Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Game Informer Show, a weekly podcast
covering the video game industry. Join us every week for
a discussion about the latest gaming news, reviews, and exclusive reveals,
alongside the Game and Former staff and special guests from
around the industry. Let me tell you there's a lot
of special guests on this episode. I'm Monibreros today Alex
Van Aiken live in downtown Los Angeles in our studio,
our makeshift studio powered by Road Microphones. We've got the
Road Mic, the Road PSA one plus the Roadcaster Pro two,
the video s it's we got wireless goes and it's
all in this awesome blue colorway as part of roads
new Colorway package. So if you're out there, if you're
looking for ways to customize your gaming play space or
your podcasting or TikTok space for making content, look to Road.
They've got some great stuff. I can go to road
dot com or click the link in the description just
say four. Warning that as an affiliate link. So Game
of Formore does get a small kickback, but there's no
additional charge to you. We just need to disclose that
joining me is one Marcus Stewart, Hello, how are.
Speaker 2: You doing well. I'm gonna do something right now today.
You rarely ever see you on the Game and Former show.
Speaker 1: Holy hell, look I can touch Yeah, we're here in person.
Speaker 3: Video editors wobble, but they don't fall down.
Speaker 2: Your little box can't save you now?
Speaker 3: Oh god?
Speaker 1: Yeah, hello, Eric van Allen, Hi, I'm here.
Speaker 3: We're We're actually present and in each other's lives. Look
at this, we all live in the same place for
five days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, well we just we are recording this at
the end of Summer Game Best, but we've been recording
for several days. We've got special guests throughout the show. Today,
we've got folks like Jason Schreier, Miles of Benza, Gianna
Garcia One, Jill Groad, former Game Informer editor. A ton
of people came through this week and we had an
excellent podcast. So I'm excited for to get into that
and a little bit. We're gonna finally take some time
and start the show off by talking about the games
we played here at Summer Game Fest and all we
thought of the experience as a whole. I do want
to say that this year was I think one of
my favorite sgfs. It was, you know, a little interesting
in some ways, but I think all in all, it
was just nice to see people, nice to see and
work with people that I love and care about. And
we saw some good games. I think, you know, high
up on my list is something like a Blood Dungeon,
which we'll talk about later in the show, as well
as Slap out of It, which is I think every
That was my first or second appointment of the show,
and I proceeded to tell every person I saw that
should go and play it. But I want to hear
what you guys thought about the show, and and you know,
maybe Kick Up kicks off with some games you played. Marcus,
Let's start with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had a great time. This is my third SGF,
but I thought this might also be my favorite. Like
I thought the energy was great this year. It was
the biggest ever been. I mean, Nintendo was here, which
I think is the first time they've ever had like
a proper real presence at the show.
Speaker 3: It was a third party presence, which was really interesting.
It was it was a lot of stuff out here,
that's definitely. I attended it for GI and it was
a lot of stuff that was on switches, but we
didn't see any like Star fux or anything like that.
But it was cool to see like a banner, a
Nintendo banner here.
Speaker 2: Yes, but yeah, I thought that the game in terms
of the variety of it was very strong this year.
A lot of really fun demos, a lot of surprises
in terms of just when I would talk to you guys,
would talk to colleagues about like what was cool with
the show and just getting like some surprising answers that
I just let either games I wasn't on my radar
or was but there was like, oh is this better
than I maybe gave it credit for. Okay, that's cool,
but yeah, yeah there like I've had a blast being here.
I'm dog tired. Yeah, at this point, I've been here
longer than you.
Speaker 1: Guys, though you have your on day nine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been here. I had two other events that
I flew out to LA ahead of you guys showing up.
So I've been here. It'll be a total ten days
by the time I leave.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I'm I'm about ready to head back to
the beautiful state of Florida.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you got to go get ready for GTA six.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, I got to get the state ready.
Speaker 1: Got a lot of prep work. I imagine I got to
talk to DeSantis. Yeah, yeah, everybody's everybody's on this. Yeah, Eric,
how about you? How's your show?
Speaker 3: It's been interesting. I agree with the sentiment that I
think it's probably my favorite SGF that I can think
of off the top of my head, barring maybe my
my second second was pretty good too. Yeah, but it's
been a really good one this year. I mean, you've
talked with people, you know in general on trying to
practice a little bit of gratitude. In our last segment,
Alex is going to say something similar that that I
think has really kind of resonated with a lot of
us this weekend, is that, you know, we're here to
do some really really cool stuff and show off some
you know that the media can be a filter, that
media can be a recommendation engine, that media can be
a place where interesting thought and discussion happens, and we
can act as that that medium to help that happen.
So getting back into that, doing a lot of this work,
a lot of the video interviews, a lot of the
stuff we're doing here has been really really cool. And
then we've also been seeing a lot of cool games
that I have to constantly check my phone for to
make sure that I know what the embargo is.
Speaker 1: Yes, if you see us checking our phones, it's it's embargos.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 3: Some sometimes people get on my case because I'll be
looking off screen during the GI show and normally that's
me just checking to make sure that OBS is not exploded.
Speaker 2: During the show. Guess what, my phone is not on me.
So I'm gonna be a loose cannon boy this time.
It is.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to edit this.
Speaker 3: Well, you can't wait to it?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he said it.
Speaker 3: He said it. He has to do it now. Yeah, no,
it some really really cool stuff. I mean, I think
a lot of my personal games, all of the stuff
I took was not the higher profile stuff that kind
of fell to some of the more senior members of
the crew. I'm not complaining, I promise. It was more
like I got to chase after some of the really cool,
uh more niche or surprising things. And at the show,
I think Alex took up a lot of those indieanpoyments.
You actually took a lot too, and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I got a lot they have. I think
I've probably spent the most time with Anna Perna just
based on my schedule, like I was there, I think
at least once every day, it felt like. But saw
a couple of theater showings, played a couple of small
games that they're publishing. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Nice.
Speaker 2: They had a pretty big presence this year.
Speaker 1: One one game that I want to talk about that
I don't want to forget about is some of the
developers of split Gate and split Gate two Border Wars
ten forty seven games. It's called Impulse, and guys, it's
probably the closest thing we're going to get to titan
Fall two for a long time. Titan Fall to multiplayer, Yeah,
where and you are like a pilot running around wall running, sliding,
doing all sorts of stuff and then grappling around with
a grapple hook. And then instead of fighting for control
of power weapons like a sniper or like a you know,
a rocket launcher or something, there will be a notification
that like people see that it's time to fight over
a mech, and a mech is about to spawn, and
it's kind of a race to see who can pilot it.
And then once you once you do have it, of course,
you have your your kind of power level increases significantly.
When you're powering that thing. It's got like a gatling gun.
You can of course just kind of like run over people.
It's got like a if you press I was playing
a mouse and keyboard, if you press and shift, then
you would kind of like sprint forward like dashed forward,
which is a fun feeling in a mech And I
think they really kind of nailed the Titan Fall feel
of like kind of being in that uh, you know,
you are on this massive, like hulking machine, but there's
like almost like a a looseness to it that feels
really good. That it's kind of like juxtaposed with like
being inside this giant, you know machine. But yeah, I
really I really enjoyed it. I thought it it felt
really good to play the They kind of set up
a few different loadouts and I just had a I
was just playing it against bots, so I was I
was in a little playground, you know, just having a blast.
Speaker 2: Is it a multiplayer only game or is there any
single player?
Speaker 1: It is? It is a multiplayer only, I believe. Yeah.
But they've got this like they're grenades they call paints,
and there's like some in universe language, but you essentially
throw a grenade that is like think of it as
almost like a splatoon grenade or something, where like you
throw it and it affects you know, the walls, the floor,
the ceilings of you know, whatever's in the blast radius.
Speaker 3: And then you can sing into it and swim.
Speaker 1: Not quite, but you can customize what that paint does
depending on which one you've equipped. So one of them
is like a simple it's like a slow it's like
almost like a sticky paint, and so that's really good
for locking down like a mech that you don't have
control of, and everyone's secondary weapon is are hammers, and
you literally just take hammers and beat the hell out
of the mechs as you do. They also have like
a weak point in the center of their cockpit. But
like it's so fun to like be zipping around and
like hammering mech.
Speaker 2: Hey guys, let's go beat up that gund Yeah exactly,
like mugging energy.
Speaker 1: So this is yeah, gundas existed when I was a
kid with hammer Let's kill the yeah, yeah exactly. And
so like you can use like the sticky grenade of
sorts you can use. There's one that's like just kind
of a straightforward like this deals explosion damage, but it does.
It's like a more of a dot and it's like
depending on when you are standing in it or touching it,
it will do different damage depending on the timeline of
like when it was thrown in stuff. I think one
of the more interesting ones is like a it's like
a essentially a jump paint that you can like go
into it and you get this huge you get a
huge jump boost. But like it's all serving like the
purpose of like enhancing your kit and your strategy. And
I just think this game has excellent flow and it's
just like one of those Listen if you if my movement,
like moment to moment movement feels fun, Like that's that's
what I'm looking for in a game, right, Like is
it fun to move? You know, later later on the
g I Show, you know, some folks will talk about
like the importance of like making movement fun, right, and like,
you know, I'm not just holding a stick forward and
sprinting right and waiting to see annemy. I'm always kind
of doing something to get to a higher vantage point,
get get around this corner and try to get the
jump on people. And it felt really good. I was
actually really impressed. They've been working on this for about
I think like a year and a half, a little
over year since they wrapped on splic Gate two. I
did really want to ask the developer about his infamous
make FBS grates again.
Speaker 2: I noticed him over by his booth and he had
a different hat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you wouldn't believe it, Yeah, I yeah, yes,
And so I was prepared to ask some of that,
and then he was pretty disarming because he's a big
game and former fan, which of course every appointment, like
I'm a huge fan, but I was like, I think
he really is. And I was like, you guys, I
will say, He's like, maybe we can grow, we can
all change it.
Speaker 2: I will say in his defense, I interviewed him a
couple of times for the original splic Gate and he
was like, you seem like a genuinely like nice guy.
Speaker 1: I think maybe it was a very bad move that
maybe he thought was gonna land differently that yeah, yeah,
that's maybe a charitable way of interpreting that, or you know,
but you know, people, people contain multitudes. But he was
a really nice guy. I think he's his team is
working on a on a good game and I'm excited
to play it. I think there's like either a BETO
or early access coming like later this month. But it's
Impulse with an E an E impulse. I'm an impulse
by Impulse. By the way, I've got a wild game
to talk to you all about. Yeah, the one that
I had to check the embargo for. I guided a
hands off demo of The Wolf among Us two.
Speaker 3: Oh, that was a really interesting one. I basically sat
on the couch. Yeah, this game, this game is real.
It was, it was in development, it was in progress
in many ways. But I sat down with the creative
director of the game, sat on the couch next to me,
and just kind of drove the session as I made
choices for it. And it was really interesting to go
through that because I think I never finished the first
Wolf among Us, but I played a pretty good chunk
of it back when it first came out, and that
was years and years ago with the original Telltale crew,
and obviously a lot of time has passed. The makeup
of what Telltale is has changed over time. I mean
Telltale has literally died and come back in that time.
Shout outs to game companies that die and come back
and there's sense a mixture of kind of old Telltale
folks and new folks working at this new studio trying
to make essentially a Wolf among Us that picks up
six months after the first game ends, and I was
fascinated by the challenge of having to approach that kind
of thing, I think, especially because it's such a beloved
Telltale game. But I was really impressed by what I saw.
I saw a section that was kind of at the
end of the first episode, they told me it is
a singular game that will still be broken up into episodes.
I feel like that's kind of where a lot of
these adventure games have gone over over the years, is
that the episodic format does fit it, and even stuff
like Dispatch will kind of do a you know, here's
one every so often. But even that was a very
condensed schedule compared to you know, think of Life as
Strange one and how long that took to fully release.
But it was basically a locked room where Big B
and this NYPD cop who has kind of been swept
up in these murders that are happening, or trying to
solve this puzzle to get out. And I was really
impressed by how much there was, there were puzzles, there
were actual solving, there were they explicitly wanted to show
off in this demo the amount of signposting you can
or cannot opt into, which I thought was really interesting
because on recently in the g I slack and also
in many other forums, I have lamented the rise of
the talking head who tells you how to solve the
puzzle the second you walk into a room. When you know,
you walk into a room and you're looking around, You're
just trying to take in the scenery and look at things, and.
Speaker 2: Example, perhaps a controversy.
Speaker 3: Those brother you get on the box over there and
I hit the switch. It's I get really tired of
that stuff.
Speaker 1: And so that happened to me, by the way, I
won't say which came. I was demo in a game
this week Get Play Days.
Speaker 2: Oh this is real.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and the person kept interrupting me and telling
me how to solve the puzzle, and I was like,
I'm literally I'm having zero issues right now, Like I
can tell you how I'm doing that literally yeah yeah, yeah, God.
Speaker 3: Forbid, I catch a b I've inside this puzzle room.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, like haut I know God, and I was
mad because I ended up finishing like early. I was like,
you were rushing me for no reason.
Speaker 3: But they were telling me that they have these strikingly
diegetic ways of introducing that where one of the examples
they showed was there was a puzzle that I was
trying to solve, or that they were trying to solve
using different sliding things that would ultimately form an image,
and they said, you know, there's an option to basically
ask your cop friend Fay for a picture that she
had taken of said image. And they were saying, depending
on choices made earlier, that image could come from somewhere
else or something like that, we actually have different ways
of introducing this hint in order to kind of make
it fit diegetically. And I thought that was really novel.
I really dug that. A lot of it feels like
there's a lot of thought going into how they approach what,
you know, a quote unquote Telltale style adventure came it
because we have seen so much iteration on that genre
over the years, as both the original Telltale works and
similar works have kind of tackled the what I would
call the new adventure game. The three D walk around
adventure game, and it really does feel like they're trying
to do something that feels like it is both rekindling
a lot of that old magic while trying to move
it up to modern standards. And I'm very surprised by
One of the coolest things they told me was that
they built a custom renderer for Unreal to try and
mimic as much of the original art style of Yeah,
there's some really cool stuff in there that you can
check out on our article on gamefore dot com for more.
But there they did some really really cool stuff to
make that all work. They would not tell me if
any choices from The Wolf among Us one would carry
over into The Wolf among Us two, though the most
I got was maybe and stay tuned, so we will see.
Speaker 1: But if I'm thinking maybe, we might still be figuring
this out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the fact that they are making the remastered version,
which I believe is coming out this October, it makes
me think that it might be tied to that. But
that is that is my spectaculation, that's my speculation. That's night.
Speaker 1: But yes, cool, Yeah, Marcus, what do you want to
talk about game ones?
Speaker 2: You know what I'm gonna be first and foremost, I
just noticed that my sunglasses that I thought were missing
are actually right in front of me, just off camera
and the table. So that makes me very happy I
did that.
Speaker 1: Would you like to put them on? Would that make
you feel better?
Speaker 2: Well, here's the thing, because I'm gonna go in a
cool guy mode here because.
Speaker 1: I'm going to play. Somebody needs to do the game I'm.
Speaker 2: Going to talk about. Technically, I did not play it
s GF. I played before SGF, which many people didn't
get to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, cool games before s g I don't want to.
Speaker 2: I don't wanna somebody plays video games.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But speaking of Anna Perna, I actually to go to
Annapurna's like headquarters in La like theyre where their film studio,
I guess is based, to go check out an like
a big event for Control Resonance about an hour. I
actually more an hour. I think like two hours of
Control Resident from like the very beginning of the game
to a section a few chapters in the Control Resident
was at SGF, But when I was talking to people
that played it sounds like they stopped right before the
second half that I got to continue at this event.
But I'm a huge fan of Control. I think that
first game is incredible. It's one of my favorite worlds
I've ever been in. Like, I just love everything about
that game. And when I saw the sequel one, I'm
exciting sequel. But also the sort of like character action
direction that they're going in speaks to me because I'm
a huge like stylist action like domic cry ban, I
don't give me all that stuff. I love it. So
I was really curious to see how Remedy woul nailed
at because that is not the kind of games that
they make. They pretty much just the third person shooters.
Really think of it between Max Kaine. Well, and there
was Crossfire, but I mean that's a shooter.
Speaker 3: See.
Speaker 1: By the way, I just thought that new Crossfire game
from That's no Moon.
Speaker 2: I mean I can talk about that too because you
saw that too. That was my first event.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think we need them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yes for Control. So, uh, long story short,
the game is awesome so far. Yeah, like, uh, Dylan Faden,
the character in that game, he controls incredibly well. The
action in that game again for being Remedy's first stab
at that style of action game, I'm not going to
say it matches the kind of like action game Nirvana
of like the best of DMC or being at UP,
but it's not terribly far off, which is still a
great mark to hit for your first time out. The
combats a lot deeper than I maybe expected it to
be because the weapon that you have the apparant which
is kind of the transforming like pretty much it's like
Jesse's the surface weapon in the first game, whereas transforming gun,
he just has like a transforming like metal rod that
can turn into like a scythe or a whip or
whatever he wills it to be basically, but each transformation
kind of offers a different play style. Like when I
started the game, I had the one handed acts, which
was kind of the more balance in terms of like
the speed of attacks, but it also had at least
would have described as robust combo potentials. But you're using
your standard melee weapon, but you also have a sidearm,
which is basically like a sub transformation that you can use,
so you actually can turn it into like a whip
or you can turn it into a big hammer for
like heavy swings. But then also Dylan has superpowers because
he's super powerful, and that's why he was locked away
in the FBC headquarters for so long, so he can
at least then the demo I had, he could kind
of like summon a bunch of rubble around him shield.
That was felt really cool to like block attack Suddenly.
Is he an earth bender? Is that what we're talking about?
He pretty he does do a lot of earth bending
because he has another ability where he just like kind
of wills earth in the ground and just like oos
it at people.
Speaker 1: I Okay, don't hate me. I I've only watched like
a few episodes of Avatar the Last Airbender.
Speaker 3: You can't hate me for my turtle takes anymore like that.
Speaker 2: I yes, I think that's more offensive than not. Yeah,
because I'm in different towards nature turtles in.
Speaker 1: I will say I have enjoyed what I watched that show, Okay,
because there has been a Turtles show for every gy
I made it to the Fire Temple.
Speaker 2: That's like the Fire the Fire Nation Fire.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: No, there's there's a part at the beginning specific episode.
Speaker 2: There's there's a.
Speaker 3: Part at the beginning of the first season where they
go to uh a fire temple during I think it's
like one of the equinoxes or something. Yeah, he can
only talk to him one of his past selves. I
swear I'm not this into Avatar. I just recently rewatched
this series and so I know whatpisode Alex talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's why I stopped. I was like, this
is great, can't wait to watch more, and then I
got busy. But my point being, I always thought the
Earthbenders are awesome. O.
Speaker 3: The Earthbenders are the cool.
Speaker 1: Like back in City of Heroes, back in the day,
I would play an Earth controller when you like like
some of like rock tombs and stuff around people and
like that. I love that kind of fantasy. Like, uh,
even as a kid, when like I was outside of
my friends and we were like, well I'm going to
control water, I'm a control fire. I would be the
Earth guy.
Speaker 2: So I'm like your Kwame and Captain Planet.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. Yeah. So it sounds like this is up
my alley.
Speaker 2: And if you want to see the best of Earthbending
watching the live action Avatar movie.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: Anyways, the uh Dylan has these kind of like three
kind of like core tiers of abilities that you're mixing
and matching between. You can switch between them when you
go to a. It's basically this game's version of the
Mind Palace more or less from All and Way two. Okay,
it's called the Gap. You can access it anytime. It's
basically the space where you can change out your loadouts,
you can upgrade your ability trees. There's even a training
room if you want to kind of test your load
out see if it does what you want to do.
But just the myriad of combinations that are available is
pretty impressive. And also the game kind of encourages you
to not stick with anything because certain enemies have vulnerabilities.
Are like, oh, these guys can really only take damage
to like blunt weapons like a hammer, and like, oh
I don't have a hammer right now, so you could
still kill them, it's just gonna be harder. So you
might be like, maybe I'll bring a hammer for this section.
I don't know, that'll be my excuse to play it.
But like the actions good. The sort of like more
open area of New York looks awesome because you know,
the HSS have escaped and they have pretty much turned
New York into this like warped, nightmarish version of itself.
For like streets are suddenly taking like ninety degree plunges,
Like there's tons of just citizens floating in the sky
like they were in the float in the Oldest House
and in the first game.
Speaker 3: Wait, when are you gonna start describing the part of
New York that is in like New York that all
sounds about right that though, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: But one of the coolest ones. I don't know why
it has popped me, but like there's a section when
you early on where you just see a flock of
birds and they're just like suspended and animation and they
keep flickering in and out of existence. Like it kind
of reminded me of Spider Verse, like the Parker was
like glitching out and stuff. So like, visually it looks awesome,
but it's like like the uh, the action's great. It's challenging,
but it isn't. I wouldn't say it's like maybe like
deble may Cry challenging, but it does get pretty tough.
I fought one boss.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: I think they've shown the trailer's a kind of like
hiss that just looks like a giant woman's head with
her jaw missing and her hair is kind of like
snake like and she's like throwing all kinds of stuff
at you, Like she just looks really freaky and she's
like like just roaming around all over the map, but
she has a fun fight. And there were sections later
on where you're like going through like this kaleidoscopic it's
like apartment Like it's like it used to be an
apartment building, but it's just now this series of like
repeating floors and you're going room to room and you
can walk on the walls, you can walk in the ceiling,
and you're getting in the fights there and you're having
to jump between the walls and the ceiling, and reminded
me a lot of the hotel scene and Inception Mmmm
in a way. I was like, this is really cool.
So I'm so excited to see just now that they
have a bigger playground to play with with Manhattan or
I don't know if it extends beyond Manhattan, but regardless,
I think that there's a lot of like potential for
a really cool level design and uh sort of environmental
tricks cool top of just how good the action is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really really quick because we need to kind of
get onto our other segments, cross Fire, the whole thing.
I think the coolest thing, the coolest thing to me
was like that that it seemed like they're doing something
cool with the cover, the way they were moving between.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the first event I went to was visiting
vatsnow Moon's development studio, their team of veteran developers here
in Los Angeles. Actually their studio. Apparently they ever given
us a tour. It used to be the motion capture
studio that Naughty Dog used for all the Uncharted games. Interesting,
and they're using that studio for all their motion capture
for this game. But yeah, Crossfire. So it's a reimagining
of the Crossfire like multiplayer game like apparently Smilegate, the
IP holder and developer of the OG game, basically gave
their blessing to say you can do whatever you want.
So they're telling a single player, no multiplayer whatsoever, like
story driven, cinematic just campaign about these two soldiers, one
of which is played by an actress from the Boys
whose name I forget. She plays a character named like
Victoria bag guy. I've never seen the Boys. Oh, yes, soon,
it's Claudia do.
Speaker 3: The Yeah. I don't want to say who it is
because it's really easy to spoil, but yes, I know
what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Okay, but yeah, she plays a character nam Leila in
a game. She's the actual playable protagonist. The other character
is a soldier named Delroy I believe, who's also played
by another actor named Ricky Whittle, who I believes is
I think the only credit they gave is like, he's
in American Gods. But the idea is like the there's
the two soldiers that are diametrically opposed to each other
because they have just completely different beliefs, like Leyla apparently
is very much like, hey, I believe in change and
being progressive, and the other guy's like, no, I don't
like that. I like status quo things should say the same.
I don't know where they'll go with that. They didn't
really a man exactly. They didn't really in context for
like what they actually believe and sort of like what
do they apply to those beliefs to They just got
like kind of keeping that the vest so on the surface,
I'm like, Okay, that's kind of lame, but also I
don't know what let's see what the how that plays
into the story. But they kind of get forced to
work together because there's some sort of strange threat that
has fallen on Earth something that is clearly like not
human because despite looking like an average military shooter, they
say that this is actually a sci fi game, but
it's drownded sci fi, so, like I believe in the
trailer they showed this, but we got to watch a
love gameplay demonstration where Delroy, who was an AI controlled
companion but he's with you the whole game. He has
like a cloaking ability so he can kind of he
has like some sort of tech where he just goes
full like world combat reptile and can like sneak around.
I did not see leyla use this, so I'm not
sure if she can do it or if the demo
or just didn't do it. But yeah, you have kind
of a mix of like conventional weapons and like weird
tech like that.
Speaker 1: It was like a ghost recon future soldier or something.
Speaker 3: Would believe neither one of you are saying ghosts in
the shell. This is messed up. This is it's a
ghosts in the shell. They're doing ghosts in the shell. Yeah,
we'll go with that ghost in the shell, but it's
literally a story about a character.
Speaker 2: Was like, I don't operative.
Speaker 1: I told you, I told you, I don't like horror.
I don't do ghosts.
Speaker 3: I gotta leave. That's the flight tomorrow.
Speaker 2: But so yeah, to your point, they're the centerpiece feature
for this game is this system called a dactive cover
where their big pitch for this is basically, we want
to evolve the cover based shooter because for so long,
taking covering games meant hiding behind an obvious box.
Speaker 1: It's the Gears of War, you know. Yeah, we're still
doing it two decades later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you go in the room, you clearly know where
you can hide where they wanted the They because this
game is built in on refined that are like, oh,
using that tech, it much has the ability to create
like natural geometry, like if you like they demoed it
was kind of like in a canyon which has a
bunch of like rocks and boulders laying around naturally, And
they're like, oh, basically we can have it so that
the characters can automatically they're animated away with the organically morph.
Speaker 1: To the mesh.
Speaker 2: And in a way that makes sense and basically is
the way a real person would if you were taking
cover basically using whatever was around you.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they showed us like a gray box sort
of like a wireframe breakdown of this that kind of
helped sell or explain what the tech did. But yeah,
it looks cool. Like just seeing the character just move
and crawl through the rocks the way a real person
would it was pretty impressive just animation wise. And again
it makes the firefights more interesting because you go into
an area, it's not always clear where you can hide,
but you just take whatever you think will hide you
best and provide some sort of advantage in terms of
like okay, can I show them but they can't shoot me?
But I kind of I like the thought behind that.
Because this game is a stealth forward game. They are
very clear that like it's very easy to die. You
take a few shots and you're down. They're trying to
like like realistic lethality, and ideally you want to sneak
up on people or flank them instead of just outright
getting into firefights. You can do that. It's just gonna
be really hard. But between that and having a stamina
meter that you have to manage for, you don't really
see him shooters very often. Yeah, and also you have
like armored that you can equit, but it can shatter
when it takes too much damage, and the sound, as
I would say, it was really good. Like the bullets.
Every bullet felt impactful, every gun shot felt impactful. The
game looks really nice, just fidelity wise, like I think
the I was worried about this at the time, and
then my fear was confirmed. We're like, I don't think
the Summer Games Fest trailer really sold what that game's
actually trying to do because it's kind of just hard
to convey through like a cinematic trailer like you would
mee the devs go out there and explain like, hey,
actually here's how this works.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I'm I'm like interested in that game. I
need to see more of it. I'm curious more about
the story stuff and how the characterization evolves. But the
tech behind it seems really cool, awesome.
Speaker 1: I'm right there with you. Well, we've got a full show,
so we're gonna toss it over. Eric is gonna get
in the hot seat and host what. We've got a
swath of excellent guests to many grade show sat a
swath yes, Allegian.
Speaker 3: Allegian, Yes, michadro a school.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you everybody for watching, and we hope that
you enjoyed the rest of the podcast. All right, we'll
bear back right after this.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to the Game Informer Show Here at the
Game Informer SGF studio, brought to you powered by Road.
Thank you Road for the awesome boom arms and mics
and stuff that we have powering our studio here at
Summer Game Fest twenty twenty six, and here to talk
about the state of things, the games, the fest, the everything,
and the Jeff. We have an excellent panel of wonderful
guest here to discuss all our thoughts about Summer Game
Fest so far. We're actually recording this on the Sunday,
so we have not experienced all of what summer game
fests may hold for us. But I feel like we
can get a good idea so far, starting on my
closest side here, John Cars.
Speaker 7: Hello, Hey, it's day two. It is day feels like
it's day thirty. It's been a long arduous SGF, so.
Speaker 3: We always call it like day minus one, day zero,
and it always feels like a misnomer because day two
really does feel like you've already run half the marathon.
Speaker 7: I thought I'd be good today and then it's like
I've had two red bulls. In the last couple of
hours and I'm like barely up to.
Speaker 3: Two Red Bulls. Yeah, okay, so we'll need the cardiac
It powered by Road all stand by. Yeah, no, they don't,
they don't. Miles, please introduce yourself for the folks at home.
Speaker 6: Hello.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I'm Miles of Ben's I'm a freelance writer. And yes,
my third SGF. Like you were saying, it's day two
but not. Actually, my first apployment was like Thursday morning
and I've just been NonStop ever since.
Speaker 6: But yeah, happy to be here, Thanks for the invite.
Speaker 3: And we've got Jason Shire. Jason, please introduce yourself for
the folks at home.
Speaker 9: Well, you just did. I'm Jason Tryer YouTube personality Jason Tryer.
I have an issue. Well, I feel like we got
the game, we kind of got the fast, but it's
not summer. So it's like this.
Speaker 2: Is I don't know what.
Speaker 9: Sweat and game fest, like late spring game kind of fest. Sure,
late spring game event as I may call it.
Speaker 3: I guess it was. It was sweltering. I almost burned
the other day at Summer game.
Speaker 9: Fest is just like a festival.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so just just started all off like How
are we feeling about Summer game Fest this year? This
is what the fifth year I believe of Summer Game
Fest total and alex fan Aikan waters into this spen
for a chair and it kind of feels like the
sentiment I've heard from people is that, okay, that maybe
the novelty has worn off. We are no longer in
the this is the new and we're trying to figure
out is this how we get kind of the legs
of the traditional summer apparatus under us because the games
industry loves to operate in its cycles, and we usually have,
now fully commanded by Jeff Keeley, we have the Winter
of Game Awards and the Summer of Game Fest. Jason,
how are you feeling about where things are at with
Summer Game Fest? Do you think like this is kind
of filling a gap that we needed filled right now?
Speaker 9: Well, I guess it's always been there, right because it
was E three and then there was a tiny hiatus
maybe a year now. Actually Killy jumped in even when
E three was still going away. This one Summer games Best,
so it's always been here. It's interesting, I think from
a player perspective, it's a little more confusing than E
three was.
Speaker 3: It's kind of.
Speaker 9: A disparate collection of events. But from a media perspective,
it's actually a little bit better than E three in
a lot of ways because what E three traditionally was
a series of press conferences and media people would shepherd
around Los Angeles going to these press conferences, and then
afterwards you would go to the Los Angeles Convention Center,
which is right across the street from us, and you
would attend the show for which was packed full of
thousands of people. You had to kind of navigate the
seas of people and like add an extra fifteen minute
buffer to every appointment to just get through people and
get across all the holes. And it was a spectacle
and that had its advantages. But what we have now
is instead of that convention center portion, we have a
what's called play Days, which is a very small campus
that is much easier to navigate, much easier to get around,
much easier to have appointments for press. So in that way,
it's it's kind of better, I think from the fan perspective,
it's a little bit different from but from our perspective here,
it's kind of like a similar structure, but a better
media experience.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, these these details always feel granular and almost
maybe like inside baseball, but I think they end up
being illustrative of the shifts in the industry as well,
because E three was always a spectacle in and of itself, right,
there was kind of a huge industry gathering that would
bring in these giant booths, and there was almost an
air of like, you've got to be here. E three
is where it's happening, and SGF does feel a little
bit subdued by comparison. It's like the difference between a
massive tech industry convention and like a south By Southwest
where it kind of takes over the downtown of a city,
and we're not even there yet. We just have kind
of a tiny campus in LA and that's that's kind
of where, you know, the crux of it is outside
some outside events, but Miles like, like, what is your
takeaway been of this year's SGF. Do you feel like
it's it's a solid year. Do you feel like we
have a lot of stuff going on? Or yeah, So.
Speaker 8: I'm actually like, relatively, I've only been doing this for
like five years, so I don't I can't compare this
to E three because I've never been My first E
three that I was approved for was the year it
actually got killed. Yeah, but no, like, yeah, this is
my third and like play days is cool, but it's
not the only thing happening. And so your your question was,
like where does it go from here? I think a
lot of UH studios have kind of figured out that
they might not always need to like work with Jeff
Keeley all the time, and they can just do the
stuff off off site completely related to just schedule stuff
around this time. That was what my appointment was on Thursday.
It was they know everyone's in town, but it's not related. Yeah,
I mean, I I'm still enjoying it. Again, I don't
have much to compare it to. You guys are gonna
have a lot more in site on that than Mesold. Uh, yes, no, no,
but I mean it's it's it's fun. I'm just glad
that like we still have stuff like this for us
to have work and then for dives to get their
games out in the world.
Speaker 3: John. Any thoughts on on where SGF, like the size
of SGF is at right now.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Like I've gone the last three years and it's
occupying the same space for the last three years. Yes,
there's like those outside like Xbox as their their thing outside.
There's only a couple of those events outside the wall
of the hollowed walls.
Speaker 3: Of the floral walls.
Speaker 7: I think it does need to grow a little bit more.
The one thing I missed from E three is having
a bunch of just like play kiosks, to just like
walk up and play a game.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 7: It's very like you you need an appointment for something.
If you don't have that connection to something, like, you're
not going to be able to play that, Like I'm
not going to be able to play like Star Wars
Race or if I can. Yeah, So like there's there's
stuff that's there that I can't even access, even though
it's right there in front of me, and there's plenty
of machines there. But if I could just like walk
up and play something, I think that's what it's really
missing for attendees.
Speaker 3: It's an interesting dynamic because like I've covered this thing
for sites and I've covered it as a freelancer, and
there is a kind of disparity, especially when there is
a limit to how many, you know, PlayStations you could
fit and not not like PlayStations but like actual places
you can play a game, how many you can put
in a room, how many people can afford to put
in a room. And that is one of the things
I think has been coming up a lot around SGF
is the question of cost. How much money it costs
to be here, how much manpower it costs to be here,
how much hardware it costs to be here. And I
think that is always kind of a concern for people
and for devs on on their side, is how much
is SGF worth it?
Speaker 10: Uh?
Speaker 3: Even for us on the media side, we ask ourselves,
you know, sending people out here, how much is that
worth it. I do still think that the summer game
Fest and and a lot of the content we end
up creating around it is really exciting, and we can
get some cool insight and stuff like that, but it
is just always this thing that feels caught somewhere between
where E three was and and I don't know, something
like a PAX or something like that. I've seen a
lot more creators around this year. I've seen a lot
more content creators influencers. Jason, do you feel like maybe
that's a are we seeing the specter of content creation
coming up? And and being like this is kind of
where the industry is going here.
Speaker 9: Asking maybe because I'm a content creator.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, and noted content creator.
Speaker 9: First of all, you you when you're talking about the
space of PlayStations and have the play stations and have
me thinking that so much, make so much to make
theme park. But for Summer games Fest, where you have
to design your own video game convention and figure out
how many kiosks you can fit in, and then every
so often Jeff Keeley comes and takes a tribute from
you attack to be.
Speaker 3: There, the sewing occurs, I think, I mean, I think
what you're seeing is more reflection of the state of
media than anything.
Speaker 9: I mean, they are fewer and fewer outlets. Some of
many of those outlets have been eviscerated. I mean just
this time last year, I was having dinner with some
friends who were a Polygon and they are no longer
at Polygon. So it's that I think that the rise
of the tiktokors and the YouTubers, I think is more
a reflection of where the media space is than anything
on the money end. I mean, it's interesting. I think
that for game developers being in one of these showcases
can change their lives in a big way. It can
lead to metrics that they can then show two potential funders.
It can lead to obviously sales. It can lead to
a lot of things like if you guys, a good
example which is at the Game Awards in December of
twenty twenty four, So not quite summer game sets, but
winter game sests let's call it, or not even winter,
let's call it, or late Fall games.
Speaker 3: Fest, late Spring games Fest. You're getting very specific about
the seasonality.
Speaker 9: I just think I think we should be accurate with
our non inflate trees.
Speaker 3: The Tumble Equinox Fest.
Speaker 9: Exactly, the game war is. In twenty twenty four, the
people at ad Hoc Studio announced a game called Dispatch,
and at that point when they announced it, they did
not have funding secured for that game. They announced it
suddenly got this huge influx of attention and it helped
them get a deal that they wound up signing with
Critical Role and making sure that that all that they
were able to finish the game and had enough funding
to do it led to a massive success. So I
do think there is benefit to being in one of
these things and getting a lot of eyeballs on your game.
That said, one of the problems that I was kind
of hinting at early with this disparate nature of some
against us is that there are something like twenty showcases
and everybody has just kind of sprung up to be
like we have the showcase that is like about whatever,
Like every single genre has a showcase, and that risks
just kind of in the same way that having twenty
thousand games on theme every year is a problem. That
can be a problem too, because I don't know how
many eyeballs all those showcases are getting.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 9: I mean, it is good generally. I think to have
a nexus point like a weekend when a lot of
people are paying attention to games and gaming news, I
think that's good for everybody.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, the media can act as a filter function
in a lot of situations like this where we can
come in and do that in honor of that, let's
filter right now. And Carson, I'm curious to hear what
you've seen so far that you can talk about, which granted,
part of the thing about SGF is that there's many
embargoes at SGF. They love to show us things and
then say you can't talk about this for a little bit,
so within the bounds of what you can talk about
what has really struck you.
Speaker 7: Yeah, thankfully this show goes up after some of those impartment.
Speaker 3: After the time traveling here.
Speaker 7: But yeah, like I saw like Stranger than Heaven earlier today,
and I think that was that's gonna be a very
interesting game, Like people are gonna talking about did not
see to Everybody's asked me if I fought Tupac in it,
and it's like I would have lost.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 7: I think that that game has like a very interesting
combat style and that's really what they focused on during
during that demo. That's gonna be maybe devisive a bit
because it's not as simple as Yakaza. It's no, it's
I don't know if you want me to dive into
this absolutely so combat in Stranger than Heaven. You're using
the bumpers and the triggers, and you have your working
the left side of your body in the right side
of your body.
Speaker 3: Like very techn almost in that way.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And it's not always like the bumpers are your
hands and the triggers are your legs. It's sometimes the
triggers are your legs and sometimes it's a more powerful attack.
You also have weapons that change how you're how you're
utilizing those buttons, but it's always left and right. The
interesting stuff that they do is when you have other
when you have enemies coming in and like grabbing you,
Like let's say they grab your right arm, you have
to use your left arm to like knock them off
of you, or just like find openings on people and
try to swing at them in the appropriate place. It's
probably needs a little bit of tuning. Still, it's very,
very hard, and kind of the thing I was having
trouble get wrapping my head around is I've played like
three third person action games during during the show, and
all of them have different like controller configurations, and so
I'm trying to like dodge with b but be's block
or like attack with certain buttons, and like really getting
your your mind around that within like a half hour
session is it's tough.
Speaker 3: So I've been having that all week with UH. I'll
play something on an Xbox controller and I'll know where
X and Y are and I'll go demo something on
a switch Pro controller and mine nex are flipped and
it keeps happening over and over and over again, we
need to we need to standardize the button mappings across
the board. Stranger the Paradise, Yeah, it is a curious
thing because I feel like strangers a fantasy on the mind. Yeah, yeah,
Stranger of Paradise, Stranger than Heaven. Is an interesting thing
because I this does feel like a Yakuza adjacent game.
There's a lot of hinting that it is kind of
a Yakuza style, like like it is involved in the
yaka Is continuum.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: But uh yeah, there's just been so much stuff around
it from the showcases. I mean, the Tupac thing I
think is what kind of maybe tilted the cup a
little far in now water is pouring out where people
are going You really need to do that? Do you
have to do that? But but you're saying on the
game side, it does feel like it's it's coming together
the way you would expect.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, it always it always looked like like playing
it was a little bit more complex than the Yakasi had.
Actually getting my hands on it, it absolutely is. It
takes them getting used to You really need to be
very deliberate. Was everything that you're doing just like mentally
not always.
Speaker 3: The same as like you just kind of run around
and in spaccas like.
Speaker 7: Yeah, dodge and stuff like you really need to consider
some things and you're when you're going into a.
Speaker 3: Scuffle the miles what about you.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's interesting. This year is a lot more hands
off stuff than the last couple of years. So I've
seen a lot of presentations for like is it the
Lost Wild?
Speaker 3: It's basically it's not the Lost World. It's not level.
Speaker 8: Multiples, but it's basically but it's basically alien isolation with
dinosaurs and looks. But I didn't get to play it.
The same thing with Silent Hell Townfall. It was all
just like a half hour presentation where they just kind
of showed off like the first person like sneaking and
combat and you have this like CRT radio that it's
kind of like the main gay play mechanic where you
you scan it and then you look. It's like your compass,
I guess, but if we're talking hands on, I did
play it about an hour with Tony Musha Weigh the
Sword with You.
Speaker 6: Actually it was very good.
Speaker 8: So the second time I played it, I believe the
demo that's out publicly was the one we played at packs. Yes,
this last Yeah, this one is a new boss fight
is pretty challenging. It's like this creepy like face hand
guy you yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like a demon.
Speaker 7: That's uh, the whole the whole thing is this town
has a god that is granting people what they want,
but at a cost. So I there's a lady who
doesn't want to play her instrument anymore, so he takes
her fingers. Yeah it's creepy, so she doesn't have to
play her instrument.
Speaker 3: How would she want it? Yeah, you gotta be careful
about how you were these things.
Speaker 8: But the fight itself is interesting, Like it's not just
like dodge perry and deflect your attacks that, Like there's
more mechanics involved. So there's all of that. But then
he's tethered to this like you know fountain thing you
can attach or sorry, you can attack that and break
it to where he's like weaker and he doesn't hit
his hard. Yeah, it's challenging. It's not like souls like
hard where like I mean it it is, but the
checkpoints are pretty forgiving compared to.
Speaker 6: Stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and for.
Speaker 8: Someone like me who's not good at stuff like that,
it's it's it's nice to be able to play it
die and just start right right back over. It took
me five tries beat it and then like it was interesting.
We we were talking about this earlier. The voice acting
was kind of rough if you play in English, but
the duds are good.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I enjoyed it a lot.
Speaker 7: That gave us a lot of like combat options, like
you're like your Perry's and your blocks like do different things,
but they can kind of result in similar outcomes for
what you want them to. And there's this like excessive
ability option to like have the button prompt on screen,
but it's kind of sure misleading because it's not a QTE.
It's just like you should hit this button, but it
doesn't tell you the time you can turn that off.
Because I found it kind of uh yeah, pretty distracting.
It can be, ye, would you think of it, Jason?
Speaker 9: I thought it was cool, definitely hard. I died more
than five times. I won't say it's embarrassing. I don't
want to say on film that.
Speaker 3: We each get like a number above our heads it's
like how many times we.
Speaker 9: Died, because it's like I feel like, I mean, I
played all of Veldering. I beat everybody in that game.
I feel like I'm decent at these games. And then
I'm standing there and these cap Gun people were watching
me and just laughing.
Speaker 6: There's a lot of pressure when they're just staring at you.
Speaker 7: Yeah, they're laughing with you, Jason, They're laughing with me.
Speaker 9: Yeah. But I'm looking forward to that game. It's funny
that you guys are catching me the day before most
of my hands on appointments tomorrow, like doing the day
of stuff. But I'll give a shout out to two
indie games that I really enjoyed this week and so far.
One it's called Bad Magpie and it is the bird
game that was announced that Xbox from an indie game
studio called Milk Tooth. It's kind of like untitled Goose game,
but like a little bit easier, a little bit more
kind of friendly on the controls and until Goose game,
but still a fun little rockus go you'reless little pigeon
that is causing all sorts of or I guess Magpie
that is called any May that is causing all sorts
of ruckous in this little town collecting gems. And then
the other game that I really enjoyed is called slap
slap out of it. I believe it's.
Speaker 7: That's what I was talking with bretet Groom about that,
and that looks awesome.
Speaker 9: Very cool game. It's it's a puzzle game. It's got
an art style that's very reminiscent of bug Snacks, these
kind of deformed cartoon characters, and it is essentially a
series of almost like Escape Room esque puzzles, adventure game puzzles.
But there's this core mechanic where your arms extend and
slap things, and everything in the game can be slapped.
Every character in the game can be slapped, and you
can just use your arms to interact with the world
in these hilarious ways. It's extremely fun. They've designed the
physics in a way that makes it very satisfying to
just slap everything you see.
Speaker 3: Like what kind of like a slap I feel is
in two parts, because there's the initial smack, but then
there's like the reverb that comes afterwards, so they get
the good reverbs, so it has that big like yes.
Speaker 9: And think of it in terms of objects, so you're
not like leaving marks on people's faces. It's more that
like you'll see you'll see a I don't know a
trash bin, and so you can reach out in your
hand extends like twenty feet and slaps the trash.
Speaker 3: Man and then it ruffles and things come out.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and you're using and you press the triggers to
control your two arms, so you can do both arms,
and then you're using this to solve all sorts of puzzles,
and some of them are clever and fun, and I'm
very excited for the real thing that game. Believe. I
believe both of those games I just mentioned come out
next year.
Speaker 3: Those sound they sound great. The indies have been really
surprising me. I spend some time in a particular booth
earlier playing a bunch of them. And one that really
stuck out to me that I did not I mean
obviously didn't see coming at all when it was announced,
and also I didn't expect to get me as much
as it did is the among Us single player game
among Us Story, where it's a single player murder mystery
where you're kind of set up. There's a framing device
we don't need to go too far into, but basically,
in the section I played, you're playing as a guard
character who's investigating them of a crewmate suspected there is
an imposter among you, and a lot of it just
plays so deeply into the among us stuff. There's jokes
about the swipe card never working on the first go.
There's jokes about events. There's a really good bit of
writing where they say the vents are the hallways of
criminals or something like that. And I was talking to
the team behind it. One of the writers on the
crew is actually a trick Weeks from BioWare, formerly back
on Dragon Age and things like that, so there's actually
some really interesting writing talent working on this. You can
see it play out in just sort of the little
quips and jokes that feel really you're getting a good
mix of both among us references and also the character
and the internal monologue you're getting as you play this
game from the Guard is very hard boiled, detechnive detective noir,
where you're just going, like these streets reek of crime today.
I'm here on this ship to cook eggs and fight crime.
I'm all at it eggs and stuff like that, and
it's it's delightful. It is absolutely delightful in a way
that I really like because Jason, you know I I well,
well noja. But in general, I love a good puzzle
game and I love a good murder mystery.
Speaker 9: How compares to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah you. You and I have gone back and
forth about many of like like your Donkan Rampas, your
zero Escapes and things like that, and one of the
two by two I Can't.
Speaker 9: Wait, which I think is secretly Before. That's my theory.
Times Before finished that with the third game, right, so.
Speaker 3: We we can't turn this into a V three spoiler cast.
We'll be here all night. But the thing about those
games is they're they're very you know, gratuitous, They're very excessive.
Even stuff like one hundred line is very over the top,
and I love them for it. But I really like
the idea of a kind of surelock who done It?
Type game that you can play with, you know, that
families could play together, that kids could enjoy that you're
not going to be worried about putting on the switch
and saying, you know, like, oh little Timmy is playing
Dangan Rampa. No, Timmy don't play Dagon Rampau. So it
was it was just delightful. I was. I was really
taken aback that, you know, this hasn't been done before.
Because it does feel like an immediately perfect fit for
this story and for this style of gameplay, and these
these jokes work so so well.
Speaker 9: When is that coming out?
Speaker 3: They they just told us it's in development. Is one
of the ones where it kind of has a vibe
of when it's ready. It's ready, but what I played
felt very ready so far, And also I poked around
a few others there. One that also surprised me was
Armatus Armatuse, from the developers of Godfall. If you remember
that that game from years back. They're they're making a
third person roguelike shooter and it. Yeah, Godfall had some
sauce at some cookery and they have relocated the sauce
with this game. It's got some really great combat, lots
of dashing and shooting and getting cool upgrades for your guns,
and it's very punchy, it's very animated, it's very you
kind of get into the mix. I still haven't played Returnal.
I've not played Sorrows or Returnal, sure, but when I
was playing that game, my first thought was, this is
kind of what I thought it would feel like to
play Returnal, like in a positive way, like this is
it's got that sort of one one more go, one
more run. Get these cool upgrades, attach them to your gun,
find new ways to blast through enemies. I had this
awesome scythe that I would, you know, you build up
your special meter, your special abilities by shooting and hitting things,
and once they fill up, then you have it to use.
And they were telling me they really want to throw
enemies at the player to encourage them to not just
sit on abilities, but you want to use them constantly,
don't hoard your resources. And so I had this site
that I was flinging out and it would ricochet back
and forth and boomerang and petrify everything in its path,
and then when I shot things, they would explode into
stone that would ricochet around and hit other enemies to
do damage. It just felt very satisfying. It felt very
like really good to play. I was playing on a
pro controller on a switch to that was hooked up
to a TV, and it was running spectacularly. I think
that one is honestly one of my biggest surprises, because
I think, on paper, third person shooter, rogue Light, you've
seen it before, but this one, I think really took
me by surprise and nailed the concepts to kind of
wrap things up. You know, we talked about SGF as
an entity earlier, but for y'all's SGF this year. Are
you are you feeling good about what you've seen? Are
you feel good about where the industry is heading? Just
based off of the games you've been playing and the
discussions you've been having here as we've been hanging out
at places, talking to developers, talking to publishers, talking to media,
Are you feeling positive right now? Are you feeling okay?
You know's how's the sentiment?
Speaker 8: I think like the quality of games is continue to
get better, and like as as as an art form,
I think it's just always going to continue to get better,
you know, when people make them not robots, But that's
that's kind of.
Speaker 6: Not even half of what our industry is.
Speaker 8: I feel good about where we're going artistically and like
how mechanics continue to evolve, But it's everything else around
it that's kind of It's been a hard couple of years.
Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, yeah, it's definitely been difficult. Carson. You
look like you're deep in thought. I am, because because like, yes,
there are.
Speaker 7: There are ways where the industry is like I think
getting better at tackling the technical limitations that we're about
to be facing with with like hardware prices. Yes, yeah,
just making games like run better and and and do
some pretty creative things there. But a lot of the
stuff that's at the show too feels like a lot
of the stuff that's been at the show for a
couple of years.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Like, I.
Speaker 7: Don't know, it doesn't feel all that all that fresh
to me right now. There's like little glimmers of hope
here and there.
Speaker 6: But I mean there's a lot of third person action games.
Speaker 2: There, the whole lot.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, but those do sell those Yes, that's true.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and that's not that's not to say that I'm
not liking the things that I'm that I'm playing and
seeing there, but like there's nothing that's like.
Speaker 3: Really blowing my mind.
Speaker 2: Nothing.
Speaker 7: I don't feel like we're moving forward significantly.
Speaker 3: So yeah, Jason, what about you.
Speaker 9: I was thinking about how in twenty nineteen I was
at E three and it felt like it was dying
and it was like half empty Sundays. It was really
really weird to real and it felt like E three
was on its way out, even before a global pandemic
came and put a put a wrench in everything and
accelerated its demise. And similarly, it feels like the video
game industry was dying before a mass of memory chip
crisis came along and put a wrench in everything. So
I mean, I am very pessimistic. I would like to
not be, but it's hard to be optimistic about the
state of the industry. And I think that, like as
two miles this point, the quality of video games has
never been better. There's never been more of a variety
of great games. We're still seeing new genres get invented
and pushed and like the boundaries are going to push
in all sorts of cool ways. But at the same time,
the industry as we know it is going through like
irreversible changes and I don't really know what the next
few years looks like there, but it's gonna be shocking
for a lot of people, I think, unfortunately.
Speaker 3: Well, the one good thing that we have here is
a lot of great coverage from the folks here in
this room. Happy to have you on real quick before
we bounce out again, I might have you all plug
your stuff real quick. Jason, where can the folks find you?
And the wonderful things you do? On the internet.
Speaker 9: You can find me on the Trip Click Podcasts, which
is a podcast about video games.
Speaker 3: Excellent, excellent, Miles what about You.
Speaker 8: You can find me on Blue Sky at Miles of Benza,
and find a lot of my games work at a
Temple of Geek. Also freelance that like most of these websites.
Heck yeah, and John Carson.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean Blue Sky, you find me in John Carson,
I'm for SGF. You can find my work at bay though,
at MMO RPG dot com. And then I'm gonna be
shopping around a few other things that will hopefully land somewhere.
Speaker 3: Heck yeah, yeah, the life of freelancer. Yeah right, yeah,
the dream Yeah, well, you can keep it here for
Game Informer. We'll have more segments coming up after this.
Don't go far Summer Gamefest twenty twenty six powered by
Road We'll be right back.
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Speaker 3: Welcome back to the Game and Former show here at
Summer Gamefest twenty twenty six powered by Road. Thank you
so much Road for getting us these awesome mike boom
arms and other equipment that we are using to bring
all this down. We've got a great studio set up here.
We're talking about the games that we played this week
and some are game Fest itself, and we've brought a
great panel in to continue that conversation. Let's start with
my left here. Jess introduce yourself for the folks at home.
Speaker 11: Hey, I am Jessica coxsle and I am an editor
over at GameSpot, and we.
Speaker 3: Got im raw and who are our game and former
fans are probably familiar with For those who don't know,
you know, I.
Speaker 10: I think I've been giving for more like every year
since being laid off from gaming for her, so like
it's like I never.
Speaker 3: Left games games media, always passing that same five dollars.
Speaker 10: Or But yeah, I'm im ron Con. I am a
staff writer for We Start Not Run.
Speaker 3: And we got Jesse over on the end. Introduced yourself.
Speaker 4: Please going on, I'm Jesse Vittelli, everybody. I also work
at Restart dot Run. I think my official titles associate editor.
Speaker 9: I don't actually know what.
Speaker 10: My dad, I have two different titles in the back end.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm social editor and then staff writer and also
associate editor. I don't know which one I am.
Speaker 11: I have to say something so important. I've known you
for so long.
Speaker 12: It's Vitelli.
Speaker 4: Okay, let's let's let's clear this up right now. My
mom says Vitelli, my dad says Vitelli, and nobody knows.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I say, Jesse Vittelli.
Speaker 10: You can say whatever you want to cause my wife
like a crisis of consciousness when like you told remember that, Yeah,
she was like she got mad at you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, she really thought I was like gaslighting here forever.
Speaker 10: And the truth is, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I say, Jesse Viddley. Here we are, we're talking about
Summer game Fest. Jesse will start with you. What's the
vibe of Summer game Fest this year for you? How
are you feeling about it?
Speaker 4: I feel tired, which I think a lot of people
have probably said it's a good time. I always call
it video game block party. I think that's like the
most apt description I can come up with. It does
feel a little more block party this year, with like
the giant statue heads and the pool.
Speaker 3: To be clear, there's no water.
Speaker 1: In the pool.
Speaker 4: It's just like a stat It's just an empty pool,
empty pool with like a fake diving board. The games
are cool, that people are great as always, That's why
I love coming here. But otherwise it's like a little
it feels weird. I know how to describe it.
Speaker 10: I do feel like there are more influencers and other
people giving photo ops in places now. Yes, Like when
I was at a demo today and like at the
registration booth, somebody was like taking photos posing. I'm like
at the registration booth, yeah, like the check in.
Speaker 11: Both I was like, oh, that's funny, cool.
Speaker 3: I get like that.
Speaker 10: Because there were tweeting I'm in line for like this
demo show, you.
Speaker 9: Know, I do.
Speaker 11: So I think that there are definitely more influencers this year.
I have to say that part of me finds this
stuff really cute because I'm always like what if this
is like like this is probably their.
Speaker 12: First time doing it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 11: Like to them, they're like, holy shit, I made it
like I'm doing the thing because like we've all had
moments where we walk in a room and we have
that feeling, and so I don't know, it's cool to
kind of see stuff like that play out now.
Speaker 10: I'm happy for them, as long as it does not
get in the way of me doing much.
Speaker 3: I've been really excited to see. I feel like I've
seen a few influencers around who are definitely more on
the specialized side, and that has been really exciting to
see of people who kind of do specialized youtoo content,
who play certain game genres and stuff like that. I
believe we're having one on as a guest in our
next segment, so that'll be a fun discussion topic. But like,
I think that's a really cool thing to see because
that's something that as games media, I feel like we
always have a very generalist approach. We kind of have
to show up here, and there's certainly a level of
take appointments that feel right for you that you want
to do, but there are always some that are like,
this is a big game, this is a notable game.
We need to go play it, somebody has to go
play it. And I've really enjoyed seeing some of the
more specialized YouTubers and how they approach some of the
stuff because they go in with a beat and a
drive and they know what they're talking about, and they
go to appointments and you can immediately tell who is
showing up and like knows ball about what they're talking about.
Speaker 9: Thousand.
Speaker 11: I'm so glad that you said, because it's actually so true.
I remember one of the first years, like maybe the
second year I went to it, Like I saw someone
who is an influencer named cozy Ka and she does
a lot of like cozy game coverage. She's all over
Instagram and she's amazing, Like she just seems like such
a sweetheart. And I saw her and I was like,
that is so cool, Like that is so cool that
they are reaching out to the right people who know
how to serve like these very like I don't want
to say niche because cozy games aren't really niche, but
like it's a specific category of games, and I'm really
happy that that representation exists.
Speaker 10: It'd be funny if cozy Gabe havoted to like Doom.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean that was.
Speaker 4: I remember when h is at the Saw game right now.
Speaker 11: When Silent Hill came out because like f because it
had uh I guess like it had it had sexy
fox guy.
Speaker 12: And it also.
Speaker 11: Was just like more more focused on like feminism. I
saw a lot more like cozy gamers and like like
female streamers and stuff like that who don't typically play
horror start playing that game.
Speaker 3: I was like, fuck, we can bleep it.
Speaker 12: And I was like, yeah.
Speaker 10: Antony used to get very mad at me because I would,
like you, like, I knew we're not supposed to curse,
but it was gonna happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, We're we're technically supposed to keep it within bounds,
so but you know you can't control it.
Speaker 2: You guys get one.
Speaker 10: Have you guys talked about the Saw robot?
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah we have not. So the last segment we
had on with the wonderful John Carson, Males of Benza
and Jason Tryer all fantastic, we kind of talked more
broadly about where Summer Game fit Fest fits within the
industry and how, you know, does it reflect the industry
back at itself? And those are all great, like heady
philosophic topics, but we only talked about the fact that
there was a tiny jigsaw riding around on a bike. Yeah,
like about gag Yeah yeah yeah, riding around on a
bike with no explanation. And my first inclination that I
legitimately did have to hold myself back from was field
goal kicking. That thing is through the goalposts of heaven.
I strongly disliked that puppet. Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 10: I don't like it. It's creepy looking. We did feed
it a cookie.
Speaker 2: At one point.
Speaker 3: We feded a cookie.
Speaker 10: Yes, we have it on video.
Speaker 2: We fedded a cookie.
Speaker 3: Where where does the cookie go? It the mouth opens, So, okay,
this is maybe not the thing I'm asking that. How
does it process the cookie?
Speaker 10: It could really just drop it out.
Speaker 4: To be fair, the humans couldn't process the cookie either,
because the cookie was like not, there's something wrong with it.
It was like spongy and like it could bend in
a way that cookies shouldn't be able to roll about.
Put the cookie in the mouth and like closed, and
the kokie did not break. That should tell you what
the texture, okay, and then it ran over the cookie
with the tricycle and it also didn't break.
Speaker 11: You know what those reminds me of you know, those
like hydraulic press video. Yes, yes, okay, so there is
a person.
Speaker 12: Now what's funny.
Speaker 11: I've only seen a couple of them, but they're starting
to pop up on Instagram and it's like a pair
of like fake teeth and like a hydraulic thing, and
it's like biting into things that you wish you could
bite into. Like the first one was like a hornet's nest,
and then somebody did like a candle, and then chaps
and so like I've seen all of these videos and
I'm like, that sounds It's like shit just goes everywhere.
It looks deeply unpleasant. But that's that's kind of.
Speaker 10: What this agree with Chapstick and like, what was the
other thing?
Speaker 5: A candle?
Speaker 2: A candle?
Speaker 3: It wasn't good.
Speaker 9: It wasn't good.
Speaker 3: It's terrible. I understand the drive. Yeah, okay, Jesse knows this.
Aboucon we talked about it, We talked about the showcase. Yeah.
I have a weird thing where sometimes I see something
in a video game and I'm like I just kind
of want to eat it, like just about wild. No, wait,
what's in Breath of the Water. You can't like you can't.
Speaker 10: Use those its ingredients like not hornets and specifically like
a lobster claws and like there's like a wasp nest looking.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I know this is this is about me
playing Final Fantasy fourteen and wanting to see what the
like ether rightes taste like because they look like giant
pieces of rock candy. And then we saw Gotta War
Laufe at this at the state of play, and I
want to eat I want to eat the cube, like
not eat the cube, not wholly eat.
Speaker 10: The cube, but like the corner yeah yeah, yeah, and like.
Speaker 3: Not pull a corner like I do. Kind of want
to bite it, like I want to leave like a
cartoon bite in the corner. There's something about it.
Speaker 10: If if Jeff Keeley put a chocolate statue of something
in Semer Games Fest, how long do you think it
would go before somebody bit it?
Speaker 3: I would bite it on site.
Speaker 1: Wine one.
Speaker 3: I used to literally do not think I have the
self control to.
Speaker 11: Not do Okay, this this is a really good question, though,
What does everybody think the cube from Laufe taste?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 4: We actually discussed this check we asked question.
Speaker 3: This is a good question, I say, I said, cucumber
lime gatorade. Oh that was my immediate takeaway.
Speaker 10: It's kind of like these bubble like they're stars or something, right,
but like it has a fizzy look to it, So
I feel like it would taste like sprite.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, like it would have kind of a Seltzery
type taste to it, like there'd be some carbonation inside.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I feel like it's like an ocean, like a sea
salt or like some sort of it's the word I'm
looking for. I don't know. I went blue raspberry originally,
but then I kind of moved into the sort of
ocean vibe, of some sort of sea salt coconut type vibe.
Speaker 11: I I picture like if you had that what's the
light blue gatorade like our Glacier freez Glacier if you.
Speaker 12: Had like jello of that, That's what I'm feeling. That's
the vibe.
Speaker 4: I guess wait, can you Sorry this is a little
off topic, but to point to piggyback off of Glacier Freeze,
could you not just freeze gatorade like Glacier Freeze Gatorade.
Speaker 3: And ice cube freeze Gatorade And then just like what
I should freezepops. You can make popsicles for sure.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, I want to make ice cubes so like put
them in my other drinks.
Speaker 3: Oh. Absolutely, there's nothing sotobbing you from freezing things up.
Speaker 10: For Jeff, this is like bad for everybody.
Speaker 3: Actually, you actually definitely got a ninja creamy if I remember.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been using that.
Speaker 3: What has the tech been for the creamy tech?
Speaker 4: The text for the creamy is almond milk, bunk fruit
sweetener xanthum gum, which I've been playing around with. That that
stuffs dangerous, be very careful, makes everything very sticky, a
crushed oreo, and then you jam it in the ninja
creamy and it like spins it all up. You have
to freeze it for like twenty four hours and then
it makes you ice cream that's like one hundred calories.
Speaker 6: It's crazy.
Speaker 4: But I keep messing it up and it becomes it
comes out like uh, shaved ice.
Speaker 6: So I gotta figure out what I'm doing wrong.
Speaker 11: I do you want me to tell you what I
suspect what almond milk? Almond milk is like, have you
tried a different type of milk?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 11: It separates a lot and it just kind of freeze.
Doesn't get like that, like that chippy frost bitten type.
Speaker 12: That can be almond milk. That would be my suggestion.
Speaker 4: Maybe.
Speaker 12: I oh, I was gonna.
Speaker 9: Say oat milk.
Speaker 3: I mean I could go to Whole Milk.
Speaker 2: I just I'm milk I've had was in the in
the fringe.
Speaker 6: It's gonna go bad.
Speaker 3: You know what else doesn't go bad is video games
at summer games.
Speaker 10: Many of them do anina.
Speaker 9: I know this was an ice cream fun I took
the reins and have a transition.
Speaker 10: There's a but does the like ice cream? There is
his name, but does the soft serve? And I was like,
that's a pretty goods good.
Speaker 3: I feel like I never eat at Summer Game Fest.
There is food at Summer Game Fest for those who
have wondered, uh, there are food trucks even, but I
feel like I never go over there because I never
have time to. It's it's so far away at the
end of campus. And they did have I had Barbie
lemonade today and that was pretty good, But otherwise I
just haven't been over there at all.
Speaker 11: The best thing that they ever had was one year
they had like you know those Yankee Sonic that the
ones like the green like like they had those and
that was wonderful.
Speaker 3: I never had one before that bone, Yeah, it was.
It was pretty magical. Yea, what is a Barbie lemonade?
It's it's just lemonade?
Speaker 2: Is it lemonade?
Speaker 3: No, this was This was just lemonade, straight lemonade. They
just it might have been like it was supposed to
be bank. I feel like it might have been like
supposed to be bank, but I think they were just
they just gave me a glass of lemonade and then
told me that there's a new Barbie game coming up.
Speaker 10: But walked by the like twenty year old girls that
are like staffing that booth. We're like, great shirt. I'm like,
this reference is so much older.
Speaker 11: It's so funny though, that because some of the stuff
that is there is literally just like normal thing with
branding attached to it. There's a whole coffee shop, and
the coffee shop is actually really good. The on site
coffee shop, it's so good every year like they nail it.
But this year it was sponsored by Warframe and Soul
Frame and so all of the names of every it
was just like the likest Momo sci Fi and so
I would go up there and I'm like, I just
want a chi with Oatmelk and like I got you.
Speaker 12: I understand, I got you.
Speaker 3: Every morning I've walked in there and just been like,
I like a dirty chie, please, we got you?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I've been on the chie like that.
Speaker 12: Let's fay it. I literally got a dirty hie today.
Speaker 3: It's so good, it's excellent.
Speaker 10: I'm glad I dragged us back to food.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, you know what else is good?
Speaker 2: Whatever?
Speaker 3: Jesse Vittelli has been playing lately? What have you been
enjoying at SGF? Oh?
Speaker 4: I feel like I have played nothing, which is untrue.
I've played a lot. The thing I've been thinking about
the most though, is Clutch, the racing game from Maverick Games,
the one that ends with you shooting like a harpoon
through a helicopter. That game's cool. I saw like an
hour presentation of it in the hottest room in the
entire world. But it was the game was cool enough
to keep me cool, you know what I'm saying. And
so what's really neat about it is it's exports Horizon
devs who are making a game and they're like, what
if we made Forts the Horizon better. And I mean
that like sincerely, because I just reviewed Forts Horizon six
whatever a couple of months ago, right or a month
ago when however, time doesn't matter. And my problem is
I think we've butt like up against how much you
can interact with an open world through a car, like
you we do the Barn Finds, you jump off a cliff,
you drive a car, right, this game is like what
if you did that but you had an oil slick
you could like sprat behind you, or a grappling hook,
so a jet booster, Batman.
Speaker 10: What if you were like, what if you had the
James Bond car and you could do cool?
Speaker 1: What was that?
Speaker 2: Game?
Speaker 3: Is like Spy Hunt or something? Yeah? Yeah, is it
kind of like that? I mean nobody else has played
Spy Hunter for the game cube.
Speaker 10: Spying Over for the game a reboot of the original Spy.
Speaker 4: Inter Clutch is really interesting because it has all this
like weird tech that makes the cars like really fun
to play, but it also drives like Forts the Horizon,
and it has he's even got like the drive line
and all this stuff. But it's a narrative driven game,
so there's like there are characters in this world that
you know, tragedy befalls them when one of their racing
comebah whatever whenever their racers dies, gets explosion in a
race or whatever.
Speaker 3: And then they're like, we gotta get revenge.
Speaker 6: We got to find out what happened to them.
Speaker 4: And then now you're just like driving and you're like
walking into people's houses. You get to get out of
the car in certain areas and like explore this person's
like apartment, and then you steal their car and drive
it off a cliff and then shoot at harpoon through
a helicopter.
Speaker 11: This game is crazy, Like, okay, outside of Diddy Kong racing,
I really don't care about racing game.
Speaker 2: Oh this is cool.
Speaker 12: I hear that, and I'm like, you know what I'm in.
Speaker 3: I do want to steal a car.
Speaker 4: It's really interesting because they have this two split where
it's like at night you do street races and you
do it for your like Instagram followers, and you have
this chat that's like asking you to do things, and
you're doing things while you're racing for like donations and stuff,
and then during the day it's you're doing like more
normal sort of like professional races and it all takes
place in Monaco, and so you're you're just driving around,
you know whatever, the south of France chilling.
Speaker 3: I mean this genuinely. Are there actual live streams out
there that are like that of people doing illegal street
races on things?
Speaker 12: I bet you there are, though.
Speaker 1: There are probably.
Speaker 3: I know what's doing tonight.
Speaker 11: Because like I feel like the racing community, not that
I'm at all adjacent to it, but like I just like,
like guys I know who are really into like cars
and racing, they're really into it.
Speaker 12: Like I guarantee you they're watching some sort of stream.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's got to exist, all right, Well, we'll look
up those streams later. Imron, what have you been enjoying? Uh?
Speaker 10: Earlier today? I'm talking about Ellice that I played today,
Both of them are. I just finished Stranger than Heaven
that demo.
Speaker 3: You finished Stranger finished that game?
Speaker 10: It was a real long demo that I played today,
A real short game. Yeah, that's rgg's new game. Where
they are I would say, stepping on some rakes here
and there, but like the not in the last chaniel
or the like the big trailer they came out of
a couple of months ago with at the like Xbox
presents whatever that I think. I looked at that, I said, Okay,
they are going for a generational leap in their yakaza ideas,
and they are. That ambition is certainly there. Whether it
succeeds for you, I think is going to really depend
on the type of person you are. I was talking
to a mutual friend of ours who did not like it.
They were a big yak as a fan, but they
were not feeling this. I feel differently. I think it
actually works pretty well. It is their attempt at turning
yakaza into a kind of a soul's like. In terms
of combat, this demo is purely combat. For the record,
I did not get to walk around or do stories
over now on that. So like it is a if
you are surrounded by four people, you will probably get
kit like the crap beating out of you. But you
have your right arm and your left arm and they
are on the shoulder, buttons of triggers, and so if
like a guy grabs your right arm, what do you do.
You start trying to punch him with your left arm,
or you're trying to punch the guy next to him
with your left arm, or if you are trying to
like alternate your fists up to get better combos, or
one as a weapon, so like you should make sure
that the weben arm is the one that you're blocking with.
Speaker 3: We had Carson on here earlier talking about it, and
it reminded me I mentioned tech in at the time,
that that's kind of the same philosophy tech And takes
with its buttons. Also, I just remember now Absolver, if
you're yes, had a very similar idea. But that is,
you know, Yakuza a game that is a little bit
more known for your standard like third person action brawler
set up, and even at that a little bit more
spectacle than challenge, and this one, is it leaning more
towards that challenge side and like trying to push you
a little bit more.
Speaker 10: I think it's definitely trying to. Like, So the way
that demo was set up is they put you at
a beginner phase, then you beat that, and you go
to like a more intermediate one and you beat that.
They go essentially what is a demo version of a
super boss? And they like, I don't know how many
people in that demo station beat that, but I didn't
know I had a crowd around me. That went from
enthusiasm that I kept losing to pity and that does
never feels good. But I did eventually beat that thing,
And yeah, I can see if they go more that direction,
that that is the like they are trying to hit
a challenge thing they are trying to be at zo.
You will get better at this game and you will
like understand the boss's timing and you will understand what
moves are doing. So this buzz in particular, had a
thing where if they kneel down and they will either
like attack you if you are trying to attack them,
drink sake and cover their health, or they will run
at you and like kill you in one hit. The
killing made one hit thing happened to me several times.
But like it. As I was playing, I just learned
more and more of him doing that one time he
needed to be in a condent or in a combo.
And like even the reps around like wow, I've never
seen that before, Like great, fantastic, awesome.
Speaker 11: Favorite things when you're previewing something like wow, I've never
seen that before.
Speaker 12: Awesome, that's great.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it's just good I've never seen before. Sometimes it's
a bad. I've never seen that before. It's a uh oh, But.
Speaker 10: Honestly, it's really interesting if, like the if the story
can keep up with what they're trying to do with
the combat, I think that's going to be an interesting game.
Obviously there are other aspects of that game that are disagreeable,
but well, we'll see what happens when that game actually
comes out.
Speaker 3: I sum we'll see whether we will hit him up,
hit them up or not. Yeah, Jess, how about you?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 11: So I guess you know. One that I would want
to talk about today. The one that I saw this
morning that stood out to me is Silent Hill Town Fall.
Speaker 12: Did anybody else see it?
Speaker 3: I really wanted to.
Speaker 12: It's so okay.
Speaker 11: This was it was all hands off and it was
only about fifteen minutes or so of actual like gameplay.
It's first person, which is a first for the series.
So if you're looking for like something to like scratch
the pt itch that we were hoping would one day
be scratched, this is probably it. And because it's in
first person, I feel like it's very eerily grounded, like
when you're walking through some of the houses like it.
It feels very very very real and.
Speaker 12: I don't know's it's.
Speaker 11: I'm excited for it, Like I think that based off
of what I've seen, it looks like it might be
the scariest one, which makes me a little nervous because
I'm kind of a baby sometimes. But it's the atmosphere
and what's going on with it is interesting enough to
where I'm like, I gotta I gotta be brave.
Speaker 3: What sets it apart as like a Silent Hill game,
because I feel like Silent Hill you had kind of
the continuity for a long time of the mainline games.
Now there's been a lot of branching off with Silent
Hill F and now Soilent Hill Town Fall. What is
the sort of like not gimmick but like thing that
this one does that makes it its own Silent Hill game.
Speaker 11: So I think it's hard to tell right now because
I think what they are going for with like the
defining thing that makes Silent Hill a Silent Hill game
is just this element of being trapped in a prison
of your own making, like that is kind of like
the true Silent ill It is whether it's guilt, whether
it's like in Silent Hill F, like her whole thing
is being a woman who is trapped between wanting independence
and wanting to adhere to societal norms and like kind
of essentially like losing her mind because of it. And
so a lot of it is whether it's something like
James and Silent Hill too, where like he was.
Speaker 12: A person who did something pretty fuck.
Speaker 11: I can't say this where you know, like James, where
it's like he was the person who who did something
that was.
Speaker 3: Not good next to you and I'm a mom. I'm
a mom.
Speaker 12: I'm not supposed to be, but I like.
Speaker 10: I haven't I heard a kid cursed before, and it
is very funny.
Speaker 11: Ye that sounds right, especially God, I need to work
on maybe a genius swear jar. But no, it's like,
so you have you know, like James, who it's of
his own volition, and then you have Hinko who's kind
of forced by society. And in this one we don't
know what it is yet. The main character's name is Simon.
He's very meek and something that I like that they're doing.
Is a lot of times, and especially in horror games,
it can be really weird when you have a protagonist who,
like you're trying to be stealthy. You don't want to
be heard by something that's going to instantly kill you,
and then like they do something, you're like, oh that
was rough, you know, and it's like, well, like what
you why are you talking to yourself? So instead of
talking to himself because he is a quiet, reserved kind
of guy, there's just like little texts that pops up
on the side like every so often. It's like an
internal monologue. You know, it'll be like, oh, like you know,
I don't know what like what this does, and it
kind of serves as a way to where you're not
just getting like an annoying, like new objective pop up,
but you're also not getting like the chatty protagonist and
a like that doesn't make sense.
Speaker 12: So I feel like they are.
Speaker 11: I don't know, they're they're sticking to what's making all
of the recent Silent Hill games like really good, because
I mean too remake phenomenal, f phenomenal. They are on
kind of a role right now, and I think this
one looks really different from both of those, which they
were distinct from one another too, but they're still doing
something that like works with what they're doing with the
series and seems interesting.
Speaker 3: Interesting. Yeah, I Silent Hill really seems like it has
found a second win. I mean, Konami in general seems
to have suddenly found a second wind of we're going
to get some of these series back to where they
used to be. We're going to stop letting them you know,
my round and nothing. And it's been kind of interesting.
Speaker 10: Yeah, Castloveedia was like the most exciting thing I saw today. Yeah, yeah,
I don't want to play that game. But also it's like,
if you told me five years ago Stalin Hill is
going to become Yearly and they're all going to be good,
you'll be like you're insane.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, Well it's.
Speaker 11: So this is kind of like a funny, cool story
because it was one of the first times where I
went to an event and I was I was like
having a conversation with developers that felt like really cool,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 12: Like it's not nothing like that.
Speaker 11: It's like that they're all great conversations, but I was like,
I feel like I I'm like in it right now,
and it's I went to Konami. I've been to the there,
like gone to Japan and seen the last couple of years.
So I saw them for Silent Hell too. I saw
them for Silent Hell f and we've gotten to know
each other a little bit more. But I remember the
first time that I was out there, they were like,
so we look at Capcom and they even brought up Capcom.
They're like, we look at Capcom and we look at
Resident Evil, and like, you guys are really loving this
in America, like.
Speaker 12: You're loving what they're doing.
Speaker 11: It seems like they're doing everything right, like they're and
I like, I think I even said, like they're going
through like a bit of like a like a renaissance
right now, and they're like, that's what we want to capture.
Speaker 12: Like they even said that. They're like that is like
like we have And I even.
Speaker 11: Told them Tom, like, you guys have so many good
like franchises, like you you truly do in like the
least like cynical corporate way, but like you have so
many series that people deeply care about, and so I
think that all you really have to do is invest
in those rather than Pachinko idiots, and like you've you've
probably got some winners, right, And I think that like
that's been their strategy, and they really are investing, particularly
in Silent Hill, and they've been really.
Speaker 3: Good yeah, Yeah, Salinel has been really on an uptick
over the last few years. It's been cool to see.
Closing thoughts, we'll start back with you, like, where do
you think SGF is at, Like, do you think we're
at a good place with how SGF kind of fits
within the industry. Do you think it's kind of serving
the need that needs to serve?
Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean I think that it.
Speaker 11: It's hard because like I can really kind of only
speak for myself because I think that as of right now,
it's still it's a really great press event, you know
what I mean. It is not like your fan fest.
It is not an eth like the public E three.
Speaker 9: It is not.
Speaker 11: Something that like is this public like hype event that
feels like a real, big like celebration of video games.
It feels like a press event. And for someone who
is working in the press, it's really great for me
because I feel like, I it's small enough to where
I can get what I need to get done.
Speaker 12: I wish that they had more areas to actually write.
Speaker 11: That would be really I wish they had more like
chairs outpower in.
Speaker 10: The media were which they had last year, but didn't
this even.
Speaker 11: At the end this year, they took away all the
chairs and the areas with the tables to write.
Speaker 3: Jeffrey Keely, if you are, if you're watching this, if
you're listening to this, Uh, it is kind of wild.
How Yeah. The media room has like no outlets in it,
and it's.
Speaker 10: Also incredibly hot.
Speaker 4: There's like no air conditioning in the back of it.
Speaker 3: And the cafe for some reason has a bunch of
tables and no chairs.
Speaker 12: And I'm glad that you.
Speaker 11: Brought up like the hot thing too, because so they
added this year, there was an expansion. It used to
end there's like this this it's so inside baseball, but
there's like a coffee shop, and then it kind of
like ended right there. But now they've extended it because
it's growing in size, like each year it's consistently getting larger,
and they added like additional rooms and they have like
this trailer. And I was talking to some of the
developers that somebody like walked up to me and they're like,
I hate it. I hate it so much. It's so
hot in there. I'm dripping with sweat. It doesn't even
feel safe. And like also they had one of the
PC's crash and like somebody who was playing, could no
longer play because they had to restart everything because they overheated.
Speaker 12: Everything was too hot in the room.
Speaker 11: And he's like, yeah, like we're definitely gonna have to
leave feedback or something because like we can't, we can't
do it if it were any hotter this year, like
we straight up would have to be like no, like
we have to shut down.
Speaker 3: Can I give my cynical take real quick?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that the media lounge lash.
Speaker 3: This is like real inside Baseball.
Speaker 2: Sorry.
Speaker 4: I think the media lounge last year was really good
and everybody stayed in it, and all the pictures and
videos from the event looked like no one was at it.
When you're in that main strip, it looks like just
an alleyway with nobody there because everybody's inside, sitting.
Speaker 9: Down doing anything.
Speaker 10: I think they did not want this this year.
Speaker 4: I think they wanted everybody out and about and taking
photos so that when the drone flies over, it gets
the drone shot. All the people are actually outside and
not sitting tucked away in some media lounge writing. And
I think it's at odds with one another because there's
a creator event and there's a press event, and creators
are obviously out and about doing their thing, which is
great and super cool. I love doing that, and press
are trying to do their job, and there needs to
be a happy medium where they can sit down and
write for an hour or two when they need to,
and then they can.
Speaker 7: Go out and look around and do whatever.
Speaker 4: I think they maybe have swung the fence or swung
the needle the other way.
Speaker 3: Shit.
Speaker 10: But also it's a weird thing because like this SGF
more than like I think any in my memory, everything's
a bargain. Yeah, I can't write anything because like there's
nothing to write this week.
Speaker 4: Even so all the appointments are double the length that
they were last year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I at at least one appointment will not be named.
But it was just like, you can't publish anything from this,
and I was like, like in perpetuity, and I was
like I cancel it because I was like, I why
would I do that. I'm here to share information about
video games and it's been interesting. I feel like people
are continuing to figure out what they get from Summer
Game Fest. Because Tryer was on here on the last
segment saying a lot of devs can still show up
at something like the Game Awards or Summer Game Fest
and have a life changing moment, have a completely like
career shifting moment of launching their game or their project
into a place where they can get their funding, they
can get a publisher, they get in front of the
public size, and all those things still exist. But Summer
Game Fest itself, the apparatus still feels a little strange
to me, like it's kind of in between two worlds.
Speaker 10: I kind of wonder if, like this year is an aberration,
like Agta six size aberration of people just being like,
we know that at a certain point in the year
there will just be nothing else that anyone is talking about,
so we have to just like really play this in
a certain way. But also, like, I don't know, man,
I asked two questions about Code Veronica today, and I
would love to be able to like just write an
article about those questions, but I can't because we're all
waiting till Wednesday to do it. But at the Wednesday
that was before this airs, I guess.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so Wednesday two days pass, read those articles, Yeah,
got these articles speaking of let's run down the coush
one more time, Jesse, where can the folks find you?
And the wonderful things you do on the Internet.
Speaker 4: You can find me at restart dot Run.
Speaker 2: Check out.
Speaker 4: Our social channels are Instagram, our tiktoks, our Blue Skies.
If you're still on Twitter, you can go there, Facebook
YouTube that might be it. I don't know for anywhere else. Oh,
we're on Pinterest. You can check out our pinches. I
don't know what goes on over there, but we have yeah,
you know what, low key Pinterest kind of sick.
Speaker 10: We have a Spotify now do we have Spotify?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, that's the other thing we've been doing.
Speaker 4: We've been asking a lot of our devs what song
is like, what's been their song of their development cycle.
Speaker 3: We got a couple good answers out of that. That's
making an SGF playlist. That's wonderful, Amron, same for.
Speaker 10: You almost everything he just said. But also if you
want to find me on social media, it's imoroncon dot
best guy on social.
Speaker 3: M hm and just go.
Speaker 11: But you you can find everything that I write, videos, everything, game,
spot everywhere, and then as far as my personal you
can find me at Jessic Coggs, j E.
Speaker 12: S S, I c O G S.
Speaker 3: And for us here at Game and four. We'll be
coming back in just a moment with our last segment
of the episode, not of the night. We're recording these
across two different nights, but don't go far. The GI
Show powered Road here at Summer Game Fest twenty twenty six.
Stay tuned.
Speaker 1: Welcome back everyone to the Game Informer Show. I'm Alex
van Aken. Thanks for tuning in. We are in our
downtown LA studio powered by Road Microphones. Thank you Road
for supplying all of our awesome audio gear this week.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Check out their colorways. They've got a bunch show. They've
got greens and blues. It's great, Road dot Com. All right, well,
we have our last segment of the podcast today. It's
been an excellent, an excellent show. It's been exciting to
have so many awesome guests, and we are running out
the show with another excellent panel of guests. Hi yah, Yeah,
I will start on the end. Former Game Informer now
Indianformer dot Com Chill Groat. Hello, Hello everybody.
Speaker 5: I love that we got the blue arms just to
match our outfits.
Speaker 13: Yes, yes, except mine because I didn't get them lujeans.
Speaker 1: Blue jeans, come on, yeah, Gianna Garcia, Hello, min Max Hi.
Speaker 14: Excited to be here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, excited to have you. And lastly, YouTube creator.
Speaker 12: Yes, lit's the last what's the last?
Speaker 1: Hello? How are you?
Speaker 12: YouTuber?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Good?
Speaker 2: Good?
Speaker 1: Uh so yeah, last day of SGF was today. It
was a pretty light day for me. It was kind
of awesome.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I played a lot this weekend. I think Slap
Out of It was probably one of my highlights. I
was the first, the first game I played at the show,
and I think probably my favorite. But listen, what about you?
What have been some of your favorites? This is your
first SGF, I think you were telling me the other night.
Speaker 13: Maybe, yes, this is my very first time attending. Yes, yeah,
there was. I think from what I heard from other people,
a lot more YouTuber creators type of you know people
like that this year, and I feel like I was
a part of that little wave. So I felt really
honored and excited to come in, show up and get
to play a lot of really amazing demos. One of
my favorite things that I played was probably Pedal Runner.
Speaker 14: Yeah, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 12: It was so great.
Speaker 13: It was like essentially their spiel and their pitch was Pokemon.
But if the battles were warrior Ware mini games.
Speaker 1: I love Warrio.
Speaker 13: Where the second that that started happening to me, I
was like, whoa, Oh my gosh, this is so great
because I didn't know about this game before I showed up,
and so yeah, that was a really pleasant surprise. It
was actually the very first thing that I played when
I arrived, so the first day that was great.
Speaker 5: I really wanted to get your opinion on Grave Seasons.
Did you get a chance?
Speaker 13: Oh yes, yes, that's actually like the main reason I
wanted to come. I've been watching that game forever. I
actually I refer to your article all the time.
Speaker 7: This is not a game.
Speaker 13: Yeah yeah, fan growling over here, yes, but yeah, no,
I admire your work and I really appreciate that article
as well. And I just was always excited for Grape
Seasons because it seemed like it was doing a little
bit more of a transformative thing with the farming sim genre,
adding on the creepy horror elements and the murder mystery.
I have been anticipating this for years, so finally getting
my hands on it, I enjoyed the demo.
Speaker 14: I thought it was great.
Speaker 13: It's really hard to showcase a game that you have
to sink, you know, a good five in game days
to really get into the meat and potatoes and you know,
not getting to know the characters before the.
Speaker 12: Inciting incident happens.
Speaker 13: Essentially that might be yes, whatever that might be. It
was a little bit like, Okay, yeah, no, we're we're.
The purpose of this demo is to kind of just
get a feel of the art style and the game,
and you know, I think a lot of people are
very familiar with farming sims, but maybe aren't keeping up
with the genre very much.
Speaker 5: I'm so ready to talk about this because I had
a friend at the mix. He played and he didn't
know what Grave Seasons was. So he's playing and he
was like, oh, yeah, I'm enjoying the I'm farming and
I'm fishing. And I'm like, oh, you don't know what's
about the hash. So I'm just like sitting back and
and kind of cackling. He's like, why are you Why
are you laughing like that? And then we got to
the I don't know if I want to spoil it,
but like the moment the moment, and he was WHOA, yes,
and I think I got it on Gama. So it's
going up somewhere.
Speaker 13: It's so interesting and I'm excited for it because I'm
just looking for something fresh, you.
Speaker 1: Know, totally there's this one. I get this one confused
with Never Way.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 15: Yeah, they are like two games, like a very similar style,
but never Ways first person.
Speaker 5: Yes, this Way is kind of more top down.
Speaker 1: Okay, there's It's been interesting how there's a couple of
different lines. There's a couple like horror farming and games.
Speaker 14: Now you might be thinking it never ends his way
never ended, Yeah, but mixed.
Speaker 15: They're like in that cozy horror like genre, which I
feel like that's definitely gained a lot of popularity in
the last like year or so, kind of like what
else can we do with this formula and thinking of
like ways to switch it up, but you know, with
great Seasons. I really liked that they it's kind of
spliced up their demo, at least they did last year.
I assume it might have been the same this year,
kind of showing you a lot like at once and
not just giving you like a slice of the game.
I think, yeah, it's way more work for the developer.
But like you know, we talk about this all the
time on indie council, Like, there's such a benefit to
making like a specific build for like demo purposes because
you have such little time, you know, It's it's hard
to like get a big.
Speaker 14: Sense of someone's game, especially one like that.
Speaker 13: Yeah, something you kind of got to like really sit
down and wait for it to yea heat up a
little bit. It's like, how do you show this off
in thirty minutes?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 13: Luckily, like I was already there, so hype and so excited,
and so just getting my hands on it for the
first time was really cool.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, speaking of the creepy cozy emergence that's coming out,
I played Ractored Blooms Okay, oh, I don't are really fun.
Speaker 6: I don't know this one.
Speaker 5: It is essentially a little creepier on the onset in
Grave Seasons, and it is a more naturalistic style. But
it is the one that I played this year at
Summer Game Fest. I at one point was so happy
to return to a creepy church because where I'd just
come from freaking out so bad?
Speaker 1: Is this the one from the developer who made that
game about the Fox? Am I making any sense? From
like twenty seventeen, No, Okay, there was like a breakout.
I'm like obsessed with devlogs on YouTube, and there was
one of the like breakout early devlog creators. I'm blanking
on his name, but he released I think it was
called like the Last at the Last Campfire. Oh n no,
it's all right, just sit here and we guess I know, right.
Speaker 13: Hey, yeah, all of our brains must be broken up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because there should really be a journalist in the
room to the other thing. Okay, but I think I
think they like they had gone and made like one
of these horror kind of farming games. But yeah, it's
just it's interesting to see, like you said, Janet, like
it's starting to evolve. I do think it's funny, how Like,
obviously these games have been years in development, so like
they all kind of came to the conclusion on their own,
but it's funny to see them kind of come to
light around a similar time. But I'm excited to see
how I love life Sims, you know, I I tend
to do more of like the enjoy the Animal Crossings
more than like a Stardo. I love and respect started.
But like I think I just like the the gameplay
a little bit more like an animal crossing, but it's
cool to see kind of a bunch of different takes
on it. Did any of you play a game called bub.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wanted.
Speaker 2: That.
Speaker 3: That is.
Speaker 5: One of those games that you walk out and you're like,
this was a game to see. And it's got really
word of mouth because I think when we were going in,
not a lot of people like had it on their radar.
Speaker 1: No, no, not at all.
Speaker 5: But it is so like the story behind the developer
is very inspiring as well, because the developer got sick
while making this game and is now making it as
much as he can with a fumbly developer and it's
just a two developer team. The game itself is so.
Speaker 1: Art Yeah, I mean, I mean it's like it's like
it seems like it's paper craft that has been stand in.
Speaker 5: No, it's like every single art form you can think of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, rush.
Speaker 5: It's got like glass. It's literally every scene is a
different art style and it's all really like evocative and lovely.
For the story. The story that we saw so far
in this demo was a young boy just kind of
narrating his early childhood.
Speaker 3: Life and yeah, he makes music.
Speaker 1: It seems like it's like a music studio in his basement.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's like an artist York, and he's thinking back
to his childhood and he's he's talking about an incident
where a young boy died who was in his school
or in his neighborhood, and then his mother realizing, oh,
I could lose my children at any time, and having
that like realization and starting to like get a stronger
grip on her kids because of it, and how that
was sort of affecting him, and just the whole time.
It's not like you're playing the story. It's just like
really lovely art evocative scenes that are like when he
was talking about, oh, the boy drowned.
Speaker 1: And I teared up at this scene, and that that
that scene in that final sequence when you're like kind
of riding the bike and the music hits. I asked
the developer like if he was doing the music, because
I kind of got that sense. But it turns out
it's actually just like an indie pop artist that he
really loves the music of. And they have like a
bartering system, so the developer will make music videos for
the indie artist and then in exchange for using the
music and in their game Yeah, it was like really touching.
I I I it hit very hard, it was very poignant,
but in a total surprise, Like I just it's like
really nice when you there's like a gentle game experience
that shows like this, Yeah, because there's so much you know,
like I played tomb Raider and like all these like more.
Speaker 2: You know, action and blood.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and there's like a lot of really cutesy games.
But then it's like it's rare and it's it's a
nice kind of experience when you get to like kind
of escape into one of these, which is it's cool.
But Janet, what what was your favorite game of the
show or one one that you want to dig into
you more.
Speaker 15: I guess it's tough. I feel like you bringing up
the like Papercraft element. I do want to shout out
out of words because that also, which is like another
I mean everyone's kind of like mimicking and being inspired
by like so many different people. And I feel like
we were also seeing a lot of like handcrafted indie
games come out where it's like what if we were
like a little bit more creative with the medium and
did stuff like in real life and then kind of
scanned it in or did stop motion or whatever, so
like bub is in that veame of like a mixed
media game and out of words is like they like
handcraft like the creatures, and then it's all like stop
motion and it looks really nice and it feels.
Speaker 14: Like comfortable to play.
Speaker 15: The closest thing I can compare it to you, like
mechanically is sort of a more low key version of
like Unravel, which is to say, okay, it's almost more
of like an experiential platform er, like I don't think
it's going to be like pushing back a lop and
its co op, and it had like they shot off
this like really fun gravity flip mechanic where you like
would toss a little guy like between the two of
you to give each other the ability to flip, and
like that kind of in the sequence they showed us
culminated in like a moment where you're essentially flying to
the sky with each other by like tossing it back
and forth, and it's like just a really nice like
way of Hey, you played the level probably verbalizing things
to each other, and now you get to the point
where you can just like play, you know, whether it's
couch co op or online and just like get a
sense of the rhythm.
Speaker 14: And I thought that was like really nice, really beautiful.
Speaker 15: It's so tough to make a game that has like
a really striking art style but also like feels good
on the sticks. And I know sometimes people downplay like
the mechanics of games that are more like in that
artsy realm, but like it's so important to like have
a good walk feel and a game if your game
is about walking, you know, and that's hard to do.
And I think they like really nailed it on that.
So that's when I want to shut out for sure.
Speaker 5: Well, I want to talk about out of word spe
I asked them what they made. There were like a
bunch of sand dooms, and I couldn't place them, Like
is that clay. They'd literally taken knives to books and
just like hit the pages down and then put sand over.
That's gorgeous. I love that. That was one of my
absolute favorite games.
Speaker 1: I just imagine like some like dilapidated scanner in an
office that has just been like blown to bits with
like you know, pain and sand, and I imagine that's
how they get into the game. Oh, I guess they
could be like photography or something.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's kind.
Speaker 15: Of like it's almost that they create like stages like
in My Life, Oh got it film, I wanted to.
Speaker 5: Be just a paper copier.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 15: I mean that was another one where like to their credit,
they like cut something very specific for like that show
where they're like, here's this level, here's like a later level,
here's a middle, and it's like you don't have to
show your game like chronologically, like you can show it
however you feel best conveyed.
Speaker 14: Like what makes your game special?
Speaker 15: And I you know, again, extra work, you know, extra funny,
extra time. But like if you can do that, like
it can go such a long way.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 5: On the other end of games where it's not like
action blood sort of game, I want to shout out
Mister Records.
Speaker 12: That was the Grandpa game. I wanted to play that.
Speaker 14: Like everyone's talk about miss Records.
Speaker 5: I think it was a lot of people missed out
on it because I missed out on I suspected it
was going to be in the day of the devs
section because it was in the day of Viv's showcase.
But it is so fantastic. It's got like the art
of the Plucky Squire. It's that kind of beautiful pop cartoon.
And then the gameplay is split between like it's not
really Guitar Hero, but like adventure Guitar Hero, I guess
you could say, and then store management because you're running
a record shop. So every record that you get for
the shop, you play through this like imaginary world of
music where everything's to the rhythm and you're like kicking
ghosts and jumping over things like to the beat, and
it's just absolutely beautiful. I'm not great at it. I'm
not gonna lie. So I unlocked one hard level and
I was like, try this, immediately died. I'm like, okay,
never mind.
Speaker 2: Never mind, I'm going back to the easy.
Speaker 5: So it is just every single song is amazing, and
they've got so many different songs styles as well, like
blues and funk and rap, and it's all just fantastic.
And then once you've like completed a level, you then
get the record to put into your store. You open
up in the morning, people come in and there it's
kind of hey, I want a game, or I want
to music that I remember for my childhood. It's like
an old woman, so you're looking for clues as to
what they want. So you can give it to them
so you can make more money to buy more records.
When you get more records, you open up more levels
and you go from there and it's a really really
satisfying game loop as far as I can see so far.
Speaker 1: Love it. Lets what about you most another one of
your favorites?
Speaker 3: I don't think can we talk about orbitals?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 12: Yeah, No, that's like way late.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's a bummer.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Or actually I'd like to ask you like more about like, uh,
what's it like been like your first year sgief, Because
for me, I felt like last year was a little stagnant,
Like the show kind of continued to like get physically bigger,
but I felt like it wasn't filled. Yeah, and this
year it's been so lively and honestly really nice, seeing
so much energy in the room. But I'm curious, like,
from your perspective, what that's been like.
Speaker 14: It was amazing. I really loved it.
Speaker 13: I loved how many opportunities there were to play games
and how the whole thing was set up. It just
felt like a very well run event that it was
like the most amount of games that you can play
in a day. You know, It's really great because you
really can get to so much instead of like a
typical convention when you're walking around and you got to
go stand in the lot and stuff. Right, So that
was something that I noticed right off the bat that
I was like, wow, I really enjoyed this experience because
it also led me to open myself up a bit
more to genres that I don't typically play. So I
was able to like, you know, kind of come out
of my comfort zone a little bit. But also in general, like,
everybody's really nice, everybody's really sweet and cool, and yeah,
navigating it as a creator was kind of interesting as well,
because I would like talk to some of my creator
friends that were there and they're like, oh, yeah, I'm
skipping out on the show because I'm going to record
from home and get a video out as soon as possible.
I'm like, oh, that's like a really good idea, So dang,
I should have thought of that mebe So my first
year it was a little rough around the edges where
it's like, oh, man, I should have maybe been doing
more stuff in the moment to be more topable. But
I learned a lot right of just like you know,
what I would do next year.
Speaker 1: Totally I mean I feel that on the press side
of things, right, Eric off screen and I have been like, oh, man,
like how do we like? It's always it's a constant
battle of like I'm sure you too relate to this, like, oh,
I've got all this stuff to talk about, Sullivan's bargo embargoed.
Some of it's not, but I have to like keep
the engine rolling to get more content.
Speaker 6: But when do I put it up?
Speaker 13: Yeah, it was a delicate balance. But the best part
was definitely meeting new people and going out there and
playing all the games.
Speaker 5: Yeah, wonderful experience.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's good to hear.
Speaker 3: Jane.
Speaker 1: What do you think about the show this year?
Speaker 14: Yeah, I think it was like a stronger year.
Speaker 15: I mean I think, you know, some years are just
like bigger on like at least the Triple A front. Obviously,
like there's always like gonna be good indie games coming out. Sure,
there are like years that have like the marquee indie title,
like you know this year with look Me to.
Speaker 2: The Hollower Road.
Speaker 15: It's like there are always like big indies that like
take the spot out of a year. But for Triple A,
I felt like there's definitely been a lot more like
Capcom has really been on a roll. So like them
having a presence there, I think it's really interesting that
Nintendo has.
Speaker 14: Had a presence here for the first time. I think
that Yeah.
Speaker 15: Kind of to me, that says like, okay, like where
are they at, like strategy wise, Like you know, obviously
they were just showing like third party, but it's like, Okay,
they're kind of making that effort.
Speaker 14: It's year two of switch to where are we at
with this console?
Speaker 15: I know, like on the player side, Like from my perspective,
I feel like we kind of maybe need a little
bit more of.
Speaker 14: An oom from Nintendo.
Speaker 15: So maybe this is them trying to say, hey, you
know again intenda thirty five support. I've been hearing about it,
I'm saying for as long as there've been a Nintendo fan.
So it's like, Okay, they're making that effort of trying
to like, you know, be here and be in this space.
Speaker 14: They're also like notably, you know, they're one of the
Big three.
Speaker 15: So there's always that question of like when we think
of what made E three three, it's the participation of
all these big publishers SGEF has never quite had that
like we've had PlayStation here.
Speaker 1: At times the Horizon.
Speaker 14: Yeah, yeah, whatever was that last year that it came out?
Speaker 15: Years but yeah, it's like, okay, it's kind of like,
will will we get to that point to eventually build
it up where it would be like the major publishers
are there on campus or you know, and obviously Xbox
does do stuff, but they do it off campus, so
it's not you know, seeing how the show evolves and
how much publishers are paying attention to the fact that
the Nintendo's here, I think is a good sign for
SGF because it says that they cared enough about this
show to say, like we want to have a presence there.
Speaker 12: Yeah, yeah, for saving Direct.
Speaker 15: Yeah yeah, I definitely like like a little a little
bit of underwhelming of like a vibe because it is
just like a lot of you know, multiplatform stuff things
in other places. But like the fact that they're there
like does say something. It means they like, yeah in
the show. So yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Joe, what about you.
Speaker 5: I was listening to you talk about like I'm going
to know for for next year and just thinking about
all of the like the lessons I learned last year
that I don't pay attention.
Speaker 15: I'll like write down like in my notes, like I'll
do like a little postmart for myself, and then I
like never rew.
Speaker 13: So it's like if you can just reread, just say
right now, never scheduling anything back to back ever again.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's horrible.
Speaker 13: Yes, so yeah, I know that was really rough because
I didn't know where anything was.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and they change it every year.
Speaker 7: You know, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 13: Yeah no, so yeah, definitely never doing that again. And
a couple other little lessons.
Speaker 14: Yeah, like I.
Speaker 13: Didn't know Xbox was going to be primarily off campus.
Speaker 14: Yeah yeah, mis ideat Xbox, which can be confusing. This
part of my ex is there.
Speaker 13: Yeah, yeah, so that's like, oh, keep on the lookout, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, speaking of that id at Xbox area, there are
a lot of really good games. We had Blood Dungeon there.
Speaker 3: Blood Dungeon.
Speaker 1: I think it's just like a slap in the face
to like the concept, the notion that like, oh I
have to rely on like AI too, because I like
and obviously very talented developers have worked on this. They
made wheel World, they made nid Hog, like, these are
excellent game developers, but even somebody, yeah, this was my
game that I worked on when I was like winding
down at night and I just was like it was
kind of a relaxing experience. Then I found a musician
to do that this it's actually the real world. Uh yeah,
composer who's like doing audio direction. But like the game
itself has this vibe not quite like pain, yeah, but
like it reminds me of like the early days of
like Xbox Live Arcade totally, and the game itself is
like really excellent, but it's like you can put a
game out and it can be incredible preview incredible at least,
because I think it's probably my maybe my game of show. Yeah,
and you know for a like AI slop like we've
seen in the Triple A space. So many companies, Like
I mean there are companies here that I don't know
if I can talk about doing embargo, but yeah.
Speaker 3: Just like.
Speaker 1: Relying on that shit.
Speaker 15: Yeah, those are so many ways to make a game,
and like it should be you know, something that somebody
developers have, like that personality and that passion of like
what's specific to them and like what speaks to them.
And it's nice to play something that feels you know,
authored and like intentional and yeah, like Blood Dungeon was incredible.
I'm not the biggest like Vampire Survivors like fan necessarily
I've played Vampire Survivors.
Speaker 1: Obviously, we play.
Speaker 15: Goobies all the time, which is like kind of like
in that style as well. But this is like Vampire
Survivors meets platforming, and I love platforming and I'm really
good at platforming, so this.
Speaker 14: Was like very smooth. But also it's like pretty friendly
even if.
Speaker 15: You're not into platforming, because you can the fact that
you can kind of grapple and crawl on everything, like
on the walls, and they have like the ability to
climb on at least the level that they suggest that
everyone play, like the first one. They have those cages
from like Mario World, and it's like, oh literally, that's
like one of my favorite things to do in a
video game ever, is to be on those cages. So yeah,
it was just super fun, chaotic, really fun art and
and a great like you know in the in classic
Vampire Survivor style, like a great constant like Dopamine unlock,
Like yeah, it would be unlocking stuff like all the time.
It was great to like experiment with my bills I'm
kind of getting more into the rogue genre as well.
So yeah, I just really like found me at the
perfect time. And yeah, I really loved it. I think like, mechanically,
it's just such an instant click.
Speaker 5: So yeah, mechanically so professional and polished. It kind of
belies the like the look of the deo finness kind
of look. Yeah, but it's so smooth, exactly the way
it needed to be. I was also worried about the
amount of just things that are going off, projectiles and things.
I'm like, is this going to start to show problems
because you know it's a demo, it's an early demo.
You never know if those things are going to be
a problem. But nothing ever slowed down, and you were
constantly going I loved that. At one point I found
a gun where I could shoot spiderwebs and I could
make my own. Oh so nice to like worry about
being trapped anywhere. Yeah, and just the synergies that they
had for the different things of like there were items
that I found that you shoot more when you're going faster,
and then you're getting items that make you go exactly sure, Yeah,
and so many different situations like that.
Speaker 15: So great, which too to like clarify for people, Like
it's the structure is like you have like a general
like level, like an like almost like an arena that
you're going up and down. There's like ladders, there's walls,
and then there's also like door like kind of doorways
that have keys, so you have to like look and
find the key and then sort of trying to remember, Okay,
I have the green key, now where might the green
door be?
Speaker 14: And you're just like progressing more to like find chests.
Speaker 15: Some of them are just available, some of them are
locked behind, like the currency that's in the game, like
getting enough coins, and that's like the.
Speaker 14: General like loop of it.
Speaker 15: But the other thing that was really cool is just
like the anime work is very like fun and silly,
Like there's different characters you can choose, but like the
like kind of default character, like.
Speaker 1: The main guy.
Speaker 14: He's his arm just kind of wave like NonStop, and.
Speaker 1: Like all new grounds.
Speaker 15: Just like a lot of like smart little design choices
like this is very like almost like a last Super
Meat Boy. But like when you're done with like a session,
they mark your path because again it's like if you
were to zoom out, it's not the sick, but it
will like show like where you start and like, oh,
you went up the wall and then you came down,
then you went back up, then you went back and
it kind.
Speaker 14: Of just like it.
Speaker 15: It just feels really good to look at that and
see like what you've done. It also kind of takes
this thing out of like no matter what happens, whether
you like won or lost, it's like satisfying to see
your process. And like, I appreciate a developer that can consider,
like how can I make a lost condition still feel good?
I feel like that's a real rarity in games, and
this does that. So even though I didn't lose, because
I was really good except for the question the second.
Speaker 14: Time I hear it, So yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I had like a supremely broken build at my
final eye, I got my ass whopped a couple of times,
but then I lucked out and I got this ability
that I had a jet pack. I had a button
that I left fire trails below. I had the fire
trail as well, and so that com out of the jetpack,
I was just raining fire and then I had fifty
percent extra damage when you're above an enemy, and then
the I could take three frames of damage for free.
So I was just like cruising around the map. It
was so fun. But yeah, Blood Dungeon, I'm a fan. Yeah,
I think people should go and check it out. I
think it'll I'm sure I think there might be like
a Steam demo up or I'm sure there will be
soon if not, but definitely wanted to look out for.
But let's kind of get to our closing thoughts lists overall,
closing thoughts on SGF.
Speaker 13: Overall, I of course am just so thrilled and so
everything was just amazing. I felt like I played a
lot of things that I typically wouldn't be downloading the
Steam demo for just you know, for the sake of time,
and so it was really really great to come to
an event and have all of this time dedicated to
experiencing a little bit.
Speaker 15: Of what's your like typical like genre preference and what
kind of thing did you like take a risk on
that ended up like paying off like this weekend.
Speaker 13: For me, personally, I play a lot of just like
a general Nintendo but you know, I am really huge
into the farming sim genre and in general life sims.
I played a little bit of horror and I can't
recall one of them.
Speaker 1: I'm too much of a baby for that.
Speaker 14: I don't like horror games at all.
Speaker 13: There's very specific things that I will maybe play, but
so not my vibe.
Speaker 14: I just yeah, I get too scared and then.
Speaker 13: My heart starts beaten and I'm like, okay, I gotta
goal lay down.
Speaker 12: It's just not my favorite.
Speaker 13: So yeah, I played one that was a It was
called Don't Fret You're Sentient Guitar, and the whole game
is themed to about music and a lot of like
the puzzles were music, but then it's also a horror
game and your chase was a big scary cassette thing
monster and I thought that was silly and fun, and
then I was reminded why I don't really love those
type of games, because I get scar Yeah, my heart
was raised and I had to go sit down after
that one. Uh and was late to my next appointment.
Speaker 14: Because I was like, I can't even walk right.
Speaker 13: Yeah, but uh no, yeah, getting out of my wheelhouse
a little bit and just trying a bunch of different things,
and yeah, I think, uh, for me, you know, I
I don't cover a lot of wide variety of games
and genres on my channel, so it's really nice to
sort of, you know, just experience a little bit of
a the other side of games.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah about you.
Speaker 15: Yeah, I mean another another year down, you know, another
year closer.
Speaker 14: To the end of everything.
Speaker 15: No, I mean yeah, like it's we've it's interesting to
be like somewhere on the ground floor in a way.
You know, I went to the last D three that
they had like E three twenty nineteen, and now to
like be at SGF and get to see it like
go and change and develop. Like I think it's easy
to be negative about the game space. You know, there's
obviously been like many reasons to be like layoffs, closures,
Like it's inherently you know, not a like super well
paying industry, Like there's many struggles. But for all of that,
like it's nice to be reminded that, like there's still
newness to be celebrated, Like there's new games coming out,
there's new studios being formed, there's new people trying things.
There's new you know, independent outlets like popping up and
people who were like out here repping their blogs, like
doing freelance, but also saying like hey here's something I
made myself and like putting themselves out there, and like,
as much as it is kind of easy to be
cynical about something like SGF, it is cool to be like,
I was here from the start. I don't know how
long SGF will be here, but it's cool to like
get to have those stories, even as like, you know,
some people would doublest like one of the not later
generations of games media, but you know, there's kind of
been tiers of people that have gone through games still
aren't that old, and for there to be still like
a new show that like, I like to think that
years from now, you know, we can all say oh, yeah,
I was there at as she Have twenty twenty six
and have that be like, oh my god, that was
so long ago. And to have that and to be
part of that history, I think that's really cool. So
I agree, Yeah, it's a nice thing to think about.
Speaker 5: Yeah, to be a little more pessimistic.
Speaker 1: No, I'm gonna on a positive notes.
Speaker 5: Cut it over, Nodard, just cut me out why it's
still not in this No, no, no dumbing over.
Speaker 14: I agree with Chann Okay.
Speaker 5: Thinking about time for one of the Xbox indies, the
PR person who was wrapping them came up to me,
it was like these kids who are making this game
and they're full of grown adults but weren't around for
the E three era. I'm like, oh no, I'm getting
way too old. But that was bad Magpie, which.
Speaker 14: I'm also a really cool game.
Speaker 15: Yeah, I like.
Speaker 5: Super excited for that. But yeah, I think it is
just like you were saying, coming here, there's an energy there.
It's seeing other people and reminding yourself like, oh, this
is why we do this. Everybody here has that kind
of passion, whether it's making games or writing about games,
making content. Like we're all excited to be here and
to see each other, and it like refills my tank
for like the rest of the year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, totally agree. I think, you know, I've been
really I mean, game Informers shut down in twenty twenty
four and then we all got rehired and like we
were back. We were at SGF. I guess we haven't
missed an SGF because of the timing of it all.
But last year we were like a month or two
back and it all was like, oh, I don't you know,
is this going to be our last one? And then
of course we've like Game of four is doing very well,
and it's just like I'm in a place of gratitude.
Like I don't you know, games media is in a
I mean media in general is in a very precarious
place with you know, search engine AI's replace, you know,
stealing content. You know, ad views are in the toilet,
or ad revenues in the toilet. But there are cool
people making cool things and finding new ways to fund
themselves through patrons or YouTube memberships or what have you.
And yeah, so I kind of just returned to a
place of gratitude, you know. And I feel like I
feel very with what you said, Joe. I feel like
very filled up and kind of centered. It's like, man,
I worked my ass off this weekend. I got no sleep,
but I did it with the best people.
Speaker 5: Yeah, are broken, but our hearts are exactly Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's kind of how I'm ending my my SGF.
But I do want to say if you enjoy, if
you well, if you it's not over yet, but if
you enjoyed this episode of the podcast, please consider picking
up a game Informer magazine subscription. We shipped ten issues
a year. We literally just shipped our next one today.
We finished it up we snuck some SGF coverage in
there and it has been shipped to the printers. It
will hit your mailboxes and new stands across the world
in late June early July, so please consider picking it
up if you see it. We're at Indigo and Chapters
in Canada, place like Barnes and Noble across the world
and plenty of other countries. But that really helps us out,
and what would really help our guests out if you
go and check out their stuff list. I would love
to know where people can find you, where they can
support your work YouTube.
Speaker 12: And I'm really stupid on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Sometimes Okay at list the last right, Yes, that is great, cool,
jan it nice.
Speaker 15: All my social handles are game Honestest that's game o
n y s us. I also have a website pen
twopixels dot com where do editorial stuff and you can
go to game honeses dot com spelled the same way
for like my general portfolio. I do all the stuff
that you see me doing podcasts, videos, articles and macroview
consults think so yeah.
Speaker 5: You can also catch podcasting for me and Janet for
the Indie Council. We are on Blue Sky at the
Indie Council dot com if I'm remember correctly, and you
can check out the Indianformer dot com for all of
my indie stuff.
Speaker 12: Should be coming very soon, I promise.
Speaker 5: And then if you want to look for me on socials,
it's blue Sky at beIN roun F I N r
U I N for me personally and at Indian Former
or the Indian Former.
Speaker 9: The Indian Former, Indian Former very.
Speaker 15: Important to have the I'll take the Indian Former handle and.
Speaker 3: Then has it.
Speaker 5: I'm not gonna lie to check everything else there.
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for watching this app special episode of
the Game Informer Show. Of course, we release new episodes
every Friday. Can listen to wherever you get your podcasts
or watch on YouTube dot com slash Game Informer speaking O.
Be sure to tune into all of our video interviews,
our preview cover from SGF. We're going to be posting
stuff throughout the week. If you have missed it somehow,
please go back. We've gotten interviews with folks like Hamaguchi
from the director of Final Fantasy, Vin Revelation, we had
Yacht Club Games come over. We did a sort of
post mortem on Mina, the Hollower remedy Stop by We've
got a lot of stuff on there, so that would
be awesome. And as always, stay tuned to gamformer dot com.
Thanks for watching and we will good call Eric.
Speaker 3: I'll retake that.
Speaker 1: And special thank you too, Road for powering our studio
here in LA this week. It's been an immense help
getting the best coverage we can out the door. You
can force find their pod mics, their PS one A
plus Mike Stands the Roadcaster Pro two the videos. We've
got a whole video breaking down our studio setup over
on our Instagram and YouTube and TikTok accounts. You can
go and check that out. But yeah, thank you Road.
Be sure to head over to Road dot com and
shop their new colorways and all of their their gear.
So thank you again, Road, and thank you for watching.
We'll see you next time. Goodbye,