Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Game Informer Show. You're weekly
tune in for all things Game Informer. Here, we've got
the whole crew. I'm Eric Van Allen, video editor. Joining
me today Brian Shay. Brian, how you doing.
Speaker 2: I'm doing great.
Speaker 3: You know, it's a strong week of video game releases
and I'm excited to talk about them.
Speaker 1: It's it's so much to talk about. We're gonna have
a pretty fun fast light show here talking about everything
that's been happening at Game in Form and in video games.
And joining us to also do that, Wesley LeBlanc, Wesley,
how you doing?
Speaker 2: Hello?
Speaker 4: Hello, I'm doing great, and I'm very excited to talk
about our latest cover story because I wrote it.
Speaker 1: And that cover story, Folks at Home, is of course
on a Musha way of the sword weird. So excited
to finally be able to show this off. Look at
the scorgeous cover. Look at that it's incredible, it's so good.
Speaker 5: Look at the back to even the back.
Speaker 1: You got some like genma on the back, I believe
some of some various genma of various sources. Uh yeah, yeah,
we'll be talking about that at the top of the show.
As always, Head over to gaminforma dot com slash subscribe
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you will be able to secure your own and Musha
way of the Sword cover story arriving in your mailbox,
and you should do that. Support physical media. It's great,
I'll say it.
Speaker 3: The cover art is absolutely gorgeous, but it like seeing
it on a computer screen does not do it justice.
Like you absolutely need to see this in person. It
is it pops like the art and everything. I have
no history with the ownA Musha franchise, but I am
jealous that I'm not going to be hanging this on
my wall as like one of the cover stories I've written,
because it is so beautiful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, no computer screen will ever capture the
physical majesty of a Game Informer. You gotta check that out.
And hey, if you do miss that subscription window or
if you just like buy an issue by issue, we
are also in bookstores now. Head to Barns and Noble
Books a Million or your local bookseller see if we're
in those shelves. If you're international, we are still figuring
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if you are internationally you see us in whatever bookseller
you have near you, please drop us a line. Let's know,
we always love to hear about where we're popping up airports,
new stands, various gaming places and things like that. It's
always fun to see us pop up in a new place.
So let us know if you see us out there.
I actually, as part of this cover trip, went looking
in a Kina Kinea in Osaka to see if we
were there, but I could not navigate the Quino Kaneya
well to even begin to ascertain where we might be located,
so I came up empty there. But if you find
us in a Kina kanea, let us know. Folks, Let's
get underway. Let's just get right into the main topic.
Ona Musha is our cover story. Wes. You and I
were the cover attendees, the respective writer and video editor
for that cover trip. Let's start with you. What is
your history with Ona Musha going into this and why
were you excited for this cover trip?
Speaker 4: So my history with only Musha largely goes back to
Only Musha one and two.
Speaker 5: They're like the pinnacle.
Speaker 4: Of I am a young boy and this video game
has a cool samurai guy with a cool sword and
cool demons and you get to do cool stuff to
them by hitting them with the sword. And to me,
video games didn't get better than that, and.
Speaker 5: So I always appreciated the series.
Speaker 4: But there's been a twenty year gap, so as I've
grown older, honestly, I've kind of forgotten that it existed,
because Capcom seemingly did forget it existed for a while
there too. But going into this cover story trip, I
replayed the recently released remasters of Only Musha one and
two just to kind of like freshen up on the series.
And not only do they like hold up well, but
they are so like such a fascinating piece of like
two thousand and one and two thousand and two history.
Like the first game is was project titled Singoku Biohazard,
which is sing Gooku's like the Warring States period. It's
when one Musha won a tour set. Bio Hazard obviously
is the Japanese name for Resident Evil, and that game
is straight up just Resident Evil, but you're a samurai.
And then the sequel kind of expands on that, and
as they kept going, they kind of found their own
formula for what One Musha is, and I don't really
think Way of the Sword is resident evil at all.
I mean there's some horror elements, but like it's it's
kind of gotten away from that what that first game was.
But I'm very, very very happy that One Musha is
back in my life and the public demo I've played
and what we played in the offices, which is like
some I've never before seen stuff as well, I'm stoked
for September, like it's it's maybe my most excited game
for September. I don't I say maybe because September is
a huge month for releases and I'm not I'm blinking
on some of the other games, but it's up there,
like I cannot wait to play more of this game
and this cover story trip just like reaffirmed that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was really like I went into this with
no knowledge of Onamusha. To be totally honest and transparent
with y'all here on the GI Show podcast, I went
in just knowing that Ona Musha was a game that
Capcom made that had Samurai in it. It was third
person action, that's about it. Going in, I was like,
you know, maybe maybe I'll enjoy this, maybe this would
be neat. I came out being like, Ona Musha way
the Sword is probably one of my most anticipated games
of this year. Feels like a really strong candidate for
one of the better action game titles of the year.
Really just number one reaffirmed and you can check out
in the magazine as well. The future that Hayes Mattson
did about Capcom's kind of golden age that they are in,
and Ona Musha just really reaffirmed that. Where I walked in,
I was like, yeah, they they've got enough juice to
bring back something from the dead, essentially to say, this
is one of our old franchises that we haven't done
in years, but we are on such a role right
now we can't miss And it really does feel that way,
and it's a really enjoyable game. I think there's so
many elements to it that are worth digging into that
we'll talk about. But one that jumped out at me
was the like the setting and the theming that is
tied so like well into the actual Japan, real life,
historical Japan. We got to go visit some of the
sites that are used as inspiration or portrayed inside on
a moosh Away the Sword, real life temples, locations. What
did you think of those wes? It was it kind
of cool seeing them side by side in your mind.
I guess we didn't have a station there to food
up and compare, but.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So it was actually really interesting because I've been
to This was my third time in Kyoto, and I
actually just went on a personal vacation in Japan with
my family in April, so to come back in June
was really cool, and it put a new light on
places I've been before, which is primarily Kyo meet Sudera Temple,
which is like probably Kyoto's most famous temple arguably location,
and then the Yasui Kompiragu Shrine, which is the like
wishing shrine. And I visited those places as tourists and
I was just like, this is really cool. Oh yeah,
it's a Buddhist temple, like, oh, it's it's old. It
has a giant sword thing that you can pick up
that has like a fun fable tied to it, or
you can pick up like some like there's like a
I don't want to say fortune teller because I forget
what they call it, but you can get some like
fortunes told there and whatnot, and it was like it
was just a tourist spot to go to and it
was a cool location in Kyoto history. And then having
played the game, which the Kio meets Sudera Temple is
the publicly available demo if you want to see that,
and then Yasui Kompiragu is what we played, It's what
people played it SGF.
Speaker 5: It was really cool to go back to those.
Speaker 4: Places with the knowledge of what they look like in game,
but then also like why they were included in the
game Kiyo meets Udera is, I mean, one is just
an iconic location. So it's a really cool thing to
take this lush, green, beautiful temple area that is packed
with Taurus and then put it in early Edo period
Kyoto and turn it into the dark fantasy that is
ony Musha's like thematic styling. But then we also learned
some stuff there, like in the I think it's the
first trailer you can see people like jumping off the
main stage of that, and we talked to one of
the producers on site there and in Japan, we like
a leap of faith, that's a saying we have here
in Japan. They would say, like leaping off Kiyo Meetsudera
is like a saying there. And that's because back in
the day, during the Edo period, if you jumped off
the stage and survived the forty three foot fall, you
were blessed, and so like that was your sign from
the god, from the mythology, from whatever, to like continue
forward because you're on the right path. And in real history,
that's a real thing. Like over two hundred people jump
from that stage, and I want to say sixty seven
percent based on historical records, survived. And so just like
having that strange little nugget of a fact and then
seeing something like the trailer where people are jumping off
and where protagonist Mimo too Musashi is pushing people off
and whatnot is really cool.
Speaker 5: And then.
Speaker 4: In the same vein the Asui Kompiragu Shrine is it's
this oblong stone that has a hole in it, and
you write down a wish and then you glue it
to the stone and you crawl forward through the stone
and then you crawl backward through the stone, and that's
to grant your wish. But today it's more of like
a tourist attraction or just like a fun thing to
do back in the day, there was mythology tied to it,
which is like, if you make your wish like it
might come true.
Speaker 5: But but it's kind of like a Genie's lamp situation, where.
Speaker 4: Like if you don't like something less uh. For example, Musashi,
if he doesn't want the only gauntlet on his arm,
he could wish to have it removed, and the way
it would be removed is cutting your arm off. So, yes,
you did get the only gauntlet removed, but not in
the way you want. And so to translate that into
the video game, they attached a deity to it named Rashiaghan,
which you can see in her cover story what he
looks like. He's like an eight arm figure. He kind
of looks like a a demonic form of my Champ
or something, and his whole thing is like, yeah, I
grant wishes, I'm the but he's called the Wishwharper in
the boss fight, like Rashia Gon the Wishwarper, and that's
because he grants wishes, but he warps them to kind
of appease himself. So in the game, we saw a
woman who is really really tired of playing the Oh
my gosh, I'm blinking on the instrument, but.
Speaker 5: Sham sent Shami Sen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and she keeps having to practice this to appeace
her lord, and her finger's hurt and she's tired, and
she goes to Rashagan and she's like, please relieve me
of this. I do not want to play this anymore.
I don't want to practice. I don't want to play
this dang instrument anymore. And he's like, yeah, I can
totally do that, and then the next scene is him
cutting off her fingers and now he gets to like
he uses those fingers as like a trinket almost, and
she has no fingers anymore, so, yeah, you don't have
to play the Shamis anymore. And it's because you don't
have hands to do so. And we didn't see exactly
how the fingers translate to him, but at a certain point,
you know, his eyes are he's covering his face with
a bunch of hands, and a certain point we see
those hands come off his face and he has a
bunch of eyes, and Capcom told us those are not
his eyes, so, uh, presumably somebody wished for something that
ended up them losing their eyes and then he gets them.
So now he has multiple eyes to see. So it's
a really fun twist on the real mythology of Kyoto
to take these like fables, these legends, these myths, these
pieces of actual history of Kyoto and apply them to
like a video game, uh Mechanic or boss or something
that fits thematically with what Only Musha is doing. And yeah,
it was I was really really thankful we got to
go to Kyoto because I mean it's like a thirty
minute train ride from Osaka. But yeah, really put into
light some of the more iconic scenery I think players
can expect in Only Musha way the Sword because it's
mostly set in Kyoto.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's a really really interesting moment to see
something like that and and realize like the amount of
work that has gone into trying to translate that into
a virtual environment and put stuff in there. I was
thinking about Paranorma site a lot while we were on
this trip, as I always do. I just always consider
Paranorma site before I do anything.
Speaker 4: But we actually did talk about Paranormo site a good
few times. I think we saw a guy playing it
in the airport.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when you and I were walking through the airport
in poland you were like, this is just like paranorma site.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, big paranormosit vibes.
Speaker 2: Everything guy who has played one video.
Speaker 1: Game exactly Hormozy from this. But it was the same
thing of a lot of desire to just create this,
this world, this story that takes place within the world,
and have that real world history, that real world mythology
and folklore play into the story and help build it up.
And I think Onamusha does a lot of that. But
I think what some people definitely want us to talk
about is definitely the combat of Onamusha, the sword play,
which I had a lot of fun with. I was
going into, Like I said, I had not played a
lot of Onomusha in the past, so I was not
aware of what the style was going in. But I
was really pleasantly surprised by the focus on kind of
smart tactical, not just hack and slash your way. If
you tried to hack and slash your way through it,
like maybe you could get through some of the fodder
a little bit, but once you got to some of
the bosses, especially one that dumpsterred both of us a
few times, you really needed to carefully perry, dodge, move,
get around. It was more of a dance, a ballet
of swords, and I really really enjoyed that. Did you
kind of feel the same way?
Speaker 3: Was?
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So the original only Musha games were a response to
Resident Evil, which is, I don't want to say long
range combat, but you try to be further from the zombies.
You shoot your gun from a distance and the game
responds and kind and Anie Musha one was like, hey,
what if we take Resident Evil and we make it
a close range combat game, so swords and we fight
up close, and so it always had a really cool
and unique emphasis on the sword being your primary weapon.
Although there are other weapons to use, they're like triple
tripling down on that in way of the sword to
the point where the sword is your only weapon. Like
and Onni Musha two, you have like three or four weapons,
including a hammer and a spear and some other stuff,
but you just have one sword here. Although you do
have they're called only armaments, which are like bumper attacks
that you can use once the gauge builds up, and
those are technically weapons, but your primary weapon is the katana.
And my biggest takeaway from combat is I love action games.
I feel like within ten minutes of most action games,
I understand and I have a grasp on what the
combat system is. And that's just because developers take inspiration
from other games, they borrow ideas this, and that we've
kind of been ingrained in what an action game is
in twenty twenty six. The thing that's most exciting for
me and Wave the Sword is I think it kind
of bucks that trend in the sense that it is confusing.
It's mechanically sprawling in terms of what you can do
in combat. Yes, you can just do one thing, but
you have so many options available in front of you,
and to me that is it was refreshing to be
confused and to have so many buttons to use in
combat and wonder how this is going to advance further
in the game, as opposed to feeling like I already
know what's going on. I mean, the easen is like
the main thing. That's when you attack at the same
time as an enemy. In the original games, it was
like an instant slash kill that returns here and it's
still the hardest move to pull off, harder than a perry,
which there is, of course an actual pary. The perry
fills a blazing gauge meter, which when it's full, automatically
lights his sword with like blue flames for increased damage.
There is a reflex dodge, which is like a quick,
slowdown time dodge that fills your reflex gauge, and when
you fill that up then you can do a massive
blow to the enemy. There is a break easen. There
is a chain easen. You can deflect arrows, you can
deflect weapons. You can perform my favorite move, the blade barage,
which is like when you and an enemy use the
same type of attack, so a one handed slash, for example,
it locks you two into combat and kind of like
zooms a bit in on you, and then to win
you have to use a move that the enemy doesn't use.
So it really feels like you're playing almost like against
an actual player or something, because if you both use
a one handed move, the blade braj occurs. If you
both use a one handed move, again, they're gonna win,
so you need to be like kind of looking at
what they're gonna do and how they're moving to responding
kind There's grab reversals for like straight up WWE wrestling slams.
There's the only armaments I've already mentioned like there is
just so much going on in the combat that there
is a level of expression I don't feel like you
get from a lot of action games. And that's not
to like disparage other action games. I just feel like,
more than any game I've played this year, I feel
the way that I'm gonna play ony Musha will differ
vastly from the way Brian plays it and from the
way you play, and that's super super exciting for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my favorite thing to do in a room full
of enemies was just kind of like walk in and
just stand there with my sword out and just kind
of wait for them to make the first move, like
almost like Era max on them a little bit and
then yeah, yeah, And it felt so cool like a
game actually capture that without just trying to be like, oh,
look at this guy, he's so cool. It's no, you
just feel awesome when you walk into a room and
you're like, who wants to take the first swing? And
I think one of the really cool things that surprised
me about on Amusha as well was the amount of
love put into the animations in combat. I love the
variety of animations, the ability, I mean, just the talent
to have all these different animations for where you'd be
blocking or pairying or moving around. There was so much
work that will show in the cover story and in
videos and stuff like that that went into just having
Musashi look natural while he's sword fighting in this kind
of three sixty degree arena around him, and it works.
It looks really really good in motion, and I was
constantly surprised by how smooth it all felt. Sometimes games,
especially when they have a perry where you're trying to
respond in that sort of like three sixty realm, you'll
kind of have a character that almost like spins on
a pivot, like he's like he's on a little lazy
Susan that spins them around and and lock stuff. Yeah yeah, yeah,
And here it feels more natural. It feels more like
you are kind of playing somebody who is trying to
operate the way that the human body operates in real motion,
and that that really adds to how intense the combat is.
And then the bosses, Oh my gosh, the bosses, I
mean the uh we we fought several of them. I
think my personal favorite was probably the Greater new A,
which was a really really interesting enemy to tackle. It
was basically two bosses in one These these two Chimera
style enemies that would just gang up on you, and
the first part of the fight was probably the hardest,
where you're just trying to manage fighting two enemies at
the same time and deal with both of their attacks
being not not simultaneously shot at you, but definitely like
they were not giving you a lot of respite between
their attacks. They were not giving you a lot of space.
I really really enjoyed that one. Were there any bosses
that stuck out to us?
Speaker 4: Yeah, those ones in particular, I'm just gonna piggyback on that.
Excuse my dog's barking. Yeah, Like, it's a hard fight
because you have two people managing it, and then you
piss them off enough by breaking down their health bar,
and then they're like, okay, fine, we will just activate
our fully lightning electric tails, and then the fight just
gets twice as hard. We're gonna talk about challenge as
we talk about these bosses, But I do want to
say this is not a Soul's like game. Capcom says
that I'm a big fan of souls like games. This
is not a Soul's like game. It is an action game.
Speaker 5: It does have some.
Speaker 4: Difficulty, but like if you're worried about a Soul's like
level difficulty, it's not like that. And one more thing
you mentioned the combat animations they mocapped like all of this,
They even mocap the more extreme bosses. We didn't get
to see what that looks like, but they explained that
they went to great lengths to like hire some of
Japan's best swordsmen and give them like fake appendages to
be Rasha Gone with eight arms and stuff, and.
Speaker 1: They at one point describe that experience of like people
just kind of pretending to be arms for each other,
like almost kind of a Goro and Mortal Kombat situation,
And I was like, that sounds incredible.
Speaker 4: I wanted to see it so bad. He was like
teasing us with how funny it looked. And yeah, and
to the blocking point you mentioned as well, I think
they it's in my cover story. It was either ten
or sixteen of the numbers I have in my head,
but that's how many different ways he can block directionally.
And they were talking about how the Capcom they weren't
saying they're going to use this, but they were saying
they see the potential for what some of the stuff
they've built with ony Musha and Resident Evil, including the
way that you can block this direction, They said the
same for street Fighter. He was like, it'd be really
cool to see street Fighter take advantage of the system
we've created where you can block from ten different directions.
They're just kind of spitballing in there. I don't think
you shouldn't take that.
Speaker 1: Well, street Fighter only as two directions, crucially, yes, exactly,
it just has left and right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and so okay.
Speaker 4: Further on on bosses, uh, Rashagun is really cool, but
you can people wrote about that. For SGF, I just
will mention he has this one move where he uses
these gigantic scissors to like sling them across the stage
and try to like cut you in half. Very cool,
but again you can go read game informers. Marcus Stewart's
his hands on preview fighting Roshagun. One of the bosses
I really enjoyed was biak Q.
Speaker 5: I believe is his name one hundred defiling defilements.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the giants. Uh, it's like.
Speaker 2: Type dude, Harry guy.
Speaker 4: He's in a trailer. He's not that it matters, but
he's in a trailer. We fought him in this underground
lab area that we can touch on in a bit.
Speaker 5: But what I really liked.
Speaker 4: About him is the more you hit him, the angrier
he gets, and he has like an angry state almost
where he hits harder and attacks more frequently and kind
of just hit you with more barrage of attacks. And
I thought that was really cool because I am the
type of person who just rushes in and I'm trying
to hit you as much as possible. And that was
like a very blunt reset for me where it was like, Okay,
so you don't get to play that way that you
usually play, Wesley.
Speaker 5: You need to go in and.
Speaker 4: Like really focus on when you want to hit him,
because the more you hit him, the angry here he gets,
the harder he gets. So I had to make sure, like, okay,
if I'm hitting him and needs to be at a
moment where I can inflict the most damage.
Speaker 5: And it was really cool.
Speaker 4: It was kind of a boss fight where I had
to sit back and kind of to read what he's
doing and when I can counter best in which of
my various moves to use, and I really appreciated that.
It also kind of showed off some of the environmental
stuff you can do in this game, because there's like
red barrels everywhere and you can kind of, you know,
yield him over to that direction so you can blow
him up. It was a really really really cool boss fight.
Quite enjoyed that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that one was. It took me a while. I
think you beat it before me. We kind of trade
it off on who was beating which boss first. Not
that I was keeping track, not that I you know,
have a little chip on my shoulder about that or anything,
but I got stuck on that one for a bit
because I had been playing so aggressively and because I
was very much doing the Okay, I dodge and hit,
I dodge and hit, And one of the producers came
over and was like, hey, yeah, just just letting you know,
like this is the mechanic of the fight, is that
the bloodier he gets, the more powerful he gets. So
you could like, like I got really close on one
run where I was I had him super bloodied and
if you just play well, if you play right, you
can still beat him. But you could also try going
for a more balanced approach or even more passive approach,
trying to just dodge and perry and stuff like that.
And when I started kind of leaning more that way,
I was like, oh, this this fight feels very different now.
It feels a lot more manageable. But also I'm having
to think about it in a different way, not as
a but just think about Okay, watch his moves, watch
his shoulders, watch where he's swinging things like that, and
I really really like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's really cool to have It's one thing to
have a boss and like you got to learn a
boss's moves. That's just across video games in general. It's
really cool to have a mechanic like his blood State
mixed in where it changes how you interact with the boss,
not just because of the moves we're using, but how
they they work as like a character in this world.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that Underground Lab now, because that was incredible.
That that was Maybe the I did like the the Wish,
the Wish Grant or Area Raschkan stuff, but I think
the Underground Lab is the moment where I was like,
this is this is a really really good video game. Yeah.
Speaker 4: They described it to us, the director Satoro and yih
before we played. It was like this area that you're
about to experience is specifically inspired by like a classic
Japanese ghost house, which I looked up after the fact,
and like one of the main fast that is the
show Gi Joe Showji Joe. It's in my cover story
behind the shoji, which is like those you know what
those are? That's the it's like the almost like papery
texture walls that move in Japanese architecture. And throughout this
underground lab, you're kind of like walking through this haunted
house and fighting enemies along the way, and you have
these showji surrounding you, and because of the light and
the shadows, you're seeing like some really horrific stuff happen,
but you're getting like a black and white version of
it because it's just the shadows. So you're like fighting enemies,
and then you look to your ride and then the shoji.
There's like some dude who just exploded into blood. There's
animals and cages. Dokio is this. She's a Gamma confirmed,
but like different than just a random a regular mob,
Like she's a named, she has she's a character, she
has a personality. She's very She's my favorite character that
we saw. She's very like mischievous and twisted and demented,
and she really relishes and an evil demon, and she's
basically taking humans and animals and all kinds of other
things she could find to create new Ginma. So she's
kind of this evil scientist and you're in her underground
lab fighting through it while she's taunting you and making
fun of you along the way.
Speaker 1: She's she's Showtucker from Full Metal. For those of you
at home who who have watched your Full Metal, it's
in every bit as evil as you would hope from that,
but also yeah, a lot of the strange twisting anatomy
that it reminded me if you played Dragon Age the
Vailguard of Gillinane from that, or maybe of trying to
think of as similar kind of slithering, kind of creepy,
elongated form character, but definitely adding to the horror vibe.
We did ask, by the way, why does Capcom keep
putting underground labs in their video games? It was not
in order from the top, is what they heard. It
just it fit the theme very well. It's a happy accident,
it sounds like.
Speaker 3: Because they have a giant undergrad lab underneath the Roska headquarters.
Speaker 1: Yea they have.
Speaker 5: They must like the.
Speaker 1: Yeaeah.
Speaker 3: I mean I will say that little like entrance lobby
that you go in. Don't know if you were in
the same building I was for the Shipwight or six
cover story. It does have a little bit of like
this is the beginning of an underground lab.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah, I was really impressed by impressed by Onamusha.
I think everything we saw was was super impressive. We've
got a lot of content coming up, a lot of
coverage to put out there, so we're not going to
talk about all of it on the podcast today. But Wes,
is there a single piece of coverage that you're really
excited for people to see from this cover story?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I actually just wrote it today and I'll kind
of talk about it here because I think it's an
important facet of the stories, especially because it's the dude
that's on our cover. The protagonist is Miamoto Musashi, who
is a real life samurai. He's famous for sixty two
successful duels, successful being he did not die, and he
also kind of invented the two sword samurai combat style
you see with the katana and Milwaukie's Wazi kashi. He's
younger here, so he's not using his two swort approach
yet because he hadn't created it. But this real life
Samurai did go to Kyoto looking for a fight, and
that's kind of his personality in this game is I
want to be the best Samurai ever who wants to
fight me. And unlike other games where protagonists get the
only gauntlet or they get ony powers and they're like,
I want to save the world, he's like, get this.
Speaker 5: Freaking thing off of me.
Speaker 4: I am I am an athlete. I do not want
this this steroid, this performance enhancer on my arm. He
wants to become the best swordsman naturally with his own skills,
and so his whole thing is like, I'm going to
kill Gimma because I think that's how I get this
thing off and hopefully it comes off soon.
Speaker 5: And that's really cool.
Speaker 4: And from the jump capcom when they decided Musashi was
going to be their Samurai protagonist, they wanted to use
the likeness of late Japanese actor Toshiro Mufune, who has
been in a lot of akurri or A films, but
he was also in a series of movies called The
Samurai Trilogy where he actually played Musashi, so for three
movies in the nineteen fifties he was Musashi and that's
one of the more famous depictions of the samurai. And
they really wanted to use his likeness from the jump,
which for me, I'm kind of a person who's like,
let the dead stay dead. I don't you know, I
don't really like these Elvis holograms or what RGG is
doing with Tupac especially, but you know, Capcom is using
Tashar Mufune's likeness, so we wanted to talk about it.
Speaker 2: One.
Speaker 4: I think it makes a little more sense than say,
Tupac in a decade spanning Japanese yakas a game, because
this actor actually played Musashi.
Speaker 5: He has a history with it too.
Speaker 4: They worked with the family, got approval from the family,
and not only got approval, but they kept the family involved.
They sent drafts, they sent digital recreations from the ri Engine,
they asked for pointers, they asked for tips. They made
sure that the family was like happy with it along
the way. And then furthermore, they're not doing any weird
ai stuff. They're not using his voice from other movies
like they just when they think of Musashi Miyamoto to
shar Muffune is who they see, and so they wanted
that to be the face of their samurai. But that
is where the Mufune likeness is. They're not trying to
recreate his voice, they're not trying to do the the
Musashi from his movies.
Speaker 5: It's just it's just.
Speaker 4: A visual image, which I'm still not the biggest fan
of in general, because it's just, you know, it's weird stuff.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I guess I'll find out when I die. What people
do with my visual likeness. Probably nothing.
Speaker 1: Oh, we got plans. The games got plans.
Speaker 5: Good, Actually, you guys.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Game of Former has full You can yeah, do
whatever you want with my face.
Speaker 1: You think the podcast ends when you die?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 5: No, oh no.
Speaker 4: But like to the director's credit, when I brought this up,
uh to saturni he he pointed out correctly that like
this is not new for ony Musha, it's following in
line with the series. The first game, the protagonist samonosk
a Catchi, is played by Japanese actor Takeshi kana Shiro.
The late actor Yasuka Matsuto was the model for only
Musha two's protagonist Jubei Yagyu. Only Musha three famously features
French actor gen Rena because that game is a time
traveling threequel that takes place in modern day Paris and
the Warring States create of Japan.
Speaker 5: And I don't think that One.
Speaker 4: Musha four used a celebrity for different reasons, but like
for Capcom, it's part of the lineage of this series
is like get a celebrity.
Speaker 5: And I spoke to the director of.
Speaker 4: One Musha two, who was a planner on One Musha one,
modohide A Shiro.
Speaker 5: He said that he actually attributes.
Speaker 4: The success to Only Musha one because of the fact
that they used celebrity likeness. Back then, games weren't doing
that as much, and it really drove people who maybe
weren't playing games, were familiar with Capcom in to play
these games because, oh, that's a popular actor.
Speaker 5: I've seen the movies.
Speaker 4: I like that, Let's check out what he's doing in
this game.
Speaker 5: So this is Capcom following in that lineage.
Speaker 4: You know, you could there are worse ways and better
ways to do digital recreations and resurrections of dead actors,
but in talking to Capcom, I was more pleased to
hear how they went about this than say rgg's approach
to Tupac in Stranger than Heaven. I'll have a whole
feature breaking that down with like actual quotes and stuff
coming out soon, so be on.
Speaker 5: The lookout for that.
Speaker 4: But didn't want to ignore that considering we have to
share a Muffune's face on our cover.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think it's a good thing to note,
and you're going to have just tons of coverage. When
I saw your your plan for that, I was like, Yeah,
Wes is really going off on this one.
Speaker 5: I really like any Musha guys.
Speaker 3: So I have a question about that because I all,
everything you're saying sounds amazing and it makes me just
like really want to play this game. But as I
mentioned at the top, I have no history with this franchise.
Is this something from from a multiple prong approach here?
Is this is something where I should go back and
try to play one Musha one and two because those
are both on PlayStation and Switch and I'm assuming Xbox
or is this like the entry point? Like should I
just wait until Way the Sword comes out and just
start with that.
Speaker 4: So they're very aware that they've been on a twenty
year hiatus, and they do look at this as only
Musha five, But for Capcom, the number that comes after
the word only Musha is more like a signal of
evolving this series. None of them are really connected and
only Musha five confirmed like not connected at all to
previous games. It's all new demons, it's all new enemies,
it's all new characters. There's no knowledge, you don't need
anything from prior games. So this is like a fresh
start for the series and it plays very different from
anything else in the series.
Speaker 5: That said, if you want to feel for.
Speaker 4: Like ony Musha, I would replay at least one, and
definitely and two as well, because they're both they both
hold up. They're both fantastic games, and it's really fun
to see what they started in those games and then
play Way of the Sword and be like, oh, this
is a continuation of those games from twenty years ago.
Like they're taking ideas that they've been developing for two
decades and now they're doing the twenty twenty sixth version
of that. So if you're like from a like historical
or like gamer perspective, I'd say replay those But as
far as like do I need to in this busy
time period before this game comes out in September.
Speaker 5: No, you absolutely don't need to.
Speaker 4: I would just play Way of the Sword and have
a really good time.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: That was the other angle from which I wanted to ask,
is like, do these games hold up because I know
you recently replayed them west in preparation for this cover story.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they hold up like so shockingly well for games
from two thousand and one and two thousand and two.
I think that's you know, the same goes for like
some older Resident Evil games. Like pre rendered backgrounds really
help games feel like, yes, you see a pre rendered background,
You're like, this is an early two thousands game. But
for me in twenty twenty six, a pre rendered background
also feels timeless, Like I actually want more games to
utilize it because it feels like you're looking at a
playable art piece rather than a demonstration of visual fidelity
in the year. But yeah, they hold up for sure.
Speaker 1: Awesome. I think that's gonna do it for Onamushak cover Talk,
We're gonna go to break real quick, take a little breather,
but when we come back, we'll be talking about Halo
Campaign Campaign Evolved. Is that what's called Yeah, that's the name.
Halo Campaign Evolved and Splittoon Raiders don't go Far and
we're back. Welcome back to the Game Informer Show. We're
here to talk about some of the newest releases on
your gaming slate that you might be thinking about picking
up this weekend or playing. Maybe you're even playing it
right now while you're listening to us. That'd be pretty cool.
Shout U out in the comments if you are. Let's
start with the big one from Xbox Halo Campaign Evolved.
Is the reviews are out. I think it is out
right now if you pay to access it early and
then it comes out later, if you pay less amounts
of money something like that. We're still doing that in
the games industry in twenty twenty six. Is you can
pay a bunch of extra money to play a game
a few days early. Our review is uh.
Speaker 5: I hate that. It's hu monetizing fomo, very lame of companies.
Speaker 1: It's a very silly thing. I don't get why we
do that. Our review is up. I'm double checking myself
right now because I knew the score going in and
this only second guest myself, and it is an eight
point five up on Gameingforeward dot Com. You can go
read Matt Miller's review of that over there, where he
says even stripped of its multiplayer, this return trip to
the original Halo nails the fun in chaos that made
the series a landmark game. Notably, this is Campaign Evolved.
This is not Halo one remake in the strictest sense.
This is specifically the campaign of Halo one plus some
additional prequel missions I believe that are remastered and remade
and redone as kind of a new package. Brian, you've
experienced some of Halo Campaign Evolved, not the entire package
just yet, but we want to have you on to
kind of talk about some of that stuff. What has
been your impression of Halo Campaign Evolved thus far?
Speaker 3: Sure, so, I wrote the cover story that we had
our previous issue for Halo Campaign Evolved, which meant that
I went out to Halo Studios. I played the entire
three mission arc of those prequel missions, and I also
had played the Silent Cartographer mission when I went out
to Halo Studios the first time when they revealed it,
and like, let us do like pre announcement hands on
now that I have like the full game I have
played through the first two missions, and I came away
kind of the same impressions that I had before, which
is like, this is a extremely good looking version, Like
this is a true remake in the sense that like
whereas Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary back in twenty eleven was
like a little bit more of like this is just
a very very shiny remaster where it was like the
main game is still running underneath like the new shiny visuals.
This is them using Unreal Engine five for this whole
new era of Halo, right, Like they've been using their
proprietary engines for Halo since its inception, and now this
is them transitioning to Unreal Engine five. And it really
shows like Unreal Engine five like looks fantastic in motion.
It does a great job of making a lot of
those visuals how you thought they looked back when, back
when you were playing this in two thousand and one
when it came out on original Xbox Because like, if
you go back and play that original Halo Combat Evolved,
it was mind blowing for the time, but that was
twenty five years ago. Now you fired up and it
actually does look how like your brain kind of converts
it in your memory today, which I think is the
sign of a good remake or a really great remaster.
And I know a lot of people were not fans
of the Combat Evolved Anniversary visuals. They thought that it
kind of didn't really capture it. I think that this
does capture the original intent. And talking to a lot
of the developers on the ground at Halo Studios prior
to getting my hands on the final version, they were like, yeah,
you know, we got a lot of the original design
docs from back when Bungee was making it, and like
we could see what their actual intent was with the
original design of these levels, and so like when you're
going through certain stages, you'll see like, oh, this is
like a lot more intricately detailed. That's because that's what
the original intent was.
Speaker 2: Now, I mean, the.
Speaker 3: One to one comparison you could make there was like, okay, well,
the Star Wars special edition of the original trilogy. That
was what George Lucas always said. It was like, oh,
this was my original vision, and you know that was
very hit or miss, whether or not it added or
detracted from what the magic of those iconic scenes were
here in Halo Campaign Evolved. I think it does enhance
the experience. I've not come across anything where it's like, oh,
that's distracting from the campaign that I've played through probably,
you know, five or six times over the course of
my life. Like I've beaten Halo Combat Evolved multiple times,
whether you're talking the original version, the Master Chief Collection version,
or that standalone Combat Evolved Anniversary edition back in twenty eleven.
You know, I've beaten this game probably six times or so,
and I've not come across anything in Campaign Evolved where
I'm like, that's distractingly different. Like it all feels in
the spirit of what they were attempting to do with
the original the original design of these levels.
Speaker 2: Just the tech had not caught up yet. You know,
we're we were still less.
Speaker 3: Than a decade into three D gaming in true, you know,
in truth right, Like you know, the PS one and
the N sixty four were merely like five years or
seven years prior depending on the system to Halo Combat Evolved.
So we have a lot more experience with developing three
D games and three D visuals. Obviously, Unreal Engine five
is the kind of the high water mark for game
engines and development, and I think that you know, Halo
Studios did a really admirable job. Based on what I've
seen so far. I'm playing on the PS five, which
is a little confusing from my gamer brain. It's like
the first time I fired up Sonic on a Nintendo system.
It's like, wait a second, this feels illegal in some ways,
and it does play pretty well. Like you know, I
like the quality of life stuff that they've added, where
it's like you can sprint, you can aim down sites,
which were things that you couldn't really do or you
couldn't do at all in Halo Combat evolved originally, so
now like they do have They did that they kind
of walked a fine line of like not modernizing the
controls too much, but modernizing them just enough that it
feels in line with a modern game. And you know,
they didn't like add a bunch of stuff that like
you know, oh we're gonna add I can't think of
it a good example, but like something that would really
upend the entire flow of the game, like they preserved
like how it feels going from section to section, and
the sprint I think really does add a lot to it.
I also think that they default you the modernized Warthog
controls where it almost controls like a car, where it's
like like a car in a video game, where it's
like the right trigger actually is like acceleration and you're
steering it more so than aiming it. I tried that,
and I was like, Okay, I see what they were doing.
I immediately switched it back to like the classic like.
Speaker 1: Me is too too strong, like it was the Warthog
was goofy. I'm the same way with the Maco and
mass effect one, where I need the Mako to handle
in the terrible way that I learned how to drive
it in the first place, and not some sort of
new fancy way of trying to modernize it. Like I
learned how to drive the bad car. Don't make it
a good car now because I don't know how to
drive good car.
Speaker 3: For me, the Mako is a step down from the
Halo Combat Evolved warhaw where.
Speaker 1: I would Mako is the ultimate machine. All right, That's
that's the You may not like it, but that's peak
perfection right there.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean, I'm glad they have the option
there this And it's funny because they actually were like, yeah,
even though we made these modifications to Halo Combat Evolve
for Campaign Evolved, and then we moved it to an
entirely new engine, and like this project was born basically
from the same way that like I've talked about multiple
times where it's like Pokemon Sword and Shield were only
possible because game Freak took on, let's go Pikachuu and
Evy to like learn how to make games for console
instead of handheld. This almost feels like this is Halo
Studios learning how to make a Halo game on Unreal
Engine five. And that's kind of the way that it
was pitched, where they were like, all right, we're gonna
start doing on Unreal Engine five, and then like they
started making biomes in Unreal Engine five, and then like
there are direct was like what if we just did
this for all of Halo one, And then they decided like, oh,
that'd be a really cool anniversary thing for the twenty
fifth anniversary of Halo.
Speaker 2: So that's where we're at. So like the fact that
this plays.
Speaker 3: Well on PS five, I don't I mean give any
xboxes pulling back on exclusivity. I would kind of doubt
that we get the next Halo game on PS five,
but we'll have to wait and see it's It does
play really well though, so it does seem like they
have they kind of got a good handle on how
to develop for Unreal Engine five and hopefully.
Speaker 2: That bodes well for where we're going from here.
Speaker 3: But you know, the core campaign is there and it
so far, I haven't run into any major hiccups, Like
there's a little bit of slowdown that I've anticipated playing
or that I've experienced playing on a base PS five.
I've not played on a PS five Pro. I mocked
the PS five Pro and it first got announced for
seven hundred dollars, and now I'm looking at that nine
hundred dollars price tag being like I should have bought
it at seven hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: Appreciated in value. That was an investment opportunity. Brian Jay.
Speaker 3: It's funny because when Xbox went through all those layoffs
a few weeks ago, I actually looked at Microsoft stock
and it would have been a better investment to buy
an Xbox Series X when it was five hundred dollars
and then let it appreciate in value than it would
have been to buy Microsoft stock from that time because
that has only gone down unfortunately.
Speaker 1: That's that's dark in a lot of ways. Yeah, yeah,
that's that's a dark mirror in a lot of ways.
And I think that brings me to a point I
wanted to make sure to raise in the section, was
that obviously, this Halo game and a lot of Xbox
games in the coming year are going to arrive amidst
all of the layoffs that have either already happened or
will happen under Xbox Game studios, and that, you know,
puts a sour mark over a lot of it. It's
pretty frustrating because I think, Yeah, when I see the
love and attention that a lot of these devs put
into a game like this, that they put into making
something that feels like they have rekindled the Halo spark,
it makes me even more frustrated to see the way
that they're being treated on the other side of it.
There's kind of a sinking feeling in my stomach. When
I saw the reviews go live in my first thought was, well,
maybe this will help three four three and the Halo
team like avoid layoffs. Maybe maybe this helps them dodge
the acts. And that sucks.
Speaker 2: That's unfortunately sucks.
Speaker 3: It's unfortunate we have to constantly be thinking about that
because you know, it is a very solid game, and
it's it's a very passionate team. Like I said, I've
been at Halo studios twice in the past year, and
you know, they care a lot about this franchise. And
that's the thing that I always try not to like
lose sight of when we're like raging at these corporations,
whether it's EA or PlayStation or Xbox is like, yeah,
these these corporations suck, and the leadership is making a
lot of upsetting decisions right now, we'll say, but like
there are a lot of really passionate people underneath the
people who are making these these decisions that we may
not agree with or are calling outright, you know, bad
moves for the future of the games industry. But the people,
the rank and file folks who are pouring their passion
and their life and their soul into this like that,
that's those are the people that I really want to
you know, shout out because they're doing really great work.
And before we move on from Halo, I did want
to talk a little bit about the the three prequel missions,
which are brand new that's completely new content that they
they've implemented into this Halo campaign evolved. I'm still kind
of disappointed that we didn't get the competitive multiplayer, although
I get the reasons that they don't because I mean,
if I'm being honest, I would have to speculate I
don't have any inside information, but I would have to
speculate that multiplayer team is working on the next, like
mainline Halo game right now, and that's why we didn't
get this. But the brand new content that comes in
the form of these three bonus missions, you know, it
takes about I would say, I think my first playthrough
of it took about two hours to get through these
three missions, and that was, you know, sitting entirely focused
at the studio, just playing straight through and you know,
minimal I think I died two times over the course
of But they are more difficult than you're especially early
Halo missions. So if you're new to the franchise, I
would recommend actually coming back to these after you beat
the game, even though they take place chronologically before. It
takes place about a year before the events of Halo one.
So if you have played a lot of Halo in
your day, then maybe you can start with that before
you jump in. But if like you are new to
this series, then I would say I would suggest going,
you know, campaign then bonus missions.
Speaker 2: But it's a it's a.
Speaker 3: Fun little like you know, almost like Buddy Adventure with
Halo and Halo Jeez with.
Speaker 1: With John Halo himself.
Speaker 3: John Halo's with Master Chief and Sergeant Johnson. Sorry, I
was trying to recall the name of Sergeant Johnson for
some reason my brain and always goes to Keys, but
it's Johnson.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So with Master Chief and Johnson on this this
infiltration mission almost akin to Rogue One, where it is like,
you know, the Covenant have struck and glassed a human
planet and you're like, all right, we can't allow this
to happen anymore. We're gonna We're gonna infiltrate this this
ship of the Covenant and and steal their plans so
we know where to strike them. And so it is
very Rogue one.
Speaker 1: In this role.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And which is interesting because if you play the
Silent Cartographer mission in Campaign Evolved, there is absolutely another
Rogue one reference there where you see the first Covenant
Elite emerge from the base there and he draws his
energy sword. That's the first time in the series. You
see that they definitely pulled from that Darth Vader scene
in Rogue one at the end.
Speaker 2: For inspiration on that.
Speaker 3: And even before I knew about these bonus missions and
what they were accomplishing, like I when I did the
hands on with Silent Cartographer, like back in October, I
was like, oh, that's a Rogue one reference right there.
So it's it's interesting to see it come full circle.
Speaker 2: But you know, they.
Speaker 3: Consulted with one of the Halo novelists in order to
ensure that like the lore was all intact, and then
they also have like kind of like a law master
within Halo Studios that they were like working constantly to
figure out like all right, where can we plug in
where we're not breaking Halo lore, but we're also complimenting
the story of Halo one and we're not breaking what
happened to Halo reach. So it's a lot of fun
in that regard. And also, like this is pre Chief
getting Kurtana obviously, so like there's a lot of like
the voice in your head is Johnson, it's not Kurtana,
so you get a lot more personality with him, and
you get there's always a lot of fun little comedic
timings with like Johnson being very talkative, and there's even
a moment where it's like, Chief, don't you ever get
tired of be in the strong silent type or strong
mostly silent type and Chief just goes no, And so
like there's there's a fun little back and forth, like
you can tell that like Chief and Johnson had this
rapport and as like you know, as the narrative directors
talked about in the cover story, they were like, you know,
I think that we in like retrospect, think that like
Johnson had like this huge personality and big role in
Halo one, but he's actually fairly limited in that story.
It's only in Halo two and three that he really
fleshes out and he becomes the Johnson that we all remember.
Whereas Halo one he was there, but like he was
not like the larger than life personality that we eventually
see him become in the series. So they wanted to
include that more of that in this package. But like,
something that's really cool about these bonus missions is also
that there are there are elements that are not in
Halo one but are peer in later games, like the
Brutes from Halo two are in these bonus missions. Weapons
that you don't see until Halo two and three are
in these bonus missions. So it gives you this feeling
almost like, Okay, these things were always here. These things
were always in this universe. They didn't just like you know,
appear into existence when Bungee thought like, oh, we need
something new for this sequel. It kind of just be like, Okay, well,
the Brutes weren't a part of the story of Halo one.
They only like you know, came back into focus when
Halo two's events rolled around, But they were always in
the background in this universe.
Speaker 2: So I really like that about it.
Speaker 3: Some of the combat arenas are pretty intense, so I
would if you're looking for a challenge, like, you know,
boost up the difficulty and jump into these missions because
they will definitely give you a good deal of challenge.
There are definitely like some things where it's like we're
just gonna put master Chief in the middle of a
big circular arena and send enemies from all directions at
you and you have to just try to figure it out,
and there's like really fun weapons laying around. There's one
area where it's like I'm not going to spoil too
much here, but like early on you encounter like a
literal like Covenant training room in this space station that
you're infiltrating, and after you take out the Covenant that
are in their training, you just notice that basically every
weapon from like the first three Halo games are just
laying around like on shelves, so you can just choose
how you want to once they like, once you take
those enemies out, it's like they set off an alarm
and like you have every weapon basically at your disposal
to choose, Like, all right, do I want to take
them down the shotgun?
Speaker 2: Do I want to take them down.
Speaker 3: With like the the the assault rifle, or or a
rocket launcher or a needle or needle rifle. Like the
needle rifle, by the way, absolutely rules in these bonus missions.
So yeah, they do a really cool job. And then
I don't I don't think I want to spoil the ending,
but like it's out there in marketing, but they do
a completely different gameplay experience to put an exclamation point
at the end of the three bonus missions, and so yeah,
I mean I it's easy to say, like Okay, well,
you know Halo four or five and Infinite don't have
the same like design chops or magic that Bungee was
able to capture with those first several Halo games. But
I think that the bonus missions here give me a
lot of hope for where Halo could go in the future,
because it almost feels like they're starting to figure out
how to capture that magic. Because these don't feel out
of place with the incredible package that is Halo Campaign Evolved,
or at least that original campaign that they recreated through
this bundle.
Speaker 2: Like, those bonus missions feel right at home.
Speaker 3: They feel like they slot perfectly in, and they don't
feel like completely disjointed in the way that like, Okay,
well this was made by a different development team twenty
five years in the future from the original game. Like no,
it feels like they're a part of that original package.
And I mean that's a very high compliment.
Speaker 1: Well, that's Halo Campaign Evolved. But Brian, we're gonna stay
with you now because we're gonna talk about a different
game that you played a lot of, uh in the
last couple weeks, Splatoon Raiders. Your review is live given
eight point seventy five for Game Informer Brian, Splatoon Raiders
sell me on it. Well, what's what's the deal with
Splatoon Raiders.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I have reviewed every single Splatoon game for Game Informer,
starting with the twenty fifteen debut on WU, and one
thing I've always kind of been a champion of is, like,
I know, the competitive multiplayer stuff is the main draw
for most people when they go to a Splatoon game,
but this single player content, whether you're talking Splatoon one, two, three,
or the DLC stuff like the Octo expansion for Splatoon
two or the Side Dish expansion for Splatoon three where
it was actually like a rogue light like mode that
they added in, Like that stuff slaps like it is
like one of the more like this deserves more attention
and just doesn't get it for whatever reason.
Speaker 2: Like modes.
Speaker 3: It would be like if you were like, yeah, like
the Halo multiplayer is great. It's so good that I
don't even go to the single player content and nobody
talks about it. Obviously that's not the case, but Splatoon
it is the case. I feel like a lot of
people are like, oh, yeah, I bought Splatoon and then
I just immediately went to turf Wour and never played
any other modes, but like the single player stuff, it
starts off almost like a tutorial for like, Okay, here's
how you get around, Here's how you use these different weapons,
Here's what these like mechanics do. But then it eventually
evolves into like super creative boss battles, fun puzzle platforming,
fun like obstacle courses and like challenges to like clear
out enemies as as quickly as possible, and then boss
battles that are just over the top creative and just
bonkers and all set to music because Splatoon is always
great about its music, so I've always been a champion
of that. And then so when I heard they were
doing a single player Splatoon game, I was super stoked,
But also like, will people care, because the vast majority
of people play multiplayer, will they go into this or
will they just be like, Oh, I don't who wants
to play single player Splatoon? Like, I think a lot
of people might think that. Thankfully, it is good enough
that I think people are gonna have to pay attention
because I think it's gonna end up being one of
Nintendo's best games of this year. And basically it's a
single player focused game, but it offers the ability to
play co op with up to four players, right, so
you can go in with a you can I played
the vast majority of this game single player and didn't
have any problems with balancing, didn't have any problems with like,
oh man, I really need another player for this. But
if you want it, it's there and you can call
in you know, up to three friends to join you.
Speaker 2: Or you can even do like a call for help button,
which is really cool.
Speaker 3: So like if you're struggling with something, you can highlight
that on the map and then hit like I think
it's like the minus button on switch and or switch to.
Speaker 2: And it will out a call.
Speaker 3: And if you are if somebody out there says like
I want to help somebody, because like you get a
bonus every twenty four hours for going into somebody's game
and helping them with a mission. You can have somebody
join you or multiple people join you and go in.
Speaker 1: It's like a it's like a subn sign from souls.
Then is you kind of put it down or like,
you know, you get to the Stakes America and Elden
Ring and stuff like that and you're like, I need
I need help on this. Uh this Splittoon Millennia is
destroying me. I need help.
Speaker 3: Exactly, and so and if somebody comes into your game,
they leave with extra loot. And what's cool is that
like when you go because like it incentivizes you to
like be like a person who goes out and helps.
So what's also cool about the co op stuff is
it level scales to everybody individually. So like while I
am like, you know, level forty something, and Eric, you
join my session and you're like level eight, your enemies
that you're seeing on the screen are level eight, whereas
my enemies that I'm seeing on the screen are whatever
level like I'm at. So it actually will play out
the way like it should for like appropriate level scaling
to your character. Or like there's also like all the
missions themselves have individual level like attached to them, so
like after you beat a level and then go back
to it later, you can take it on in its
original form, so like if it's like level seventeen, you
can do that, or like it'll have a spicy version
where it's like, okay, now it's level thirty six, and
then there's like eventually you unlock extra spicy versions, which
are like all right, this is like post game, like
far post game, and as you keep going through these missions,
you know there's there's tens upon tens of missions that
you can compete in or complete, and hundreds upon hundreds
of weapons. You're constantly gathering weapons and gadget parts. And
the way it basically works is you go in to
each of these they're called raids, you know, playing into
the name, and there's a few different mission types. One
of them is like, okay, just go into here and
collect power eggs and once you fill up your meter,
you'll be able to move on to the next level.
Speaker 2: And then like it's.
Speaker 3: Usually like three levels or three layers that you were
going down to and then it ends in a boss
battle that is one of them. Then another one is
like it dumps you into a big open area and
there's a big spiral light shard. It's the Spiral Light Island.
So like the main currency is spiral light chards. There's
a big like like like shard that you can drill into,
but first you need to power up your drill with
power eggs, so you go around to smaller spiral light
charts that you can drill into clear.
Speaker 2: Out all the enemies.
Speaker 3: Gather their power eggs, get the shards, and then once
you have enough power, you can choose to keep going,
and you as you keep going, you actually get on
a multiplier, So like like if you choose to do
that risk reward of I'm gonna keep going before I
go and complete the main main mission here, you'll get
a multiplier on the currency that you get. And then
and you know, once you drill into the main spiral
light shard, you get your treasure and you exit the level.
There are also the set piece boss battles like we
talked about in the original Splatoon games. There are other
ones where it's just like more of a linear style level,
kind of akin to the splatoona like mainline game single
player stuff where it's like all right, you start at
point A, you're working your way to point B, and
then you defeat all the enemies on en route to that,
or like there's there's some mild platforming stuff. Honestly, that
is the thing that I missed the most is that
like the puzzle and platforming elements were really toned down
for this. They're mostly relegated to kind of like you
unlock these kind of like side raids where it's not
so much like a standard Splatoon Raiders level, but more
so it's like a challenge, like a test chamber almost
in where did.
Speaker 1: You call shrines, Like like would a shrine be the
comparison point like a Zelda shrine?
Speaker 3: Maybe a little bit, but it's it's still the core gameplay.
It's mostly like, Okay, you are put into here. You
don't have the same like level of agency that you
would in a Breath the Wild shrine, for example, where
it's like you still have access to all your abilities.
Here in Splatoon Raiders, it's like you enter these special
levels and it's like, okay, you only have this one ability.
You don't have any weapons or whatever. We have a
level that is catered to making it so you have
to use this one ability, this one gadget in very
specific ways. So like there's one ability where like you
can throw out a balloon that is full of ink,
and then you can throw out another balloon and it
automatically tethers them to each other, so you have to
manipulate it so that like the tether is taking out
like target balloons in order to open up the next path.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of puzzly in.
Speaker 3: That way, and like kind of physics based puzzles in
some sense, other ones where it's like, okay, you have
no weapons, you just have like you have to run.
Speaker 2: Through these these loops or these hoops in order to
clear the level.
Speaker 3: You have to run through like twenty seven hoops and
you have no weapons, and enemies are just constant spawning,
so you have to like lure them away and make
it so that you are getting through those those hoops
before they splat you. So it's like little challenges like that.
So I guess like the Breath of the Wild Tears
of the Kingdom Shrine metaphor is a little bit apt there,
but it's it's more restrictive than they are in those
in that. In that way, the gameplay loop, I think
is probably the thing that is most attractive to me,
because these raids are often very bite sized, they only
take a few minutes at most to complete, Like a
lot of them are often on timers, especially if it's
like one of like the collect as many power eggs
and then move on to the next level. Those are
timer based, so you can only last a certain amount
of time on there, and you gather so much loot
and then you go back to your your home base,
which is upgradeable, and it's like okay, on one side,
you can upgrade your character with like modifiers to say
like all right, weapons do more damage, gadgets do more damage,
your your HP is higher, you have more customization slots
for each gadget if you if you upgrade this part,
then there's another part where it's like you can upgrade
your gadget, you can research new gadgets if you want
to unlock new abilities, and then there's another one where
it's like you can upgrade your weapons. You can transfer
in the post game, you can transfer abilities between weapons,
so like they you know, they'll have special modifiers like
depending on rarity like legendary or or like I don't
know what, like epic or whatever. Like they're actually not
called that, but like they're they're sort of like five star,
four star, three star rarity. The higher the rarity, the
more special, Like like there's one where I was shooting them,
and like there's like a two percent chance that it
will freeze the enemy in place. And when you're using
like an automatic like splatter shot, that at two percent
happens pretty frequently because you know every hundred shots. Two
of those are freezing an enemy, so you could upgrade
that to four percent so it happens more frequently, and
you can if you find a weapon that you like more,
you can be like, oh, well, how can I transfer
this freezing property over to this other weapon?
Speaker 2: So in the postgame you can do that.
Speaker 3: And so there's so many customization options and the tinkering
of the gadgets themselves.
Speaker 2: I had it. So there are three.
Speaker 3: Tanks, right, there's the speed tank, there's the power tank,
and there's the tactical tank. Those basically serve as base
character classes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, classes and stuff. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: So the speed is all about mobility and range. And
so there's one the setup that I had, or the
load up that I had, where it was like okay,
I on one button I have or one shoulder button
I have it.
Speaker 2: So you can just burst straight up, which is really
good for.
Speaker 3: Getting out of trouble, like if they're swarming, you burst
straight up and then I can like, you know, go
elsewhere and then that it leaves like an explosion when
you do that. And then the other one I had
the boo yah rang, which is just like a boomerang
you throw out it leads a trail of ink, and
you can modify that to like you know, spin in
place at the end of its range for longer.
Speaker 2: So like if you if you get it like perfectly.
Speaker 3: Timed, and like there's like an like a boss salmonid,
you can have it so just like spins right on
top of them, doing damage the entire time. And then
the power one is all about like getting right in
their faces right Like There's there's the slash where you
could just like constantly keep slashing back and forth, but
that's like a charge forward move. And there's another one
where it's like you're throwing out like a like a
like a projectile that like you can follow along with,
so it like really kind of clears a path for you.
My favorite ended up being the tactical tank, where I
was like throwing down turrets that would just shoot ink.
And then there was also one where I could throw
down like trip wires where it would shoot out like
five trip wires and any enemy that walked into it,
they just constantly took damage. So like if there was
like a bunch of enemies coming at me from all directions,
I would throw down that trip wire it would shoot
out these this kind of like spiderweb and any enemy
that walked into it is just taking the constantly damage
and that was really helpful. And then the one that
I ended up going with was it.
Speaker 2: Was like it created like a vortex.
Speaker 3: It almost like a sprinkler head that you put down
in the middle of the map and it created this
vortex and it sucked enemies in and it was just
constantly spraying out like a misting of ink.
Speaker 2: So it was like really really.
Speaker 3: Powerful when combined with the turrets and the way I
tinkered with those with the different slots that I had available,
you get all these gadget parts and you can start
upgrading the individual abilities through these gadget parts. So I
had the turret, for example, I had that upgraded so
op by the end of the game where it was
like I had it. I had a gadget part that
made it so I could get an extra charge so
I could throw out two turrets at once. Then I
had it so that the cool down was reduced. Then
I had it so that the turrets lasted longer. So
like by the end of it, I had like four
turrets out because they were still on there there they
were lasting longer, the cool down was shorter, and I
also had it so that they auto deployed, so if
I damaged any enemy with my ink, it would auto
deploy a.
Speaker 2: Turret I had a charge.
Speaker 3: So they were just like blasting out of me left
and right, and I was just like, you know, basically
controlling the map with these tactical tanks. Like I love
the way that they let you customize these abilities your way,
and just really they give you reason to bounce between
them as well. Like some of these raids they give
you bonuses if you've never completed it with that.
Speaker 2: Type of tank.
Speaker 3: So if you've done it with the power and the
tactical but you haven't done with the speed tank, you
can go in with the speed tank and complete it
and get a bonus piece of loot. And they dole
out these upgrades so intelligently paced that you get out
of there.
Speaker 2: Like there were so many times where I was.
Speaker 3: Just like, Okay, it's getting late, I should go to bed,
and then it'd be like, oh, I just got that upgrade.
I want to see what that is like. So the
raids only about like three minutes, I'll jump in and
do that. And then that got me going again, and
before I knew it, it was like another hour beyond
what I was planning on playing. Because they do that,
they install such a smart gameplay loop into make so
that you just like say, okay, just one more, all right,
just one more again. And even though it's so loot
driven outside of like ambo functionality where it's just like
you scan the ambo and you get like an outfit,
so it's like cosmetic, but like outside of that, there's
no like micro transactions.
Speaker 2: There's nothing like that.
Speaker 3: So even though like it's a luter shooter inspired Splatoon game,
it doesn't fall into the tendencies that we see other
louter shooter games go for, which is another testament to
why I enjoy this game so much.
Speaker 5: I have one very important question. I'm in the opening
hour still kind of like tutorialized.
Speaker 4: I like my Splatoon music funky, but right now Splatoon
Raiders music is freaky, and I'm wondering if it will
get better or change because I'm I'm missing some of
these spunk that Splatoon is known for.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: That's one of the things that I kind of detracted
a little bit in my review was that, like, I
think Splatoon has some of the best music of any
like game of the past ten years, like that first
Platoon soundtrack is fantastic, and every subsequent Splatoon game has
been incredible. The soundtrack of Splatoon Raiders didn't really vibe
with me. There are some bangers, like I like the
home based theme, I like the some of the boss
battle themes, but overall, you're right, like, it does feel
kind of like almost like a disjointed feel because like
you're fighting the Samanids, and the Samanids every time they
come on screen, it's almost like this like airhorn like
not air horn, like like air raid horn, like you know,
it's not so it's like an air raid horn almost
that plays when they come on screen, and it gives
you that sense of dread and that's cool at first,
and it gives you like that vibe of like, oh crap,
there's like enemies to take on. But I do think
it overshadows the soundtrack and the music itself didn't really
do it for me, and it never really did. Like again,
there were some songs that I think were exceptions to this,
but I do think this is the weakest Splatoon soundtrack,
which is unfortunate because it's probably my favorite. It's probably
my favorite single player Splatoon content, and playing co op
is awesome as well. So I by the end of
the review period and what I was just like grinding
for levels and replaying levels. I was listening to other
stuff while I was playing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a bullet to the heart or a Splatoon splat
shot to the heart. Uh that that's that's serable. I
I love Splatoon. It's been one of my favorite new
Nintendo series of of the last few years. I think
it's like I was commenting on this the other day
that a lot of people talk about Nintendo. They talk
about the the sort of mount rushmore of Nintendo your Zelda,
You're Mario, your Kirby, your Donkey Kong. But for me,
I guess Pikachu. Technically it's that's that's a weird thing,
you know. It's it's Nintendo, not Nintendo game freak. I know,
But I personally love the era of Nintendo obviously where
I started growing into it, but a lot of Pickman
and Splatoon and those are kind of series that mean
a lot to me, and Splatoon three I've kind of
been looking for an excuse to want to go back to.
In some ways, I'm almost happy that this is a
single player one because I'm hoping that the servers for
Splatoon three will They've been populated, They've never been barren
or anything, but I'm hoping some more people pick Splatoon
three back up and have an excuse to go back
to that multiplayer. But I'm also really looking forward to
this as sort of a chip away at it played
over time, definitely co op. I love the idea of
doing co op and either hopping off with friends or
doing those kind of support missions and just helping people
out because it's the other thing I love about Splatoon
is even though it is a quote unquote competitive shooter
and all that, it's community is so like just loves
the act of playing Splatoon and wants to have fun
playing Splatoon. And maybe it helps that there's no voice
chat or anything, but like, I've never really run into
like toxic situations with Splatoon very often, and it's it's awesome,
and I'm happy to see if there's some mechanics in
here to kind of encourage some of that with the
jumping into help and hopefully I can boo yah with
other people. That's that's what I'm hoping for you can
you can bou yah. Okay, that's that's important. I want
to think.
Speaker 3: I think it's down on the dpad because I was
booyahing with people pretty frequently.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's that's the important part. Uh. One last question
for me before we go. We talked a lot about
all of the sort of gameplay loop the story or
the new music and stuff. I want to know about
the story, like how how deep is the story, Like
does it really get into a lot of interesting stuff.
I know Splatoon can kind of have a story and
really interesting lore, even if the main plot is not
exactly like the most complicated, dense thing. I do love
the world of Splatoon. Do you feel like a lot
of that carries over here or is it just kind
of like a framing device for what you're ultimately doing.
I mean it's both.
Speaker 3: It's it's silly, it's inconsequential in terms of like you
know that coming from something like Halo Campaign evolved and
being like wow, this is like the fate of humanity,
and then like you go to Splatoon Raiders and it's
like we need to figure out like how we can
get more treasure, but also like here we are in
the spiral light islands and the Salmonids are being like
driven crazy by something, and like we need to figure
out why they're being driven crazy before they go attack
all of our cities. Again, Like it's semi interesting and
like you you uncover a lot about like the Splatoon
lore in general, through like scrolls that you find while
you're you're exploring, Like there's briny scrolls they're called where
it's just it's a bunch of like Splatoon lore and
like hints the past and things of that nature. There's
some cut scenes that play after you defeat a boss
in particular, where it's like, oh, yeah, this is related
to this because of this, and so you do if
you've been following the Splatoon story, there are some like
you know, minor revelations that you will come across. But
I it was not my like standout part of the experience.
Speaker 2: The standout part of the experience.
Speaker 3: Is Splatoon has the thing that the reason that it
has been so successful over the last eleven years is
because starting with the first s Platoon game, they absolutely
nailed the gameplay feel right, the feeling of like sinking
down beneath the surface of an inked surface and being
able to like smoothly glide around while you reload. By
the way, that's such a smart process of like all right, sink, reload,
move how you want to move, pop out, and then
you have a full ink tank to use whatever weapon
you have equipped and that feels good as well. And
then it's just you get into a rhythm of sink,
get to where you need to go, pop out, blast,
and then sink and then keep going that cycle. That
rhythm feels so good from the start of Splatoon one,
and that carries over into Splatoon Raiders. And I think
that's why this is successful franchise, because it just feels
so freaking good to play and and that is the
main triumph of this and then they can I think
the sky is the limit for the different types of
gameplay experiences that they can put Splatoon into. I know
that there was a report that came out recently where
they did like an Aska developer conversation over at Nintendo
with the producer of Splatoon Raiders, and he was like, yeah,
the idea behind this actually started as a tower defense game.
And now I'm like, oh, I want to play that,
Like I'm happy Splatoon Raiders, except it's one of my
favorite games of the year so far, but like a
tower defense game would be amazing with all the different
like trinkets and weapons and everything you can do.
Speaker 1: With almost like an orcs must die kind of thing. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, like there are so many different ways that
they could go out and like try different genres with
Splatoon and Splatoon Raiders. Makes me really excited about that
process and like the prospect of going out and trying
new genres because this is their first attempt at doing
that outside of like the little side games like they
did like a Card Battler and Splatoon three, and then
obviously they Salmon Run and Splatoon two and three, which
I mean, if you like Salmon Run, Splatoon Raiders, the
elevator pitch for Splatoon Raiders is basically like a looter
shooter that implements mechanics of Salmon Run and the single
player content of Splatoon's mainline series. Like that is basically
what Splatoon Raiders elevator pitch is, and it does it
really well. And you know, there's little complaints I can
have here and there, but again it's it's the highest
rating I've ever given a Splatoon game, and I've reviewed
all of them. I gave the highest one before this
was Splatoon three, which my complaint always with Splatoon games
is like there's not enough content at launch. This has
more than enough content at launch, and I don't know
if they're planning on adding more post launch, but if
they do, I will absolutely return. And something I want
to mention before we wrap up on Splatoon Raiders. After
you beat the game, there is a extremely challenging post
game that you can tackle that I am currently still
working my way through, and it's it's awesome, it's rewarding,
it's challenging. It puts like if you think that like
you've broken the game. I was talking to IGN's Logan
Plant on my All Things Nintendo podcast and he was like, yeah,
I thought I found like the build that broke Splatoon
Raiders by the end of the game. And then they
were like, no, way, you have to go rethink your
entire life in order to get through this post game stuff,
because like they thought, like ten steps ahead of whatever
build you have, you need to go back and not
only get better at it, but also like readjust it
and maybe even rebuild it from the ground up to
like figure out the load out that you're gonna need
to tackle this post game stuff because they don't mess
around with that. So that's something else that you can
look forward to even after you roll credits. And it
took me about probably twenty to twenty two hours to
roll credits on it, so it's it's a pretty solid
experience from start to finish.
Speaker 1: Heck yeah that as Splatoon raiders out now as of
this recording for the Switch to folks, that's gonna do it.
For the Game Informer show this week, Fast Breezy talk
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Speaker 5: Bye.