Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Welcome back to the Game Informer Show, a
weekly podcast covering the video game industry. Join us every
Friday for discussion about the latest gaming news, reviews, and
exclusive reveals, alongside Game Informer staff and special guests from
around the industry. I'm one of your hosts today, Alex
van Aiken. Today I'm joined by Marcus Stewart.
Speaker 2: Hey to Marcus.
Speaker 3: Hey, I'm back from the Game Awards and they didn't
give me an award. I, oh, yeah, you were supposed to.
Speaker 2: That's what you were going out there for.
Speaker 3: I thought that's what Keighley told me when I hung
out with him in Japan. He promised me a game award,
and when I approached him, he just kind of like
backed away and acted like he didn't know me.
Speaker 2: It was weird, huh.
Speaker 1: They were also supposed to do an orchestral arrangement of
the Game Informer Show intro music, and I noticed that
wasn't in the show proper. I wasn't sure if that
was in the pre show and I missed it or
a special you know audience on nothing.
Speaker 2: Nothing.
Speaker 3: No. I blame this piggy, honestly, I think.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, there was a lot of drama.
Speaker 3: A lot of drama. I was I saw some stuff backstage.
I can't. I don't know if I'm at liberty to
say between the two of these.
Speaker 2: But is that the stuff that was on TMZ?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Something different?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, then maybe you already know if you're
referencing TMZ.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it just what does TMZ stand for? Too many
bit's zany?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Actually? What?
Speaker 2: Maybe?
Speaker 3: What does I just realized? I don't Actually, I.
Speaker 2: Guess I just told you. Charles Hart, Hello, how are you?
Speaker 4: I'm I'm doing better now that I know that TMZ
stands for thirty mile zone TMS.
Speaker 2: Do you have the official name? Are you looking it up?
Speaker 4: That's yeah, thirty mile zone, I know, really yeah. Historically,
using the film and television industry to refer to the
so called studio zone, an area with a thirty mile
radio centered on the intersection of Beverly Boulevard in Los
Cienaga Boulevard, Los Angeles, is that can call the studio
zone because the number of film and television studos within it. So,
I guess because it's like celebrity news, specifically Hollywood news,
the thirty mile zone would be like the area that
they would do.
Speaker 3: Therefore, that sounds confusing if you work in the industry,
like if you're trying, like if you live in LA
or something, You're like, I'll meet you by the TMZ
and then people are like, what you're talking to TMZ?
Like no, no, no, the old one, the one that
you know.
Speaker 4: It's also you wouldn't meet someone by that's thirty miles zone,
so that's.
Speaker 3: Like a big area.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, like, I meet you in the Manhattan.
Speaker 1: That's my favorite call diuty word or called didty mode.
And I know that people. We'ven get a lot of
comments lately on YouTube people don't like the word association jokes.
And I say to those people, two damn bad, you know,
two damn bad.
Speaker 3: That's all we have, guys. I'm sorry, that's that's it.
Speaker 2: That's what we have.
Speaker 1: We have sweet treats, that's the and we got word
association jokes.
Speaker 3: Okay, our comedic ceiling.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we have sweet treats.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've got a Coke zero vanilla off Okay.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but that's not for them, that's just like us.
Speaker 3: You're saying for the class.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, did you ever have a teacher that actually
did that?
Speaker 3: Oh? Like the did you bring food all you out?
I mean I class because I was I was a
very good kid. But I have seen I've seen it
happened to less good kids that brought food in. We
were like, I'm trying, Oh did you actually have to
like did they take it away and make you share
or did they just know?
Speaker 2: But I was like publicly shamed and I didn't like that.
Speaker 3: What'd you bring?
Speaker 2: It's just chips?
Speaker 3: I mean, chips are class, that's what It's always chips.
Speaker 2: Oh, there's always chips Son chips, Yeah, which is.
Speaker 3: Weird because that's like the loudest thing you could eat. Like,
it's not really good for sneaking, which is the idea
of bringing food in class. And you're like, I'm going
to open this bag, which makes a lot of noise,
and then the every time I bite into this is
going to sound like like stepping on glass. So I
never understood why so many people tried to sneak, is
like there's so many there's so much more QUI I do.
Speaker 1: Just say it's a dumb rule, and people want to
snack while they learn, they should be able to have
a snack.
Speaker 3: I wonder if it's still a thing in school, like
his food still banned.
Speaker 4: Probably depends on the Yeah.
Speaker 1: Listeners, but I think it was a free to email us. Yeah,
but I think it's also as a game offumer dot com.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think it's also a cleaniness concern because like,
some kids are gross and they don't want people leaving
food and getting roaches and rats and classrooms and stuff.
Speaker 2: Okay, well they're kids. There's gonna be roaches anyways.
Speaker 4: There.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they all look like Pigpin from Peanuts.
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, Well let's get into the show proper.
We're gonna be talking about Marcus's trip to the Game Awards.
We're gonna be getting into our Steam replays, which is like,
you know, similar concept like Spotify wrapped. If you have
a Steam account, you can get your Steam replay from
the year. We're gonna be talking a bit about death
Howl and Dogpile. It's Charles, and then then we're gonna
be later on getting into our World of Warcraft Midnight
cover story. Charles and I visited Blizzard Entertainment in Irvine,
California during November, and you know, we can finally talk
about what we learned, and that cover story is live
if you want to go read it yourself, go to
GameInformer dot com slash Wow Midnight and that's the coverage
hub for everything that's in the issue. So if you
have a digital subscription or print. If you have a
print subscription, you are automatically have one, and uh yeah,
you can go and go and check out all the stories,
or you can wait for it to get to your
mailbox or on newsstands in January. So yeah, Game in
Former Magazine issue. That's three seventy four World of Warcraft
coming January twenty twenty six. I think that's the official
publication date. But of course if you have a digital subscription,
you get early access to it.
Speaker 4: Cool.
Speaker 1: Well, let's get into the show for Opper Marcus. How
was La speaking of? You were in the TMZ zone
the TMZ.
Speaker 3: We're in the TMZ I guess I I am TMC reporting. Yeah.
So this was my first ever trip to the Game
Awards Live. I've gone to some of the other killy events,
like I've done SGF, I've done Opening Night Live games Com.
This was like the last one. So I punched that
last hole and I think I'm do like some sort
of like discount now. I turned in my card right,
and I get like fifty percent off ticket. I believe
that sounds like yeah, but it was. It was cool,
it was getting in was a bit of a pain.
Like the event itself was fun and long, very long.
They're they're always long, and it felt longer being there
in person for reasons I'll get into, but I will say,
neither of you have been to the Game Awards live, right.
Speaker 2: I haven't been.
Speaker 3: A yeah. I was like, that's right, you have, Alex,
I have not. It was some rough things to learn.
So for one, the line to get in was like
really unorganized where there was just multiple lines that are
I guess all the same line. But then I asked,
I didn't know if my ticket was differently was different
just because I received it as press versus buying it,
And so I asked. I remember I went up there
and I got there early, and I asked a person
that was like the line police, and I was like, Hey,
is there one line or are there different lines? Does
it matter like ticket wise, like just trying to get
the four one be like, I don't want to commit
to this line if I'm not supposed to be in
this line, and she's like, no, it's all the same line,
and I'm like, okay, so I said, in the line
for a very long time, it's not really moving. They're
slowly starting to file people into the building. And then
I would say, after about like thirty minutes of line occupation,
I got to like the front of a line, and
they start checking the tickets as you're in line, giving
you wristbands so that you're just good to go when
you get in. And then the moment she scans my ticket,
she's like, you're not supposed to be in this line.
And I was like, a class I asked you that, yeah,
and she's like, no, no, no, you got because you didn't.
This was like I forgot what the the criteria was
like somethinking about purchase versus not purchable, like you need
to go to the like directly into the entrance. I
was like, all right, here we go. Also, I think
this person was a questionable moral character because before this,
as I was moving in the up the line, there
was a gentleman who was running past. I looked like
he was trying to get somewhere into the game awards.
And as he was running like she was, I was
following her because she was escorting us, like our section
of the line forward, and I was in the front.
And as this guy runs past us, his room key,
his hotel room key falls out of his pocket and
she's like a good two feet in front of me,
and I noticed she sees it, so I'm kind of
expecting her to kind of bend down and pick it
up and be like, oh, sir, but she doesn't, so
then I have to go get it. And then she
looks at me and says, oh, I think that's that guy,
and I'm like, well, in my headline, you will clearly.
Speaker 2: Have to We all saw what happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then I had to chase this guy down
and be like, hey, excuse me, sir, and give it
back to him. And I was just kind of like, well,
I don't know why you didn't do that. You you
had your chance, and I had to step up.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I had to step up.
Speaker 3: I had to do my good deed for the day.
And my payment was getting to stand in another line
because I was told this line was okay. But anyways,
and then also, and this is important for this story,
I was very thirsty because I kind of had to
I had to change hotels right before this, and.
Speaker 2: I know there's no concessions in that line.
Speaker 3: No, and there's concessions inside, but they may as well
be useless. And I'll explain why because I so, I'm
like thirsty, and I was like, oh, I'm waiting to
get inside to get a drink. But then I had
since I got shipped through another line, and the second
line was right next to the Starbucks as in La Live.
I'm sure you know of it, Alex. So I'm like, oh,
I'll just run in there real quick because the line's
literally out the door anyway. So I wait in a
very long Starbucks line get a bottle of water. By
the time I come back, the line has like dissipated,
so I can kind of just walk inside and it's great.
I unscrew this cap once take a sip, and as
I'm going through the uh, the security, the lady's like,
you didn't just open that bottle of water, did you?
And I'm like, I mean yeah, because I took a
sip and she's like, oh, you can't bring that in here.
And I asked her, like why, what's wrong with it?
And she's like, we just they don't allow open drinks
in here. And I was like, I literally just opened it,
Like you can't even tell that I drank it. That's
how small of a sip. Yeah, And she's like, I
can't let you in, so I had to throw it
away and I this is like a good four dollar
water and I'm still very thirsty. It's like I took
one sip and then immediately.
Speaker 2: It almost makes it worse, like you got teased with
the water.
Speaker 3: And yeah, and then I'm just looking at it sit
on top of the trash pile, like this perfectly full
like Ethos water bottle. So I get it.
Speaker 2: I want to chucked it, rucked it in front of her.
Speaker 3: Well, here's the thing, because like I heard stories of
the Game Wars and you can attest to this two
Alex is that they're very strict about bathroom breaks, Like
you you can't just come and go during the show,
Like if you get up during the show and go
to the bathroom, depending on what's going on, like if
there's anything happening in terms of a trailer or someone
on stage talking, they the ushers won't let you back
to your seat. They hold everyone in like the aisle
and it's not till the excuse me, the ad breaks
that they let everyone sit back down because apparently, I
guess they don't like maybe the visuals of seeing people
moving about up and down the aisles, even though I
feel like a lot of the time when I watched
the broadcast, the camera is almost like ninety percent always
on the stage or on Jeff, Like, there aren't too
many like crowdshots, and if they are, they're like centralized
on one individual, not like look at everyone here, and
so like because of that, I didn't really shots.
Speaker 2: They probably would.
Speaker 1: Really there's a big crane shots that will sometimes show
you a lot of the theater and then just when
Jeff soft to the side doing Muppet bits, you can see.
Speaker 2: The crowd behind him. Usually, Yeah, but it's probably.
Speaker 1: Just like a wide sweeping policy, so they I think
their face is covered.
Speaker 4: It's pretty common, like theater rule. This is kind of
a weird event for it, But like, I don't know
if you've ever been to I went to like the
Ballet the other weekend, and that's the thing of like
you can't exit and re enter unless it's like the intermission.
Speaker 3: Really, I mean, I guess, I guess I get the
mighty you don't want to disturb people. But I the
live events I go to regularly are like wrestling shows
and they don't care. Like you watch Monday Night Raw,
You'll see like crowdshots, you'll see people moving up and down.
So I'm like, yeah, like is a billion dollar company
and they don't care. So I don't know if you guys,
But anyways, that all that all was standing. That was
my reason of like, I don't want to just chuck
this because I was trying to like be very conservative
with my water intakes. I don't want to leave and
miss something. Uh. So I get inside, I'm you know,
it's packed with people. I'm running into a lot of friends,
and I actually ran into, uh some of the Obsidian
folks who I worked with the over Wild's cover story,
like almost immediately, so caught up with them. I ran
into Jonathan Blow, and I wanted to introduce myself because
I had done the order of preaking star in like
I interviewed him about a week prior to the events.
I was gonna introduce. I was like, oh, you know,
it's good to meet you in person, but he was
he was on the phone, probably quadruple checking like it
is the trailer good is the trailer. Good right? Is good?
Is everything? Okay? Steam Page is gonna go live? Okay,
probably that kind of stuff. But they have like a
concession's store in there, and I wait in line for
like a long line to get another bottle of water
to replace the one I just lost. I go through,
I buy it. It's a very expensive bottle of water,
like I think it's like it was like twice the
price as the one I got at Starbucks. I guess
because of theater inflation. And so I'm like, great, I
open it up. I'd take again, just a little slip
because I'm trying to, you know, kind of space out
my my SIPs. I go to my seat and as
I'm about to sit down because I'm like towards the
middle front, this woman, one of the ushers, goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
You can't bring that in here, and I was like,
I can't. And I see like there's cup holders on
all the seats, Like what are these four? She's like,
you can't have drinks in the theater, and I'm like
but I just thought, like I'm just like just dumbfounded
at this point. And then also I.
Speaker 5: Saw there there's one shape shifting woman that told you
to get in the wrong line and then made you
throw away two water bottles.
Speaker 4: She's just like running on the theater.
Speaker 3: I like to think it's just the three three identical women,
like they're like Nurse Joy from Pokemon. But yeah, so
then I had to throw that one away because the
alternative was chuck it all now and then have a
full bladder very soon, or just tough it out for
three hours. And I chose the tough it out for
three hours because I didn't want to ge. I didn't
want to miss any of the reveals. There were a
lot of them. I listened to last week's show. You
guys went through most of them, so I won't, you know,
regurgitate all that here. But being their live was it
was like a fun experience. I mean, it's it's always
fun to be in a room surrounded with like in
that atmosphere. It was also quite revealing because I was
sitting directly, like directly behind the production area, so I
could see all the screens and all the like pretty much.
I could just I could see how the sausage was made,
which I kind of almost wish I had it because
I had the startling realization that all of the stage
banter is all scripted. Oh yeah, I could, but like
I wish I understood for some stuff. But even the
stuff that seems off the cuff, I would see like
a guy's screen just like word for word, just telepropt
the scroll, like like when Jeffrey Wright was up there
with his son, like their whole little like, oh dad,
I'm better than you know. I forgot what their bit was,
but that was all like word for word smoke and
I was like, no, no, that was the first speech.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm not going to name names. I have been
in that room in past years, and I've been multiple
I've been many years, so you won't be able to
pin down which one it was. But I've been in
that room before where somebody got emotional on stage and
there was like a part in the script.
Speaker 4: I know exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: I think I have, and it's it.
Speaker 1: It was the wildest thing I've ever seen because it
was like I forget what they said. Let's say they
let's pretend they said like oh I'm choking up or
something like that was in on this teleprompter, and I
was like, this is maniacal. This is this is devilish, manipulative.
Speaker 3: It didn't have a prompt be like cry now.
Speaker 2: We were like, no, it didn't go that far.
Speaker 1: But it was like, I was surprised that how much
was on there because I was thinking I was watching
a purely genuine moment and the there were emotions that
obviously were real, but also part of it that I
thought was genuine was definitely on the script.
Speaker 3: And I should think I should quickly clarify that this
only applies to like the presenters. The acceptance speeches were
all off the cuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 3: I was checking, and there was no teleprompter for the
acceptance speeches. It was just the presenters or just whoever
wasn't there to get it an award if you're up
here to sell something or do something. Yeah, yeah, except
for maybe the street Fighter bit, because that was just chaos.
Speaker 4: Actually, yeah that if that was scripted, I would have
been shocked, like the degree to it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know if it was. If they were,
they they decided there's too many of us, what are
you gonna do.
Speaker 4: We're gonna say brackets make a dig at Mortal Kombat cast. Yeah, right,
I I do think that's why there's some that some
of the presenters when they're actors, it just feels more
natural because they are literally reading off a script, like
there's not there's no room for the I don't know,
I just remember the Sometimes a developer will come up
and they'll try to do their back and forth. You
can tell it's kind of stiff. They're like in business
presentation mode. And then I remember, like the Warframe people.
I don't think they're actors, but I remember when they
were like introducing the update to the game, being like, Oh,
they seem like they've done this before in a way
that like they're reading off a script, but they're comfortable
and like loose, which is interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. It was cool, I mean I was.
It was weird seeing that stuff and also maybe the
most horrifying thing. I saw something that I've tried to
go my entire life without seeing, and unfortunately the Game
Awards was the first place to to expose it to me.
But from my vantage point during all the Muppet bits,
I could see the actual puppeteers clearly, and I hated it.
As a lifetime Muppets fan, I have somehow I'd gone
out of my way, Like.
Speaker 2: I don't even if you thought that they were real,
you know, I.
Speaker 3: Really did, Alex, I really really did. I thought Miss Pit.
I thought just that Jim Hansen was just some sort
of sorcerer. But like even I even have a hard
time with like the like the Pines scenes documentaries. It's
like I don't want to see them like as puppets.
I just want to I don't want to see anything
below their like chest, like yeah, or the times when
they do show the whole body, it's just like their
legs and you don't see the arm or anything. But yeah,
like I could see I was like directly behind more
or less where Jeff was standing, and I could see
the person playing Miss Piggy, and I had to look away.
I had to avert my virgin eyes to the screen
that had the the the televised broadcast. And I'm just
gonna watch that for all them up at bits because
it's not it's just it's not Marcus at the game.
Speaker 4: Glad to know that some for someone else, somehow. The
Jeff Keeley Miss Piggy interactions were more disturbing.
Speaker 3: The song was fun. People were clapping any rana and.
Speaker 4: Song was great song is what I expect from the Muppets. Yeah,
it's like yeah, yeah, yeaman.
Speaker 3: But it was cool, like the wild stuff with like
the I thought this the use of stage kind of
like props or performances like wires. This year, like Jeff
discovered wires and like what if you just hang people
from ceilings during.
Speaker 2: Like when the Divinity, Yes, stuff happened.
Speaker 3: That was funny because like, so I was near the
aisle and I saw all the performers dressed up in
the like villagery outfits like on standby before for a
while before they went out there. So I was like, Oh,
somethings about to happen, what this is about? And you know,
they did a little marshal to ring and I also
saw the wires hanging, but I didn't realize it were
like for people and then yeah, they you know, hook
them up and then they start raising them. And for
me it was interesting because I had just seen like
for my birthday a month prior, I had gone to
my first CIRT day lay show, and there's a lot
of like people flying around on wires. So there was
a bit of like, oh, this is this again, you know,
not nearly as like impressive, but still like, oh man,
it's just people angling in front of me, and man,
I hope nothing goes wrong, but it was cool. The
coolest one though, was the control trailer, Like I don't
know how much of it they I still haven't really
watched the broadcast version of the show, but like the
opening where they just have the big physical like cell
for for Jesse's brother, and then they have the performer
on wire just like lowering into the cell as the
trailer starts, and they're like, Oh, this is a cool
way to start this trailer. Like I don't know how
much of this people are homer seeing or if they're
just cutting to the footage or not, but like I
saw the whole time. I was like, Oh, this is
the coole start to this. And then he's just in
there for like most of the trailer, just sitting there
like you know, facing like back to us, and I
don't know, I thought it was.
Speaker 2: Like a real screening the TV.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I just had like a really like like a
theatrical touch to this like game trailer that I appreciated.
But yeah, I mean in terms of stuff that got
the big reactions, and I again I don't know how
much of this came through to broadcast, but like the
Divinity trailer, Oh my god, Yeah, I was sitting next
to uh to Ryan McCaffrey from from IGN, and we
turned to each other and we're just like Jesus Christ,
like like like what is happening here? And again this
and as people are dangly in front of us two.
Speaker 4: Where people are people like making noise when that's happening
like ah, or like like what is the yeah people
do to.
Speaker 3: Like I mean this happens every sort of like game stricken,
but there's always the like who like you know, there's
always a lot of those from some somewhere in the
crowd or.
Speaker 4: When you're watching the skin boiling and the flesh being
there was there audible discomfort.
Speaker 1: I mean there was like a who guy really loved
the on screen orgy.
Speaker 3: I mean there's there was like kind of like the
like gas not gas, but kind of like the crowd
rise like the whoa like people just going. So it
was like a lot of like probably like visceral reactions
from like especially the more kind of like which is good.
The general audience that was there, who were like mostly
behind me. I will say when the street fighter bit
uh cappened and Cody Roads and Roman Reigns came out.
All the wrestling fans made themselves known immediately as soon
as Cody started talking, like a guy probably like two
rows behind me screw. Oh did you hear that? That
was that guy? Yeah, he was like two rows behind me,
and I was just like, who's that? And then when
Roman started talking, several people stood up and threw the
ones up, which if in w W, that's like the
thing you acknowledge him by throwing up the ones, and
then I think you did it. Yeah, that's a little
door here. That's like, that's like asking that you want
to check when you're at a restaurant. Excuse me, can
I get the bill? Please? So that was fun. The
Resident Evil tray like the Leon reveal, that got one
of the loudest reactions, like people went nuts for that,
which I thought was interesting because I had kind of
been leaked or had been totally leaked, so I was like,
maybe most of the people in this room just weren't
privy to that, but I was kind of surprised that
it got like the raw reaction, like as if it
was a complete surprise. So that was a good one. Yeah,
the Star Wars like the Fate of the Old Republic
that got a huge pop too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, overall, like it was a good I thought it
was a good show. It's it's long.
Speaker 1: Especially what was the reaction for High Guard, which was
like the last game they showed off.
Speaker 3: It was like it wasn't like crazy, but it wasn't
like that. I've seen that that game's gotten some or
it's getting some negative sort of flack around it because
it's like like people are like, oh, here comes another concord. Yeah.
Speaker 2: People people write stuff off way too quickly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I do.
Speaker 1: I do the same thing for some games, but like
I'm gonna at least give it a shot. Doesn't look
like it's exactly my thing. I don't really love, Like
the theme was kind of a little weird to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think. I think with all the build up,
like Jeff's whole speech about like this is yeah, respond
diff they've worked on this in secret until now, and
it's coming out sooner than you think. You know, he
does the like the you know when he does the
review now he's almost about to break out in tears
where he's like I'm so honored to be the one
to do this. Yeah, like yeah, yeah, and it's the
last thing too. I think if this wasn't the last thing,
it wouldn't be crapped on nearly as much like if
Star Wars was last.
Speaker 1: Like I forgot he did that whole speech because it's
it sounds like he's setting up like, oh, oh a
titan Fall Spiritual successor.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well I knew.
Speaker 3: That because he said it was a new studio with
X response.
Speaker 1: Well, I was thinking, yeah, I was thinking, oh, you know,
Spiritual Successor.
Speaker 2: You know they're going to be mechs and stuff.
Speaker 3: Oh oh, like a non tighten all I got saying I.
Speaker 2: Thought they're making a new titan Fall since respawn.
Speaker 3: Wall gotcha, Yeah, I'm.
Speaker 2: That's that's kind of what his speech was setting up,
I felt like.
Speaker 3: But I didn't get the sense though in the in
the arena, like it didn't feel like nearly a cynical
in arena like maybe the most I think the thing
that set that turned people off was the immediate reveal
of that character and his weird hairstyle, where we're just like, oh,
that's the guy we're playing. Before he kind of understood
what the gamer like that's a I don't know that
that's not the most appealing looking character models to hair.
But yeah, I mean it seemed fine and I'll play
it like I again, will reserve judgment until I play it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a fun trip. It was fun to
run into people and catch up with so many you know,
friends and peers. I was at a Larry And party
after the show and a lot of the Clare Upskier
team came in, which they were the easiest to spot
because they all have the mind outfits. Like I was
in a restaurant afterwards and a few of them came in.
But yeah, at the Larry And party later, a bunch
of them showed up and everyone gave them like standing
ovation for you know, like congratulations, and it was like
they were like taking a back by down. It's really sweet.
Ben Starr was there. I wanted to say high Did
you say hi? No? He was busy. He we just
I moved out of his way at one point, if
that counts as he needed.
Speaker 4: It's such a funny accent. It was like years when
I was like, you know, one time at a party
I moved out of Ben's.
Speaker 3: I was having a very nice conversation with Jan Ochoa
from Giant Bomb, and then at one point Ben Starr
needed to get past us and we were in his way,
so I told Jan because Jan was his back was
to then, so I said, jam Ben stars trying to
get by, and then we side stepped him and he
said thank.
Speaker 2: You, thank you.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Jennifer English was there too. Matt Mercer popped
in for a spell. But yeah, like I said, it
was it was fun to go to see a bunch
of people. And I was there for other things too,
like other sort of like smaller demo events that were happening,
like the day before the day of played a couple
of games I'd like to touch on, one of which
was Beach Drove.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, yeah, you guess familiar with real or was
it before that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I was known before that, but I maybe Data
Dance was maybe the first, like really big showing. But
I went to a a demo session for that and
played about an hour of it. It's a kind of
cozy cooking game but also a like card based roguelike
where you play as this like anthropomorphic kind of like
fox Chef, who is like as far as cans like
running a restaurant and you're building up this town and
it's got a bit of it's got a bit of
a day of the diver structure where it like your
days are segmented, where a portion of the day is
preparing ingredients, like preparing to open the restaurant. You're like
going around town. You're you're buying ingredients or growing crops
at some point. And then you have the opening the restaurant.
You're running it where you're creating dishes and you have
to appeal to patron's different taste and try to like
you know, not screw up any dishes. And I like
this part is all the cooking men a game. All
the cooking we're like fun mini games where like oh,
you're chopping the keras, you gotta like it's almost like
a guitar hero esque like like no notes coming down
the line and you gotta like hit it in the
rhythm and sink. And it was like decently challenging to
where it felt engaging or like to boil food. It
was like this. It was almost like a shoot the
hoop style. Then again, like you know, like when you
shoot the hoops in arcades. It's kind of like that
where you like there's like three basket or three pots
of water, and depending on how long you hold the
button down that comes to the or determines the trajectory
of the food you're throwing in. And then they tell
you which pots you need to throw it in, so
you're like, Okay, I need to throw it in the
closest pots, so I don't want to hold it down
too long, so I need like a little baby throw
versus longer throw for the last pot. Also, that's a
terrible way to cook food. You should probably already if
it's boiling, and even if.
Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe it's overcooked, yeah.
Speaker 3: Maybe a little bit. Yeah, but yeah, I don't recommend
shooting your your food into boiling pots of water. Don't
do it. But then after the restaurant closes is the
roguelike part where you play where you don't play as
the chef, which you play is one of his buddies
or different buddies, and they sort of like almost in
media reds, they kind of like recount their trip to
get like ingredients for you, where they're like, oh, yeah,
I went out to a cave today and this is
what happened, and then unfolds is this like cool puppet
show where you're just playing like little Wooden Standys as
the character, and then you're just walking down the line
or you know, puppeting down the line, whatever you want
to call it, and you're just running into enemies and
then you're battling them in these like card turn based
card battles where you're matching card synergies and are all
like I believe, like types of food or ingredients, but
it's all about like trying to find flavor synergies based
on the enemies that you're fighting, where like if this
person has a certain car and they're all like color coded,
then it's like, okay, do I have a card that
has like that either enhances my cards based on like
a flavor profile, or does it like I guess, like
directly beat one of their cards, and you know the
cards are like a numerical value of like, well, my
numbers higher, so I can I should be able to
get over this. But this guy has a card that
I don't have, like a a a flavor or type
of card that is like emphatical to that one, so
I either have the discard or take a hit.
Speaker 4: But it was pretty fun, like the kinds of flavors
would be. Is it just like spicy or sweet or
is it like.
Speaker 3: I think it's said, I forget if they're named. I
know there's like there's like a reference guy that you
can pull up that kind of shows you like almost
like rock Peper, so like this beats this, this, this,
these flavors go together. These already in the sort of
like the paths of Enhancement or whatnot. But yeah, it's
it's it's like pretty it's like pretty good. Like it's
it's decent. There's like some decent strategy involved. I don't
know how much it involves. I was playing like the
second the second like day two pretty much. So it's
like like just afted the tutorial, which I think the
Steam demo that's out now. I think it's like the
first two or three days, so you'll be able to
play the section that I played with. Yeah, it came
out during Day to devs if I remember correctly. Yeah,
but it seems fun, like it's got like a nice
little kind of like almost like DreamWorks the art direction.
It's got like a cozy five to it. I would
I would mess around with it some more, but uh, yeah,
that's supposed to come out sometime next year. And then
the other game I played that was maybe a bit
of a surprise in terms of how much I liked
it was Damon and Baby. Have you guys heard of this?
Speaker 2: This is the I've heard of it?
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, so this is the Arc System Works game.
You know. Arc system probably best known for fighting games
like Dragon Ball Fighters and Guilty Gear and Marvel Token
next year. But this is a this is a like
isommetric or like bullet hell game where you play as
a demon who somehow becomes like demonically attached to a
human child. And despite it being called Damon and Baby,
the baby in question is a little bit more of
a toddler. Is like, she looks like she's maybe like
two years old just in terms of just her size,
and she's got a full heat of hair and stuff.
But regardless, she's she's a young a young person cannot
speak very well. And Damon and toddler maybe we should
call it. But basically, for whatever reason, this demon has
like a is like demonically like almost like like a contract,
like you are bound to this human no matter what,
and he's not happy about it, and like the baby's
like on your back and you're just exploring at least
the section I played, like I played a toy. We're
fighting in like hell or the underworld, and then eventually
going back to the surface. And what I like about
the game is that like it's an isometric bullet hell
game kind of like twin stick shooter, where you get
a bunch of different guns. You got like machine guns, handguns, shotguns,
and you're just fighting these enemies at all fire back
at you with like kind of like bullet hell style patterns,
like a lot of spread shots and and like line
shots that you're dodging. But it feels really good. Like
one thing, I like how destructible it is. Like the
second level I played that was I don't know how
deep in the game it was, but I was going
through like a like a mansion like on on like
in the real world, and I was trying to the
mission I had to find some like the Lord of
the manor who was locked up somewhere, but he was
behind a bunch of locked doors. And it became this
kind of like surprising exercise of like almost like a
survi well maybe not survival horror game, but just the
the extras, like oh I need to find keys to
get through these various sores. Okay, where do I find
these keys? I need to explore all these rooms, and
like a lot of the rooms the enemies were like
possessed objects, so I would like walk into a room
and then like the cabinet would start attacking me. Or
there were like these dolls behind glass cases where if
you accidentally shot them and broke them, the dolls would
come to life and sprout these like long like spider
arms and then just start like rushing you. And it
sounds scary, but like it's got a really cute like
arc direction, and it's not like a really big sense
of humor. Like honestly, the humor reminds me a lot
of the Diskaya series, which fits the sort of like
underworld theme. Yeah yeah, like what if demons were funny
kind of a thing. But yeah, it's it's so you're
like blasting through all these environments. It feels like the
shooting feels pretty good. You're finding Ammo like constantly, so
it's like encouraging, like no, just go in there and
just blow everything up, and it's like fun and it's
like satisfying in that, like I just want to blow
away everything. I like all the guns. There's different types
of guns too, like they all have like different properties
of like oh, here's like three different machine guns, but
maybe one of them heals you, or maybe this other
one shoots a little slower but has more power. Like
you're kind of weighing different stats as you're picking them up,
and you're also finding food and ingredients because you can
cook dishes that heal you and give you all these
different buffs. And you're also like there's like fun secrets
you can find, and even puzzles like I found like
all on the way, I'm like finding memos and then
I need to use those memos for a like combination
lock to access an important area. And again it was like,
surprisingly it was survival horrory in that kind of like
at least in the style of puzzle reminded me of
that like a Resident for or something like that, which
again I didn't expect in a game that I just
thought would be like, oh, you just go in a
room and just blast everybody. But yeah, it's it's cool
like it was. It was it's still very early, like
the the pr was letting me know, like, yeah, this
build is like this isn't even like a demo build.
This is just like an internal building we put together,
so it's it's going to be a minute. So it
was a little rough in spots, but even then I
had so much fun with it. And honestly, the whole
time I was thinking and maybe because I was playing
on PC, but I was playing on steam Deck. Like
they didn't have any regular controllers, so they just had
a steam Deck set up so you can either look
at the monitor or you can just look down at
the steam Deck screen. But yeah, it was like, oh,
this feels like a good handheld game. Like honestly, like
just the fun little twinstic shooter are going around. It's
got like a goofy fun art style, just blasting everything.
Like I could picture myself just laying a bed just
running through this. And some of the like dialogue and
conversations I was encountered are like, oh, there's like a
charm to this. So yeah, this game was like kind
of on my radar just because it was like a
weird thing coming from Arcsist. But now it's like, oh,
i I'm actively like looking forward to this now, and
that's also supposed to come out next year, so Yeah,
that's uh Damon and Baby.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that one looks cool. I really liked the art style.
There's like a nice bloom to everything a little bit,
at least on the surface areas, and like like that
there's like a dusty town that they're running through and
I don't know, I like the setting.
Speaker 2: It looks cool. I want to check it out. Also,
I haven't played a twenty six shooter in a while,
so me neither.
Speaker 3: Actually, I trying to think, like I feel like that
was they were like in vogue during like the early
Xbox Live Arcade days, maybe like with Geometry Wars and
like for Start as HD, and it felt like yeah,
like or like what was the the zombie one that
they did, like two of them for like p S
three Dead Dead something. I mean, you could play co Op.
I know the word you're talking about, dead Side. No,
this is gonna bother me. I used to play a
lot of it with my friends on PS.
Speaker 2: I know exactly what you're talking about. I can see
the cover.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let us know in the comments if you remember,
unless I scream it out later on the show. But yeah,
it was, like like you said, it felt like a
fun throw about, like yeah, I feel like I don't
play a lot of these anymore. This is this seems
like this could be a good one.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's dead Ops, that sounds right. No, that's not
okay songs right, you're thinking wrong.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking of something different when I hear it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 1: Uh well cool, Well that's a bit about the Game Awards.
Cool that you got to go in person and uh,
you know, shake some hands, play some games, move out of.
Speaker 3: People's way, get out of the way of important people.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought we would shift gears for a second
and get into our Steam replays. Uh and I you know,
I I predominantly play on Steam.
Speaker 2: Uh so I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm curious to see, like how ours compares to each other,
because I know probably Marcus, you're the next in line
line in terms of like Steam usage, I would think, yeah,
and then Charles you kind of dabble and Steam here
and there.
Speaker 4: I'm more, Yeah, I'll play something on Steam. Deck is
usually my thing. So yeah, so it's not like my
primary platform if it's like a big new game, but
if it's like an indie thing, I'll pick it on.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I guess I'll start These are these are cool.
I also got a Discord one Discord randomly gave me
a replay as well. Is there because I yeah, actually, okay,
because I play a lot of games that aren't on Steam,
a lot of other PC like I play a lot
in Battlenet, and I play a fair mountain etic game store,
and Discord kind of has all of them. And it
says your favorite games. You played seventy one games this year.
These were your favorites Number one with eighty four sessions
logged League of Legends.
Speaker 4: Oh congrass, you did.
Speaker 2: It, yeah, and this was.
Speaker 1: I posted this win December fifth, So I'm probably close
to one hundred now because I've played a lot of
League this month, So one hundred sessions will say or
so of League this year. It says I put in
thirty one Fortnite sessions, which is more than I thought
I did this year. Honestly, maybe I played at the
beginning of the year. I usually get back in around
the holidays and then I'm out again. Twenty three sessions
of World of Warcraft, but then another fourteen sessions of
World of Warcraft Classic, So what is that? Thirty seven
sessions of Wow, and then Deadlock with fifteen sessions.
Speaker 3: That's the Valve game, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's the Valve Mobile. Eric and I have talked about
it a few times this year on the show. That's
my Discord one.
Speaker 3: But let's get into the scene replay well real quick
for Discord. Do you guys want to know who my
two most called people are?
Speaker 2: Like, oh, did you do it? Okay, yeah, I want
to Yeah, it's it's YouTube.
Speaker 4: Really, that's so funny.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like Charles, You're my most it said Charles hard
is the person I've spent the most time on Discord
calls with, which makes sense because.
Speaker 2: Of replay replay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then you were number two, Alex, and I
forgot who number three was, but it was probably another coworker,
which makes sense. It let be use Discord a lot
for the podcast and Kyle probably it probably was Kyle.
Speaker 2: If not, we'll give it to him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, it was like oh, and I was like, oh, yeah,
I guess that makes sense because like, yeah, I use
Discord with my friends, but we're like when we don't
do video, we're just like on a call call and
we're not you know, just the sheer amount of hours
as they come close to what we do for just
you know, our work stuff. Yeah, work projects. I was like, so,
congrats to you, Charles and Alex. You did it. Thank
you in a second, you know, I look forward. We'll
see if that changes this year. Maybe Alex you can
overtake Charles.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna try.
Speaker 4: I'm really gonna replay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah about a replay.
Speaker 2: All start a new series with Marcus, do it?
Speaker 3: Wow?
Speaker 2: Because we all have so much, so much room on
our plates.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've been looking for front of the project. This year.
Speaker 1: You played a lot of new games, unlocked quite a
few achievements. It says I played fifty nine games, which
is one fewer.
Speaker 2: Than last year.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Forty nine of those were new games. Five of those
were play tests. I unlocked two hundred and fifty four achievements,
which I feel like isn't a ton, But I did
get twenty seven rare achievements. Interesting, I played seventy five
percent with keyboard and mouse.
Speaker 2: And then.
Speaker 1: How you compare stack your year against the rest of
the Steam community. Wow, I'm I'm blowing them away, so
the average away.
Speaker 4: I'm past all these medians also, and I don't I
guess I used Steve a decent amount. But I thought
it was funny that, like, is it just a bunch
of inactive accounts? Am I am? I more of a
gamer than I thought I was.
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's just like, especially for our jobs,
a sheer amount of like we get a lot of
PC codes, you know to play for check this game? Yeah, yeah,
or like or just yeah you said downloading Steave demos
that she checks the foul so that that's probably what
it is.
Speaker 1: If I had the guess, yeah, I figure I'll just
go through mine and then we can just go through
each each other's.
Speaker 2: Let's see. Yeah, eighty four percent new releases.
Speaker 4: Can I ask what your longest gaming was?
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm going to get to that. I have to
find it. It is on here though, Uh you are
what you play. The spider graph shows the kind of
games you spent the most time in twenty twenty five.
My pie chart is honestly, my pie chart is almost
full in every direction.
Speaker 3: Not quite. It's like when you say, everybody out on
a mission and dispatch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so ask and I guess.
Speaker 4: Can I guess what it is?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, there are multiple there are multiple tags. These
are like the Steam tags.
Speaker 4: I would I would guess Actually, yeah, no, I'm just
gonna guess first person shooter is one of yours.
Speaker 1: No extraction shooters on there, they're more specific. How about
I tell you, how about I tell you my graph
what's on there, and you can tell me which direction
you think it is.
Speaker 4: Well, you just said it was kind of all you
do it? Do it for Marcus?
Speaker 1: Okay, Extraction Shooter, Mobile Destruction, Soul's Life, party game, Hunting, hunting.
I don't know what that fire up like a cabellas
this year definitely.
Speaker 4: Not so wait, what are we just doing like deer
hunting simulators whatever? Reason not?
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, I don't know what the hunting things from,
but it's some game I played.
Speaker 2: I guess had that on a tag because you can
add like dozens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my my gra I'll just tell you my graph
is just like maxed out all the way like touching
the confines of the graph in Extraction Shooter or Mobile
Destruction and Souls like then it kind of comes back
to like the middle area for party game, and then
hunting game is just kind of like I think hunting
just I don't know there's even like there's not a
point either going towards hunting. It's like party game is
cutting across hunting to get the extraction shooter.
Speaker 2: It's very weird.
Speaker 1: I had fourteen new friends at popular screenshot shared eight.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is dumb.
Speaker 1: Let's take a closer look at your top played games. Blueprints,
how many of your runs are ruined by the archives?
Twelve percent of total playtime seventeen sessions, eight day streak,
and I started it this year. My ninety six percent
of my playtime in Blueprints was in April, which tracks deadlock.
The baroness is always looking for new guests. Deadlock is
ten percent of my total playtime twenty six sessions played.
I had a six day streak. I played thirty three
percent of that in August, and then September was sixty
seven percent. Arc Raiders ten percent of my playtime nineteen
sessions six day streak, seventeen percent in October eighty three,
in November the finals. Another inmbark game, fifteen percent of
your playtime in the finals was in January, forty seven
percent was in March. That was definitely a new season
a little bit in.
Speaker 4: July that Blueprints was your number one, but doesn't seem
to be reflected on your chart at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't get that. Yeah, it's not in my
puzzle like no puzzle games. Yeah, yeah, so I don't know.
Speaker 3: And Blueprints is an extraction shooter. That's why you have
to extract knowledge each day.
Speaker 1: I had twenty two sessions of the finals. Almost all
those would be with Leo Vader Elden Ring Night ringing
six percent of my total playtime eleven sessions, seven day
streak that was in May. Playtime by month, interesting. I
had a lot of playtime in April. That was the
biggest month of gaming for me.
Speaker 3: We were coming back too, like we were in the
midst of our.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think we were. Probably I was.
I was energized.
Speaker 1: You know, sixty three games played on PC, eight on
steam Deck. I'm surprised it's not more. But of Blueprints,
I played on steam Deck, thirty percent of ballocks Pit
I played on Steam Deck, and Citizens Sleeper, Cyberpunk and
Everybody's Hot Chop Golf, anything else interesting? No, oh, you're
asking about my streak, Charles. My daily longest daily streak
was eleven days.
Speaker 4: Okay, is that normal?
Speaker 2: That's pretty I beat yours.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I also did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a life. What can I say, I
got things to do. It was probably it was probably
another launcher. I was playing League of Legends.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I assume it was a review. Like I probably
had a review that I had to do on Steam.
I had today.
Speaker 4: I had Baby Steps Hades to consume, me.
Speaker 3: Back to review.
Speaker 4: So I would bet that was. My streak was thirteen.
Speaker 3: Days okay, yeah, line was longer than that.
Speaker 1: It tells you what you played during them. My my
streak was May twenty second through June second. During this time,
you played four different games, skin Deep Expedition thirty three,
Elden Ring, Night Rain, and split Gate Arena reloaded. And
then they get into a really and they have a
cool I'm not going to go through all of it.
I'm not gonna go through it at all at all. Actually,
but they give you like a whole breakdown of every
game you played throughout the year.
Speaker 2: In a month by month timeline.
Speaker 1: There's really not a ton of super interesting picks other
than I forgot hyper Light Breaker came out.
Speaker 2: Yeah this year.
Speaker 3: That was January.
Speaker 4: Poor game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, poor game. Eternal strands about that one.
Speaker 3: It was also January or February.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that.
Speaker 4: Was one that we were like maybe gonna do for
our comeback review. Right, Yeah, I don't think we got
to March.
Speaker 1: I played a lot of mind Over Magic, which is
a colony sim like almost like Fallout Shelter style, but
you're running a magic academy. I played That made up
twenty seven percent of my playtime in March, with the
finals being at forty three. Uh oh, Door Kickers too interesting,
Ruin Escaped Dragon Wilds I forgot that came out this year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, I lost an early access this year.
Speaker 4: I do want to move to ours real quick.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Please, Also, Alex, I know you had a hard out.
I don't know how close we are did that.
Speaker 2: We're okay, we can keep going.
Speaker 4: Okay, cool, I'll run through some of mine real quick.
I don't need to hit all the things. But I
had twenty seven games played this year, which is nine
more than last year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's good.
Speaker 4: Roman Raids. Yeah. My most played game was also Blueprints,
twenty two sessions, seventeen percent of my playtime, eighty four
percent in April and then sixteen percent in November because
the listen and I started up a new save go
to it my number.
Speaker 1: Two You had more more sessions, so many more sessions.
I forgot you picked it back up?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: I also would play that game for like nine straight
hours and it would just like anyways, second most played game,
Monster Trained two, which is one of my Yeah that's
gonna be. I think we're doing like a bunch of
end of year articles about like games we want to recommend,
and that this is one that, like, I feel like,
is so much better than a lot of people. It
kind of went under the radar for a lot of people,
but it's just such an awesome game. And I played
a lot for the review, but I played before and
after that also because it's great. And then my third
most played game is Done and Ron but two Goodbye Despair,
Oh all in January. This is like a perfect game
for when you're unemployed because it's so long you just
kind of have to sit through a lot of dialog,
and it was just like the kind of thing where
I would wake up clock into Dog and romp with
two and then play it for six to eight hours
in a day or whatever.
Speaker 2: What was your graph? What you played?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: Your tags?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 4: My tags?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 4: Roguelike deck Builder and deck Building are both maxed out,
and then walking simulator is pretty high and then fast
paced which is interesting, and then hand drawn for you No,
no hunting that is nothing to do with blueprints. Would
you say in market.
Speaker 3: That said you gotta get your hunting stat up?
Speaker 4: I clearly do.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And then my next one is Death Howl, which'll talk
about later on the podcast, and then Baby Steps, which
I had to review, which I suffered through, which is fine.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: And then I'm I'm actually sixty five percent steam Deck,
thirty five percent Windows, which surprised me. I guess I've
been playing more Windows for Death Howl and played Root
Trees are Dead on the cup a lot because it's
used with the keyboard and a mouse and that and
my longest street was actually in April. It was Blueprints,
Haste Arco and Monster Trained two.
Speaker 2: Oh Haste, Yeah is good?
Speaker 4: Uh Marcus, what about you?
Speaker 3: All right, kiddos, buckle up because I've had thirty nine
games that's played this year, which apparently nine games fewer
than last year. Let's see, I'm fifty four percent with
a controller, forty six percent keyboard and mouse, which is
more than I would have thought because I am not
a I guarantee that's more like it's less keyboard and
more mouse, because I played a lot of point click
games this year because I'm not sure I am not
a mouse and keyboard person at all. I plug in
a controller whenever I can. And then my three most
played games. Number one, to no surprise, Eugo Master Duel.
That has been my number one. That's my number one
plates the since that game came out. It's a bit
on the street. It's like up twenty percent of my playtime.
Second place, The Root Trees Are Dead really back in January.
I mean I put a lot of time today game,
and there are a lot of periods where you can
attest it to charge where you're just staring at the
screen and nothing happens for like hours because you're trying
to figure something out, so that I probably inflates the
playtime too. And then number three was Loreline the Laser Eyes,
which I started in twenty twenty four but I didn't
finish until the beginning of this year. But I still
put in a lot of time this year. And that's
another game where you're staring at things for long periods
and nothing's happening as you try to figure out this stuff.
So I was not surprised to see those last two
crack the top. Let's see here, I had My longest
play streak was eighteen days.
Speaker 2: Whoa gamer?
Speaker 3: Yeah, sorry, just real gamer over here?
Speaker 4: Whoa gamer?
Speaker 3: Let's see fifty eight percent of my games or new
releases in terms of my like tags on a little
circle chart thing. It's it's a lot more clear. So
the ones that are maxed out are Metroidvan and turn
based Tactics.
Speaker 2: Oh so turn based tactics.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm trying to think of what I played, Like
metro Mania I could get because I played, Yeah, and
I played Possessors for review on Steam. I played I
finished Nine Souls this year, which was again I hold
over from twenty twenty four. And then also I played
inter Magnolia Bloom in the Mist, which I reveive was
one of the first reviews when we came back because
that when we came back, Yeah, that was like a
February release too.
Speaker 2: I have a question for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've heard some people say that Nine Souls is
harder than Silk Song.
Speaker 4: We do agree with that. Interesting, I have I played
a lot more of Nine Souls than I did of
Silk Song, and I I don't know if I would
say it's harder, but I found it a lot less
frustrating because the Nine Souls you have a lot more tools.
Do you have a lot maybe maybe at the end
of the game, like it's more comparable. But Nine Souls
was a lot easier for me personally to get through.
Speaker 3: Nine Souls is it's easier to Charles's point, in a
sense that sort of equipping things, it's not as restrictive
as Hollow I is, where you really have to make
some hard choices about your loto. Nine Souls is a
little bit more flexible, like you can you can just
hold on to things more. And but like in terms
of the combat, it's it's because it's pretty much like
it's like two D Secaro. It's like very very heavy
and actually.
Speaker 4: Better at parrying than Silk Songs, just like avoiding kind of.
Speaker 3: They're both tough games, and I think they're both great.
Like Nine Soles is a gem from last year that
more people should play. I think it's a great game
and I I and I actually interviewed the team for
a Future a while back where I talked to him
about this game before it came out. But yeah, I
don't know. I think, yeah, if you like hard metro
vanias I guess to go for for sure movie, you
throw blasphemous in there too. But yeah, so like those
are in there. Let's see what else are we looking at.
Let's see, I'm just scrolling down stats trying to find
something interesting here.
Speaker 2: Let's see what's your playtime by month?
Speaker 3: I just got there. Good, my playtime by month? So
my number one is January, which makes sense because I
was unemployed and have more time and also reached.
Speaker 2: January was my the January and June.
Speaker 1: Uh, three percent of this year's playtime was in June
and four percent of this year's playtime was in January.
I might have been playing on other platforms and stuff
during those months.
Speaker 4: Or actually those are those high for you, Alex?
Speaker 2: Or is that those are my lows?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Oh you know what I just in June, I
just realized that most of my January playtime was not
Route traf. I forgot. I didn't play Route Trees until
early March. So like it was Lorale, it was. It
was the carryover of Lowerlei and then Nine Souls and
then also you know Yu gi Oh's and all of
these and then but yeah, my second most is actually
October because of Yugio Masterdool and then also let's see Possessions,
which I have to play for review, and also a
lot of Mugenics because I was playing a build of
that game for the big feature radio of Eugenics. Yeah
and yeah, and that build was more or less like
I think Edmund McMillan's tim He's like, this is more
or less the finished game because they're just in the
polishing phase at this point, so I could there's a
lot of game in that. And then my third most
played month is March, which had root trees taking up
the bulk of it, and then like inder lilies and stuff.
But yeah, and like I said, everything was like, yeah,
you play a lot with a controller, you weak PC person.
Speaker 1: You said your longest streak was how many days eighteen eighteen?
Speaker 3: Baby?
Speaker 2: Which games were in that?
Speaker 3: How do I see that?
Speaker 2: Do you have to click into it or if you
keep scrolling down?
Speaker 3: Okay at the bottom, yeah, oh here it is okay,
so long as daily three eighteen. So for from Tuesday
March eleven to Saturday, March ninth, and I played five
different games. They were Yugio Master Duel Spilled, which is
a really fun, cool little way in the game. Recommend
Intero Magnolia the Root Trees are Dead. And the demo
for Once Upon the Puppet It was like a puppet
puppet platform and it kind of reminded me a lot
of Do you guys remember Puppeteer for PS three? Remember
that game? I think it was I think it was
Japan's studio that made it. It had like kind of
that vibe a little bit aesthetically at least. But yeah,
I played a demo for that, I believe, actually, I
think because that was when we were just starting to
start back up, and I think our pr sent me
a bill to my personal email just to be hey,
you want to check it out? So yeah, I actually
forgot about it until I saw it here.
Speaker 2: But yeah, well cool, that's fun. I like that. So
we got to go through that.
Speaker 3: So who's the best them? Gamer?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 3: Is it you? Alex? Are you the best?
Speaker 1: I don't know, Marcus, I feel like you are you
the steamiest. Maybe I'm the steamiest, but.
Speaker 4: I'm glad I'm not the steamiest. I don't like that.
That's that's I just do for us it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'll take that. I'll take the steamiest award.
That's fine by me. I can hold that badge. I
can wear it well. Before we take an ad break
and get into our Midnight World of Warcraft Midnight cover story,
I do want to toss to you Charles, to chat
about two games. Even playing two recent games, death Howl
and Donk Pile.
Speaker 3: They sound like they're the same games. They sound vaguely,
they're so different.
Speaker 4: It's hilarious different there. So death Howl is interesting. I'm
reviewing it. It's taking forever because it's a big game,
and that's fine. It was kind of a last minute
agreeing to do. But I if I had a one
pager for every time I started reviewing a game and
ended up being like forty hours long, I could write
a whole freaking issue game. I tell you, I'm thirty
hour is in right now. I have beaten three of
the four main areas. I'm like halfway through the fourth,
and then there's like a final kind of boss area,
I think. But it is a Soul's like deck builder,
so it is. It's not a roguelike deck builder. It's
a souls like deck builder, So there's like bonfires where
you heal and it's kind of like an open ish
world and the enemies will respawn at different places, and
it's hard and it's really it's like a very I
kind of didn't love it at first, and it grew
on me a lot, which I think is a lot
of Souls games as you start out and you're like,
this is so hard that it's mean, and then eventually
you like it clicks for you and it starts getting
I don't know better. That's kind of my arc with
a lot of really hard games. But it's like a
grid based combat and you have a deck of cards
that changes over time, and the whole main mechanic is
that each card has like a realm, so there's different
parts of the spirit world that you're exploring and cards
are tied to certain realms, and depending on what realm
you're in, those cars will be like normal cost or more.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 4: There's like realmless cards, which are like your base cards
that any deck can use, but depending on where you are,
it'll kind of lock you into certain play styles and
like certain cards, you can unlock an upgrade if you're
using a realm of a card in a different realm,
it costs one more, which is like prohibitively expensive. Most
of the time, there's like no reason to use a
card not the realm. So it's it's a fun game
in that, like I've been playing it for this long,
but it still kind of feels fresh because every time
you start in a new area, it's like, well, this area,
all the cards are built around block, so you'll get
a lot of block and that'll make this do more
damage and they'll make this cost less or whatever. My
favorite area was based on like movement, so it's like
the more that you moved on the grid, which usually
takes up like when your action points, the more like
damage you'll do or the more things will cost less. Yeah,
And it's just really it's a really fun arc to
start out and be like, oh, I just have like
my plane cards again, that's annoying. And then as you
slowly unlock new cards, you like literally build a new
deck in the way that you like, and so I
enjoy that. Like loop Esthetically, it has like a very
very specific atmosphere. It's like pixelated. I think I want
to say it takes place in like h this is
like kind of caveman Ish times and it's a Danish developer,
so it's this like old European kind of folk tale style,
and you're playing as a mother who's like chased her
son into the after life because I presumably he died
or he's gone into this spirit world. She's trying to
get him back. So it's a story about grief. She
interacts with a lot of these like big, larger than
life spirits and kind of like learns life lessons, but
she's very angry and upset. And then just the fact
that the combat is so hard kind of like fits
into the whole vibe of everything. But yeah, and it's
a game that it's called death Howl because when you
kill someone, you get a death howel it's essentially the
same way as naming the game Dark Souls, because you
kill someone, you get souls. But you spend death howls
either to like level up your main experience, which you
can get you likabilities, and that's also locked to the
specific realms. So in the movement one, for example, if
you use up enough stuff, you can unlock a like
a meter to fill up that does a bunch of damage,
and like a T shape that goes up from your
character versus another one might give you more like man,
another one might give you more help, et cetera. Sure, yeah,
So there is an element that's nice and that is
like a dark soul's which as hard as dark souls is,
one of the nice things about like an RPG that's
being a soul's like is if you're ever having too
much trouble, you can stop fighting that boss and go
grind on some enemies and like level up a bit,
make yourself do more damage, get more health than.
Speaker 3: Also, I'm going to change your phrasing. You want to
go kill some enemies, not grind on them.
Speaker 4: Sure, grind by game. Yeah, in this game you can
do that. Also, if you're having a hard time in
a certain spot, it's like, stop doing that, go somewhere else,
level up more or unlock more cards, and you'll be
surprised by like how big of a difference it makes
when you have more like totems, which are like little
things you can equip that give you like passive abilities
and stuff. So it's like a big game. I think
it's definitely like it's such an annoying thing to say
this when you're reviewing games. Like, either you're gonna like
it or you're not gonna like it. But it is
very much that type of thing where it's like kind
of an acquired taste. It'll be too hard for some people,
but a lot of people really click with it. I'm
enjoying it, and I think it's definitely definitely worth checking out.
It came out like two weeks ago. I believe it's
on game Pass, So if you're interested in playing it,
I would recommend it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is the Outer Zone. Who did the last
game before this was Taught or Scanners? Mind Scanners?
Speaker 2: What? I haven't heard of that.
Speaker 3: Twenty one game. I never played it, but I remember
I remember. Yeah, look, it's got a similar art direction,
but more sci fi.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, yeah tracks.
Speaker 2: I really do like the pixel art.
Speaker 4: It's beautiful, and the music is good. It's very very vibe.
But it's also a good game to like. Like I
I've for a lot of my playtime, I'll have it
muted and I'll have like I'm watching something on the
other monitor, like it's something to just kind of like
take up time and play, and I kind.
Speaker 3: Of just like that.
Speaker 4: It's just a big long adventure. You can kind of
sit through for a while.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah.
Speaker 4: The other game I've been playing it is called dog Pile,
so different.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 4: I don't know if it was revealed during Day of devs.
I believe it was, but it was also shadow dropped
during day of the devs. It was a game that
like came out very suddenly made by the developers of Gubbins.
Speaker 1: Game.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then they're partner with another developer and they've
like they portmanteaud their two developers to be called foot Games.
I can't remember what.
Speaker 3: Like the two. I think one of the most games
or foot games is the combination.
Speaker 4: Foot is the Portmanteau. Yeah, that's when they combined.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Anyways, this is a if you've played like sweek a game,
which was like a big popular game last year. Yeah,
just one of those games where you're just dropping stuff.
Dogpile is sweek a game, except it has like roguelike
cards system.
Speaker 1: So that's what makes it interesting to me. So what
does that look like that combination?
Speaker 4: You start off and you have a deck of cards,
and your base cards they're like numbered the way that
like playing cards are. So it's aces are low of
ace two, three, four, et cetera. Combine two aces, it
gets to two combined two as you get a three,
And all these numbers are represented as dogs, so like
an ace is a little chihuahuah that's all balled up, okay,
and I think a two is like a fluffy Pomeranian
that type of thing. So that's the basic game plays.
You're combining them. But then also as you're going along,
you're adding like modifiers to your cards. So like Barkie
would be one that like makes dog bark and they
will like bark and all the dogs around them will
be like repelled backwards. So sometimes it's cool to like
drop a barkie dog in the middle of something where
you don't make space, yeah, and it'll will kind of
like shuffle them.
Speaker 2: All around, ah okay, yeah.
Speaker 4: And then it'll just be good. It's just good to
get kind of movement. And then they'll have they can
have negative traits, so there's one where it's created where
they'll kind of be covered in like a blue ring,
and then it can't bond with other dogs, even if
they're the same number, until like a certain number rounds passes.
Speaker 2: That's sad.
Speaker 4: It is sad. And then the farther you go. The
goal is that whenever you bond two dogs, you get bones,
which is just kind of like experience, and you just
have different milestones of how many bones you need to
get in order to progress further. So at first it's like,
get like a hundred bones, and that's pretty easy, and
then it gets higher and higher and just demands you
to make bigger matches with dogs, until eventually it fills
up too high and you can't match them anymore, and
then you have to restart. Pretty simple game. I think
it's just on Steam right now, but it's the kind
of thing that I really wish it was a mobile
game because it worked really well on mobiles.
Speaker 3: The closest thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and this is when I've just been
playing on desktop. But yeah, it's it's like super chill,
super casual game. I showed. I showed it the the
It was breaking the rules, but it was fine. I
showed a list of my fiance the pre brief trailer
for dog Pile.
Speaker 2: You showed your fiance a pre briefed, embargoed trailer.
Speaker 4: I did because I knew she would like it and
you should, I'll have your job. But she was like
and it's out today. And I was like, well, it's
not out today, it'll be out when the thing comes out.
And she was like oh yeah, and she was like devastated.
She really wanted to play it. Day it came out,
I posted about I did like a whole round up
of things, and I said, like, this game looks really
good and I want to play it. Dog Pile PR
reached out to me and they were like, hey, we're
glad that you were interested in the game. Here's a
code for it. And I was like, oh awesome. And
I was like, and while I have you just as
a funny story, because you know, developers like it with
people like their games. I showed the trailer to my
partner and she was really excited about it, but she
was mad that she can play it. And then they
sent her a code.
Speaker 2: I was like, Oh, they're going to say they canceled
your your Steam code. They're like that's not allowed.
Speaker 3: Allowed.
Speaker 4: No, they were like they're like, oh, that's so glad
that she wants to here's a code for her. Also,
so we have matching Dogpile codes. Yeah, so shout out
to that PR company. But also the game is good
and worth checking. Out. I think it's like ten bucks
on Steam right now.
Speaker 3: Not even that it's actually hours on sale currently for
the I get, I assume for the winter sale, it's
only seven dollars six nine nine.
Speaker 4: Oh heck.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I like the art style. It's got a very
like twenty tens Cartoon Network vibe. Yeah, it seems like, yeah,
like it's like in the vein of something like an
Adventure time or like an Uncle Grandpa. It would have
come out in between those two.
Speaker 4: Yeah, kind of annle that'll that'll pull out of people.
It's kind of kind of an Uncle Grandpa aesthetic.
Speaker 3: Everybody does a Cartoon Network show.
Speaker 4: It has a lot of You can go into the
settings and change like the color pallet of the background
if you want to. So I have mine on kind
of like a ink bubblegum pop kind of vibe. You cool,
change change it to just match your aesthetic. It's just fun.
Speaker 2: That rules.
Speaker 1: Well, we're going to take a quick ad break and
then we're going to come back and chat through our
cover story trip for World of Warcraft midnight, and then
we'll be out of here. So we'll be right back
right after this. Welcome back to the Game Informer show
it's time to dive in to our World of Warcraft
cover story that I wrote. Charles and I visited Blizzard
in early to mid November and we were there for
a couple of days. Charles wrote a really great retrospective
that if you are you haven't played well before, and
you're you know, you're interested because of this this cover story,
you know there's a great that's a great primer for like,
here's what's been up with this game for the last
twenty one years. And so then that goes into my
twelve page cover story, which is about the new expansion
that's coming out March second. But I think point being
like now is a great time to get into Wow.
Even though this is the second game in a trilogy
for Wow. Wow is currently in the world Soul Saga,
which is a trilogy of three expansions, the War within Midnight,
which is what our cover story is about, and then
the Last Titan, and then Wow will still continue after
this trilogy concludes, but they're trying to tell stories over
three expansions. It gives them more breathing room for like
character development and kind of planning seeds and paying them
off later. It's it's it's working well so far. I
think the War Within was a great expansion. I actually
recently finished it myself and has probably my favorite ward
of Warcraft Zone in a very long time. And how
a Fall that place is awesome. But Midnight is kind
of the expansion is kind of like picking up mid Conflict.
There's like this really bad There's there's a villain named
Zalatat who actually players have known about for secretly for
like ten years now. It was a in the Legion expansion,
which came out in what twenty sixteen or so, I
don't quite remember. Let me look at Charles's retrospective.
Speaker 3: Charles, do you remember from writing a retrospective when Legion
came out?
Speaker 4: Trying to remember so lych King was twenty two thousand
and eight, twenty eight, and then twenty.
Speaker 1: Ten was like two years missing the panderia, So maybe
it was twenty fourteen Legion.
Speaker 4: That sounds right, Well, no, because there was Warlads a
Drainer in twenty fourteen, so no.
Speaker 1: Shoot, you're right, yeah, okay, yeah, I've been I've I've
retained it. You have it an elaborate test impromptu gi
auto know, Okay, I was right.
Speaker 2: It was twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's just so there's a lot of expansions. But
this this bad guy, it was actually a weapon, was
trapped inside of a weapon that priest players used during
the events of that expansion. Now a decade later, what
kind of that bad guy's been released? It was a
dagger called Zalatat and it would actually speak to you,
like you could tell there was something trapped inside of it.
And now ten years later that that that villain is
like in human form and is like, you know, trying
to do a lot of bad things and it's up
to the heroes of Azrath to beat them. But in
many ways, this expansion is re is analyzing a lot
of long held systems in the game, simplifying a lot
of things, reworking mini systems, as well as introducing big
features like player housing, which has been a long requested
feature and is really kind of a brand new reward.
Speaker 2: Vector for players.
Speaker 1: It is, and it's also reinvigorating old content. And so
let's say you you get a house, which is very
simple and wow. Now and if you it's like this
feature is out already. So if you pre ordered Midnight,
you have access early access to housing, and so I've
done that. I've I've been working on my house. And
in order to like craft equipment and stuff, you have
to use professions. And they're like kind of reinvigorating a
lot of old professions that have long been dormant because
you know, they're tied to old expansions that aren't really
relevant power level wise anymore. You're not really going back
and using those professions when the new expansion is where
you get all the gear that you actually need for
current stuff. And so this is a really clever way
I thought for them to kind of, you know, give
incentive to go and check out those old zones, those
old professions, and you can like make furniture with them,
and you can make furniture and sell it to other players.
Speaker 2: It's a really cool system.
Speaker 1: And housing furniture housing decor is what like it's actually called.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: You get those.
Speaker 1: Rewards via quests and dungeons and raids and all sorts
of So that's why what I mean when I say
it's like a new reward vector in the way that like, oh,
gold is a reward vector, Like I get gold from
doing this and that and this and that, and housing
decor is like a new kind of wide ranging universal
reward that you see and all sorts of content and
it's really exciting and it's a great housing.
Speaker 3: As someone that has never played Wow, excuse me if
I'm gonna ask a dumb question, but housing, that's like
I've never been in a game until now.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 3: Yep, that's kind of surprising to me. I don't know
what I think of just what Wow is and how
long it's been around. That sounds like something that would
have already happened.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I had what would they call North uh Strong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was like a whole base building sort of.
Speaker 2: It was not very well implemented.
Speaker 4: It's not the same thing at all, but I think
that would be like in there in someone's head, they
maybe were like, this is the finally we're getting houses
in Wow. And it was that which was kind of
a disappointing feature. So now years later they're like, let's
let's make it good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And these are like in instance, neighborhoods where like
your neighbor will always be your neighbor unless one of
you decides to leave the neighborhood and go to a
different one.
Speaker 2: It's a very cool system.
Speaker 3: Or other players your neighbors. Yes, that's Steve Money.
Speaker 1: Yes, So each neighborhood has fifty five housing plots on it,
and so you could do a private neighborhood where.
Speaker 3: It's you and your friends, data community.
Speaker 1: You could, Yeah, you could do a guild one. I'm
in a guild uh neighborhood, and so a lot of
my guild mates Red Valentine for instance, is and Mick
Abrasom or two of my neighbors.
Speaker 3: You have to invite people into this, I assume, like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so it's more of a private neighborhood.
Speaker 4: You could theoretically for that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, player housing has been a really great success
so far. I've loved being on the reddit and just
seeing people share their creations. There's some wildly inspiring houses
that people have made already. But Midnight is also bringing,
you know, they're reinvigorating, reimagining the Blood Elf Homeland of.
Speaker 2: Kelp A Loss.
Speaker 1: It's uh, this was a zone that was made back
in uh the Burning Crusade in two thousand and six,
and it is now, you know what, nearly twenty years later.
They're coming back to it and they are redoing all
of it and reworking it and they're showing what has
this city looked like now that it has gotten more
resources and had the chance to heal, because part of
the story back in two thousand and six was this
is like a scarred land. The Lych king Arthurs had
previously invaded this area and so there was a lot
of like remnants of you know, like desolation and war.
And now what does this look like now that you know,
so many years have passed and it's had a chance
to heal. And it also is serving as the sort
of staging grounds for the kickoff of the Midnight expansion
because in Calthalas, Silverman City is the capital and it
is home to the sun Well, which is like a
very it's like a magical fount that essentially connects to
the primordial energy of Azarroth the planet, and that's like
a big subject of the War Within and the world
Soul saga. It's about Azarroth that has a soul essentially
and like it is it is kind of being, it's
in jeopardy, and so there's all there's a lot of
story about that. But this new reinvigorated zone is like
the subject of one of the main focuses of the
next expansion. So we got a really great uh, we've
got a really great insight into what the process was like.
You know, one of the interesting things that Maria Hamilton said,
who is in charge of content of Wow, so she's
in charge of the quest team, Uh, anything that kind
of like touches.
Speaker 2: The world of Wow.
Speaker 1: I talked to her and Gabriel Gonzalez, who is uh
leads the art team on Midnight.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting they were Maria was saying, Yeah,
one thing one of the concerdnedation considerations we've had to
do and remaking the zone is, you know, our standards
for making environments has changed a lot in twenty years.
Speaker 2: As a team.
Speaker 1: You know where back in the old days, you would
have flat land and then it would essentially just butt
up to a mountain, and you know that was that
was the standard. But now we have internal procedures where like, no,
if we're going from flat ground to a mountain, we
need to have a series of hill foothills that naturally
lead up to the mountain. And like all of these
considerations to make it a more natural feeling location.
Speaker 2: I thought it was really interesting. So we have a
lot of.
Speaker 1: Insights into that and sort of what it was like
revisiting this old you know, but I would say beloved
location for Horde players and making it something where both
Hoard an Alliance players are going to go to at midnight.
We also chatted about new new class changes to like
the Demon Hunter and like the Devourer class, and just
like Blizzard's philosophy on like you know, in their in
their opinion of Paul Cubitt, who is their associate game director,
he's like, there's nothing more exciting that we can do
for World of Warcraft than to introduce new class fantasies,
whether that's through a rework or an additional specialization. People
have played Diablo, you know, it's similar to how like,
you know, a Diablo class you could be a Druid,
but you could specialize in you know, three or four
different sort of like build types like you don't you
could be a Druid that doesn't transform.
Speaker 2: Into a bear at all.
Speaker 1: In Diablo, you could just be yeah, right, you could
be somebody who's more of like you know, they summon
companions and they you they wield and morph the earth.
Similar concept in Wow, where you know, everyone can be
a mage if they want but are you going to
be a frost mage or fire mage an arcane mage?
And within those there are even other specializations and choices
you have to make within those like kind of make
the class and the character unique to you. And you
know they they are introducing another specialization to this demon
Hunter class and it's all about like you have this
uh scythe that you're kind of like jumping in and
out of melee combat with. So you're like jumping in,
cyfing people, jumping out, using like void abilities and it's
like this really dynamic class where you're like in and out,
in and out and like, uh, you know when you're
jumping in, you're using certain abilities to then trigger to
unlock other abilities in your rotation.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Very like feels like very like combo heavy sort of
and seems really exciting. We gotta we got we talked
about you know, there's new Allied races coming. If you
don't know what that is, I realize like a lot
of our audience probably doesn't play WOW. A lot of
the core game and former audience. I know there's definitely
people out there who are are excited and and and
our wold players, but forgive me if I am if
I'm over explaining, but I.
Speaker 4: Can also uh just real quick talk about the four
new players someone like me who has hidden wow at
all that One of the things they're talking about adding
is a feature called lore Walking, which is a I
don't know if this this is already in the war Within.
Speaker 1: This has been in the game since okay, war Within,
I think the last expansion, but.
Speaker 4: It is a feature that basically lets you experience past
expansions and get yourself caught up on the story and
kind of get like a head start on some of
the like gear and leveling stuff. Just be like, if
you if you don't know, this is the middle of
a you know, three expansion arc. So here's what you
need to know. It's an abbreviated version of the story essentially,
and now you're.
Speaker 2: Up to speed and stuff and gotten gear.
Speaker 3: Is this like how does that? I'm trying to wrap
my mind right, It's it's sort of like like you
just run through an expansion, like in a bridge version
of an expansion, Like do you play so.
Speaker 1: You'll go and talk to you'll go once you make
your character and get out of the starting zone. Yeah,
you're automatically taken to if your warde, you go to Orgramar.
Speaker 2: If you're Alliance I really, they send you to Stormland
and there are there are, there's an NPC in each
of those cities.
Speaker 1: You go and talk to them and then you can
pick you know, they have lore walking for all sorts
of things. So one example they gave us was, oh,
I don't know much about the elves and Wow, let
me do an elf lore walking and it will show you.
It will take you through a series of like custom
sort of like shambled together quests of like here's what
you need to know about elves, and you're like actually
playing through these quests and these moments in Wow's history,
but in sort of like an instanced kind of version.
It's like and same thing with what Charles is talking about.
There's a war within recap where it's like it's an
abridged version of the expansion, and so it'll like pick
and choose the most important pieces that you need to
know as a player and run you through them. And
it's a like, like I said, it's a bridge, it's
much shorter, but meanwhile you're getting this story while also
you're getting the rewards from those quests and you're leveling
up and the ideas that you can get caught up
the speed and enjoy current Wow while also having the
chance to like fill in your knowledge on these various
subjects good or expansions.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because it's been around, you know, twenty years, Like
there's a lot of stuff to get cut up on
if you were trying to join now. And I think
that was another thing that was fun about just all
our conversations with the developers of their talking about kind
of like their collective arc, specifically post Shadow Lands, of
being like, what what do players want from this game,
Like we're making it for them. We need to be
on the same page about.
Speaker 2: Like our shadow Lands count in twenty twenty for reference.
Speaker 4: And is not not popular expansion despite being like I
think during COVID a lot of people were playing Wow,
but that specific content was not like people were fans of.
So it's interesting to hear them be like these are
people want to make you know multiple characters and do
lots of stuff with them. People wanted to get caught
up and play with their friends as soon as possible,
and kind of instead of being like this is the
way world of Warcraft is, and you're going to play
the way that we've designed it kind of like meeting
people in the middle more and being like, we should
be more welcoming to people, we should be doing this
X y Z. And it's just cool to hear them
talk about that. I'm hoping that when you Know Midnight
comes out, players feel like they have executed it well enough.
But it's it's all promising sounding to me.
Speaker 3: That's good. Like I again, I've never played Wow. The
most Wow gameplay I've ever seen was that South Park
episode from twenty years ago.
Speaker 4: Of course, yeah, a lot of the developers were like
and that was a big deal that self, but like
it it's a significant moment for them as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I kind of made it like a household name.
Speaker 3: That's that's when I really understood. That's when I because
I had heard a while before that episode, but that's
when I like really grasped how popular it was was
that South Park would dedicate a whole episode to it
like an engine too. It's like, oh man, this is big.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I secretly want to do a replay series
of Ward of Warcraft and convince several of my coworkers
to play, and.
Speaker 3: Even like, unless it's like a one off replay or
super replays. This sounds that the latter sounds like super replay.
Speaker 1: So just forever, just never no, no, just like like
will beat, we'll beat, We'll pick the expansion, will beat it?
Speaker 3: Like you would have to be I mean, I guess
we would trust you. I would if we did that.
I would like to hop bongs like wow is probably
there's others, but I think it might be the biggest
game I've never played, or like like the most important
game that I've just never touched whatsoever, just because I
didn't grow up a PC gamer, so I have no
affinity for a Blizzard from like a personal level, like
I got him with Blizzard. The only Blizzer games I
played were Diablo three four and og Overwatch and that's it.
And that's like much later in my life. And I
almost felt like when I did the Bliger Tour last year,
like I visited them for the Diabolo for it was
a Vessel Hatred expansion and they give you the big
tour and stuff, and I almost felt like like a
fraud being there has his reverence for Blizzard, and I
respect the hell out of Blacher, like I recognize how
important they are but you know, I don't have the
like personal like this is my childhood. This is like
a or guy, I know who that is. I'm just like, oh,
I know Tracer. That's cool. See that Tracer's statue. She's
one of my favorites. Did you guys get the Blucherd
Tour by the way, or either of you been the Blizzard.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, this is the first time, so you never
got it, was Alex, No, I haven't had the chance.
Speaker 3: Cool for you?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah it was because while is my favorite game.
Speaker 1: I mean I grew up playing Warcraft and Warcraft two
and StarCraft, and I love Overwatch, and I played casually
the diabolo games, like every Diabolo game very casually. So yeah,
it was like a big It was a big deal
for me. Did you just like for anybody though, Like
it's it's an impressive place, I think.
Speaker 3: Did they give you guys the full campus tour?
Speaker 4: Yeah? They have like they have their own if for
the listeners who have not been to Blizzard campus, presumably
they have like their own Starbucks there with a secret
menu of Blizzard themed drinks.
Speaker 3: Yeah it crazy. I wasn't able to get one and
have time to get one. I kind of wish I
had one.
Speaker 4: We did which we went twice.
Speaker 3: What was good? How did you get?
Speaker 4: The really good one was the Flappuccino, Yeah, which is
themed after the World Warcraft dragon Flight. But it's like, uh,
I have to look.
Speaker 2: Up the flavors passion for it's interesting almond or something.
Speaker 4: It was almost like brown sugar like it wasn't super fruity.
It was just really good.
Speaker 3: So you're naming so many different ingred.
Speaker 4: It didn't look good to me on the page. And
then our PR guy was like, this is our face.
This is my favorite one. I was like, okay, I'll
try it, and then I was like, oh, yeah, this
is busted. But yeah. Other than that, there's they have
like they have a library there, board games and video
games books. They have you know, gyms and that sort
of thing. It's it's it was a fancy like tech
level office, you know, like they've they've got oh we get.
Speaker 2: We can get massages, uh you know once a week
in this room.
Speaker 3: And that kind of we get massages from Diablo in here.
And it's just like a person dressed big demon.
Speaker 2: Dress cane exactly.
Speaker 3: Wait, I can name Blizzard Carrot. There's a Karrigan, right, StarCraft, Caragan,
that's a StarCraft person, right, yeah, Caragan. Yeah, Okay, I
read Jason Tryer Blizzard book. That's a very good book
there there. Yeah. Yeah. Stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But for the people who do know wow and want
to learn more, please consider going to pick up a
game Former subscription Game Informer dot Com slash subscribe. This
is a I've I've been hesitant to show off the
cover of this because this is a samp.
Speaker 2: This is not the U like the finished put product.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a test run so on on other people.
I mean the cover story is, the art is gorgeous,
but on the actual uh like production version, the one
that people are going to get at the store.
Speaker 2: This gold Game Informer logo.
Speaker 1: We kind of simulated it here for our purposes, but
it is a like metallic gold spot ink color, and
so it's like shiny I r L. Where are like
test versions they are not shiny.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like for for TCG fans or GEO fans,
like getting an ultra rare Yu gi O card, you know,
get the gold.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Is this is this an named characters or is this
like a.
Speaker 1: Just no, no, there's this is just a blood off
character going into their Horde style neighborhood.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, this is the neighbors.
Speaker 3: Just there's an or on a motorcycle.
Speaker 1: I want to know more about Goblin. They're on a
Mechano Hog. That's a mountains getting engineers called Mechano Hog.
Speaker 4: Marcus. There was a for at the Blizzard office for uh, Alex,
remind me what the the under undermine undermine they there
was some YouTubers that make cars and they made a
car from this Undermine update for World of Warcraft that
is parked in the the Blizzard parking garage.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's actually driving.
Speaker 3: Okay. They're like a West Coast Choppers, kind of like
Channel Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I guess yeah. And it looked it looked
like blocking and cartoonian like Blizzard style.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very cool. But yeah.
Speaker 1: This issue is also twenty five percent bigger. It has
twenty five more percent more pages.
Speaker 3: I should say that with two c's.
Speaker 1: It's thick, and it's to celebrate our end of year,
all of our end of year content. So this is
our special end of year issue. At the end of
each year, you're going to get a bigger magazine that
has special treatment. In this case, we went with the
metallic gold logo spot ink treatment, and we've got our
top ten games of twenty twenty five in here. We've
got our Best and Brightest, which is our end of
year awards and editor picks. We've got our individual personal
top tens in there, the best board games of twenty
twenty five. We've got a huge, really cool feature from
Brian Shay in here called I think you called it
The Soul of Souls, like right, yeah, uh, and it's yeah,
it's it's a look back at how the genre rose
to prominence. He's got quotes in here from I believe
Miyazaki as well as several other prolific uh dark.
Speaker 3: Soul yeahs, like the developers.
Speaker 2: The team.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He also did a feature correct me if I'm
wrong on was it Fallout? Fallout to the point where
like we we also got new details about like status
updates on the Elder Scroll six. Yeah, that's in here
as well. It's a really great book, uh, Like I said, bigger,
way more pages, and we've got our typical reviews and
previews and stuff in here too. But really we wanted
to be a celebration of the end of the year
and celebration of twenty twenty five in games, it was
a big year for US Game Informer coming back. So
this issue you can get early digital access Gaminformer dot
com slash subscribe. If you do already have digital access,
you can read the cover story early by going to
Gaminformer dot com slash Wow Midnight. That I'll get you
digital access to all of the stories in this book.
Of course, if you want to wait for the proper
print magazine to come to your mailbox, that will be
arriving in uh I think mid January, as well as
on newsstands around the world.
Speaker 2: Uh in that time that same that same time window.
Speaker 1: So yeah, really excited about this book. Uh, really stoked.
I'm gonna have a bunch of features on uh World
of Warcraft Midnight as well as uh, you know other
other I I really took the chance and took the
opportunity to ask the questions I've wanted to ask about
Wow for a very long time, and so I think
those will make some good breakout stories.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I asked about like theorized classes that that fans have
wanted for years and if those have been considered or not.
Speaker 2: That kind of stuff. Just no, but but that would
be cool.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about got a couple of exclusives
going up on like what North End is going to,
the kind of the philosophy of going into North Rand,
and the Last Titan, which is the expansion after this one.
No necessarily concrete details, but I really I thought a
fascinating conversation about the considerations of returning to arguably World
of Warcraft's most iconic location in North Rend, which was
the subject of the Wrath the lych King expansion in
two thousand and eight. Arguably wows, I mean, it was
at its peak at numeratime, numerical peak.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then and.
Speaker 1: In the Last Titan, we're going to be returning to
that place. So I took the opportunity to ask them
about what they're considering when they go back to that
kind of space. So we'll have online articles on GameInformer
dot com, as well as videos on YouTube dot com
Slash Game Informer. But fellows anything else before we before
we get out of here, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Tune in to the super replay. That's still a thing
that's happening.
Speaker 4: That's true, we're hoping to finish it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, by the time you're listening to this holidays, it
might be done or might still be going.
Speaker 2: We are Twitch dot TV Slash Game Informer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we are at the end. We're we've been at
the end for a while, but we're like knee deep
in the end. We're hoping to see if we can
get it done before the before we go on our
holiday break. So we're actually going to do like a
longer stream, or we would have already done probably by
the time you listen to this. So you can tune
in Twitch up Colm or TV whatever Slash Game Informer.
And also it's on our YouTube channel. It's there too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, go watch it and I'll say, Marcus Lilties, I
have a surprise to reveal to you, and we do
that stream. Oh oh okay, so that'll that'll be a
little teaser. I was like, should I tell him now?
He's like no, oh wait, oh wait.
Speaker 2: Wait, I hope it's an announcement of an announcement.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah. You do work in the game industry,
don't you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is the full CGI teaser that just says
Friday on it and then yeah we'll actually get gameplay.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well cool.
Speaker 1: Thanks everyone for listening for watching this episode. Be sure
to follow Marcus here at Marcus Stewart seven on Blue Sky.
You can follow Charles Heart at Chuck Duck three six five,
and you can follow me at It's man Akin on
Blue Sky. And actually I am using Instagram more than
any of those places, so if you're on there, feel
free to follow. But that'll do it for the week.
We'll see you in next week. We're gonna have a
bit of a different episode for our holidays. I think
we're gonna be chatting through our top ten lists for
the year, which would be a lot of fun, so.
Speaker 2: Stay tuned for that. Be well, be safe and happy holidays. Goodbye,