Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to GV side Quest. This is our
weekly video game show here at Get First. I'm your host,
Phil Mussina with me the nicknameless Taylor Field. How are
you doing my friend? I'll say this the tailor of
the Solar Empire?
Speaker 2: How are you doing here? And I love it? I
love it. I'm doing good. I can't believe I forgot
my nickname. Unbelievable. I'm doing good. I'm happy to be here,
happy to talk shop with you, Yes, very much, talking shop.
I feel like we have a lot of fun mini
topics today, so I don't know.
Speaker 1: We'll see how this goes. We have a lot of
little things to discuss, but I want to kick it
off right off the get go here talking about some
Ubi soft. Are you ready to talk some ub soft stuff? Taylor?
And I feel like that's your soft, that's your main domain.
First off, Star Wars I loves. Have you played any
more of that?
Speaker 2: Are you?
Speaker 1: How is that going? Or have you just after the review?
Were you good and put it aside?
Speaker 2: I haven't put it aside. I've tried to play it,
but I've been like on the the recap recoup of
from Being six. So it's been hard. Like I tried
playing once and I just passed right out. Just it's
a point where you like you wake up after like
you pass out and you're like you're looking at the
sky and you're walking against a wall of a building.
And yeah. So I haven't been able to properly deep
dive into it again, so I'm still exploring tatoweine.
Speaker 1: Fair enough, fair enough. Next, then, I know that you
with the Ubisoft Plus subscription have been jumping into a
little avatar Frontiers of Pandora, and I am very excited
to hear how that experience has been going for you.
Speaker 2: Yes, that has been really really enjoyable. Actually, I'm liking
the game a lot more than I thought I would.
I'm glad I didn't buy it. I'm playing it through
you'bi Soft Plus. So it's turning out just to be
quite quite a fun experience. Now there's different different elements
of your skillsure you can focus on, where like you
have survivability and like there's different things in the world
like plants that can harm you, and you have to
hunt wildlife and you have to keep your stamma up
and keep eating food and whatnot. So you can do cooking.
There's a whole bunch of different things in there that
kind of make that that RPG kind of feel. And
I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about
it being first person, but I actually really like it.
And it's fun just to be kind of like moving
around and you just get your bow and arrow and
you're shooting bad guys or shooting humans and whatnot, and
just kind of going through the world. The world is beautiful,
really really love it, especially when it gets to be nighttime.
Oh my goodness, it's just gorgeous. And so when you
go into certain areas that are more human occupied, certain
things that are maybe a building that's really outputting a
lot of gas or fuel and whatnot in the area,
like the vegetation just decays around you and it looks
more like more just more gross and industrialized. And so
once you clear that area, then the once you, I guess,
destroy the compound, then the natural beauty starts to retake
the area, which is kind of nice.
Speaker 1: That's a really cool detail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just it's it's a lot of fun. And
I would love to I have to get to the
point where I can fly my acron because I want
to be flying around, but I'm not there yet. I
haven't been able to mount anything so far. I've just
been going around hunting and doing little missions. But yeah,
it's a it's a beautiful game.
Speaker 1: I also jumped into this game and played for about
an hour. Uh for My first impression was, man, we're
in this facility for a long time, because at the
start of this game, you are in novie who has
been I don't know if imprisoned is the right world,
but probably like tricked into like believing that where you're
living is just where you're living. But then you you,
you and your crew. I honestly, it skipped a lot
of the cutting, so I don't know exactly what happened,
because there was cutting after cutting after cutting, but you
and your crew like break out of this place and
then just the escape sequence out of the facility takes
so much longer than I feel like any other game
would do for that sequence. I don't think maybe they
really wanted you to build up for that moment where
you're actually in Pandora. But yeah, I just I was
shocked at how many events and walls and doors and
random stuff I had to go through. You know, it
is the tutorial stuff. It's like, here's how to crouch,
here's how to do a long jump, and so it's
it makes sense that it's doing some of that stuff,
but that was the first thing that was striking to
me about it. But then I totally agree with you.
As soon as I was out in Pandora, I was like,
holy shit, this game is one of the best looking
games just in terms of visual fidelity that I've ever
seen and just like really popping color. I was really impressed,
and even just like the amount of stuff, the amount
of foliage and that you're if you walk through you know,
different flowers and stuff, like it will brush against you
like you're pushing it around, and like the physics of
that is also very satisfying. So it felt like immediately
I was like, man, this is a very living, breathing place,
like with the plant life and the humans and the
animals and all that, and so I was I was
very impressed right off the bat in terms of just
the visuals of it, and like even the game feel
of it, like felt pretty good to move around. And yeah,
I was much like everyone else, they kind of surprised
that they went first person with this game, but I
think that does make it a lot more immersive. Typically,
like I've been playing a lot of third person games
without Star Wars or Eldering, which I'll talk about in
a little bit, But like when I'm playing a third
person game for a few hours and then I hop
into a first person one, I feel like I'm just WHOA.
I'm like, immediately right back there. You kind of don't
notice if you're you know, on different nights, switching between things,
but going like back and forth. I was there in
Pandora for a little R and R.
Speaker 2: I was right, I love it. I'm glad you have
to try it out. That's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Yeah I don't, so I'll explain why I only played
for an hour. So I get out of this tutorial sequence,
I meet up with my friend there, and then the
next quest is like go this waterfall or something. It's
like go up to this building, up on this waterfall. Here,
it's like climb this mountain, get to this waterfall. I'm like, okay,
I kind of like how open this is. Like I
don't have like a line on the ground that's telling
me exactly how to do it. So I'm looking around
and I see these these cliff faces, and I'm like,
you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna try my best
to climb up this mountain. And I went some like
wild route. I was using that like thing where you
can kind of connect to that tentacle thing coming under
the tree and like zip up to the top like
a little zip line, and I was climbing around rocks.
Some of it was like very janky Bethesda style climbing,
because I'm like, this is not intentional route, but I'm
finding my own way and it's very satisfying, very cool.
And I was climbing for probably ten fifty minutes. It's
a fucking huge mountain. And at some point it's like
you have ten seconds to return to the game area
and I'm like, oh no, it's like you have to
return to the quest. I'm like, what are you talking about.
You told me to climb this fucking mountain. So I
went and climbed this mountain, and so I tried my
dartness to get back to where it was acceptable, but
none of it was acceptable. It kicked me back to
a save from like a while ago, and I was
nowhere near the mountain anymore. So I had to like
re track all the where I'm like, if this game,
like I don't know what I was supposed to do
here clearly was not that Like how did this possibility
not cross the developer's way and like play testing or something.
Maybe I'm just really dumb and went the wrong way,
but that really bothered me. So I don't know. I
definitely want to get back in there and like spend
a few more hours with it because I feel like
I really only got like the most babyest of steps
in there. But yeah, that was very frustrating. Is that
something that you found in like that hours you've played,
like just weird things where it's like it wants you
to do a specific thing even though it's an open
world game and it's like targeting. It's like really just
hampering the experience if you try and get creative or
do something out of the box.
Speaker 2: I can't remember what the context was, but I did
have that exact same thing happen in another quest where
I was doing something or going somewhere and yet prompted
me like returned the quest area and I managed to
get back into it, So that was all okay. Hopefully
it didn't it didn't put you back in like the
comp the prologue or anything. Did it.
Speaker 1: No, just put me back to where the guy was
like sitting on the tree when he was like leaping
out there kind of. So you know, it's not a
super far walk, but it was enough. That was at
least for that night. I was like, I'm done with
Pandora for this evening. Yeah, and I'll call back to it.
So I think I will, I mean my Ubi self
subscription at last for like another week or two, so
I have a little bit more time to jump in there.
Definitely not what I'm gonna be, uh making the purchase
after my initial hour with it, but uh, for sure
I was. I was impressed with it, honestly, other than
that annoying thing that happened.
Speaker 2: Uh. Fun fact for you is kind of drifting off
the Pandora train, the uh the Scull and Bones beta.
You remember we dipped our toes into that. I could
never forget it too, that I never forget Well, I thought,
you know, I'm gonna download this as well. I downloaded
it and I booted it up, and it actually carried
over everything from the beta. My character was the same.
Look at all my stuff, my ships, everything like that.
So I mean, if you if you need to get
back in there.
Speaker 1: Absolutely not diving back to this calling Bone that was
a one and done for me. There are too many
games on this ub self plus offering for me to
jump backto a game that I played for two hours
and I hated like almost every second of it. I
would happily jump back into Pandora for another few hours.
Then I would call them Bone, So I don't I
won't be joining you on the open seas there, unfortunately.
Speaker 2: That's fair.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, have you played like a few more hours. Ever,
you kind of just jump back in just to see
if your save was still there.
Speaker 2: I I was not expecting my safe to still be there,
so I jumped back in while I was waiting for
Outlaws to download. And yeah, when I saw my character
was still there and everything, I thought, okay, this is
super cool. So I went in. Because I have two ships,
I took my ship. That's kind of you can go
into more of the heavier waters though taking damage, and
so I went in there and went really far out
and I tried. I kind of got in and over
my head a little bit because there were some ships
that I attacked. And then this whole fucking fleet came
down on me and I was like panic fleeing out
of the area. So it was a little bit chaotic.
But I think they're on their third sea writing. I
think that's a third it's like a huge, like I
think Chinese dragon style kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I think I've seen some screenshots of that a while ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so I haven't gone back in since, but
I'd like to try it again. Hmm.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The other thing I downloaded through that service is
far Cry Primal, which is one that I've wanted to
play for years. I've had it on my wishles forever.
Have you played that one? And I feel like that's
right up your out I've.
Speaker 2: Never played it, but it's up my alley for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, I it's weird, like far Cry is a
mixed bag for me, Like I really like two back
in the day, and three as well, and then all
the other ones like four or five, six. I've played
all of them for a few hours at least because
they've all been on game Pass at different points, so
even before having UBISLF plus, I was still able to
jump in and check them out, and I played for
like maybe three or four hours of each one, and
just it was just not really my flavor of open
world game. And I don't know why that is exactly,
but Farcry Primal has always stood out to me just
because of the drasticly drastically different setting to it, of course,
and honestly, like in playing in the first few hours,
it feels way different than any of those other games,
So I think it's really only a farcard game in name,
but like in terms of gameplay, like it is open world.
I'm sure there's camps, I'm sure there's like some of
the skill tree stuff is from those games, but really
it's just like very surface level things seem to be
the crossover there. Even the story is a lot less
heavy handed because it's just like cavemen grunting, you know about,
like gathering land and saving each other. So it's much
more basic in that way. But I had I had
a very weird issue with this once alas time you've
played Oblivion. Have you played that in like last few years,
last probably five years? Okay, I don't know if I'm
guessing you. When you wherever you own Oblivion, you have
some of the DLCs or maybe all the DLC's you
got the definitive. So you know, when you like play
Oblivion and you get out of the sewer area, and
then for the next like ten to fifteen minutes, it's
just a barrage of like DLC updates of things that
were added to the game, of like oh, you've unlocked
a key to Frost Craig manor so here's here's the
and then you exited that and then like another prompt
comes up. It's like, oh, here's this other dealc oh
a strange door in the nip and bay, and just
like this on someone's like, come on, guys, you really
like this makes sense if you're playing all these DLCs
at release, you know, every time you log in, ooh
with a new one, new pop up. But it's like
one of those things that just the kind of overlooked
what like the new player experience would be. Like I
kind of had a similar thing with far Cry Primal,
where I was going through the tutorial area and you're
essentially hunting a mammoth with your crew of buddies, and
so you know, it's teaching to like crouch and like
sneak and not make too much noise and throw your weapons.
But there's no prompts on the screen telling you like
what buttons are, and it's not actually telling you what
to do, it's not telling you where to go, and
it's like it's somewhat open area, like I'm sure you
could stray off the path there, and I was like
really confused by this. I mean, I could figure it out,
it is basic enough. But then I got into this
other little zone and that was like a very small
open world area, like very much like trying to teach
you a few things before it lets you go any further,
and I was like, I don't even know what to do.
I don't have any store of quest marker. I'm very
confused here. Then I also saw in the settings there
was a Survivor survival mode, which I honestly sounds a
lot like what you were describing with Avatar there where
it's like very much about hunting and like the mechanics
are much more hardcore. You know, you can die and
like respawn. But I didn't pick it at first. I'm like,
maybe I should get used to the game. But then
I actually restarted, like within the first ten fifteen minutes
of the game because I was like, I actually think
that seems kind of fun to try the survival mechanics
an a game like this, And so I restarted the
game and then none of those prompts were there anymore,
and so now the actual tutorial was happening where it
was telling me the buttons, it was telling me where
to go, and I'm like, once again, how does this
kind of oversight happen where like this DLC shit is
just being shoved down your throat and you can't actually
get through the opening, you know, ten fifteen minutes of
the game properly without this happening. So once that happened,
I got back to the area, and then it was
like actually telling me I was supposed to make arrows
and hunt these beasts and I could Okay, I can
do that, and then I can progress. So it made
a lot of sense from there, but just one of
those things that was very weird. It felt very out
of time. You know, the game is a few years old,
and that feels like something that would not happen in
like a new twenty twenty four game with like all
the DLC. It feels like they would integrate that a
bit better into your game experience. But other than that,
it's it's been a fun, fun time so far. Since
I am playing on this this higher difficulty, it's pretty difficult,
Like I die really really quick. I have no upgrades
for my character yet, so I really have to be
sneaking around, whether it's animals or like other you know,
crazy cavemen that are after me and stuff. But so far,
I'm really enjoying it. It's it's nice visually as well.
It's definitely a downgrade from Avatar, you know, playing like
a lush jungle setting like that and then playing far
Cry Primals much more. You know, the colors are much
more paler, the way less detail, it's a little more janky,
which of course it's years and years old at this point.
But I've really enjoyed the first couple hours of it
there and definitely plan to play more of that. So
that's definitely one you should check out if you. I know,
you have a ton of games on your play right now,
especially with that Ubi self subscription, and I don't know
how if you're planning on renewing that or if you're
just getting a one month, but.
Speaker 2: Oh I will all do another month.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you'll get it again when well, are you
gonna buy the new Assassin's Creed. Are you just going
to play it through the subscription.
Speaker 2: That I'm I'm going to buy at? This is just
I can't say no. It's beautiful. It has been a
fan called title for so long.
Speaker 1: You've been waiting for this for a long time.
Speaker 2: I've waited for this one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that makes sense. But yeah, whenever you have
some time, definitely check out Primal. I would love to
hear what you think. And I'm sure there's more. I mean,
it's not like cryptid stuff, but you know, like mammets
and saber to It's like all these extinct creatures which
I think you would have fun hanging around with. I
don't think there's like dinosaurs in the game, but maybe
there's like some dinosaur type stuff that pops up later on.
I'm not sure. I swear Far.
Speaker 2: Cry has put things like cryptids in there. I thought
Far Cry four had like yetties in there, Yeah, the
Valley Valley of the Yetties, and they appear in the
far Car five DLCs zombie yetties on Dead Living Zombies. Yes,
they've done a lot of fun stuff in Far Cry.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, they definitely have some wild DLC's for some
of their games as well. I don't know what are
really the DLC of things for Primal specifically, but I
don't know. I'm not nearly deep enough in the game
to want to check out that stuff yet. But yeah,
that that's been a fun time. I speaking of Assasin' Screed,
I had two questions for you. One, when I was
browsing this Ubisoft Plus catalog, I saw these Assassin's Creed
Chronicles games. There's China, India, and Russia. Have you played
those or do you know what's going on with them?
I just I feel like I've never heard about them
until I was browsing through that catalog.
Speaker 2: I think I have them all on Steam and my
Epic Games account because they've been all made free at
some point. I also think I have them all through
Games the Gold Ah, because I'm I'm aware of who
the main characters are. Let me just pulling up your
second just look at it, because I'm pretty sure they're
like side scrolling games.
Speaker 1: Okay, would they be kind of akin to like the
Old Prince of Persia or even like, you know, the
New Prince Persia. They just came out like, is that
kind of what the idea with it was from the
ub Soft.
Speaker 2: I would say, so, I don't. I just don't have enough,
like my own personal experience to talk too much about
what the gameplay is like, Like, I don't know if
you can see this photo here? Yeah, like yeah, character
side scroll, moving around, jumping around. This is the Russia version.
And they all kind of came out within the same
period of time.
Speaker 1: Okay, Like were these phone games too, or were they
just console things? They were consoles, were handheld games or
something like a Vita Vita type situation. Maybe a Vita
would have been more like what did they do?
Speaker 2: They did one for the Vita. I'm pretty sure they
did Assassin's Creed Liberation. I think that was Assassin's Creed
three Liberation. I think that was the Vita one, and
then I came out on Steam.
Speaker 1: Uh, why is it that you haven't checked these games out?
They just don't draw to you in the same way
that the third person action does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't necessarily draw me in like the other
main ones. I like, I have an interest to eventually
get around to these, but I don't know if I
ever ever will I have one. I have to actually
Assassin's Creed two Discovery for Nintendo DS and Assassin's Creed
Alta Hair's Chronicles for DS. Those are some handhelds.
Speaker 1: Like essentially like a downgrade port from like the main
mainline games that could run.
Speaker 2: I'd say so, they're they're their own stories, but they're
definitely downgrades my opinion, but they're still kind of cool.
There's also Bloodlines that was for the PlayStation portable back
in the day, Assassin's Creed blood Lines, and that one
is actually pretty neat. That's definitely a downscale one, but
it's yeah, it's it's it's neat.
Speaker 1: That's cool. And I'm thinking with with with ac there's
Assassin's Creed Jade, which I think is that out now
or is that still to be released.
Speaker 2: That's like the mobile one, right, that's the full like
this is like a full on main game, but for mobile. Yeah.
I signed up for the beta for that but never
got into it.
Speaker 1: Right, And that one's set in China, I believe, right, Yes,
and then India or Russia have been locations in any
of the mainline games or other games that you've heard.
Speaker 2: Of, Uh No, not that I'm aware of.
Speaker 1: Interesting. I just feel like that would have been an
interesting poll, maybe just having these different locations. But yeah,
if it feels like kind of a lesser spinoff game,
I can see why the allure isn't quite there. But
I was surprised when I was just looking at the Wikipedia,
like how many spinoffs for Assassin's Creed there were. I
didn't realize there was that many, considering they're like pumping
out games on a yearly basis for all those years.
But it seems like and even in some of those years,
I guess there would have been two or more games,
just if you include the spinoffs as well, which is
which is pretty crazy. But I think they finally settled
down to like a good spot in terms of their
release calendar. It's a little less bombardment, a little more
quality focused, maybe.
Speaker 2: I'd say so Jade looks like it's being pushed to
twenty twenty five. I think there's a lot of people
that are kind of upset that they're getting an Assassin's
Creed China released on mobile. But at the end of
the day, I mean, mobile gaming is not what it
used to be. People kind of have this negative connotation
of associating like like I don't know, floppy bird or
angry birds or like that mobile games, all.
Speaker 1: These goddamn birds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very different now you're playing like full on,
like I remember I was. I was playing Halo five
on my phone like months and months and months ago,
just to try it out. But it's incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is pretty crazy. And then the other thing
I was gonna ask you about is and forget me
if I did ask you about this already, but I
had it in my notes from like months ago, and
I just forgot about it and then I saw it.
I still I didn't cross it out, So I'm guessing
I didn't ask you. Assassin's Creed Odyssey and the story mode?
Did I ask you about that? Like that DLC story
mode thing?
Speaker 2: No, you didn't ask Do.
Speaker 1: You know what that is? Have you looked into that
at all? Is it ringing a bell? It was essentially
a thing that people community members could like make stories,
like make missions and things that were like within the game,
and they could like scrip to different interactions. And I
don't know how much they could build in terms of
like actual world stuff or it was, or how it
was integrated.
Speaker 2: Quest creation tool stories. That's pretty neat. I did not
know about this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you should definitely look into that at some point.
I'd love to hear like if it's any good, if
people made any you know, any thing that the community
looks at as like, wow, that was a really great
story that you have to play, because I don't know
what the capabilities of it were in terms of like
the custom tool set to it. But I thought that
was a cool thing that I just didn't even know
about until recently.
Speaker 2: Interesting. Yeah, it's fun and people are talking about it.
I didn't realize this came out like five years ago.
Speaker 1: Holy cranky. Yeah, I guess it was some expansion on odyesty,
Like I don't think it was in there at launch, right,
But yeah, it's weird, Like I don't from what I know,
I don't think they've done that with any other Assassin's
Creed games. That maybe is the first time they did
that sort of thing. I don't know how successful that was.
Speaker 2: Probably is the first time that they're doing it. And
it's funny because Ruben sent me snapchats the other day
he was playing. He's I think he's a big Odyssey guy.
He's still in it, in it to.
Speaker 1: Win it, which those endless games, I feel like you
can just put.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it might be I'm be swoozing him into a
geek's creed. In the future, we'll see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I'd love to have him on Side Quest.
Speaker 2: Do you have?
Speaker 1: That's the freedom you shouldn't because I should want to
get him.
Speaker 2: You should get him as a guest on side Quest
for sure. He's he's got lots of games on the go, right.
Speaker 1: I'll tell has to tone down the puns though, because
it's uh, I'm just being bombarded over lastly, last ubi
self thing for me, where's your hype level for Shadows
right now? Scale of one to ten.
Speaker 2: H my hype level it's high. But at the same time,
I feel overwhelmed because I want to be able to
fully experience such like open world games. But it's I
feel like I have so much on the go and
it's so difficult for me to really commit to it.
And when I look at Shadows, I know this is
gonna be a beautiful game, It's going to be a
huge game, and it's got so much going on, I think, God, Oh,
that's that's where it feels kind of like almost negative
for me. But that's my own that's my way of life.
You know, just gotta make time. Whatever that being said,
everything that I've seen with this game looks beautiful. It
looks wonderful, and my hype to play this game and
be in this world is through the roof. It's just
gonna be a dang good time.
Speaker 1: So are you out of a ten out of ten
or is it a nine just because of you know,
the time commitment on these open world AC games is
just so intense.
Speaker 2: Well, I'd go nine out of ten just because of
the commitment that you need to commit to a game
like this. But it's not gonna degrade my I'm still
gonna buy this game. I want a physical copy. I
want to play it, and so it's still up there
for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I yeah. Like I said, I'm definitely planning on
describing to yourself plus again when that comes out and
jumping in with you. So yeah, I'm excited to do that.
It's been a while since I've played Ghost of Tsushima.
I'm looking looking for to do some just stealth action
in there. Well mostly the stealth. I don't care much
for the action part, but I just want to sneak
around some basses, you know, knock some enemies out, that
kind of thing. I'm looking forward to that, so should
be a good time. Let's see what other I have
one other game that I want to shout out here
in the games've been playing sort of section which is that, yeah,
I mentioned earlier, like Eldon Ring, I've been back into
Elden Ring Shadows of the Ur Tree DLC. I haven't
played it probably since like mid July, so it's been
a little bit here. I don't even know why I
fell off of it when I did, but I just
did for whatever reason. And I gotta say it, man,
when I jump back in here, I was so lost
because the last time I played this Sarah's was at
my house and he was playing on my characters save
he was just playing for a few hours. He just
wanted to try the DLC out And so when I
immediately jump in, first of all, he plays inverted camera,
so my camera's fucked up. My character is completely naked.
All he's got is a loin claw, then a fucking
witch's hat that with like a blindfold on. And then
I'm in this building that I've never seen before, like
maybe maybe I was out of the room when he
was playing this particular section at my house, and there's
kind of like I can go I can jump down
into a lower area, I can go out this like elevator,
I can go down the hall, or and go up
this ladder. So immediately it's like this is too much choice,
Like I need like a linear hallway. I have four
options here, and there are collectibles in all four directions.
So I'm like, either SAYRS was just not picking things
up because he didn't want to do that on my save,
or he just missed this stuff. But I have no
clue where he came from. I have no idea how
he got here, and I have no idea which way
I should be going. So it took me probably at
least an hour to like get acclimatized to controls again,
figure out where the heck I am, where I came from,
which way I should go.
Speaker 2: So it took me.
Speaker 1: It took me a while to get back into it.
But you know, that's that's fine. It's all part of
the it's all part of the experience.
Speaker 2: And I was in this just huge castle. It's kind
of at like the base of it. It's just it
was good fun just going through that thing. Just all
these different directions, as I mentioned, figure on every single
one cool library with these giant statues hanging from the
ceiling and you're kind of pulling leavers to move them
around and then navigating jumping on the back of them
to get up to different areas.
Speaker 1: It was a really cool, really fun area. And this
is like the tower for people who played the DLC.
The boss at the end here, his name is Mesmer
the Impaler, and holy shit, I it took me at
least at least forty attempts on this boss, probably fifty.
He was kicking my ass, super super hard boss. He
has like a very brutal thing. Well, right at the beginning,
he just does this huge like meteor attack from across
the map, so like you right at the start, you
have to get your reaction time down your role immediately,
and then he explodes right away, and you can't just
like double spam roll, like you have to time the
first role to get out of that first initial attack
and then wait for like half a second and then
roll immediately to dodge the explosion. And even just getting
that consistently, especially when I'm frustrated and I'm on Attemp
thirty and I'm bashing my head against the one I'm
just mad about this freaking boss in my way. Everyone's
I'm still still died of that combo, like right off
the start, or at least get knocked down to like
one HP, and then he would just stab me with
his stupid spear. But it was it was quite the duel.
I fought him for a while, got frustrated, went and
explored some other areas, went leveled up my character a
couple times, and then came back to him again. He's
also he's such a freaking dufus of of an opponent.
He just looks like a dufus and he has the
stupid line Taylor where he's like, embrace the Mezma's flame,
Like every time he kills you, he spews up this
stupid little catchphrase. And he was bothering the hell out
of me. But I can finally say, after whatever it is,
forty to fifty attempts, I finally killed him, and it
felt so good. MUDs can confirm that I was like
popping off in my seat when I finally got the
ko on him. It was. It was brutal, but it
was very satisfying in the end. The only thing that
was annoying, truly annoying about it was he had a
couple moves. One move is like just a flurry of strikes,
and it's just such madness. It's like, I don't know
how anyone's supposed to dodge of this thing. It's just
too many random moves of random locations. So that move
I just I couldn't. I think in the fifty times
I fought him in which he'd used it at least
two or three times, every time, I maybe dodged it
fully once and then maybe like I was able not
to die from it like two or three times. Like
that's how brutal this move was. So when I saw
him charging it up, pretty much just throwing a towel
at that. But like, if use this one move, I'm
just done for. So that was really annoying.
Speaker 2: And then in his second phase, he's like a snake
snake kind of guy. So he has these big snakes
coming out and they're just so big and you can't
see them very well and they're just so flayly that
it's just it's hard to analyze what you're seeing.
Speaker 1: And then like dodge properly. So it was it was
quite the duel with that guy. But I finally took
him out, and then that was like kind of the
progress blocker for another area. I think he's one of
the main bosses, so that I could finally kill him.
It really progressed too, like it opened up a bunch
of doors to go to other places, so that felt
pretty good. So that was pretty good. And then and
then after that too, I've just been going because I
found a couple of other bosses and they're just super hard,
so I'm trying to go level up somewhere before I
fight them again. And one of the biggest things with
the DLC is like there's this huge canyon area and
I've never been able to figure out how to get
the heck down there. It's so far you can't just
jump off the cliff somewhere you'll just die. But I
just today I was like looking around all these different corners.
I was like on the map, there's this little waterfall
area that looks a little suspicious, and that was the
pathway it led down to the canyon. And so now
I've just been exploring down there. A ton of new
stuff down there, which is really satisfying. I think I
have all the map parts filled out on the map now,
like not every save point and stuff, but just like
the overworld like maps that you get, so that feels
pretty good. And uh yeah, I'm really really just totally
invested back in it, and I think trying my best
to beat this DLC within the next couple of weeks
here and just put it to bed because it's been
pretty challenging. But it's been. It's been fun.
Speaker 2: I'm glad.
Speaker 1: I glad it came back to it here, and it
was only a couple months so I wasn't totally rusty.
I still remember like the buttons and the jank of
the game. So yeah, it's been it's been nice to
get back in there.
Speaker 2: Good stuff. I'm glad you got the upper edge on
that guy. That sounds horrible.
Speaker 1: Fucking mesmer, but he's dead now and he's never coming back.
He does not respawn like every other enemy in the game,
so that feels good. How about we, uh well, actually,
before we go to a break, how about you tell
me about a little game that you don't want to
talk about today, A little game called Sins of a
Solar Empire. Tell me what was scratching your itch about
this one lately?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Oh man, so I did not realize there's a
sequel that just dropped out of nowhere for this game.
Kirkland mentioned it to me the other week. Now, this
is a game. It's one of the games that me
and Kirkland talk about, like Star Wars, Empire War, Sins
of a Solar Empire. It's just when that we talk
about that. He never plays, but he wants to. He
wish lists of these games. He waits for that sale.
So he let me know, Okay, there's a sequel. I'm like,
what are you talking about. There's there already is a
like a sequel. He's like, no, no, this is this is
an actual number two. So I look and sure enough,
this is it. So originally the game Sins of a
Solar Empire. That game I remember back when EB Games sold.
EB Games was EB Games, not game Stop, but they
sold a lot of hard copy PC games. You could
walk in and get Halo Combat Evolved on PC and whatnot.
And now I realized this. I didn't actually get it
from me B Games. I went to Lendin Drugs. That's
where I got it, That's right. So Lenden Drugs had it,
and so I went there and I just was pruising
and I remember picking it up. I have the hard
copy in my office somewhere, and I was big on
just trying to find like the next big Space RTS.
I was looking everywhere because I was super big in an
Empire at War, so I wanted to find it. And
this game blew my mind. Have you ever have you
seen it? Seen it or played it? Ever? Do you
know of this game?
Speaker 1: I've not played it. I've definitely you know, I looked
at some footage of the sequel here. But the only
reason I think I know of this game is I
just to wear when, like you know, nine years ago,
when we did our Top ten Games of All Time,
I'm pretty sure Sins of a Solar Empire was on
your list back then as a top ten game of
all time, And that's the first time I remember hearing
about it, and so it's just been in the back
of my head since then. But I've never sought it
out personally. But yeah, I did not hear it all
about the sequel, not heard a single human being talk
about it, So I don't know if it exists in
some super specific niche. But it's pretty cool that because
what that was, like an early two thousands game twosand
and five, Like, what's the era for that first one?
Speaker 2: Oh, my gosh, Sins of a Solar Empire, I do
not remember. I mean, this has to be I want
to say at least twenty ten. Okay, that's super Bowl
two thousand and eight, two thousand and eight. So, and
then it came up with an expansion, and the expansion
was Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion. Oh and that
came out a few years later, and I just assumed
that that was the sequel. And again it's just a
major expansion. So it's this is an actual official sequel.
Speaker 1: But I've played the sixteen years between the original game
in this sequel is a pretty big time, I guess you.
As you mentioned, there's that DLC in there too, but
that's a long time. But it's cool that it's finally
coming back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad. And it seems like reviews are great reviews.
People are talking about how this is just pulling all
the good stuff from the first one and deleting kind
of like the stuff that didn't work forward and just
kind of really capitalizing on what made this game successful
a big thing too. That's just wonderful about the game
is it's a scale effect and I did not realize
this because you get one solar system that you're in,
and you have your Sun and your different planets orbiting it,
and certain planets can connect to other planets. You have
your skill tree, you're upgrading your technology, and you have
other factions, so you're forging alliances, you're breaking your alliances.
You're setting up like mining and trade and whatnot, building
up your resources, and then you're building up your fleets.
And the fleets can be small fighter craft to corvettes
and then bigger capital ships and then like Rebellion brought
in huge super spaceship units, which is really awesome. But
what I liked about it was you can zoom out
of your solar system and see that there's like four
other solar systems that you can access, each with like
thirty planets, and it's like, oh my gosh. So while
you're building up and you conquer your solar system, it's
great because you could just you see your fleet of
like five hundred units going in, and then after that
it's like going to another solar system. And once you
go to another solar system, it's just like, oh, just
open season again just all out war. So it's just
it's absolutely crazy.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. How and it's hard for you now because
you've play the game a lot, But how like how
easy to difficult or complex is it for an RTS game?
Because RTS games, I feel like, are typically pretty pretty
hard to either control or play. But also just like
in terms of the inner workings and mechanics are pretty intense.
Speaker 2: It is. It is intense, and I think I only
scratch probably this of it because there's a lot that
you can do in there. But my my experience was
just building alliances and then canceling those alliances and then
just creating like scenarios of all out war and chaos.
So that's kind of the extent. There's so much more
you can do, though I'm pretty war hungry, Like I
want to build up my armada and then go to
town and destroy conquering planets and systems and stuff. So
I have a very linear kind of path that I
follow with my my space conquering gotcha, But is it
kind of like saying the way that there is like
other wind conditions if you choose to go down other routes,
or is it like always going to lead to combat
in the end, like like a typical arteas that's a
good question and I wish I had an answer for that.
I really just to war hungry, war hungry ways. Yeah, yeah,
right on, So with the sequel, like obviously you mentioned
that it's just you know, getting rid of the annoying things,
adding some new stuff.
Speaker 1: Like what is the new intriguing looking stuff for you
that you've seen on this on the sequel?
Speaker 2: What's pulling me? And is just the fact that they
brought back a lot of the super units from the
Rebellion expansion, which is great, and again there's the familiar
classes too, but the main thing is just these new
beautiful areas like planetary systems you're checking out, and just
the it looks like the scale of combat is a
lot lot bigger, and I like just I like how
you can just get up close and zoom in and
actually see the squadrons of fighters flying by and just
watching them and so and graphically too, it's it's improved
greatly over that first ones. Yeah, because it's been so
many years, so that's that's just a blessing.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah that's cool. Like how for rts, like
is this kind of one that you'll be sitting down
and doing a whole battle like in one playthrough, or
is it like a multi session thing where you're gonna
be playing all one saved for like hours and hours and.
Speaker 2: Hours one save for hours hours hours. Definitely. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I gotta say, I don't know if you've sold
me on it just because of like those parts, Like
I feel like I would want something that's like i'd
be down for like an artists and like one sitting
or one that's like a bit easier. This just sounds
so overwhelming, But I don't know. I would love if
you were kirkingly did a live stream of it someday
and I could just watch and learn. That would be
That would be really fun. It just sounds maybe a
bit too intense for my current current state.
Speaker 2: Well, maybe I can download it, download it because I
think it's Rebellions still in my steam, So maybe I'll
get in there and pop open an old save and
maybe do a stream and get into the war. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: I was just looking up what else the studio has
done Ironclad games and looks like The Sins of a
Dark Age. Have you heard of that game?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: I have not it looks like it was a mobile
so like a League of Legends type game that they
did after between Solar Empire one and two, as like
another thing that they'd worked on, which makes sense that
they weren't working on this sequel for you know, sixteen
years straight kind of thing. I don't know if that's
still around, if it was an online focus thing. Yeah,
it looks like they shut it down in twenty sixteen,
so that's been gone for a while. That's cool that
the studio is able to survive through that and is
here all these years later with a sequel after six
years of their previous game going offline. That's pretty crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no kidding.
Speaker 1: Plus that Rebellion DLC that mentioned, So that's cool. I'm
surprised if you love this first game so much, Like
I'm surprised this wasn't just like immediate pickup for you
but instead of a wait for sale, I guess just
down to the time element of your life against Like
you really don't have time for all this anyway, so
you might as well wait.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I have the first one, and I have Rebellion,
and I know what I have. I know I can
get in there, like I'm not playing it for campaigns,
story reasons or anything like that. There's no characters or
arcs right here. That's drawing me like I'm just going
in just a wage war and conquer space. I can
wait for a sale for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fair enough. Well, speaking of waiting for a sale,
I don't know how this transition is gonna work. But
did you know that the best wait port geek versus
is to hit up her Patreon and subscribe it. Whatever
tear makes sense for you. You get episodes, access to episodes
early in ad free, some things you get months and
months and months early, and some also exclusive shows as
well that are worth checking out in some retrospectives that
are gonna be up there exclusive as well. You can
join our discord always chat with us about whatever news
or interesting things are going on in the world. Leave
a review that helps our show a lot, and in
terms of other things on the feed, these days really
just I feel like we're back in a TV show
city where we have Penguin going on, Agatha is about
to start, We're doing Rings of Power right now. Any
other shout outs from you, Taylor for geek First as
a whole.
Speaker 2: I can't think of any I mean, we've done a
few reviews and we got a joker coming down the pipeline,
Big Brus Cast this week, so yeah, I think, yeah,
I guess that's coming around the corner here. So that's
pretty much it that I know of sounds good. We're
gonna throw a quick ad break and it will be
right back. Okay, we are back, Taylor. Tell me about
this Call of Duty Halloween update that you wanted to
talk about. Yeah, so it kind of came out of nowhere.
So I mean, of course not nowhere, because we have
usually the reoccurring haunted events that the Call of Duty does.
The nice thing about this though, is that it starts
in nearly two days at the time of this recording,
and they're dropping Michael Myers in here right out of
the hop or off the hop, and I was not
expecting that. Now. We've had a few other characters in
here in the past, like Billy the Puppet, we had
leather Face, hash Aash, that's right, We've had walking other
Walking Dead characters, and who else have we had in here.
There's been a few Scream ghost Face, so it's been
it's been pretty cool. But this time around, it seems
like they've gone like through the roof with haunted characters
because Michael Myers is including the Battle Pass, which is
exciting because that means that you'll you could probably see
like a Black Cell version of him, which would be
wild because they have the regular Battle Pass for like
eleven bucks, and then there's the Black Cell which you
pay an extra premium, which is ridiculous, but you get
extra content in there, mostly cosmetics. Some stuff is actual weapons,
but mostly cosmetic stuff. And those skins throughout the whole
Battle Pass that you can unlock will have their regular version,
but then they'll have like a gold Black Trim version,
which is pretty cool. So Michael Myers might have that,
which is wild to think about. I'm hoping he does.
But aside from that, they have Norman ritis Darryl Dixon
from The Walking Dead, so he's coming in. So we
already have Rick Grimes and miss Show and so now
they got him, they're adding have you ever seen Trigger Treat?
Speaker 1: I think I watched it last year for the first
time after you and Travis talking about it.
Speaker 2: So there, Sam, Yeah, he's that character.
Speaker 1: Oh the kid.
Speaker 2: He's the kid with the pumpkin kid with the he
has the lollipop with the bag over his head. So
they're adding him in. Uh have you seen Terrifier?
Speaker 1: I have not seen Terrifier.
Speaker 2: They're adding Art the Clown, which is pretty wild.
Speaker 1: Wait, I'm missing up Trick or Treat? What's the Arnie
movie that you guys love so much?
Speaker 2: Jingle all the way?
Speaker 1: Why I confuse those two ron today that that is
a funny mix up there. So okay, no, I've never
heard of Trick or Treat. Then, actually, I'm looking at
this picture of this guy now that looks terrifying. I
am not excited to have that guy pop around a
corner in war zone map over here.
Speaker 2: Trigger Treat is a fantastic Halle movie. I know Travis
would say this as well, like you should definitely watch
it with MUDs. It's great Halloween movie.
Speaker 1: I don't think she would, but I'm I'll check it.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, Art the Clown from Terrifier. He's in there,
which I think Travis said this first. But huge, huge,
because I'm pretty sure it's just I don't know much
about it. I haven't seen the movies, but it's just
a small company, small group that made those movies. And
now to be at your third film that's gonna be
coming out soon, and you have your character debuting in
a huge video game franchise. That's pretty that's pretty awesome,
So shout outs to them for doing that. And then
you have of course smiled too the characters. You get
two operators in there where they have the big smile
from the movie franchise, which I think is like pay
like they paid Call of Duty like tons of money
just to get their.
Speaker 1: All the profit that they made from the first movie, all.
Speaker 2: Of it went into Call of Duty here, Yeah, to
get that, which is just ridiculous. But I look at
this and I just think, man, I like Michael Myers
included with the battle passes. Great, that's that's a rite off.
And then you got Sam. Sam is definitely someone else
that I want to I feel like Travis is torn
between like Sam and Art the Clown. It's just it's
it's super cool and they're gonna come with their own
weapons to their own killing animation. Sam has his lollipop
which he uses like in the killing animation, which is
so cool. I just can't wait. And aside from that,
you get some cool new maps. I can't see what
the names are on this photo. But one of them
is called mad Cow and it's like a six v
six map and it's the whole thing is set up
where like the you can't see the actual ground, but
it's like blood kind of you're walking on blood. It's
just it's like an abandoned cow factory, meat processing factory.
It's just it looks super haunted and super crazy. And
then the other one is like an old like clown
drive through uh map. It's like nighttime and it's like
a fast food joint basically, but it's got like clown
themes to it. It's like so much fun.
Speaker 1: And of course nothing new on the map front for Warzone.
It sounds like just.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, Warzone Rebirth Rebirth Island should be getting. It's
what is it called purgatory. It's gonna be getting a
purgatory mode, which I don't know what that entails. But
war the reworth itomal will be like nighttime, like spooky time,
which is gonna be super super awesome to play in.
Speaker 1: Cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm looking forward to that again. I don't
know what the purgatory is, but they're bringing back the
zombies war Zone again. That's just a classical iconic thing,
and yeah, there's a few other skins that you can
get to other characters. They got what do they have?
They have ghost but he's got like I don't know
if he's an actual unit that you have to kill
in the actual zombie mode or whatnot, but he's like
his one he's got one head and two other heads
and they all got ghost masks on them. So he's
like got three headed zombie creature. Looks terrifying. And they
got haunted guns they've added in as well. And then
I saw there's a bunch of other miscellaneous Halloween skins
that they've thrown in, and one of them, you know
those Halloween costumes where it's like partially inflated. Let's say, like, yeah,
the inflated is like the alien arms and head wrapped
around you, and then the alien legs are your legs,
and then the inflated legs are just a human stangling. Yeah,
you know what that is. It's like in a weird
conjoint costume. So they did that with one of the operators,
where you have a clown on your back. I'm gonna
pull a picture of it. You gotta see. It's something
you have to see. A wild duty clown operator skin.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a lot of stuff for one season,
like more than usual or is that like how many
new things there usually is and I'm just not paying
enough attention.
Speaker 2: I feel like this is more than usual. It really
really is, because usually they I mean again for a
new season too, like they keep it pretty pretty cheer.
I guess last year we got spawned for Halloween, gosh
spawn and.
Speaker 1: Was ash last year?
Speaker 2: Probably he was skeletor was last year too. Let's see here.
Apparently verdancek is supposed to be coming back with Black
Ops six as well. It's a fun little thing.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's good. I think I'm I'm due for
new map switch up. I think that even the night
change for Rebirth will be nice. But I'm maybe getting
a little a little tired of that one for the
time being.
Speaker 2: That's fair. There is another they drop maps for I
think it was at there, like cod Next or whatever
it was. They dropped the map for the new Resurgence
and it looks pretty neat. Actually, I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 1: Like a brand new one, like not a rotation one.
Speaker 2: It's a brand new one. It'll probably be thrown into
the rotation eventually they like to do that, and I
wish they didn't. I'd like it if they had dedicated,
dedicated playlists for their certain maps. Okay, I think I
have it here. It took a bit to find it.
Oh yeah, Oh my gosh, this is ridiculous. It's actually
in a little video, so you're gonna laugh when you
see this. Okay, there we go. Make sure the volume
is muted, so this oh man, Yeah, okay, okay, here
we go. So it's called this is fine and you'll
see him running.
Speaker 1: But it's yeah, that looks so silly. The legs, just
the way they're so jankly, just having that physics to them.
Speaker 2: Just fo Yeah, it's it's ridiculous. And I don't know
which head are you supposed to shoot? Like, have I
gotta go for that headshot? Like am I shooting the
clown head? My shooting? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Much and a bit annoying, but very very annoying.
Speaker 2: This is an interesting skin. It's kind of like the
like the stand up guy you talk to we're ordering
from a burger joint. He's got like the microphone in there. Yeah,
interesting five minute Freddy's vibes to that's that's right then,
we got the last straw. There's no shortage of interesting
skins that they do for for call of duty. But yeah,
there you.
Speaker 1: Go nice and then yeah, the new one comes out
end of next month.
Speaker 2: Right ooh, I'll take your work for it. I haven't
been paying too much attention. I've been kind of panicking
about it because I see all the omni movement and
people are like praising it, and I'm kind of scared
of it.
Speaker 1: You're the purest Yeah, I'm sure you were against that.
Were you against sliding and doing these dolphin dives and
stuff at first?
Speaker 2: Too? I never dolphin dive. I don't see too many
other people doing it. But I love sliding. I'm all
about it. I'm not slide canceling like some crazies are.
But yeah, I like just I see these crazy videos
of people doing like side jumping, and it's just blowing
my mind. And then I would like to experience though,
like taking people hostage. I think there's a lot of
fun with that. But I'm seeing some people just losing
their their noga and they're getting super upset about it.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I'm I don't know if I excited it's
the right word, but I'm definitely gonna be checking checking
out that new one when it comes out. I still
don't have game Pass active right now, but I'm sure
when that by the time that's coming out, might resubscribe there,
so that makes sense. Cool. Anything else on the cod
front are going to move on? Ready to move Let's uh,
let's leave the PS five for the last. Let's quickly
talk about this. So Ana Purna is a game publisher
of course, as well as a movie studio situation. But
there there was this crazy news that happened this week,
which is that and A Purna's uh Interactive is the
name for the like the gaming side of it. Literally
every single employee from and a pernit Interactive all resigned
at the exact same time. They just all quit this
company all of the exact same time. Pretty crazy and
unprecedented thing to see. Seems like there was maybe talks
at some point for a Pernent Interactive to split off
and become its own entity rather than being tied to
I guess these other owners with the rest of the
Apurna stuff, and that fell through, which is laid into
partially why some people did this. Then I also saw
that maybe there's some issues with like toxicity and some
of the executive people higher up at and A Purna,
there's there's kind of it's a bit of a he said,
she said situation with this. But what we know for
sure is that literally every single one of those employees left,
uh and I mean and Perna said, They're still going ahead.
They're gonna rehire, they're gonna get a team set up again,
They're gonna get more people in the door. But this
is a pretty crazy thing to see for anyone who
doesn't know Anna Purna is. Yeah, they're they're a publisher,
so they're not actually developing games, So no games have
been canceled in this process, but they help bring the
resources and marketing push to mostly indie studios making interesting
stuff like Outer Wilds, Sorrying Our Wildhearts, Cocoons, Stray Neon White.
These are a few examples of games that Annapurna has published,
which to me is like, whenever I see that and
a Purna logo next to a video game trailer, I'm
immediately a little bit more interested, because I think this
team had a really great eye for games. Some of
those are just absence of my favorite games from the
last few years. So hopefully that kind of essence can remain.
But if it's going to be wholly new people at
this place picking these games and making these deals, who knows,
it might just have kind of have to build from
the ground up at this point. So we'll see what
happens there. But it's a pretty strange thing, especially with
the timing too. And I think it was just a
couple of weeks ago that Remedy announced that Control Too
is going to be published by Annapurna, and that's like
that's their publisher going forward. So that's pretty crazy that
a game of that scale just got picked up and
now this is happening, and so they said that, you know,
that's not affecting them at all. Remedy has said that,
and the or a few of these other studios have
said that they're not really going to be affected by
this in the long term. So we'll see what happens there.
But I don't know if you have many thoughts on
this tailor. I just thought it was an absolutely crazy
thing I had to bring up because I am a
fan of of I don't know this publisher. I guess, like,
I think they've really made a name for themselves in
the last couple of years here.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's that doesn't happen without some behind the
scenes coordination. That's pretty that's pretty crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And is.
Speaker 2: There was there? Sorry, was there a reason for it?
Did they disclose that they were unhappy? Was it like
higher ups or something like that.
Speaker 1: I think it is a lot of speculation right now,
but I think maybe one of the main things was
just that you know, whoever the head boss was at
the interactive side there may be working on this deal
to split it off, make it its own, like kind
of independent thing and where they could have more freedom,
I suppose, and then that kind of fell through, and
it seems like maybe in a bit of a shady way,
or maybe they're being led on or something like that,
and then this deal kind of got pulled out from
front of them. So I don't know what it is.
And maybe I'm giving them too much credit, And just
like being on the side of those people who quit,
and it seems like, I don't know, they seem like
they're doing a really good job over there, like I
feel like they should be given the resources. But I
understand that there's when corporations are at play it's a
whole different ballgame. So yeah, it's just just a crazy situation.
And I hope it can remain to exist or I
don't know, still be a cool, interesting publisher and help
support these indie developers making cool games. But who knows.
It might honestly just be the end of it. And
they say they're gonna try and make it work, but
it might just not happen at all, and they might
just fold at some point in the future. So kind
of a kind of a wicked situation. But I had
to bring it up because yeah, it's it's relevant. And
then I think our last piece of the day here
is that just last week, the PS five Pro was
announced after i'd say like a month of speculation or more.
I feel like it's been talked about for a while here,
but the new PS five was finally shown off in
the PS five Pro. It has a new design to it,
and of course it's got stronger hardware in it. It's
got more hard drive space, but it's also got a
significantly higher price tag and Taylor with taxes, this baby's
gonna be well over, maybe not well over, but just
over one thousand Canadian dollars.
Speaker 3: Ah, what isn't that absolutely fucked Yeah, I mean it's
like nine before tax Canadian For this thing.
Speaker 2: I have to compare what the Xbox prices to that,
like the Xbox.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the Xbox and regular PS five
or the Series X are like six hundred or six
six fifty maybe with the disk drive PS five right Canadian? Yeah,
I guess, so throw the tax on there so you
add an extra you know, one hundred and fifty ish
one hundred and twenty.
Speaker 2: I think you're right. Series X two.
Speaker 1: Because I don't think they've done a price drop on well,
and I don't think any of the kurringing consoles have
had a price drop, And I was wondering. I was
wondering with the PS five, with with this pro being
announced and it being rumored for a while and people
expecting it to come out this fall. I was hoping
that it would come in at like a price point
just like the same or a little bit higher than
the PS five. Then they would drop the PS five
price and that might be the time when I finally
jump in and get that console. But with this insane
price point, it seems to me like they're not really
targeting this for the everyday person, like this seems like
the rich ass people who have a lot of money
or are willing to upgrade from their PS five and
maybe they can get a better deal that way from it,
But I don't. I don't see them dropping the price
of the standard PS five at this rate, given given
the insane price point of this. But yeah, what was
your reaction to seeing all this news about the PS
five pro if you even paid attention to it at all?
As the next Box guy, I mean.
Speaker 2: I I think it was I think it was bound
to happen. You get the console and then you get
the next upgraded version of it. They've been doing that
for a long time, so it makes sense that we're
going to get something here. But at that price point,
I just absolutely cannot believe that. That blows my mind.
That's that's absolutely chaotic. I do like the look of it.
Looking at a photo of it now, it does look
pretty nice. Just you know, it's mostly the same, but
it's got like I'm assuming those vents.
Speaker 1: Kind of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is pretty neat. But I have to look
at the specs here because yeah, there's the US in
comparison Xbox Series X.
Speaker 1: It's one of the things it has is so the
base PS five has eight hundred and twenty five gigabytes
of space. This one's gonna have two terabytes, so it's
over double you know factor and like usually like what
is it, fifty to one hundred gigabytes of that are
like space you can't actually use. It's like used for
software for the you know, firmware and stuff like that.
So that's great, that's double the hardware. So I mean,
I don't know how much a one terabyte or a
two teraby hard drive would be if you were a
say a PS five owner who had the base model
and wanted to get that better hard drive. I don't
know what that would run you, but that's something you
could factor into the price here, of course. And then
the other thing is just like it's stronger, and in
the way that they've shown that off, it seems like
you know, a lot of games on the current gen
it's like you have your performance mode or you have
your quality mode, and it's like, Okay, do you want
thirty frames and four K and like ray tracing all
this beautiful stuff, or do you want better performance which
is usually sixty frames? And then the game is going
to you know, look a little bit worse, which honestly,
I don't think I've ever really noticed difference when I
when I do the quality versus performance, I just always
pick the performance mode. So it seems like what they're
aiming for here is like every game, no matter what,
is gonna be at least sixty. You don't have to
worry about that anymore. But then you're gonna have the
option now on probably mostly like Sony first party games
for one hundred and twenty frames. So I don't know
if that was not an option whatsoever before on like
a ratchet and Clank or something, but it seems like
now at least when you're picking between do I want
thirty frames or sixty frames, now that decision is gonna
be maybe sixty versus one twenty, and then that's same like, Okay,
the graphics are gonna be a little bit worse on
sixty frames, but they're gonna be just like or a
little bit better on sixty frames, a little bit worse
at the one twenty. To me, that was the main
thing that stood out, Like the hard drive space in
the frame rate are like the main the main differences
as far as I can tell.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think at the end of the day, looking
at what them not offering like multiple versions like the
Xbox does. Like that's that's interesting because it kind of
forces your hand to either go with like the I
guess the old gen is what it's called, or this
next gen version.
Speaker 1: I mean, wouldn't the options just be like the standard
PS five and then the Pro.
Speaker 2: Now yeah, center PS five I guess their disc or
their Discless versions and.
Speaker 1: Then yeah, yeah, which I think is like a fifty
dollars difference between those. I don't even know if they
do that anymore. They might have like retired some of
those because then some point they release a PS five
Pro or sorry, a PS five Slim, and I don't
know what that change. It's a little bit smaller, I guess,
and I don't know where the disk drive. I think
that Slim didn't have a disk drive and then you
could like buy that as an add on or something.
And I think this Pro I don't know if you
have an article open in front of you, but like,
I don't think there's a disk drive on this. I
don't think, so he's one of the things as well,
so it actually loses that feature which is kind of crazy,
and I don't think there's an option for that to
come with a distrive. You just have to buy like
the little bonus thing that you plug in USB. I
would I would guess too if you want to play
your discs, which is too bad because on I do
have quite a few PS four games, so that would
be something that's kind of a important for me to have.
Is uh is that destrived to play some littler games
that I own already? But yeah, like I don't know.
To me, I just see this as like I feel
like the target the market they're aiming for is the
hardcore fans who already have a PS five and want
to upgrade this and then can like trade in their
PS five and get you know, get this for I
don't know, five hundred dollars or something, or I'm just
throwing out a random number there, but get it for
a lot cheaper relatively speaking. But like, I don't I
don't see anyone who doesn't have a PS five right
now that goes straight for the pro instead of just
getting the regular PS five unless you're just you know,
Mark Cuban or something and you just have like all
the money in the world it's I don't know, it's
just it's it just seems kind of anti consumer in
that way. It feels like they're boxing out a lot
of a lot of people to even like, I would
never consider getting this at a thousand dollars, that's absolutely insane.
Speaker 2: No, not even a Christmas gift, that's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh, I guess said, cause I don't know what
what else is to say about it. I mean, it
seems like you know, a solid version to have. But
I'm curious anyone, anyone listening if you are planning on
upgrading or getting this, if you don't have a PS five,
I'd love to know why. So please please let me
know what is the decision making for you? If you
just want the best of the best, fair enough, But
I feel like, man, if you're blowing a thousand bucks,
like get a gaming PC at that right, keep your
regular PS five and you have, like you know, good
options there for gaming. What do you think Xbox is
going to do for a next gen or like a
pro version, Like do you think they're gonna do something
like that? I feel like the rumors have been that
they're maybe targeting to do an held thing like a
steam Deck rather than like a pro and I feel
like they haven't hinted at doing like a Series X
pro version, and I don't like I guess they maybe
do need to, Like a lot of their games are
being locked at thirty frames, which is really bothersome to me.
But at the same time, I don't know what they
would have to cost it at to make that worth it,
and I don't know if I don't know if that's
what the Xbox fans want necessarily, But what do you
think would you would you pay? Would you trade in
your Series X and pay for you to dollars to
get an upgrade for a pro version?
Speaker 2: No? No, I wouldn't. I mean I only did that
once with my previous Xbox One two the I guess
Xbox one S, which the S which is like the
white slimmer version. But that was still at a very
affordable price and the trade in was pretty reasonable. I
don't think I would if it was in this type
of price range, I wouldn't do it. I'm pretty happy
with the console I have and graphically everything looks great,
So I mean, at that point, if you're getting a
better console that can produce better results than you, probably
need a better TV, but even that, I'm happy with
my TV. One hundred and twenty hurts refresh rates like
four K. I don't need much else.
Speaker 1: So yeah, And I mean, like how many games are
actually taking advantage of that anyway? Like, as as far
as I know, there's Gears five and do Maternal, I
like the only one FPS games on XP, unless there's
maybe this, like some smaller one that I'm not thinking of,
like a simple indie game or something. But in terms
of like Xbox first part, they can barely even get
their games to run at sixty, so like one hundred
and twenty is like kind of out of the question
for a lot of them. Like I think, I forget
if Starfield we ought to patch to get to sixty,
but they even announced like a Vowed is being locked
at thirty, which seems kind of crazy for the scale
of that game. So I don't know. Maybe maybe it
would be helpful to have that, but I just don't
think with how many how much they're already kind of
struggling to sell the current lot of Xboxes and the
series s at its affordable price point, Like I don't
see many people ponying up for that higher version other
than once again the hardcore who would just like upgrade,
which like they're pool of people who are going to
do that as much smaller than Sony's, considering that what
this PS five is like at least doubling outsale outselling
the series series consoles at this point. So I think,
I think, I think that they are in factually working
on that portable one, the Steam Deck kind of varying
type thing. I think that's I think that's a great
angle to go for Xbox. If they do go that,
I think that's a much better ute than like a
pro version.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, would you pick up something like that an Xbox
like Steam Deck essentially?
Speaker 2: Probably not.
Speaker 1: No, you don't really game any to go these days
at all.
Speaker 2: No, the only gaming on the goal I do is
my my Nintendo Switch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which like, when's the last time you boot up
your switch? What's last time you played on switch? Oh,
probably would have.
Speaker 2: Been at least a few weeks ago, Mario Party Superstars.
Speaker 1: When's the last time you played your switch on the go?
Speaker 2: Years?
Speaker 1: Really? That's crazy?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I feel like i'ven't used mine on
the go much recently. Like sometimes I'll just play like
the handheld just on the coach or something like that.
But yeah, very rarely. My am my traveling and playing it,
I guess, just with my life. So cool. Any other
thoughts on psive pro or any other things you wanted
to bring up, No, I think that's it cool. Well,
thank you for joining me, Thank you everone for listening.
Next week I'm very excited for because to my two
most anticipated games of the year are coming out both
this week, which is The Plucky Squire and UFO fifty.
So I'm very excited. This is gonna be a fun
few days for me, just indulging in my highly anticipated
games here. So I think Kirkle's gonna be joining me
back next week because he's me picking up Plucky Squire
as well, and yeah, excited to talk about those games.
So thank you everyone for listening. We'll see you again
next time. Bye bye,