Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to side Quest. This is our weekly
video game show here at Geek Vers. I am your host,
Phil must and I with me Taylor Field, the mentor.
How are you doing today, my friend?
Speaker 2: Doing good? Doing good? My voice is on the men,
just time for side Quests.
Speaker 1: You're sounding much much clearer, much better, and I'm sure
you have a lot more energy, so I'm happy, happy
to hear that. Yeah, I'm excited for this episode. This
is gonna be fun set of topics here. Really, the
main thing today is that the Game Awards nominees for
twenty twenty four were dropped today, so we're gonna talk
about some of the controversy going on there that's getting
people all fired up. And then we just have a
bunch of games we've been playing as well on the
side so a lot lots of I have quite a
few to talk about there. So it's gonna be a
fun episode, and how about we just get right into it.
So yeah, here we go. The Game Wards twenty twenty
four is coming up in about a month. I think
it's maybe less a month. I think it's like December
ninth or whatever. It is usually like that Thursday, right
pocket and the kind of second second ish week in
December there, so it's coming up quick. And usually around
this time mid November is when they announced the nominees
for all the categories, and you know, every time it happens,
there's always some people who are a bit cheesed that
their favorite game didn't make it in Game of the
Year or some other category, or you know, there's some
of these weird categories like ongoing Game, and there might
be odd things that pop up there and people have
questions here or there, But I don't think people are
normally cheese for the most part. And then when it
comes to a live show, when we get winners, I
think that's when people get more fired up and they're like,
how did this win? How did that lose to this?
This thing shouldn't have been in this category? Lad d
da da da. But I think this time is the
first time I've I've ever really seen people fired up
and mad and salty about the nominees list in like
a really genuine way. And I think the big reason
for that is that across many categories, I think like
four or five categories, Olden Ring, Shadow of the Archery,
the Elder r DLC is up for nomination, including in
Game of the Year. So a lot of people don't
like this because they feel, oh, this is DLC, this
should not be a contender for Game of the Year.
This isn't a game, this is an expansion for a game.
What's going on here? Game awards? Jeff? What are you doing?
So a lot of questions just throwing it out you
right away, Taylor, how do you how do you feel
about about that? Are you on the side that DLC
expansion should not be included in these categories like Game
of the Year or do you find it to be okay?
Speaker 2: I think that DLC should not be counted as Game
of the Year. That's that's uh, it's it's an afterthoughts,
right and after additive to to a completed game, like
that base game is already in the running for it
or whatever. I can I can't remember what it was
back then, but like, that's that basic game, that's your submission.
Anything after after that fact, I mean, that's come on,
that's like double dipping.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, it's uh yeah. It did win back in
twenty twenty two at won Game of the Year there
when it uh, it wasn't even a competition. It just
swept the floor with all sorts of categories. So yeah,
I wanted to break this down a little bit because
I do feel like there is and this happens every
year and I try and clear some of these things
up because not that I know more about people, but
if you just go on the faq on game boards
dot com and they tell you how all this stuff works,
and I think people are always surprised at how it works.
And so I just want to talk about a little
bit of here because even just the word you use there,
and I don't know if if you just use that word,
but like saying like submitted, it's like these games are
not submitting anything. I don't know if that's what you meant,
but I'm just like, in general, like it has nothing
to do with any company submitting a thing. It's not
Jeff like picking arbitrary things. It's down to this jury
of the game awards that they I mean, Jeff picks
the jury of course, so that's part of it. But
the jury is all sorts of different publications like you know,
IGN and games Game Spot, and then like even podcasts
like I Think kind of Funny is in there and
some other bigger podcasts and all sorts of crazy. There's
some wild ones. If you look through the list, there's
I think like the CBCS on there. I was joking
about last year, like there's some strange, strange additions that
you don't normally think of as like that's where the
gaming conversations is happening. I don't even know many of
these companies that are that are part of this jury,
but I want I want to read this straight from
the FAQ just to give people some context of like
how this stuff happens and how we got to this
point where Eldon and DLC is in here in the
top five. So this is once again from the FAQ
on the game Wards website. How are nominees selected? Nominateds
for most categories of the Game Wards are chosen by
an international jury of over one hundred global media and
influencer outlets selected for the history of critical video game evolution.
And then there's a thing about specialized juries that's for
like accessibility and best adaptations of some other categories. And
then ballots are tabulated and the five games that appear
the most on the most ballots are put forth as nominees.
In the event of a tie six or more games
will be announced in a category. I don't think there's
ever been more than six, just putting out there. And
then Game Wards, of course they put this in here.
Game Awards producer Jeff Keey is not a member of
the jury and does not vote on the nominees or winners. Similarly,
the Game Awards Advisory Board has no involvement in the
awards process and learns of the results at the same
time as the general public, which I do find that
hard to believe. I find it hard to believe that
Jeff doesn't know the winner until the person on stage
flips open that, you know, even whoever's like printing that thing,
you know, like I assume that they would know who
the winner is. So there's maybe a little bit of
funkiness there, So that's a bit strange. And then, of
course winners are determined by a blended vote between the
voting jury, which has about ninety percent weight, and then
a public fan vote, which is worth ten percent of
the weight. And so everyone, you know, anyone listening to this,
you can go make an account on gamewards and do
your votes there and you'll be part of that big
bundle of ten percent. And then there was one other
part I wanted to Oh yeah, uh, there's a section here.
How are live service games handled? The Game Awards recognizes
that many games are ongoing services that evolve over time
with new content, features, and improvements. Games released in previous
years are eligible in all award categories as long as
the jury feels their inclusion is merited due to new content,
improvements or service updates. In addition, the Best Ongoing Game
category specifically recognizes the titles that continue to provide value
to customers. And then just this one last thing. Are
DLC's expansion packs, remakes, remasters eligible? The Game Awards aims
to recognize the best creative and technical work each year,
irrespective of the format of that content's release. Expansion packs,
new game seasons, DLCs, remakes, and remasters are all eligible
in all categories if the jury deems the new creative
and technical blah blah blah goes on there. So if
you read that, and I mean this has happened before,
Like I was joking in MUDs earlier that like if
the jury wanted to and of course this would be
like a coup, you would need like a lot of
jury members to come together. They could vote for absolutely
any game ever, end end of sentence period right there.
So I like got my joke, was like, oh yeah,
they could. Just if everyone wanted to vote for Super
Smash Brothers Melee in the year twenty twenty four, that
would win, because there is nothing that the Game of
Words will do to stop you from voting absolutely any
game ever to be in any calendar year. Like it's
it's kind of complete nonsense. And that's where I just
feel like they really need to button down on it,
and I think it becomes a really murky question for
a lot of these things of like what is eligible
here or there? But I'm I'm in the same boat
as you. I think I my knee regrection because we
talked about this on After nine on the weekend, actually
the nomalies hadn't come out yet, we were just theorized
and then apparently, well what happened over the weekend is
that that Jeff Keeley or whoever posted that like, oh,
by the way, any any DLC is allowed in any category,
And it was kind of like, why did we, why
do we? Why would he tweet that out if like
Elan Ring wasn't about to be in this nominees, and
he knew people were getting mad about it, so he's
kind of like preparing for people to fire on him
in that way. So it's funny that he did that,
and then of course it ended up being the case.
So yeah, my kneejr. Regrection is like, that's really weird. No,
take that stuff out of there. And then I was
thinking about it more today and especially after we got
the official announcement. The scene it there that Elden Ring
is part of the announcement, and I do feel like
it gets pretty murky. Taylor, maybe you can help me
with some examples here, but I was thinking about the
case of like, here's an example. Spider Man twenty eighteen
came out cool. Two years later, Spider Man Miles Morales
comes out. It is a separate game. It's not a DLC.
It's like half the price. It's you know, can beat
it in a few hours. It's the same city, but
they just threw some snow on it. Of course, there's
new villains, new story and all that. But in my opinion,
the amount of difference between like Miles Morales and the
Elder Ring DLC, as someone who's played and finished both
of those things is about the same. So it's like, Okay,
if elden Ring had decided to do like a small
spin off game instead and released it that way, because
the DLC is completely disconnected from the main game, then
I don't think people would have an issue with it
just because of the way it was released. And so
that's where things get a little murky, where it's like,
I don't know, I feel like Miles Morales, you know,
that was eligible in categories. I think it might have
even been a nominee for Game of the Year. But
I don't think anyone would have thought anything differently about
that game had it been a DLC for Spider Man
in terms of like the quality or the length, or
any of the price, any of that sort of stuff.
So it gets a bit murky there. I don't know
if you can think of any other examples where there's
like a DLCs that feel very substantial, for like where
the line is, well you think about that a little bit.
Like another one for me is one of my favorite games,
Outer Wilds, not to be confused with the Outer Worlds,
but I wud Wild's released a DLC a couple years
later called Echoes of the Eye, which was built into
the base game, like you couldn't play it without the
base game, but it was like completely its own thing.
It was the same length as the main game. I
think it was a free ad on. Maybe it costs something.
I don't actually remember how much it was, and like
something like that to me is like it seems totally
fair game for like a Game of the Year contender,
And so I don't even know what. I don't know
where the biases within myself to say like, oh, well,
where is the line of like what we allow and
don't allow for these kind of things? And if like
all these outlets like an ign is gonna put Eldon
the Ring Shadow their tree as one of their Game
of the years, then like why shouldn't they just put
it in their ballot when they're submitting to the game Wards.
So I know, I just rambled like a million things
that you there, but I don't know. I do feel
like the more I've thought about it, the more it
is a really complicated thing to decide, like where that
line is of when we decide, like even if I
was to be in the game Wards was in Jeff's position,
what do how do I decide which games should be
considered eligible. What is DLC versus what is an expansion
versus like how close a remake? You know, it's it's
it's not easy to make these precursors.
Speaker 2: No, it's it's really not. And I mean, I guess
everyone has their own predetermined kind of I guess ways
of looking at it, like what will qualify and what
would not and where they stand with it. So I
think the voting is going to be very very interesting
when you look at it and break it down. I
was trying to think of of an example. I thought, well,
maybe Halo three ODSC is kind of like an expansion
built off of like Halo three, but it's well maybe
more like Reach. I can't remember, maybe maybe Halo three,
but that's still it's still setting out its on two feet,
is its own main game. Yeah, that's a tough one.
I was trying to think maybe Border.
Speaker 1: Well that's a good point too, because like ODST came
with like an extra disc for Halo three with like
new multiplayer maps, and I think that was that like
firefight was that there?
Speaker 2: Or was that that's firefight?
Speaker 1: But yeah, like that's a good point too, where it's like, Okay,
you buy this separate game, but half of it is
DLC for another game, Like I don't know that, Like
where do you weigh that in like the Calculus And
of course that was pregame Awards days or like these
game awards. But yeah, that's a good point. Like there's
a lot of things that release in very strange strange ways,
right or like early access like being another thing that
is in one of the FAQ things is talking about
early access games. But yeah, it's like there there is
an opportunity for games to double dip, and it like
it doesn't fall on the game makers, you know, even
in the case of like Miles Morales my example there
maybe maybe that's just also my boies that I don't
love Miles Morales as a package and I was kind
of underwhelmed by it. But like, is that even Insomniac's
decision or is that just like a Sony decision. So
it's like it doesn't even necessarily come down to the
developer of like if they put it as a DLC
or if they spin it off into like a separate
box art, and is like that gonna be our differentiator
If a game has like its own box art, does
it get like considered to be if it has its
own space on a shelf, Like, is that is that
what it takes to be a game of the weird
Game of the Year nominee, Like, I don't think it's
that easy. Uh so, yeah. I And the weird thing,
the extra super duper weird thic about this to me
is that Best Ongoing Game is a category as I
mentioned there in that overhaul, and that's they call this
order to a game for outstanding development of ongoing content
that evolves the player experience over time. So that's like
kind of the DLC category. Usually it is for more
like live service games and things that have battle passes
like of course Fortnit's in here, Destiny too. But the
funniest to me is best Ongoing Game does not have
Elden ring. The DLC is not in here, which is
like the one category that I feel like it should
be kind of bucketed and put into. So it's it's
just broken and weird. And another example that I found
when looking through this is this year they have Best
Fighting Game, as they do every other year, and one
of the games nominated here is Multiverses, which is kind
of a weird case right where it came out a
couple of years ago, and then they killed it, took
it offline, and then they brought it back this year,
relaunched it. The Multiverses won a Game Award two years
ago for best Fighting Game, so it already won in
whatever state that was deemed good enough to win a
Game Award in. But then they took it offline, and
now it's back, and so now it seems like a
new release, and now it's nominated again and it could
potentially win again, which to me, like that's just as
egregious as the Elder Ring thing, And of course no
one cares about because it's multivers and it's best fighting game.
It's not Game of the Year, but like that is
just as egregious, if not worse than like the case
of Eldon Ring, because it's like there's new content here,
there's new characters and stuff, and actually they just released
a new season has like Raven from Teen Titans. I
checked out her move set. She was pretty cool, so
I might go play a few more games in there.
But there's weird stuff like this that happens all over
the place in game Board's history, and I feel like
new Normally it's just not the game of the Year category,
which is why people don't tend to not care as much.
But yeah, multiverses is another perfect example of like how
broken these categories are because the game boards doesn't police
anything and they let you do whatever the f you
want as a as a a member of the jury.
M h, yeah, so I got I don't even think
I mentioned this, But like the the Game of the
Year right now, the sixth nominees are Astrobought Volatro, Blackmoin, Wukong,
Elden Ring, DLC, Final Fantasy seven, Rebirth, and Metaphor Refantasio.
So interesting crop of games that you know, we're gonna
do predictions in a couple of weeks, like that's two
episodes from now is we're gonna do official predictions. But
when I look at that, I was really prize by
those lists. What do you what do you think of that?
Is there any like big snubs immediately or do you
think there's like a front runner when you when you
think of that list.
Speaker 2: Wokong front runner right there? Really yeah, I remember just
that blowing up all over my feeds, and I just
watched some videos of it. I'd never played it, but
I just remember saying that this was breaking records and
was just blowing it out of the water. People were
super super excited about it. But I'd also say Astrobot
there was a lot of shatter about that one too.
I think that one was really really popular as well.
So there's there's a few on the list. I think
there are definitely fitting to be there.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, I was really surprised by this list one,
I mean the only run any thing. I was less
surprised because Jeff did that thing over the weekend, so
it's kind of us kind of prepping ess for it.
I was surprised to be the black Myth see Black
Myth in there, because I feel like, yeah, there's a
lot of hype for that game pre release, and then
it came out and people like, yeah, it's a decent
Soul's game. And so maybe me and you are just
in different circles that you saw a lot more praise
for it. But I even saw an article today that
from IGN, I think that only Blackmith Wukong is the
lowest rated Game of the Year nominee ever in game
Ward's history. Like, like I guess just looking at like Metacritic,
like the overall aggregative of reviews there and it's like,
you know, eighty something like it's good. But that just
shows like the caliber. I think it's like low eighties
and usual. You know, the caliber is very very high
for where these Games of the Year and things normally are.
So that's part of it, maybe of Worrise leaning into it,
but maybe people just enjoyed a lot more. Sometimes you
give a game at eight and it's like your favorite.
Maybe you give a movie inn eight, but it might
be your favorite movie of the year, you know, just
because like that's the way some of these things work out,
and when you're giving things numbers. I was very happy
to see Blatro make it in here, just because I mean,
that's a game made by like one Canadian dude who
just made this funny little poker game. And then it's
like the hugest thing ever and uh, you know, it's
in like four or five categories and just seed in
Game of the Year. I I thought it had a chance,
but I don't think it's gonna win still, but I
think the fact that's even in there is a huge
compliment because I think only of the indie games that
ever do that are Celeste and Haities, which are like
two of the biggest indie games ever, so the fact
that Blotro is kind of in that camp with them
is really cool. I think the biggest shock for me
was that no Hell Divers two in the Game of
the Year list. That was maybe my pick for what
I thought was gonna win overall, and it's not even
a nominee, so I don't know what the heck happened there.
It made it into a few categories, but not Game
of the Year, so that was the biggest surprise. And
then you astrobought final Fantasy metaphor. I expected those three,
and then it was kind of just open for the
rest of them. Another thing I wanted to mention here
is kind of going back to what I was saying
earlier from the nominees, that yeah, ballots are tabulated and
the five games that appear on the most ballots are
put forth as nominees. In the event of a tie,
six or more nominees will be announced. So I don't
know if this is somewhere else, but one thing I've
noticed is that I think every single year there has
been six nominees for Game of the Year, specifically that
one category, meaning that there's always every year there has
been a tie, which seems crazy to me. So I
don't know if they just actually fudge it and they
just say, yeah, whatever the top six are will allow
those for a game Game of the Year nomine is.
But it seems like a really weird coincidence to me
that every single year there's been a tie. So I
might be I might have looked at it wrong, but
I'm pretty sure I saw when I was looking through
the years really quick. So I don't know, funky, something
something weird's going on there in my opinion, and I
don't know what exactly. Yeah, I don't know. If you've
been able to click around and see some of these categories,
see if there's anything else that looks a bit off
to you. I guess another comment on like the DLC
stuff is, you know, Phantom Liberty the cyberpunk DLC was
all over the place on categories last year, so not
just not just ongoing game. I think it had like
maybe three or four normbs across the different categories. Definitely
not in Game of the Year just because it wasn't
on that caliber. But I guess people should be more
prep for this kind of thing. But even then, A
couple of years ago, or a couple of years ago,
a couple of weeks ago, me and Travis were talking
because he's on hiatus now, of course, so I wanted
to ask him about Game of the Year and Game
Awards and things like that, and we both just completely
discredited elderings like a possibility, even like I know these
rules and I know that like that would have been
a possibility, I suppose, but it just seems so weird,
Like I can't imagine being a jury member and wanting
to put it in there. It's like also for me,
it's like it's a good deal. See don't get me wrong.
It's not like Game of the Year. You know, it's not.
It's not one of the top five or top six
things that came out this year. So I was very
surprised by by some of that. Two other weird things
that stood out to me. Maybe maybe this isn't weird,
but I just want to get your take on this.
Knuckles best adaptation is a nominee. One of your thoughts
on that, that's.
Speaker 2: Some straight up bullshit. That's not a great adaptation.
Speaker 1: Adaptation is always the funniest one to me, because like
there are usually only like five or six video game
adaptations that release an year, or maybe a couple more
of you factor in some smaller animated things, so it
kind of feels like whatever came out is going to
be a nominee, regardless of quality, and then there's usually
one or two kind of like front runnery things, So
I thought that was funny. The other one that I
thought was really odd is so Diablo four did have
a new DLC that came out this year, but Diablo four,
just like the base game, was one of the games
in innovation and accessibility this year, so I don't know
if the DLC just somehow added a bunch of accessibility stuff.
But like the thing on the nominee doesn't even state
the DLC, it just states the base game. And so
that's another thing where like, once again, you can nominate
a game from any year ever, and I don't, but
it just seems really odd to me that Diablo is
one of those nominees. So once again, these categories are weird,
and the jury can do whatever they want, and Jeff
is not going to stop them until there is a
coup and some weird game like Katamari Demassi wins Game
of the year, even though it came out in like
two thousand and seven, you know, like until that happens
and there's some big coalition of people who want to
troll A Kiley then, and they wouldn't do that because
I think if anyone did try to troll them with
a weird pick like that, and it's obviously a troll,
then next year they would not get the callback to
be a jury member. So I don't think they'll ever
do that. So we just have to hope that they
pick things that the general public also generally agrees with.
So we'll see what happens there, because I think I
think elden Ring has a pretty good shot of landing
the whole thing now knowing that it is even in
there now, and definitely with ten percent fan vote, I mean,
that might be the most popular game on the list,
so you know, good chance it gets an extra ten
percent bump from people voting out in the wild. I
will not vote that way. I'll put my vote on Billottro.
I want to see the indie game succeed there. But yeah,
any any other thoughts on all this stuff.
Speaker 2: I mean, I took a quick gander at Best Multiplayer
and I just thought it was funny to see Super
Mario Mario Party Jamboree in there.
Speaker 1: That was funny. Yeah, that was odd. You'd think like
family game, but multiplayers seem like an odd place for
I guess they did have like a Battle Royale mode,
I suppose, but it's just weird.
Speaker 2: Seeing it sandwich between Black Op six, Hell Divers two
techn eight and Warhammer forty thousand, Space fore two. It's
just it's funny to see it. But I also liked
that they listed as Nintendo Cube Nintendo, which like Nintendo
O CU.
Speaker 1: Yeah, where's that?
Speaker 2: Sorry here, I'll share my screen.
Speaker 1: See that's on Best Multiplayer.
Speaker 2: Yes, it is Nintendo Nintendo Cube.
Speaker 1: Weird. I guess that's maybe the name of the because
like all of the Nintendo's teams, like they don't have
fun names, like all the Xbox studios at the PlayStation studios,
they're just called like internal development too, you know, like
that kind of thing. And I guess Nintendo Cube is
maybe the name of one of them, or it's it
must that must be what it is, but I've never
heard that name before. That's but actually you mentioned there
with the multiplayer and the Black Ops like Call of
Duty in general. That's another one for me. It's like
so often these Call of Duty games year to year,
there's so little like change or new with them, and
it's like something like an older ring in that dealc
like that to me seems more new than some Call
of Duty games that come out, and those are always
eligible in every category every year, as they should because
they're a new game. So I don't know. I I
think people who are super salty about this, like I
think I got less salty as the day went on.
I still don't want it in there. I would like
if there was, if Eldon Ring was like kind of
stuck and ongoing there. And I think Jeff Keey just
outside of this should put some barriers on what can
be allowed like that multiverses a thing. Again, I think
it's incredibly stupid that it's allowed to be here kind
of twice, but once again, it could be there every
year for the rest of time because there's nothing to
stop it from that. So I think there needs people
put more barriers there. But I think people should like
maybe think about that and just see, like there's a
lot of other examples of stupid things that make it
through all the time. So I feel like it's more
of just like an overall game awards issue, not just
necessarily this one weird case because I saw people online
today being like, I can't believe they change the rules
of the game wards to allow elden ring DLC. But
it's like this has been the case of every year,
and there's always weird cases like this, So people just
like obviously aren't paying intention to rules, but the rules
are weird. So I don't blame people for not just
like knowing how these things work, because it's not how
you would expect. I suppose there are other game award
things out there, like the baff does and the Dice Awards,
and I think those ones, like the Dice Awards, I
think the way it works is it's like mostly only
other game developers, so other people, other studios, and they
you know, are given like here's this category, you have
to play all eight of these games, and then you
do like a roundtable discussion with other developers who are
on that roundtable, and you figure out who's the winner
of that category. So if you want like a better
take of like what actually deserves to win and not
just like a raw popularity condest with the game awards.
Is there are other awards for that, you know, we
just have to see the game wards as like the
fun entertainment tee oscars one that we go to for
mostly the announcements, and then we also sometimes get enthused
with some of the award wins or losses. So that's
the way I see it at least interesting case. Let's
let's take a quick break, Taylor. Let's let's cool down
a bit here and we'll be right back to talking
about some of the games that we have been playing. Okay,
we are back. We have a few things on the
docket here. I want to bring up one to start here.
So when possible, Taylor, I like to have synergy between
what side quest, what's going on side quest, and what's
going on like the gig first me feed, whether that's
like big news topic or usually it's like a big
movie thing. So like you know, Alien Rhomos came out,
we did the Alien Isolation retrospective over here. X Men
ninety seven came out, We did an X Men roster
when the when we were doing all the Lord of
the Rings releases for Rings Power season one, we did
like a Lord of the Rings episode. So I try
to have these synergy moments when I can, and I
have the jankiest synergy ever this week because last week
we did the Gladiator retrospective because Gladiator two is coming
out this week. To my knowledge, I don't know if
there's a Gladiator game. I don't think there is. But
what I downloaded and checked out for a few hours
Taylor Rise, Son of Rome. I was just cruising around
on game Pass. I wanted to download something new, not
necessarily new, as like twenty twenty four new, but just
something I haven't played before. And I saw a Rise
there and I was in the mood. I was like,
I want to get in the coliseum. I want to
get in the ring. I want to chop some people
up as a gladiator right now. And so I gave
this game a download. You played this one right back
in the day when it.
Speaker 2: Came out a long time ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, woul, did you get it? Like launch launch
day kind of things.
Speaker 2: I didn't get it, Like I didn't buy it, but
it was a launch day. I went over my friend's
house when he he bought it and we were playing it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, So I it's an interesting case to
talk about this game because I feel like no one
when they're talking about this game ever actually talks about
the game itself. I feel like people just talk about, oh,
I can't believe this was Xbox Ones, like launch title.
What it's such a bad thing to have it there,
And I feel like no one's actually ever really talking
about what the game is, or at least that's maybe
how I've tuned it out. Maybe it goes in one
of my ears out the other kind of thing. But
it was fun and interesting to jump back into this
game one not even realizing the developer of it. I
feel like that never gets talked about. But made by
cry Tech, who make all the Crisis games, of course,
and I feel like, once again that's a developer that
people don't really talk about their games. Then we're just
talking about how crazy their engine is and how good
their games look, rather than like the actual content of it.
So interesting that those two things are kind of paired there.
But yeah, made by the Crisis team, and you know,
not a first person shooter like they normally make. It's
a third person your action game. And yeah, I think
that maybe the first thing that stood out to me,
especially because I'm playing this game. What ten twelve years
after it came out, is that it still looks like
absolutely beautiful, Like graphics are amazing, the draw distance looking
out to the city. The lighting is really good, like
some of the just flowing of like you know, blankets
and scarves and like all these things in the background.
But yeah, what do you remember of your time playing
this game all the way back in the day.
Speaker 2: So I remember it being like a pretty epic scale.
I remember you charging into combat. I remember the combat
being pretty pretty gory, pretty up in your face and dropping.
I remember it. Like launch titles like yet that they
have a certain kind of aesthetic to them, I guess,
but like Sunset Overdrive and stuff like that, they have
a certain kind of like a certain piece of baggage
with them that people kind of throw shade onto. But
I will say that this one is definitely I mean,
it's not bad. You said it yourself. Yeah, it still
looks great after all these years. And I think the
combat from what I remember is it's relatively smooth. I
would give it some give it some kudos there. And yeah,
I think that you know, it's doesn't need a SEQL,
absolutely not. I don't think you need to need to
laugh far but I think, yeah, it's it's they set
out to do a game here in Rome and like
Gladiator kind of style, like Roman Legionnaire, and I think
it definitely accomplishes exactly what it was supposed to do.
And it was at the time, like you're trying to
test out a new console, right, trying to emphasize and
show like, hey, look how good this console can like
could be like like we're building a game here that
looks amazing, and like, look how well this console can
showcase it? Right, So it really the game was kind
of in my opinion, it was designed to really emphasize
and maximize like oh wow, like the Xboxes just looks
so good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I could definitely see this, especially being back in
the day where you know, digital game digital games hadn't
completely taken over, where if you walk into eb games
and like up on the screen they have like gameplay footage,
random stuff playing as they always do, and you just
see that game up there, and people would look at
that like, damn, that's what the new Xbox can do.
That's pretty crazy. I think in hindsight like that was
a really it was a really smart idea for Xbox too.
Presumably they just funded the development of this game completely.
I would think to get like the get cry Tech
to make this game, I think that's like a great
developer to grab people who are known at making beautiful
games and like really technologically impressive games. I think that's
a great developer to grab and try and like show
off your new console with. And I think like, to
that extent, it seems like they kind of got the
job done.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's what people wanted from a launch
title from Xbox. Clearly we can look back at the
history books and see that was not the right foot
forward for that console to be a success, and all
these years later they're on a completely different trajectory. But
interesting history lesson in terms of the combat, because that's
what ninety nine percent of this game is. Like you
have a cut scene in a hall with some guy
wearing some row like robe, and then you go out,
you fight up like thirty guys, and then kind of
rinse and repeat that thing over and over. There's not
really platform being or like puzzle solving, at least in
the first like two or three hours that I've made
it in. And yeah, the combat is very like you know,
Shadow of mortor or like Witcher three Arkham style where
you're spamming that attack button, you know, mix of a
heavy attack and a light attack. Enemies blocking, okay, go
for the attack that hits them off balance, and then
just like hitting that perry or dodge or counter button
when like that color flashes just the right way. So
it's a very kind of classic combat system, and it's
one that like worked for me for the first hour
and then I was just get like so burnt out
on it because it's so much like button mashing. You
gotta hit these guys over and over and over again,
especially like as they're trying to ramp it up. They
really don't ramp it up with like more interesting enemy types.
They just ramp like the amount of enemies that they
throw you, which once again is probably a thing to
do to like show off a new console. Oh look
at there's you know, ten enemies on screen. Back and
back in these days, that was a press of number,
I suppose. And yeah, so, but I think that the
one of the funniest things to me about the the
combat in this game that is very Xbox coded is
that in this game, like once you knock someone into
this state, where you can pretty much go for like
a finishing blow, so you hit the finishing blow button
and then it goes into like this slow mo attack
and it's pretty much like a quick time event where
you got to hit the buttons in the in the
right order. But instead of like them showing X or
R two or on screen, they just show like the
color of the button you're supposed to hit, So like
they'll put like instead of why they'll like highlight the
enemy yellow, or they'll highlight them blue or what are
they other call this red and green that kind of thing,
So they just highlight the color of the Xbox Face
button that you're supposed to use, which I find so cheesy.
And it also like kind of takes you out of
like the game because it is this beautiful game and
it's like all those Roman stuff and then like all
these yellows like highlighting big ugly blues and you so
it's so goofy, but I kind of love it for
how goofy it is and the commitment of the bit.
And even like when you're picking up objects in the world,
like object will like highlight green, like green like the
A button, which I just I think that's actually a
really fun idea, and I'm kind of surprised I haven't
seen that done again or since. Uh And maybe that's
because a lot of games are a multiplat and they're
all gonna like color code for each console and all that.
But I just found that to be like such a
funny little detail of this game. One thing that I
found absolutely savage and egregious is that whenever in this game,
you go to your you know, menu, and you can
like upgrade your your skills, and there's all sorts of
different ways you can do that, and you can upgrade
it in two ways. There's one that's like valor points,
I forget the names of them, Valor points, and these
are kind of like XP like you know, you build
up this XP bar. And there's also there's one it's
like coins, and you get coins from like I guess collectibles.
I don't even know how these currencies work. But there's
two ways you can buy any of these skills in
the game. But there's also a third way you can
buy any skill in this game. And I clicked it
once out of curiosity, and it popped up like the
Xbox Store like took me to these like rise bucks
so I could just like any skill from level one,
you could just pay to win your way to like
the top, and it was just it's so grim me
the way it's in there, because it just seems like
another option, like any player is gonna click that. So
that's just like the grossest monetization I think I've ever
seen in a game like this just absolutely cracked me up.
So I don't I'm not gonna see this game all
the way through, you know. I was just looking for
a little Roman nostalgia hit in the in the gladiator
hype here, and I really just I get burnt out
of this commat really quickly. I can play the game
for like twenty minutes and I'm like, okay, I'm done,
like a mashing X and Y for just one hundred
times in a row to kill this room of enemies.
So an interesting time to go back and check this out.
And honestly, I wish I could, Like, you know, so
many games these day have like a story mode difficulty
which pretty much makes every enemy of one hit kill
and you could just see the story, and I wish
I could do that for this game. I wish I
wish I could turn off everything and just like walk
through it as if it was like a diorama and
check out the different locations and just walk around and explore.
But you know, ninety nine percent of the game, once again,
is just like this annoying ass combat. So that's what's
kind of pulling me away from it. But yeah, really
really interesting game, and I'm glad I finally played it
because I feel like I never had a concept of
like what the game actually was outside of it just
being kind of memed as this weird launch title for
the Xbox One. Yeah, there you go, Rise Son of Rome.
We're still waiting for that sequel, as you mentioned, all
these all these years later, I don't think it's gonna happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think that's happening.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Sticking to the realm of the
historical what's going on with sasas screen two, Taylor.
Speaker 2: Nothing big, it's just it's fifteenth anniversary and so they
were just dropping cool little videos of oh is this.
Speaker 1: Like the frame rate update kind of thing that I saw.
Speaker 2: That was for Syndicate, which it which is pretty cool. Yes,
a Syndicate. It's getting that sixty three's per second frame
rate update day I believe for all current consoles, which
is you can jump back, super awesome. You know, I
think there's there's a little bit of there's a little
bit of room in my heart that I think I
would like to go back and actually play that. There's
more DLC that I actually have to experience a little
bit more on that game and revisit. But that's a
great story, and it's a great place, and it's actually
funny enough. And of all the history as doing in
my family lineage. There is a district in Assassin's Creed Syndicate.
Now excuse me, I'm not saying like they didn't design
or put any of my family history stuff in there,
but there's a district of Lambeth in that area that
I think that is incorporated into Assassin's Creed Syndicate. That
I could walk around and I could just see it,
and you know, it's not anything major because the buildings
are all pretty much garb and copy from other districts
and stuff like that. But the fact that I think
that I have to go and recheck it and make
sure it's actually there. But the fact that the district
of Lambeth I think is in Assassin's Creed Syndicate. That's
the same district where my family had used to run
their business and do all their stuff back in like
the eighteen hundred. It's like, you know, that's actually pretty cool. Yeah,
really really cool. So a syndicate is definitely a game.
I need to go back and revisit some more.
Speaker 1: Right, but sorry I interrupted you. Assassin's Creed two that
got a update of some sort or something.
Speaker 2: No, it was just the fifteenth year anniversary, and so
I thought, you know, that's just super super cool. They
did an interview with the guy that voiced at CEO
from Assassin's Creed too. He was just talking about it,
and so I just wanted to shout out because it's like,
it's the best Assassin's Creed game out there.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of crazy that Assassin's Creed as a
series isn't even twenty years old yet, because it just
feels like one there's been so many titles, and obviously
they were doing the yearly thing for a while there,
but it's just such a storied series and franchise, and
it is like Ubisoft's flagship series, and so it feels
wild that hasn't even hit the twenty year mark. But
we're getting pretty close because like the first game came
and what or I assume it hasn't twenty years yet.
If you said Assasine Creed two is fifteen years old,
I could be wrong though.
Speaker 2: The first one was two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so we're getting damn closet year and so
this is this is interesting. So I this maybe soft
announcement here, but when Assassin's Creed Shadows was going to
come out, we were planning on doing a one episode
Assassin Screed retrospective because that is a big blind spot
for me as a series, and it's so important for
you that I want to jump in there and check
out more of these games. So I asked you, like,
what was what game should we do? And you said
Assasage Creed two, that's the one we should we should do.
So I still would love to do that in the
new year. I forget did Shadows got a new date? Right?
It got kicked with the date?
Speaker 2: I think it's Valentine's Day?
Speaker 1: So interesting. Okay, that's good to know because that's coming
up pretty quick. So that might be something i'd even
play play over the holidays or something like that. So
that is the plan. I would still like to do
that if you if you have the bandwidth to I
don't know, chump jump You know it so well you
probably don't need to replay, but even just jump in
for a couple hours, get your hands on the sticks again.
But I would really like to do that for sure.
But yeah, like why that one? Why why is this
one your your favorite? Give it? Give it some love
on it's fifteenth birthday.
Speaker 2: The character of that CEO is just so it's just
so engaging. You just latch onto that character, you latch
onto the story. The story is a huge step up
from the first one, especially because you're dangling between the
the Animus story, which is in the history in the
past with the history with et CEO, and then you're
dealing with the present day where you got Desmond Miles,
and so I think they do a great job at
kind of creating that balance between the two characters after
what the first game had introduced. Yeah, there's just such
a dynamic there that you just you, you just engage with,
as I already said, And it's just such a powerful story.
And I think when the moment it starts, when you
were with this character, then it carries forth and you
just go through all these tribulations with et CEO. It's
just absolutely mind boggling and just the characters that you're
you're fighting and the bad guys. It's just such a
such a dynamic story. Uh. It's one that I'm I'm
I've got seared into my mind, like I'll always be
able to just pull from that game. It's just such
a such a great, great experience. And I remember that
was like the best time for that game to come out,
because it was like high school grade nine and like,
oh peak. But they did do it remastered. I think
it was the CEO Trilogy that got remastered, but I think.
Speaker 1: Put On Switch maybe that was one of the big
motivations to do that trilogy. I don't even know when
I came out.
Speaker 2: So I think so. But it was definitely a little
bit underwhelming.
Speaker 1: I'd say just go when I played, I should just
go to the original? Would you say, jump right to
the sound screen two? Because they probably got like I
don't know, I assume maybe would they even have like
a current gen patch Ford Is it kind of old
enough game that they wouldn't worry about that sort of thing.
I'm sure.
Speaker 2: It's playable, yeah, or on Xbox at least.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Nice shows two sausand Screw two. I'm excited to
check it out. Like I said, that's that should be
in the next couple of months, jumping into that for
the first time. So that'll be that'll be fun. Okay,
moving along, then, I got I got a few games.
We have one collective game. Maybe I'll show this one
out first, then we can circle back as we like
to do to the other stuff. This is a game
that came out just this last week or two weeks ago,
I think it was last week ish called mind Over Magnet,
which I'm guessing you have not heard of, Taylor. But
have you heard of the YouTube channel game Maker's tool
Kit by chance? No, it's I I ask you that
because it's like probably the most popular like video game
essay YouTube channel on on the internet. So I feel
like I'm not like, I'm not like I'm shouting out
some under the radar YouTube channel here. I want to
mention that, but I'm sure a few people listening are
familiar with game Maker's tool Okay, yeah, just like these
ten to twenty minute long video essays on all sorts
of the game design things and and whatnot. It's a
it's a really great channel. But anyway, a couple of
years ago, two or three years ago, the guy who
runs that channel, his name is Mark Brown, he announced
that he, after many years of talking about video games
and critiquing them and analyzing the design, he was gonna
throw his hat in the ring and he was gonna
develop a game of his own and cover the development
of that on his YouTube channel. It's kind of like
a side series. And yeah, so he is the creator
here of mind Over Magnet is solely developed by him,
and then he has like a composer who did the music,
but everything else that design and art and and coding,
all of that was was done by him. And it's
it's kind of it's a game that is kind of
special to me in a in a weird, a weird
sort of way, because when he announced this project that
he's gonna start working on this game, it was around
the same time that I started working on Potion Problem
in earnest, and so it was just like funny timing,
and of course similar situation from me were like I
made everything on the game except for the music, so
we kind of like a similar journey there and even
though he has no idea who I am, but just
like in a parasocial way, I feel like it was
a really nice companion to watch his YouTube devlog of
this series as I was making postion problem. They're both
puzzle games that they're quite different, but still like he
was just very open and honest about like, you know,
maybe he didn't work on the game for like two
or three months in a row, because it's just hard
to make a game, and it's like you get burnt out.
You have so many things going on, and so hearing
like the highs and lows of the development or like
some really exciting time when like maybe in a couple
months period a ton of things where they came together,
that moment when you finally add sound effects in your
game and it just like makes everything feel so much better.
Like there was just so many things that like really
mirrored my experience making my game, and so it was
a really special series and it's cool, like, you know,
I released the game back in May. He released his
here in November, so pretty close development times and release dates,
and like his game's on a way different scale, Like
his YouTube channel is huge, and I'm sure his game
has made like a shit ton of money, and he
even jokes about like how he kind of was doing
game dev on like easy mode because he has so
many people in his community that does want to play
test his game and like people who like offered him
code or all these suggestions. And he knows a bunch
of game developers from his YouTube videos who like, you know,
famous like puzzle game developers who like played his game
and offered him feedback and all this stuff. So his
game is definitely very polished and very impressive compared to
something like that I that I was able to make.
But it's weird, like, even though I don't know him,
I was still I was very happy for him. It
was very cool to see that the game finally came out.
So when once again it's called mind over Magnet, I
played through the whole thing. It's pretty short. It only
took me about maybe two and a half hours to
play through the whole game, and it's pretty simple. It's
a two D puzzle platformer. So you play this little
robot character. You move around the screen. You know, you're
flipping switches, you're jumping on buttons, you're moving boxes around,
that kind of thing, and then the core mechanic of
the game is tied to the magnets in the in
the title there where you have these these magnets and
you're flipping the polarity on these different fields. So for example,
you have a you have a red magnet, there's a
blue field that would carry you up. You grab the magnet,
you jump in the field that carries you up. That's
how you solve a early puzzle in the game, that
kind of thing, and then it kind of just ramps
up on top of that. New mechanics get introduced. There's
different magnets, you can throw some around, you can switch
the polarity on the fly, all these kind of things,
and it's kind of a game based around that core concept.
There's like a tiny bit of a story in there,
but it's really just a straight ahead puzzle game. And yeah,
it's it's really solid. It's a fun puzzle game. You know,
it's not one of the best by any means, but
it's just a very solid fun time. And yeah, like
I said, like two and a half hours long to
play through it, and then I think, you know, I
played through, I was like, yeah, this was a solid
fun time. Nice job. Mark I'm impressed by your game
is cool. And then I think where I actually gained
some additional appreciation for it is with after you beat
the game, you unlock like a developer commentary, So as
you're playing through the game, there's like these text boxes
that would pop up, and then he'll kind of like
talk over like, oh, when I was making this puzzle,
here's what I was trying to do, or here's the
purpose of this, or this is when this thing got
added to the game, So just kind of like a
fun behind the scenes. Funnily enough, I feel like I
didn't actually gain a lot of knowledge because I'd watch
all his devlogs, so I kind of knew, you know,
the broad strokes of I'd seen those things before. But
it was fun playing through the game a second time,
knowing the solutions to everything, and just like blast just
speed running through the game, flying through it really really
really really quickly, and then you know, stopping to like
listen to those dialogue the devcom things. But I feel like,
I really it was fun. I'd beat the game in
like forty minutes my second time through, just blasted through it.
It was really really satisfying and really fun. So I
don't normally replay games, especially puzzle games, Like Yeah, I
would never replay a puzzle game. Was once you've solved
the puzzle, there's not really got anything to do in
the game, and unless you haven't played it in like
ten years and you forget the solutions. But yeah, I
had a really good time playing through this game. Definitely
recommend it. It's like ten or twelve fifteen bucks something
like that on Steam, really cheap only on Steam right now,
I'm I don't know if he's going to do I'm
sure he'll announce soon if he's going to do a
switch port. I think this would be really really solid
switch kind of game. But yeah, definitely a good recommendation
for me on that one. Check out Mine over Magnet.
It's a fun, cool, interesting, interesting game.
Speaker 2: So there you go.
Speaker 1: And then jumping along, we got we got two things, Taylor.
Do you want to talk about Outlast Trials?
Speaker 2: Yes, my goodness. Getting back into this world has been
quite exciting because they've added a lot of new stuff,
I'd say at least new antagonists that you're dealing with,
right and they've added some interesting new trials as well.
And we were trying to figure out some of the
stuff because some of the maps they seemed familiar, but
I think for the most part they were all new maps.
And then we had.
Speaker 1: Like half and half, like I'd say like half and
half at least, like you know, the ones we were queuing,
and it's like, since we haven't played the game in
a few months, it's like, have we freed the prisoners before?
Have we done that quest? You can't can't quite remember
the exact details.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's right. I mean even like the the
loading room where you guys are just waiting to start
your trial. It was cool because they had like a
Halloween kind of thing going on and that was fun.
And then they added new games you can be engaging with too.
But a big thing was it looked like they had
this new battle pass kind of battles. It's like Seasons
Pass kind of thing, and there was like three of them,
pardon me, And so it looks like you just you
do the trials, you unlock different currencies and you can
use those currencies to basically just unlock cosmetics and stuff,
mostly just for your room, your cell. But that's about it,
and it looks it looks fun because they got a
lot more of the challenges too, something you have to
do while you're doing the Trials, which is a lot
of fun you get XP but I don't I don't
think they added any more amps because I was looking
at what I had unlocked and it didn't look like
there was anything else added.
Speaker 1: Well they I think that isn't that barricade one new
We're theorizing that was.
Speaker 2: Maybe, Ah, maybe I'm getting it mistaken because there's the
abilities and then yeah, there's the apps because they had
that barricading app.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of oh, like other like the main like
at the nurse lady that like the.
Speaker 2: Weird shadow we dame or whatever she is those abilities, Yeah,
and she's like the three of them right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So for anyone who forgets out Last Trials is
the third out Last game, it's the multiplayer multiplayery one.
We did a review four back in whatever is March
or something that came out with all four of us.
Uh so yeah, I can go back and check out
that that full deep deep review. But yeah, as you said,
they've hadded some fair few bits of content over the
I don't know when Halloween of course, but then I
think over the summer Day had some stuff. So since
we've last played, there's been quite a few new additions
in there. It's just yeah, fun in general to get
back in there. It's such a such a fun game.
It's funny, like the the battle pass stuff, which I
was not in there when we first played the game.
It's such a weird thing to me to have like
daily and like weekly challenges in a game like Outlast trials,
because I can't imagine in wanting to play out Last
every single day and like try to hit these daily
challenges in the way that like Fortnite makes sense, Marvel
Snap makes sense. Out Last though, Like, I don't think
I want to play out Last every day. That would
be pretty games, very disturbing and gross. I can't imagine
wanting that to be part of my daily ritual to
make sure I'm you know, stabbing bodies five times or whatever. Whatever.
The weird objective is that it gives you. But I
think it's like that stuff. I mean, it's good to
have in there for when we're playing, even if I'm
not going for the week, every weekly or every daily challenge,
but especially when we're doing the maps that we've done before.
It gives just gives you a little additional incentive to like, Okay,
since I've done this mission before, I know it, but
I might as well try and go over some of
these bonus objectives since I got nothing better to do
while I'm going through it. Yeah, it's been fun to
getting back in there. I think there is a good
amount of new stuff. It seems like I wish it
was maybe displayed a bit better, like what is the
newer things versus what is the older things? But yeah,
I think even as you mentioned, like some levels, like
you go back to the police station, but you're in
a different area were you were four, So it's like
we're using some of the same visuals and areas, but
like you're going to different areas that were before different objectives.
But then some of the areas are just like completely new. Uh.
And so we had some I don't know some of them.
I think the more exciting ones for me were like
the big new missions that had like full cut scenes
in the middle with Geister and he's going through and
he's being crazy as he as he normally does their
new villain. So yeah, I'd had a really good time
going back into this, and I definitely would like to
keep doing that play through some more of this content.
They added some new difficulty stuff as well, and then
as you mentioned, yeah, like there was that new amp,
the Barricade One, which I finally bought it because we've
always just all of us who have used the Healing
One and it's like because it is just really good
and the most consistent. But I switched over the Barricade One,
and I want to start trying it out because I
feel like there's some cool strategies you can come up
with that, especially if we're working out as a team,
like we don't need four heels or three heels, you know,
we could afford to switch it up there. So uh, yeah,
I don't know, it's cool. I like what they've done
with this game, and yeah, I'm curious like how the
numbers are looking for it, because, like I said, it
just doesn't seem like the kind of live service game
that people are gonna be want to playing all the time.
But if they have a big enough audience that just
jumps back in once or twice a month, maybe that's enough.
I'm not sure because I kind of measure imagine every
wanted to spend more money on this game for cosmetics
like because it was already what forty bucks to pick
it up in the first place, right, and it's only
been out for a year and now right, well it
came out in like, yeah, marchish, so not weren't sitting
at like three quarters of a year. Hasn't hit the
one year mark yet, right? Yeah? Uh yeah? Anything else
on on el Last Trials, No, I don't think so, Okay,
I think maybe the last game I have to shout
out today then is that I've been jumping back and
playing a little bit of Halo Infinite because well, two reasons. One,
they had like a Halo two they had a yeah,
they had a Halo two event because that was an
anniversary came up recently, and so just like they did
last year, they did they've added like a bunch of
Halo two maps and then they have like a legacy
mode in there. So like they took out the sprint,
they made the game a bit more jumpy and floaty
like kind of the Halo two mechanics, So they kind
of brought back all that stuff with the new map.
So there's a playlist just to do that Halo two things.
And I'm not super nostalgic about Halo two multiplayer. I
was just played the campaign a bunch as a kid.
More about the Halo three multiplayer stuff, but it's still
it's fun for a little variety to go in there
and check that out. And like you get the Halo
two armor for free if you just log in right now,
so definitely worth doing to get that armor. That's why
I'm rocking now. So it's fun. And then I also
I had a friend over on the weekend and we
just played some split screen, just some online split screen Halo,
which I feel like was you know, middle school and
high school. That's all I did all the times. It
was fun to do that again. It's been so long
since I've done that, other than like when me and
you have done a Halo match on like Gauntlet stuff.
But to just sit back on a team cruise through
a bunch of these random playlists. I didn't know that
they have like gun game in Halo, like the Call
of Duty mode or the counter Strike mode, So that
that was fun to play through big team battle the
Halo two stuff, did some doubles, saw so many maps
I've never seen before, so obviously they just keep churning
out maps, like even outside of the Halo two event.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was really fun to jump back in there. Uh,
do you have any interest in jumping that into that
one like Halo two? Were you ever playing on multiplayer
Halo two or you more Halo three, Halo Reach game,
Halo Reach.
Speaker 2: Guy, It's funny because I was Halo Combat involved multiplayer.
Never gotten to Halo two, a little bit Halo three,
and then a lot of Halo Reach, a lot a
lot of yeah, the Halo Reach and a lot a
lot a lot of Halo four. But I do have
an urge to kind of get back in there into
into it's multiplayer. It's a shame we didn't atually whipping
out on the stream. I would have been ideal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well once again, it's uh, you know, it's weird
when we when me and you did the Gauntlet match,
Like I don't think we needed too Like we didn't
need two Xbox accounts, but when me and my friend
were gonna go play online, we needed like that classic
second Xbox account, like that issue we ran into with
zombies on the stream or multi versus, and so my
friends just like made an email real quick. It took
like ten minutes or something, but it was still annoying
to have to do that. But I don't remember us
having to do that when we faced off in Halo
Infinite before, So I don't know what the difference was there.
Maybe if you just do a custom game versus playing online,
maybe that's the difference.
Speaker 2: Because you yeah, maybe, I'm not sure. I was gonna
say maybe the difference is playing on games Pass versus
actually owning it. But then if I recall, I never
actually owned Infinite when we're playing that here at my house,
I was still a games Pass, So yeah, yeah, I'm
not sure about that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was especially disappointed for me to see that.
That was another thing here where you need a freaking
second Xbox account. Once again, it doesn't take that long,
but you still need to like put an email in
there and do all this annoying stuff because to me,
Halo is such a co opy game, whether that's multiplayer,
going through the campaign and doing firefight, mess around in
custom games, all that stuff, so I have like that
extra barrier to entry for someone to just jump in
with their friend is just kind of frustrating. So now
that I have that account of my Xbox, I guess
I'm good moving forward, So maybe it's not a huge complaint,
but it's still kind of an annoying thing. But man,
I just I just love Halo. I think it's it's
always what I can go back to, especially after we
did We talked about this a bit on the Call
of Duty Black Op six review that when I go
into a multiplayer lobby for that, I just can't keep
up anymore. Like I can play war Zone because it's
a little slower paced and you have like a shit
ton of armor, so you don't dine in you knower
point five seconds. But Halo, the pace of that just
still works for me. As I'm aging older and my
reaction time is getting worse, Halo just like still works
because it is such a tactical game, such a positional game,
and it's less reaction y and more well it can
be reaction depending on your weapons and stuff. But yeah,
man I just I just love Halo. And then did
you see the other thing they did for the Halo
two anniversary Did you see any article about this or
anything they did it? They did a really interesting thing.
This is not in Halo Infinite. This is I believe,
only through Halo two via the Master Chief Collection only
on Steam is they released like the Halo two E
three demo whatever that E three demo was back in
the day. They released that as like a playable level,
so you can like play through that demo now and
seeah once again. I think it's like through some mod thing,
Like it's officially supported, like only through Steam in this
one weird way, so I couldn't do it on Xbox.
But like that is just such a cool thing. I
love that they added something like that. That is such
a fun way to honor the anniversary of a game
with a with cool content like that on top of
like Infinite dropping a bunch of Halo two stuff, just
such a like I don't know, Infinite is such a
good game. It's so underrated. People don't give it enough praise,
and yes, it launched in a weird way with all
the things coming out at different times, but like it's
such a good game, and they there's so much love
to the history of the series, and like it's such
a generous battle pass too, that you can get good
fun unlocks even if you don't put a diamond of
the game, like me, I don't put a diamond. That's
what I'm saying like, I don't. I've only just get
my game pass subscription, and I feel like I'm still
unlocking cool stuff all the time. So yeah, yeah, people
go play Halo Infinite, Like, maybe it doesn't need me
to support it. It's obviously doing fine if it has
all these new events. But yeah, it's a it's a
really great game, and it was fun to jump in
there in last couple of weeks and play some more. Yeah,
we should definitely get in there. Uh in there, assume
what was your like, what was your game mode? Did
you have an ideal game mode that you would queue
up when you were playing?
Speaker 2: Oh, just slare. I did enjoy some big team battle
because I like the vehicles, I like flying around and
stuff like that, but mostly just just slare.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: I'd have to see if Ruben's still playing it, because
a couple of weeks ago he was sending me videos
he was just like popping off in Halo Infinite multiplayer
and I was like, oh my goodness, he was taking
a break from four Tonite and he was getting into
the Halo.
Speaker 1: So yeah that I would be love love to play
with him. That would be super fun. Yeah, I played
played some doubles, which Doubles was one of my favorites,
and in back in the Halo three Days, I've had
the right party. Even though we had more than two people,
we wouldn't cue that up. But I just love the
strategy of that. I find it so fun just working
really close in tandem with one person. You know, I
really like swat back in Halo three. I don't think
they have that currently, and maybe they do as a
sub mode indefinite, but there are so many modes and
it's nice that you can, like Q like any mode
that you're searching. You can also like turn off any
of the things, like if you want to do big
team battle but you don't want to do flags, you
can like turn that off. And I don't know, didn't
really affect our Q times at all. You know, one
or two things that we keep to our specifically took
a little bit longer. But yeah, they do a really
good job with all that stuff. So yeah, we should
definitely get back in there pretty soon.
Speaker 2: Are you an oddball guy? I love Oddball?
Speaker 1: I I do love Oddball. Yeah. I think it's uh,
it's a great game mode. What else is there to say?
It's fantastic? I was one of my favorites in Halo
three for sure, Like Guardian Oddball, that was ideal. I
feel like that map was like just ideal for that.
You need the right map. You don't want too big
of a map, you don't want any weird, yanky corners,
you need like just the right And I feel like
Guardian has so many interconnected little path there that it
worked perfectly for that. Yeah, yeah, shout out to Oddball.
And then of course they have the weird stuff like
infections in there. I don't know if they have Griftball,
but like they have all sorts of crazy things in there.
But yeah, even like Big Team Battle, there's like some
maps I'd not seen before, And I think that's just
like a credit to like Forge Mode in that game,
is that sometimes I can't tell if something's like a
Forge Mode map or if it was like a legit
map made by I almost said Bungee, but I guess
now Halo Studios, as we talked about, so like they
do a really good like the Forge Mode is insane now,
Like sometimes I'm like, oh, the texture is kind of weird.
It's like, am I playing a custom map right now?
This map looks insane for custom map. It's very different
now than it was back in the day. It was
very very bare bones, but they just keep adding it,
adding to it. So it's good stuff. Uh, Taylor, anything else,
any other games you've been playing? Any other shoutouts? Are
you picking up Stalker you can play that this week?
Or are you just looking forward to Indiana Jones?
Speaker 2: Just looking forward to Indiana Jones.
Speaker 1: That's probably the last new game of the year you're
gonna be playing. I assume.
Speaker 2: Probably there is another game, And again it's it's a
handheld game that I've been playing. But I know you
you know it's not like Marvel Snap. But it's well,
maybe it's kind of similar to a Marvel Snap. It's
the Pokemon trading card game Pocket.
Speaker 1: You've been playing this? What are you doing home back here?
Tell me about this thing? Tell me all about it.
Speaker 2: So I've been going through like a rough patch with
just buying Pokemon cards, just been collecting and everything like that.
It's it's brutal.
Speaker 1: I didn't know where you were going when you said
I've been in a rough patch.
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, it's it's a very expensive hobby and
so you just got to properly gauge yourself. And some
of some of my friends they've been buying packs too,
and there's new packs coming out all that kind of stuff,
and I thought, Okay, well, in the down time when
I'm not trying to buy packs, let's try out this game.
This game just came out, and it's doing a great
job of just kind of satisfying that urge to open
up packs and buy packs. Now. They only have the
one set right now, but they have three different pack
styles with different cards, so you can try and complete
the full set and you have full arts and you
have other cards and stuff like that, different variants of
certain Pokemon. But it's a lot of fun, and you
basically do different challenges daily challenges, do different things in
the game, and then you can unlock and the ability
to open up more packs. You open up one pack
a day, but then you can get little other things
to open.
Speaker 1: Up more cigarettes.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I sound like I'm smoking cigarettes.
Speaker 1: I'm on two packs a day now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But it's a lot of fun being able to
just rip the backs and see what kind of Pokemon
that you get from each one. And so I've been
trying to boost up my collection and I've been getting
some really cool like full art cards and you can
pop them up and you can like spin them around
and see like the three D foil effects and stuff.
They look really really cool. But I'm just I'm trying
to hopefully remind people here, like, don't go crazy and
buy packs. I don't think you should spend actual dime
buying packs on this game because they're all just digital.
I think if you're gonna spend actual money, go buy
a real pack, because there's a chance you could pull
at eight hundred dollars surging Sparks Pikachu cart Like. You
don't invest in the digital digital stuff like this, you're
just training in money for nothing.
Speaker 1: But that aside, I mean that with that argument, like,
isn't that every video game ever?
Speaker 2: Yes? Absolutely, But I would prioritize those over this because
this is just you on your phone and just your
digital collection. I don't see much you can say.
Speaker 1: There's still a game to play. It's not just collecting, right,
You also battle stuff?
Speaker 2: You also do battle, yes, but I mean you can
rent decks. They have decks that you can that are
pre built, so there's a lot of different avenues that
you can tackle. This and in theory, you don't. The
game's not trying to leach your your wallet or get
you to spend tons of money. It does a great
job at actually allowing you to have fun without actually
spending money. I'm for the most part, I can open
up like two three packs a day because I'm just
doing different challenges and stuff like that. And the battling
I just got into, and so I got my friends
into this. Now they're they're playing it like crazy. And
the battling is a lot of fun because I've never
actually known how to battle in Pokemon before, and so
I did a quick tutorial in here and it's like,
oh wow, this is actually really easy and it's a
lot of fun too. So I'm going to try to
get to a point where i can build a deck
with the cards that I've collected so far. I've gotten
like over two hundred and fifty for the sets so far,
so there's a lot. And I've been seeing people say like, oh,
even if you're buying packs, it'll take over two years
to complete the whole set, and just other crazy things,
crazy weird little facts, but like Marble sounds like Marvel Snap. Yeah,
it's it's honestly a lot of fun. I'm quite quite
enjoying it. It's a good pastime. And yeah, I'm just
going to keep on ripping packs and battling and trying
to learn a little bit more about the game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is it just the original one to fifty right now?
Gen one?
Speaker 2: No, it has Gen one in there, but it's got
a whole variety of other pokemon across the gens, a
lot that I am very much unfamiliar with.
Speaker 1: And so Marvel Snap they really is like card every
week and then each season also gets like a bonus.
There's a week that you know, two cards. What is
that like? Are they adding things frequently? Have they added
new stuff since you started playing? Or how's that working
with with that game?
Speaker 2: I would say they've not added anything since I've started playing,
because basically, I don't know how well you can see it.
But you have those three packs that you can choose from,
and they're all part of the one set called Genetic Apax,
And so basically you just.
Speaker 1: Need to do you have a pack available right now?
Speaker 2: I wish I did. Oh I got here like the car.
Speaker 1: Will do a live unpacking?
Speaker 2: Yeah sounds good, but yeah, no, it's it's it's a
good time. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Cool. What's your like main deck right now in that
game for battling, like for battling now, Oh gosh, well.
Speaker 2: I just I mean, I just did the tutorial today
and I was just starting to actually break into it.
But I mean, I.
Speaker 1: Said, you have over two hundred and fifty cards.
Speaker 2: That I've been collecting, but I haven't built a deck yet.
So basically, okay, the deck that I've been using is
a pre built one.
Speaker 1: So wait, you can you do daily and weekly challenges
without actually fighting in the game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can do challenges where you're like collecting cards,
opening packs stuff like that, or you can do actual
like the battling a right, So yeah, the rental decks
are interesting. I think you can only rent a certain amount,
but you could do like a Brock deck they got them,
a Champ deck you kind of searche YouTube Venus Ord deck.
And then there's my decks, which apparently I have a
sand Slash deck, which is what the game. So each
one is made of like twenty cards. Well, it's prompted
me to build a deck.
Speaker 1: Like Sandstrew more than sand Slash. But of course San slash.
Speaker 2: Is better sounds slash. Yeah, I'm I'm a Gralis guy. Well,
I'm more of an archaize guy in the Grals guy.
But yeah, with.
Speaker 1: The with the card collecting outside the game. Now, just
talk in real life with you. And you said that
you've been on a in a bad place lately. Just
go and hamm on these cards. What what's your goal
with that? Are you trying to like make money by
like getting good things and then reselling them. Are you
trying to get specific cards right now for a complete
a set? Like, what's what's your what's your goal? Do
you have a goal? Or you just smoking a pack
of Day kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Smoking a pack of Day. When I first started really
looking into the Pokemon cards, I was looking at what
other people were investing in, what they were trying to
collect and all that kind of stuff, because I thought, Okay, well,
you know what, maybe there is a path here forward
where you can collect certain cards. And so I have
I have spreadsheets documenting prices and days and stuff like
that I created, and I've just kind of created this
whole tracking thing for it. And so I started collecting
certain cards that I know that I like and then
when I got a few cards that I like, and
there's still a lot more that I like that I want,
I started to keep an eye out for Okay, what
are other people collecting as well? And I'm not necessarily
looking at reselling it. I'm just I'm I'm trying to
collect things that have value to the community, and so
those are the things that I'm trying to hold on
to for a long period of time because maybe I'm
being hypocritical, but maybe twenty years, thirty years from now,
maybe I'm like, oh, you know what, I'm gonna sell, sure,
But for now these things. There's certain things that I
really like with certain trainer boxes that I think are
really cool because they have a potential of pulling a
certain like a Moon Breyonne or something like that. There's
certain cards that are highly sought after. But now it's
kind of just transition into like there's things of collecting
just for me. I know, I want to get a
base set Pokemon pack booster pack that's like five hundred
bucks and it's expensive, but I want one just from
my own personal collection, not to open it, just to
keep it, like keep it there, because like, oh, this
is just a piece of like nineties history is just
so so wonderful. But there are a few things lately
and I've been kicking myself because they they recently announced
a Pokemon Prismatic Evolutions and it's just an EV on
the front and it's just all ev ev. I can't
say it ev evolutions, a whole bunch of like full
art cards and just like dedicating to that. It's just
like it's beautiful. And I'm so mad because I thought, oh,
maybe I should prove it or a box, and I didn't,
and now they're sold out. It's been sold out constantly
like everyone. I'm so mad because I thought I would
have loved to have just had that for my collection,
just because it's it's EV related. So I missed that ship.
That's that's unfortunate. But I've been buying Searching Sparks packs
and that's been the latest, like latest and greatest because
there's I don't know how the people do it, but
there's a Pikachu card in there that's worth over eight
hundred bucks and it's just crazy. That will drive these
prices up. Yeah, but yes, maybe I'll start battling now
that I'm learning through the app.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's cool if we can kind of teach you
those mechanics and then bring it out to the do
you think it like? Is it simple enough that it'd
worked pretty well and fun with a card game format
like playing it in person?
Speaker 2: I think so. It seems it's a lot more simple
than you gioh at well what yu gyoh is now,
it's a lot more simple.
Speaker 1: Yes, base yu gi oh is pretty simple, but yes,
it's gotten savage these days, no doubt.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 1: Thank thanks for sharing that. I didn't know that you
were playing that one, so that's cool. I have been
taking a break from Marvel Snap totally, so we traded places.
You're on Pokemon and I'm off Step.
Speaker 2: We did when I'm off of Pokemon. You'll be back
on Snap.
Speaker 1: Yeah. We'll just passing the packs around, smoking them like crazy. Okay, Taylor,
anything else or is that all for today?
Speaker 2: I think that's everything.
Speaker 1: Sounds good. Thank you everyone for listening. We'll be back
next week as we always are. And yeah, I just
know what you think of the game War nominees. Do
you have any issues with elden Ring or do you
want to see him win? Let us know? Thank you
will see you An account of