Speaker 1: Welcome to the Game Informer Show, a weekly podcast covering
the video game industry. Join us every Thursday or Friday
on this week 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 one of your hosts,
Charles Hart, and today I'm joined by Wesley LeBlanc.
Speaker 2: Hello. Hello, I'm back. I'm barely live, wow, and making
sacrifices to be here.
Speaker 1: Yes, to serve your magazine.
Speaker 2: It's not much of a sacrifice. I'm on like day
seven and feeling pretty normal, so I actually wanted to
come on and talk and do something other than rot
away in my quarantine.
Speaker 1: Couch Fair and Eric Van Allen.
Speaker 3: Hello, Hello, week two. I'm still live. I'm still going.
Speaker 1: It's you know, you know, we're having a great week
at Game Informer. When everyone's introduction is like, well we're alive,
that's the bar right now.
Speaker 2: The worst part about this kind of stuff, like these
weeks is like it all just stays with us, like
none of it gets to go out and no one
knows why. Yeah yeah, hell, but wow, is this week?
Hell not not Game Informer's fault, Like weird.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's my fault, everybody. I did it. I walked
in the room and then I just knocked everything over.
So it was terrible.
Speaker 1: It was it was funny, just listeners.
Speaker 2: It's all.
Speaker 1: It's a bunch of like scheduling stuff and people are
sick and everyone's traveling, so we're just shorthanded and then
the travel there's all these mix ups and whatever. And
in one of our meetings, editor chief Matt Miller was like, Eric,
just so you know, this is this is a crazy week,
and Eric's like, I get it, it's just Tuesday. And
we're like, I can't. We can't emphasize enough how much
this is not just Tuesday. So much going on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's fine, things are chill, but I was I
was talking to to Brian earlier today. I told him,
you don't sign up for the big leagues and then
train for t ball. You know, you show up to
play and sometimes things go a little bit awry. This
is what you suit up for. This is what the
professionals handle. It's all good.
Speaker 1: It is funny though, because it's like that that metaphor
is kind of like you're getting you're getting ready to
hit really fast baseballs and it's like we're doing that.
But also right now the field is flooded with like
three inches of water and nobody knows why. And that
doesn't really have to do with the baseball skills you've accrued,
but we all have to do with it.
Speaker 3: On top of the exactly you're trying to hit baseballs,
the field is flooded, the ump behind you has like
a shoe that he's trying to thwack you in the
head with while you're not looking at It's, uh, there's
always the USI of ump Yeah, honestly, I want to
I want that to be a game where you are
just like the umpire and a base ball game, and
you just like call the most annoying plays and.
Speaker 1: You hit people.
Speaker 3: I was going to say, let me tell you about
the magical game of blaze ball that ended all too soon.
Didn't quite have that, but had some elements of that.
Speaker 1: Definitely the closest thing. Well, this week we got a
fun show for you. We're going to be talking about Mafia,
the Old Country. I'm gonna be talking about my trip
to gen Con, and then West is going to talk
about his reviews for wheel World and Ninja Guiden Rage
Bound before we get started. Just as always a reminder,
we make a magazine. You can subscribe to it at
gameformer dot com slash subscribe. Our next issue coming out
is The Vampire the mass Grave blood Lines two issue,
so if you subscribe now you can read that digitally.
I think we've passed the window for physical so if
you subscribe now, you'll get whatever the next issue is
after that in your mailbox, and then ten issues for
that year long cycle. But yeah, I wrote that was
my cover story. That was very fun. Game looks cool.
I'll have some more coverage going up. But if you
want to read that and all the other stuff digitally, like,
you can subscribe there and yeah, anything else, any other
housekeeping stuff. I think that's good. Let's just jump into
Mafia the Old Country. This is a Mafia prequel, I believe,
and Wes, you're the one that you just put your
view of today.
Speaker 2: Dave recorded, Yes, yeah, Mafia the Old Country, which is
out when you're listening to this, it's already out. It
is a loose prequel, like it takes place in the
same universe, and it's the earliest portion of the Mafia
series timeline. But for the most part, it is standalone
unless you're like familiar with last names and locations in Mafia.
But for the most part, you can play this and
not worry about anything that comes after, although the games
that come after are really great, better than this game unfortunately. Yeah.
So I gave Mafia the old Country of six. I
wish I was giving it a higher score because I
really really loved the Mafia series. I especially loved Mafia
Definitive Edition in twenty twenty or twenty twenty one, and
this game was supposedly taking a lot of cues from that,
like in the lead up to the game's release in
the press and marketing and whatnot. So I was really
excited for it, but ultimately it's just it.
Speaker 1: Oh what, sorry, I was gonna ask as someone who
doesn't know Mafia. Yeah, was the Definitive Edition? Was that
like a full remake?
Speaker 2: It was a very very pretty maybe Unreal Engine five,
if not like a very late Unreal Engine four remake
of the first Mafia game, which is my favorite of
the series. And it's it's like a type of game
we just don't really get anymore in the sense to like,
it's here's some missions play each mission, and then you
have a story that plays throughout each mission, and then
the game's over and there's not really much to do,
which people liked, and Mafia two opened up a little bit.
Mafia three went way too wide as an open world game,
way too checklist, and people were like, whoa whah, well,
none of that, none of that. So when Definitive Edition
came out, it was like a return to form, and
it did well enough that I think two K Games
the publisher and Hanger thirteen was like, oh, we should
maybe return to our roots, and that's what Mafia the
Old Country is trying to do.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 2: It's some acts and there's like quests within each ack,
but it's basically like point A to point B, two
point C to the end of the game, Like there's
no real reason to explore. There are some collectibles out there,
and there's like a kind of hard to find explore
mode if you want to go out there and search
this beautiful world for those collectibles, but you don't really
how because you have to go to Chapter replay and
then at the top of that, which is like on
the main menu, you have to go to Explore, and
then Explore puts you into the world without any like
quests or anything like, you don't just you can't just
necessarily mosy around in this world, like if you want
all the collectibles to be on the map, and you need
to be in the explore mode, which is odd choice,
but honestly, I don't just think it's one people are
gonna There's really there's no reason to go find the
fifty weird per collectibles or like the newspapers unless you
just want to be in this world more, which Hangar
thirteen is aware of. Like they they have been saying
this is a linear story focused game, and it is.
There is a like a huge emphasis on the storytelling.
It's just unfortunately for me, it didn't really pan out
to be much. I think kind of the thesis or
crux of my review is everything in Mafia the Old
Country you've seen before, and there's a good shot it's
been done better. The story is not really going to
surprise you, and it's going to be very predictable in
some instances, like so predictable, and they I don't want
to call it like Chekhov's Gun type stuff, but like
I think they were leaning way too much on like teases.
It's it's so obvious where the game goes, and if
you're familiar, I don't even think you need to be
familiar with like mafia media, like in pop culture to
know where the story is going. Like it's it's a
very basic premise. That said, it's it's still an enjoyable one,
Like it's still fine, it's it's a fun mafia story.
I'm always gamed for these types of stories. They don't
need to be surprising every single time. But given the
storytelling throughout a series, I kind of did hope this
one would be a little more impactful.
Speaker 3: The one.
Speaker 2: Not one thing. There are a couple of good things
I have, like a nice little fun persona background on
my computer, and then now I'm like, I look over
and I see like that Firehouse.
Speaker 3: That's the best case for we've ever seen on a podcast.
We do not.
Speaker 1: We do not.
Speaker 2: We are not sponsored by Firehouse subs.
Speaker 1: Although it's it's also funny because if you had YouTube Premium,
you still have to see these these ads in the background.
Wait do you really I'm saying, because so you'd be
watching someone at home, be sitting on their couch watching
gaming form show. Right, and then even within the Game
Former show. We have an ad in the background for.
Speaker 3: Firehouse Wild of the YouTube premium turned off your ads
on other people's ads. You know what I'm saying, Like.
Speaker 1: You're watched like a cyberpunk nonsense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, why is that not our cyberpunk future? You know,
why don't we just have.
Speaker 2: Yes, Firehouse? That sounds delicious right now. That said, uh,
the game is set in Sicily, which is they did
a really good job of like creating an early nineteen
hundred Sicily, which I love. I really love Italy. My
wife was born and raised there, Like I go to
Italy often. It's it's a place I cherish in my
heart a lot, which is one of the more exciting
aspects of this game. And they did a really good
job recreating that portion of Italy, which Sicily is like
its own island. It's a very unique part of Italy.
There's also an incredible Italian dub that actually takes into
account that it's set in Sicily, and they use the
Sicilian dialect instead of the Italian dialect, which is great
because the Sicilian dialect is so different that my mother
in law, who is one hundred percent Italian born and
raised there, very fluent, says that Sicilian might as well
be like a different language. She can kind of understand it,
but like you can't. Just Italians can't go to Sicily
and speak it as if they were fluent. It's its
own thing. So she thought it was really cool that
they use the Sicilian dialect versus the Italian dialect, which
I think that is that's a really nice not a
detail that I'm sure a lot of people won't care
or appreciate, But I do want to give Hanger thirteen
some credit there because I think that's cool.
Speaker 1: I do also want your mother in law's opinion on
other games. I like a concept of like a column
of like my mother in law's favorite games that she's
watched me play. Well, she's like offering from an injury
right at your house.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, she has broken her shoulders, so weird. She's
been living at her house for like a month and
probably another month. And also the COVID I got hit
her today unfortunately. So now it's just my wife is
the last bastion of immunal hope and my daughter shout
out to my wife because she is lifting mountains tube
to maintain our household while we're all going through it.
Shout out Wes's wife, Gabby.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, that's good.
Speaker 2: That's good Italian Women.
Speaker 4: If there's one thing you take away from this, this podcast,
the game and former though, shout out Italian Woman, I
was gonna say, we need to get on your INTI
persona now, just like a carousel of pictures of your wife.
Speaker 1: What Yeah, I love Anyways, I.
Speaker 2: Need to get like an eel of Italian Woman's shirt
next episode. I would like ironically wear that too.
Speaker 3: A lot of questions answered by my shirt, you know.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so like the Italy part of this game,
I think they really nailed. It's just like everything else
is so boring is not the right word, because I
had a fine time. It's just so middling. It's just
depressingly middling. Like the gameplay is seems cool at first,
like you're going around old Sicily, you're doing like shootouts,
you're doing stealth sequences where you're stealthing through a warehouse
and there's enemies with paths and you have to track
their paths and then get behind them and choke them
out or knife them and your knife has durability and
blah blah blah. But like what you play the first
time during a stealth sequence is what you're going to
play the last time during a stealth sequence. There is
virtually no growth in systems or any kind of progression
in that regard. You can unlock different knives, maybe they
do different things. I don't know. I switched around my
knives and never really noticed much difference. The biggest one
I liked was like it auto looted enemies that I
killed with the knife takedown. But like, I don't know,
it's so mind numbingly easy, and I was on like
the standard difficulty and I even went up to hard
to see if that would change anything, and for the
stealth it didn't. I mean you were It is the
most bog standard stealth game, like crouch from cover, get
behind somebody and choke them out, and you don't even
have to be that like sly. You can. If they're
looking at you, just walk faster and get behind them
and you'll be fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like for real, I've been playing this too, and
that was one of the first things I noticed was
they give you the option. They say, you know, it's
a big deal. When you go buy your first knife
and you go to a store and there's like an
old lady who just has a box of knives that
you're pulling from and it's it's fun, it's flavorful, it's good.
And then I was looking at all the stuff and
I remember seeing one that was like, oh, like throwing
knife takedown or something like that. It may implied that
there was a new takedown I was going to unlock.
And then I did a stealth section right after it,
and I just played it the same way because it
seemed like it was very clearly signposted to be played
in the way that the game teaches you how to
play a stealth segment right at the beginning is okay, well,
there's two guys and they're talking, and one's going to
peel off that direction. One's going to peel off that direction,
and they're going to look at a wall for a
little bit and they'll give you time to go up
and er and then throw them in a box and
ad repeat. I didn't even I stopped looting the bodies
after a while because I didn't see a huge point
in it for me, because I just I had more
wetstones than I ever needed to keep my knife sharp,
and honestly, there wasn't a ton of combat or anything
to speak of that made me really want to engage
with that stuff. So I was really surprised. And then
to hear you come back and be like, oh, actually
that the game just does that. It's it's like that, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: It's kind of a funny we're throwing knife thing. I
don't I had that night, like I unlocked a bunch
of knives, just trying different things out. I never got
a prompt or a tutorial or anything on the throwing
knife takedown, so I don't know if it just means
an animation that happens sometimes which I did never see,
or if there's like a whole system with that. But
I was like, well, okay, sure stealth is stealth. It's
like and it sucks because I recently just played Eric
Schulm The Stolen Dream and I gave that an eight,
and that was a really good stealth game that had
My biggest problems with it weren't with the stealth. The
stealth was amazing, and I really liked the way the
AI moved around the world and acted a part of
the world to like inhibit your stealthy progress. Like you said, Eric,
these guys are just like standing around to be taken out.
Speaker 3: They blair witch themselves into the corner. Yes, so you
can take them out one by one and.
Speaker 2: Before yeah, you throw one coin and they're like, oh
my god, I do see that coin.
Speaker 3: I forget which game it was where developers started having
it so that if you threw the bottle and they
could see the trajectory of the bottle, then they ai
would be like, I saw you throw that across my
field of vision. Right, so if they saw kind of
go left to right across their path of vision, they
turn and be like, I saw you throw that, dude.
But in this game, I tried that and he just
looked immediately to the right was like what was that
over there? And I was like, oh, okay, gotcha all right? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Is is stealth like a significant portion of the game
or is it just like especially bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like it's a major portion of the game.
Every sequence of the sequence is start as stealth, and
you can fail in stealth and then it becomes a shootout.
But like the premise of the game is like, we
aren't super abundant with guns. There's no Tommy guns. This
is like nineteen oh four, although like you can get
guns pretty easily if you want, Like, they put a
lot of focus on the knife aspect of Enzo the
protagonists like build, which is to say, like, if you
fail the stealth and you go into a shootout, there's
gonna be guns everywhere. You can buy your own guns,
but also every enemy drops the gun and you can
encounter every single gun in the game. Honestly, in like
one shootout, they just be dropping all their guns everywhere.
And the shootouts I enjoyed more than the stealth. But
the shootouts again are nothing. They're doing nothing unique or interesting.
They are just third person cover, pop out and shoot people.
The AI is not particularly good or like threatening. I
just happen to enjoy shooting guys in the head with
a shotgun more than slowly knifing them out, and I
can get through encounters faster by shooting. But I mean,
there's not much going on here in terms of combat,
whether you're stealthy or shooting.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, it's a bit of a bummer because I was
really excited about this game because when I think back
to some of my favorite open world games and also
kind of like crime based games, crime story games. Two
that immediately jump to mind are Sleeping Dogs and Yakuza
games that I think make really good use of the
fact that gun exist but are not prevalent, and it
creates almost a like, yeah, a sliding scale of how
dangerous weapons are. And when you introduce a gun like
that carries consequences, that carries a significant impact to the story.
People can die now instead of just like punching each other.
And Mafia I thought was going to do that for
a while. I did think it was goofy how often
you could kind of get slashed with a knife and
still be walking around later. I was like, I don't
I don't think that's like something you just brush off, dude.
That I saw your.
Speaker 2: Uh comedically large in sentences. So like you you buy
and it looks like a little switchblade, and then you
go out there and he whips it out and it's
it's like an eight inch blade, and I'm like, that one.
That's a one shot kill.
Speaker 3: Right, It's a decent blade. Yeah, And so I was
I was kind of excited for that aspect. I was like, Okay,
we're going to scale it back. Even when you watch,
you know, a mob movie, you know when somebody pulls
a gun. Maybe they pull a gun, but when somebody
actually shoots it and uses it, that is an escalation,
that is a heightening and games often try to do that.
But then video games are video games, so you're you're
going to shoot people because that's the video gamey like
brain go birth thing that happens. And I was really
excited for Mafia to kind of play around in that space,
and it seems like it just didn't do much with
the potential there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they do try to play into that space a
little bit with what I'll call boss fights. It's one
one on one knife tools, which is cool because that
does go back to like Sicilian mob history. They were
big on knives and like it was an honorable fight
to like drop your weapons and fight each other with knives.
But the game doesn't really like play into that enough.
I'm not sure if I just know that because of
my history with Italy or if the game is does
a good job of explaining that, because often you like,
my dude's carrying a shotgun on his back, like a
large shotgun. He's got a pistol shotgun and my knife
and then I'm about to go fight this guy and
all of a sudden, those are gone and we just
got knives out. I'm like, well, hold on, I'm already
doing bad things. I just murdered like twenty people with
a gun. I have no problem just blowing your face
off with a shotgun. Which there are other moments in
the game where you have these big enemies that you
think you would get an honorable death and the game's like, nah,
shoot them in the head. So it was kind of
like funny to be like, Okay, I guess we're doing
a knife duel now because we have to do a
knife tool, which, like the rest of the game, the
first knife duel you do is going to be the
same as the last knife duel. There is a perry
window that's pretty simple to hit. There is a evade window,
which there's a big light like a slash on their
arm that lets you know you can evade, and you
just want a perfect dodge and perfect parry so that
you can counter with big damage. And other than that,
you're just thrusting with triangle and slashing with circle and
sometimes breaking their guard with R one. They're kind of
like they're so repetitive though, they every single fight. When
you get to halfway health, there's like a cut scene
where they struggle and like, oh, Enzo is not going
to make it, and then nope, you got to slam
square over and over and over and oh he gets
out of it, and now it's time for the second
phase of the fight. No different from the first. Just
a kind of old school style QT cut scene in
the middle, which is fine, But whenever you do that,
like fifteen times across fifteen hours, it's like, what are
we doing here? Why do we need to have this
many knife fights? And they don't work?
Speaker 3: It's like the makeshie, you're awake?
Speaker 1: Check right?
Speaker 3: Yeah honestly, yeah, yeah, you're still there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like you gotta can I ask.
Speaker 1: What it is about like the original Mafia games that
you liked so much that you feel is like not
present here or is just done not as good?
Speaker 2: Yeah, honestly, I think and I kind of touched on
this in my review a little bit. As much as
I love Italian countryside and like Sicily in the early
nineteen hundreds, I do think the environment is kind of
a detriment to the game, because when you think of Mafia,
like it's fun driving around on these like prohibition eraic
cars and going into flashy banks and casinos and underground
bars and the environments like Scream Mafia, and they give
you some some cool stuff. And there are some cool
environments in Sicily, don't get me wrong, But for the
most part, you're like traversing around dilapidated buildings and like
Roman aggression ruins that are like kind of destroyed and
that kind of all looks similar at a certain point,
and you're just kind of like shooting out in the open.
I've seen other reviewers call this game like almost like
a Western, and I think that's a really good way
to parse It's like it does feel more like a
Western than a mob adventure game, which is fine and stuff,
but for me, I was just kind of missing like
the spirit of the Mob and Mafia one. You're kicking
down a door with Tommy gun in your hand and
just like unloading on the place Scarface style that kind
of thing. Like you're in these flashy environments that make
you feel like you're coming up in the world as
a Mafia member, and that's something I really appreciated, and
I just think ultimately, like the other the metropolis environments
that are in the games are probably just better, Like
they just work better for these type this type of storytelling,
especially Mafia Definitive edition that Lost Haven, which is like
Chicago esque. Basically it's bright neon lights, the water's reflecting
off the streets, the car, it's fun to drive around
the cars, and there's like a radio that plays like
era specific music. It just gets the vibe. It's a
it's a much better vie vibe from Afia, and I
guess there's no way to get around that if you're
going this far back in the timeline, like nineteen hundred.
Sicily is a place that's well documented. You can see
that it is not Chicago or New York. But ultimately
it kind of just as much as I love Sicily
and the environment, it does take away from the Mob
and Mafia aspect of the game. But yeah, it's yeah,
it's it's a mostly just forgettable game for me, which
sucks because like, I really do enjoy these games and
I would like a reason to jump back in. But
the story isn't all that compelling, the characters aren't all
that compelling. You're you're pretty much getting your like cliche
trope cast here. There's like a trophy romance, although very
good Italian woman. I'm saying I love Italian.
Speaker 1: It was it was gonna be a five, but every
every Italian woman on the screen bumped it up to
us six.
Speaker 2: I have three screenshots on my computer from this game,
and all three are the same.
Speaker 1: We pull up we both less his screenshots and it's
just like his wife's face photoshopped onto all of the
women in the game.
Speaker 2: Like wow, shout out Italian, shout out, shout out. Is
there anything else I'm missing at this game? I don't
think so. I think it had a lot of potential.
I was really rooting for it. Six isn't the worst
score ever. I do think like I spent and this
is a fifty dollars game too, we don't really I'm
not really interested in like trying to like, how how
long was it? Like twelve to fifteen hours? Okay, yeah,
you could probably beat it faster too. I try to
do some due diligence with like reviewing it. But I
bet if you're stuck to just like fool on mainline,
like maybe ten hours. But yeah, it's a fifty dollars game,
so like budget title or whatever you want to call it.
But I don't really I don't try to like quanticize
that into my review, like games good or not without
being fifty bucks. But like, if you're fine with like
a fine Mafia game at fifty bucks, sure go for it.
If this was like twenty bucks, yeah, easy recommend. It's
a fun, little weekend whatever game. I just think, set
your expectations because it's not. It's not at the part
with the rest of the Mafia games, and I wish
it was. I wish it was. I hope this is
not like a death nail in the Mafia series. I
do think there are some cool ideas here that the
team could build on. I do think there's a lot
more storytelling to be had in this universe, and they
clearly care about it. But yeah, we'll see I hope.
I hope it sells well. I guess despite me, I'm
not ensuring that, which is weird to say, but like
I love it.
Speaker 1: It is weird, and it is weird to be a
critic and also a fan of a thing of Like
often I review a game and I'm like, this one's
not it, but they should make another one, and if
they learn from this one, it'll be better. But it's
hard to be like it's a six out of ten,
and then what happens happened more or less in line.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not nearly as far to feel like I
could definitively put my own score on the paper. But
when I was talking to Wesley about this stuff, I
was kind of thinking about the parts that I'd liked
so far and the parts that I hadn't liked so far,
and it sounded like the parts that I hadn't liked
so far would continue to propagate, mainly the kind of
missions that I didn't really like. I don't love a
mission where you described it super well in your review, Wesley,
that you get on a horse, go somewhere, talk to somebody,
Get back on your horse, go somewhere, talk to somebody,
and it's like, compared to like a Sorkin walk in
talk is just a ride and talk where you're just
going from place to place to place in talking the
whole time. And I think that became a staple of
open world games, especially you know, games like Red Dead
love that stuff, and I think it can work to
varying degrees, but it can weigh on you too, especially
if the things you're doing when you get to a
place are not inherently interesting. You're kind of just showing
up and standing there while two characters talk or watching
a cut scene and then leaving. It's like, Okay. There
was one cool moment in one of those where it
was when you're first given a gun and you're told
to basically intimidate someone with it. So in the middle
of talking, you pull the gun out and you point
it at somebody and then he's like, he's not giving
up the money that you need to collect, and so
the guy's like, you know what to do, and then
the objective thing is like, hey pointed at his son,
and it's like, okay, now we're doing like mob stuff.
Now we're doing and I imagine that doesn't happen very
often in the rest of the game. That felt like
a very mission specific moment. Yeah, but that stuff is cool,
but it sounds like there's not enough of it to
carry the full game. And that's that's kind of a bummer,
because I do I liked Mafia three more than most.
I think that was actually my personal favorite in the series.
I think Mafia two is okay. I never played Mafia one.
I should go back and rectify that at some point,
But I actually liked the story and the setting and
the theme of Mafia three a lot. It had a
decent time with the action of it too, Yeah, more
than most.
Speaker 2: Ocky three story is like that might be the best.
It's awesome, and the things they do with like that
period of history is really cool. It just it was
like a product of its time, twenty fifteen or twenty sixteen,
like Ubisoft Checklist type open world, which is yeah.
Speaker 3: Which is weird because Mafia the Old Country feels like
a product of that time in some ways, like it
really reminds me of playing a game from that era,
you know, a decade ago or so. And in some ways,
I think we are seeing an almost revival of the
Xbox three sixty mindset of here's this tight, focused, quirky
single player action game. We're moving away from like the
super Prestige Triple A games, and we're moving back to
sort of like reasonably scoped and budgeted single player action games.
And I like that a lot. I think there's some
cool games coming out because of that. But I don't
know if Mafia handled the jump so well, and I
do hope there's more because I like a good mob story.
Man it's it's good, and I was really excited for
this one. You know, I'm a little bit basic and
all that, but I love Godfather Part two, I love Veto,
I love all of that stuff, so I was really
hoping for some of that to come through here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Another thing you mentioned about the the riding on
the horse or like in a car and going from
place to places. There's like interesting conversations that happen atop
those horses. It's kind of like b stuff. But then
the game also just says like it puts a little
prompt like skip drive or skip.
Speaker 1: Look or whatever.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, So I'm like, okay, well are you even
like confident and the riding here or like like it's
like a war of two worlds. Like one group's like, well,
people don't want to drive for ten minutes to the
next destination and yeah, and then the riders are like,
well we wrote really good dialogue. And I was like,
it was just weird to see that. And I often
end up did skipping because I was like, well, if
they don't want me to drive, if they're not interested
in giving me something for fifteen minutes, then I will
because sometimes the conversation was good they would go the
whole fifteen minute drive and then other times it would
be like thirty seconds and then it's just quiet and
I'm like, okay, well yeah, Usually in the countryside is.
Speaker 3: In like La Noir, they would do it to where
they would do the conversation and then when it ended,
the little thing would pop up and be like, hey,
do you want to finish the ride?
Speaker 2: Like yeah, no, not this this is just like skip
it all if you want. Who cares last thing? None
of this is in my review because this is like
I don't know, I guess experimental tech on PC. But
like the DLS and the video stuff is like kind
of borked right now. If you use the frame generation
stuff to like get your frame rate up, it's a mess.
It gets very blurry and like kind of sludgy on
the outsides, and the captions and ANYUI on the screen
gets real shaking weird. Don't recommend. And then the DLS
like resolution scaling stuff is pretty wonky too. Pretty much,
just if you're going to use any of the DLS
into stuff like DLSS stuff, your game's going to be
a little weird sometimes. And also me and Eric both
have this problem. I don't think it has to do
with like the experimental tech. I think it's just the
game if you're playing on a frame rate higher than
thirty or uncap like I was. For example, when the
cutscenes which go down to thirty half and every single
time it will have a weird three second stutter where
it's like trying to jump from one hundred and twenty
frames to thirty. Funny, it sometimes ruins very impactful moments
at other times and obviously just ugly to look at.
But I wouldn't say it's like broken on PC or anything,
but be aware of those issues.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was playing uncapped. I was joking with Wesley
that my whole week has been playing the game of
how do I make this look good? Because you know,
I'm over here recording b roll and everything the b
role that you're probably watching on whichever side of the
screen that I put it on. But there was all
kinds of stuff with screen dooring faces on some of
them weird pop in depending on what DLSS I was using,
because it has I believe FSR, DLSS and whatever unreals
version is all as options, and I think it's worth
mentioning for PC specifically because you have to flip through
some weird settings and toggles to turn it off. Like
getting to the point where everything is turned off was
actually kind of difficult to find in the menus compared
to other games that have had those options before. It
seems like they wanted the player to use them. And
every time I used auto detect to kind of say like, okay,
well recommend me my system settings based on what I have,
which is pretty beefy. I've got a forty seventy super
in mind and a pretty decent CPU. And it was
still it was showing on the meter like you have
eleven gigs a video card available, you're gonna use two.
And I was like, what are what are you talking about? Well,
why are we doing it this way? And it would
always be like, oh, just use the DLSS, use the FSR,
It'll reduce the load. And then you would have weird effects,
weird hair, weird faces, screen dooring during pivotal moments, and
I was having to go back and re record scenes
because I was like, that looked not good. That didn't
look good. So I'm curious to see if once this
game is out and open, if there'll be driver updates,
you know, there's always kind of Day one graphics drivers
or even Day plus five graphics drivers that kind of
try to tune this. But I am curious to see
what the long tail on this looks like, what the
Digital found retake on it looks.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, was shut out. They just went chat last week.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of note only Steam codes for pre release, so
like they're trying. They have a PS four pro PS
five pro patch coming and on PS five base they
want performance to be sixty fps, but they weren't sure
if they were going to hit that. From what I've
read online, none of us at staff have codes for consoles,
so like, yeah, wait, maybe wait for Digital Foundry or
you're going to be testing it yourself. PC is a
little weird. I do think PCs mostly fine though, like
it's there are some weirdness to it. It's not like unplayable,
but like it definitely could use some work. No idea
on consoles though, so go with your own risk there. Yeah,
that's that's Mafia. It's a It's a six out of
ten and probably the most six out of ten game
I've played in a minute.
Speaker 1: I think my one contribution to the end of that
conversation is that a walk and talk on horses should
be called a canter and banter. Good.
Speaker 3: I like that.
Speaker 1: Good?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, okay, man, Well next up, I'm gonna take
the reins, so to speak, keeping on the horse theme
and talk about I went to gen Con, which I
had never been to before, honestly hadn't even heard of
until a few years ago, which is a big board
game and tabletop convention in Indianapolis. And I live in Dayton, Ohio,
and so I learned that it was a thing, and
I was like, oh, I can just drive there.
Speaker 1: I don't need to like approve travel or hotel or
anything like. I can just go for a few days
and see what it is. Uh So I did that.
And I don't know if either of you have ever
been to gen Con or like a similar large convention.
But the thing I didn't realize. So I've been to
like local conventions and stuff before. There's one super since
the Expo, which like a local gaming convention. They've invited
me to the They've only I think it's only existed
two years, and I've been both years. But that's just
you know, you walk in and there's a bunch of
booths and people are selling you know, their mercher they're
showing off pictures of I don't know, there aren't like
game developers there usually, but like you don't have tournaments
and everywhere, would you say.
Speaker 2: Three D printed dragons everywhere?
Speaker 1: If it's like yes, definitely, three D printed dragons, three
D printed eggs everything, And yeah, there's like meet and greets,
there's you know, fighting game tournaments or whatever. Gen Con
has kind of what I was expecting where it's like
there's you know, like hundreds of booths of all these
different like board game publishers and developers that are like
we make Wingspan, we make Everdell, we make you know, Magic.
The gathering obviously, which is the coast, is there in
a big presence, all sorts of stuff like that. But
the thing I didn't know about gen Con is it
has like thousands and thousands of events you sign up for.
There's people that have you know, panels and seminars of
like you know, D and D, people that stream playing
D and D. They'll do a live at live show
there or other related things. There's board game designers we'll
talk about their thing, and then there's also just so
many places you can sign up to just play board games.
So if there's a thing where it's like, oh, I
wanted to play this game and no one will ever
play it with me, you can go to gen con
and just sign up for a table and then just
sit at the table and then play with people. And
it works for stuff where it's like a game you
haven't bought a game. You can't find people for a
game like you know, D and D where you're like,
I don't want to write my own thing and none
of us want a DM. But we can just go
to the convention and we can all play the table together.
So it's really cool. And the first day I went,
I had an appointment. I saw a panel and it
was Eric Lang, who is a guy I didn't really know.
He did a game called Blood Rager, which I think
is his most well known thing. I don't know. All right,
First of all, let me back up real quick. All right,
you guys like board game people. I don't know if
that's a.
Speaker 3: I'm a card game person, not a board game person.
Speaker 1: Well represented here, Wes. Do you have like favorite board
games off top of your head?
Speaker 2: I really like Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven, Games of Night City,
although that one's kind of hard to wrestle people to
play together for because it's like a campaign focused. Yeah,
tabletop game, the Bloodborne TTRPG is really good. And then
for like more casual things like Photosynthesis. Wingspan obviously is
a classic splendor pretty much like a lot of those.
Like I have a friend and he comes over once
a month and we just pick like five or six
random board games we have and play for hours, and yeah,
it's great. Even Villainous, Like we play a lot of
Villainous because they just keep putting out infinite sets of
that game. Jesus Christ, they.
Speaker 1: Have They have a new one. I don't know if
you know about it, West, but it is Davy Jones.
Speaker 2: My friend that I play with literally today went and
bought it and sent me a picture. It's David Jones
and krakatoa from Moana, the two Tomato guys. Tomato, Yeah, Tomato,
which is awesome, very cool. I like that those two
are the ones in the.
Speaker 1: Set, very very West.
Speaker 2: The Yes, so I love the board game's rule. Board
games are great cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I was gonna say, I went to a
panel and it was one guy did that Elizabeth Hargrave,
who's the designer of Wingspan, so it was like very
excited to see her. And then also Joe mangan Yellow,
who is like an actual big actor guy but also
like death Stroke and the Snyder credits scene he's flashed
Thompson in two thousand and two Spider Man.
Speaker 2: He's ex husband.
Speaker 1: Ex husband. Yes, I did. I did post a picture
with him, and a lot of people are like, well,
you met Sufia Bergar's husband. I was like, I got
news for you anyways, Uh, yeah, it was. It was
a panel with the three of them. It was kind
of an awkward panel because Eric, the guy didn't know
super nice, super Fine would jump on questions and talk
for a long time about them. Elizabeth didn't get as
much time to say stuff, and it's a thing where
I wish that the panel host had kind of like
probed her a little bit or trying to get her
to open up or make her more comfortable about the
whole thing. And then there's like an interesting thing with
Joe where he would he would say stuff and I
hear that he's like celebrity and then also board game person,
and I'm like that's fine, those two things can coexist.
I'm totally cool talking about the board game stuff, and
it was a funny thing where anytime he would mention
like doing Magic Mike, it would get like an enormous
uproar of laughter from the crowd. And it wasn't like
they were making fun of him or like a thing
he would. He kind of played it for comedic effect
where he's like, no one thought the guy from Magic
Mike would be into this stuff. And to me it
was a thing where I was like, I feel like
we're still like we can get I'm past that, I
get it those two things can exist. I want to
like hear what he thinks about games and instead its yes,
exactly has a bit obviously he's like playing the bid
a little too often. Yes, And I think I think
he knows like to be honest, and I'm like psychoanizing him.
I don't know him as a person, so this nother
thing I kind of read a level of kind of
an insecurity of him of being like because because uh,
you know, nerd culture is famously like gate keepy, So
I do think there is a thing of like, well
you want to come and like play that you're a
real nerd like us, but like we are the real
nerds that did this and do all this stuff all
the time you're off at your big Hollywood parties, And
I feel like, I don't know if he he thinks
he's perceived that way or he has been told that
he's perceived that way, but I did, I don't know.
I kind of picked up from him, but I got
I got uh two autographs from Elizabeth Hargrave, which was
very exciting. And then after that I went and I
played Hero Quest to Joe Magan Yellow because he wrote
an expansion to the game here requests, not a game
I had played before, and I was embarrassed about that,
but then found out knowing at the table like the request,
so I felt a lot better. And it's like a
it's like a dungeon crawler, and it comes with like
a big board and these like preset scenarios and basically
every time you open a door, like on this big
grid of board, the person that's behind like the DM screen,
which is what Joe is doing, they'll like place down
the items, or like, Okay, this is a hallway and
these are the doors on either side of the hallway,
or like this is what's in this room. It's like
a you know, alchemist shop or whatever. So it's like
an interesting dungeon crawling, exploring type thing. And I honestly
am not I'm not a judge for whether it was
a really good expansion or not because it was literally
my first ever exposure to the game. But we did
have fun and we liked it.
Speaker 2: Did it take place in Las Vegas and like behind
this door was a scantily clad man, great ass.
Speaker 3: It took place in.
Speaker 1: Uh tavern and he he introduced a bunch of people
again he wrote it's like called Joe Manganiello's Crypt of
Perpetual Darkness, I think is the title, and he kept
introducing people that had Philadelphia accents, which I assume is
because he's from Philadelphia. I was I was like kind
of role playing as my character, but I had chose
a voice that was very similar to mine, and he
kept doing committing to voices no one else at the
table was. I was like, oh, man, I should have
like I should have really gone for it because I
don't want him to feel left out, and just my
uh every time he put a goblin down on the board,
he went ah. He was talking to his completely normal voice.
He never did a goblin voice, but anytime he placed
a goblin down as if it was like a soundboard
effect to go like, ah, if.
Speaker 3: I thought that was you kind of have to. I
think if you're like putting down a funky little goblin guy,
you have to make like a noise with it. It's
like when the thing like you put a pair of
tongs out and you tell someone to pick them up,
and they always give them a little.
Speaker 1: Like click click click click. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you have to,
you have to. I fully, yeah, I was like I
could tell he it was a thing where it's like
if I called him out on it, I think he
would not realize he was doing it every single time.
Lizard bring and also he had he also had a
little tiny chiuahua named Bubbles with him, which was very nice.
Bubbles was just limply sitting on his lap the whole time.
Great dog.
Speaker 2: He's like really big into D and D right, like
that's his main thing. Like he spends a lot of
money on his basement and invites celebrities like Vin diesel
Over and they played celebrity D and D often.
Speaker 1: Uh, I don't I don't know how often he plays
with like celebrities specifically, but I do know that's like
a whole thing with him. And he's like, there's a
D and D setting dragon Lance, and he's been he's
adapting dragon Lance into a TV series, and he was
talking about how he's like doing that right now. It
was funny in the panel hearing all the board game
designers talk about their inspirations, and he was like, yeah,
you know, I grew up and I playing D and
D and hero Quest and all these like epic fantasy stories,
and I just really liked this part of my life
and these things I was doing, and that's why I
wanted to make games. And Elizabeth Hargrave, who if you
don't if you don't know Wingspan. It's a game about
birds and has a lot of like really specific bird
art and they all have like bird facts on them.
And it's a thing that was like not really popular
around the pandemic because it was a board game. All
of a sudden, everyone's stuck inside playing board games that
people that didn't play strategy games or intense board games
would be like, oh I like birds, or like a
grandma would be like, oh this is interesting, I'll learn
the rules of this. It's all birds Her inspiration for
starting was, I was so sick of every game was
D and D. Every game was like castles and goblins
and swords and stuff, which jen CON's got room for
both of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's fair.
Speaker 1: So that was my Thursday. I worked on Friday, and
then I went back on Saturday and that day. So
it takes place in the Indiana Convention Center, real big
convention center, obvious. It has like a lobby that kind
of like wraps around the main halls, and then the
halls are like this huge I think it was like
a big LA shaped or maybe even like C shaped,
like combined thing of all these halls of places to go.
But it's connected with an underground tunnel to Lucas Oil Stadium,
which is the stadium where the Colts play the NFL team.
It's an indoor stadium and because of that, during the
summer when the Colts aren't playing, they use it for
like conventions and stuff. So I went through this underground tunnel,
came out in Lucas Oil Stadium and the fields are
just covered in tables of people playing like magic. The gathering.
This was mostly where the magic stuff was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's where the magic happens true.
Speaker 1: There you go. I had a joke. I can't remember
if it made it into my gen Con piece in
the magazine or not, but I was laughing that, like
one of these guys be like, yeah, I've competed on
the an NFL field before, I've actually one of won
a few games. It was like wow, not not even
talking about magic. Yeah. Anyways, from there, I went into
they have like these a bunch of like meeting rooms
and suites in the stadium, and I went into this
like super fancy decorated room and I played the new
starter set for Dungeons and Dragons just called Here's the Borderlands.
And I'm a big D and D guy. I keep
trying to figure a way to get all my D
and D books on this shelf behind me, but I
can't make the shelves tall enough to fit the books.
But I have them all on this other side of me.
So I was interested to play this. I like the
twenty twenty four rules. It's kind of controversial online, but
I was just I don't know, I was interested to
see what this is. And it's like, well, quick pause break,
do you either of you guys play D and D? I think, Eric,
we've talked about D and D before.
Speaker 3: I have looked into the idea of like dming before
because I think it would be fun, it would be enjoyable.
And I also learned that the fact way to get
your friends to play a tabletop game is to DM
the tabletop game, because that's It's like playing Jungle and
League of Legends. You know somebody's got to do it,
and usually you have to be the one to do it.
Speaker 2: I know what we're talking about here was legal stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a quick pivot here, No, it's it's
it's cool. I own a lot of books and I
like a lot of writing around it and about it,
but I have yet to do more than play like
a one shot just because getting it. Turns out, the
greatest challenge in D and D is getting people together
on a regular schedule to play.
Speaker 2: It's literally impossible, impossible.
Speaker 3: I love D and D.
Speaker 2: I play it not as often as i'd like to,
just because I have friends that keep moving away to
different states and virtual D and D doesn't hit the
same as in person, although I probably just need to
get over that. But yeah, I love D and D
and I've been playing it for years cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I play. I actually haven't played in the last
time I played D and D was for over at
min Max. They've got a podcast pp Bang and for
their big season finale, I ran a D and D
game for them. That's the last time I played, and
that was like a month or two ago. I used
to play very regularly, but then I moved an hour
north of my friend and now it's just way harder
for us to get together for a group. But we should.
Speaker 2: We should do a game in Former one because we
have We also have Matt Miller, who is like, yeah,
I want him. I want him to DM and I
just want to see what that's like.
Speaker 1: I'm so curious to see him.
Speaker 2: He's been playing for like decades and he loves Matt.
Speaker 1: Matt told me he he wrote a D and D
campaign setting for fun. He wrote and like just just
just like for his friends, wrote a setting for it,
like a continent of like this world for their next
campaign over like a series of months. I think he
told me. Rachel at Game Informers, she's the one that
like laid it out for him to make sure it
looked okay, and then had it like printed out in
Bounce and handed it to his players before they started
the campaign so they could like learn about the lore
of the world, and then they like ran that campaign
for several weeks. Rule.
Speaker 2: That's so sick, Like, I want to get into that
part of Matt Miller's mind. He's such a nice, chill, professional,
professional boss. Even when like we're having a complete wreck
at work about something, he's still so calm headed. I
want to know. I want to hear his the goblin noises,
you know, the Matt Miller goblins.
Speaker 1: I actually really have fascinating to know what Matt's goblin
noise was. This is going to be the next meeting
we have.
Speaker 3: That's gonna be the first quest.
Speaker 1: Stand up, Matt, can you make a make a goblin noise? Well? Anyways, uh,
Here's the Borderlands is a really interesting starter set. If
you haven't played D and D. There are books that
like have the rules of D and D and you
can print out character sheets and right stuff on that.
But they do sell like boxes, Like if you go
to Target, you can get a box that's like a
starter set and or essentials kit, which is basically just
like a smaller version of the rules some pre made characters.
If you want to use the and then like a
little adventure so you guys can play a few sessions.
It's got dice, it's got everything you need to get started.
And if you feel like graduating writing your own stuff,
or like getting a more proper campaign setting or something,
you can get some of the other books. Here's the
Borderlands is one step even further than this like easy
access thing, because they give you like physical boards, like
the way we mentioned Wingspan before, but there's a lot
of board games where like to start the game, you'll
have like a like a I don't know, I don't
know what the material is, but like a laminated cardboard
board where it's like this is my pieces where my
things are gonna go. It has like your stats and
your character pre made, and then there's those slots for
like equipment and spells, and you have like playing cards
that you put in those spots to be like I've
equipped a mace and you'll put it there and it
says this mace does this much damage plus whatever thing.
So it like streamlines it so much that they're always like, yeah,
you can pick this game up and start playing within
five minutes, and that's always like that's not true, because
no one, no one's gonn understand it. This is like
before exact exactly our minimum. This is genuinely something where
you could take people that haven't played D and D
and fifteen minutes after you sat down, you guys can
start the experience of it, probably assuming one of you's
played before. Though. The rules do have instructions for new dms,
and they specifically I was playing with Justice Ramon Armand
I think is his name. I'm probably pronouncing it wrong,
but he's he's one of the like managing game designers
over at Wizards of the Cost that on D and D,
and he helped design the set, and he said that
the way they wrote the book, they were trying to
emphasize that the dms and the characters are all players.
It's not players and dms. They're trying to say, it's
all that. And they actually wanted people to trade the
Dungeon Master role around the table for this, and they
were like specifically very like piecemeal quests and stuff like that.
So I played it. I played it with this D
and D influencer name Sean, who I think known online
is krit Hit the Giant. I want to say his
name and the pr person invited my partner because he
knew that she was going to be there, and she
decided not to do it at the end because she
saw she saw a stand that was selling a froggy
fanny pack, and she was like, I actually have to
do I left her alone for an hour and came
back and she had a froggy bucket, hat, a froggy
fanny pack and had already gone back to the car
to drop off a bunch of other stuff she bought.
As is her as is her right. I'll say it.
I love her, even though she's not Italian. You know.
Speaker 2: Women, froggy women.
Speaker 3: You know we're not.
Speaker 1: We can opens Yeah, no, no, don't don't even show
me a picture of an Italian frog woman because I'm
not even going to know what.
Speaker 3: To do with myself.
Speaker 1: West you know how to say frog and Italian? Are
you thinking? Did you hear me?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Sorry, no, I'm music. As I had to cough because
I laughed too much.
Speaker 1: I said, do you know how to say frog in Italian?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 2: My god, no I don't. Actually I know a lot
of other animals, but not frog. It's probably I need.
Speaker 1: I need you to find out and you'll have to
do this right now, but just for future purposes. One
how you say frog and Italian? And two what they
say that a frog makes the sound that makes because
it's always like animal sounds are different. Another thing. Anyways, Uh,
my partner didn't come, but I didn't realize that they
had like an empty seat basically that she was gonna fill.
She was just gonna watch, but she could have played.
So it was me. It was this influencer, Sean and
then Sewan's kid, Riley, and Riley's like.
Speaker 2: Eleven.
Speaker 1: You know that age where you're like you could be
eight or you could be twelve, and I can't really
place it just because people mature at different rates. So
I played. I played like an hour of D and
D with Sean and his kid and it was very plightful.
And Riley, the kid for the record was I was like, oh,
this is so perfect because I can see how like
a kid who's never played D and D or doesn't
know that well might be able to adapt it. Riley
was like such a pro, already knew everything. I think
they picked playing a rogue because it was just the
one class they hadn't played before. They showed us a
picture or they told us about it, and I found
on the Instagram later the two of them have a
picture like with Matt Mercer because they had gone to
like a meet and greet a year earlier or something
like that. So very funny. But yeah, and it was accessible.
We found a secret door and behind that secret door
there was a young dragon and we were all level
one and it was like, give us your gold and
Riley was like, I'd rather die and the dragon was
like okay, and then we would have for sure died
if we hadn't run out of time. But I was like,
that's D and D man who knows? Who knows? I
was like, probably could have. There could have been a
lot of twenties and a lot of ones after that,
you know. Anyways, Yeah, so it was it was a
it was fun. I think it's an interesting idea. I'm
really curious of like how it'll be received because it's
it's one of the things where I'm I'm kind of
like hopelessly D and D pilled at this point, Like
I don't think there's a lot that would happen that
would make me stop playing the game, just because I
have all the books and stuff already that I would need,
Like I'm not buying every new book when it comes out,
but I don't need to be convinced to like the
game at all. And I'm curious if I brought this
to like my dad or something, and I'm like, this
is overwhelming. There's just these boards and these tokens and
these cards, and it'll it'll all make sense as we
go along. I Am just I'm curious as how it
will go.
Speaker 3: It's interesting to think about because D and D did
have that explosion, right, you know, the combination of actual plays,
crit roles, stuff like that alongside stranger things is kind
of the one to point to of like D and
D being in pop culture mainstream Again, it did have
a giant explosion. Now it's very mainstream. A lot of
people play it casually, play it with their friends who
normally you might not expect to at the same time.
I do always then wonder are these tools actually getting
people in or is it the people getting people in?
And like, what is facilitating what here? Is it always
that you need a good format to get people in
or do you need good tools for other people to
get other people in? That's I think that's what changed
for me with Magic and why I'm suddenly like crazy
down the Magic rabbit hole is because I've played Magic before.
I played Duels with the planes Walker on three sixty.
I played bloom Borow back when that came out, because
I like to set a lot. But what got me
to stick this time was having a commander that I
like meet up with regularly, and having people that I
play with online, and having actual reason to play with
the cards I have and play the game Magic versus
just experience it as a collecting thing that I sometimes
play on an app every once in a while. And
that kind of like unlocked in my head that it
really is about having that setting around you that I
think is conducive to getting people to join it, not
just making the game itself super approachable. Commander and stuff
like that in Magic has also made that game super
approachable and sociable in a way. This fresh and interesting too,
But it's interesting to see these these hobbies kind of
adapt as they grow in popularity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is cool to see them make moves like this,
but ultimately I think with D and D and Magic
like it really is and similar games, like the people
you're playing with are everything, especially like for D and D,
like if if one person is not like vibing or
is kind of like messing up the vibes, like it
can really take down the whole party, Like it needs
to be a pretty cohesive unit. And I've always found
that like, yeah, that kind of stuff. It just for
all the tools, for all the features, for all the
D and D beyond things you can do to make
D and D easier, Like none of it works unless
you have a party who is like active in buying
into it. So I am curious to see if like
this type of board game approach works because like ultimately
you still have to go to a board game shop
and like that even that's like a big step for
a lot of people out there, like they're stepping into
like a card shop or a board game shop is
like a crazy experience when you walk in, and if
you're not into that community, it's like, oh, whoa, this
is like something's going on here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they like ask you if you if you're looking
for something specific in a way that like like another
store wouldn't bother doing that where it's like you come
you often come to a board game or a card
game shop of like oh, I'm here for this game
or this specific thing.
Speaker 3: I think a lot about when I was fighting games
a little bit more competitively than I do right now.
It would be that feeling of walking into a tournament
for the first time, or walking into a weekly for
the first time, and everybody's setting up, maybe they're playing casuals,
they're warming up and stuff like that, and you're like,
I don't know anyone here. I don't know what the
vibe here. I don't want to like disrupt the vibes,
you know, and so you kind of just like try
to figure some stuff out. Maybe you look for somebody
else who looks similarly lost, and you find companionship there.
But that really depends on just.
Speaker 2: Through the record scratch moment, because when you will open
the door, everyone's like turns and looks you're walking in,
and you have to be like, Okay, they're just looking
because the door opened. They don't they don't hate me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: I've done weeklies for two games. I've done weeklies for
Smash back when Ultimate came out, and that was the
experience of walking in and being like, there's a giant,
thriving community here that I'm trying to enter into. And
play against full of a lot of personalities, let me
tell you what. And then I played Soule Caliber and
Soule Caliber was like, there's not a lot of people
here and they all know each other super well and
they've been playing together for ages and I'm just walking up,
like which one?
Speaker 1: And when when were you playing?
Speaker 3: This was six? When six first came out and I
was playing, I forgot his name. Now I feel bad
because I really I grow was his name with the
dual swords that could kind of do the stance changing
and stuff like that, and I got pretty decent at
him and could do a lot of the combos and
changeups and stuff like that, and it even won a
few games. But it was still that feeling of like
it was a really small community and you still feel
very alien at times, and it can be hard to
find that. And I think when you do find that
with a game, you end up latching to it because
it is a different feeling altogether. Like having a group
to play commander with regularly in Magic is huge because
now you have not just a game to play, but
people to play against. I've already started like crafting decks
in my mind that are like this will beat that.
This one person keeps running chatterfang squirrel tokens on me
and I'm sick of it. So I'm going to design
a deck to destroy this. And that gets really interesting.
But you have to overcome that initial pump. And that's
not easy for everybody to just walk into a place
and try and insert themselves. I mean, we're all fairly
personable people. We're on a podcast, for God's sake, and
still we might walk into a room and that's the bar. Yeah,
personable is having a podcast, we'll talk about our opinions
online for people down below to yell at us about.
And still, like you can walk into a place and
feel unsure about what the vibes are and stuff. I
think that's the biggest hurdle to overcome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think also the uh there's a uh I
don't know she like knows a professor that I had
in college, but there's an online figure, doctor Friedman, and
she writes a lot about tabletop games and stuff, and
she recently, I think, was commenting on I want to
say it was an NPR piece that was kind of
about dungeons and dragons, and she was kind of pointing
out some like not like tearing to shreds, but kind
of pointing out some inconsistencies in like the conclusions it
was making, and one of it is a lot of
what you're saying, where it's like, yes, Dungeons Dragons is
doing really well, but Dungeons and Dragons didn't sell out
Madison Square Garden to mention twenty sold out Madison Square Garden.
And it's like that the game is good and people
have liked the game, but it has a lot to
do with those performers and like the stuff that they
bring to it that's very interesting. I think too. Here's
of the Borderlands credit and why this specifically makes me
more curious than a lot of other stuff because like
the D and D twenty twenty four rules, I do
think simplified things and made it. I find it easier
to make a character with those rules than the twenty
fourteen rules. I think the thing that this does is
more more of a reach out towards confused people than
I feel like they've done before, where it's not just
like we've made your character sheet already you can look
at it. It's like we've redesigned the character sheet. We've
made these things like physical pieces you can hold.
Speaker 2: It sounds like it makes it a more tangible thing.
I think that's one of the barriers that D and
D has is like it does require I mean, unless
you've got a lot of money and a lot of
sets in many figs, but like there is a level
of imagination there that can be uncomfortable as adults because
we don't really Yeah, yeah, that every day. So I
think board gaming it up a little bit where it's like, oh,
I'm holding this piece and I'm moving this here and there,
Like I think that that sounds like a smart.
Speaker 1: Move for Yeah. It also it also comes with like
maps for all the areas you go to, and you
have like little standis for each of like the races
that you can pick or their species now. But yeah,
so but yeah, no, I think it's it's all an
interesting conversation and a matter of like is it D
and D, is it tabletop games? Is it Matt Mercer,
Brendan Lee Mulligan or is it just the idea that
you can be then? Yeah, that was wild. That was
another thing at gen Con I didn't get to go to.
Was they Yeah, they had a live show at gen Con,
and then Matt Mercer came out and was talking about
the I mean Dagger Heart and sorry for your game
to this podcast just for video games. We're getting real
deep in the world TTRPGs right now. But Dagger Heart
is a competitor to D and D created by the
people that made Critical Role. They have their own game
publishing arm now and they've made a D and D
like game that has a little bit lighter rules, different
rule set, has has physical cards for all your abilities,
just as when we're talking about like tangible things. That's
one of the things I like a lot about the game.
And then two of the head designers of fifth Edition
left Dungeons and Dragons and are now working for Dagger Heart.
And in this big show, like Matt Mercer came out,
he's talking the future of Critical Role, and then these
two guys came out like on the stage with him
months after they started there as like a show of
I mean, they were they were both wearing one shirt.
They were collectively wearing one shirt. The two of them
has a bit about they were all trying to be
Steve Jobs, so they all had different turtlenecks. Anyways, Yes,
and now Brendlee Mulligan, who's the DM Mention twenty, is
gonna DM campaign for Critical Role, which is big news.
Speaker 2: And that's the kind of thing that which is also
crazy because he's always the DM.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, yes, that's kind of thing that if
I had learned about gen Con even earlier in the year,
if I had thought to do it, then I could
have gotten tickets to stuff like that. But that is
one interesting about the event that it's like there are
stuff to do if you don't have appointments and you
haven't signed up to play games. But kind of the
heart of it is in these are the board game
celebrities you can see and the anyways.
Speaker 2: So as that was my thing just because they go
for excited about the Critical World. Season four, Yeah, not
set in Xandria, which is Matt Mercer's like own little
setting he created in D and D, but it's a
whole new world, whole new setting that I presume Brendan
is created, which is really cool. So like very if
you've ever been like I want to get into Critical Role,
I do think Season four. I mean, you can watch
all of them, they're all great, but Season four seems
like it's going to be a legitimately completely standalone like
New Fresh Start, and Brendan is if you Matt Mercer
is an incredible DM, but like secretly, Brendan might actually
be the best DM out there.
Speaker 1: Dude. That's my take, is im Brendan spoiled me for
basically other DM.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not a huge actual play person. I'll sometimes
put him on to like Fall Asleep too, because they
have a pretty even volume. Yeah, that's fair, And that's
like a weird thing that I'm sure some random people
in the comments probably identify with and everybody else is like,
you're crazy. When I got eye surgery a while back,
I had to basically lie in a room to heal
and recover, like in a dark room and screens for
a couple of days, and I ended up listening to
Dimension twenty. They're they're like high school one where they're
all at the D and d H. Yes, yeah, I
listened to the first season of that because you know
that that worked. I didn't have to like see it
to understand what was going on. I could hear it
all and it worked. And uh, let me tell you
that's that's a good time. That's a real good time.
If you ever get eye surgery and have to line
in a dark room for a couple of days, that's
my recommendation to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah and uh yeah, I was gonna say even the
the easier approachable thing from that is Brennan DM a
like prequel spin off mini series for Critical Role that's
like four or six episodes or something. Yeah, so if
you just want to taste of what he will be
like on Critical Role, that's a good u.
Speaker 2: And then he's going to be damming and Matt will
be one of the characters like that is I cannot wait.
It's going to be so awesome.
Speaker 1: Uh. My last shout out is Brennan has a podcast
with Lou Wilson, Erica who's the ghost of Yota uh
and Abria Engar called Worlds Beyond Number. That is my
pinnacle of D and D show. And they're almost done with
their like big first season, which is very cool. You
shoul watch that too. Cool. Okay, let's move on past
tabletop games. If you are sick of that, then good
are not good? Good for you because it's done. Now
we'll go back to Italian Women or whatever. Talking.
Speaker 2: We're video, We're a game informer. We are not video
That's true. That's we're talking games here, like get informed people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, wants to talk about.
Speaker 1: It was funny to be at gen Con and there's
like a big wingspan booth and a big like clank
booth and all these board games I know, and then
also like a big Uno stand.
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, yeah, let's go, let's go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Mattel's Mattel represent.
Speaker 3: Phase ten?
Speaker 1: Is that?
Speaker 3: What are they up to? What are they doing? Block
has got to be there.
Speaker 2: They're on twenty now, phase twenty, I think.
Speaker 3: Phase That's crazy, that's so many phases.
Speaker 1: Anyways, wess you reviewed some games recently? You reviewed a
wheel World in Ninja Guiden, rage Bound. I'll let you.
I'll let you pick which one you talk want to
talk about first.
Speaker 2: I'll probably start with rage Bound, just because I know
Marcus talked a lot about it last week, and I'll
just kind of ducktail and finished that convo. Yeah, the
past four weeks for me, I've I realized I've published
a review every week for four weeks now, and I've
been exploring the scale here at GI I published an eight,
then a five, then a nine point five, and now six,
and I'm currently working on my fifth review. I don't
know where that will land, but it's been fun opening
up our review skill and going up and down it.
Rage Bound is probably my top three games of the year.
It's just it's just fantastic for all the reasons, Marcus said,
And he hadn't even gotten to the real meat yet,
which is when you fully unlock both characters to use
at all times. And yeah, they are kind of like
a Nail and Piccolo situation, I believe is what I
remember reference last week, shout out to Nail, gets that happens,
and then I think he shows up. You hear about
Nail one more time near the end of Z and
then you're like, oh, yeah, that guy exists, and that's it.
Speaker 3: A real MVP, an unsung hero of the series.
Speaker 2: Truly, truly, but yeah, rage Bound, for everything Marcus said
about the first two ax he had, plays like the
rest of the game, it only gets better, it gets good.
It's just keeps ascending to new heights. I adored Rage Bound.
It is a hard, awesome, fast platformer with awesome combat,
and it does a really cool thing that he's kind
of mentioned, where like it becomes a rhythm game because
certain enemies need to be hit, like if they're pink,
they need to be hit with the girls range weapon,
if they are blue they need to hit by the
guy's melee attack. And as you continue through the game,
that just builds up to where you're like, pink blue,
pink blue, boom killing this, blah blah blah, and it
just goes crazy and it really tests your limits on
a controller, which I think is kind of Ninja Gaidan's
original appeal. Although I do think rage Bound is probably
easier than every other Ninja guiding game out there, which
is great. I just can't sing the praises of the
game Kitchen's work enough, like I mean, blasphemous games are great.
I love that they didn't make this a Metroidvania, because
I'm sure they would have crushed that. But I think
that rage Bound is works better as like a retro
throwback platformer. And yeah, I gave it a nine point five.
I don't really have any issues for me. I haven't
given a ten yet, and I'm kind of just maybe
waiting forever for the game that just screams ten at
me because I feel like it will and who knows,
but nine to five is like one of my highest score.
I was very happy to give that game a nine
to five. It truly rules, and I think it's like
I don't even know. I think it's like twenty bucks
maybe even less.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's a good little appetizer for Ninja Guid
in four, which is later this year, I think, right, So, yeah,
I Ninja Guid and Rage Abound is a must play
in my opinion. If you like platformers, if you like
retro gaming, if you like beautiful pixel art, if you
like the blasphemous games, give it a go. And some
people beat it in like four to five hours. I
beat it in like twelve. I kind of went syco
mode on it and tried to get like S rank
on everything and find every collectible. So if you want
a meati little platformer, that's there. But if you don't,
you can just mainpath it in three to four hours apparently,
which I know is like a big appeal for people.
Speaker 3: What did you play it on? Because I would be
curious to know if there's a particular like platform preference
for this sort of thing.
Speaker 2: I played it on PC. Also, if you hear my
daughter in the back, she's okay. She's just testing at
her vocal cords. I played it on PC primarily on
Steam Deck runs like a dream. It's perfect there. It's
perfect on PC. I've I've heard and read that it's
good on consoles as well, except with the exception of
Switch Too and Switch it's just a Switch one game,
and it is a capped at thirty fps, which is
kind of a bummer in my opinion, especially when it's
not capped at thirty fps elsewhere. So like, I'd probably
recommend it anywhere else. But again, I know it's you know,
Switch is really nice to carry and hold around. So
if you're fine with thirty fps, like, yeah, go for
It's not the game, it's not broken, it's just cap
to thirty And that's kind of a huge bummer for
me after playing on Steam Deck and PC. But yeah,
it's an excellent steam Deck game. It's not like one
of those ones that feels weird holding that gargantuan brick.
It feels at home there. Yeah, that's rage abound. I mean,
I just I just kind of wanted to tailcoat off
of Marcus's thoughts and just say, like the first half
of the game, he's loving. I suspect he's he hasn't already,
He's going to really love the second half. And I
would highly recommend that game too, pretty much anyone out there.
Speaker 1: Oh there you go?
Speaker 2: Was it real world? Oh go ahead.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, just in terms of the the difficulty,
do you think it's like hard enough that it'll be
off putting for some people? Like is it is it
like a I don't know, not to compare everything to
Dark Souls, but is it like a Dark Souls where
it's like it's really hard and that's the point to
frustrate you, or is it.
Speaker 2: Like no, No, it's challenging, but not like brutally hard.
And there's really good accessibility options to like make things
easier or slow down timings or you know, change visuals
and stuff to make windows easier to see and stuff like.
You can make this game as easier as hard as
you want. And I think the baseline difficulty, like the
normal difficulty is, is really good. It's not it's going
to challenge you, but it's not going to like break you.
And you can also like some of the options include
like you don't take damage so you can enjoy the
platforming and fun and not worry about like dying. It's
got a lot of cool options like that.
Speaker 1: I really like when when companies get like real, real
intense and specific with accessibility ones like that. I always
mention a game called Ike and Fell that came out
and like, oh, yeah, twenty nineteen, I don't remember exactly
the year, but they had a thing where when they
were developing the game, they created a button that just
let you skip combat encounters because they were trying to
just make sure it worked out. And then they're like, hey,
why don't we just put this in the menu. If
someone doesn't want they just want to play the game,
the don't want to fight people, we might as well
just have a skip combat en counters. But it's like, yeah,
why not, why not let people do whatever they want?
Why the ara of cheat codes is over? Just put
it in the menu, Let me toggle big heads, you know, South.
Speaker 2: Of Mind, And I did that too. You can completely
skip the counter.
Speaker 1: What a game?
Speaker 2: Love A game that actually might if I reviewed it,
I wouldn't give it like a Game of the year's score.
But like, since I didn't have to review it, I
can just be like, I think that's my game of
the year because I loved. I can just ignore that.
I can ignore the parts that are bad and be like, no, yeah,
the Cajun culture, they nailed it. Love it perfect, excellent game.
Shout out South Them Midnight.
Speaker 1: Shout out South Them Midnight.
Speaker 2: A game I cannot recommend highly compared to Rage Bound is, unfortunately,
wheel World, which is probably my biggest disappointment of the
year so far. Am I lowest score this year. I
think technically my casting a frank Stone review got a five,
but I played it last year, but we reviewed it
in our downtime, blah blah blah. I gave wheel World
a five. I really really wanted to like this game,
but it just didn't work for me. It's it's like
a tale of two games. There's a really cool vibe
bicycle game, and then there's like a really and then
there's like a racing game, a bicycle racing game in there,
and I don't think it commits to either one well
enough to work, and so you just have this like
disparate package that is a lot of boring and clunky
races in my opinion, a pretty boring world, like basically
non existent storytelling. For example, you have to like go
around and race these like legendary bikers to get these
legendary parts. There's a whole story, but like, honestly, it's
not even it's whatever. The game doesn't commit to it much,
so I'm not going to either. But like you, they
build up these legendary bikers and then you you race
them and you beat them and they're like, oh, you
beat me, good job, and that's it. And I'm like,
what this is?
Speaker 1: What this is?
Speaker 2: It? Like your rid this is like your this is
like I've read and Pokemon was like, ah, good job,
and then that's it. There's no built like it was
just it was bizarre. And I didn't particularly like the races.
And I never struggled in the races, and I'd be
finding all these bike parts that change how my bike
plays on the road or in bushes or on grassland,
and it just didn't matter. I just put the best
stats on my bike and go And I never struggled
in a race, and I never had a hard time
fighting to get first place. Even when the game's annoying
rubber banding put me way back into eighth place. It
took me like not long at all to get back
into first place. The only challenges I had during the races,
we're completing bonus objectives like finding hidden kat kat is
the protagonist's name letters throughout each race. But it's one
of those games where I was making my own fun,
which is not fun ultimately. That said, I like the
art style. It's weird. I don't know how to describe it.
It's very different, very cool. I don't want to say
like very indie looking, but like, I don't know. You
look at it and you're like, that's a cool endie game.
And the soundtrack is incredible. I really, actually, legitimately love
the soundtrack a lot. It's really really good and probably
one of my favorites of the year. But yeah, it
was just pretty much nothing worked for me. The world
is pretty boring to explore. There's only three types of
things you'll see on your map, and they're all the
same and they don't change. And then it does the
most annoying thing in games, which Charles I think you're
dealing with in Shadow Labyrinth, where like, oh we're at
the end, boom, pal Nope, a whole new thing just
opened up and now you've got to do all this,
and then the narrative that happens. There was just like blow,
like what are we doing? And then I'm at the
final part of the game and it was like, Okay,
here we go. I hope you did it all right.
Game's over. No built, like, no, no momentous, yeah no,
And it was just like it almost felt like I
don't know, I don't want to like speculate, but I
was like, what, like it just is this really done?
It's it's finished. What happened the heck just happened? And yeah,
Ultimately I gave it a five. It's just my biggest,
my biggest disappointment this year. I don't really know if
there's anything redeeming in it other than the soundtrack, which
I will be listening to throughout the year. But again,
it's a It's another smaller, cheaper title, so like, if
you want to play a biking game, there's not many
out there, Sure go for it. It'll do it as
you know, maybe you'll. I'm I'm on the lower end
of reviews I've found, so like, there are people out
there who actually really like this game and dig what
it's doing, and that might be you. It just uh,
it didn't work. It felt the ViBe's part of the
game weren't given enough attention. In the racing part of
the game, weren't giving enough attention and put together, it
was this package that didn't work at all for me,
which is unfortunate, but you know, that's how it goes.
Sometimes that's a that's wheel World. It's not happened in
the wheel World.
Speaker 1: They said, that's life in the wheel World.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and the name is terrible. Ghost Bike
was way cooler. Having played wheel World, I now know
why they called it wheel World because the ghost bike,
the whole ghost aspect basically non existing. All of that
is like it's mentioned and then it's kind of there
in the background. Like I get why they changed the name.
It is not very it's not a very ghostly or
ghost bike game. But I also don't know if it's
a wheel World game. There's there's a lot of people
that ride bikes, but there's still annoying cars that not
you to freaking files and wheels. That's true. Actually those
are tires wheels. Here's what we want to get into here.
Speaker 1: We got it. We got to know it's tires are
wheel There's no debate there, it's that's that's.
Speaker 3: I think tires are subset of wheel.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, but uh we should we should
rename Grand Theft Auto six to real World. I think
that's like a better name for that.
Speaker 2: Just Florida World, Florida, Real World, Florida, Florida. Yes, yeah, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: General question for both of you. Uh, this is either
true for reviewing games or just in general. Would you
rather play a boring game or a frustrating game? Oh?
Speaker 2: God, probably probably a boring game, because then I can
at least turn on a podcast frustrating at my current
state in life, which is with the four month old
at home and the ever never ending schedule of being
in games. Media, frustrating is like, can be really frustrating. Sometimes.
I hate when I'm like, I just want this section
to be done as boring, I'll turn on music, I'll
turn on a podcast. At least I'm accomplishing something for me.
Speaker 3: I think, well, you, Eric, I think I'd rather play
frustrating right now, because boring just makes me fall asleep.
Like I have actually fallen to sleep while playing a
video game before because it was so boring, but like
the music was also so serene and relaxing that I
just kind of like dozed off. What was the game
playing it? It was? It was some random RPG. I
legitimately don't remember the name of it. That's how boring
was that. That's not for the bid. I'm not trying
to like dodge casting shade on somebody. I legitimately don't
remember the name of it. I just remember like the
little piano lulling me off to sleep, which gives me
a hint. I think in my head to what it was.
But that was a long time ago. But maybe it
was im sesnah, who's to say, but I I don't know.
Like frus can be its own reward in that way.
And also I find something fascinating in a frustrating game.
I don't think I would enjoy playing Lord of the
Rings Gollum, but I think I would find it an
interesting game to play because of the ways in which
it is frustrating actively, whereas boring is never going to
be textually interesting. It's just going to be wrote by
the numbers, you know. And you can put on a
podcast or something, but at that point I'd rather just
be watching something or listening to the pocket, like actively
listening to the podcast than like passively. Yeah, so I think,
I think frustrating for me, but it is an interesting question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you. I I would rather play a boring game,
but I do. I find frustrating games easier to like
review and talk about because I'm like, sure, finally I
can talk about this thing that's been I Wes brief
mentioned Shadow Labyrinth, which I've been trying to finish forever,
and I just keep having other things on my plate
and I'm at the final area. But it's a whole thing.
But one thing about that game that I don't like
is there's two types of collectibles. There's yellow collectibles and
there's red collectibles. And red collectibles can either be health
upgrades or like super important like character upgrades, or it's
map markers. It can just be more map markers. You
can do a whole like challenge section and get a
red collectible and then find out you have more markers
for your map, which, like I was never like I made.
Speaker 2: An amount of markers for your map.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can place, which I didn't realize until I
got more. And I keep going to places and it's like, hey, man,
give us one hundred gold, we'll get you some more
map markers. It's like crazy be the first level of
this this boss rush mode, and you'll get some more
map markers, and I'm like, why is this a reward
to you? And then the yellow collectibles are either a
currency that I didn't figure out who I supposed to
give it to until literally like our thirty five of
the game, or text logs, and it's always that's one
where it's like always not fun to get.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought you're gonna say something like the ability
to pause, Like you've gained one pause.
Speaker 1: I made fun of the game earlier that it's like
you gotta get five hours in and beat a boss
and then like your first big metro vanea thing, it's like, congrats,
you've unlocked the Perry button, Like why didn't I start
with the Perry button? And then after you get the
Perry button, you unlock the block button and it's like
you can't block in perry at the same time. They're
two different things.
Speaker 3: Anyways, That's that's like a gaming cardinal sin to me
is when you take too long to give the player
the stuff that is just the fun parts of the game.
Speaker 1: Like I get this exact conversation we were talking about Donkey Kong.
I feel so strongly about that. That's don Yunk's the
perfect example, perfect example of Donkey start off and you
can you can turf surf and you can jump, double jump,
and like you start off and it's like, oh, I
have so many things I can play with. It's just
fun to exist. There's a version of Donkey Kong where
you have a punch button and then eventually you do
a tutorial to learn how to punch down and punch
up and it takes like five hours to get the
like movement tech stuff.
Speaker 3: Has to learn how to punch up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, terrible.
Speaker 2: Now my flip side, Prince of Perser Lost Crown, you
don't get the double jump. That's like one of the
last things you unlock. And they did so good with
the progression and the momentum of that game that, like,
it is one of the best feelings I've ever had.
So it sounds like Lost Crown is doing the opposite
of Shadow Labyrinth in the medic The.
Speaker 1: Double jump is kind of like a whole thing in
a Metroid Venus specifically, where it's like any platform or
you want to double jump because it's just such a
common movement tool. I do like of all the abilities
to withhold. I like withholding the double jump because it's
something you know you're gonna get and you always want,
and there's something about not being able to jump quite
high enough that you're like, oh, I'm gonna get that,
but it prints. PUSH's a great example of like, you
do get other cool stuff before then, so it's not
like you're so disappointed you never get the double jump.
Shoutout Laborth. That did take me fifteen sixteen hours to
get the double jump, And when I finally did, I
was like, Ah, finally the base features of the game
are complete. Now I can move on to the rest
of it.
Speaker 3: It depends if the game feels like it's been laid
out and designed it that way right. Does it feel
like you are kind of getting this tool to moment
that makes it feel like it opens the game up,
or does it feel like, oh, now I can play
the game more comfortably axiom verge. Weirdly enough, is when
I think of a lot where you start that game
as almost cumbersome, like you're just kind of plodding around
and you just have a gun. It's almost very metroidy.
I mean, it is extremely metroity, but it gives you
so many movement tech options to start to think about that.
By the time you start doing weird movement and weird stuff,
you kind of have the mind space to start thinking
about how all those things can combine together to do
some really cool stuff and then hunt some secrets with that.
And I think those are good examples of giving you
something later on that is kind of an expected upgrade
in a video game like that, but making you wait
and designing worlds around it so that it feels right
and timed and impactful, Whereas, yeah, I think there are
other games where it's just like, why'd you wait so
long to give me this? Man, that's the good stuff.
I liked Final Fantasy sixteen more than most, and I
think you spend too long in that game with too
limited of a skill set when it comes to the
icons that you can use, because by the time you
start to unlock more than like two icons, maybe two
or three that you start out with, then the game
starts to really open up and give you some really
cool stuff to work with. But up to that point,
you're kind of working with a very limited skill set,
and that can be frustrating because you're like, give me
the cool toys. I want to play with the cool
toys was so excited.
Speaker 2: Review Charles also, yes, I love oh Sure sixty as well.
But your shadow out in the review is probably my
most anticipated of you to see. I've just I've just
seen and heard so much of the ups and downs
you've gone through a lot of times playing it in slacks,
so like, I can't wait to it.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things where I sat down to
start drafting it and I blew way past the one
page limit, and now I'm like, I'm gonna have to Yeah,
I don't know if I'm gonna do two versions of
I'm gonna do a web version and a magazine version.
Listeners are our magazine. We go based on character count,
and like one page is like thirty six hundred characters,
which is not that many words, definitely less than you
would normally put in a review. So it's often hard
to like pare down your thoughts into something as concise
as that. But when you're writing something right at the
magazine deadline, it's like almost more work to write a
web version, and of almost it is more work to
write two versions of a thing versus one version of
a thing, but it's good.
Speaker 2: Practice though I do that, like, yeah, the magazine version
really forces you to think about what needs to be
said in this review. There are I often sometimes I'm like,
if I had one more paragraph, that would be awesome. Yeah,
when I'm trimming, I'm like, I wish I didn't have
to trim this. But I think it's a unique thing
about writing and physical that really tests your brain in
a way that doesn't happen online elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's some There's a few points in my life
I can pinpoint as the most relief from stress I've
ever felt. And number three or four is my first
week at Game Informer. I found out that it was
a character count and not a word count, where I
thought I had to write like sixteen hundred words on
Path of Titans. Maybe it's called it's like a dinosaur
MMO game that I didn't really have all that much
of a thought about. And I was doing like a
half page preview on it, and I was like, I
can't write like an essay on the like hour or
two I played on this game. I don't want to
do that those character counts, And I like almost cried.
I was like, oh my god, oh maybe I can
do this job longer.
Speaker 2: My favorite is I don't want to say names, but
we are like freelancers, Like you know, help a freelancer
get a piece in and pitch and stuff, and then
they get it in and they're like, dog, these character
counts are you for real? And I'm like, welcome to
print man. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: That is a thing of I think it's also a
coming from a school environment where it's like the hit
the minimum, like minimum a thousand words and like you
would never write three thousand words for that thing, but
you get so used to being like I'm just gonna
fill as many thoughts as possible and get them out,
and there's like definitely an art to the magazine of
making it more concise. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Forces you to talk about the game, though, And I
think that's what I like is I think too often
when I am given unlimited space, I'm like, oh well,
I really need to like write all of this almost
back of the box summary of like this is what
the game is, this is what you do, and having
a character limit forces you to just talk about what
you think about the game. Not this has a gun
in it, but the gun in this game is not
very good, or the gun in this game is very good.
Shout outs to the smart pistol. And that's a that's
a good thing to encourage, I think for writers, and
so I like it and.
Speaker 1: That's that's why it's nice to have the podcast where
it's like I can give my unabridged thoughts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: My all time lowest review. Definitely least favorite game I
played was Super Bomberman R two. At least we have
a flavor work. I've probably played worse games otherwise, but
that game has like insane lore where it turns out
that like these little cute guys have been committing suicide
for you on like you get to never mind. It's
it's a level of weirdness and annoyingness that I'm like,
I literally I don't have the word count to explain
it in a written review. So I was glad I
got to come on here and they gave me like
a minute timer to just word vomit how much I
was baffled by the weird lore of this game, whereas
like the average person is like, I just don't know
if it's fun, Like I don't really need to get
I don't need, you know, twenty thousand characters on the
ins and outs of the Bomberman law as you've now
become familiar with it.
Speaker 3: But that's a good segment. Idea is just here's a
minute to vent about something in a game you've been playing.
Speaker 1: That's actually great my back pocket. My favorite thing about
Super Super Bomberman R. Two is I explained it it's
like an open world Bomberman game and Matt Miller, having
not played it, I don't think he ever played it.
I don't know he ever said a thing about other
than this, but he was like, that's like making open
world tennis. I was like, oh my gosh, that's genius.
What a bar that's gotta be the I don't think
I put it in my review, but I was like, Matt,
that's so good. All right. Uh well, thanks everyone for
tuning into this episode of the Game Former Show. As always,
you can subscribe to Game for a magazine, a Game
for when a com slash subscribe. We're working real hard
on our most recent issue or our upcoming issue, rather
hoping that all our scheduling stuff works out, but we
are excited about it, so that'll be fun. Yes, I
don't know your guys' social handles. Off the top of
my head, I'm I'm everywhere as that's a friendship. I'm
I'm member, where was Chuck Duck? Three sixty five West?
Where can people find you?
Speaker 2: Mostly Blue Sky? I'm just Wesley LeBlanc there and then
on Instagram, I am annoyingly I underscore, am underscore, Wesley Underscore.
I've been trying to be more active there and like
posting about my work and travels because I'd like to
travel and do a lot of it and take pictures.
And I'm also trying to make TikTok thing, which I am.
I've been seeing those seven on TikTok. I'll talk about
my China trip that I returned from in a later
episode one day. I have a lot to say and
it was an awesome trip, but I was there with
a lot of people, like it was the biggest event
I've ever been to. At one point, like two thousand
people China shows up and a lot of them were influencers,
And to be frank, just hearing some of the numbers
they're throwing around, I was like, I gotta get on TikTok.
Speaker 1: I gotta start.
Speaker 2: I got to make my life content and it's a
struggle It's not easy and it's kind of embarrassing, but
it helped. Like filming in public is really hard, but
seeing these people are like professionals at it, like they
have no problem whipping out their phones and just doing whatever,
and I was like inspired. So I'm really trying to
give it a good go. We'll see if that continues.
But if you want to join me there in the
cringe and in the work travels and whatever else I post,
It's Wesley LeBlanc seven.
Speaker 1: And Eric C.
Speaker 3: Moussy on Old b St. Guy is about the only
place I'm on these days. I'm trying to disconnect myself
from social media as much as possible. So yeah, I've
got you know, I've got stuff for friends and family
to get signs of life every now and then. But
uh yeah, I especially when the Great Exodus happened and
all that, I was like, it's probably a good time
for me to just take a break from a lot.
Speaker 1: Of social media.
Speaker 2: It was connected.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we should we have connected. Kajimo is so right
for that, And so I've been doing it less but
best guys where you'll find me most of the time.
So when I decide to post random thoughts that enter
my head.
Speaker 1: Well, there you go. And if you want, if you
want someone that's gonna post consistently, you can find Game
Informer dot com, on Blue Sky, game Form magazine, on Instagram.
You can just search game for him anywhere. We'll probably
pop up before we go west. Did you find out
frog and Italian?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Frog and Italian is ratza, no rana? But hey,
do you know what Italians? What frogs sound like in Italy?
Like the noise that they.
Speaker 3: Ribb it an Italian?
Speaker 1: What did they?
Speaker 3: Does?
Speaker 1: She say something?
Speaker 2: She said that she just knows it's rhana, but doesn't
she says she knows it's rana an Italian like that's
the word for frog, and she's positive they do not
do ribbit. Like if you're a kid in Italy doing
a frog noise, you don't do a ribbon.
Speaker 3: You don't do ribb it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, this this week instead of looking it.
Speaker 3: Up to find out okay, okay.
Speaker 1: This week after watching the podcast, instead of looking it up,
you guys can imagine whatever you want Italian frogs to say. Firstly,
I think they go rubato.
Speaker 2: Oh hold on, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's cra cra cra, oh cra.
Speaker 3: Well Okay, Cra, cra.
Speaker 2: Shout Italian women. Shout out frog, there we go. Shout out.
Women that like frogs, shout out women, shout out Italy.
Frogs are up, We up, we up.
Speaker 1: Shout out Italy, shout out. Thank you so much for
listening to this absolutely insane episode The Game for Michelle.
We'll see you guys next week. Bye bye,