it was going.
I was just kind of waiting for it to kind of mature a little bit
exactly. Yeah, it's been in like an alpha state. Friendn't know how
long. It's like considering the characters in the Law and all that, like,
it wouldn't be the worst idea in the world to have like a game
where the champions of League of Legends where the characters in the tight games exactly,
And it's that's you know, they've been building out the lore in League
of Legends and trying to like get people to you know, hiring people and
fleshing out the stuff around the game in a way that like doesn't make sense
for league, but makes sense if you want to take these characters and try
to apply it to something else someday. So I could see them. I
guess I don't know enough about the league roster to know, like how many
of them makes sense as fighting game characters. I'm gonna guess plenty of them
prob like Bombastic, right, Yeah, but they're pretty wacky, So I
think you could do it. Yeah, you could do it. I just
I don't know if that fan base has that kind of deep love for those
characters though. It doesn't matter though, because like the fighting game, fans
will play fighting games, you know, and so the agen you get a
lot of play free to play, right anything League of alleged exactly, So
you get a lot of people who would normally wouldn't play fighting game. What
was the other uh not Hearth Stone Stone Heart stone Heart? Okay, so
Riot owns stone Heart, Blizzard own Heartstone. I'll just continue like some of
these other competitions on a new playing field. That was a kickstarter, right
it was, and they said they are gonna they are continuing, Yes,
right, that will continue? Right? Wasn't it a Stone Hearth before?
Wow? Okay? Uh and then I guess the other the other kind of
loose end here is that does this mean that Riot now owns GGPO. I
don't know. I don't know that. I think that was a separate thing.
Okay, yeah, like it wasn't like a Radiant. I mean that
existed way exist prior to Radiant. But I wonder if like they just when
they incorporated, that's why they incorporated around GGPO or not, because you know,
like you know, Riot is doing all kinds of Riot is building its
own second Internet, specifically for League traffic. Sure, you know they're out
of their fucking mind. Well whatever, They've got a game big enough justifier,
right, so it makes sense. So, like you know, net
code is something that they are probably supremely interested in. So at the same
time, I've never heard any complaints about the existing I know, I'm not
saying like for League. I'm just saying, like, let's you know,
if they can lock down greater and more technology to further their note knowledge and
get these people in here or who are super smart and RAYGPO and say hey,
can you guys take a look at League and is there anything else we
can do here for our fancy new inner net right. Uh, that probably
makes a lot of sense for them to considering the amount of money those guys
make and how they make it. You know, games of the League that
just pulled in millions dollars a day. It's it's it's astounding to me that
they're even interested in anything else. So, like, it really makes me
curious with this acquisition, Like what they're thinking of him, Where it's going
to go? It should be pretty interesting. Well, they've always been right
games, so they find more than one game games plural. It's true,
it's been a while. It's been uh god, what is it seven years
since League came out? Really it was dark around that. Can't tell you
how many times I've downloaded install that game, went through one tutorial. It's
like, nope, nope, sorry, not for you. Well, it's
it's not the game itself. It's just like I'm not a mobile guy.
I downloaded the King of Fighters MOBI and point through the tutorial in that,
and then realized I couldn't read enough Korean to oh yeah, yeah, wow.
I haven't played enough to actually really talk about it. But I starteddabbling
with Paragon last week, which is which is kind of out today, sort
of oh is it getting there? Like you kind of have to buy one
of the like Founder's packs to get in free to play, but it's not
yet just freely downloadle blek. Is that a straight up MOBI or like the
battles it said behind the back. Yeah, it's like it's it's Smite is
probably the closest cars I mean, but it doesn't appear to be abstracted.
It is like Mobi zoomed into the third place. Yes, three lanes,
yes, but it is a mobi. Ask Mobi. Yeah, Like it's
got last hitting, it's got some really fucking obscure mechanics. I've played.
I've played a couple of matches of Paragon over the you know, relatively recently,
and and yeah, are we talking a little like Smite? Yeah?
Ok, yes, Smite is definitely but I found Smite way more accessible from
from what I played of it. Uh, this seems like there's like a
card element to it, of like building a deck and as you level up,
returning to base to slot more cards into your slots, and that were
more card points because yeah, that replaces the item shop. Okay, you
don't earn gold and buy items, you earn card XP That then activates the
cards in your deck my card which is functionally not that different but still item
shows. I mean yeah, like the idea of returning and having well,
it's the same mechanic. It is the same thing because you're turning and slotting
things in. It was the is the thing that It's the thing that made
me not want to play a lot of Counterstrike that then extended onto like a
lot of mobis and stuff with just like this, like buying things that are
not permanent that I have to do every game, return to this store and
do this as I level up, Like it was this stumbling block. What
if a lot of those games, what if there was a cheeky flying animal
that would bring your items to you? Okay, have I got the mobile
for you? What's it called? Uh? Capcom has provided details on the
Street Fight or five March up date. Wait are they turning Street Fight or
five into a MOBI? That's the story mode? This is? This is
this is not a knock on Paragon at all. But I can't play any
other mobile without actually just wanting to play Doda Like it doesn't it does not
work. And it was like one of those things where it's like it's hard
for me because like, I understand why they balance it the way they do,
because they're making a mobile. They're not being shy about that fact.
But I picked the guy with twin pistols and his rate of fire is so
slow. That is someone who liked into a mouse wheels scroll down, yes,
but no, you like you hold down the buttons just I'm like,
no, man, you got two pistols, let's dump. But like even
when you pop, like is is you know, I mean that had a
fire increase. That's cord of the genre though, you know, like totally
max and build that guy toward a tax speed. I want to play the
MOBI that plays like Unreal Tournament, not the MOBI that plays that looks like
Unreal Tournament but still plays like the MOBI. It definitely does that, you
know, like it very much looks like a game is Battleborn faster because I
know you've played that and that's trying to do mobile type stuff a little bit.
Yeah yeah, but I don't know that mode that I played was not
the MOBI mode, right, So I don't know. I don't know.
Overwatching mob overwatches TF two. Okay, Okay, I was gonna say,
because that looks really fast, it is. It's superfession so confused. Yea,
yeah, Battle Morn. I feel like is the game that is getting
lost in this shuffle. It's the Demigod. It might be it might be
the Demigod. There's Timney video games coming out. There's never enough, oh
Man, Street Fight or five. Yeah, the March update. Yeah,
we still don't know when it's coming out this month, but at least yeah
they still have Yeah, let's hope they still I'm given a date, but
they did exhaustively run down what's in it. I actually I have not heard
this. I'm really really interested in this, like like pretty pretty nice amount
of detail here about exactly what's going to be in here. So all right,
hit me challenge mode. Yes, okay, it looks like it's gonna
be chock full of tutorials, like this is what the game needed badly at
launch. Yeah okay, So in the Challenge Mode demonstrations, learn the ins
and outs of Street Fighter five through helpful demonstration and tutorial content. I love
helpful demonstrations. Yeah, if they're helpful. It contains content for each of
the sixteen characters, as well as advice geared towards players of all skill levels.
Twelve beginner tutorials covering movement, normal, special attacks, v system throws,
counterheits, chip and recoverable damage, et cetera. Do we know who
like actually is delivering that stuff, Like who basically came up with the tutorial
stuff? It doesn't It doesn't say who put it together. I'm not sure
if it's like, you know, the initial tutorial, I think it's going
to be garbage. Ye, there's quite a bit. There's actually quite a
bit more to this. Well, I'll keep going. Okay, there's okay,
So intermediate tutorials. There are eleven lessons that cover projectiles and invincibility frames.
Yeah, armor and armor break covering like, uh, doesn't mean it
depends on what kind of depth, because if it's just like do a fireball
that's your opponent and they block it, will do chip? I mean they're
talking about you know, they're talking about cross up attacks, anti air options,
recovery. That sounds like a list of canned combos that you need to
perform to precede them. Maybe that's what Challenge Mode more or less has been
in previous games. It's just a matter of like the text they wrap around
it and how situational they get That's kind of why I was asking all is
delivered, because like, if it was like those commentator guys who are always
doing EVO, who are like telling you how to do this, technic would
be super interesting. There have been lots of games that have done like tutorials
very very well. Skull Girls in particular has one of the best tutorials,
like in the Business Killer Instinct is also you know, very good. Well,
they'll give you situations were practice. That's like VF four was really good.
Yeah, but the way that they've presented, like the tutorial stuff in
Street Fighter five, it's just like okay, walk forward, walk back,
okay clear, Yeah, yeah, I wish that that's more games had.
So I don't know if techn even still does this. But when you were
trying to do combo training for techn and you would tell you the ten string
combos, it would assigned sounds to the button presses so you could hear the
rhythm of the buttons being hit. And I can still hear just ten hit
combo in my head as I do it, and so it's like super effective.
It must be something that they have pattented on, because I don't know
that other games haven't want to say at yeah, because that because it's so
useful, they should have battened it. It was. It was cool shit.
I don't think it'll apply that much t Street Fighter, probably the TWOD
game. There's a lot of buffering commands and like tech and three D games
like that. But but still there, still there still is an affect of
timing to that stuff that like if they just I think it would help.
Yep, all right, let me let me throw out the rest of the
challenge stuff. Advance tutorials there are four lessons that cover back dashing, frame
advantage, combo potential, button priority, and so on. Then there are
character tutorials, sixteen lessons covering each individual character. Finally, there are trials
put your skills to the ultimate test with combo trials for all sixteen characters ranging
from basic to pro combos. Completing trials will also earn you extra fight money.
That's it say anything about explaining the V skills is beginner. The beginner
levels have have V system stuff in there, like, I hope that it's
like per character as well, because you know it's it's so so so yeah,
Beginner, Beginner, intermediate, advanced are all sounds like they're all generalized,
and there's a second set of characters specific tutorials and trials. Uh.
In game shop, they talked about spend your hard earned fight money to purchase
extra game contents such as DLC characters and story mode costumes. That's exactly what
you expected it would be. Yep. Uh, there's gonna be an online
rematch option. That's kind of interesting. Yeah, salty from a close loss
online want revenge players can now play a two okay, two out of three
set and ranked match provided ranked. Yeah, and provided both players accept the
rematch. Uh. They're getting up to eight personal lobbies yep, complete with
match spectating. Yes, that's cool. And then you know it's it's got
bu fixes, some balance changes, yeah, a few, a few moves
are being tweaked. It says. It looks like they're they're being pretty aggressive
and like patching out like option selects which were four was riddled with that and
I don't I don't want to go too deep in it, but it's it's
it's good for the balance of the game, Yeah, I think. Yeah.
Overall, it sounds like they still will not have a permanent rage quit
uh, fix ya or solution still seems kind of half assed, like the
patch. Yeah, they're just kind of monitoring stuff and deducting points. That's
the worst defenders. Nothing automatic. I'm sure you as far as I know,
you could tell me his name. I can't remember. But one of
the like top ranked players in the world got penalized. I don't remembering name.
Yeah, you got like seven thousand points deducted. Yeah. Yeah,
and he was down the bronze. I don't know if he was anybody like
prominent in the fighting game community, just like a you know, pretty good
in a player, but rage quit an awful lot. Yeah. I don't
know the specifics for that guy. But uh, any mention of Alex,
no, they but they've said that right then, they've confirmed his first one
they put out, they put out the first image of Alex over the weekend,
or well is he so this doesn't mention Actually I'm sorry, Right,
so, I wonder if that's going to be at the same time, Right
they have the ability to just okay, yes, yes he is. He
is part of the march, the march up to perfect Right, there we
go. I mean, this is the ship that we've needed since day one,
and it's a patch that I've been waiting for actually any lobbies. I
need the challenge mode stuff. I need those to well, I don't need
those tutorials. I mean there's so many. Yeah, there's there's a ton
of resources out there that you can go and mine. But for somebody who's
just hopping into the game, I think it needs to be well, it's
always better if it's interactive and it's right there in context. I've got just
a description of Alex's v trigger here if you want to hear it. No,
yeah, maybe going too deep in all right, but yeah, he
seems seems interesting. This. If this stuff had been in at launch,
I feel like that conversation maybe wouldn't have actually even happened. Yeah. Yeah,
Like the big, crazy, lavish story mode is one thing that's nice
to have, but like this is the stuff it actually needed. When is
that the story June or something? Yeah, that's what a crazy story?
How was this going to be more? Because they already have like those little
ministories terrible but like little rational like cut scenes. It seems like, you
know, a traditional kind of arcade mode, but you know with the cut
scenes in between, Like I don't know for sure. I saw I saw
YouTube video going around. I can't remember which character, but there's a video
of a six month old infant beating the story modes. Oh my god,
like just banging on joystick that do it. It's been edible. My at
Twitter has been blown up with that. Yeah. Yeah, they they wont
Griffin to take on this kid, yep, yep, so set up a
grudge match. Yep. I'm looking forward to this update. This sounds highly
necessary. Yeah, lobby's in particular, man, so it's it's real rough
right now. Yeah, but I mean that's how four launched, you know,
And it wasn't until like what a twenty twelve or whatever. I forget,
but before they had like multiplayer lobbies. But it's a quarter match on
Yeah. Ever Quest Next has officially been canceled fox those Yeah, yeah,
I wish I could tell you what that game actually was. I feel like
I have had that landmark that they were supposedly I thought that was supposed to
inform the development of Every Question Next. Like I thought there was kind of
a big building aspect. Yeah, landmark was like people building things that I
think would get into ever Quest Next, right, but like they had some
huge I was never clear on that yeah, I wasn't either. They had
some crazy ambitious pitch about like to be able to shape the world of ever
Quest Next Yourself right in some weird way. Anyway, not happening is Landmark
Still I don't I don't know, Okay, I don't know anything about what
that company is doing at this point. So it's just like, all right,
you just make the zombie game now, huh. Right, and and
John Smedley left also, yeah, we've been there forever. That's who knows.
Future seems uncertain for what they're doing. Uh. And then the only
thing I've got in advance of the avalanche of GDC news that's sure to follow
this week, I don't know if it'll be an AVL. It's well,
the main thing, like you know, like I said, we're probably going
to get some pretty hard details about PlayStation VR, and one would hope some
stuff like that. Uh. But Amazon Japan is now selling games directly to
international customers like me like you like you? Wow? Could I not just
go on to Amazon dot JP and order something? No, they wouldn't want
to. You could place the order, but they would then send you an
email going no, yeah it had it had a ship to a Japanese mailing
address, if you could order CDs and all sorts of other stuff. I've
imported music from Amazon Japan for years. How shipping on that it's fine?
Yeah, very reasonable. Yeah, like surprisingly reason order stuff from Amazon US
to Japan a lot and it's it's it's really surprisingly not that expensive. It
gets there fairly quickly. Yeah. Do you get to prime discounts now?
Because you have to create a separate account, you can't. US account doesn't
apply. I think they do have Prime there, but I doubt they would.
International shipping. You guys ever have to mule any packages for anybody?
Oh? Yeah, now you do stuff? Friends buggy about stuff? Yeah,
I should say this thing has some exceptions, like it's not everything that
you can order. You can now order a bunch of stuff that you couldn't
before, But there are still certain things that they won't ship overseas for whatever
reason. It's just like stuff that's too big or does that cover some game
game stuff size related. I was looking up something the other day for a
friend and it was like, you know, it has the little disclaimer on
there not we'll not ship overseas, So I don't I don't know what the
reason it is, but there's some terriffest risks and it's definitely only new stuff,
right, Like there's not you can't just order stuff that Amazon is carrying,
not even fulfilled by Amazon. Stuff will ship this way. It hasn't
been direct, right, No, that would be too good. So but
video games are now in this category, yes, correct? Okay, yeah,
so yeah, before they wouldn't because it was you know, it was
partially from like region locking. They wouldn't want to send DVDs either, because
they don't want to deal with you getting something that you can't play and then
you're trying to return it. So just to make it easier on their end,
I think they They're probably other reasons too, but one of the reasons
it's probably like just a customer support thing. It's great to see Amazon doing
this, though, because it sort of sets the stage for everyone else,
and I feel like as we move more towards the like much needed like region
free future that we all know is super necessary, Like it kind of makes
it hard not to be a region free like when you've got consoles like NX
coming up and stuff. It's like, if you know people from overseas can
buy your stuff and everything. It just seems like, okay, this is
kind of like when it's Amazon's like you can't not what are they going to
do? Like not seller games on Amazon because Amazon is willing to sell it.
It's like, no, just make stuff reason free and kind of get
over it, you know, or like, you know, do the language
work upfront instead of doing it after the fact. I guess, right,
right, which is hard. It's harder to do than it probably sounds.
But yeah, that's true. Yeah, because I guess like on some level,
like the game has to be proven to be wanted in another territory before
some of that language stuff starts to happen. Right on a lot of cases,
Yeah, yeah. Does this have any bearing on your buying of Hamster
Arcade rereleases or is that process that's all digital? There's no, Yeah,
that's that's all day one that'll be there. But you know, like if
they you know, you can buy I'll just buy PSN points cards right from
from a shop than just you know, code. That's why I feel like
this thing is not you know, as big a deal these days with everything
being digital and stuff like that. But I mean, yeah, it is
nice when you want that you know, collector's edition something or other something with
hardware. Sure, this would have been a big deal back in the day
when we were all suffer market price. Yeah, do you how do you
think like NCS and play Asia or not, it cannot be happy at all.
Yeah, but it's even of these things. I hope that like this
eventually leads to maybe some just some better international shipping for used stuff or something
like maybe they grow into that eventually, because that was always the thing.
Is like that was pretty constrohibitive sometimes. Yeah, And and getting to a
point where I can like successfully kind of half asked to translate Yahoo auctions right
and and get stuff that was always a hassle. Right, I did it,
and I got it shipped to some There was like a service there would
like you would go to their service and like basically you'd get the package shipped
there and then they would ship you the package right, right, And I
got some stuff that way and it was great, But it was like nine
more steps than should have been in that process, right, Right, we
better go around and buy as much shit as possible before that before that happens,
before anybody from over here guncoming storm on the gold rush. I mean,
yeah, like the prices before the prices go all the way out of
control, right, I mean. I bought a like a model PC Engine
Duo R off of eBay. There's like pristine, beautiful condition with like a
region switch on it and all this other stuff, and it's just great.
But like all the prices on that are ghost going up up up, and
I imagine, yeah, now that you guys now, now, now that
people in the West are gonna be able to get their hands on that stuff
relatively easily, it's over. I mean because like it's already starting to show
right now. It seems like Habras like yeah, yeah, the good old
days are behind this. All right, That's all I've got for news this
week. I'm sure there will be some more to come, but the time
for the emails podcast bomb dot Com got a handful here I'm gonna start reading.
Here's the one from Nasser from Riyad Saudi Arabia about street Fighter five.
I was listening to the power Bomb cast and playing street Fighter in my dorm
room. I usually don't care about who I'm fighting, but then this name
showed up, Old glory Hole. Since you choose your name when you start
the game for the first time. Do you think they would or should do
something about this. I've thought someone whose name was lick my butt hole.
Yes, yes, and was shocked that there was no filter or that that
hadn't been caught in like like a forced reset. And with the number of
other things that are missing in that game, I'd be surprised if they had
the facilities to actually like make like force a name change. Not high Japan,
butthole licking is absolutely normal, and that would concede if that would be
themselves. It's twenty sixteen in the US. It's totally normal, and don't
worry about it. It's just a cordial greeting. Yeah, sign of respect
really at this point. Yeah, they have the ability to change names.
Oh yeah, So when I first started, I was like Jay Strike or
whatever. Yeah, because I had reserved a name, they went in and
manually changed it to unit Strike for me and it kept all my stats And
wait, did you have to request that? Yeah, it was something weird.
The Ford press like, we could reserve name, but they do have
the abil ability to change yeah, change it on that. But I wonder
if they have the ability to force a prompt to show up to force you
to change your name, which is how Xbox Live would do it, that's
sure. Or if they'll just yeah, maybe I'll just go in and change
that guy's name to something even worse but at least not objectionable. Yeah,
like not licking butt holes, just like maybe that's not objectionable. I don't
know, like whatever, the game's rated t right, but hole looker,
okay, just it's not just suggesting that anybody do it to anybody. They're
exhorting you to lick theirs, which might be a little aggressive. Yeah,
I suppose. So it was just a little bit more. It was just
like lick a buff, right, yes, be like well whatever, that's
just sure. Well if they put a question mark at the end, you
know, it's just that it's just a polite invitation something to think. Not
this early in the day, Okay, I won't force you. That's that's
your choice. Only after lunch. Yeah, if you're gone with the more
accepted modern terminology and said eat the booty like groceries, maybe that would question
mark. I mean, that's just all right, question right. Yeah.
Uh so I put out the call on on the Twitter this morning because you
guys were coming in see if anybody had any questions, Okay, question from
one David Ellis, please ask Mark McDonald if he's still bathes in Pokemon milk
to stay ageless. That's uh, that's mister. Mine placenta that I put
on my keeps me nice and nice and well. Amazon ship that now,
you know, because I keep placing the orders and they keep canceling. It's
weird. Their form letters say you sick fuck in them. Yeah, you
wouldn't think. All right, here's an email from Gareth in Australia. He's
writing in about best nineties jobs. Avortex sucks you back to nineteen ninety three.
You can number one be a reasonably senior journalist at a print video games
magazine. Pros going to Boca to see Atari games. Sorry, it was
Cabo CON's probably a lot of work that isn't the above? Is that true?
I don't think that's true. I was never there. You were you
were relatively I maybe not ninety three, but nineties. It was pretty good.
It beat the hell out of out of having to work online. Of
course, did the way that deadlines work for obvious reasons. But we were
not bitter. We don't still carry grudge having a deadline once a month as
opposed to every day. It was pretty nice. It sucks that week.
It really was just at one E three where we were all part of the
same company and saw you guys doing jack shit while we were in the boy
that was that was before my time, all right, but that was there
was definitely like a man, what the fuck? Yeah, and the only
thing that kept us going, I think, and I guess I'll only speak
for myself, but I'm pretty sure it was shared amongst a lot of the
game spot staff at the time. Was like, don't worry their days or
no, they're running upazine. Were right, that's there. But yeah,
it was nice because you could go to something like E three and come back
and actually like process it and think about it and be like, okay,
what you know put it in I don't know in context, I guess take
a take a week, but that was nice. Yeah. The stuff that
people on online do at a trade shows is amazing and we don't even have
that anymore, you know, like like we had some aspect of being able
to like reflect on things and like, oh we went to this event and
it was embargoed, so at least we have a couple of days to think
about it well before we write, and now everything's live. Well. I
absolutely hated those early years when we were sent out to when we were kind
of working together with you guys actually, and we were at like the Jets
Japan shows and stuff, and because there wasn't to send a lot of people,
we had to play the role of not only gathering stuff for the print
bags, but also delivering stories back for online. And that was rough.
Yeah, that was really bad because you know, everything was happening in Japanese.
You were lucky if you kind of got a gist of what was going
on, and then you had to take the long train back to the hotel
and then you finally get back and then you have to do that for a
few hours while you're jet lagged. Like it was. It was not fun,
But you touched on something earlier. Mark just kind of let it slip
through. But he was like, that week was really rough. But that's
actually the truth. Like until the later years of like EGM and stuff,
we got organized and got a managing editor and stuff. But like in the
beginning era, I would say the first couple of years I was there,
oftentimes it was like the one month, you had the one month uh you
know cycle. But we really did all the work in like the last week,
and I remember we're just like not to fun, like skateboarding through the
hall When when did you start there? And I was there and from well,
I was at ZIF or SENDI slashed if from ninety six to two.
Okay, I was at EGM from like ninety six is about when I started
talking to you guys on IRC, and I was distinctively remember the stories like
coming in at like one o'clock every day and reading in the magazine about you
guys playing Was it Decapitito or some potato? Yeah, it is a hallway
game that we played with the with the arrow what's it called arrowb Yeah.
Some lights were broken and some people were hurt, but uh yeah it was
fun. It was a good time. But but how how how rough was
deadline week though? Because like my memory of talking to you guys on IRC
back then was like you've fucked around for three weeks and then yeah, crazy
part of it you had, I mean part of it you were just playing
games for like you took it was basically you did lose a week because you
were working so hard on deadline week. Then the next week was like you've
missed the first two days, and then people really were just like coming in
late and leaving early. But then then people would just play games and they
would put the actual writing of stuff off the last week. And so yeah,
I mean it was you know, they were they were really long days,
but it was fun and everybody was young, like it didn't really matter,
like, you know, I was like twenty one I think when I
got joined that company, and so like to me, like I actually didn't
even finish college like I left. To me, it kind of replaced college,
and you know what that's like, right, I mean you're basically just
up all hours fucking around anyway, So it was kind of like a replacement
for that, like doing your term papers the night before it's to do for
straight week. And then you have a video game magazine. It's like college
except all dudes. Basically my time of game informers all when everybody did everything
basically everyone does online and print. And you definitely got the sense that the
old timers like kind of pined for the old days, like yeah, oh
yeah, this was pretty great when we could just go to E three and
then you know, just just go to parties all why home right an episode
two later, I mean because I moved, I moved from print to online
and not just online but video while I was still at ZIF and like so
I'd seen both sides of it, and I mean the print people did work
really hard, but it's a completely different kind of pressure when it's like I
have to get this up as fast as possible, especially you know at that
at that time with a lot of stuff. It wasn't with everything, but
a lot of it was like we have to get this done and fixed and
edited, and you have to be showing up at a location and making sure
the camera works and everything's recording and what. It's a totally different type of
pressure that after a trade show. Yeah, it's just like completely exhausting.
So I have like huge, huge shoots amounts of respect for you guys.
I mean we will see you like at at E three and stuff like that.
I mean, you guys are having a good time, but it's like
I know that those are like twelve fourteen hour days of back to back to
back to back, you know, just doing it. It's it's it's pretty
it's rough. Yeah, I spent a year in print. H well,
I guess actually only about three months actually putting out issues because it was the
launch of a magazine, so it was like the run up to launch,
and then we we made it three issues. So what was that? What
was that was called Blast? It was packed into it was on news stands,
but also it was packed into uh sound blasters. The CEO of Creative
Labs invested in this thing, and then my understanding is that the people that
were running it ran off with some of the money and then we were all
laid off. A classic print story. Uh yeah, and but we we
were in Berkeley and we had that that same thing of like the issue got
put together in the last week of like you know, it's like, okay,
we've got blue lines now, so yeah, thankfully, you know you
can go read those and fix all the typos and all other stuff. But
it was like, you know, there would there would be a week of
like I'd just be in Berkeley till like four in the morning or all night
and not go home because we were just like putting everything together and getting it
all in. And that was actually really fun because Berkeley got really weird and
it was just like there's a lot of naked dudes out on the street,
and so like you know the manage you had to run go naked guy,
naked guy, naked guy, and everyone would run downstairs, look and go
listen. Naked guy walking up the street and he's holding a pair of pants
in his hand. He's actively choosing to not wear them. They live in
the dream, and so it was, yeah, there's just a lot of
dumb shit like that. That but whatever. Yeah, it was were they
like always trying to take the sound angle on everything where they like like it
was three paragraphs devoted to the sacks. It wasn't purely a gaming mag so
it was kind of like it was like tech and then there was this lifestyle.
Someone there coined the term does seem like it could incorporate a lot of
different There was some of the one of the sales guys coined the term screen
agers. And this is ninety four. As you know, these kids,
they screens around them. They're just screens are just part of what they do.
Man, there's the screen angers. It's like you're a screen ager and
I'm like, i am technically nineteen. You're right, and fuck you.
When he came up, he was he was yes, he was out of
I know, yeah, that's weird how that didn't make it, but yeah,
and and so yeah, it was trying to be a lifestyle thing.
It was like the same time that like Grand Royal Magazine was a thing,
and so like Mike d from the BC Bays was on the first cover because
like he was doing it multimedia style, so it was like this more of
this multi media thing. And then I actually, I think I did write
something in the first issue of like fucking, here's some cool shit you can
do with a sound card. I guess, like, here's making music on
a PC. And I the only PC in the office. Everyone else was
mac of but you know, because I needed to generate articles about like games
and other stuff. So yeah, it was weird. But yeah, it
was like it was like two weeks of playing Doom too. And then a
dude from that works on one of the other magazines and they're brought in his
like super Wild card, which I had never seen before, and I'm like,
so super Nintendo games on a floppy disk. This is crazy. Yeah,
and then at some point you're like, okay, let's write a magazine.
And I was, I mean, you know, I've gotten better.
I'll say that much. But man, I was a fucking terrible writer in
nineteen ninety four. So it was a lot of time spent with like editors
going like no, no, just right, no, you need to write
this again. Going people keep posting, especially lately, like old reviews I
did in EGM, because like we're hitting all these anniversaries, like it's a
twenty and I'm like, you know, part of me is like, hey,
I want to retreat this. It's cool, it's history. But the
other part is like, oh, I can't believe that at least it was
only a paragraph. Right, that's true that with your crew, that's true.
On the format, what is your most what what are some of the
ones that you're super ashamed of? Well, I was actually really pleasantly surprised
that, like Okarina of Time review was not too bad. But I just
gushed, I mean, you know, that's like that's a come on,
if you're going to pick a game, yeah, well that's away. Even
so, it was just like, you know, if I had gone like
even a couple of years after that, we had kind of gotten used to
writing those reviews, and you kind of learned like in that little space.
You really got to hit on the important points. But it was like mostly
just like a lot of the things that are now, like those cliches that
you would never ever want to put in a review, were like the things
we were writing bag exactly the genre. Yeah, yeah, I don't think
I even need to read the other two options in this email. I think
everybody would just be Aney three print guy if you could get away with it.
The other options were dot com employee or internet early internet hacker in the
nineties. Yeah no, no, I did some of that. That's not
no, Well, we'll just move on. Here's an email from John and
Manchester that think four guys might be able to shed some light on I'd love
to hear from the collected knowledge in the room about treasure, not the stuff
pirates hunt for, but the sumptuous video game makers. Are they done?
Will we even get just one more wonderful game from them? What shape are
they in these days? So? I have actually semi recently heard that they
are kind of done, that they do exist, but that it's basically like
a licensing house at this point, so like just managing their IP stuff coming
out on virtual console or whatever, like paperwork that that kind of stuff.
Yeah. I looked it up after this email came in, and the last
things they put out were like that Gunstar Heroes re release on XBLA, and
they looked like they did a couple games for Capcom that were three DS only
in Japan. Yeah, and I had kind of heard that that might have
there's I mean, it's just speculation because nobody knows, but that may have
burned them to some degree because that was part of like this big I forget
the name of the game, but gayste Crushery Crush. Yeah. It was
meant to be one of those big like level five asque like monim It's got
the anime and this and that and the other and all of it just tanked,
okay, which you know leads to the theory that maybe that was one
of their reasons for their downfall and put a lot into that stuff and it
didn't go anywhere. Huh. It makes stretched panic, didn't they they did?
Yeah, that's around time time, did Mischief Makers. Yes, Yeah,
there's both great. The President is still around. I mean, the
treasures still exist, and I mean it is him and he's the same guy
who always was it, so it's not to say that they couldn't necessarily resurface
in the future because now it's pretty much him maintenance mode, like the most
hallowed developer of action games at one time it is. But I could possibly
think of Yeah, and I mean, you can imagine they're being like a
lot of different opportunities open to them. So I don't, I don't.
I don't know what their deal is if he's just there's no interest or what
happened, because you can't imagine them not having some opportunities if they wanted to
write. So yeah, I don't know. Hopefully somebody else will get some
more information on that. I went to their office ten eleven years ago and
could not believe how modest it was. Yeah, for like what an incredible
reputation they have, Like it's just like two little rooms in a basement.
Yea, like super cramped. They've been there too, I went to Yeah,
I think the only like developer maybe of that. Like I went and
sawt Anchor at one point when they were doing like the UFC games for THHQ
or Crave maybe it was Crave at the time, n anyway, And yeah,
it was like the tightest just like long tables full of dead. It
looked like Gawker, but like reduced by fifty percent somehow, like packed into
a tighter space. Yep. Uh, that stuff was like really sobering in
a weird way of a lot of those seems like a big company, but
like, yeah, man, a lot of the Japanese devs would would be
that way and run just like it would just look like any other office all
with the desks facing each other and people side by side in a in a
workstation and yeah, super just spartan, super run things nice and cheap.
And when you would tell those guys how like beloved they are overseas, they
it was like a shock really, like yeah, like you guys made all
these amazing games and like nobody They're just like, oh, yeah, we're
just doing our thing, probably at like minimum wage, you know, Like,
oh yeah, fad, that's depressing. Rick and Nashville has another email
that might inspire a little more reminiscing. Uh. Jeff spoke briefly of the
process of getting the quote major exclusives in print and on websites, which aren't
really relevant anymore. I was wondering if he could speak to the process of
getting those exclusives. He mentioned negotiating for them, and I was interested in
what that actually meant, Like, you guys probably have an even dan foot.
For us, it was like, you know, hey, we can
give you the top slot on this day and we will. You know,
this is the type of coverage we would want to do for this game if
you give us. So basically it was like, if you give us this
access to your game before anyone else gets it, we will put it,
we will promote it here, right And the sticking point we would run into
is that that top slot changed every single day, so you know, it
was like for one day, you'll be on this thing, whereas like a
print magazine stares out at you for a full month right from from an airport
news stand. Yeah right, yeah, And like yeah, Game Informer made
a huge business model really for a while of having that the exclusive and that
they do. I think they are one place where it still does kind of
matter. But all the other magazines kind of went away. So they have
their they have their pick now and it's such prime real estate. You know,
pr goes for those covers because it's right there, front center at every
register or game stop. So yeah, they went to this many people on
the last time. Yes, circulation really mattered back in the day. I
mean I remember when we at EGM. I don't remember where it peaked,
but there was a period when when I was there, when it was up
at like around five hundred or six hundred thousand uh readers. And I don't
know exactly how they got that. It certainly weren't all subscribers. I mean
there was some amount of newstand you know and pass along and all that crap.
But I mean at that era, at that point, like that meant
something to people. Yeah, But then, like Mark said, I think
Gaming Former came around just kind of ruined it for everyone because they just had
they had to circulate, and they had the pipeline to retypeline exactly exactly.
And that's just why would you go with anyone else when because all at the
end of the day, you know, even if you thought your magazine was
the best or not or whatever, like, at the end of the day,
who can reach the most people. I remember they're being like some just
some push from maybe it was from Ziff, but there there was something to
try to counter what Game Informer was doing by saying like they give all those
books away for free, you realize that, like Game Informer goes out to
all these people that just our game, stop whatevers, and they were trying
to make ABC the place that regulates circulation. They were trying to make it
count because it was it was people not paying just for that they were getting
the game. They were getting the power up awards, the land cards,
and I used to make with the with yeah yeah, they would give us
commissions. They would give two dollars commissions on every subscription and Game Informer yeah,
yeah, yeah. They used to have a policy on in the early
days, in the early to mid nineties, Game Informer would only be games
that were out, and it's like we're gonna give you all the tips,
We're gonna give all the strategies and stuff. And it was funny going back
through the old archives when I worked there and like and passion letters from the
editor from Andy being like, we will never have a pre release game on
this cover. Remember that, and it's like now our entire business. But
uh yeah, that was the big thing. Is PR would fly usually the
creative director and one or two other people and a dev kid out and they
would sit in our because they would come to Minnesota because obviously stuff in the
office we had to go to all the studios. Now, no, that
was once we were actually writing the cover stories. We would get sent out
to whatever. Okay, but it would be like would come in and it's
like, oh, BioShock Infinite, which no one's even heard of, is
just in the office here. And sometimes we'd get to come in and see
this stuff and they would pitch it to Andy. Yeah, we benefited from
being away from everyone because we were in Chicago. They were in Minnesota,
and like that was like the two places that the press would go, and
the pr people probably wanted it too, like I get a trip out to
the Midwest, you know whatever to go show games. But like one of
my some of my favorite memories at EGM were like the guys passing through and
bringing games because then we'd we get to check out stuff and like that sort
of exclusive environment. But then we get to go hang out with these guys
and become friends with them and stuff, and I'm like, that was really
fun. And Minnesota, they would always be doing the rounds, usually because
Target and Best Buy are both based out there too, so a lot of
times they'd be showing it to all three You know that that usually was a
little closer to release, but yeah, every once in a while it would
be like six months before you know, Skyrim launches sky Rims in the office
or whatever before Skyrim's announced, you know. Yeah, so that was always
really cool to see that. So yeah, I remember talking to different people
about like pitching their games to Game Informer and stuff like us, Yeah,
we're trying to get a GI cover, so you know, like this game
that hasnt been announced yet, I gotta go out there and hopefully those guys
will bite on it because yeah, we need it or whatever. One of
the one of the things we shifted to, like towards the end of my
time, as if when I was doing video is we would start with the
well put together these like packages where I was like, okay, you have
the EGM cover, and then while we're there doing the EGM cover story anyway,
let's just film it and then we'll put that out as a video at
this timing and then you know, there will be web stories on it and
this timing, and so you got like a month of stuff and I know,
like Game Informer does that stuff now too, and they do it really
well, like the stuff that Ben does and with the with the video they
do some really great Remember seeing like it seemed like One Up was trying to
go for like that almost cover approach, like the month we're cover story coming.
Yeah, that's right. Remember thinking of that was like interesting to try
to like solve that problem. It was trying to like, yeah, I
was trying to like use every part of the Buffalo thing and also trying to
like yeah compete with with with game and formal that just had the sheer raw
numbers. I remember, I remember being super jealous of you guys having that
kind of like what do we have that nobody else has because we would be
able to get like first hands on at the drop of a hat. You
know. It's like you know that was that was like that like IGN and
Game Spot we're fighting for. And I remember there was a big deal with
like buying a Commando of Street Fighter four, like Capcom was getting ready to
announce both those games. It was like it was the first time when we
were like finally gonna like actually announce a game and I think you guys got
Street Fighter four, yeah, and we were actually like I was actually super
psyched for buying a Commando because I was like, fuck, yeah, dude
buying a Commando and then maybe in retrospect should have maybe foddled it harder for
the other one, but could have gone either way. Yeah, it could
have gone either way. Yeah, yeah, but generally we didn't. We
didn't break games, you know, right, Yeah, that was and there
was still like a big premium on print. Just people. It's just this
irrational like seeing your game on a cover of a printed thing, even if
it was there's a lot of executives that didn't understand the Internet, but you
could hold that thing in their hand and go up okaye on there at the
grocery store or whatever like that. That mattered even a lot of people,
even as a writer, just having this tangible thing like I've got these fifty
five sixty whatever issues game in form, Like it's it's cool seeing that go
to print every month. Yeah. Yeah. And the process of doing those
cover story trips was great too, because we would always send three guys,
so like we'd go out to the studio and I would write the ten to
twelve page print cover story or whatever, and then like Tim Turry would be
in charge of the written online content for the month. So that was all
different stories and stuff. You know, that was you know, features on
the characters or the weapons or whatever. And then Ben Hanson was putting together
you know, four or five or more video features that would run online,
right, so you know, definitely dividing up the duties and stuff. But
those are always really fun to go on, right right, Yeah, And
if you're into that game, like that's great. Oh yeah, the people
and there's a lot of content. So it was always just fascinating seeing the
pitches or just you know, there was always this feeling of like someone who
you know loves games and grew up that way. Like there was always this
kind of off factor of like here I am seeing this thing. Oh yeah,
like a dozen people know about it completely. Yeah. I remember like
playing the Splinter Saw. I think Pandoor Tomorrow was the first one with the
multiplayer and it was such a like the like completely unbalanced nature of it,
like just completely blew my mind. And you know, seeing that so many
months before anybody had knew about it or thought about that kind of thing.
I was just one example, but like, yeah, there was a lot
of stuff in Japan to get into Mist Japan Trips Man were amazing. Got
to play metal gears solid like before anyone they had this one pressure to their
offices where I met Cojimi where he wasn't really a big deal yet just like
a regular dude and he was and you'd show too because you had access to
his office, like, which come on, would not happen now. But
like those are great. Those are like amazing to be to just be to
be a part of you know, the level of access you guys are talking
about in print is like something we could never dream of, you know,
just you know, yeah, we would get it here and there, but
it just but now with the way things are at some point, going and
producing long form content is not the smartest thing you could be doing at some
point, Like it's it's because there's so many people out there live streaming everything,
like they're the you know, it's why we do all these quick looks
and all the other stuff. Is like, you know, that's that's what
the audience seems to want these days, and that's that's cool too. Like
I actually the quick look really like the kind of thing it's that unfettered just
like you know, like, hey, the game's out, but like we're
just gonna give it to you. Raw right here. It is for reels.
Ye. Uh, it's just like fun in a different way. Yeah.
I think the quick look is the one thing because and I was working
in video when I left, but the quick look was something like, what
fuck? Why didn't why don't we just do that? Because you spend all
this time, like you know, editing together something, but you're not really
getting anything better than somebody just laying it out a normal conversation playing it and
uh, and of course so much you know, more efficient, so much
quick. But yeah, it does save a lot of time for sure.
Let's keep this nostalgia train rolling. With a very simple email from Elizabeth,
it says, based on the number of devs dropping out, how long before
Giant Bomb stops covering E three? As long as there's an E three,
you know it'll be covering. That was the thing I said, is like,
you know, as long as there's enough developers in one place at E
three for us to like do our night show and and do all that sort
of stuff like it's worth doing. You know. They of the information comes
out of the press conferences anyway, so the people showing on the show floor
kind of doesn't matter. And with that I'm gonna run to the restroom.
Guys, take the rest of this stuff. Sorry, all right, uh,
all right, now's the perfect time to read this email. We can
we can speak candidly from Luke and Little Rock. Hi, Luke. The
subject line just says in all caps with the space between each letter at Surrus
regime, my goodness. With two of my favorite Destiny podcasts combiding forces today,
I wondered if Mark could give his thoughts on the state of the game
Curly and what he expects in the spring and fall updates. Also, what
features in the division would you like to see in Destiny? Interesting? Yeah,
there's probably good at least for the first part that the Jeff went the
room. So I am not have not been playing Destiny the last few weeks,
and I'm okay weeks really yeah, you made it that long. Yep,
no kidding. Yeah, I'm completely fine with it. And at first
it felt like wrong, it felt like there's something wrong with the game if
I'm not playing it, and you know, bsur I would Resurre didn't have
stuff exciting, and the weekends would go by where I didn't I'm like,
shit, I didn't even I don't even know what Zor had last weekend,
Like who am I? Who am I anymore? It's part of that just
because you were kind of getting everything you need wanted at that point, like
there's only so many items to sell exactly, there's not there's not new stuff,
and there's not news enough to use new items on anyway. And I'm
not big into the PvP stuff, so if I was, maybe I'm still
be more worried about like the Trials as Cyrus stuff or you know, I've
been to an Iron banner or whatever. But I'm now okay with it because
I look at the number of hours that I have played Destiny and the amount
of money that I paid for it, and it's completely ridiculous, Like I'm
not paying a monthly fee. If I was paying a monthly fee, this
whole dynamic changes completely and I'm pissed off. Why do I not have stuff
to play right now? Blah blah blah. But would you pay a monthly
fee if you did have new stuff to play all the time? So so
the the the reverse of it is, it's money is being left on the
table, because I absolutely would be happy to be paying more money right now
to be getting more new content. But now that I'm not, I'm I
have time to be playing other games. Like now you know, I'm going
to be traveling a lot this month, i have division to be playing.
So I am. I am fine with it. I want them to be
making more new, good, really good content. I'm still you know,
they're still kind of vague about what's going to be coming in in what updates,
Like they're like a sizeable update. I don't know what that means.
So they're raising the light level which is spring update and some new content,
right, but who knows what that means, right, And so I'm hoping
that that will mean a raid because that's my favorite part of the game,
and that's the most replayable stuff to me as well. But but I'm I'm
actually fine. Like again, it felt weird just because at first, because
I have been playing it so regularly for so long to actually stop for a
while and it was like, yeah, what the fuck? What's going on?
This is messed up? Why isn't not? And it's like, well,
actually, wait a second, I've played it for probably like seven hundred
hours or something like that, Like why not stop and play some other games?
That's fine, I'll put it on the shelf like like you know,
like they say, and uh, and then I hope when the new content
does come that it's not like like the Sparrow Racing didn't really do it for
me and that kind of stuff. So I want new reel Like I would
love to have another Raid. I would love to have more like strikes,
like actual replayable content. So so yeah, so I'm not playing it right
now, but I'm not like disappointed or unhappy that I'm not playing it.
I guess if they added a bunch of AK forty sevens. So that's that's
that's the second part of the question. What what do you need from from
from the division now in Destiny AK forty sevens Okay, as much as possible.
No, I don't know. Beanies, uh backs, Yeah, hats.
That's another thing about the division, Like the hats. They have different
names, but I swear to god they look exactly the same. Yeah.
There's like one has like a you know, like a crest on it or
something and the other doesn't. And they're named it's like if it's totally different
things. It's the modern one. Yes, the thing don't exactly It's like,
yeah, I don't know. I I do think that there's uh,
I like the real world settings of Divisions, So if I had to answer
that question, I don't know, maybe more stuff set on Earth, different
parts of Earth to see kind of what's going on and in the other parts
of the world besides Russia. I don't know. What about you, Bren
Oh gosh, I don't know. Well, I haven't played enough Division yet
to really say. What about the first part of the question, what about
your feelings on dude? I don't know. I stopped playing that thing when
it taken King come out mid September. Yeah, I think I made it
two about in mid October. Then, just did you ever do the raid?
Did you do? Oh? Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah,
I never did hard mode, but I did the regular raid okay five six
times. Yeah, Sparrow Racing was not not into it, like the Valentine
stuff. Like I just yeah, I didn't nothing they've done. I just
don't like the competitive parts of Destiny very much at all. So it's,
you know, the more the time they spend on that, the more I
feel like they should be spending that time on better, more interesting single player
or you know, right, it feels like that stuff is probably like easier
for them to make to get stuff to than the you know, the amount
of replayability that that stuff gets out of the community is probably higher. But
on the same way, I don't. I don't really play the PvP stuff
that much. So, yeah, some people are super into it and that's
great for Yeah, yeah, not us. I guess there are other games
I'd rather play for PvP stuff. Yeah, all right, I know,
eight four guys, y'all got meetings to get to and whatnot. But a
couple more questions came in for you. This one's from Lychon in the Massachusetts
I guess of gaff fame. He also know, how much of a game
do you typically need to play when you're localizing it? For example, do
you need to play every quest, side quest, mini game, and or
any other miscellaneous activity in order to make sure the localization is correct. That's
a good question. I mean, ideally you would, but most times you
you can't do that. So, like, I think you need to get
a good idea of the game in general, for sure, but then you
know you're going to go through a quest if you're it depends, you know,
if you're translating something or if you're editing it or if you're just overseeing
the project. Right, it's all different answers. But like we try to
see it all anyway though, right, I mean, like even if you
can't play it, we'll get videos of it, or we'll get information we
need on it, right, right, But I mean, I'm not going
to watch I'm not going to watch somebody play through and beat every monster and
Monster Hunter like six thousand times that you know is required. I'll just but
I need to see the parts of it that have the story and the dialogue.
I need to see the character talking and like that setting and stuff like
that. And so if I have one character in the game, you know,
you might have debug tools and stuff where you can just Okay, I'm
going to now just talk through with this character and see everything that they say
through the game. Ideally, at some point before you're finished with that,
you experience the game as close as you can to the way that the player
will because a lot of times in ways that will surprise you, you'll want
to change the dialogue based on you know, oh, I just I talk
to you, but I haven't talked to you or seen you, you know,
in the village or whatever for twenty years and then suddenly we're talking again.
If that's not acknowledged at all, it just sounds that feels weird,
And a lot of times that's the kind of stuff that I think goes into
a good or bad localized game is stuff that if somebody's just seeing on a
page and translating it, you would never get that. But if if somebody
is is actually seeing it in game and then tweaking it after the fact,
like that's that's where that last little five percent at makes a huge difference.
Definitely. I was curious about how generalized are the tools you're working with from
game to game, Like does it very pretty dramatically like like are you are
you able to like input localized text and immediately see it reflected in like a
running version of the game. I'm sure it's very rare that's being able to
like name names obviously for clients and stuff. Some people really have their shit
together like in amazing ways where like you can what you just said, like
I could literally like change the text in a game, hit a button and
then it's like appears on screen, which is amazing versus other times when it's
like we're lucky if we even get to see it, if you see it
at all, you're ever just providing text back to the developer in there.
Oh yeah, lots like and you know, you don't even know necessarily,
like how wide the window is going to be the text is going to go
into and so line breaks and stuff, line breaks and stuff. Yeah,
that was that was something when I there's not a lot of information out there
about this stuff, but like reading about how like SNSs RPGs were localized stuff
and like like buy facts. Yeah, like you literally buy facts machine,
right, people would be like no, this is messed up right in the
facts right. But but also like they yeah, they they like it sounded
like they didn't even have the ability to like make the text windows longer when
they needed to because they were locked to whatever size they were for the Japanese
stuff like the number of limitations and restrictions you were working with just sounds like
completely so back in the day they would they would basically have to input the
English text writing the code so like right between the the the different like macros
and such, and like just thinking about that now, it sounds like such
a nightmare compared to how we happen now. I mean it's way better now.
It's not perfect by any means, but it's a lot better to the
Sometimes you'd literally just get like a print out of a dump of the code
and it's like, okay, let's go through. Okay, somebody here is
saying like, welcome to my shop. Okay, this must be like a
shop. I have no idea where it isn't a game, but I'm just
gonna put you know, a unique I'm gonna this might it might say welcome
to my shop in four different places, but I'm gonna put a different thing
in English and texts so I can figure out where is leading to where myself,
you know, And then that you get a romback a month later and
you know you put two question marks. Okay, that's that one. I'm
going to change it to this. So you're like completely reverse engineering and actually
to a surprising degree still today with modern games you would be surprised about you
still have to do things kind of like that. It's not there's not uniform
tools. A lot of people, you know, at least use Excel now,
Like you'll get a sheet that just has a lot of Japanese and you
put the English next to it. But like, you know, having context
for stuff and what happens and things like that is shockingly rare. So like,
you know, you'll have a big thing of conversation and in the middle
of it, this person just gave you like a super like sword or something,
but nothing in the text says that or acknowledges that, and so you
don't realize that unless you're playing the game along with it, and that's super
time consuming. And so yeah, there's a lot of reasons for games to
be like badly localized. So when you find one that's that's good, it's
usually Yeah, it's usually a combination of the tools being actually really good and
the people like really caring. It's crazy to hear that it's still like that.
That sounds like the stuff that people deal with twenty years ago, you
know, you know, you would think every game would be like that,
where you can just like put in the text and then immediately hit a button
and see, But that is really rare. We love it when that happens,
but that is crazy rare. It makes a big difference. A lot
of times these guys are making to get their games in Japan, not really
thinking about the outside audience, you know, from day one. I mean,
sometimes it's because they never think their game is gonna get localized, and
other times just because they're not planning properly, you know. But other times
it's like they're just busy enough getting the game out in Japan and then immediately,
you know, after crunching for like six months, it's like, okay,
now it's time for like e figs for the for the English and the
European version, and they're just you know, super fucking burned out. You
may have heard, but game industry producers are notoriously bad at scheduling, and
I don't think that's just the Japan thing, but but yeah, it's pretty
it's pretty bad problem. But yeah, so it would be great if there
would become some some companies have custom made really badass tools, but it would
be cool if if some kind of universal standard happened. So especially with like
indie games and stuff like that, you know, and going into Japanese as
a whole different other problem because we also do like English and the Japanese stuff,
and so having your game be able to handle those kind of non non
Western character fonts and uh and look good and having like a decent font and
stuff like that. It's all really tough stuff. So yeah, it would
be nice if somebody came out with some really nice universal like middleware tools for
that kind of thing. I don't think I enview you your profession, No
you should. It sounds arduous, Yeah, for sure, it's it's really
good. Yeah, totally. Yeah. I kind of feel like the like
then moving over into local station, I kind of feel like I felt with
Print looking back on online, which is now looking back on the on the
online thing, or when I was online looking on print basically like, oh
man, yeah, that's that's that was pretty nice, Like when I used
to be able to enjoy a game on that level and I have to worry
about like that kind of shit. Yeah, all right, let's finish it
off of a couple more quick emails. Keep it a little lighthearted here,
Ryan and Vallejo. Do you have the choice, would you rather give Kirby
a big hug or punch Sonic Hedgehog in the face. You can hug Kirby
as hard as you want, or you can hit Sonic full force. Kirby
would be hard to get the arms around, he's so round. I don't
think you could get a full hug. Do you know how big is Sack?
I just I just want to hug him. You don't have you don't
you don't have big. I think he's about to putting a half tall half.
So actually, yeah, you could get based on that in my head,
yeah, you totally. It's like a basketball. Yeah, okay,
talk about Kirby. You could probably palm Kirby if you get oh that's just
smushy. I mean you could probably Yeah, you can dig your claws and
just really dig the fingertips in there. How tall is Sonic for the for
the Sonics four feet tall level? And just yeah, I could punch the
ship out of someone who's four foot tall, right, like a kid or
super kick. Yeah, wait, what do you what do you think Kurby
smells like things pleasant thing? Okay, sure, I'd probably go with Kurby
on that. Yeah, what if he pops on the inside, you can't
pop all that's horrible. I mean think it's made out diet. He probably
actually is rotting. He's made out of the stuff that like stretched Armstrong's arms
are made out of just that kind of likes. Yeah, you don't know
what he wants to hug that though, right, and then if it breaks
yet, all that gross goop comes out stretched Armstrong broke. What's on the
inside of those It's just this weird like like tree sap. Really, I
thought it was like some powdery shits. I think I remember some like Viscus,
like orange, yeah right, amber colored? Yeah yeah? Yeah?
Well okay delicious. That sounds foul. All right, dig up one more
email here, I'm trying to find that might have been the last lighthearted one
I've got. They're all about They're all about, you know, review process
and and and canceled games and tell people that some industry veterans are gonna show
up and the the nuts and bolt stuff shows up. All right, this
will be the last one, Alex and Utah. I was wondering if you
could tell us a little bit about how you review games. Do you take
no as you go through or do you just write up everything after you've played
enough of it. I was also wondering if there are any games that have
been ruined for you because you had to review them. For instance, Brad
said that the end of The Witness was kind of brutal because he had to
finish it on a Deadline. I have constantly done notes. Yeah, like
you're sitting there with a nopad in front of your I had no memory whatsoever.
Yeah, thanks to Lawrence Mark. Mark went to school Lawrence as well.
That's true. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, ever since I started
at Lawrence dot com, just notes on everything I'm playing, character names,
you know, systems and everything. As far as something that got ruined for
me, probably first one that comes to mind is Mario and Luigi Dream Team
because I had to review that before some trip or something, and I was
like, oh, I can play over the weekend and I'll totally get a
beat. Those games are usually like twenty hours long or whatever. That one,
for some fucking reason, was like fifty hours long. So it's me
just trying to get this review done for like an entire weekend, just full
full days playing it, and that game never ever ended. Also, I
think you told me about this one time. Wasn't it like in the debug
enclosure or something. It was done the three changed to the office. Yeah,
so I to go into the office all weekends punched over this three DSD
bug thing, and I probably would have liked that game otherwise I like that
series. But yeah, that was the review process for you guys back in
the day. I mean, is there anything different other than like what we
do now. Yeah, I was always a note taker time, and yeah,
those with the old Nintendo review things were always a pain in the ass
because especially the hand old stuff box flying guy out the briefcase to and then
the special keys would open up the lock box. Taking screenshots used to be
a huge pain in the ass and used to spend a lot of time trying
to get really good screenshots. And then finally we were like, yeah,
let's just use the screenshots that they send along. But I don't know when
the when that exactly when that switch happened, But that was a because I
remember my one of my first games that I ever reviewed like professionally when I
started as IF was Metal Gear Solid and I played through it like three times,
and one time was just to take screenshots, like expressly, just to
take screen shots. It was crazy time consuming. It was almost like a
second part of doing a review was like not just having to write it up,
but having to take good illustrative screenshots of what you were talking about and
then like a good screenshot with a caption. A lot of times would be
like, fuck, okay, I don't have any space to talk about this
in my review, but like I have a caption for a screenshots, so
I'm going to make that where I can like fit in this you know,
other kind of comments and things like that. So yeah, we would have
to capture a lot of video for video reviews and stuff like that, and
that was always a terrible process because it happened at the end. So you'd
go like, great, I'm done with this game the reviews written, it's
out of my way. No, I need to go back and like capture
like forty five minutes of footage. It was relevant to my what I'm saying,
And I was always the way. A lot of games don't let you
just go back and jump around, and that's started over the problem too.
Yeah, it's amazing to me that the review crew days, you guys had
enough manpower and time to like four guys beating a game like Sounds. So
that's where those other three weeks went. A lot of that though, right,
I mean, like, yeah, it wasn't like everybody would beat the
game, was it. Well, no, that was a reviewer had to
beat the game, and that was a big problem actually around the time I
came onto EGM, because our joke so so within zif. Like when I
first started, I was on Official PlayStation Magazine and and everybody hated the EGM
guys because the EGM guys saw themselves as like the flag ship, yeah,
flagship. They had an email coming had an email string called flagship, which
was like, yeah, we're the fucking flagship of the company, and like
you like lesser pons or and so so our our thing back to that was
like, well, yeah, but we actually play the games that we review
because we only had to have one person reviewing, you know, per per
game review, and like the EGM guys in the last week would be like,
fu, I have like three days left to play four games and do
all this other shit and so like yeah, a lot of times, like
especially in the in the old day, as those review crew things, like
guys would be like lucky if they, like, you know, if one
of the guys got to finish the game. Like that was one of the
reasons we switched to the format of HAT because it used to be just four
reviews or the same size four little boxes. Then we switched to the big
review system. When I was there, that was primarily for that reason,
like that guy is responsible for at least one of us has to really play
the shit out of it. The other ones could maybe stop at like ten
hours or whatever if they have to, and get enough to be able to
say their say without like, because it's just not realistic to have like four
people beat a forty hour RPG or whatever along with twenty other games. Some
cases, imagine it would even be hard to get enough copies of the game,
right, yeah, just logistically sometimes you only had like the one copy
and stuff like that. And so that was a big part of the reason
why we knocked it down to three people on the review crew as part of
the thing. And then it also we kind of made it accepted like yep,
Okay, the big guy is going to be the most knowledgeable, has
to know the games super backwards and forwards, and then the other two just
need to get like it really like they still need to be confident in their
view on the game, but then they don't need to know everything about it.
What the work count for that stuff is, like what is like one
fifty years, two hundred or remember, yeah, I mean the Small Ones
was really was really small. I don't like that. The big ones are
maybe two fifty. I feel like I'm on some dark level. I could
give you one hundred and fifty words and an opinion about a game, so
that to play part of the So that's part of the problem, right.
It's because you could, You could very easily, especially when it's like midnight
and you know you've been working late the last couple of days, that that
starts to seem like very appealing and it's some like, you know, fucking
shitty Game Boy Color game. But we were super strict about not sharing opinions
with each other too, so it's not like you can go to they got
the guy who did the big you know what do I say? Like we
had that to be fair, we never did that cool. Yeah, we
were that way with the second opinions. We had a gi for a while,
but we eventually had to face those out too, just because you just
don't have the time for two people to be playing this sea. It's like
we we built into our system the ability to where you can run multiple reviews
for a game on Giant Bomb, and as a result, I think GameSpot
can too, but we only use it for DLC. You know, the
same system is used to like it. You know if a game, if
we're reviewing DLC for a game, it gets kind of attached on the back
ends the same way that like a second review would. This is like a
little bit of a different topic, but what you said just reminded me of
it. So like, especially with street Fighter five and hearing you guys and
everybody talk about street Fighter five. Looking back in old EGMs, when the
first Xbox was announced and was announced there was going to have a hard drive
the thing everybody freaked out about. And I had completely forgotten about this until
just recently seeing this again. But everybody freaked out because everybody is like,
well, they're just gonna start shipping in complete games and they're going to be
patched them later like PC, and they would backwards and forwards, and there
was a whole huge thing for months about like no, no, no,
no, that's not gonna happen. It's gonna be just like console games.
No no, no, we promised, we promise, and it was.
But now it has become exactly what people feared it would become. It just
took like a lot longer. Well, it took a long time for the
bandwidth to get there to where they actually could put the scope of the game
has changed to a point where that on some level, like like the way
it is right now is not ideal, but the idea of like going back
to those dark ages and being like nope, you like send us the cartridge
and right, that's all your memory corrupted. Oh well yeah exactly, like
send us your memory card, maybe we can fix it. It's that's not
the answer either, Yeah, it's but you want to talk about ruining games,
like I never felt like reviewing a game ruined it for me, But
try working in localization when you have to get the entire plot of a game
down like in the first couple hours of knowing it, Like that's that's the
one thing that sucks because like we we're lucky that we get to work on
a lot of games that actually really like, but they're all ruined for me.
I mean, imagine working on a game like Near you Know, which
which was super plot heavy and like really down to like you had to play
it all the way through to really get the magic out of it. But
you know, for us, it's like we're going to learn all that within
the first week or two of working on the game. You're also the only
people too in just it that way, Like the Riders didn't do that.
The Riders, you know, came up with it over the course of months,
and people playing it will enjoy it over the course of forty hours.
You're getting like a dumb in it. That's crazy, right, Yeah,
it's yeah, it's It's as much as possible with stuff like that. That's
why, like I was saying, we'll try to at least get videos and
stuff. So if we're not going to be able to play through it normally
sometimes because it's not even done yet, at least we'll be able to kind
of see the flow the way a player would see it. Because it's really
important too. I think like kind of know the like get the same context
when you're translating something as a player who was getting it when they're playing it,
you know, because like if if you're playing a game like the first
time, certain emotions and feelings and stuff come out right. But like if
you kind of don't try to capture that the first time through, Like if
you try to get go through the whole game once and then go back and
start working on it, you just lose you know. I mean, I
definitely have had games super ruined for me by working on them in localization,
Like like The Evil Within, you know, I knew about I didn't know
exactly how it would end up, but I you you know, and you're
seeing like really crappy like animatics and you know, very placeholders stuff, and
so you're not like getting the surprises and like the way that it's meant to
be presented and stuff like that. What is about that game is it still
doesn't make sense even if you feel right right that's yeah, yeah, not
not like that that example in particular, but like like you know, seeing
enemies for the first time, and and like the a lot of the gameplay
setups and stuff in that game, you're seeing a lot of like embryonic form
when it's not really there, and so it's not as exciting when you actually
play it through. But at the same time, with those games where I'd
actually care about getting them ruined, playing them early is also a lot of
times like pretty exciting in another way. Yeah, and you see stuff that
gets cut and stuff that didn't never made it, and that stuff's also kind
of that was always the fun, like the highs and lows of like just
getting preview builds on the side of things exact. You know, sometimes you're
just seeing like three levels from the middle of a game and you're like,
well, I guess I just had this thing ruined for me. Yeah,
where every now and then get one of those games just got outright canceled,
but you have like a basically finished build the game. Yeah, that's that
is. There was another there was a totally another email that I had we
didn't have time for, is just asking like, what what canceled games have
disappointed you the most over the years. The first thing to the fact that
they were canceled. Yeah, just like like yeah, yeah, Metallica Car
Combat the first thing. I'm not saying I was at all disappointed by this,
but the first thing that popped into my head was thrill Kill. I
thought you for that reason when we had more or less finished total. Yeah,
there's there's a there's a mostly finished version there. They having a GI
somewhere in the vault, and I spent like five years trying to find that
though. Yeah, it's out there online leak on the internet some point.
Yeah, what about you saw John you saw resid Evil one point five?
I did did? Yeah, Man, I still can't believe that build a
build of that guy has gotten out since too as it has really Okay,
there's some stuff floating around. I'm dying to check that out because nobody had
seen it or anything. And I got to play it like basically at Capcom
and they just they're just like, yeah, I want to show you something,
pull us out. And we saw it and we were just like,
it's a very blue tended police station, right that. They show tons of
screenshot. Remember there's been video footage and stuff like that out now. But
yeah, I guess now if the whole build is out, my memory's ruined.
It's worthless now. Some footage got out of the original R four too,
right before they changed to the third person well they put it was a
proper footage with the like black like smoke or whatever. That was something smoke
Monster version of the game. It was still Leon, right, it was
still Yeah, but it but it was like tank controls like classic Reside eval
right. It was I think it was fixed camera angles, yeah, and
yeah, it was. It was fixed camrangles. Yeah. And there was
like stuff that would move, uh, and like environment stuff and you had
to to run. There was a lot of footage on it on a special
edition of R four I think right one came out that had a like two
minutes or three minutes of gameplay. But yeah, and then it was shown
at that into No conference that one time, wasn't there? There was one
one of those the Capcom five got canceled, right, the one with the
wings I forget the name o the Legendary Wings, like Spiritual what was that
even called? Forgot? They're really going to make a new one of those.
I think that's what that thing was. They didn't necessarily come out and
say it. But the Dead Phoenix, Yeah, I came out of or
something like that, something like that. Wow, I might have just made
that up. But I remember going to like an AM show or something,
and there was a Capcom fighting game there that ended up getting canned, and
it was like one of those like, hey, we're going to pull some
fighters in from different Capcom games. It wasn't it was like and then Capcom
Fighting Jam or maybe that's what it was called, and then Capcom Fighting All
Stars is what eventually came out. Evolution, Yeah, that's what it was.
But there was a game that was similar in scope but actually different that
actually seemed kind of cool. But I remember going over there and plying,
well, damn that got killed. Uh the cast Levannia we worked on a
cast Levania game like got canceled or no, that's right, it was show
Shingo game. That one came out. Those all came out. None of
those was a sequel to Symphony of the Night. Yeah, so you guys,
this is this is it's not like a secret out there. They showed
sprains and stuff like that, and they showed a CG only teaser at Tokyo
Game Show. Okay, what time frame was this? Yeah, this was
two thousand nine maybe, Yeah, you got Ego was working on it and
we we were localizing it and then and this is regret before the other guy,
the Spanish one came out. Remember, I think like they basically decided
this one looks better than that one, let's go with this one, which
you know, yeah, maybe two thousand and eight Manus nine fucking zobec ruined
everything. Wow, like where they were totally full on going to market it
as like this is the sequel to Symphony of the Night and everything. Yep,
yeah, I don't think it's gotten as far as like they discussed marketing
plans, but story but that way, yeah, exactly, And I think
the teaser thing that they showed I think made that made that clear too,
But it was not. I don't know that you need to be that okay,
as upset as I probably would be if somebody told me that there was
a sequel. I didn't. The game wasn't ever in a state that we
actually saw the game. We were just working for the Castalanias weren't very good
anyway, they weren't right. So that was around the time they made that
weird six player thing and kind of the symphony style and you could be alu
card it was five arcade, Yes, wells I thought harmony disonance was it?
I think it was harmony, but GBA was harmony of dissonance, right,
it was harmony. It was something of the fair. I don't know,
how do I forget? I played a shipload of that and I can't
That was a weird game. Yeah, we did work. I don't remember
either. I don't remember what. Yeah, they did like a symphony like
puzzle fighter thing on iOS. Yeah, it was pretty rough and leveled up
and stuff. Yeah, remember Kami. Yeah, they used to make games.
What is that crazy track and field? Right, I missed that.
Yeah, someday maybe someone will license out those ips or we will all learn
to love pachinko. It seems like it would be fun. I don't know,
Yeah, I know, it seems like it should be fun. Yeah,
you can get should be fun. You can get involved with organized crime?
What's not the like, no, that's yeah, I don't know.
Like this is not to get too tangenty, but I was reminded recently that
at some point SMK was talking about making a Mark of the Wolves sequel,
and then they showed a similar kind of teaser of like, hey, we're
working on this thing, and then around that same time frame, I want
to say, maybe like O eight oh nine, it just kind of completely
vanished, like or they updated on it and then never talked about it ever
again. Right, I guess that that just happens all the time. Uh,
I'm sure there's plenty of Nintendo games that will go canceled. I mean,
sixty two was the thing every time. Remember Fantasy Imagine getting into that
vault, I know, just finding that hard drive or hard drives. I
mean, if it hadn't I mean I played Star Fox two at like a
trade show, you know, before they canned it and stuff, and like
I just think it that on VHS that I took from that trade. They
don't have any way of getting it off the VHS onto like a computer.
But someday I want to put it on you. We do, we might,
we might be able to help you with that. And also that complete
game is leaked as well, so yeah, that's out there too, so
it's as the cartridge of that, like yeah, yeah, wow, that's
pretty crazy, including the internals of it, which is just amazing, Like,
yeah, they put them work into that. That's that's really cool,
dedicated. Yeah, that's uh yeah, I don't know, that's I wish
more of that stuff got out there. I mean they're they're you know a
lot of it does, but there's still so many things that just like never
get out of the idea stage that like if you if you heard some of
the pitches that go around this industry that don't get picked up picked up.
I think of a couple, it's just like their fucking craziest ship because everyone's
everyone's pitching to everyone always, right, So there's a zillion different weird ideas
that never happened. Or come like so close to happening and then fall apart.
I mean if people, you know, any any idea that a person
on message board has had has probably been pitched right and then for whatever reason,
like for business reasons. Well that was like going back to the quarterman
stuff. Half of the time with quarterman like people would be like, I
mean a lot of it really was true rumors, but some of it was
like, you know, this would be cool if this happened. Let's put
that happen, and then it would happen half the time it would happen.
So somebody was probably like, funk, how did they know? I didn't
even tell anybody about that yet, you know, somebody got fired somewhere.
Yeah. If anything, this this industry is it can be super predictable at
times, like I feel like you could write a rumor column of things that
will almost definitely happen, Right, we should start a rumor column. Yeah,
no, I remember we sent fake rumors to Game Centers rumor column at
one point and they printed him and that was fun. Was that before you
guys were the same company or we were the same company. I don't know
that got told. I mean, I actually I think we mentioned it very
in a super abrasive dick ish manner to the after they acquired us. Man.
That was always fun. Remember back in the day. I don't know
who was that game spot at the time, but we were out for a
Japan show and they were announcing the PlayStation two and I sent back this thing
saying that it was called the PlayStation Wonderful. Yes, and everybody picked it
up and ran ran it back when you could actually get away with that stuff
where it's just like saying something on IRC was like the only source of source
of news, pictures, nothing, but people still ran with it. Run
the US with that information. I heard it was on Madman's Cafe, so
we have to run it now. Fact magic box. Yeah yeah, seriously,
somebody fund out what Bitch X and the and fat Babies are up to
Tudays. Yeah, those were the days, man, just like Neil the
Castro rumors ye oh man rumors quote unquote, uh oh. This has been
a fun little trip down memory lane. Good. Yeah, thank you guys.
Yeah, thank you guys so much for coming in absolutely and yeah,
uh thanks going well anything you guys want to know. You're here doing a
few res related things, but anything you want to hustle or pitch here steady
as she goes out, one fifty episode of eight four play happens this week
with either Mark or myself. It doesn't really think celebrating the anniversary and stock
Yeah, that doesn't count. Come back at one fifty two. I'll be
back. You can pretend. We'll just pretend that's one fifty Uh yeah,
no, that's it. Uh, eight four play on the Giant Bomb part
of the big Giant Brown family, the Giant Bomb Network. And uh that's
about it. Cool. Yeah, all right, Well, as we said,
GDC is happening this week, we'll be kind of about doing a few
things, checking out some virtual realities. Yes, I hear it's gonna be
hot. Yeah, that's the thing. It's a thing, I guess.
Yes, got handful developers coming through with some wares. Wait, like zero
DA stuff. What are we talking about with their wares? Never mind everything
that I just said. It was like, well, yo, they got
photoshop CD keys. What are we doing here? Yeah? Uh again,
music, they're just trout. Yeah, check out some sixty four K demos
while we're at it. Yep, all right, well let's let's go GDC.
Then, thanks everybody for listening. We'll be back with a regular edition
of Jeni Bomb Cast, same time next week.