Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Game Informer Show, a weekly
podcast covering the video game industry. Join us every Friday
for a discussion about the latest gaming news, reviews, and
exclusive reveals, alongside Game of Former staff and special guests
from around the industry. I'm in your host today, Charles,
and I'm joined by Marcus Stewart.
Speaker 2: He everybody, I'm here. I'm back. You can't get rid
of me. I'm always be persistent, persistent threat. That's what
I am. The Mister X Podcast.
Speaker 1: And Kyle Eillier.
Speaker 3: Nemesis, where I'm much more like you think it's going
to be a persistent threat, but it's really actually pretty
choreographed and like it just happens in specific moments and
this is not as compelling as mister X is. Kind
that's that's who That's who I am.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you do say the same over and over too.
Speaker 1: I'm like Adye Dematresk, where like I'm really persistent for
a little bit and then I'm kind of like the
rest of the time, it's like, ah, she was. She
was like an act one kind of deal. Like I'll
be I'll be around a lot at the start, and
then I'm just gonna I'm just kind of kind of good.
Speaker 3: She's real. Who is who is a vas from Far
Cry three? You know, She's like one of those where
it's like, oh, that was that was the compelling villain.
I we actually had a bigger villain, but you don't.
You don't even remember that guy's name. Sorry?
Speaker 2: Sorry, did you call it boba Fett's syndrome?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I don't know that boa Fett's first entrance
was compelling that I would.
Speaker 2: Say to him, to dicentegrade a guy, he.
Speaker 1: Was interesting, but anyway he stood out.
Speaker 3: He followed the garbage.
Speaker 1: Is that what happened?
Speaker 3: I don't remember, it's been a while.
Speaker 1: He followed the garbage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, garbage, that's what it was. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: This week we got a lot of talk about We're
talking about Castlevania, Belmont's Curse, Kyle review Densch Attack, Marcus
played the incident at Galley House, I reviewed the Mermaide
Mask and Heave Ho too. Markus also checked out Dtopia.
We're very excited about all that, but first, as always,
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Kyle's got a double O seven first light issue Marcus.
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There's people that Matt Piscatella is a games analyst and
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and it's.
Speaker 3: Like, wow, it's so nice.
Speaker 1: We love seeing that people eat our stuff. So yeah,
it's always nice to when when things go wrong, as
people should there say like hey, we didn't get something.
But when things go right, usually it's just kind of
business as usual, so it's always nice to celebrate the
touchdowns when they actually do right. Well, without further ado,
I'm gonna jump right into our first game this week. Uh.
I got to fly to Paris, France, country I've never
been to before, to play Castlevania Belmont's Curse. I did
this last month. What is time?
Speaker 3: There's no way.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, it's been like a couple of weeks since you've
been back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the end of the last month.
Speaker 1: Yea, of all the notes I wrote, I didn't write
down the day I went. It was super hot when
it went.
Speaker 2: I was going to ask, like, because you went right
in the middle of I think it's still going on,
the big heat wave that has just brought Europe to
its knees. As someone that is a Northerner because you
live in Ohio, how was that for you?
Speaker 1: Yes, well, it does get hot in Ohio.
Speaker 2: It's hot.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it was like it's it's ninety one right now,
so it's pretty hot. It was.
Speaker 3: It was about that here in dang it, you guys
are it's gonna make us cry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I will tell you, not only hot, but hum
it is here.
Speaker 1: Oh nice, but yeah, I showed up at it was.
It was a pretty all things considered brutal travel period
because I landed at seven am France time, but it
was one a m. Eastern time, and I had eight
hours before I could check into my hotel. And the
hotel was like it was an hour walk from the
Eiffel Tower, and I was like, sure, I'll just go
see the Eiffel Tower. And the metaphor I've been using
is like all the way there, I felt like a
Pokemon trainer. I was like, wow, look at this new city. Wow,
look at all this stuff, so many landmarks, and the
way back it was like fro Do the end of
Lord of the Rings, where I was like so sweaty,
I was bleeding. For some I was wearing jean No,
I wasn't bleeding protos. My my feet did really hurt.
I was so sweaty. I like rolled up. I cuffed
my jeans, which I've never done before. I had a
backpack on for no. I thought I was maybe going
to find somewhere and hang out, and that never happened.
Speaker 2: To go to the Pokemon train or analogy, Yes, that helped.
Speaker 3: Honest, someone handed you a bike. You're about like ten
hours in.
Speaker 1: It was weird. There were plenty of bikes there. There
are anyways. Uh yeah, So that that was then I
slept that night, so I kind of avoided jet lag
by doing an insane physical challenge.
Speaker 2: As opposed to the most nights he slept then, and.
Speaker 1: Then the next day I woke up and went to
Chappelle John John d Arc, the chapel of dedicated to
Joan of Arc. It's deconsecrated, so people don't like warship
there anymore, and it's been turned into an event space.
So we went and we got to play Castlevania Belmonts Curse.
Uh and uh, it's really really good. I'm really excited
about it. I played the game and came home, purchased
Dead Cells on my switch to because I didn't have
it there yet, and purchased the Castlevania DLC and beat
the whole thing because I was just like, I just
want to play this game and this is like, we
have Belmont's Curse at home. That's like the closest equivalent
I had. If you're unfamiliar, Oh yeah, go ahead, Marcus, Okay.
Speaker 2: Well I'll let you set it up and then I'll
ask my question give people the overview.
Speaker 1: Of what this is. Also, before I forget, they gave
us some goodies, including a wine glass. Wait, I'm holding
up to the camera.
Speaker 2: They gave you like.
Speaker 3: From here we go here full scrange.
Speaker 2: Okay, it's got the logo on the curse.
Speaker 3: Yes, you are drinking blood right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is not blood or wine. It is red
Bull that I dyed red to be festive because I
had red food Diarra red Bull yellow fun fact.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I've always I've always, I've always noticed, I've
cut Red Bull out of my life. But like, I
drank it a lot for a while, and I was like,
there's a reason this doesn't come in a clear bottle,
Like this has to be in a cat because that
looks like urine, Like this is not does.
Speaker 2: I don't think i've ever seen what red bull. I
don't drink energy drinks. I never knew what Red Bull
looked like. I didn't I wouldn't have guessed yellow was
what they do.
Speaker 1: It looks like ginger ale is what it looks like.
But the name is so evocative of a Anyways, go
back to game.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we don't really want to hear about this amazing
game that Marcus and I are jealously you got to
play or anything.
Speaker 1: Talking about the Red Bulls. Yeah, so I showed up.
I got to play three hours, the opening three hours
of the game. It is a direct sequel to Castlevania three,
which is an nes game, right super old, But it
is what they adapted into the first two seasons of
the Castlevanian Netflix show. So if you've seen those first
two seasons, it'll be a lot of characters and events
that are recurring. Specifically Trevor Belmont. He is the main
character of that story, and in this story he's a
little bit older and it's about his daughter, Rose Belmont,
and she's the daughter of Trevor and Sifa Cifa being
like a magic user who's passed away at this point
of the game.
Speaker 3: And Rose's original character for the game, right, she was
not in the anime. I don't think I watched correct
all of that. I actually watched the whole thing. I think, Yeah,
I did watch all that. Yeah, which they never had
kids in the show. Yeah cool.
Speaker 2: I was just gonna ask, like, is Rose the first
female Belmont because there's been female leads in Castlevania, but
they weren't Belmont's.
Speaker 1: I want to say no from what I looked up,
but I.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe I'm forgetting on here's the game Boy game,
the first Castlevania on game Boy, I think, but I
might be yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I might be forgetting one. But it just regardless,
it's not. It's pretty rare.
Speaker 1: It's yeah yeah. And the one of the things that
I got to speak to some of the developers about it,
one of the things they were excited about or interested
in exploring, is that the Castlevania games is very much
about this like generations of the Belmont family or whatever
families come after them, but you don't often get to
see the like generations interacting. So this is one where
it's like, here's a character that we know in love
and his daughter and the game he's not around for
most of it. He's like, oh, you're an adult, you
go go do your own thing. He says the line like, well,
you're an experienced vampire hunder at this point, so you
can you can do this on your own, like he's
not worried about it.
Speaker 2: That's how Belmont's kicked their kids out the nest. Now
you need to go and kill You're eighteen, go get away,
go kill your first.
Speaker 3: Vampire on your own. That's that's video games. Man Link
believing the house at like eight years old to go
on his adventures too, right, Like, that's that's true.
Speaker 1: Uh so yeah, So you play as Rose and the
game feels very good. I played three hours and I
got to fight three bosses. There's a bunch of different
weapon types, so there's a I started with a sword,
and the weapon type like symbol looked kind of like
a rape year, so there's like lighter swords. Later, I
got like a bigger two handed sword, and then I
had a spear that I could throw. I had a
sword and shield combo, and I had cestis, which are
like metal gloves you can punch with metal boxing.
Speaker 2: I always think of the ones from God of War
three you when I hear cessens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a cestus in Assassin's Creed two. I think
it makes your melee damage to more anyways, uh and yeah,
And so you start off the game. Rose has a
deck of arcana cards that her mom left her, and
they each have like some name on it. It's not
like actual original tarot cards, but it's like the fall
in I think the Priestess and the warrior, the ones
that you have, and the way the game works is
those are the bosses that you'll fight, and as you
get like close to them, it'll kind of awaken a
bit and you'll have a system where you can go
and find ghosts in the town and they'll give you
hints about where to find them or if you know
where they are, like ways that you can hurt them
and stuff. So the first one I went to was
the fall in who's a character? The other ones, after
you beat them, you like learn their real names. I
don't know who this guy is, but I think he's
gonna I think it's gonna be like a reveal whatever
his actual name is, because he's being very cagey about
his identity. But once when I fight him, he throws
a like a holy Cross. It's a classic Castlevania item,
and when I beat him, you suck his soul into
the Arconic card and then you get that spell as
an nobility. And then also the bosses because like companions
that hang out with you throughout the game, so as
the game continues, every time something happens, Rose will say
something and then like her deck of cards will like
chime in and say other things, going on.
Speaker 2: Okay, did they give abilities or are they just buddies
that talk to you?
Speaker 1: So get he unlocks the cross spell? Like I was saying,
they each each card specifically has a spell associated with
You have a I don't know, it's not called Mana.
Maybe it is called Mana, but you have like a
magic bar and it uses a certain amount of that.
But then also when you beat bosses, they give you
I was surprised every time I beat a boss, I
got like three or four new things. So I beat
the Fallen and it got I got the Holy Cross,
I got to go to a new area obviously. But
then he gave me an ability called Pendulum, which is
basically just the whip. So eventually you'll get like a
main weapon that's a whip, but I didn't get that,
and you don't get it in the first three hours. Instead,
I have like a spell like thing that's like a
whip of light that you can use to kind of traverse.
You can swing on certain like grappling hooks. There's also
other ones you can just like direct directly launch yourself towards,
and you can also use it to grapple to enemies,
which is really cool for combat each weapon has a
like a distinct whip attack. So when you whip as
you're launching yourself towards someone. If you have like a sword,
it's like a cool slash. If you have the fists,
you'll do like an uppercut. So I just enjoyed seeing
what all those did. And then also you can use
like sometimes there's an enemy up on a ledge and
you have to grapple to that enemy to like platform
to get up higher, Like there's some secrets that are
hidden just by the fact that you can grapple on
the guys. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: I like that system of sorry, like the idea of
like killing bosses and getting their cards, Like it's a
lot of like you see that in other Castlevania games
and particularly DS ones, like Order of a Clicheo, where
you kill a boss or and you get like a
power from them, and you're kind of like building out
your roster to more enemies you kill. Like I've always
been a sucker for that system, like even Bloodstained it,
which is kind of the Castlovania spiritual successor. So I'm
glad that they have like a version of that in
this game.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, there's also something really fun about fighting a boss.
This happens a lot in like souls, like the Dark
Souls from Soft Games of You'll fight a boss and
you're like, gosh, this attack sucks. It has such a
crazy hip box or makes everything explode, and then you
beat them and you get their sword, You're like, oh
my gosh, I can make everything explode.
Speaker 2: Now with that thing, I can make other people angry
to it.
Speaker 1: Yes, so after the fallen uh oh. Also, he he's
like kind of like he gives kind of were wolf vibes,
but it's clear when you meet him he's just like
asking for souls and he's very not himself. Then I
fought Joan of Arc, who was very much not herself,
which was fitting because it was the that was the
chapel that we were in, and this is like a
corrupted version of Joan of Arc who failier Joe. Oh great.
Actually that's because Jean on the Arc is like how
you say in French of the Apostrophe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: But she did she ask you about that, by the
way the game, and she didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't give her enough time. I was kind of like,
let's get let's get down to the business.
Speaker 3: You know, three hours.
Speaker 1: But the whole thing is that in history, she's like
really young, she's like nineteen, and she leads these French
soldiers to victory and then basically gets sentenced from what
I understand to be like mostly bogus charges from the
church and is burned at the stake. And in this
she's like, basically as she was burning at the stake,
heard a voice that was like, hey, I can get
you out of this. Burning to death is pretty bad, huh.
And so in the game she accepts that offer and
then becomes this like new evil person and has a
bunch of fire based attacks as a result.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't blame her for that. Yeah, it's I
think if I was burning alive and I heard a
mysterious voice say I can stop you from burning alive,
this sucks, I think I would probably also, yes, thought.
Speaker 1: Also it wasn't God in this case, but if I
was Joan of Arc I'd probably assume it was God.
Assume like I did such a good job that this
is this has got to be what it is. Anyways,
one thing I did mention is I did you don't
have a parry at the start of the game, which
is not a big deal in the grand scheme of gaming.
But I feel like within the past like five years,
I become so accustomed to having a parry or like
a dodge roll, and instead the dodge button lets you
do a step backwards and you can slide under people.
So a lot of the early combat was interesting of me,
like kind of relearning how to fight perry lists and
it's totally feasible. I was just surprised by how much
of my instincts were being like questioned in those moments.
Speaker 2: Well, that's like classic Castlelania to have like the back
dash or some variation of that. Like I always think
of Sympothy of the Night with the cool moonwalk.
Speaker 3: That's where that's where it started. I think that is
the first one, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, dash is a very like new gaming thing, like
you kind of just get hit for hour.
Speaker 3: I never I love Sympathie the Knight. I never quite
got the hang of that backstep thing where you kind
of dash backwards, like I was always I never used
it really.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it does feel good when you time it right.
You feel really you feel really cool when with enemy
whiffs and you do a moonwalk.
Speaker 1: With the these bosses. I could kind of read and
be like, Okay, I'm supposed to backstep here or I'm
supposed to slide under them here, and that made it
just having essentially a place where I had to learn
how to fight them made it become a little more easy.
But beating Joan of Arc does un lack of perry,
and I was like, oh, thank goodness, I can go back.
Speaker 3: To after all that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what she was known for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, her varying perie.
Speaker 2: Huh is that what Paris is named after her?
Speaker 1: So hard They're like, gosh, you gotta change the name
of the city. But yeah, So then Joan of Arc
as like she drops the Sword of fair Bois, which
is like a huge, like two handed sword. She drops
a spell called Infernal Pyre, which is a move that
she uses that you can like basically the whole platform
you're on, the whole horizontal width of it. You can
make like flames erupt from it. So it's like really powerful,
but use a lot of mana. And then also an
nobility called Holy Light, which you activate by holding on
one of the triggers, and it puts this ball of
light around you and it's not a block, but if
you do it right. When someone hits you, then it's
a parry, but you can't like hold it down and
just resist attacks. But the I thought it was such
a cool use of like the Metroid Venus side of it.
Of there's these like walls of like kind of floating
rocks that solidify when you get near them, but if
you hold down holy light, you can go through them.
And so it makes a bunch of places just these
like really cool puzzles of you got to swing through
this wall, but then let go of holding down because
otherwise you'll fall into a pit of spikes, and just
kind of the managing of when you're intangible versus tangible.
And then the last boss I fought was Medusa, who
was very cool. It was the one where I was like,
I watched a YouTube video that was like every Medusa
fight in Castlevania history, because I was like, is this normal?
Medusa mainly was partially because of a note Kyle mentioned
of wrote. I wrote a piece in the upcoming issue
a game four, which of course you'd be very soon,
where she has a move and one of the ghosts
told me is like, hey, by the way, if she's
about to look at you, you can look away. That's
how Medusa works. If you don't make eye contact with
you her, it doesn't work. And we were like, are
there other instances of that in games? Because it feels
like the most obvious kind of game mechanic. But I
don't think it's a mechanic in other Medusa fights in
the Castlevania series. Maybe it's in other games, but yeah, that.
Speaker 3: Was like the note I left, which is maybe annoying
that I do sometimes when we're reading each other's work,
I leave like lots of editing notes, but sometimes I'll
just comment because I'm like, what is this thing? Like whoa,
that's weird. And it's like at the comment I left
for you, Charles, which were probably yeah I need to edits,
don't get this out here, it was I was like,
it's this. Surely there's some other game where you can
just look away from Medusa and it doesn't turn you
to stone, because like I was like, God of War
is a big one that comes to mind. It's like,
I don't think you can just like turn your back
and be safe, don't.
Speaker 2: I feel like a lot of games that depict Medusa,
especially post Good of War, where they treat her site
as like a vision cone that you just need to
like physically be out of the way of. So it's
not enough to just turn your back. It's like you
need to jump out of the way of it, even
if you're not actually looking at her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and she does have. She also has a crazy
full screen death ray that it's one of those moves
that will kill you basically instantly. And a lot of
these fights were very much like there's absolutely skill involved,
but it has almost more to do with just knowing
what to do when they do certain moves, of being like, oh,
you got to go to this part of the screen,
or you have to have this item equipped, you got
to do this in reaction or whatever. So she did have.
It's not like you can just look away from Medusa
and you'll be immune from the whole fight. But there's
like a move that petrifies you that it's cool that
you can kind of avoid and worth noting that it was.
I thought it was like a healthy difficulty, like I
enjoyed how hard it was. I was definitely dying. I
think I died five times in the fall and then
six times to Joan of Arc. But the guy next
to me at the preview, like never beat Joan of
Arc like he spent a whole time just stuck on
that fight.
Speaker 3: But outlet call him out right now.
Speaker 1: I will not, partially because he was a freelancer and
I was like, oh no, I trust I have been
in those situations where you're I, I guess I need
to beat this boss.
Speaker 3: I have fifteen minutes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, especially when you're like surrounded by other media
and you can see that they've passed where you are
and you're like, yeah're still stuck back here.
Speaker 1: That was I had a guy. The guy to my
left was way behind me. The guy to my right
was way ahead of me, to the point of like,
I don't know if he was watching the cut scenes.
I don't know if he does as.
Speaker 3: Good as far as it could.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, can I guess Charles, there's overall your impressions
of especially now that you've gone back, you can oh,
thank you, thank you, not as you've gone back and
played the Castlevania DLC for Dead Cells, which I love
Dead Cells, but I still have never played that Castlevania expansion.
Does Belmont's Curse does it feel more like that DLC,
like Dead Cells take on Castlevania or does does it
feel closer to like a traditional Castlevania as if Konamia
made it with some dead cells flourishes?
Speaker 1: So I as when I picked up the controller for
Belmont's Curse, I had this feeling of immediately like, oh,
I'm I'm back. I played a lot of Dead Cels
with my brother a few years ago, and it's one
of my brother's favorite games of all time, so I'm
like very familiar with how it feels. I picked it
up and I was like, oh, this feels very comfortable
to me. I know exactly how these like this should
feel to play. It feels very dead Cells. But then
when I went back to Dead Cells, it did feel
markedly different. So I don't know exactly what it was.
If it was just kind of the jump physics, or
the the speed or weight of the attacks or whatever.
Dead Cells feels a little bit I don't know twitch
ear is the word, but there's a hostility of the
dead too. Dead cells of like you have to be
very specific and precise and everything wants to kill you
if you're not like planning your approach into stuff, and
Castlevania was a little bit more like on an average screen,
I felt more like I was as powerful I was
supposed to as I was supposed to be. But I
can definitely see the comparison between the two, but I
don't think it just felt like dead cells.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, that I think that sums up Castlevania. Like Castlevania,
it's weird because the two d ones, especially as any
s ones, those are like notorious for being pretty hard, uh,
And a lot of that was maybe a little bit
more to like kind of like bs than than anything
of just like, oh, I'm stuck on a staircase and
there's like Medusa head flying and I can't jump on
a staircase, but I have to try to find a
way to climb up these stairs. Wh I'm getting hit constantly,
like more like Shenanigans like that, or like I got
hit and it knocked me back and now I fell
into a pit. Uh. Like the combat in those games
have always been even when you get into the the
later ones like there, I've always felt like kind of
like you, like, they're challenging enough, but I would never
say they were like exceptionally hard at least to me.
Like the bosses are a little bit more of a
different story, but like the rank and file enemies, there
were just more like okay, like that guy's up there,
I need to jump up and hit them before it
comes to me. Or I can use like a bunch
of different magic abilities or whatever it is you have
on you to.
Speaker 3: Kind of like there's not a lot of individual strategies
for each of the monster types. Really sure you're kind
of running through them this start.
Speaker 1: This game definitely had I liked that. I was, I
gotta find a better word that's sending them for this.
But the thing I say a lot is I was
paying attention while I was fighting them. I was being
intentional with the things that I was doing. I wasn't
just running through and just kind of spamming the attack
button or whatever.
Speaker 2: You were engaged in the combat, Yes, that's going through
the motions.
Speaker 1: A good example is there are archer enemies and if
you if you walk up to them to hit them,
they will kick you fast through. Then you can draw
your sword, but if you're far enough away, they'll shoot
the bow at you. So you know that if you
are far away, they'll be doing range attacks. But you
can't just run up and immediately hit them for free,
like they have a defense against that.
Speaker 2: So it's just.
Speaker 3: Stuff that seems like a little bit like an extra
bit of strategy I'm than I would expect in Castlevania.
And I don't mean that as a complaint against previous
Castolvania's part of the fun of Castlevania. The RPG ones
are like, you know, you struggle early on, but by
the end you're just like a You're just like ripping
through the castle and destroying everything in your path with like,
you know, a super powerful sword that's arguably overpowered.
Speaker 2: And actually, I just said RPG. How much of an
RPG is this, Like does it lean more into like
classic Castlevania of more or less an action side squirrel
or are there the more RPG symphony of the night
stuff like haven't in gear and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I haven't played something of the Night, but there
are like there's like I said, there's seven weapon types
and there's like slots for them in the menu. So
there's like maybe like twenty eight weapons or something like that.
Like there's three or four maybe twenty one twenty eight weapons,
three or four for each of the seven types. So
there's a lot of like items to be collected. And
as I was exploring, I was like, oh, I found
this new thing and that was cool. There is like
a level of like customizing your build. You can only
have one spell at a time, so you get to
pick out the spells that you have, and then there's
a system. They're like Works of Mercy. I think it's
called where. It's a little achievement you can get and
if you do that, you get essentially a skill point
for a spell. So I had one where I got
the you start with a fireball. It's like the Cursed
because that's who Rose is. She Also it's called Belmontz
Curse because she has a big cursed arm and there's
a whole thing of she tells the fall and that
she has to control her emotions or else it'll take
over her whole body and kill her. And I was like, oh, yeah,
that's note should collected.
Speaker 2: We could absolutely do a top five for tough arms. Yeah,
I mean so many of those video games we should
absolutely get on that.
Speaker 3: Here to the Kingdom four Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh. Anyways, she uh the fireball. If I hit twenty
any means with the fireball, then it does more damage
and does more knockback, or maybe it's bigger and does
more knockback, something like that, so there's a fun like
I would have spent a lot more time doing that
sort of stuff if I had the time. But there
is a world where you're spending time exploring specifically trying
to do these achievements to upgrade your spells and searching
for new weapon types to get, and in that sense
it feels kind of RPGE, but it's also it's all
options of more or less equivalent power. Like I'm not
I got the spear and I didn't use it for
very long because it's not really my place stole and
that's fine. It wasn't like I was like, gosh, I
need the next upgraded sword just so I can do
enough damage to beat this boss. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I reading your reading your feature Charles and talking to today.
I mean, the thing that I'm struck by is like you.
It's it's that kind of like perfect developer franchise combo.
You know, it's like, oh, yeah, of course the dead
cells folks should be tackling Castlevania like this is this
is like destiny, you know, and and it's like reassuring
to hear you play it, even as someone who's I
mean are like You're you're not like a big Castlevania fan.
It's like you have this history of the series or anything,
but just to hear you be like, oh no, it's
I really liked what I played, and like I was
disappointed I wasn't allowed to play more. It's like that's
like it's like, okay, it says it has the potential
to be as good as we hope Castlevania from the
makers of Dead Cells could be. You know, it's just
like okay, good, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2: Like I am so excited for this, Like this is
one of my most inti spated games in your Like
if you've noticed YouTube watchers and you've seen my eyes
kind of looked at the left. I've had the trailer
on my other monitor just tod myself of like how
the game looked and ran and every time, just like, man,
it looks rad Like I love Castlevania and I adore
Dead Cells. Like like I said Kyle, like it's a
match made in heaven. I am so so psychohnous. And
I love that it's in October, like like perfect mom
for it, like spooky season, like Halloween's my favorite holidays,
So this is like the perfect thing to get me
in the move for that.
Speaker 1: Let me find do you have the release date pulled up?
Speaker 2: October fifteenth?
Speaker 1: Okay, it is. It does come out the day before
my wedding. Hopefully I get an early coffee so I
can play it.
Speaker 2: I married very stressful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like you'll have a lot of free time leading
up to the wedding. Charles, that's fair, that's fair.
Speaker 2: Have you have you considered just bringing your Steam deck
up to the altar and just playing it as the
wedding is happening.
Speaker 1: I'll do like that thing in Friends where rossays the
wrong name, except I say Rose Belmont instead of my
fiance name. Yeah, I was gonna say. On the note
of them being the perfect developer, I did ask them.
I was like, what was the pitch? Like? Like when
you were like, hey, you want to make a game
and they're like, oh, we came up and we said, hey,
can we make Castlevania DLC for Dead Cells And they
were like, oh, do you want to make a game
Like Konami was like oh yeah, we know, we like
your stuff. You should make a whole game and they
were like oh my gosh. And they're like, well how
about this. We'll start with the DLC and if that
works out, we'll just do the game. But from their conversation,
they were like, there was never a point where we
were trying to convince someone to let us do a
Castlevania game. It seemed like they were just so happy
someone was like interested in the ip that they were like,
go for it. You guys are good, which is also
just I don't know, nice to hear. I think there's
a I don't know the people involved, but there's often
stories of cool games getting shot down or having a
don't through a lot of hoops to get to be
the specific way that you want it to be, And
this seems like a collaboration where all all the parties
are very satisfied.
Speaker 2: It's like the best case scenario, right, we all just
like I asked for a street and you gave me
the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like the idea that.
Speaker 3: Like they were they were like, yeah, do you guys
want a castle? Like they will go to Konami. They're like, hey,
would you be interested in making Castlevania game in Konami?
Like shuffling papers on the desk and being like, you
guys aren't I thought we already had you guys on this. Yeah. Oh,
by the way, important update for anyone screaming at their
car radio or whatever. Sonia Belmont was the protagonist in
Castlevania Legends for the game Boy, the only I don't
know if she's the only one, but there's we know
there's at least one other female Belmont who has been
the star of a Castlevania game.
Speaker 2: So gotcha. I've never played that one, so that's good
to know.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Maybe so apparently it's bad, so never mind.
Speaker 2: Well maybe that maybe that's even more of a replay.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, Well I guess you could say that
when they did the DLC Evil Empire was training for
the jump from Dead Cells to Castlevania. And speaking of
trains and jumps, Kyle, you reviewed a game called Densh Attack.
Speaker 3: That was beautiful that you should host all the time
with that kind of.
Speaker 2: Translation, Kyle, what have we talked about about acknowledging good transitions?
Speaker 3: Oh right, yeah, we don't ignore them. We pretend they didn't.
Speaker 1: Have transition or trainsstation. Kyle, you played a game called
Densh Attack.
Speaker 3: I did Densh Attack. It's good.
Speaker 2: I like it.
Speaker 3: It's a cool game. If you're not familiar, it is
a game where you drive a train at high speeds
through like a colorful anime inspired Apocalypse Dick Japan, and
it's like heavily inspired by like Tony Hawk in that well,
I don't know. I think actually that's too strong to
say heavily inspired as much as it's like a game
about the joy of like doing jumps and doing stunts,
which is Tony Hawk is just like one of the
best examples of it. So it's not necessarily that it's
like a Tony Hawk clone or whatever you want to
call a clone. Again, too strong a word, but like,
if you like Tony Hawk, you like Denshittack is basically
I'm getting it. But you're like ripping through these levels
and you're driving a train and the train can leap
and you can do train stunts in the middle of
the air and like land on tracks, and each level
is like uh specific. It's not like you are playing
the same level over and over. There's like there's a
ton of levels. I want to say, there's like fifty
or something like that, and.
Speaker 1: Each one a game that went on longer than you
expected it.
Speaker 3: Too, Yeah, which I don't say pejoratively. It's not that
I think it was like I don't think it. I
think it's as long. I think it was a good
length right like and it And the thing about the
length of a game is always dependent on like tone
and pace and Denshit Attack does a really good job
of like giving you something new every like eight levels
or so that like changes the next the levels following it,
you know, like you know, you start off with the
ability to jump between tracks and do tricks, and then
you get the ability to grind on rails, which is
like mechanically a little different, and like eventually you get
I don't want to like spoil too late, but like
like one for example, is like you get you can
start like like you know, like a like a trolley
that has the like or what am my trens like
a mono rail cable like a monorail where like the
cable holding the train is like above you. Like there's
stuff like that where you're like hanging from a cable
and you can like swing and do tricks and stuff
like that, and they sort of like uh, sprinkle that
out throughout the course of the game, so it's like
you it's you get like new abilities like pretty consistently
at a way where it like feels good.
Speaker 2: Does it feel like this might be a weird question,
but does it feel like you're controlling a train or
does it feel like you're controlling a skateboard disguise as
a train?
Speaker 3: In question, No, it does not feel like you're controlling
a train. Admittedly, I don't know what it feels like
to control a train, but this is like, this is
not a train simulator, like you are just like sprinting,
Like it's every level is like three to one go
and you like burst out of the gate. It feels
like which you know. I did a feature with them
for a while ago and was talking to them about it,
and I loved doing that zoom call with them because
they literally had like a little train like that. They
were like explaining like how what they do with the game.
It's like, yeah, we usually just hold a pen in
our hands. It's like that's the track and then the
train and then And the thing that like occurred to
me is like that is maybe you guys were like
what are you talking about, Kyle, But like, to me,
that is like a childhood experience that like we all
do at some point where you're like playing with a
little hot wheels car or something and like you're like
making go up walls and like jumping on off and
like you know, it's gravity doesn't matter, and it's like
you just like you're this is imaginative way to like
picture like moving a vehicle through in the environment that's
your bedroom and like making it jump over to your
bureau and like do flips before it lands on the
bed stuff, and like that's what Dentsha Attack is. Like
that is they have taken that sort of what I
think is like a pretty universal childhood experience and like
turn it into a video game because like physics and
gravity don't matter. You're just like going high speed. You're
leaping your train off the tracks and like going along walls,
and then like you're going underwater and you're doing crazy backflips.
And then there's like boss fights. There's one where you're
like fighting a mech through like a collapsing city and
like it fires a a fist at you. You know,
like that's like following you and like trying to punch you,
and you can like you jump your train off the
track and land on the fist and then you're controlling
the fist and like flying through the city and it's
like it's it's absurd, and it's like shockingly maintains that
absurd like throughout. Like you know, like you played that
first boss where you're fighting that giant like Gundam like
in the middle of a city and you're like, wow,
that's like can't get crazier than this, And then it's like,
you know one level like later you're like, you know,
this train's like firing giant baseballs at you and you
have to like jump through the air and like do
a trick to like ricochet it back. And like those
are like the first two examples. Like there there was
a boss fight like later in the game that like
I don't want to spoil that like like changed the
genre for a moment that was like really shocking and
cool and like I imagine people will be talking about
it for like a moment of the year kind of
kind of thing. But yeah, it's uh, it's it's it's
it's crazy, and it's like it's all wrapped around this
very heavily inspired by anime story of where you're like
you want to be the best denth attacker, which is
like doing these train stunts and racing and stuff like that,
and there's all these gangs. You know, there's like of
other dnsch attackers that you have to like first defeat
and then they will like join your team because you've
inspired them about how much you love densch attacking and
how good you are at it, and like classics. Absolutely
it is one hundred percent shown in and to the
point where it's like it does feel like like considered
homage as opposed to like cliche, Like you know, like
it acknowledges the tropes, and it's like I know what
you're doing, and I like it because there's always a
danger of that just feeling like, I this is so
predictable that it's boring, you know, But I think the
reason like as as sort of like fine as the
story is and like the characters are colorful and interesting.
The thing that it didn't it wasn't like my big
takeaway from my experience, right, it wasn't like, Wow, what
a fun story that was. The thing that like sticks
with you is just like the absurdity of the of
the train stunting and racing and stuff like that, and
so like when you have that to sort of grab
on to the fact that the story is just kind
of like you know, familiar and cute. Is like, it's
it's fine. It's like a nice rapping to have to
get you to the end. And I think the way
I phrased him my review is like I don't even
know if I could like point to like a favorite
character necessarily, you know, like they all have really distinct
designs and they're all from different gangs and stuff like that.
But I just was like none of them really stood
out to me as like, well, I like her, she's
really fun, you know, or I hate that guy. I
love hating that guy. It's like it doesn't get that strong.
But the core game of just like high speed train
racing through crazy environments and doing crazy stuff is like
is consistently fun and crazy throughout it, and it really does
feel original, Like there's not really I can't really point
to anything else that feels like this, Like I was
pointing to Tony Hawk in the beginning, but like I said,
it doesn't really it's not structured like Tony Hawk. It's
not really that you're trying to get, you know, the
most points in a two minute run in a small level,
Like it's you're just like trying to get through a
level as quickly as possible, like in a positive way.
It's just like it's just like a chase and you're
just doing crazy stuff along the way, and there's some
levels where you are doing laps and racing other trains,
and there's some where you actually have a bunch of objectives.
So like you know, you you go down a track
and it's like, oh, I got to go destroy that
statue over there, so I'll like turn to the right
and then you kind of loop back around and then
you gotta go so like, oh, I gotta go over
there and set that thing on fire by hitting a
wall with it. So all I go down that path
this time, and it's cool. It's a cool game that
I think is fun. It's it's like I guess the
big like I don't know big is is too I
keep saying too strong. But it's like the sort of
like the reason I'm not like over the moon for
this incredible experience is just because it's like it is
like so fast and so quick that like I never
really felt like I needed to engage with like the
trick system very much, and like it was just kind
of like it was just it's weirdly like almost passive
in a way, because like you are on train tracks
most of the time and there's not a ton of
choice in what you're doing, but it would be kind
of crazy if there was. It's like one of those things.
It's like, it's not that I'm saying like it needed that.
It's not like I needed more choice in like exploration
of the levels or anything like that. It's just that
it's like it's just it's like you didn't even get
a chance to think about it, you know, and it's
like it was, Yeah, so it's a cool game. Denshittek
is like, it's the thing I like about it is
just that it's like it feels unique. I mean, there's
a lot of unique and novel games in the indie
game space. There's a lot of people doing like things
you've never done in a video game. But like, I
think the reason that I feel like this is almost
more unique or novel is because I can connect it
to that like experience that I think we've all had
as a kid that no one has effectively gamified in
a weird way. It's like that's always so hard to do,
is like make something that feels unique but it's universal
at the same time. Like that's such a hard thing
to pull off, and I think they did.
Speaker 2: Does anyone say chow choo at any point in this game?
Speaker 3: I don't think so. Actually, no, there's not like a
lot of trained puns because it's like I'm it's because
denthre Attack is like its own thing, you know, it's
not like you know, they're not really like transporting pedestrians
from from station to station. Really Yeah, right, I.
Speaker 1: Did want to clarify, Uh, are you're playing as a
human that pilots the trains? Correct? Yeah, I can't remember
her name as an anthropomorphic train.
Speaker 3: No. No, everyone, like all the characters, everyone who does
denth Attack is like is like a racer.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: This is like a like a like a NASCAR anime
or something like that, you know, where everyone's got their
cars and they all look weird and have like unique
sort of personalities, and like you even unlocked trains that
have different abilities. But mostly I just like enjoyed sticking
with the sort of like the middle of the road
train that you start with, because a lot of the
abilities were like in this one, you can like you
can grind longer, but like you don't get as many
points from flips, and it was like the sort of
decision of like the gains usually yeah, the loss is
always outweighed the gains. To me, I never really found
a specific train that I was like, well, I'm gonna
use this one for the rest of the game, you know.
Speaker 2: I guess it'd be more like I'm better at grinding
that I am at flipping, so I'm gonna pick that train.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that they're Yeah, it's like there you
can pick different trains based on your sort of play style.
But like they the way the game like works, it
distributes the sort of abilities that you get like so
evenly in a complimentary way that I never really felt like,
you know, it's like, oh, I suck at doing that thing,
I should find a train that makes that easier. I
just was like everything I was, I was equally decent
at everything.
Speaker 2: Good at everything.
Speaker 3: Kyle will just say it no, like it's not true.
Speaker 2: I guess real quick. Before we move on, By the
time people are listening to this, we will have done
a stream of this game that you can go check
out on our YouTube channel in our twitch vod. Yeah,
it'll be me playing it from the beginning, from the
first couple of hours of it. You want to YouTube
come in? Who knows, but yeah, we'll have a stream on.
Speaker 3: It'll be a good game to stream because it starts
strong and fast. You know you're doing a lot right away.
It's it's not a game that's wasting a lot of
time on tutorials, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is the opposite of a real experience riding
a train famously starts extremely slow and you're just like, cat, we.
Speaker 3: Leave please, Yeah, no, not at all. Yeah, it's a
cool game. Yeah. Have you touched it at all? Charles,
because you had the switch to version, right, have you?
I meant to play this morning. I get to it,
no worries. I was just curious, like how the switch
version ran. It's not like a it's one of those
games that's like it's very it sounds like such a
negative thing. It's a lot of flat colors, right, it's
like a cell shaper world. Right, there's not like a
lot of like shadows or like textures, which is also tracing.
Liken't do a lot in this game, no, which is
like that's like why it's like can be so fast.
And I was just I just I'm hopeful. I'm not
really worried about it, but I just wanted to make
sure that the switch version like goes at a good clip,
which I bet it does. I'm not too worried about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, uh well, uh dunch Attack Kyle, you reviewed, what
score did you give it?
Speaker 3: I give an eight to five out of ten eight
five Former Magazine. Yeah it's cool, it's a good.
Speaker 1: Game, Earns, Earns the g I must play Badge actually,
Charles at Oh, it's editor's discretion. Okay, my bad, my bad.
Speaker 2: Editor's discretion, Badge.
Speaker 3: Yes, right, I didn't actually am.
Speaker 2: So that's.
Speaker 1: Uh well, going on to our next game, I was
going to try to come up with a really good
uh pun for the Marcus is going to be playing
Dune Attack on stream and speaking games. Marcus is playing
we have a game called the Incident at Galley House.
I think Marcus you I was on vacation recently and
you tagged while it was gone, But you were like
Eric Van Allen and Charles, this is a game that
you guys would be interested in based on our previous
love of like Puzzly Avenger type stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well not just that, but specifically I rope you
guys into playing the Root Trees Are Dead last year,
which was one of my favorite games of twenty twenty five.
I reviewed it and then I needed more people to
be on my side for end of the year, and
thankfully you guys played it and shared my affinity for it.
But because of that, so the Incident of Galley House
is the next game by Evil Trout, who was the
developer of the Root Trees Are Dead. It's Evil Trout
and another gentleman named William Russ, so it's sort of
a collab. But Evil Trout reached out to me, I
guess because I reviewed Root Trees and I've been screaming
from the root tops that a Root Trees is good,
go play it. And he sent me a code to saying, hey,
my next game's coming out. Do you want to check
that out? And I was like absolutely, because I've been
waiting on this game for like the last year. When
I saw that he already had something else coming out. So,
and it's it's very Root Trees coded, like the way
it's an interesting game in terms of a structure and
the best way, if I had to like be reductive,
it's Root Trees with a bit of clue mixed int okay,
so it shares root Tree's premise and that you are
a investigator of some sort. You go to a house,
the Galley House, which is just this old condemned mansion,
like huge mansion, and it is the site of a
series of mysterious deaths that have involved at least a
dozen people that we're all living in his house or
staying in his house over one night, and you get
a newspaper saying, like, all these people died under mysterious
means in the same night and in different ways. And
you have this strange machine that has the ability to
recreate scene like crime scenes basically, And so you go
into this house and you're trying to piece together every
moment of that night to try to figure out one
who are these people because you don't have, like in
a very Route Trees way, you don't have their names,
and you don't have their photographs. So the way they
appear in game is that they're kind of silhouettes. It's
very reminiscent of Tacoma. If you guys played Tacoma, the
Fulbright game from a like god years ago now, but
the way that game kind of like it had a
similar structure of like scenes would be played with like
these sort of like colored silhouettes of the characters. It's
like that, and so you're trying to get that identifying
information by so the UI of this machine. It's separated
into three categories. So you have the list of people
that were killed. You have a the tab for the
locations of the mansion, of which you start by not
knowing any of them. So you're in the house, but
you don't know anything about the house. You don't know
how many rooms there are, you don't know what the
rooms are, so you have to figure out what rooms
are even in this house, as well as a few
areas outside the house, just kind of on the grounds.
And then you have a timeline. It's divided into twenty
six scenes that sort of break up what happened over
the It's like one night and then the following day
that it seems like everything goes down and you're typing
in you're sort of using information to type in codes
that then reveal a scene that involves the characters that
you searched and the room they were in at a
certain point in the timeline. Are you guys with me
so far? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Somewhat, Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 2: It's weird. Like even if you look at a trailoay,
you see like the kind of like interface your right,
and it's like it's weird to look at until you
start messing around with it yourself. So like a basic
idea is that the very first scene of the game,
it's the more or less the protagonists will say, or
at least the first character introduced with but kind of
seems to be positioned as much of the protagonists as
he can be. Is a gentleman arrives at the Galley House.
And the Galley House there are among the people are
living there, multiple of them are part of the Galley family.
There are other people in your house who are not Galleys,
but are like friends or like close like acquaintances. You're
the only one that is kind of almost like a stranger,
like you were invited to the Galley House by a
name named Rupert Galley, who you don't know who he is.
You just got this mysterious invitations that ain't come to
my house. You show up there on a rainy night,
the butler drives you there. You wind up getting the
car stuck in the mud because it's pouring outside. And
also I should mention this game is set in like
nineteen thirty six or something, but the character you're controlling
seems to be from the modern day, so you're kind
of like almost like investigating a cold case.
Speaker 1: Basically, we talked about Top five Cursed Arms. We should
do top five games where you arrive at a remote
manner during a rainy night, because that's also I feel
like a very common.
Speaker 2: Was seance of Blake manor was it raining outside It
wasn't night, I don't know if it was.
Speaker 1: To show up anyways, continue market.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you show up there and you go to
the door, you say, hey, I got invited by this
guy Ruper Galley. And the thing is that no one
seems to know who that is, despite several of these
people sharing the same last name, and so it's mystery
upon mystery of trying to figure out well, like, okay,
so who is Ruper Gali? Why was this guy invited
if he's not even he seems to have no relation
to the people in the house. None of the people
in the house seem to know who he is. Also,
they have their own thing going on because they had
a big they're having a big gathering of their own
that you kind of have stumbled into, so you're trying
to figure out, like, what are they doing here? Why
are they here? And so it's like the more you
kind of dig up scenes, the more you're kind of
piecing together who these people are, their personalities or relationships
to each other, and then ultimately how they all died.
And so it has the Routrees thing of like, so
it has the Root Trees notebook, same exact notepad of like,
you can take as many notes as you want. You
can pluck out lines of dialogue from seeing transcripts and
just paste them right into the notepad with the exact
timestamp of where they are, so you can jump right
to that scene later if you just need to re
reference it. You can highlight lines of dialogue within the transcripts,
so it's just easier to point out if you're just
reading through it again, which spoiler, you'll be doing that
a lot, and and other like cool quality of life things,
which one thing I love about Root Trees was just
like so many in game resource just for just trying
to keep the mountain of information that you were given
in check, because there is there's maybe as much, if
not more information that you have to juggle in this game,
it's it's less so much like Root Truths is about
keeping track of multiple types of like periodicals and like
web pages that you have to go through, where this
one is trying to keep track of where everyone is
at a certain time. So, like I said, like you
you'll find a lot of it is just listening to
context clues of a scene where like let's say you
unlock a scene and like seeing five or hour five,
I don't know how much time is supposed to progress
throughout these scenes, Like it's like is this like an
hour later or a few hours later, But like if
you unlocked, you can unlock scenes out of order, and
honestly you will because you'll get to like let's say
you actually seen one and then you unlock scene five,
but then you're wondering what happened in that gap of
time with all these characters, where were they? And you
just kind of have to listen to the current conversations
and it'll drop context clues about like yeah, I just
got done to talk to so and so in this room,
and then you'll go like, oh, that's a room that exists, okay,
and then you'll take the initial of that room. You'll
type in in the tab that has the rooms, and
then every time you figure out a room, it shows
up on the map, and then eventually you'll fill out
like a three D map of not only the room
in the house, but where it's laid out in the house,
because that can be a clue of like okay, if
this room is here, then that means they couldn't be
over here because that's a far walk unless something happened.
But then you'll again you'll learn characters' names just because
they'll start talking to each other right and you know,
you can update their names over times. Originally everyone is
just assigned a number, so everyone's just like, okay, that's
number three, that's number four, and then you'll fill out
their names and then eventually you'll on like photographs that
you can match them so you can actually get visuals
of them. But it's the same like it's it's such
a fun exercise, much like Root Trees of just listening
to these conversations and just trying to like pick anything
that seems searchable in this machine and then seeing you
fit on lots of scene. And it also appreciated that
it does the root trees thing where every every time
stamp basically tells you how many unlockable scenes are left
in the very root trees way where it says like
there's still one more thing you can find here, so
maybe don't move on yet and then win there's none.
They'll tell you like, Okay, you're good. Uh, it's all
is this to say an apology to this sounds confusing
because it's a it's a weird game to describe. It's
really good. It's really really good. I've not finished it yet.
I was trying to see if I could finish it
before the podcast. I'll finish it this week, for sure.
I'm over halfway through it. But it is one of
those nights where or those games where there's so many
just like fun cozy evenings where it's like, I'm just
gonna play some of this. I'm gonna I've got some ideas,
I've got some leans, i gonna I'm gonna, you know,
check on and then I'm gonna listen to some old
conversations and have these epiphanies that I didn't have the
first time, or like I'm going to re examine the
scene that I've seen five times, but now I've got
this new information that maybe changes everything. The story gets
a lot crazier the more it goes in terms of
like just just fun little twist where you're like, oh,
I don't know what's happening now. I thought I knew
it was going on, but now something else is happening
and I don't even learn what's what's really at play
going on here on top of just the mechanics being
so and then like it's such a like a creative
format for this, like just having to get three pieces
of information and then type them as a single like
line of code into this machine of like time time,
the time that had happened, a location had happened, and
then however many characters you think we're part of this
scene and then see if it matches or not, and
manipulating just that format as as you know makes sense,
but it's good, Like that's why I like Charles you
would be all over this. I know Eric would be.
But I hopefully it sticks to the landing with the sort
of like the resolution of the mystery. Hopefully it makes sense.
But I'm like all in on it one day right now,
Like it's it's fun to get like basically another root trees. Yeah,
like two years in a row. It's it's awesome.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, for what it's worth, I did
completely follow your whole description of the game. And also
someone who played Root Trees, I I didn't realize it
was the same people. I think you just mentioned it
as a comparison point. I just don't think I read
it all the way through because I was on vacation.
Now I know what it is. I'm I'm gonna like
play this tonight. I'm very, very excited about this. This
is one of the Root Trees was a game I've
mentioned a few times on the show of My Future
mother in law. We like live in a house with
her sometimes and she's here right now, and so she'll
sit in a living room while I play games on
the TV. And Root Trees was a game she enjoyed,
or at least was it. She has lots of strong
opinions about games she doesn't like or doesn't understand, and
that was one where she could follow it enough to
be like, oh, okay, so I feel like this is
going to be a mother of Law approved game.
Speaker 2: And it's the same thing with Routries, where like how
you progress through it is purely based on how you
approach it, whether you try to like I'm going to
constantly move the timeline forward and not do so much
backfilling of like I need to know where this guy
was three scenes ago, if I already know where they're
going to be in the future, or if it makes
sense like actually, maybe I'll stop progressing at a certain
point and I kind of want to backfill. I need
to know where everyone was up to this point, because
I feel like that's gonna give me context to move forward.
It's like, however you think make sense in your head,
or if you just want to go for like I'm
going for completionis like I want to know where everyone
was at every hour of this this night. So it's
been really fun to kind of like go back and
plug in holes or like follow one character in particular,
like I need to know where this person was all
the times. I think they're the key to answering a
few their questions later on. But yeah, it's it's really good.
I'm really excited to finish it, and I would like
to write a review of it, so we'll we'll see.
Speaker 3: Do you do you type in this game? Like like
type in like I'm wondering if you need a keyboard
to play the game.
Speaker 2: Okay, you do type into the machine, like do you
have to punch in the code that looks up everything. So,
like I said, you punch in like pretty much like
abbreviations of like okay, I need to And it's also
got a little bit of a of a tack tile,
uh sort of like not Rube Goilberg, but sort of
like messing like with a toy or whatever where. Occasionally,
because you're inside this abandoned building, you're running on a
power generator to make this machine work, and occasionally the
power will go out and so you have to like
manually kind of like hold a click the mouse down
to like spind a little generator to turn it back on.
And then if you want to turn the dial to
set whatever time that you were trying to search for,
you have to turn a little dial on the machine wheel.
But other than that, yeah, you have to type in
like the names and also your notepad to type things.
So this is only l PC by the way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, my wife and I the while I'm waiting,
the steam machine is on its way, which is exciting.
But uh, lately my wife and I have been doing
a lot of docked steam that Steam Deck, docked steam
Deck with a Steam Controller, Like we've been playing a
lot of games that way. But yeah, it sounds like
this is when I would have to I'd have to
go track down onboard or something like that.
Speaker 1: I've been doing. Yeah, I'm doing docked when I did
uh root Trees, I did docked steam Deck, wireless mouse,
wireless keyboard. But there's also it's a lot to plug in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I will say. I'm on the Steam page. It
does say it has full controller support.
Speaker 3: Okay, maybe I'll maybe I'll try it. Yeah, I've been
liking the Steam Controller, like it's it's like I still
don't really like, you know, mouse based games, but it's not.
My wife and I've been playing like Road to Empress,
which is like a weird FMV game and it's like, which,
actually it's funny. I brought that one up because it's
actually doesn't play nice with the Steam Controller, and we've
been using a wireless mouse, but like just stuff like
that where you're just like clicking, it's nice to have
the pad on the controller to just kind of like
you know, click stuff.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, well that is Marcus. You say the
whole is the incident at Galley House. Yep, the incident Galleyhouse.
I believe it came out today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as we're recording. The game is out today, so
you can play it right now. It's on Steam. I
think it might be on the Epic Store, but in
general it's a PC only game.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And if you're interested in more murder mystery games, I'm
going to talk about my review of The Mermaid Mask.
But first we're going to take a quick ad break.
We'll see you guys right after this.
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Speaker 1: And welcome back to the Game Reformer show. I just said,
we talked about the rubbing mask, but I decided to flip.
Speaker 4: Things around a little bit, or would you lie to
us kind of like how you flip yourself around a
little bit in Heave Ho Too.
Speaker 1: That's the game that I changed it just to make,
just to make the transition work.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm reviewing Heave Ho Too. I the review will
be live at this point, but I have no scored
it yet at the time of recording, so I'm not
gonna say score. But I like the game a lot.
I had not played the first Heave Ho and Brian Shay,
who usually assigns their reviews, is like, Hey, I got
this code for a game and you might like it.
And it's like a funky physics based co op game
and that's like my exact jam. And the best part
is my brother is in town for the summer because
he has the summers off because he works as like
a teacher, So I got to play with him, and
he's the guy I would always play this sort of
stuff with and it is awesome. So you play as
like a little ball and you've got two long arms
and you can grab use the bumpers on the controller,
and each hands can grab and swing around. And I
think the thing I like about the game so much
is it's a very basic control scheme, very basic premise
of you. It's just swing from here to here. You
can hold hands with the other people you're doing call
up with and become like a really long chain and
try to coordinate to go from point A to point B.
But each world in the game, your goals and all
the mechanics are very different. So like the first world
is like a kind of a ski area where there's
like are they gondolas or whatever? The ice the carts
you sit on.
Speaker 2: Yet ski lift.
Speaker 1: That's what I was looking for. Okay, I think there
are also golden whatever it is like carts that you
can go on. It's pretty straightforward of like get from
point A to point B, don't fall off the cliff,
but if you do, it's fine, no one cares. You'll
respond pretty quickly. The next world is like kind of
like a museum and each level has a key and
you got to find the key and get it to
the end. So there's more like opening drawers, and one
of them has you sort paintings by year on like
a timeline based on like the things that it's depicting.
There's another one where, like the last level in the
game has like portals, like portal the game style portals.
I don't know if there's other kinds of portals. And
then there's like.
Speaker 3: Machine Minneapolis Portal Lounge that I went to, which is unrelated,
which surprised me when you went there. I was really
I made a little Instagram video that you can find
on the game Former, and my wife watched it and
she's like, oh, I thought it was like Valve portal theme.
I was like, no, no, it's just it's is called portal.
Speaker 1: Also, Kyle, did you have to did you have to
go through TSA to do that? I did?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was not totrail us too much little thing
to do. Yeah, I bought a plane ticket. No I didn't.
What they did is like they invited game in for
me to go check this thing out. I was like, yeah, cool,
Like it's like a little a lounge you can go
play video games out at the Minneapolis Airport, which I
was like, yeah, I'll check that out. It's not it's
like a twenty minute drive to go to the airport
for me. And they gave me a day pass where
I had to go to like information and they had
my name and I give my ID. But then I
had to go through security like I wouldn't you know,
and like it was such a weird experience and feeling
to go through airport security and not get on a plane.
I went through security, I checked out the lounge, which
you can check out a little video on our social
media tails, and then I went and got a sub
from Firehouse Subs because that's the only Firehouse Subs in
Minneapolis right now.
Speaker 2: Where I was like, Firehouse Subs is great. They're not
sponsoring us.
Speaker 3: No, no they're not.
Speaker 2: But it was just like.
Speaker 3: It was funny because I was texting my this I
totally derailing. I'm sorry, Charles, but I texted my wife,
we're trying not to do fast food and stuff, and
I was like, we were, we would like a Firehouse
sub When else am I gonna like go to the
airport and come home like this.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's fast food. I think a sub
is like it's like a step above. I think it's fine.
Speaker 3: I got it on wheat, so I'm doing good. It
was it was healthiest, that's true. That basically makes it
like healthy.
Speaker 2: But Heave Ho Too.
Speaker 1: Has portals that are not like the portal gaming rounds.
Speaker 2: And there's no fireout subs in this game as far.
Speaker 1: As uh there's not. But there are levels where you
construct sandwiches.
Speaker 3: There's like that you're that's not a bit for real.
Speaker 1: That's not a bit. No, there's a one of the
worlds is like a kitchen I can transition to uh
it is uh so, So there's the level variety in general.
I really really liked it. I like that you're switching
up the things you have to do a lot. There's
also a lot of optional objectives. So there's like tokens
you'll find in the level. You got to bring it
to the end, and it's one of those things that's like, oh,
I'll just grab it and bring to the end. Oh wait,
I only have two arms, and if one of them
is holding a coin, I can't like swing myself around.
The physics don't work that way, So usually you have
to hold one end and then your co op partner
holds the other end, and then you become like a
two person chain with a coin in the middle, which
is cool.
Speaker 2: I mean that's kind of these games, right, it's just
le you and a fre and just being human daisy chains.
Speaker 1: But then there's also silly stuff of like there's a
part where there's like a catapult, so I'm just like
launching someone across the stage and hoping they like cling
to a wall where you say.
Speaker 2: Marcus it can you play this by yourself? And if so,
is that even a good idea?
Speaker 1: You cannot?
Speaker 2: Okay, you have to have at least one other person.
Speaker 1: Yes. Also one of the reasons that Brian gave to
me the review is I tend to have people around
that will can make review games with me, which is
not always the case of a game.
Speaker 2: You have friends.
Speaker 1: H yeah, I mean I have a fiance who plays games.
Speaker 3: We get it, Charles, people like you and want to
spend time with you.
Speaker 1: Anyways. Uh. The My main complaint with the game, if
you can even call it that, is I just don't
love the chef world, the sandwich thing, the chef World
and then there's a Medieval World. There's just two. There's
levels in each of those that I find different and
not a fun way and a thing of the chef ones.
It's a lot of you making recipes, so it's bringing
items from one part of the stage to another part,
and it's just like clearly not what the game was
kind of built around. It's just like moving other objects
that are that big, and it was something that like
me and my brother we played that we didn't really love.
And then there's some levels in the Medieval World that
drove me crazy where you have to transport a throne
and a king sitting on that throne and you have
to move that to the end of the level without
the king falling off. So it's like this like goofy
floppy physics game essentially like a bucket of water without
spilling any of the water out. Luckily, if you spend
a really long like if you pass the ten minute
mark on a level, like a flying cat drone will
show up and if you grab it, then it spawns.
It turns you into a like a drone that you
can just fly someone to the end of the level.
So we did that with the throne one because it
was driving us crazy in or one of the thrown ones. Anyways, Yeah,
and then uh, I also wanted to say that there's
a lot of alternate achievements. So there's like the tokens,
there are silhouettes in levels where it's like if you
put yourself in a certain position, you'll get like an achievement.
There are items, so every time you do a certain
number of achievements, there's like a little experience bar and
it unlocks new stuff. So once you get the camera,
there's a whole new like two pages of achievements you
can do, of things you can take pictures of of
like and it's all like encouraging you to experiment with
weird stuff. So the Chef World has a blender and
one of the achievements is to take a picture with
friend juice. And it's if one of you goes in
the blender and the other one turns it on, it
puts out like a colored cup of juice. And that's
I guess friend juice, because you got put in a
blender a bunch of stuff like that that.
Speaker 3: Like friend juicers and friend juices, that's what you have.
That's how you're able to play all these co ops.
Speaker 1: That's what was in this goblet and now it's gone.
But yeah, and then uh, there's also uh. As you do,
each achievement fills up the siluxp bar and it unlocks
lots of skins, and most of them are not most
of them, I don't. I don't know the exact percentage
of them. A lot of them are like crossovers with
other indie games. So Shovel Night, I have not gotten
Shovel Night yet. Okay, fully possible in the game.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean a's Mena's coming up now right,
mean it's gonna take.
Speaker 1: A I got in among us crewmate pretty quick. We
have the Lamb from Cults of the Lamb. Uh. We
have the main guy from Kingdom Come Deliverance to which
I thought was funny, kind of a human head.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, are they all like Devolver published
game characters? But then you throw that out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a I want to I think it's a skull.
I think it's from something. It might not be from something,
but I was thinking maybe it's like from Sea of Thieves,
but it just had like it was a skull with
a distinctive appearance. To me that I thought looked familiar.
Speaker 2: It's like, this is an old game, but I thought
of Skulls of the Showgun.
Speaker 1: It also kind of looked like a medieval Is that
like an old PS one game?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, that medieval the PS one has.
Speaker 1: Some reason that that skull I feel like a distinctive
shape in my head.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Sir Daniel Fordescu.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, the the game that they remade that. I
don't think anyone bad it than I. Ye, like there
was you know, like I did you okay because I.
Speaker 2: Was as a kid. Yeah, I mean, I don't.
Speaker 3: Think it was even bad or anything. It was just
like one of those It's like Sony is doing another
remake of one of it's like famous PlayStation games, and
then it just that one just like what just didn't
make a splash at all for whatever reason, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if it was made an the r E engine,
we'd be talking about it exactly.
Speaker 1: That's true. Anyway, is that TIFO two? I like it
a lot. We'll probably score in the eight range. It
was fun fun to play with one other person. It
was more fun to play with two other people. And
I bet if you got a whole couch of four
people to play. It'd be great. Also, you don't have
to beat the worlds in order, you have them all
unlocked from the get go, which is a nice way
of like if you just bring a bunch of people
into the game, you guys can just jump around and
just see what you like and what feels good and
it'll be fun too and lock stuff.
Speaker 2: You know, it would be a great place to play.
This is with other passengers at the portal lounge at
the Minneapolis Airport while snacking on some delicious firehouse subs.
Speaker 1: Okay, two questions now, Kyle, One can you bring other
food into the portal lounge? And two is it just
bring whatever games you want or is it like set
games there?
Speaker 3: To answer your first question, it's funny you say that
because they did specifically like talk about that with me,
and that like most lounges are really like like they
don't they want they have dress codes often at airport lounges,
but like at the portal lounge, you can you can
wear whatever you want and you can bring in food
from the outside. They don't care. They're very inclusive Pom
that way. That was like among their bullet points that
they were sharing with me. And then in terms of
like the games, like they just have a bunch of like, uh,
it was like fifteen stations and it was like five
switch to s, five PCs, five PlayStations, and five xboxes.
Is that twenty? I think I got my math Ron.
But like they're just set up and like you you
could sign into your account. I wouldn't recommend doing that.
I probably don't want to like sign into your Steam
account at an airport and then walk away then and.
Speaker 2: Then I'm going to download a big game on airport.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what, I kind of want to play
Call of Duty. Let me download this here real quick.
But but they just had like they had games like
running right, like they just like you, My Mario Wonder
was running on one and like crash Man it was
running on another, and like they just have games on
the hard drive. So it's not really like it's not
like you can bring a you know, your switching and
hook it up to a TV and play.
Speaker 2: You could put your switch into the dock if you
already had your switch. I guess you could, I would imagine, right,
But they had.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they had some pretty hardcore locks on those things.
So I don't know. I guess you. Maybe you could
call somebody and be like, I want to put my
switch on here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I gotta play EVO two with three other strangers with.
Speaker 1: Evo for what it's worth. Does have online multiplayer? I
played couch co op does I'm online? And I also
think it has like matchmaking, so if you just buy
it by yourself, you could you could play with strangers
on the internet. And it has like some emote systems
and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 1: Well, Kyle didn't fly at the Minneapolis airport, but he did.
He could have flown over to d Topia, which is
a game that Marcus played this week, and he's gonna
tell oh that's all about he threw.
Speaker 2: Me off far as like Kyle Tong has he played
Theutopia is Dutopia place right?
Speaker 1: A place okay?
Speaker 2: Good? Cool, and it's the best place you'll ever want
to live, which is a big sort of theme of
this game. So this is an Anna Perna published game.
The developer is, uh, let me pull them up real quick.
But like Anna Perno's name on games usually has a
lot of weight with me because they tend to have
a pretty good track record with the things they decide
the back. This is by Maru Mittwo Maru midtwo Games.
I might be butchering that. I apologize, but yes, it
is a a puzzle game but also like a bit
of a life sim in there, where you play as
an eighteen year old and named Shiro who arrives at Dyetopia,
which is basically this AI controlled human paradise, at least
that's how they build it. It is this very like white, sterile,
clean looking sort of like living like this city, and
there's other humans there, but it's largely controlled by AI.
There's a bunch of like drones and other little machines
that sort of like actually run things. And you have
arrived to be a facilitator, which is like the role
that you play it in the city, of which there
aren't many of you, so everyone kind of treats you
as being special and like a big deal. But your
role is basically to make sure that everything is okay,
like you deal with citizens problems. You'll do like mechanical repairs,
but like you got like a little jumpsy little hat,
and everyone just kind of looks at you like, oh man,
that's the facilitator. He'll fix things. And the way this
world works, which is maybe the most fascinating thing about
it so far is that it's set seemingly like a
really long time after the current present day. Like they
kind of refer to like the past as the Old Era,
and it seems like they are implying that like humanity
has either wiped themselves out or done something to where
they have like screwed the planet over and so over time,
the remaining humanity has like built these AI controlled cities
that uh, because there's multiple other topias, like you're just
in Dtopia, but there's other like there's like a I think,
like a g Topia somewhere. But the idea is like, Okay,
back in the old era, there was a lot of
human suffering. What if we just made an AI's controlled
city that takes care of everything and we eliminate pretty
much any sense of struggle or hardship and and maybe
thinking as well, because the machines take care of everything
and everyone in the in the city is super down
with this. A lot of them are everyone was you know,
no one was born from the old eras that they
talk about like how life used to be and and
just sort of like almost like a legendary sense, and
it's really fascinating because like a lot of the more
interesting war bids are just from talking to people. You
don't have to, but I recommend it where they'll just
like hammer home how this is the perfect place to
be and how I think the motto is that we
try to make the greatest life for the greatest number
of people, and like that is kind of the philosophy
that drives everything. There's a there's even one line of
dialogue where someone mentioned that, like you find like a
garden and there's like a like a water area, and
someone told me, like, yeah, even the water here is oxygenized,
so it's impossible to drown. Yeah, Like you get all
the meals are prepared for you in advance, like everyone
has a little living units, and you get like a
little mini and it's like, Okay, here's where you're gonna
be fed today. It's all gonna be good. A lot
of the food is synthetic, but it's okay. And the
big key.
Speaker 3: Is that everyone reminds me of actually is the portal
lounge at the Minneapolis Airport. It's like if you go
in like like food is just included when you go
in there, and it's just.
Speaker 1: Like I felt it coming. Yeah, in Dytopia, it's only
Firehouse subs. It's like the rest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just different subs on the menu, but it's
all from Firehouse. Yeah, sponsors Firehouse least, but yeah. But
the biggest detail is that everyone's brains or whatever it is.
They haven't detailed how this works, but I imagine everyone's
brains is plugged into this machine that they call like
a visualizer, and basically the AI controls what you see,
so it eliminates seeing anything remotely unpleasant, and it turns
out that what you're looking at in terms of the
city that is not how it actually looks. And as
a facilitator, you have the ability to basically go into
the back end of Dytopia to work behind the scenes
in case something breaks, and you see what the city
actually looks like. And it's kind of like it's like
a mix between the matrix and the sunglasses from they
live of like the moment you take the glasses off,
you see how the world actually looks. And so when
you go to these designated terminals throughout the city, you'll
flip into I'm trying to remember what they call the
basically the back end of dtobia. But basically, you see
you removes the visualizer and you see the city as
just this really cold and like blue, and it just
looks like just a bunch of metal machinery everywhere, and
you see people just hanging out. But they can't see this,
but they're aware of it, like they're not tricking them.
They know that they are all plugged into these visualizers
and they'll reference it and they'll see every now and
then you'll see like visual glitches of like, oh, there's
a creature here that we can't see, Like it's almost
like blurret out and so like you need to go
in the back end and see what that is. And
so they don't acknowledge it. But again they're all just like, eh, whatever,
this is cool. We're happy. They even have like genetic
matching for like mates, and you have to take like
personality tests and yeah, it's a it's an interesting world.
But the main gameplay hook is that so you have
to go to work every day and they say straight
up like the job that you have is worthless because
the AI controls everything, like you don't actually like human
input is not needed. But we learn from the old
era that humans need tasks to prevent them from being lazy.
So you're you have everyone that lives here has to
go to a job. But the job is an incredibly
simple task. And the way that it is and unfolds
are these kind of like interesting number puzzles, where like
the first variation of them is that you have these
like numbered blocks that you have to match, like it's
like on a grid, and you have to get one
block from one end to the other and put them
in their matching blocks. So if you have a number
one block, there's an empty number one block somewhere else,
you got to guide it to get there. And then
to get more complicated, we'll to start putting obstacles in
front of you. There'll be switches that you have to
hit to kind of like remove an impassable barrier, and
then they'll put like they'll add more blocks of like Okay,
now I have one, two, three, four blocks and they're
all in different places. How what's the order to get
them where they need to be. There's another variation that
comes later on where they kind of take the form
of line puzzles, where you have to like guidelines through
different number nodes. And then there's certain nodes that like
multiply them. So you're like, Okay, if I want to
get from one to four, maybe you have to multiply
it into two and then multiply it into a four
to get the four. But you have to follow like
a certain route on the line map. It's very witnessing,
like like witness is what is.
Speaker 1: The function of the puzzles? Like what are you achieving
when you do is it like representing Like you're in
the computer doing stuff.
Speaker 2: Like you go to a like I think you're doing
it on a computer, Like you go to like a
works a work area each day, like you have to
every morning you have to go to work. I should
kind of probably press like this is kind of almost
structure like a life sim where like your day is
regimented each day. If like you wake up in your
little apartment, you eat breakfast, you get dressed, and then
you go to work, and so you walk to down
to Utopia, go to the workstation, and then you're just
in this interface where you're doing these number puzzles and
in the in the narrative, you only work during the
morning and then for the rest of the afternoon you're
free to do whatever you want. Or whatever story thing
that takes place. But doing these puzzles and doing well
gives you you points, which I think you stands for utopia,
but it just keeps makes me think of the Ubisoft
points from there, Like they're like launcher.
Speaker 1: You can spend them on a battle pass in a
Sassafied black fleg recinc to get like a Neon blue
monkey for your ship exactly.
Speaker 2: You do use them to buy new either food because
you have to eat throughout the day. But I don't
know how like crucial that is. Like there's times for
Shiro if you don't eat lunch, hell mention it's hungry,
but there's no like meters or anything, So I don't
know if I haven't tried to like starve him and
see if there's any like consequence for that. But you
can buy food from various vending machines if you don't
want to eat at home, and you can buy different
decor items for your house to make it less sterile
and kind of add some more personality to it. Like
right now my apartment has like a workout like cycle
and like Madison Ball, and then I have like paintings
and I added like a nice little coffee machine. Recently,
I have a cat now, which is like a whole
side quest to get a cat, which is like one
of the few living animals in Dytopia because apparently they drop.
They're like, yeah, people got bored of real animals, so
now we have machine animals and people want those better,
Like people just prefer that, which is like wild to me.
But but you're also so yeah, you're earning, you're doing
this what they say is a meaningless task. And the
puzzle themselves are like fun, like they're like fine number puzzles,
Like some of them do get kind of tricky, and
you can actually do overtime where you do like a
set quota and they say, okay, you're done. It work
for today. But if you want to earn more points,
you can. You can do some more like another batch,
and I always do just because I want to try
to buy everything in the store from my house. And
also they'll tell you that you did a good job.
They're like, wow, you're really you're a really good actuator.
Speaker 1: Number.
Speaker 2: Also, everyone has a number, they don't I'll call you
by your name. I think Shiro he's number forty six,
I believe is what his is.
Speaker 1: Does everyone have a name and a number.
Speaker 2: Or everyone has a name, but people, the little machines
that run everything just call everybody by their numbers. Gotcha,
And everyone seems to know whose number is who, but
you can. But there are characters that just introduce themselves
by their name. But outside of those puzzles, when you're
free to just go explore, it's got a bit of
a sort of like almost like persona e like bond
system where you're meeting certain named characters and you're getting
to know them, Like I met like this older guy
who seems to be a bit of a rebel and
seems to reject the idea of like how sterile and
just regimented everything is, and he's but he also seems
to be very cynical of human nature. So he's kind
of like briskly to interact with. But if you talk
to him each day, you'll there's like hearts that you
can fill up, and then it seems like you'll hit
certain milestones with that character. There's a little kid who's
like a genius who is like struggling with the idea
of like like he in his own words, he's like
I'm so smart, but I'm still a kid, so I
can't apply my intelligence and do adult things. But also
because I'm so smart, it's like alienated me from the
kids because no one wants to hang out with me
because they all want to do kids stuff. And I
speak like I'm a forty five year old college professor,
so I don't have friends, And you kind of become
his friend because you're like you're kind of your role
again because you're like, hey, you're just you're supposed to
take care of people's problems. You just that could just
be being a good listener. And there's like choices you
can make of like do I want to listen to
this person complain about something or do I want to
walk away and see what happens? And you know, things
play out however they play out. But there's like some
some interesting personalities, and like the most interesting conversation I've
seen is that you can decide people's fates. So there's
one character I meet early on who apparently accidentally broke
the interface of like a snack bar because he's just
like really into snacks, like he just likes to eat.
But it also the AI seems to dictate like, hey,
you know, ideally people shouldn't eat too much because it's
unhealthy and it could cause some like complications, so we
try to like limit how much people eat, so him
eating more than he's supposed to is technically a crime.
So after you fix the problem, there's another character you
meet who's friends with the snack guy, and he basically,
because you had to fix it, you have to report
everything to the AI, and she basically pleads with you
to like, please don't snitch on him to the AI
because apparently there's a three strike system in Dtopia, and
if you are deemed unworthy of living here, they kick
you out and you go to a place called Ztopia,
which I really want to learn what's going on in
Ztopia if that's where all the like outcast go.
Speaker 1: I think the thing I'm trying to wrap my head
around this game is I looked up images of it.
Is this like a dark game? Because the art style
is like kind of cute.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very cute. It's like very like I don't
know if you've seen it, Kyle, but it's got a
very like anime esque.
Speaker 1: Cute, very character design.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like like bright eyed, like everyone just looks like
you want to give him a hug. Basically, I'm waiting.
That's what I'm trying to figure out. I've not played
enough to see if they're like and then things get
dark twist. There's been hints of it that makes me
think it's coming, like this scenario I'm describing where they're like, oh,
people can get get kicked out if you seemingly a
minor infraction of like hey, he just wanted some snacks
and he didn't break into the system purposely, at least
he says he accidentally did, like he pumped into a
droid and it like broke something. But they they the
robots make a point. They're like, no matter what you do,
every work order, you do, everything that, everything that you
do that interacts with the system, you need to report
it to AI, no matter what. And they're citizens that
subscribed to that because they're so just conditioned to like
this is how things work here. So but the girl
that's kind of telling you not to she seems to
be one of the exception. She's like, listen, he's gonna
get sent away. He didn't mean it. I'm you don't
have to listen to me, but be great if you
didn't report him. And so when there's those like kind
of like branching moments. You play this sort of like
almost like a mind map basically, I think they call
it a brain map where you basically it's Shiro considering
every possible like decision and why he would be doing
something and the outcome of it. So it'd be like, Okay, yes,
this guy did this, yes or no, and then acknowledging
like he did this this yes or no, and then
be like, Okay, these are the consequences of it. Am
I okay with that? If not, why am I not
okay with it? And if I'm not okay with it?
Do I consider it not a big deal to keep
it to myself? Am I okay with any ramification that
might come of this later? Yes or no? And then
you kind of work your way down until you get
to what the conclusion will be of Like, I guess
I'm not a stitch on this guy? Uh so I
did not snitch on him. Nothing has happened. Yeah, like
no one the robots have not like caught on to
me yet. But there's been a couple of utterances like
what my cat where Apparently this cat used to be No,
it's a real cat. It's a real cat.
Speaker 1: Cat.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, like this cat breaks out, but because of
it's like not register, like it used to belong to
a resident who used to live in Dtopia. He took
horrible care of it and he left. And then so
this cat runs wild, but no one can see it
because since it's not registered, the visualizer that everyone has
doesn't pick it up, so it just looks like a
weird little, you know, blurry thing running around. Said, they
know something's there, but they don't know what it is,
so you have to go solve that. Eventually, through a
bunch of events, you get to the cat, and then
the person you're talking to, who is another facilitator, is like, hey,
protocol says that we got to like basically kill this
cat because the rules say that, well the cat's not registered,
we have to put them down. And that's just what
the AI says, and I agree with the AI. You know,
the AA has never been wrong. And then that's another
instance where you can choose to either be like rules
or rules, or choose to adopt the cat yourself and
be responsible for anything that it does going forward. Basically,
and of course.
Speaker 1: Like a type of like good evil decision. That's like
that's a tough like there's always the things of like
you'll play the game that has like the choices and
be like, maybe next time I play, I'll be evil
and then you replan. It's like, so you want to
murder the cat and I'm like, I can't kill I mean,
I can't kill the cat. I can't do that. Maybe
I'll snitch on the guy for the snacks, but like
that that's a unique brand of heartlessness to kill the
cat exactly now.
Speaker 2: But I don't know what Zetopia entails, so maybe it
might be a furnace that they're dumping people in out.
Speaker 1: I assume the pun is Dtopia's like Dystopia because it's like.
Speaker 2: It does it's short for something. They've said the full
name of the city and apparently Detopias, and it's like,
I forget the name of Topia. No, that was the
game that became Star Fox Adventures.
Speaker 3: Oh isn't that a book series Topia? And it's like
a secret Dinotopia book? My crazy?
Speaker 2: Do you think?
Speaker 3: To perians of illustrated fantasy books, James Gurny, Come on,
you guys.
Speaker 2: Oh, so he invented this city. They do allude to
like another besides the AI. They meant they make mention
of a person called the Master, who I've not met yet,
but apparently it just makes me think of the guy
from Brave Little Toaster because the appliances also called him
the Master, but it it's ostensibly another human that might
have been in charge of this, but I've not met them.
But they're like, yeah, the Master, like next to the AI.
He's like, that's the guy, you know, question the Master.
I think one of the robots said, like, I think
the word that I would use to describe that you
humans would go with is God. So it's like, okay,
that's a strong word for the Master. But that's to say,
to your point, Charles, what's keeping me going with this? Gangs?
The puzzles are fine, and I like that because you
play the game over a series of days, where again
it's the same structure, wake up, go to work, whatever
happens in the afternoon storyline wise, you do, you go
back home, you go to sleep, and then repeat the
next day. Each day, the puzzle mechanics that you do
with the job changes, which is cool, and they're like
find like their fun little brain like number puzzle. But
what's really keeping me going, is I'm waiting for like
the dark secret, like what's happening in Deetopia because again
they're with enough.
Speaker 1: Yeah the dark poorly veiled secret.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're waiting for Wally to show up and just
like up and everything, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like is it gonna get like brutal of like
people are gonna get like murdered or like gunned down?
Like how dark is this game? If it is? Like,
that's what I kind of like, how far is it
gonna go? Like after already alluding to them being like, yeah,
we gotta put this cat down and we gotta send
a guy kick him out of Paradise and send it
to z Topia just because he wanted an extra bag
of chips, and everyone seems to be okay with.
Speaker 1: That wild.
Speaker 3: It sounds interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I I like the premise of it a lot.
I'm very curious to see if it does take that
hard turner for it's gonna kind of stay skimming the surface. Dtopia?
Is that out, Marcus?
Speaker 2: It is also out today, a big big week for
puzzle games.
Speaker 1: Day of recording. Yeah, well awesome, uh well, speaking of
games that are out today that those of us have
played well and our show with our final final segment
on the Mermaid Mask. I also reviewed this week that
I'm very excited about. It is, uh, the next game
from SFB Games, which Marcus, you did profile on them.
Quiz what does SFB stand for?
Speaker 2: Oh god, I don't remember. I did do a magazine
profile to them a couple of years ago, but I
do not remember something.
Speaker 3: The B is for Brothers, right, isn't it correct?
Speaker 2: Okay, super Fantastic Brothers. I remember.
Speaker 3: It's like it's kind of lath super frame rate brother.
Speaker 1: Marcus that you said super and I got excited because
I was like, that's the right first letter, and I
was like, oh, yeah, obviously it's it's an acronym. Of course,
get the first letters. Super Flash Brothers Flash because they
used to work in flash games.
Speaker 2: They had a long history in flash games before they
decided to do conflagain, Like they were really big on
a was it new Grounds back in the day.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yeah, well, uh they made a
game called Detective Grimoire, which I believe started as a
new Grounds flash game and then got ported and or
not not ported, reimagined as like a proper Steam game.
Then that got a sequel that kind of overhauled a
lot of the visuals and mechanics called Tangle Tower, which
came twenty nineteen, which yeah, I loved. I played that
on Apple Arcade. I think it was an Apple Arcade
launch game.
Speaker 2: I review that game for screen Rant.
Speaker 1: WHOA would you give it? Do you remember?
Speaker 2: I gave it? I think the highest score of all
the games that I was at screen Rant for like
a year, and I think that was the highest score
I ever gave. And it was a game that was
given to me that I had never heard of. No
went into a completely blind. It was like, this is awesome. Yeah,
I read for the longest time. No one I knew
played it, like I never knew anyone to talk about
it with.
Speaker 3: I only played it recently. Like it was weird, like
cause I am I'm annoyingly like I just kind of
play games the year that they exist, just just professionally.
That's just helpful. Like I don't usually go back and
play a game that's like two or three years old.
But I randomly played through Tangle Tower with my daughter
like two or like a year or two ago, and
I was like, yeah, this is great. And then and
of course I'm sure you're gonna get to crow Country
here a second too, which is like, I love crow
Country too. I thought that was a really great game.
Speaker 2: Snipper Clips before that, I think.
Speaker 1: Y S Games is under switch game super versatile developer
because they did Tangle Tower, which I loved, having no
clue it was related to snipper Clips, which is a
switch launch game. Both both both Dangle Dower and snipper
Clips are in like my favorite Launch Games of all
Time lists.
Speaker 2: Which they made going to my profile. They made snipper
Clips not knowing it would be a switch launch game,
like that was something Nintendo surprised them with development.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which, and you're referring to Tangle Tower as an
Apple Arcade like launch game. Is that where you said
launch game? You said, yeah, that's why I launched that. Okay,
I just what that launch was, got it?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 1: And then they made crow Country, which a game I
haven't played, but both of you played and enjoyed. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah.
Speaker 1: So the remen mask is it's a sequel to Tangle Tower,
but it stands alone well enough you don't have to
have played it. I would recommend Tangle Tower. It's also
on sale this week for like super cheap for like
five dollars or something. So yeah, he's either kick up
and play through on on Steam or any other console.
I don't know if it's on sale and other consoles.
I saw the sale and Steam. But the Mermaid Mask.
You play as a detective Grimoire and he's got assistant Sally. Uh.
And the plot of this game is that there is
a a submarine called the Mortuga Submarine and Captain Magis
Mortuga has been murdered and you've been called on by
the new captain, Cynthia c Foam to see what the
heck happened there? How did this guy die? And Yeah,
and I it's a pretty straightforward premise that they are
just really good at executing this type of thing. The
way they write dialogue is very good. Grimore and Sally.
The whole game is voice acted also, which I feel
like is kind of unique for this genre of game.
There's a lot of like murder mystery games that I've played.
I mentioned before of like, I played an Ace Attorney like
in high school and I loved it so much, and
for a while there was just always another Ace Attorney
I hadn't played, And since I've run out of Ace
attorney games. I'm always just trying to like fill that
void in my brain, and this very much like fills
that void. But Eterurney games are not voiced, and I
find a lot of similar games are not voice because
it's so text heavy. And not only is myman mask
fully voiced, is voiced very well. And it's like the
character animations are really really good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they have like some of the coolest character portrait
It's like, I love that that all the direction of
those games.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there it's like a thing of there's some
characters where I'm like, man, I kind of hope they
say that line again because I really like that one animation.
There's one character that's like very stone faced and doesn't
react a whole lot, and she has a laughing animation
that comes up very occasionally where she like breaks through
the facade and I really really like that.
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker 1: So the art's really good, the music's really good, and
then like the the game itself is you're going around,
it's kind of like point and clicks. You'll go into
a room, you can be like, hey, what's that over there?
What's this over here? And you'll gather all this evidence,
you'll present it to people and ask them about it.
Everyone on the submarine, there's eight people. They're all suspects,
and so you're trying to narrow down who did it,
where they were at the time of the murder, that
sort of thing. It's it's much less involved than a
galley house that Marcus was talking about. It's more of
a Kyle mentioned playing Tangle Tower with his daughter. This
is definitely a game that you could play with like
a I would guess if it got an ESRB rating
and be like E ten plus maybe team just because
there is there is murder, and there's like you don't
see someone get murdered, but there's like blood. I don't know,
but like I think a twelve year olduld play this game.
It'd be fine, and uh uh yeah, I just I
just really really like it. I think I think the
story is good. I think my main complaint with Tangle Tower,
and one that I've seen echoed a fair bit around,
is that like the ending and like ultimate reveal I
found like kind of unsatisfying or it's kind of like
a twist that you're like, oh, I couldn't I wouldn't
have predicted that in a way that like I wouldn't
say it felt unfair, but I've just played a lot
of these types of games, and it wasn't my favorite ending,
even though I liked everything else leading up to it,
And this is one where like I actually really liked
the ending a lot and a lot of the like
the first, you know, six or seven hours of the game,
I took. It took me like twelve hours to beat
this game. And I was telling Kyle earlier Kyle marks
in the morning meeting. I don't know if it's actually
that long or if I left my thing running for
a while, but I do think it was about like
maybe ten hours if I was saying, like, I spent
a lot of extra time, but ten to twelve hours.
The first seven hours or so, you're going around talking
to everyone kind of exhausting their dialogue, and once you
finish that phase of the investigation, the story starts moving
forward a little bit. My least favorite part of the game,
and just kind of these games in general, is the
often a part where you're like, I feel like I
have all the pieces and I'm just kind of presenting
evidence to random people and being like, did I ask
them about this thing yet? Or maybe there's something I'm
missing this room where you're just kind of scraping where
you've almost made the conclusions in your head already, but
you just need to get that last item that will
trigger the game to know that you're ready to move on. Luckily,
the game has like a pretty good hint system. There's
just like a red bar that's in on the map
or in the conversation or in like the evidence screen
where you can just click and I'll be like, hey,
maybe they'm asking them about the ship and the bottle,
or hey, maybe you should go to this room and
look around, which I appreciate because the worst thing is
just being totally stuck and not knowing where to go.
And yeah, I'm very happy with the game. I gave
it a nine out of ten. I think it is
I absolutely scratched the Ace Attorney itch, and I am
comparing it to that because that, in my life is
such a touchstone. But I think it's it's I don't
need to like bottle it down and reduce it to that.
It's very much its own thing and I like it whole. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, Phoenix Right is an interesting game because, like
you play as a lawyer, but those they're detective games,
like you're not really like, you know, lawyers always go
out and find the evidence, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I used to wonder that back in the two
thousands when I played Phoenix Rights, like the lawyers actually
do this where they go out. I just missed that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very much not allowed to present evidence in
court as a surprise. Yes, yeah, it's super illegal. It's like,
by the way I went through the victims trash and
I found this receipt, They're like, whoa, that is not
that's not.
Speaker 3: That jury, do not pay attention to anything that man. Yeah,
but so I think I think the Phoenix tricking person
is apt when you when you realize that Phoenix right,
their murder mystery games is ultimately is what they are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and yeah huge trying to recommend it.
It did come out today. I played it on steam
Deck runs fine. There, I guess my only steam Deck
complaint is you're using the joystick to move a pointer around,
so it's not like a menu that you're navigating like
you would on like a true console game. It's more
just like they poureded the mouse to controller buttons. But
it's fine. It's not that big of a deal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm really excited to play this one. I'm just
like in the move forward and it's like a good
like you know, like family game. It's like it's like
watching a new Knives out or something, you know, it's
like yeah, yeah, yeah. So like IM, I've i've been
looking forward to it really, Like like I said, it's
I randomly played Tangle Tower and it was instantly like
and it was like even the time I played it,
I was like, oh, they announced the sequel. That's oh,
it's like a year away. I think I got delayed
at some point. But I've I've I've been i've been
looking forward to this one. Like, so I was excited
to see a review and see that you liked it,
Like I would have been bummed if you're like, ah, nah,
it's not as good as Tangle Tower or something like that.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I was getting wordsuse. This game had been
in the it had been around for a few years,
and it got delayed a couple of times and you
would go long stretches without hearing any updates. So I
was worried about this game period of this because I
really like Tangle Tower and I would love another one
of these I'm glad that there it is finish line.
Speaker 1: There is a dialogue line near the end that I
thought was funny but also maybe kind of sad or
I'm like, I hope it's not true. Where you spend
the whole game in the submarine. That's not really a spoiler,
but at the start, oh, well, know what I'll say.
If you're playing the game, once you get in the submarine,
you don't leave the submarine, which is like totally fine
for the game stuff. I would recommend clicking on as
much stuff outside of the submarine as you can before
you go in, before you click to go to that area,
because they'll reference it later. And I didn't really explore
all that much, and I just wish I had. It's
not even that much. I just wish I had kind
of more of a sense in my head of like
what this other area was. But there's a lighthouse off
in the distance, and you spend the whole game of
Submarines you don't go to the lighthouse. And at the end,
Sally's like, oh, I was really hoping this would be
like the Lighthouse the Lighthouse Murder one, and then Grimmire
is like, maybe the next game will be set entirely
in a lighthouse, so I was like, no, no, it'll
probably have a different theme entirely. This was the nautical one.
They're not going to do that back to back. And
then Grimoire is like, well, that's if there is another one.
This was really hard to do and makes a joke
about like it might not even be sustainable, and I'm like, well,
I hope you guys better make it freaking sistency.
Speaker 2: And then and Sally turned and looked directly at the camera.
Speaker 1: Gridmore has there's a different line, and Grimmore says, all right, Sally,
don't lean so hard on the fourth wall like that.
Speaker 3: That's good. That's that's like that's a Gilbert and like Schaeffer,
like you know, like kind of like they've given this
genre that sort of fourth wall permission, kind of like yes,
Secret of Monkey Island ends with like a complaint about
the price of the game and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah,
it's good. Yeah, I'm excited for that. Well, but thanks
for spoiling the end joke, Jesus Child.
Speaker 1: There's luckily there's so so many jokes in that. Okay,
well that's gonna do it. For this week's episode of
the Game Informer Show. Thanks everyone so much for joining us.
As a reminder, you can go to gameformer dot com
slash subscribe to subscribe to our magazine. That's the best
way to support what we're doing here. Uh, physical and
digital and on newstands all around the world. We'll be
launching our next issue next week. We're very excited about that.
We'll have some of the stuff we talked about today
in that issue, especially the the Belmont's Curse spread. Our
designer to meet you did a great job with that.
We have some exclusive art assets in there that I'm
very excited for you guys to see, especially like all
laid out in print. So that's very exciting. And Yeah,
you can also follow us on YouTube, gameformer dot com
or not gamefour dot com, YouTube dot com, slash game Informer,
or us on Twitch, Instagram, TikTok all the good stuff.
You can follow me online at Chuck Duck three sixty five.
You can call follow Kyle at Kyle M. Hilliard or
Kyle Hillyar.
Speaker 3: Kyle Hilliard dot com on Blue Sky.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Kyle Hillary dot com on Blue Sky and then
Marcus is Marcus Stewart seven. Thanks so much for joining us.
We'll see you guys next week. Bloe Bye.