Don't be bad. It's the Internet. You're busy. Let's do this for
October fourth, twenty twenty three. For the next hour or so, let
me help you sort through the world of gaming on Game Mess Mornings Live with
me Jeff Greb. Today, French authorities detain Ubisoft to executives, and Nintendo
pulls the cable out of its older modems. But first, please join me
and welcome you. Today's co host the Game Mess Mornings. It's Mike Manati.
Everybody, Mike, how are you doing? Ah good, It's not
a difficult question, just answer it. Mmmmm. See now now I know
you're gonna lie good. Good. I'm glad to hear that. I am
very excited. I'm gonna even I'm so excited I will even flip on the
headlines here. Let's do that's there, we go go? All right?
Yes, so, Mike, it's been uh, it's been a week so
far. A lot of bad news kind of NonStop, a lot of bad
news to talk about on the BombCast yesterday kind of it's not gonna stop today.
But you know, there's there's games coming out. We'll talk about that.
I think we have like three two and a half review roundups. In
this show, we'll see how much Detective Detective Pikachu reviews are out there.
Yeah wow, just like complete disrespect for Detective Pekachee. That's right, sorts
an official round there. We got three or three round ups for Detective Pikachu
and Forts and Horizon excuse me, Assassin's Creed Mirage. We'll get to all
of that by the end of the show. We got a lot of news
though. But you know, really really, Mike, I mean, well,
you've been just well still stick in that bowlder skate three? Were you
up late playing that? What were you doing last night? What the bete
that I talked to you? So you know, I get my Sea Pat
machine on Monday. My sleep quality has been poor for years. But knowing
that it's poor, yes, a little extra too where I like I'm like,
ah, yes, like I said, yeah, So you know,
mornings I've been even rougher than usual for me. You know me, Jeff,
I'm not a big morning person anyways, But Monday I get to go
and then pick that thing up, So I'm excited for that too. Of
Course, the problem now is like I have too many expectations on it.
I'm like this is going to turn my life around, this kind to fix
every problem I have. That's definitely how I live my life too, where
it's like, oh, I thought I realized a new thing that I could
be doing different, and this is the one that's going to change everything,
and then two months later I'm like, well, I feel like I was
supposed to be doing something, and then I never remember it again for the
rest of my life. I did stay up a little bit later in bed
to beat Sea of Stars and watch the first half of that new Folding Ideas
videos, doing a little bit of that, so that was good. So
I mean beating Sea of Stars where that probably took like an hour or so,
and then the first half of that Folding Ideas videos like well with four
and a half hours or something like that, something like that. Yeah,
okay, exactly. All right, Well, let's explain what we do here
most weekdays, I Jeff Greb, will help piece your gaming life back together.
That includes breaking news and maybe even some of our own original reporting.
For all these topics, I'll get the input of a bona fide expert who
will make me look smart. If you are watching live on Twitch welcome,
you can always listen to the show later on podcast feeds by searching for game
Mes Mornings, or find the RSS on giant bomb dot com. You can
also catch the show later with chapters and timestamps on YouTube. Hello YouTube.
All right, we have a lot to get into, so let's start the
morning mess with. Former Ubisoft executives have been detained by police in French a
sexual assault investigation. This is from Nicole Carpenter at Polygon. Five former Ubisoft
employees were detained in France this week, three on Tuesday and two more on
Wednesday. According to a report from French newspaper Liberation, former Ubisoft chief chief
executive officers Sures Surge Hesco think I'm gonna have to say that you want to
say Surgery. I'm gonna go search Rge. I think the character from Chronocra
I think not. Sir j Hasco and former editorial vice president Tommy Francois were
among the five people detained in questioned by French police in twenty twenty, current
and former Ubisoft workers accused the company of creating a culture that normalized sexual assault
and harassment and allowed it to thrive. Multiple top level employees were accused in
the weeks and months following the allegations, several people resigned or were fired,
including Maxime Belon, a former creative director and editorial vice president, and Ubisoft
Toronto accused of choking a female employee Assassin's creed at all. Yes, that's
it, you know, just a tiny bit of choking somebody Assassin's Creed.
Valhalla creative director osrof Is male accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a fan.
HR lead Cecil Cornett and ubisofts Canadian studio director Jannis Mala were also involved
in the detainments. Beyond Haskell and Francois Liberichon did not name the three other
people question by by police. Do okay, those are other people? Then?
Previously were the ones that were let go? I do wonder if that's
who was actually involved in thisgation. The investigation began in twenty twenty one after
French union Solida Are Informatique and several impacted employees of filed complaints regarding you Be
Soft and its culture. Police reportedly spoke to fifty current and former Ubisoft workers
over a year, according to the French paper, before taking the five former
employees into custody. This week Hasco, Francois and the others do not appear
to have been charged, but French law allows police to arrest and hold people
suspected of a crime for up to twenty four hours without a charge. Holly
Gond has reached out to the judicial court and the victims lawyers Maud Breckers,
and they'll update the story if they hear here more. I'm sure we'll hear
more on this. This is mostly still the fallout of what's been happening for
years now at Ubisoft Mike, where we've heard about this culture. There was
a big a lot of reporting on this, and now it's kind of almost
surprising because you always feel like nothing ever comes of that, at least not
in terms of the police doing anything about it. It's taken some time,
but the investigations have seemingly led to something. Even if these even if none
of these men have been charged yet, at least they are being questioned and
detained. That feels like it's leading to something. Do you think that this
is the kind of thing that can continue to inspire change at a company like
Ubisoft or is it too toxic to ever like fully change? I think thinks
can always get better. I think that's for sure. I mean, look,
the good news here for Ubisa, there's any good news, is that
these were former employees. They did in fact fire these people for these reasons.
Yes, for these reasons. So man, it's a good thing they
did that because if not, this would be a insane catastrophe for them maybe
hard to come back from. So is that, you know, and you
know, hey, keeping get visible like this, that's going to make it
easy here for ub some employees to be loud about it, to talk about
it themselves, and to bring it up with their managers, their leadership,
and it's not gonna be something that ease is gonna be able to act like,
oh, that wasn't that big a deal. Now, clearly this was
a real big deal, wasn't it. Yeah. I think the original reporting
of when when these stories broke it was something like twenty five people spoke on
the record about this stuff, and now the police have investigated or have talked
to fifty people, so significantly more. That's like, oh, that's a
widespread issue. If like that's how many people seem need to be talked to.
Do you even understand what was happening there? You do want I do
wonder does this ever lead up the chain and uh enforce use gimmel or someone
to take responsibility and say the buck stops here for enabling that culture to thrive
in the first place, which was always the accusation was like, hey,
this is not just one off of examples of people behaving badly. This is
not a bad Apple situation. It is very much it is ruined the bunch,
and it's ruined the bunch because that's the environment that has been enabled to
thrive here because of people like you used to go on at the top not
taking it seriously. There are examples of people saying, hey, I was
I was held at a party by by Tommy France Swise basically his band of
merry assholes kind of held me while Tommy France Swad tried to kiss me at
a party, and then when I complained to HR about that, they're like,
you misunderstood the joke. It's like, that's the kind of thing where
Okay, if I if that's happening and I'm around, that doesn't feel like
that's not a prank, bro, that's just assault. And if that's happening,
and then that's the response you get from from complaining to someone who's supposed
to be protecting you. That is a poisoned organization overall. So hey,
great that these five people are being are having to answer for the crimes they're
alleged crimes. But I still wonder if you be Soft has been, you
know, anywhere near cured of this stuff. It feels like, hey,
we haven't heard much, but that doesn't mean anything. But for years this
stuff was happening and we never heard really a bad word about stuff happening at
you'bistoff. It all had to come out at once so people felt comfortable talking
about it. I don't know, it seems like you've Skima has mostly gotten
off Scott free. How do you feel about it? Yeah, I mean
I do think he has. And you wonder at what point is there going
to be any muppets for him? Uh? Yeah, it's just brought me.
That's kind of been the theme lately, Jeff, is people at the
top kind of messing up or bad things happening under their watch and other people
paying the price for that. Yeah, and it's like the system is rigged
to work that way or something. It's it's odd. Let's see, I
guess from from here, like what happens next to I'm not familiar with how
the French law of judicial system is going to work, so if these people
do get charged, I bet we will hear about that soon. It seems
like this Liberation newspaper is on top of this, so hopefully we get it
more information about all of that. In the meantime, let's move on to
the next story. Three DS and we Use online play ends in early April
twenty twenty four. This is from Liam Dulin at Nintendo Life in news that's
been a long time coming. Nintendo has announced it will be ending online play
and other functionality that uses online communication for both the three DS and we Use
as of early April twenty twenty four. Here's the official confirmation from Nintendo.
In early April twenty twenty four, online play and other functionality that uses online
communication will end for the Nintendo three DS and we Use software. This also
includes online cooperative play, internet rankings, and data distribution. Again, there
is no exact date at this stage. This is no longer the statement.
It's just early April, so do or play whatever you need, but to
before then, Nintendo will announce a specific end date at end time at a
later date. According to Nintendo, but also mentioned South, services could be
discontinued earlier than planned. Basically, they say, if an event occurs that
makes it difficult to continue online services for Nintendo three dsm WEU software, we
may have to discontinue services earlier than planned, which just makes it sound like
I don't know the servers, like all the way over there. I don't
want to go reset it, and so we're just gonna let it be down,
like that's what it makes it sound like. They're like, hey,
if something bad happens, we might just not fix it. This is inevitable
and also just a huge bummer. Still, the three D SMU sure they
are going to be two generations old here pretty soon, but that is not
going I don't know. It still feels relatively recent and there are games on
there. I would I still think about maybe going on on planing and playing
specifically the original Super Mario Maker. But this is expected, right, No,
yeah, exactly. It seems to be the trend again. Man.
Yeah, because I was like, okay, what games would really bug me
about this? And there really aren't too many. For one thing, Nintendo
Online has never been particularly good anyways. But yeah, Mario Maker one,
that is a rough one to have to lose. Yeah, kind of seems
to be the big one that stands out. Yeah, I think the original
Splatoon. Obviously you can get a lot of the Splatoon effect from the other
ones, but yeah, there's some specific stuff about that game. And then
I'm like, on the three DS, like what like Hitacherus Uprising had some
online mode. I bet no one in the on Earth is playing anymore stuff
like that? Oh gosh, it did Yeah that what do we think that
was going to get remastered? It seemed like, yeah, it's still stid
possible. But uh, right, that that was Sakarai and Van Day and
Nancos like mentioned like they're working on a remaster of some like Nintendo game from
that era, an action game, they said, and that one. That
one made a lot of sense. I think there's also been rumors out there.
We probably still get that eventually, there's there's not going to be some
point in the future where, uh, the the online infrastructure of these games
is just put in a place where we can count on them lasting forever.
They're always going to have an end date, right, No, Yeah,
that seems pretty blatantly clear, especially for con games. Yeah plays right,
Yes, I don't know there. I don't know if there's a solution to
that. I guess unless, like you know, going forward, the infrastructure
for all these things are just so similar. Like if the switch to online
infrastructure is basically just the same infrastructure that the switch has, maybe you don't
have to worry about that anymore. I don't know. Yeah, yeah,
I guess that's right. That's what I'm wondering, is like, do we
get to a point where there the continuity that Nintendo's talking about and that Microsoft
in PlayStation seem to have where it's like, hey, yeah, you bought
all these games, and yeah, of course they're just going to keep we
But I mean, I think at a certain point, maybe more games will
have longer online life than they had in the past. But I still think
like third party publishers and stuff, they have to run anything, any sort
of maintenance to keep their games up and running. They are still going to
be pulling the plug individually on those games. I just hope that overall we
get to a point where like, yeah, you could probably count on the
service for something like that is keeping online switch games running to be operational for
a long time, because it's basically, like you said, the same service
that's running on the new systems, because there's just this this continuity overall.
Though I don't I mean, I don't know when the right time to pull
this stuff is pull the pulicon on this stuff is. But it does still
feel kind of early. But I guess it probably would never feel like the
right time. I suppose so nintended doing this is a bummer. Uh but
here we are, all right, we got a lot more news to get
to. But first we're gonna take a quick break. When we get back,
we're gonna talk about Hyaenas being Sega's biggest budget game ever. What.
Yeah, right, But we'll be right back, and as promised, we're
back, Mike, What was that about Hyaenas? Yeah? You ready for
this one? Canceled Hyenas was Sega's biggest budget game ever, it's claimed.
Oh this is from Andy Robinson at VGC. New alleged details on the development
of Sega and Creative assemblies canceled live serve shooter Hyenas have been published, including
claims that it was Sega's biggest budget game ever. Before the company pulled the
plug. The Japanese publisher announced last week it was canceling the multiplayer shooter and
some unannounced titles under development, and that's in Europe, following at least six
years of development on the project, and that project again being hyenas developer Creative
Assembly has suggested that the game was canceled due to ambitious plans and high competition
in the multiplayer shooter space. However, a new video published by total war
YouTuber voland corroborated by vgc's owned sources and again Total warst Creativessembly's Marquee franchise features
claims from anonymous developers that a lack of direction, disruptive engine changes, and
overly cautious design contributed to its downfall. VGC has asked Sega for comments on
the story, and they'll date the story if they ever get it. One
anonymous developer wrote, however, that so what went wrong? Total lack of
direction. Many of the leadership were asleep at the wheel, but they never
seem to lose their jobs, an engine change part way through the process,
attempting to break into a saturated market, and not committing to doing anything adventurous
with the game. Uh yeah, Hyenas or Get incredibly safe, incredibly safe,
and there's like some interesting tidbits about like what like what direction they eventually
did get and like where it came from. It's pretty wild. Hyenas or
Project Keaton as it was known then, was greenlit after the critical success but
commercial disappointment of Alien Isolation, following which the Creative Assembly Console team delivered the
work for higher project Halo Worst two, which is also claimed to have sold
modestly. Creative eaton like Michael Keaton. Yeah, it isn't Keaton, like
a fox or like a hound. I always think of Keaton because of the
mask from Zelda? Was that a fox? That's right, I'm making That's
just my brain making connections with zero information, So please, I'm probably wrong.
Creative Assemblies Management wanted to create a console game with broader commercial potential,
with Destiny Escape from Tarkof and Pubg cited as inspiration. The game was a
PVPVE shooter with for up to fifteen players in teams of three. The goal
players was to break into vaults spread across the map, battling AI enemies as
well as other teams, looting merchant escaping the ship alive. Apparently in the
early days, the theme here was going to be all of the wealth is
accumulated for a few people, and you're going to go steal stuff from these
rich people, and that was going to be the vibe and the impetus of
the game. But according to yes, I guess exactly. But according to
sources, the District nine and Elysium director of Neil Blancamp. Yeah, Neil
Blancamp visited the studio and was because he was a big fan of Alien Isolation,
but his trip to the studio was more than a social visit, as
he was actually providing feedback on Hyena's overall direction. He comes to visit the
studio and he's shown what we're up to. One source told Volan, he
has some ideas of a direction to take it in basically that you're not stealing
to survive, but instead Netflix, Steam and the other services like that don't
exist anymore, so DVD box sets, music games, all that physical media
is now super valuable. This match the synopsis of the game when it eventually
was announced, which had players rating huge plunderships on their way to Earth,
carrying valuable pop culture relics such as old DHS tapes or vinyl records. He
also had the idea of inserting a lot of Internet humor and stuff. The
anonymous developer continue, can you imagine, can you imagine being a Hollywood director
and be like, you know, what this game needs is some Internet.
He even made a movie humor? Now, isn't it fy the way?
What is internet? Hearing me? It means it's gonna make Dan Reichert very
mad? And I think you're playing Detailah okay, you know, like I
try to be nice. Yeah, mister mister Neil here, but god,
you made one movie people like like, twenty years that Grand Tourisma movie.
What's your deal, Mike? Uh? Why does he get why does he
get the have a safe in this? Don't know. I think it's because
he made one movie that people like twenty years ago. I think that's all
you gotta do. Apparently, uh he but apparently even made a mood board
or mood video excuse me to show what he was thinking. But you know,
as much as this sounds silly, like, apparently developers were like,
hey, after the what the fuck are we doing here period with the game,
getting any sort of direction was a welcome change. So like, fine,
whatever, this is great, We'll work with this. But at some
point the Creati Assembly did part ways with Blancamp. You probably went to go
make a Grand Trismo, got busy and forgot about the game. Hyenas was
eventually announced during a live stream in twenty twenty two. However, there was
still uncertainly around the game's direction and even its business model. Here there is
let's see here. Yeah. Although it's not public knowledge how much Sega invested
in Hyenas, former developers told VGC they believe it was the company's biggest budget
game ever, beating nineteen ninety nine's Shinmu, which was once claimed to have
cost around seventy million dollars. I forgot to mention that Hyenas was Sega's biggest
budget game ever. An anonymous developer also told Voland towards the end, there
were people from sigajs banned more or less permanently at the UK office. This
has never happened the whole time I've worked at Creative Assembly. They occasionally came
to visit and check how a game was looking, but as I've said previously,
they're generally hands off. But with this game, apparently I'm very expensive.
They went in there and got hands on. How does that happen?
Mike? Okay, the whole idea of live service is that you could try
a lot of stuff and fail and fail fast, and one of them will
eventually hit. Now, they are not cheap to make, but they're supposed
to be less expensive because you're experimenting, unless you like become pot committed.
I guess you over commit and be like, this is the one that's going
to work, so we're going to need all this content, and then you
start thinking like five years down the line, and this thing has to be
ready to go and have all this stuff, and then it can balloon really
fast. Like that's also a risk, but you're not supposed to really do
that until you have a game that you know is going to work. I
don't know how you end up in that situation with something like hyenas, something
that developers never seem that passionate about, something that never really had direction,
something that was ambitious in terms of its goals but not in terms of its
design, where they were just taking it safe. How do you spend that
much money on it? Mike? I don't get it, you know,
I don't know how you bet the farm and then at the last moment decide
you're better off just sitting the farm on fire. Yeah right, I mean,
if you're that plot committed to it, like you say, maybe at
least just released it and see what happens. But if it looks that bad,
they're like, oh, yeah, this is absolutely gonna fail. What
were we doing here? Right to chane us on back of Orangey, What
are we doing here? Folks? What are we doing here? How did
this happen? Over six years? The biggest budget ever? No direction?
I mean, this is catastrophic. Yeah. The developers said that VGC talked
to you, said that they weren't even angry at Sega for canceling it.
That's what they say. I'm not angry with Sega for canceling, to be
honest, I firmly believe it only would have lost more money. Otherwise.
They're typically a light touch publisher, I guess because in the past the Studio
Creativessembly has been so profitable. I fear those days are now over, but
we'll see. I am angry with the shit leadership and for the people above
them for not dealing with them. I had hoped that maybe after Hyenas flopped.
We could be kept on at Creative Assembly if the next project was another
nice, low risk contract job like Halo Wars two. But most of us
are likely being made redundant, and I'm okay with that. Really, what
I'm actually furious about is that the redundancies are affecting people who had nothing to
do with Hyenas, like it, operations, marketing, HR, even some
people over on Total War. They bear no responsibility for this banfire. Yeah,
it just seems absolutely nuts. And yeah, I mean there is.
I mean, it's something like this happens. Wouldn't we joke like, oh,
people with the top okay, oh are the people at top over at
creat Assembly or it's like whoever it is that let happen. There have to
be consequences. I mean, my god, this seems like one of the
most notable, high profile failures we've seen in terms of like a big but
game in a long time. Yeah, and it's you know, I think
it probably is easy for us to sit outside and be like we told you
so with games like this, But we did tell you so. We did.
It was obvious to every party at the moment that they revealed it that
well, this isn't gonna work out, and this was your big bat.
Like, the one thing I could say when they revealed it was like,
well, I don't think they're too worried about this at least. This is
probably some stupid cheap thing that they did exactly and I think it was their
most expensive game ever that they had spent six years on. And I mean,
of course you're going to miss the trends at that point, whatever you're
trying to do there in terms of gameplay, in terms of tone, Internet
humor, my god, like, yeah, you gotta like those. That's
just not compatible if you want to chase a trend and try to get rich
with a big with a live service game. No, you can't be spending
shinmu money on it, right. You got to reserve shn MoU money for
Shenmu. That's the only thing that deserves it. That's the only thing.
Yeah, it is. It's you're right, you're right that the diagnosing of
like looking at it and be like, hey, we don't think this is
gonna work. It's probably not that big a deal. Yeah, And then
to hear this, it's okay. This goes back to the people running Sega
don't really seem very good at their jobs, something that used to be a
joke on this show. And then yeah, I felt like recently they were
kind of getting their their legs underneath them. They got Atlas putting games out
everywhere and really hitting the cadence of Persona games, releasing a pretty good clip.
So it's like, oh, yeah, that's got to be making money.
They've got to be doing fine. But to make decisions that can lead
to something like this, This feels like someone was like asleep at the wheel,
is what the developer said. It's yes, extreme example of that where
I don't know how this happens unless someone who could have stopped it. What
either just wasn't paying attention or didn't know what they were looking at when they
when they when they were confronted with this, and either one is bad enough
to deserve consequences. Something we continued like, is that gonna happen? Doesn't
doesn't seem like it, but hr people and they it people though, can
they like can they overwatch this? Remember when Overwatch was built off the bones
of but Project Titan or whatever was is theres nothing to do with all of
these assets and all this work that was put into this thing. There's nothing
just right. But I think you know on fire that you know, you
think you try to figure out like what enabled a Titan fall or a good
titanfle a Overwatch to come out of Titan. When they canceled Titan, It's
like I think Blizzard had a command of what it was doing and what didn't
work and uh and knew what assets it could repurpose and how they could repurpose
it. It doesn't seem like the people like who were working on Hyenas have
that sort of faith in what they were working on, otherwise to transform it
into something else. I mean, it seems like there is like some relief
that the game was canceled, because I don't like anyone there had any strong
feelings about it in terms of like clearly nobody thought of it as a passion
product. Right. What do you remember about the Hyenas trailer or any of
the stuff they ever talked about. I remember how we thought it was an
echo the Dolphin game, and that's about it, Jeff. Otherwise I remember
very little. I remember that the stuff that you would be stealing from the
ships was going to be like sonic dolls or something like that. I remember
that. It's well, yeah, you're gonna be you're gonna repurpose that stuff
in that you're gonna keep working on stuff that involves Sonic. But does that
turn it into another completely new game similar to what happened with Overwatch? No
way, No, there's just nothing there. All right, let's keep moving
along here. Blizzard predictably acts as Overwatch League to revitalize esports program. This
is from Jordan Fraagan at Game Speed. Blizzard announced it would rebuild its esports
program after the twenty twenty three Overwatch League Grand Finals. I've shortened this.
Everybody to go over there and read Jordan's thing if you want the full detailed
analysis what's going on. This is a good idea, it's a good story,
Like really kind of breaks it all down, but I got the short
version here. The publisher largely telegraphed this move by offering each team a six
million dollar breakup fee if the league's expiring agreement was not renewed. Overwatch's popularity
has nosed dived since the league launched in twenty eighteen. Blizzard failed to fuel
community interest with new content, and Overwatch two was a kind of a big
dud when it came to that. New competitors also emerged to eat Overwatches lunch,
such as Apex, Legends and obviously Valorant. China was by far the
most important market for Overwatch, but when Overwatch League's Chinese partner, net Ease
suspended their agreement with the league in November twenty twenty two, that completely fizzled
out and now they don't really have a presence in China. This led to
one of the top teams, the Chindu Hunters, to pull out of the
league in June twenty twenty three. It's not clear how Blizzard plans to revamp
or actually revitalize its esports program. Mike, I'm of the opinion that there
is no plan to do that because that is a marketing expense and that's an
easy thing to pull back on when you're trying to look around and be like,
hey, how can we save money? Yep, and that's going to
be a Microsoft problem eventually here. Anyways, that's yeah, I jumped in
here, yez. I'm one of those weirdos that still watched the over watched
League right up until this final broadcast, and it is incredibly sad. Yeah,
that's since they get like it's a bummer to watch now, that's sort
of tainted the whole feeling, right. It was like watching people give like
eulogies at a funeral. Yeah, even after the final game. It was
people who have put like seven years of their lives into the scene. And
it's really fucking sad because they have a lot of talent in their community that
they have done a good job at fostering it with a Tier two scene,
but then they have never been able to integrate thatsh and the biggest problem with
the old Watch League is that it's a league, and that was never going
to work. A worldwide league was never going to work. You were never
going to be able to get everyone from China to Korea to all travel to
America and live in America and not wind up with a bunch of teenagers who
were depressed as fuck living away from home. It was never going to work
having a condensed league all set in the same location. It got a bit
better when things went online and they did Western regions and Eastern regions, but
then they fucked all that up because they fucked up all of their relationship with
China and most of a good portion of the audience for the Eastern Region,
and a lot of the money for the Eastern Region came out of China,
and some of the most talented players came out of China. Also worth noting,
the final wasn't actually held by the Overwatch League. It was held by
the Toronto Defiant. It was held by one of the East Sports teams.
They organized the whole thing and funded it and paid for it in Toronto,
and then they didn't qualify. Oh Jesus, okay, if you are the
ones that put it on the thing, you shoulde qualify. That's just how
it should work. What's happened with the World Cup? Right If you put
on the World Cup, you are automatically in the World Cup. Le see,
let me ask you the whole I mean, I think you spotted it
right there. This was never going to work. Also because there's a conflict
of sort of interest here the community once in esports league that is about competition
and about this this idea of the game existing as this sport, and the
company that owns the game and owns the IP and is responsible for it is
not really as interested in that. They are interested in people then getting excited
about the game and spending money in the game proper. They've never really view
esports as a as a primary source of income, right, Yeah, And
one of the big problems is that the hand was talking to the foot for
the entirety of Activision Blizzard, where the developers were very much so towards the
middle life cycle of Overwatch, just balancing for the esports crowd. The entire
thing was the most of the community was vocal through the balance of competitive Overwatch
and through high level Overwatch. And that's why they took away one of the
tanks. That's why they decided that the be no crowd control anymore. Was
because the loudest members of the community were esports members and were the high level
players. But that wasn't the thing that like casual players who actually did make
up the majority of the base, enjoyed They enjoyed the weird abilities, and
they enjoyed the mobile elements. And so you had a situation where the entire
game philosophy from a corporate side was let's get people in here as a casual,
fun game, and the entire game philosophy from a balancing perspective, and
why they rebooted the entire game was, let's balance it for esports so that
there's more pop off moments and people who play sniper kind of more highlight wheels
and have a bigger impact in the game. Can't never balance your game for
snipers. There the worst of the worst. I've always said this. Yeah,
thank you, Lexia. I appreciate anyway. Yes, nice, uh
am. I getting other thoughts on that. It's I mean, you know,
Jordan, when you did you edit the story and when do you have
any thoughts as you're not going through it or whatever. I mean, the
whole thing's been a bummer, especially the predictability about it. And I kind
of like that in the headline it was predictable this is going to happen for
some time because this never watchally came out with a lot of thunder. It
was exciting for a bit, right, it became clear pretty quickly. Man,
how do you sustain that excitement for it? Right? How can you
grow an audience for it? How? How many more people are going to
come to Overwatch? I mean the other part of the problem there is,
you know, I Overwatch. His audience has to be smaller, Jeff.
It was at its hey day Overwatch two. I mean, you know everyone
I played over Watch with, I don't know anyone who's playing Overwatch too anymore.
I used to play it daily than weekly, and now I just don't
play it. So everything about Overwatch is a bit of a bumer to me.
But the other thing here is this was a huge, huge investment,
right, I mean, but I mean the franchise fees to start a team,
wasn't it something like twenty million dollars or something like that. It was
a lot of money, a ton of money. It was a ton of
money, and it's incredible to think about that kind of money and then have
the company say, hey, we're not going to make that core feature of
Overwatch too that we promise. That's kind of what I think about. So
nothing about Overwatch makes me feel like taste Jeff. Yeah, I'll say,
like my default position on esports in this stuff is that the esports should not
be run by the companies that run the games. Really that I think that's
it will always lead in heart lead to heartbreak eventually. I think that if
the companies are involved, it should be someone pointed out in chat like almost
a charitable exercise where they are throwing some money to the community to something like
the Quake League or something like that, and then stand back and let the
community do the work. And and yeah, maybe have pump some money in
there, that's fine, But otherwise if it has to come from the grassroots
so that they don't get these false ideas about what like what kind of long
term support, there's going to be people build their lives around playing these games
at a pro level. They do move across the world to play on the
on these teams. They buy houses, and they send their kids to schools
in these towns. And now that their lives are going to be turned upside
down because the Overwatch League just isn't going to be a thing that that Blizzards
and that Bobby Kottock is interested anymore. That's not the way this should work,
absolutely all right. So moving along here, Warcraft Rumble hits iOS and
Android devices on November third. This is from Stephen Mills that Destructoid announced last
year Activision Blizzards upcoming mobile and tree Warcraft Rumble will be hitting iOS and Android
devices in exactly one month on November third. The collectible action strategy title was
originally announced as Warcraft Arc Light Rumble, but somewhere lost the arc Light along
the way. I feel like there's an arc something else called arc Lights.
It's probably like an ip thing. Those interested in checking it out can preregister
with battle dot Net, on the app store or via Google Play. Warcraft
Rumble will be free to play, though I'm sure there will be a cash
shop. Yeah, I bet you're right about that. According to the Warcraft
Rumble website, players can expect to collect over sixty five Warcraft Universe minis as
they play through multiple game modes, including a single player campaign, head to
head, PvP battles, and more. I want to stop here, Jan,
stop listening. Don't even don't even don't even open it up, all
right, man, just don't just stop listening. Please you like it,
Jan, I think you probably will too. Mike, do you know anything
about this? Have you had any interest? I know that there's some thing
where it's like you can collect these minis while playing or World of Warcraft proper.
How are you feeling about this? Were you ever some of that,
like like the pet games, like the Pokemon stuff that they put in there.
Oh, I didn't like that Pokemon stuff that didn't do anything for me
in there. But no, I actually am in like an early access thing
Warcraft Rumble, and actually did an interview that's gonna go up later this week
with some people over there. So I've been following this a bets. It's
gonna be interesting to see, you know, if this pops up, you
know, is it gonna be like Carstone where that was just this cute little
Warcraft spinoff thing and then it kind of seemed like it took over the world
for a little bit. The game's fun, jeffic games, very simple,
you get in there real quick. It is definitely their most mobile game.
Yes, right, it seems like I mean, honestly, even look at
the logo treatment here for video watchers, and if you're listening to the audio
version, just imagine the Clash of Clans or a Clash Royale a logo,
and Warcraft Rumble looks exactly like that, and that's what they're It's very Clash
Royale, right, Yes, very much that kind of game, just with
some Warcraft trappings. The Warcraft trappings are cute. A lot of it is
inspired by like classic World of Warcraft. You go to those zones, you
have dungeons, and you fight like those like people you fought in like your
early leveling up question and World of Warcraft stuff like that you can eventually even
fight some of the bigger raid bosses like a Nixie, that kind of thing.
So they're making use of the IP. Yeah, you know, I
think this is probably going to do well. I don't know if it's going
to sort of break the world. We talk about the stagnation and the mobile
market a lot. How it is a lot of those same games at the
very top over over, and one of them is probably still Class Royale Clans,
right, both of them, Yeah, Clutch of Clans, Class Royale.
So you know, I guess it's like, oh, is this going
to like find a place up there or is this going to be another Heroes
of the Storm were there coming with something maybe a little derivative and it just
doesn't really get that much trash because everybody would rather keep playing League of Legends
and Doda too. It turns out all right, related to this, let's
see here there is apparently Warcraft on Netflix is something that might be happening.
I saw this, but then when I was putting the news together and nothing
popped up about it. I guess on the forums, people are saying that
they think a Netflix series might becoming involving Warcraft. You're someone who's like,
okay on that movie, right, do you think, Well, I got
to go to the mirror of that movie. It was good. It was
good experience. It was a good experience. So yeah, sure, yeah,
you know they you know, getting to go to the Chinese theater and
beyond the what red carpet and all that weird stuff, it was fun.
Yeah. I mean, look, I did think the movie was fine.
I don't know if perhaps having a good day colored my perception of it a
bit, but it's not like some amazing movie. Absolutely, I want to
I want to show that the image here of like what people are talking about,
because when I look at it, it's like, it looks it looks
fake. There we go, Yeah, this looks fake as all hell.
This picture Warcraft Chronicles Owning on Netflix, coming twenty twenty four, shot with
someone's phone. It's blurry because something's a leak, doesn't mean the picture has
to be blurry and on a tilt. So yeah, I don't know.
I don't know about that mean neither. I'm gonna I'm right now, I'm
sticking to this is probably fake. But I will say at the same time,
of course, the Warcraft we make Netflix. Maybe what Netflix is best
at right now is adapting video games. They're on a better streak of that
than anybody, I think, at least they. You know, Netflix is
not always directly involved in making it, but they were picking the winners and
the Cansylvania stuff and the Witcher stuff and the cyberpunk and fucking Lord League legend
stuff. That's a hell of a list to be like, Oh, all
that stuff is not just good. People love them. Yeah, So if
they want to do Warcraft, I think that would make a lot of sense
and I would welcome it. There's a ton to do with Warcraft, right
It's almost especially in the game. The problem is that there's too much lore.
Now behavor show you kind of pick and choose what you want to make
your show about. Problem there is warcraft. Warcraft has always been at everything,
which is sometimes a problem with the actual game. It can be funny,
it can be dark, and you know, you can look like a
cartoon or it can look like well that's why what you pick. I know
what you do is you get very specific with it, and I think you
make something that is probably pretty similar to the legal Legend show. I can't
remember the name of it right now, do you remember? Great now?
Yeah? I can't either make you make something like that first, but then
you do make a funny cartoon. Thank you, Arcane, Thank you you
do make a funny kids show cartoon because that stuff does well on Netflix as
well. The Cuphead Show is fantastic. My kids love that. Yeah,
let me tell you what I think they're gonna do. I think they're definitely
gonna do something with sexy night elves. Oh in their kind of early arcane
magic starving days. I mean, I think that's a night oven. This
bad blurry picture but AI generated image. Yeah, Warcraft for Netflix, please
being image creator? All right? Moving on here to surprise. Red Dead
Redemption update adds sixty frames per second option on PlayStation five from Tom Ivan at
VGC. Rockstar has released an update for the PS four version of Red Dead
Redemption that adds a that adds a sixty frames per second option win played on
the PS five. The studio released PS four and switch ports of the original
Red Dead Redemption in August, and a Wednesday, players noticed that the game's
latest update came with a welcome surprise in the form of a sixty frames per
second option that can be toggled on and off in the pause menu. Red
Dead Redemption a very successful game that that's pretty deep that I think that was
one of the things people were like, why isn't that in there? Now?
It is that this is a really nice thing to see, and people
are seem pretty happy with it too, from what I've noticed online so far.
Yeah, I almost factually want to go and check it out now,
but can't do that. No time for that. Absolutely not too bad.
Yeah, I love Red Dead Redemption one, but yeah, just absolutely not
going to have a single moment to go back and play Red Dead Redemption one.
I do want to see what that looks like, because I mean,
is this gonna be Is this the first time this game I've ever been running
at sixty fps? Di? Did it have frame r Xbox? Yeah,
it does. It have frame rate And you know what, now I think
about it, the Xbox backward pet version is very very good, but I
think it was at thirty frames per second now that I try to remember back
to when I was testing it. So yeah, this might be the first
time on console. It does on backupats this, but le see okay,
because I was trying to maybe that must be something added later, because I
think in the early days I was testing it, I'm like, oh,
the auto HDR is cool and it is running really smooth. Okay. So
yes, it was and is at their Okay. So we're getting conflicting information.
If anyone wants to look for sure, let me know. I appreciate
that. I'll update it from the chat. Hit Man Blood Money Reprisal is
coming to the Switch this winter. This is from my Nintendo news. Feral
Interactive is announced that they are bringing hit Man Blood Money Reprisal to Nintendo Switch,
iOS and Android. Along with the announcement comes a new trailer showcasing the
classic stealth based action game. Hitman Blood Money Reprisal doesn't have a release date
just yet, but it is scheduled to be released this winter on the Switch
platform. There's an announcement, trailer and all that stuff. Uh, this
is I'm very excited about this, Mike. Then I you know, I'll
be honestly, I'm mostly a hit Man twenty sixteen and on guy. I
played a little bit of the hit Man games before that, but not really,
and Blood Money is the one that people always played, I was like,
they really like that game. It's like an early take that was pretty
similar to what we got with Hitman twenty sixteen. Yeah, I like you
were. I honestly had no interest in the Hitman series until the World of
Assassination Games. I was like, oh, these are great, and now
I was. I was a little curious a little man. They were like
five games, Sweater those like And I also hear that blood Money is a
favorite. Absolution is like that that was the one where when way more just
like an action game. I remember Splinter so did the same thing. Yeah
that time. Do you remember the trailer for Absolution when it was like the
sexy nuns or whatever. I remember that being a controversy back then. Yeah,
what I watched a bit like the opening of it was him assassinating you
that woman handler in her shower while she's thinking, I think he's okay.
Actually was that that was a big thing on a feminist frequency. I remember
that being the thing, and then a bunch of dude roastby on like that's
important to the story. Okay, all right, that's not what they're saying.
Just chill out. Yeah, I mean, looking at this video here,
this just looks like hit Man. Yeah, I'm gonna play this.
This is I'm gonna play it on the switch. This is a I gues
this is awesome that they're doing this. Uh IOI it looks like, yeah,
they contracted out Feral Entertainment. The studio seems to be doing the port.
Uh that's yeah, the io. Why is out on their own?
Why wouldn't they just bring it? Oh Man, King Griffy. Sorry,
another three hours of relaxing King Griffy winning run music just popped up on my
feed, not another one, another way I got bigger, just taking over
YouTube. I'm glad that iowai is finding the capacity to make stuff like this
happen. They seem very busy making Hitman the world of assassination into this platform
that now exists. It kind of still gets updates, even though they said
they would stop doing that. They're they're working on the Double seven game.
They have that like Project Dragon Massive RPG that they're working on. I'm glad
that like Hitman is getting this kind of love, because it's going to be
a while before we get a new Hitman, like a new new hit Man.
Yeah, and that's fine. I am completely okay with that I'm gonna
keep playing the rogue light mode that they put in Hitman World of Assassination.
That's great, but keeping it relevant with like a little moves like this is
important to me because I want Hittman to stay relevant. God, I would
love to watch you play like the original hit Man code named forty seven someday.
Yes, yeah, it's two thousand pc Jank. I would enjoy that.
We can definitely forget to find time for that somewhere, all right,
Moving along as we get kind of short on time here, Boomerang X studio
Dang is shutting down. This is from James Hard at Destructoid. It's a
sad day for the indie gaming scene as Boomerang X developer Dang has announced its
imminent closure I via post on Twitter. The announcement was made via a screenshot
on of a notepad document, causing some to wonder if this was a joke
in poor taste. The studio conffirmed and the replies that it was really clear
down in the announcement, the team said the closure is primarily due to a
lack of resources for its next game. Basically, you know, Boomerang X
was a well regarded game, but they are now looking for investment to make
a new game, and no one is biting, uh, and that's so
they don't have the money to keep working on stuff, and like, yeah,
we could try crowdfunding, but that doesn't really work for our vision and
be kind of difficult to pull off, and so they they're they're disbanding.
They said we might work again and again in the future on something small,
but in terms of being a team that's working on relatively bigger indie games,
that's just not going to be in the cards anymore. And that's disappointing.
Do you think this is a sign of like investment going to be harder to
come by for these smaller teams or is it just like there's so many studios
it's just naturally difficult to come by. I mean, I'm sure it is
difficult to come by, but you do worry these days what investment is looking
like in general. But I don't know. Again, it just seems like
there's so much bad news going around Jeff, Yes, even as we have
one of the greatest years ever in terms of game quality and quantity, that
it's hard to not read into this and wonder if we're going to see future
problems. So we have been having just teams just say ah, yeah,
we're just ending, we're just done. You know that that that Desperado's three
team. I can't remember the name now, you know they released a new
game this year and then they're like, yeah, that's it, We're just
done now. Actually yep. And it makes me wonder. It's like,
okay, well, what would change? What's that the name of the teams?
Me me me, Oh, that's right, thank you. Yes,
I sound like I was just talking like a baby for a second there.
Yeah, but he's just making sounds, but it sounds like he's trying to
communicate bug. But yeah, I wonder, like what would have to change
in the like the game making environment to keep these teams around. And it's
like it's tough because the how do you to go out there and convince these
investors to give you money in a hit driven business? Like for years and
years we would I would talk to investors and they would say, it's hit
driven business, and picking hits is really really difficult, and we're scared of
doing that, and so we're we're kind of afraid of investing at all.
And then investment picked up in the years since then, in a lot of
ways, seems like it might be cooling off again and it's hurting teams like
this. So hey, I don't know, maybe move to Canada trying to
get some of that public funding. Uh, that's that seems to be working
in some countries. It's not everywhere, and it's not going to be a
universal thing, but boy, that would be nice if we had more of
that going around. Let's just all moved to Canada, everybody. Let's do
it. Cheap, cheap drugs, let's go never mind. I don't want
to go to hell. The prescription drugs, my prescription drugs, the kind
of your daddy hands out. It's all good. Okay? Are those are
good godly drugs? That's right. Titan Fall two fans, I'm just gonna
editorialize year a little bit, are losing their minds. Uh. Fans think
Respawn is teasing something big again. This from Alex Hopley at Game Reactor.
Is there going to be another titan Fall game? Earlier this year? If
you had had asked us, we would have said no, as it seemed
that there was a third a titan Fall in development. But that was that.
It was as Respawn instead focused its efforts on Apex Legends. Now,
with the teases that respond is putting out, including a random patch to titan
Fall two out of nowhere, it seems like new life could be breathed into
the franchise. As pointed out by games Radar, fans on Reddit have been
scrambling for more clues, and they believe they've found one of the game's featured
playlists. All right, Mike, buckle up for what they're saying here.
The latest mode to rotate in is called the Other Side. Eagle Eyed fans
also known as Lunatics the Eagle Brain Universe Brain fans have made the connection between
other Side and the title of a red Hot Chili Pepper song, other Side,
which is the third song on its album, And so that means we're
getting titan Fall three. Mike, do you have anything you would like to
say to the titan Fall fans out there? Get a grip, grow up,
guys. I mean, this is even a very impressive way of somehow
manifesting the number three. There must have been an easier way than this.
What are you doing here? I wonderful. I'm sure some of it's tug
in cheek but a lot of the people on Reddit are just like, this
is like a mega level troll. They're just coming for us. I'm like,
oh honey, oh sweet baby, you need to get offline, you
need to go outside. Please, I'm begging you again. Titan Fall three
was in the works. They were going to make it a part of Apex
Legends, and then it was in kind of development hell because the the person
who was in charge of it left and then there was no one to take
it over, and then they realized that, hey, Apex Legends is probably
not worth making a major major investment in because it's on the downslope. So
no titan Fall three in development at least the last time I asked, which
was just a couple of weeks ago. So if it's happening, it would
be years and years away. Sean is defending the sewn claims that there's been
genuinely teasing a lot of other three stuff too. I think, I don't
know, Sean might be one of them. Yeah, Sean's yes, he's
young. He doesn't really he hasn't been through the video game ever. Is
Star Wars battle Front two from like the PlayStation two? You know what I
mean? What can you do with taste like that? That's right, Sean.
If you got honestly, if you want to just pop in and tell
me the other three things, I will probably kick you out pretty quickly,
assaulted him. You just get a yell at me, don't maybe come in
there and oh hr hr all right, let's see here, okay this I
need your help with this one. Mike fans split after Final Fantasy seven rebirth
reveals How to pronounce this name? How do you say it? How do
you pronounce it? I would say Kate. I would say Kate Sith.
I have no familiarity with the Gaelic past of whatever they're talking about it,
that's the thing. And I always just thought, hey, it's Kate Sis
and I it was only like a week ago when I said Kate Sith.
I think when they had that trailer and they revealed him and I said Kate
Sith and some people were like, uh, actually, Mike, it's pronounced
kat s. I was like, what are you talking about? So I
believe these people like a fool. But the official Final Fantasy Twitter account came
out and said, Hey, by the way, this is how we're pronouncing
it. It is going to be pronounced Kate's sin uh huh. So they're
just going with that, you know what. Good. I'm sorry. No,
no offense to my Gaelic friends, which apparently is what cat cash she
is supposed to be from. Yeah, just wasn't really picking up on that.
I think Kate Sith works just just fine, just fine. That's how
we all had been saying, Oh my god, they pumped in at the
same time. No, you fucking moron. All right, well, real
quick, real quick. When I worked at Burger King when I was sixteen
and my my Mexican friends called me hef, I never once corrected them.
I was like, yeah, I get it, guys. It's it's it's
just us fucking with you because you're white. That's it was. They're very
Mexican. Please, none of this diet Mexican stuff or diet Latino stuff Mexican.
All right, all right, is Christian. I need my fellow Latino
back me up like last night. All right, give it to us,
get it out of your system, hurry up. Okay, Well, first
of all, the whole Katesith catchy thing. First of all, yeah,
it should just be Kate since that's how I spell it. It's because there's
a history of them actually calling him catchy, as in, you know how
you would actually pronounce it with the Scottish Gaelic whatab right, And that's how
they pronounce it in Japan. That's what I like a dirge of Sarabas,
which we just don't acknowledge. Yeah, but that's Cannon. It's canon.
So like you, it was absolutely you know, you can make something not
kidding it anymore, just take it over there, shotgun if only they remade
it or something something the titan Fall thing. I am fucking around a little
bit. But they have been like they've been doing some subtle threes stuff like
they have had fun and stuff. I remember when they put they put Loss
of the comic into like titan Fall or maybe e Peck sliches or something like
that. Like you just find a version of Loss scribbled on a wall somewhere.
It's like they've been doing some of that stuff, like with the recent
update and everything. So it's like, I don't think it seriously means anything.
I think it's most likely that they're just having fun. But that's why
people are reading into it maybe a little too much, is because there have
been the little teases that it's probably just respawn having a little bit of fun
there. But that's that's why people are like maybe jumping conclusions on that one.
Very enough, okay, at a way harder line, way hard line
on this. You should all learn how to pronounce actual words. I wonder,
I wonder why. Yeah, I try. If someone tells you that,
like something has a history and that like that history is important to it
and it's like culturally relevant, it probably is and you should probably learn why
it's culturally relevant. I saw someone on Twitter being like, oh, these
are like dead languages, like Irish and Scottish are like languages. And it's
like, no, motherfucker. All of our like fucking government documents have Irish
spelt into them as well, Like we have two languages on all of our
road signs. Like they're not fucking dead languages. They were fucking almost eradicated
by imperialists, assholes, and we're trying to bring them back to life,
motherfucker. So the only way to actually bring them back to life is by
giving them the respect that they have deserved for all these years. Welchi,
well, welch, they're doing grand they yeah, they they have plenty of
they love their they which is cool, which is cool. It's just impossible
to pronounce anything in Ish. An Final Fantasy character Yeah. On the on
the flip side, likes where where Scotland on Gaya Is it next to Fort
condor or like, I don't know. I think the one reason that I
think that this annoyed me is because they have other like characters and summons like
cou Culin that are pronounced correctly, and they're like, oh, cuck culin,
because you can pronounce that pretty easily, Whereas as soon as it's like
something that's difficult to pronounce that, like oh, what if we just like
it's like saying to like an Asian person, like what if we just called
you Jim. Yes. So at the Ellis Island Final Fantasy seven characters came
through and they're like, we're just gonna call you Timothy. That's your name.
Now here's the good news. Lex The next time they remake Final Fantasy
seven, I promise they'll go with Ketschi. They will change it again,
because that's what they do. They're like whatever, and they give it to
a Western studio and it's a disappointment. Exactly there you go. I look
forward to that. All right. We got a bunch of review roundups,
Mike, Can we start with the Pikachu one Detective Pikachu Returns that the name
of the game, that is in fact the name of the game. With
fourteen reviews, it is at a seventy one. Jeff, I think that's
about where we expected this to fall. Sounds right. It's game, you
know, it's acute enough game, cute little mystery game, simple though,
I believe. Yeah, no one seems to hate it, but they're just
like yats it's simple for in four kid. Yeah, I will say it's
an interesting kind of group of the reviewers here, Like you don't see an
ign or a game spot, but there's like screen Rant says. The Techti
Pikachi Returns doesn't quite make good on the promise the film adaptation gave the series,
but it's a solid follow up. Anyone who like the first will double
down on having a good time with the second. Nintend to Life of the
Seventies says The Tecti Pikachi Returns serves up more of what The Light does for
some round, with an endearing, exciting story packed ful of fun and lighthearted
sillyness. There you go. Meanwhile, we have Forts and Motorsport, which
is is doing pretty good. Actually, could you get the metacritic on that?
Why I read some of these, Yeah, it's kind of weird because
it's doing it's like an eighty four. I think I got to double check
that. Look, I ha to say eighty four is low? Of course
not is that low for Forts? I think for the primary Forts A series
it might be a little low. I need to see what Forts was the
last number? One? Six, seven, then seven? I think,
let's see Video Gamer gave it a nine out of ten. Forts and Motorsports
Refined handling next gen visuals. But what was it going to get previously?
Guess Sports of Motorsports Seven was in eighty six? Yeah, it's usually the
Horizon ones do much better. Those are the ones that are the nineties,
I mean, yeah, okay, then six was that an eighty seven?
Though? Okay the days of those games being in the nineties. Forts and
Motorsport was that three sixty era? Right? And so like we can get
some of these reviews of samples here, Forts and Motorsports Refined Handling next gen
visuals. In response to Physics tempt you with the accessible yet familiar thrill,
especially when you avoid spiraling into a bend. A lot of it feels,
like Forts said, but one race will tell you how much things have changed
under the hood. It's a remarkable achievement that this racing sam captures the feeling
of owning a handful of cars that speak to you. As reboot, there's
little more one could ask for. Let's see some others, though, go
with ign. After six long years, Forts and Motorsport is off the lift
and back in our back in our lives. It looks great, feels great,
sounds great, and it's brought with it the most impressive multiplayer we've seen
in the series so far. With five hundred cars and twenty track locations,
it's hardly a small start, but now positioned as a platform, Forts and
Motorsport has the potential to expand into a seriously rich racing destination over the coming
years. And that seems to be where if there's criticism, it's about Hey,
it's not like there's not nothing in the game, but it feels pretty
slim down compared to I think even like what Grand Turismo, the recent Granturismo
launched with. We had a lot more going for it right away. People
are expecting a lot more to come into this game very soon and for years
to come, but as it stands right now, they're like, yeah,
it's a little bit light. That seems to be where the criticism is at.
But in terms of the way it plays and the way it feels,
everyone seems to be gaga for it and what I've played of it. That's
also how I feel. Assassin's Cree Mirage review round up. Meanwhile, what's
the Metacritic on this one? I think this is like seventy eight ish seventy
seven seven five version Anyways. IGN gave it an eight out of ten set.
Assassin's Cree Mirage back to Bay six approach is a successful first step in
returning to the stealthy style that launched the series. PC Gamer gave it a
seventy seven out of one hundred. Assassin's Creed Mirage isn't the triumphor Turned to
Glory that I hoped it'd be, but it's a good first stab. I
think that one seems to be really kind of nailing the overall tone of these
reviews, where everyone seems to like it, no one dislikes it, but
they're not. They're just not like, oh, this isn't the second coming
of Assassin's Creed four Black Flag or something like that. It's not reaching another
brotherhood. No, And I think that's I think that's fine. I mean,
this is honestly, it's a upscale DLC, right it was. It
was a DLC that was turned into its own game. And that's not to
like let it off the hook. But this is where my expectations were personally,
was hey, it's going to be a pretty good Assassin's Creed thing,
but it's not going to be at the top level Assassin of Assassin's Creed either
kind of flavor of Assassin's Creed either. Maybe, But like for me,
I think I'm still going to ultimately enjoy this more than the role playing ones.
This is just kind of what I like more from an Assassin's Creed.
I think most people like this are gonna have a good time with it.
I think I just I mean, I saw some people are like, oh,
all the Assassin's Creed fans are gone, and everyone left reviewing it dislikes
it. I'm like, I'm not seeing anyone dislike it in the reviews,
Like even the well sure everyone's got their serious member. When everyone absolutely freaked
the hell out about Starfield, right yep, reviews like oh so I'll give
you a seven, and now there's a lot of people like, yeah,
okay, I see this seven. I think that will happen here as well.
A video gamer gave it a seven out of ten despite its faults and
playing it very safe again. I think those are the criticisms. Assassin's Cream
mirage is a step in the right direction for Ubisoft and exercise in concision and
a solid attempt to rekindle what made early Assassin's Creed games memorable. Concision is
that how you say that? Concise decision, concise, concise vision, whatever,
circumcision I need. I need to learn how to pronounce words. I'll
go to school. I'll go to school again, everybody, I promise,
all right. That does it for the news. I have a pull from
Yeah, well really from this morning, Rush Year. I didn't put it
up until this morning. Bring it over here. Do you think Marvel can
turn some of its other games into Spider Man like successes. I'm gonna say
maybe in SOMNIAX Wolve Ring, but nothing else. Just like twenty seven percent
of respondents did, nineteen percent said no, fifty four percent said yes.
Fifty four percent are buying into the train here that if they put the effort
in that that Spider Man gets other things like iron Man in Black Black Panther
can have a similar sort of result. I mean, it's hard to imagine
why an Iron Man game couldn't work. That just seems like this should just
be fun, right like or what everybody actually liked about Anthem it was the
Iron Man stuff, So there you go. I do wish we lived in
a world where the Gardens of the Galaxy game was getting a sequel, because
boy, I love that game. That that would be the nice version of
the Marvel gaming universe I'd like to live in. All right, Well,
I mean that game suffered from the faults of the Avengers game, which I
think is now officially officially dead, which is weird because there's another giant bet
just didn't work out. But these days, I think new Marvel games won't
have that stigma or association with them anymore. If any think they will be
compared to these insomniac Spider Man games, yeah, I think you're I think
today is the day it's no longer on stores, the the The Avengers game.
Mike, I have another poll that we're gonna get up here in a
second while we While we're doing that, though, do you want to tell
people where they can find you what you have going on all that good stuff?
Yeah? Please check out games Beat everybody, gainstbeat dot com, where
my crew is always hard at work with some interesting stores. We've got some
good stuff coming out this week. New Nineties Disney is out about Journey into
Your Imagination. It was when Disney turned its best ride into its worst ride.
So that is a fun one. Go to nine zero s Disney dot
Com. Yep, well we got We've got major Mitch later today, now,
don't we we do? We do? We have? That'll be happening
at two thirty pm Eastern time. I think they think that's what. That's
right. That's right. Done with pretty much, Brad, So we're done
with counter striking. Huh, that's right. So here here's the new poll.
Which three DS slash will you online game? Will you miss the most?
Mario Kart seven, Animal Crossing, New Leaf, Super Mario Maker or
Splatoon. Feel free to make your vote. I'm gonna vote here myself here
in a second actually, there you go. Now you can see the poll.
We will get the results of this poll tomorrow on Giant Bomb. Speaking
of Giant Bomb, like Mike said, later Today's Blake Club. Before that,
we will be doing a Wednesday Night Warfare or Wednesday Afternoon Warfare. We're
gonna be playing some counter Strike two with community, so feel free to hop
in there with us. It will be a handful of us on a team
and you can take us out, you can shoot me in the face.
It'll be fun. And then let's see tomorrow we do have a Thursday night
prodown where we're gonna be playing Titan Fall two. That'll be surrounded by voicemail
dump truck games. Mornings, we'll be back all that stuff. We will
be discussing the results of this poll and more. Let's see until then,
though, Mike, thank you so much for talking with me about video games
today. I really appreciate it. You're welcome. I know it's your honor.
It's definitely my honor. Thanks for pointing that out, and thank you
all for watching. You're the best audience in gaming. Until next time,
have a good one, take care of yourself. Goodbye.