Speaker 1: Welcome back everyone to the Game Informer Show, a weekly
podcast covering the video game industry. Join us every week
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, joined
by Charles Hart. How are you doing, Charles?
Speaker 2: Hello, I'm doing well. I'm hanging out here and I'm
number two on the call sheet.
Speaker 1: Yes, sir, Yes, sir, number three on the call sheet.
Wesley Lablah, how you doing?
Speaker 2: Hello? Hello.
Speaker 1: We just got back from Japan not too long ago.
Speaker 2: Together. It was a fun time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, last week it was a it was a really
good trip though.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think I wowed you with how often I eat
multiple dinners?
Speaker 1: Eats a lot multiple first, Yeah, I was. I was impressed.
I was impressed.
Speaker 2: What's the do you go sorry, go to are no? No, no, please?
Just are we going to like a place and you're
ordering an entree and you're ordering a second entree? Or
are we like six pm dinner, nine pm dinner late snack.
Speaker 3: Six pm, noodle dish, nine pm standing sushi bar, eleven
pm clombini. Stop. I'm getting some ice cream. I'm getting
a fan and I gotta get me a oh my god,
Pacari sweat drinks.
Speaker 1: But it was like every night in.
Speaker 3: The hotel room.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everyone was impressed. I love that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Eric Van Allen, how you doing.
Speaker 4: Last on the call card? But the one carrying us
when we're trying to play some boomstroke play earlier and
somebody is just slamming it directly into the rough and
the bunker.
Speaker 1: Yeah, said, some people might not understand.
Speaker 3: I heard boomstroke.
Speaker 4: So earlier we did. And everybody's golf hot shots stream
with giant bomb in which we play boomstroke play, which
is just normal golf. But there are land mines on
like different parts of the course and somebody here not
gonna name names, but fifty percent of the team was
kind of struggling to keep the ball on the green,
if you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, listen, I was trying to play a golf game.
I'll also dealing with stream issues and I ended we
ended up I ended up being plus fifteen. I think
you're like plus fourteen by the end of that over par.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you need to practice your boomstroke.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right, I do maybe after this podcast, but
let's get into the show proper. We're gonna be talking
about Little Nightmares three today West Reviewed that we're gonna
be getting into the early hours of Digimon Time Stranger.
We're gonna be playing a bit talking about our time
plane Apsolom, which is a game you should definitely look
out for and keep an eye on, and then at
the end of the show, getting into our favorite fall
game games, including horror games.
Speaker 2: So it's gonna be a fun show.
Speaker 1: But before that, I do want to say, if you
enjoy listening to this episode, this podcast in general, please
consider going to pick up a Game Informer magazine subscription.
Head over to Game Informer dot com slash subscription. Sorry god,
slash subscribe. Charles, Charles and Wes are being if you're
watching the video version, they're distracted, being silly with their
Vana White.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That you're not supposed to do that to a magazine.
That's not what you're gonna You're gonna get a I'm
gonna get.
Speaker 3: A do whatever I want to this magazine.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Hey, hey, if you subscribe to Game Former, you
can do whatever you want to the magazine. We will
not stop you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, West showing off the Outer Worlds to
cover that will be hitting mailboxes in the coming weeks.
We've started rolling out our online coverage of that, so
if you're interested in that, head over to to Game
Informer dot slash Outer Worlds too, Is that right, Wes?
Or YouTube dot com Slash game Informer. We got some
videos and exclusive online features going up, so check it out.
That's the best way to support us. By picking up
a subscription. You can get print or digital magazine subscription.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I really appreciate that, guys.
Speaker 1: Let's get into the show proper, Wes. You have been
playing the third installment in the Little Nightmares series. An
interesting installment because the original developers are no longer on board.
Speaker 2: Is that correct? And yeah?
Speaker 1: Kind of a new studio? What not a new studio?
Speaker 2: But is it super massive?
Speaker 1: Picking up the ring is?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Tarsier Tarsier. I don't know why I always want
to say it like French Tarsier Tarsier Studios. I don't
think they're French. I met them at games Calm. I
believe they're Italian. They developed the Little Nightmares one and
two and now they are making their own game that's
very similar to Little Nightmares a bit different called Reanimal,
looking forward to that it's coming out next year. I
played a games come it's a good time in their place.
The developer of Little Nightmares two Enhanced Edition super Massive Games,
who you might know from until Dawn the Quarry or
Game in Former cover star, the casting of Frank Stone
from last year super Massive Games. They took over the
reins to do Little Nightmares three, and that's it's It's
cool to know, but to be honest, you're not really
gonna feel super Massive jumping in onto this franchise or
Tarsia leaving this franchise while playing Little Like It feels
this is another This fits right in with Little Nightmares
one and two. I do think it's probably the weakest
of the three, just because as the threequel, like the
third game in the series, it's it was probably time
to branch out a little and maybe spice up the
the formula a bit, and this game doesn't really do that,
though it does have some valiant efforts. But yeah, if
you were to play one, two, and three, I don't
think you'd recognize a developer switch up, which is you know,
credit to is super Massive. I don't think they were
brought in to radically change this Rangers. I think they
were brought in to make a third Little Nightmares game,
and that's what players are going to get when they
play it.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Is this the first entry in the series that has
co op?
Speaker 3: It is, which is weird, right, Like that doesn't make
especially two, which two's whole thing was having an AI companion. Yeah,
everybody was like, oh, it's weird. It's not co op
and there is co op and Little Nightmares three. Crucially,
it is just online. It is not couch co op,
which to me is a massive miss, a super massive miss.
Shout out to Jesse Vitelli for the pun. Uh. Yeah,
the whole time I was playing, I actually was. I
told my wife like, I was really excited to review
this because we're gonna play it together, blah blah blah.
And I just guess I had him been paying attention,
got code and realized it was online co op only.
So I had to to break her heart because this
is one of the few game series she does really enjoy.
And yeah, it's just such a miss. It doesn't make
it just it really doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 2: I is there a cross play?
Speaker 3: There is not cross play. But there is a thing.
There's friends Pass, which other studios have done, like Hay's Light,
where you one person buys the game and you can
like basically gift the game to another player free of cost.
So like, theoretically I could play with one of you
on PS five where I played it, and you wouldn't
have to buy the game. Uh that wasn't I remember?
Speaker 1: Didn't you and Gabby play this play a little bit
Nightmares too when it came out when you had first
joined games.
Speaker 3: I watched her, Yeah, I watched her play.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember you talking about that back then.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and uh yeah. The friends pass is cool, and
I do think that's a neat feature. But for me,
this feels like a perfect game to play on the
couch with somebody, not I don't really want to be
in a headset with you know, playing with a friend,
especially because the ambiance and like the vibes of Little
Nightmares is so important. I don't know something about the
online peripheral. Speaking to a headset kind of takes me
out of it.
Speaker 1: Do you know if it's Sorry for all the questions,
but do you know if it's steam deck verified, because
I'm curious if like, the next best thing would be
somebody playing on like setting up your PC on the
living room TV and then having somebody else playing steam
Deck on a different account with the print.
Speaker 3: I don't I don't know. I'm checking.
Speaker 4: Is that somebody plays on the someone else in the
game pad?
Speaker 2: Yeah it is. It is steam Deck verified.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, that's a solid work around on PC.
Speaker 2: I asked about the cross play because my fiance and
I have the cursed dual TV living room setup where
we both we play in the same room, but I've
got the Xbox hookup to one TV in the PlayStation
hookup to the other one, so if there was cross play,
we could do it in the same room. There's not
cross play, so I guess we'd have to do a
weird PC work around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there might be cross play, but I don't think
the friends pass would work through that because when you
like toyed around with the option, it like brings up
my PSN friends list. But yeah, that's besides the point.
Like co op, it's cool, it's cool. It's the first
time there a little while to me that it's not
couch co op. But I do think it'll be a
cool feature for people that want to play this game together.
That said, I played the majority of it with the
AI Companion, who is for the most part pretty good.
They died a few times, like being stupid, which is
kind of annoying and frustrating when you're playing solo because
like I know what to do and I'm like this,
dude's come on, let's go, and they're just not. There's
also like two or three times where you have to
jump on a hatch together to knock it down so
you can like fall through it and you have to
jump at the same time and land at the same time,
and they were unable to sink to me, like I
would jump and then they would jump after me and
never works, so I had to wait and learn the
AI's jump patterns to jump in not anything I would
like mark the game for that that puzzle. That puzzle
is only in the game for like a couple of times,
but I thought that was very funny. The AI Companion
does a decent job overall, So with the co op
that's like the big new feature. The reason for that
is there's two playable characters, Low and Alone. One is
a little boy who has like a blue cape and
a white raven mask and a bow and arrow which
he can use to like shoot strings that break things
so you can like drop items to the floor, or
he can shoot switches and enemies occasionally. And then the
other is a little girl with these very cute little
red pigtails, and she wears a green suit and a mask.
She kind of looks like six I think that co
Eating Cambria soundtrack CGI movie from like two thousand and nine.
Maybe it's a weirdly deep pool. I haven't about that
movie in forever. And she has a giant wrench which
she can use to like bash the heads in of enemies. Again,
there's not much combat that this is not a combat game,
but occasionally you do that or to like hit buttons
on the wall and stuff, So that's cool in theory, Like, oh,
there's two different playable characters. I'm curious how they will
play differently and interact with each other. The biggest miss
for the game, One of the biggest misses for me
is that one they don't really have communication or interactions.
There's no real personalities between these two. For the most part,
they're just two walking bodies that perform the actions you
hit on the controller and I would have liked to
have seen a little more interaction between them. And there
is a story reason I think that super Massive could
say is the reason why that's so, But I don't know.
That's not enough for me, Like I still have to
endure six to eight hours of these two characters with
little interaction. Mechanically, they sometimes work together to solve puzzles,
like I there's one that it's actually in our review
where you pull down like a projector image and it
has certain buttons you need to hit and the other
character while you're while one character is pulling down that
image to show that on the screen, the other character
has to look at it and shoot buttons based on
what they see. And that's a cool puzzle, And there
are cool moments like that, but they're very few and
far between. For the most part, this game plays a
lot like Little Nightmares one and two, where you're just
solo and you are moving boxes to climb up on
stuff and escaping through shoots and crawling through vents, and
it gets pretty repetitive pretty fast. The saving grace of
Little Nightmares three is the vibes and the ambiance that
has persisted through all three games. I enjoyed seeing what
was next. I enjoyed running from these terrifying creatures. I
enjoyed just being in this world. And it just barely
edged out the repetitive nature of the gameplay. I think,
like you're not You're doing a lot of the same
things over and over. It's really cool that sometimes it's
in a carnival, or sometimes and it's in a rotten
candy factory with a giant, terrifying baby or weird spider
lady that chases after you. But yeah, I think this
is a This is like a very decent crack at
Little Nightmares three, rocking at.
Speaker 1: All as somebody who has always been interested in Little Nightmares,
but I haven't actually played the series number one? Is
it cool to jump in with this one? I think
they're all different characters, right, so I.
Speaker 2: Could start this one.
Speaker 3: This one is the most standalone. I think they're on
the same universe. One happens, two has connections to one,
like it's a it's an actual sequel in a lot
of ways. Three is like completely standalone, although to be honest,
like I think one came out in twenty eighteen, twenty seventeen,
but like you wouldn't know the difference between this and three,
Like you wouldn't be able to tell there's years of development,
Like going Back does not feel old or anything. That
game is still up really well, it's a blast. I
honestly probably recommend starting with one, unless you just want
to talk about three with people playing here right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the thing that's always the challenge with
us is like, oh, we got to consider this for
end of year awards and stuff, and so it's like,
I guess I could play the new one, but I
have wanted to play that series for a while. But
my second question is how scary is this compared to
like my my, Again, I don't play a ton of
horror games, So like recent horror games I've played and
enjoyed were like Resident Evil Village, Signalis stuff like that,
How does this compare scare wise.
Speaker 3: Nowhere near as scary as Residon Evil Village. If you
played Village, you'll be fine with any of the Little
Nightmares games. The type of horror that is in Little
Nightmares is very like Tim Burton esque, okay, where it's
playful and creepy and there's like some dread, but it's
not outright horrific. I mean, some of these monster designs
will give you like the they're just creepy Crawley's like
you'll feel goosebumps, but like you aren't going to be shrieking. Ever,
there's not really it's not like a jump scare specific thing.
If you made it through Village or really any modern
resident evil game like these will be a piece of cake.
These are It's like watching Corpse Bride or like Frank
and Weenie, but maybe with like a higher rating instead
of being PG. It's like PG thirteen.
Speaker 1: These games always remind me of a scape Plan on
the PS Vita.
Speaker 3: I'm not familiar with that game. Okay, I only played
like six things on my Vita. I loved that console,
but I did not play that game. I put a
lot of hours in a percent of four instead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fair that.
Speaker 3: The gist of Little Nightmares and all three is, for
the most part is just escaping, Like you're just in
these terrible places and you're an underpowered child pretty much
like I know you are children, and you're just trying
to escape these childhood fear like monstrosities. I think that's
something that's really cool about Little Nightmares is that it
plays into even the title itself. Little nightmares like these
aren't and that's not like Resident Evil where these zombies
are coming to like eviscerate you and rip open your
flesh like it's like a scary spider lady or a
big baby doll that is terrifying. And as someone who
grew up and like my grandparents had the most terrifying
life size girl doll ever that would always be in
the room in a corner on a rocking chair in
the room that I stayed at at their house. That yeah,
and it blinked and stuff. It was awful. It was
not good. And they used to like they think they
would sometimes if we were like sleeping in too much,
they would have put it at the end of our
bed and then wake us up. What the hell not
my grandpa, my grandparents were they there a little pranksters.
Speaker 1: It sounds like any to get canceled.
Speaker 2: Ninety year old man canceled.
Speaker 3: God, I'll go to my grandma's grave and let her
know that she's canceled.
Speaker 2: Do Yeah, I just want to talk.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So yeah, the fears are like they're playing on like
the the things that are scary as as a but
even like level is not like clowns. It's like it's
just a spooky part. There's not you're not going to
run into like any clowns. It's just it's it's and
the art style is really cool. I say Tim Burton
because it feels very like molded by hands, like and
using clay and like other features like that. It's not clay,
it's not claymation. It's not stop motion or anything like that,
but it feels like these are characters somebody made on
a table with like real life materials that were scanned
into a game. And I think that's the real strength
of Little Nightmares is the visual style and the worlds
that you get to play around in. It's dark stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah for those of us, for those of us with
normal childhoods, though, we should be less scared.
Speaker 2: Probably yeah, you'll be less scared.
Speaker 3: But I mean, like I think it's in my review
the best way to like sum up the scares of
Little Nightmares is you're not gonna shriek, You're not gonna
beything like that. You're just gonna see something and you're
gonna be like nope, nope, absolutely not no, no. No. Works
to the games, Yeah, it works to the game strength
because you're trying to escape and anytime you're watching something
and you just want to be like Nope, absolutely not.
You just want to leave, And that's what the game
is all about, is just just leave, get out of
that room.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I like that. Well, Wes, what would do you
give it? Would you? Would you score Little Nightmares?
Speaker 3: I gave it a seven point five because it's like
it's one of those it's it was a tough game
to score because for all its faults, it's it's still
so much closely aligned with what Little Nightmares is that
I had a fun time. Like if you're looking for
a Halloween game, and I think this is a great
game to play in October. It's something I always wrestle
with is like when we're reviewing a game, I'm trying
to poke holes in it and find what works and
what doesn't work for me, Whereas but I'm just playing
a game for fun. It's so easy to gloss over
and issue a game has like I just and that's
just part of the job. So like, if you're someone
who just wants a fun, co op horror game, like
this will be it. And it's like six hours, maybe
six to eight hours, maybe even less. There's collectibles and
stuff to find, but like it's not necessary, Like it's
a quick, fun, little horror romp. If you want to
skip movie night a couple of nights this October, like
play some little nightmers cool.
Speaker 2: That sounds fun.
Speaker 1: Well, wells, thanks for for stopping buying chatting through your review.
I know you're busy and you gotta go, but yeah,
thanks for thanks for keeping us up to date on
on Little lightmres three.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: All Right, bye, Wes, see everybody else in just a second, bye,
and we're back.
Speaker 2: Eric.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna toss the popcorn ball over to you to
talk about.
Speaker 4: Isn't that a thing, popcorn ball, the popcorn tall.
Speaker 2: It exists. Popcorn balls are a thing. That's that's a
fact one corn.
Speaker 4: You can't just keep saying pop like he'll get it eventually, Cornisle.
Speaker 2: Don't say like you're casting a spell. Pop style is
like people go around the room and they interject at
their own times, like kernels of corn in a popcorn bag.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you toss the ball, but.
Speaker 2: You're just saying, okay, he tossed.
Speaker 1: The ball to somebody that's there. Turn to talk and
you say popcorn you'll do some crazy stuff here in
the Midwest.
Speaker 2: I think that's a specific ritual at your school, but
I don't that's a Virginia education system. Yeah, I thought
you were crazy actually so yeah yeah, Eric Popcornball, Yeah yeah,
Eric popcorn You're gonna talk about Digimon time Stranger.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, let's talk about this. Let's talk about popcorn bon.
That's not a real Digitmon. I don't think. I can't
be sure it could be. Yeah, there's no real way
of proving it right or wrong. Uh, Digitmon story Time
Stranger is so some some pretext I I was not.
I wouldn't say I wasn't a digitmon kid, but I
wouldn't say it defined me the way that like it
did for some digitmon kids, if that makes sense, because
I feel like I don't know if y'all had this
when when you were growing up, but there was kind
of the the Pokemon kids and the digitmon kids right there.
There were there was something that were like, oh, well
you and Pokemon was was the majority, Like like everybody
knew about Pokemon followed Pokemon.
Speaker 2: Some of us were cultured and liked both. I would say, sure,
I will say I was. I think I was later.
I'm a little younger than both of you. I didn't
know any Digimon kids. I knew Digimon as like a concept,
but I don't think I ever met someone that like
was into Digitmon.
Speaker 4: There was there was some pride of the underdog in
the digitmon kids, right, and that they were like, oh,
ours is like more interesting, It's like more mature. There's
like stuff happening in it, like our digitmon, like the
things happen there. And this was like between fourth and
fifth grader, so like is the.
Speaker 2: What is the things happened? What is the flex there?
Speaker 4: Like like like in Pokemon's like, oh Pikachu, Pikachu does
fun stuff, but like in Digitmon, like they turn into
stuff with like guns and cannons something, they like fight
for the fate of the universe and all that kind
of stuff to save the digital world. And then you
had me, who I was like monster ranchers really cool
and nobody cared uh and then Yu gi Oh came
in and swept all that away. So that's kind of
a time capsule of my youth. But so with that context,
I did watch Digitmon when I was younger because it
was on I think it was like WB Kids or
something like that in the morning. But I always thought
of it as it's an alternative to Pokemon. It's a
it's a similar, It's a monster raising game of some kind.
And there's a lot, you know, on the spectrum of
monster raising. You have Monster Rancher, Pokemon, Digitmon.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: This is gonna throw some people for a loop to
have never thought of this before. But Shi Maygan me
tense is a monster raising game.
Speaker 2: Uh definitely. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And so even like Dragon Quest Monsters and stuff
like that, you have a lot of like it's it's
it's a side of the RPG spectrum. And I just
considered dijimon like like on the kid's side of it.
But for years, folks like good Friend the Show, Kenna Shepherd,
uh would always tell me like, hey, Digitmon story Cypressluth
really really good, Like it's it's actually very very good.
I just never really believed to be honest, and Uh
with Time Stranger, I played it at SGF, gave it,
gave it on a shot, walked out of there and
said that was probably the best thing I've seen at SGF.
Speaker 1: And I remember you saying that, and I was shocked.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I was surprised because I had played stuff
like Pragmata and things like that there and I was like, no,
that that was the best thing I've seen. And I
don't know if Time Stranger is something I'm not far
enough in to feel like it's, you know, in contention
for one of my favorites of the year or anything
like that, but I think it has been one of
my biggest surprises of twenty twenty five, is did you
mut story? Time Stranger is just a really solid monster
raising RPG at a time when I think people are
kind of hungry for that, especially one that's a little
bit more complex, a little bit more nuanced, a little
bit more involved than what you would expect from other
titans of the genre. So yeah, to give an overview,
you're kind of an agent of a damis you get
put into this story in media arrests. You're gonna be
confused by the intro. Don't worry. You're kind of supposed
to be, is what I quickly learned. But you do
your first dungeon and they teach you all this stuff,
but basically you're just fighting digimon And one thing I
really like is that you just fight them and to
capture them, you just beat them in battle and kind
of internalize their code so that you can like spring
it forth from the digital world and add them to
your party, which I think is cool. I like that
more than the Pokemon catching personally to draw comparison or
like shit may go me tense bartering, which is goofy
and fun in its own way but gets old after
a while for me. And what really makes digitmon stand
apart is all the digivolutions. So there's so much stat
work and personality type manipulation and stuff you can do
where you can kind of start to take this digitmon
from a base form and start branching it out into
these different paths to say, I want to digitvalve you
up into this, so you get this ability or this,
and then d digivolv you back and take you into
a different path. So now it's like the abilities of
one digmon on the body of another, and you're doing
all this cool stuff that I think really reminds me
of the things I like the most in RPGs. I've
been playing this just off the back of playing Fall
Fantasy Tactics, a game which I think has one of
the coolest job systems ever. And a lot of that
is about how do I take kind of the component
pieces of different jobs and form them into something that
I think is going to be a really powerful single unit.
Because I'm having to do all these battles where I'm
five people up against ten twelve tons of units that
are all really powerful, I've got to figure out how
to mix and match to win. And I think digmon
has some of that DNA in it, where you're making
these really cool choices about I'm going to take a
monster down this path and lean into this and then
maybe like, oh this isn't working out or I need
something different, and I'm going to do dig evolve and
see if I can go into a different path. It's
always progressing, it's always fluid in a way that feels
really really fun in this sort of style. Yeah, that's
and and on top of that, like the digitmon. If
you haven't seen digitmon before, if you haven't played a digitmon,
if you don't know what a digitmon looks like, I
could show you fifteen pictures of digitmon and say which
one of these are digitmon and which one aren't, and
you would get them wrong. Because there's some wild digitmon
out there. Times where you have a little oh.
Speaker 5: It's a little guy, just a little, little, flubby, little
little guy, and then all of a sudden he turns
into like, Oh, I'm a tank now, or I'm like
a humanoid angel like descending.
Speaker 4: From the heavens, yeah, or or I'm a garbage can
look yeah. Yeah. I love that stuff, and I think
that gets really fun as the game goes on, too,
you start to see all the different evolutions and versions
of these mons interact and become parts of your party,
and these little grubby guys become these giants weapons of
war and stuff like that. It's a really enjoyable game.
I mean, it's having explosion on Steam right now. We
did a YouTube short on it, but basically was outpacing
at launch several mainline RPG series PC launch, which granted
some of those games were ports or later launches and
stuff like that, but it was doing extremely well and
is maybe a sign that people are hungry for more
in this space, especially because when you think about other
monster taming games Shimmy Gammy tense happens once in a
blue moon. Pokemon's kind of locked to the switch. I
do think there is a hunger for people who play
on steam Deck, who play on PC, who play on
all these different platforms to have something that they can
easily access and get a lot out of. And I
think Ditchmond is smartly targeting that audience and it feels
like it's working very well. So it's a really exceptional game.
Like I said, I'm a few hours in. I'm not
super deep. I can't really speak to any of the
larger stuff at the time stranger part where to my understanding,
you jump between moments and time and things like that.
It kind of affects where you are in the world
and how you can access side quests and things like
things like that. But I've I've been hearing very positive
things and I've been enjoying my time quite a bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is definitely one of those games I want
to fire up on steam Deck and play through. I
just installed it last night. Actually maybe after Clarubscear. I've
started clarib Scear finally in a real way. Yeah, and
I'm probably three hours three and a half hours under
claib Steer. Really enjoying that markedly different I think where
clarb Scar is like really dark. Not that Digimond isn't
dark at times, but like I'm definitely going to be.
I'm playing Silk Song and Clerpscar at the same time.
Both those games very dark and just like oppressive.
Speaker 4: It's a total difference. And I think in some cases
digimon that's where sometimes I think people can bristle is
they'll be like, I literally just had a big story
moment happen and this this thing transpired, and I was like, Oh,
what just happened? And all of a sudden, I'm howling
around with some little digitmon and they're like, oh, help us,
help us find that the person we're looking for. Look
out Mini, And I'm like, oh god, I look, I
have a decent tolerance for that kind of stuff, but
I don't know. I always think of if you watched
O G Gundam, they're like characters in the original Gundam
double O seven nine that are like two kids that
have stowed away on the White Base, and they're always
the ones that are getting into trouble and needing to
be saved by the protagonists, and they're the ones that
they're the scrappy do or like if you want this
is a crazy pole if you watch the Land Before Time,
it's like the younger dinosaurs in Land Before Time that
are always getting into trouble and then the slightly older
dinosaurs have to go save them. I have low tolerance
for that sort of thing, and there is like a
little bit of that where I'm at right now. But
I think overall it is a like you're saying, it's
slightly more mature than you think it's going to be.
So it's thankfully not all that, And I do like
that it does seem to want to touch on things, like,
you know, the real world. I think that's always been
Digimon's advantage. Is it kind of broadly gestures at, okay, well,
what kind of effect has the internet had on society?
And has it been a good one? What would sort
of conversations about that sort of stuff? How would they
play out in real life? And Cybersluth was a little
bit more on the nose. I did finally after playing
at SGF, I went back and played some of Cyberslooth
because I was like, oh, they were right. Those digitmon
story games are very good. Cybersluth has a little bit
more of that front loaded, whereas Time Stranger has taken
a while to get there, but I'm led to understand
that some of the later story beats get surprisingly complex,
so I think wise you'll find a good mesh of
Saturday Morning cartoon and oh this is surprisingly deep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's good to hear.
Speaker 2: I did want to ask, and maybe you said this
a while ago and I just missed it. Who are
you playing?
Speaker 4: As it's a great question, like what is you're you're
an agent of a damis And and again I'm playing
with I'm a few hours in and they very intentionally
withhold major story stuff with the feeling that you're supposed
to be like what is going on here? What is
actually happening? But to to set it up, you are
infiltrating this walled city essentially like a walled section of
a city that has been sealed off after some calamity
happens or some sort of bad thing happened there. And
it's a really cool intro, I think, because you kind
of infiltrate this area and you're kind of moving through
this crowd that is protesting the blockage of the area,
and then you actually go in through the sewers and
infiltrate it, and that's when you start having to use
digitmon to fight. Also, you launch a digimon out of
a gun, which is kind of sick, you know, like
a yeah, yeah, yeah, like just a full on handgun,
like like you do this like pose like a Tokusatsu pose,
and you just like and shoot your digitmon out. It's
kind of cool.
Speaker 2: Where it's persona three, except they accidentally have a didjumon
gun until they just shoot it, did you youmon at
their head?
Speaker 4: And then yeah, launch an auguman directly into their cranium. Yeah, yeah,
I I don't know about that.
Speaker 2: But.
Speaker 4: They have infiltrated on that. They you infiltrate the city.
You find some characters who seem to know who you
are or have a connection to you, but you don't
know them. And there's a lot of just in media
res of like things have happened, and you can tell
that there's something strange afoot because you're a damis is
I forget what it even stands for. But basically, you
investigate anomalies. You look for oddities in the real world
and how they might be affecting and you handle them
kind of a men in Black situation almost, but obviously
there's more at play than you are to understand. But
you get into the middle of this fight between several
large digimond that all seem to be fighting over something.
There seems to be a war transpiring in the digital
space that is bleeding into the real world, and so
you get caught up in the middle of it. That's
when events happen, Things go haywire, and you kind of
get launched into what is ultimately like the start start
of the game. And that's I'm a little bit after that,
but I do think it's again I think of Cyberslouth,
where Cybersluth was much faster about getting you into the
story and getting you invested in it, and I do
think that is a strength that Cybersluth has over Time
Stranger for me right now in my own personal feelings
on it. But I do think all the quality of life,
all the digitmon building, all the RPG systems, I really
like Time Strangers options. The only thing I felt this
during SGF, and I've heard that is transpired out across
the rest of the game. Bosses are a little spongy,
a little a little just hit them a bunch and
wait for it to close out, and you kind of
figure it out and by the time you figure it out,
you're like, okay, so I just got to do this
over and over and over again. That happened when I
was playing at SGF the boss there. It was like, Okay,
I figured out what his weakness is, and I just
got to beat him down, and it takes like a
little bit longer than you want it to. I do
like a digitmond. They have some interesting ways of handling
weaknesses where you have kind of a typal wheel. So
you have fire Are they weak to fire? Are they
weak to ice? Are they weak to that sort of stuff?
But you also have a triangle of I think it's
is it data virus vaccine, where it's kind of at
the fire emblem triangle where one will kind of supersede
the other. So you can get double effective the way
that you can in Pokemon. If you get double type
effective attacks on certain Pokemon, you can get double effect
and do even more damage if you get the right
type matchup and the elemental But also it acts as
a way for you to be like, Okay, well I
don't have any digimon that can use the elemental attack
that I need to use right now or the specific type,
but I do have a type advantage on this Digitmon,
so I can still get some advantage out of this
and kind of eke my way out to a victory.
And that does reflect back on you. Obviously. If you
show up and you only have a team full of
virus digmon, probably going to get walloped if a vaccine
shows up. So that's Digitmon. I think it's really well
timed too. Obviously ZA is right around the corner, and
that's on you know, Boster. I don't know why I
have to keep explaining that to people. I thought it
would be self explain an the tory, but I've had
meetings here a game Informer where someone has been like, Eric,
what are you talking about when you say ZA, And
I was like, it's it's the.
Speaker 2: It's the the Joe Merrick of Sarah By or Sarah
b however you pronounce it. He said he was mad
because he saw an ad. I think he's in the UK.
But they didn't say Z to A. They said Z
to A. Oh, oh we're not localizing it.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: That's a blunder, mate, straight straight miss and you got
your you got family over there of a tip, you
got an authentic.
Speaker 2: They actually just moved back, so oh balls, yeh, bollocks.
Speaker 1: I don't have I don't have the the past anymore.
Speaker 2: The Seaward pass uh No.
Speaker 4: But I think I think it's really well timed. Uh
I think a lot of people got their RPG phil
earlier in the year with stuff like claip Scare, and
now they're going, well, you know, I'm kind of eager
to play something a bit Meteor again and a bit
Media Lands, and it's well times, so I'm happy, you know.
I like seeing Digimon show up and actually get some recognition,
because again, I'm not a digmon kid, but you know,
healthy competition is good for all and Digitmon are fun.
They're goofy in a way that I really appreciate, and
I do genuinely think if you've ever said, I want
like a more complex monster taming system, but I don't
want to go all the way into shimmying on my tense,
especially like Nocturn and stuff like that could get very difficult.
This feels like a good half step. It's still maybe
slightly on the easier side, but this feels like something
that anyone could kind of pick up and play and
enjoy and still find a lot of really good stuff
to dig into. It's not going to feel too overwhelming,
but you're going to get a lot of rewarding stuff
out of the systems at play here that I think
elevate the and especially the monster taming up and above
what most others offer. So it's it's been a surprise
for me and one that I hope I continue to
find time for as the year goes on.
Speaker 2: It is nice to hear someone talk about the game
in the opposite of what Pokemon is. Where Pokemon is like, yeah,
it's like, this one's not I mean, it's kind of
okay and doesn't look good, but it is Pokemon, so
we're gonna play it, whereas this one you're like, it's
fun and it likes it and like, even though it's digimon,
it's like a good game, Like you don't get that
part out of your mind and then go play because
it's good, not just the aesthetics aren't the justification, which.
Speaker 4: It has made me want to go back and maybe
try some digitmon stuff that I missed over the years.
I know Digitmon Survived came out and there were people
who were really into that one, but I remember that
was the visual novel, right, It's like have visual novel
half Tactics game, which is usually like just catnip for
me specifically, but.
Speaker 2: Yeah, such a funny combo. It's like the least game
and then the most game.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like it's overwhelmed two different people at the
same time. But that is the venn diagram of me.
When we get to to go to you just wait
for me to start talking about one hundred line, which
is in my.
Speaker 2: Top three for this time if you can find the
pr for them, because we didn't. I don't think we
got codes.
Speaker 4: For that for one hundred line.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think any of us have played it
in that. I played Donan Rompu one in two last
year and I was like, oh, these are totally up
my alley. But I anyways, we'll talk. Well, I'll message
you later.
Speaker 4: One hundred line has a moment that's really frustrating because
I think it is one of the most audacious moments
I've ever seen attempted in a video game. Like Hideo
Kajima wishes he could pull something off like this, but like,
you have to legitimately play thirty hours of a game
to get to it, and it's already thirty hours of
a game that I think a lot of people might
just jump off of because it is largely a mix
of adventure game slash, visual novel and tactics, and that's
a very hard sell for a lot of people, and
I get it. But the payoff if you stick with it,
will just absolutely blow your mind and then you will
experience what is quite possibly one of the most unique
games I've played this side of Thirteen Sentinels.
Speaker 2: So exciting. Yeah. Yeah. My only concern is that I
think I was unemployed when I played Doc.
Speaker 4: Romp but one and two and the best state of
mind to be in for Duncan Ramp.
Speaker 2: But that's how I found the time to get through them.
I was just like, I'm not working right now, so
I'm just gonna just kind of through.
Speaker 4: You've played one and two, but you haven't played V
three yet.
Speaker 2: Uh no, Well, so I played two and it was like,
literally like the week after I finished two is when
the game Fourer started back up and all play V
three work can play games for work?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I forget about that. I go play V three,
tell Matt.
Speaker 2: I said, Also not, I played the other two on
steam Deck and V three is not steam Deck verified.
Speaker 4: It should be now. But also I think the deck
is dense collection if I remember right, has them all
on switch and playable, and I think that's probably the
best way of doing it nowadays.
Speaker 2: I'll do it there.
Speaker 1: Well cool, Well, Charles, were actually gonna kick it over
to you. You've been playing a game that ever since
I learned about it, it's been on my radar and
I'm dying.
Speaker 2: To play it. Art style looks really great.
Speaker 1: Uh. And and the fact that it's a rogue light.
I'm like, oh, okay, let's let me hear more. Uh,
tell me about Absolum Absolom.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna crack open my red Bull for this long.
Speaker 4: Let's go.
Speaker 2: We're going real. These are real gamer hours. Oh damn,
he's sipping it. He's sipping it. So if you don't
know what this game is, it is published by dot Emu. Okay,
I'll try to find They're having like a crazy good year.
I don't. I don't think I knew who dot emu was,
and then this year it's like Marvel Cosbiguration, Absolum.
Speaker 4: Did you never play a Streets of Age four? I
knew of it, but I never played it. Oh, if
you like beat them ups. Streets of Rage four is
a good time.
Speaker 2: I think, I think what I like about them this
year they also I think published.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah Shadows Revenge Yeah yeah yeah, uh okay and
developed by dott Emu, Guard Crush Games and Super Monks.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I I it wasn't like super on my radar,
and I did play it at Summer Game Fest and
I was like, I don't know what this is, uh,
and it was really cool. So it's like a beat
them up rogue light, but it's like fantasy theme, so
it's not I mean, the Streets of Rage is the
kind of like when I think of a beat them
up game, it is that, or it's like a Turtles game,
or it's like you're literally on a city street and
you're picking up trash cans and throwing them at people,
and you're eating pizza that goes on the ground. Not
so you hear yourself. This is like we're gonna take
all of that kind of gameplay style and put it
in like a high fantasy setting. So your main characters
are like you got an Elf, you got a dwarf,
you have a frog is a wizard, and then you
have a like clockwork assassin I think they call her
who's voiced by Carlac, the voice of Karlac and b
Skate three. Oh cool. Yeah, I don't know the full cast,
but I was. Also my theory was that the main
character might be Amelia Tyler, who I think is the
narrator in Balders K three, but I'd have to check.
Don't quote me on that anyway. So I really like
fantasy stuff. I'm kind of like a recent I always
liked it growing up. Recently I've gotten really into D
and D, so it's like very much my aesthetic of choice.
The art in this game is so good. It looks
like a Saturday Morning cartoon. And they did just confirm
they are making an animated series based off of the game,
like a week or two ago, which like makes sense
because they should and yeah, I I The thing that
I think makes it interesting is it's a roguelike. As
you're going through, you're picking up rituals, which are like
just your power ups in the game. They're gonna give
you elemental bonuses or make it so you know, your
jump attacks do more dan et cetera, et cetera. But
also every run there's like a bunch of branching paths.
It kind of reminds me of Dead Cells. I can't
think of a more recent example, but like sure, when
you do a run of Dead Cells, it's like you
can choose to go this way or that way, and
then you're you're getting to choose where you go, and
it's it's on a smaller scal than Dead Cells is
because I think you're still ending up at the same
like first Boss, Second Boss, et cetera. But there is
a lot of like decision making every run of Like
I had a hard time with this, you know, Mini Boss,
I'm gonna do this other one, so that's cool. I
like it a lot. Matt Miller, our veteran chief, also
liked it, and he reviewed it, and I think his
review should be up today, but he gave it a
nine out of ten.
Speaker 4: Wow, which is very exciting.
Speaker 2: He really liked it. He's also a D and D guy.
He told me that he he wrote a whole D
and D setting. I don't know if I've mentioned this
on the podcast before. He wrote like two hundred pages
of a D and D like continent campaign setting and
then had it bound and handed it to his players
before they started playing a game like he did. He
did Capitol w world building, so he's he's very much
this is like his element. And yeah, I think I
think if I had any I'm not that far into it.
I've played like a few hours. I think the thing
that this game is going to struggle with is launching
so close to Haites two because there are different styles
of games, but it is still like the same kind
of idea. It's still like an action game. And I
think the mike qualm with this game is in a
lot of roguelikes, I feel like it's very easy to
have two runs that are very, very different, and I
feel like the upgrades in this game don't do a
ton to change your like base move set. So you're
picking different characters you can play as, and they all do.
Speaker 1: You have like the access to them from the very start.
You start with all the characters too.
Speaker 2: And then you get the other one. So I have
three of the four, but I played as the Frog Wizard.
I had like a preview build earlier. But yeah, and
they have they have like light attacks and they have
heavy attacks, and that's cool, and that's basically about it.
They it changes a little bit situationally, but you don't
have that wide of a move set, and most of
the time the rituals you get, which are like the
power ups, It'll be like when you dodge perfectly, you
get like a ring of fire around you, or your
heavy attack does win damage if you hit people enough times.
So it's nice and it's like you feel a little
more powerful, but it's it is relying more on I
think skill than build than some other rope likes do,
where like if you're if you're playing Hades two and
you just have like you can get some like crazy
builds going on, like just your cast for this run
or just your special or whatever and just kind of
like blaze through things without having to think about it
this much. Absolom is like, oh, you do need to
figure out how to parry and how to dodge, and uh,
like you have to pay attention to the whole time. Yeah,
better term.
Speaker 1: There's no like build where you can put the dead
cells turrets down and just I will I.
Speaker 2: Wish I could do a Garlic Vampire Survivors build man
where just like people near me just kind of melt. No, yeah,
not like so, and I don't think it's bad, but again,
it's hard to play a game that's a satisfying as
Haites two and then come to this where I'm like, oh,
I'm kind of I was never like stuck on a
boss in Hades too, like maybe the final bosses at
the end of the run or whatever I would have
to do like a few times. This is one where
it's like, I have yet to beat this first area
boss like eight or nine runs in because I'm not
like really gaining that much power between runs. It has
more to do with me just like having to learn
what it is and react appropriately, which is fine, and
I think some people will prefer that. They'll like that
it's not getting too fluffed up by the power ups
and stuff. But yeah, they're also is co op, which
is nice. I think it's only two player though. Cool.
There is local and there's online, and they have a
cool system if you're doing online where it will match
the story content to the less progressed player. So if
I'm like, oh, that's ten levels deep and someone else
is like three levels deep, we'll get all the cut
scenes for the three levels deep person, but we'll still
keep our like builds and abilities and stuff as we
go through it. Yeah. I Oh the other thing I
really like is there's like a pary button, so if
you dash towards someone when they attack, then you like
parry them perfectly, but you also have like your heavy attack,
and if your heavy attack hits them when they do
their attack, it's like a super stagger. I can't remember
what the word for it is, but that feels really
cool to like time it really perfectly. And it's hard,
but that's like one of the most satisfying things in
the game is trying to get that timed right. Yeah. Yeah,
I mean.
Speaker 1: The world building in particular, I mean you talked about
it already a little bit, but is there anything in
particular with the characters or like the setting that really
kind of kind of anchorsy to what's going on in
the game, or is it more like, oh, this is
just like really pretty high fantasy with you know, the
frog wizard and and like if you like those archetypes,
you know, then you're going to be interested. Is there
like any big like I guess poll besides that kind
of thematic stuff.
Speaker 2: I think Matt was a little more into it than
I was. I I admittedly wasn't like sitting there and
like really reading the dialogue exchanges, but they weren't really
grabbing me necessarily. I liked that. I think what he
called it is it's the platonic ideal of like a
fantasy beat him up where I think it is. It's
not so boring that it like doesn't make sense or
that you shouldn't pay attention to it. But it also
to me was like, Yeah, there's an evil ruler who
looks at the tower and you're all like children of
this one goddess like person, and that's how you She
like revives you every time you die. Basically, Yeah, and
I like it, but I wouldn't I wouldn't say it's
not like a Hades where I'm like really invested in
all the characters and there's like there's like quests and
stuff with it, which is interesting. So you like meet
someone that'll ask you to go to a place or
do a thing and that'll like inform which direction you're going,
like what route you take, which is cool. Yeah, but
I also haven't beaten the first boss, so I don't
know if like maybe it opens up a little bit more,
it gets a bit more specific, But yeah, so I
would say the story itself is not a huge pull
for me it has more to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the vibes still look great.
Speaker 4: So yeah, yeah, I was going to say, like, I'm
already really interested because I love the capcom D and
D brawlers from back in the day that like Chronicles
Mastara and stuff like that. Those have always been like
a secret Yeah, those have been hidden gems of the
beat them up genre for a long time, and specifically
because they're high fantasy, they're a little bit different and
stuff like that. Uh, and this looks like it might
hit similar notes for people, and so that has me
pretty excited for Chack in this game out.
Speaker 2: I also like how it's like you get you're with
the playable characters. You're getting some fantasy tropes, but they're
like just different enough that I think it's like cool. So,
like Galandra is like my favorite character. She's the elf
and she has a huge sword on her back and
she only pulls it out for her heavy attack, which
I for some reason that's so cool is she has
she's mostly just boxing a puncheg with her fists, but
if there's like shit's going down, she's gonna pull out
the sword and she's gonna do some big attack or
there's also like magic attacks that'll have that'll use this
special thing too. Carl is a dwarf, Alex, you like dwarfs, right,
I don't know why I thought so. He's a dwarf, okay,
I I think you had mentioned it.
Speaker 1: Before, But are like my from the earth.
Speaker 2: You know, he does a lot of uh he's he's
a lot quicker than I thought it would be. And
he does a lot of like really short kind of
boxing moves, and he has a gun like magic moves
are him like shooting or like he launches a grenade
or something. But his heavy attack doesn't even use the gun.
It's like a big head butt. So he's like really
good at like juggling people, and he was like surprising.
I was ready for him to be like a slower,
heavier character, but I think Galandra is slower than he is,
and he's very like, I don't know, cool. I like him.
Speaker 4: I didn't know you were such a dirty boy lover
there van Ak and the Orcs and the and the
dwarves getting down in the earth like that.
Speaker 1: You gotta yeah, that's my my people.
Speaker 4: Uh huh yeah, gotta build a commander for you then
to match that match that energy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Magic Commander, Yeah, Yah.
Speaker 2: Of the Earth.
Speaker 4: There's there's some very there's some good like goblin orc
type stuff that you can do and magice.
Speaker 1: I love goblins orcs.
Speaker 2: Did you Alvatar Last Servender Alex?
Speaker 1: I have watched the first like fifteen episodes, I think. Okay,
so before I got this, I made it to the
fire Temple or fire shrine or something is on top
of a big tower.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, and they're trying to break it down while
he's talking to Zuku not Zuko.
Speaker 1: Yea, as far as I've made it.
Speaker 4: He's trying to connect to his Roku. Yeah it is.
It is Roku. It's the same name. It always reads
me out where they're like Avatar Roku and I picture
like the little set top box.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Anyways, I was gonna say, I don't know if
you were like, oh, I would be an earth Bender
because that just feels like the same type.
Speaker 1: Of I I like. Yeah, and a lot of those
kind of games like I like, I like when people
will manipulate Earth.
Speaker 2: I used to play a City of Heroes and.
Speaker 1: I had a Earth controller for a while.
Speaker 4: Like tra from Teen Titans kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I like other.
Speaker 1: My mains are usually other elements and like superhero kind
of stuff.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, what's your if? But if we're like firewater, Earth, air,
which of those who identify more with man maybe Earth?
Speaker 1: Actually maybe Earth? Maybe it is Earth? I I love
you know what, Now I'm I'm realizing about myself. I
love Gollum from Uh Pokemon Wokemon.
Speaker 2: No, you're right, Yeah, yeah, that's correct.
Speaker 4: Can you imagine if Gollum came out of a Voca
ball that'd be insane.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I gotta add an alternate evolution for Graveler or
it becomes Smeegel. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I was watching these two guys fight their Pokemon and
one of them just bit the other one's finger off.
It was crazy.
Speaker 1: My my second favorite those usually like honestly, it's probably fire,
but I love I love like fire and Earth a
camera rupt.
Speaker 4: I have great news for you. I have incredible news
for you. In the Legend of Cora, the sequel series
to Avatar, the Last Airbender, Bolin, who powerver Bound, one
of my favorite characters in all v Avatar, Uh learns
how to lava bend Uh and it is that's sick
as hell. It is the coolest thing you have ever seen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I was a big, like like.
Speaker 4: King kind of vibes, like pound the ground and like
make walls and then shove them forward and stuff like that.
Yeah yeah, I like that.
Speaker 1: Kind of stuff like Earth tomb, you know, rock tomb
type of stuff. Yeah, big fan, big fan fan of
the Earth, but Earth, but not like in a green
way and just like I like rocks rock way.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I like rock. Yeah. Well cool, that's absolom. Yeah,
what a weird transition. Also, yeah, I don't know if
we're saying the name right. I'm guessing absolum absolom.
Speaker 1: It could be either like absolve absolute. Anyways, let's get
into our final topic of the show. We each brought
a few games to talk about to recommend to play through,
you know, primarily October, but the Fall in general. We
got some cozy, we got some horror. It's really like
our favorite Fall games. I guess you could say that's
what's gonna be in the headline, but Charles, I'm gonna.
Speaker 2: Toss you to kick us off. Okay, So what we
were talking about like our favorite Fall games and we're like,
this is your idea, wasn't it? I think I said, uh,
fall games just so because I don't play a lot
of horror games.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we talked about doing horror games because it's also
October at the time of this recording.
Speaker 1: Yes, we're like the people left on this podcast.
Speaker 2: We don't.
Speaker 4: Oh, hey, hey, speak for yourself, you do. Yeah, you know,
I'm bringing some horror, don't worry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hope somebody is. But yeah, I'm gonna I'm
gonna get this out of the way. And this is
kind of like the free space. If there's a bingo
card of of Fall games, Knight in the Woods is
the free the free space. Yeah, yeah, is quintessential horror
or not horror sorry, whichisential fall Again, it's a little spooky.
It's a little spooky. It's it takes place around that time.
I feel like the main character being like a black
cat also fits the like Halloween kind of vibe. To me.
Fall games are like a little bit nostalgic. It's like
being outside. I'm picturing like the leaves changing.
Speaker 4: It's the Midwest emo of seasons, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I like that. What's what's more Midwest Emo?
Then life is strange, which is my most Yeah, I
I don't. I can't tell you what it is specific
about Life is Strange that feels fall. I do think
it starts at the beginning of a school year, but
there's definitely something about the back to school season that
is like distinctly fall because it happens at the same time.
But just I can't, I can't unravel the two in
my head, and it's it's kind of cozy, but it's
I don't know, it's a very like grounded, like down
to earth story that is like what I think of
what I think a fall.
Speaker 4: Well, so life is strange. It's kind of weird because
I would say specifically life is strange one, or life
is strange, Life is strange, true colors, because I think
I think two is also very very good. I just
wouldn't necessarily associate to within a tumnal vibe, whereas Life
is Strange one. Like you said, there's I remember booting
that game up on a whim basically for the first time,
and there's the scene where you kind of close your
locker and the Sidmatter song is playing in your head
as you walk through the halls, and it's like, oh yeah,
this is like really this is start of the school year.
This is like fall vibes and then life is strange.
True colors you're in this. I think it's a Colorado
town that's out in the mountains, a little bit little
whirl and it's legitimately just gorgeous everywhere. And there's a
bunch of scenes where you're walking around the park and
doing stuff. I love the Larp episode Larp chapter where
you're kind of walking around and it feels very fall,
very cozy. It's almost like Gilmore Gilmore Girls.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, great Fall show.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, that's also a very autumnal pick. So yeah,
life is strange for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they are also Something about them is like
if the character in this game could be wearing sweaters
the whole game and it would fit. I'm like, that's
a fall game to me, and I'm like that's fair.
I think Max Coffield, where's a grace hoodie the whole game.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think this is more
of a summer game.
Speaker 2: But for some reason for me, wait then, why'd you
pick it? What do you what are you about to say?
Speaker 1: Well, for him, let me let me answer my Okay, sorry, okay,
go ahead, let me finish my.
Speaker 2: Sentence, why do you pick it?
Speaker 3: Start?
Speaker 1: Well, maybe I was about to tell you, Charles, why
I picked it? All right, go ahead, respect your elders.
Speaker 2: Wow, okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna prefer to you as
my elder from now an elder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, listen, I think it This game reminds me more
so of the transition from summer to I think it
may be because when it came out, I played it
around October, and but it's got It's a very cozy
game and like the characters are I think it's one
of those games. There's a lot of biomes in it,
and so you're kind of going from like the lake
to like up to the snow area. You're like getting
in like cozy, like it's it's dude, it's killing me
how much Okay, I was gonna say it's killing me?
Speaker 2: How much?
Speaker 1: You're describing this game without saying the name. No, A
short Hike kind of reminds me of like the last
week of Summer Slash, like the start of all and
you can still warm enough to go camping, but like
it's chilly out, you know what I mean, Like it's
you're gonna be cold at night, but like during the day.
You know, it's just like reminds me of that time
of year. And I think the characters, like in particular,
like they're going through like it's a kind of a
lot of it is like periods of transition and that
kind of thing, and I think it just like reminds
me of autumn and reminds me of the solstice.
Speaker 2: That's I think that's correct. I think you you shot
yourself on the foot by leading with the summer thing.
I think this, Yeah, but it's kind of summer.
Speaker 4: It's kind of but it's but it's also little, but
it's it's definitely I think it's a September October game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I fully get that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like September twenty third, September is fall, right, yes, yeah, yeah,
it just doesn't feel like fall because we're all heating
ourselves to death right now once we're not in the sauna,
like September is technically fall.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so a short hike is my pick?
Speaker 1: Good pick, good pick, going back around the rack, around
the band.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let me let me bring some horror into this.
I do want to say before the show started, we
did ask Wes what his fall game would be. I
do want to shout out alan Wake two, which was
a very good pick. It's a very, very very solid pick.
Alan Wick one I would also thrown there, but honestly, like,
just play allen Wick two. I think that one is.
I think I'm gonna give you your Autumnal vibes for sure.
My pick is a complete pivot and a game that
has already been said on here. But I just think
that anybody who has not played this game needs to
play this game. And that's why I say it. Signalis
is one of the best horror games I've played in years,
And yeah, it is maybe not a Tumnal, but certainly
if you're looking for a horror experience, you can do
a lot worse than Signalis, and I don't think you
can do much better. So yeah, I think it is
an embodiment of like the classic like kind of top
down survival horror, dealing with enemies that are kind of
unknowable and indecipherable and pursuing you across different screens and
doing all the kinds of fun, puzzly stuff that is
really good about those early resident evils and stuff like that.
I think if you're trying to play a horror game,
or maybe you've always wont to play a horror game
and you wanted to like understand why people vibe with
Resident Evil and Silent Hills so much. Yeah, that's a
really good one to get an idea for it. And
I also don't think it's that scary. It's it's it's
very stomachable. I think if stuff like Silent Hill f
is is looking kind of intimidating to you, or like
a Silent Hill to remake, and you're like, ha, do
you know, I want to play these, but they're like
they seem like a little bit too scary for what
I want. I think Signalis is going to be the
right amount of thrills without like jump scaring you all
that often I will zero jump scares. But I never
felt like I played that game basically in the dark
on a Steam deck and I was fine.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that game is very management with the horror.
There's like a tense atmosphere throughout and like a sort
of like desperation, but it never feels oh my god,
I can't get through this because it's so scary. That's
coming from me, who, like I am a big baby.
So I think it's definitely like palatable for a lot
of people, and it's it's an incredible survival horror game. Yeah,
And I have found like, even though I don't love horror,
I do love survival horror as just the game design
of survival horror is very sticky and like very fun
to interact with, and my Signalis is great.
Speaker 4: So for years, I've never been able to understand this
because I do have a lot of horror games that
I've enjoyed over the years, or horror games that I
really liked conceptually but could never really put my finger
on why I didn't enjoy playing them. So like Amnesia
was a big one for me, where when that game
came out, I loved the atmosphere of Amnesia, but then
I hated playing Amnisia and it wasn't because I was scared,
and it wasn't until I finally I never grew up
with Resident Evil or anything like that. So when I
finally played a game like Signalis, I was like, Oh,
this is why it's different is because in this game
I'm not doing what I do in Amnesia, or like
Soma is legitimately like one of my favorite horror experiences ever,
but you kind of just run and hide a lot,
and I don't like run and hide games. I don't
find them interesting. I don't find that gameplay exciting. I
think it only works once and then after you either
succeed or fail the segment, you've lost the entire appeal
of this of the section for me, And so I
do like that. Signalis and other survival horror games say
we're going to give you horror. You're going to have
like a like a gun in your hand, but the
tension is not going to come from just fleeing and
hoping you don't get seen. It's gonna be Oh, I
have five bullets because I have to carry this key
from one room to another, and I had to use
up inventory space, so I got to make every single
one of these shots count in a room where there
are six enemies chasing me. You know, I love stuff
like that, and I think that works very very well.
I have another horror game that I would pitch in
with that well, but I think I'll wait until it
comes around on my turn and I'll let it wheel
back around. Charles, how about you.
Speaker 2: Next time I'm gonna pick is my gut said it,
and then I was like, I feel like I have
to verify some facts about it because I don't I
don't remember all details about it. Let's know, it's all
the Twilight Princess to me, feels like a Fall game. Yeah.
One is there's pumpkins in the main village. I think
that was like where my first thought went. But it's
also like a little bit spooky, like you're turning into
a wolf. There's the whole Twilight realm where everything's kind
of scary, and there's something about like the the colors
of it that are a little bit it's got that
you know, uh, that era of gaming where things were
getting like a little desaturated, a little bit brown. That
is kind of like feels fall to me. No, that's fair, Yeah,
and that's there are parts where it's not fall at all.
But I specifically think about the intro of the game,
because it's a very long intro, and I've probably played
that first section a bunch of times and I actually
finished the game like maybe once. Yeah, Twiolet Princess, good pick, good.
Speaker 1: Pick, Yeah, I think my next pick. Kind of going
off of Eric's survival Horror, this is certainly a survival
horror game. It's a little more along the lines of
it's it's I'm not going to keep its Murder House
by puppet Combo, okay, and we we did a we
did a replay series, a super replay series of it
a couple of halloweens ago, and it is a really
fun I mean, it is very scary. It's much scarier
than Signalis. But if you like Signalas and you're looking
for something less cerebral and more just straightforward horror, very
much on the nose, this is the Murder House. It's
about like this news crew that go to this house
that allegedly used to be like the home of a killer,
and you know this is where he took his victims.
And you're there kind of filming like a documentary, and
slowly things are not really slowly, very quickly things unravel
and it's it's just like it's really fun. It's it's
meant to be pulpy and cheesy and like corny, almost
like a nineties or an eighties slasher. The characters are
dumb uh and and are always kind of like stumbling
over themselves, but it's it's a it's a fun game.
I really like it. And whenever Halloween comes around, I'm
never gonna play it again because it's too scary for
me to play again.
Speaker 2: But it's one of those games.
Speaker 1: If you haven't played it, you should definitely, you should
definitely play it.
Speaker 4: I'm going to throw a crazy one out there. I
don't know, it might not be crazy. I was going
to say something else, but it's a I don't know.
I think that's a little too out there, So I'm
going to do this one instead. The outer or not
the it's outer? Why else? I think it's the campfire,
it's the the tall trees in the starting area. It's
but it's also that sense of it's something about the music.
I think, really it does do it for me. But
it's that sense of sitting back and looking at the stars.
You know, a nice little chill breeze is coming in.
It's not hot outside anymore. It's cool enough at night
that maybe you want to put a fire on and
you want to sit back, and you want to sit
around a fire and just kind of talk about things
and and look at the stars and think about the
universe and our place in it. And it just hits
all that. Also again, it's it's a straight up banger.
I think if I, if I had to if somebody
was telling me, you have to make a list of
the best games that have come out in your lifespan.
I think I think Outer Wilds is really high up there.
I I really love that game, and I think it's
it's it's a very wonderful experience. And uh yeah, just
keep I keep hearing that dun dum dum du no
no no no no, dun't like in my head, and
it's it's perfect. That's Fall to me is just that
maybe because we also love to hang out in the
forest and play guitarist, right, van Agin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's something about it too that's like the nature
of the game and the nature of Fall of it's
like a transitional period where like we're about to hit
Like in the case of Fall, it's like the holidays,
but also like the New Year, Like, uh, a lot
of stuff happens around the end of the year. It's
like a big thing. And I feel like the nature
of the Outer Wilds And like the time loop that
you're in is like we're all anticipating something's about to happen,
but this is that quiet moment before it actually does.
Speaker 4: And it's just ahead of the winter too, and and
I've always I mean, we only need to get like
really philosophical on this episode of the g I Show.
But it's always interesting that the start of a new
year happens during the whole dark months of the year,
you know, because of the way a calendar works, And
I do think it's interesting in that transitory period. Then
you think about how Outer Wild's kind of goes into
a lot of the unknown, with a lot of hope,
with a lot of belief in a greater place in
the universe and all that. So I yeah, it's it's
such a good game. I seriously I want to go
back and eventually I never, like, I think I did
the DLC, but I don't think I got the ending
that you get after getting the DLC or something like that.
Speaker 1: I'm mad at myself because I almost finished the Bass
game and then something happened and I never finished it,
and so now I'm like stuck in limbo where I'm like,
I think this might be one of my favorite videos
games of all time, but I didn't actually finish it.
Speaker 2: But I need to.
Speaker 1: I feel like I need to go back.
Speaker 2: And restart it.
Speaker 4: There's a very specific reason why I've never seen I
also have not seen the ending of the Bass game
because there's a very specific I got to the part
where I like, piece together exactly what you have to
do to get it, and there's just a very specific
mechanic in that game that I'm just terrible out at
and you have to be like good at it to
do that one thing. And I just have never sat
down and been like I'm going to I'm going to
accomplish this, I'm going to do this. So it was
one where I had to be like, I was moving
on to other games for coverage and stuff like that,
so I was like, I'll just go watch it on YouTube,
I guess, And it bummed me up because I think
that was one where I really wanted to experience it
in person, but it was just I think there was
a solid hour or two I sat there just trying
to get through that one part and I was just
like the fish, Yes, yeah, I'm so bad at that part.
I have no idea why. I just never like I
got even to the point where you get through it
at least once, but then you have to do it
again later for a different reason and in a different
way with like higher stakes involved, and it's it's a lot,
so Outer Wild's incredible.
Speaker 1: The Bramble, Yes, yeah, yeah, yes, yeah, I know, that's
where I stopped playing.
Speaker 2: I did finish it, but it was weird. I was
playing it on game Pass and it was leaving game
Pass the next day, so I was at I was
like eleven forty five pm. I'm at my girlfriend's house.
She's asleep, and I'm playing like on cloud on my phone,
just like desperately trying to be like, I just need
to finish the game. And I did get it, but
I had like a headache because I've been just been
trying to marathon the game before I lost access to it.
So maybe that's a stream one day or something. We
just spoil the end of the Outer Wilds just all
of us actually get to be obviously for the first time.
Speaker 4: I think that game. I know a lot of people
talk about, oh, I would need my memory wipe to
re experience this game, and I think there are a
few that are like that, Like I've mentioned Thirteen Sentinels
before and stuff like that, I think, but I Outer Wilds,
I think I would happily go replay that game, even
knowing a lot of like the nuance of it just
to re experience so much of that exploration and to
see the way that world unfolds. It's so special.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I never played the DLC, so that's kind
of waiting for me too.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think if you're if you're looking for another one
like it too.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: It's It's a game I've been meaning to get back
to recently, and I think this discussion is going to
make me finally pull the trigger. Heaven's Vault by inkle
uh Is is kind of a similar game where you're
playing a like a crypto linguist. I actually don't know
what what the official term is for, but it's you're
you're studying the language of a dead species to understand
them better, and you end up like traversing the world
and learning new ways of accessing things and doing stuff
by understanding that language. And it has a lot of
the same vibes, and I think it proceeded Outer Wilds
by a fair bit and kind of got slept on it.
It's one that I've been wanting to go back to.
So that's another good out Tumble game. Yeah, is it
my gay Charles's game?
Speaker 2: I go, do you guys want to do? We can
do one more like we land on it and then
I have like some I can just kind of like
rattle off real quick. Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, the last
one I'm gonna like land on. It's kind of weird,
and I we're talking about a lot about games you
don't remember very well, at least I am. I don't know.
Epic Mickey to me is a very fall game. I
was just thinking about it recently. I was like so
excited for it as a kid, and I never got
that far. But it's like it's peak like kid scary,
where it's like, yeah, it's kind of dark and it's
like a weird world and it's like a a take.
I mean, it's called Epic Mickey, which I remember thinking
was really funny as a ten year old, Like I
can't believe they named the game epic Mickey. But it
is like that exact type of like there's not really
any steaks, but there's like a real real sense of
gloom and doom over the whole thing and something about
like the painting. Painting. This is like a school thing again,
but like arts and crafts are very fall to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's fair.
Speaker 2: I haven't actually ever played that. I also I've been
going through our magazine archives and it was like the
first cover with our new logo. I want to say
it was like issue one ninety nine, and that sounds right.
Matt Miller wrote the cover story so he would know.
I think.
Speaker 1: My you know, we've been talking about this game a
couple of times this last year, Eric and I and
I think it's like the perfect Halloween vibe. It's a
multiplayer game called Deadlock, and I think it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I was so sure you're about to say
dead by Daylight.
Speaker 1: Well, that's on my list. That's on my list.
Speaker 4: I told you I can't do the run and hide
and that's like what if we made the whole game
run and hide competitive? And I was like, no, no,
I'm good.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: Also, well, I'll let Eric go before we rattle off
our Oh, I guess we're talking about Deadlock. Yeah yeah,
I mean Deadlock is just if you want the ghoulish,
spirit focused vibe of like a Halloween game that is
like and you don't want like an outright dead by Daylight.
I feel like everybody, I'm Dead by Daylight. It's gonna
be on every list like this, you know.
Speaker 2: And I loved it. By Daylight.
Speaker 1: I've played it a lot over the years, but Deadlock
is a different kind of kind of Halloween vibe. We
talked about how like a lot of the characters feel like,
you know, there's there's the vampire girl, There's like this
stalker vampire man. There's his bartender type character who's like
he's like straight out of like a horror bar where
he's like, you know, his patrons are like ghouls and
ghosts and stuff, and that's that's kind of the vibe
of all the characters in the game. So even though
it's a third person shooter mobia, it has a lot
of that kind of Halloween flavor to it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it is Halloween Town. I think that's like
a really good way of putting it. It would be
easy to just say, like, oh, Kingdomorts because there's a
Halloween Town level and stuff like that, but I think
Deadlock has We've talked before about how Valve can do
character design really really well, especially I love a lot
of Dodo's character designs. I love a lot of TF
two's characters designs, obviously Half Life and stuff like that,
but I do think Deadlock is not getting a lot
of recognition right now, which is kind of a bummer
because it is a really inventive idea of this kind
of spiritual New York that is like Hell's Kitchen filled
with ghouls and goblins and things like that, and it
has such a wide visual range that I think it's
a really really cool thing. So definitely good pick. Yeah.
For my last one. One of my other favorite things
about Fall is to like cozy up with a nice book,
right and so I wanted to put something that was
either in adventure or reading game on hearing a visual
novel type thing, and I kind of flipped through a
couple in my mind whether that was really old stuff
if you have a ds A hotel Dusk would go
pretty hard. Was pretty good, and I do love necro
Barista is a very slept on one that I think
is really good. But I think if I got to
pick one, especially for the spooky season, Paranorma site is
an incredibly good about let's say, fifteen to twenty hour
story about a bunch of people gather in this Japanese
town in which a battle royale is going to take place,
where they all have these haunted artifacts that have conditions
on them. And if you fulfill the conditions, you can
kill another artifact user, and if you are the last
artifact user standing, you get to bring someone back from
the dead at the end of the night. And it's
about what happens when all these people who for various
reasons have either lived in the town or wound up
in the town get involved in this sort of battle
royale and what transpires afterwards. And it's very very good.
It's really excellent. There's some really clever meta tricks it
pulls with God, there's one early on that I think
is so clever, but I don't want to give it
away because it's such a good twist. On an episode
of Acts of the Blood Gout, I did say what
it was, and some people were like, oh, come on,
I wanted to find that out, and I was like,
it's in the first like two hours. I didn't think
it was that big a deal, but I will I
will hold back now just to say that if you
like stuff like Zero Escape or anything where a game
that's going to toy with the idea of it acknowledges
that it's being played by a player, it acknowledges that
it's being toyed with. If you like near the way
that near kind of plays with that kind of stuff.
It does that, it does some really cool stuff with
that ways that I don't think you would expect an
adventure game to do all the time. And yeah, Paranormous
Paranormous Site really really good time. Heavily recommend it, especially
if you want something a little a little creepy. And
it definitely like very scary. That is, when I played
with the lights off on, I think my switch and
there are at least a few parts where my skin
was like crawling from anticipation. I would call it more
of a thriller than a horror game, but there.
Speaker 2: I just added this to my wish list. For the record,
I had not heard of this game, and I'm.
Speaker 4: Like, all this, Yeah, it's it's a Square Enix game
that got very little fanfair and it kind of bums
me out because I think a lot of people if
they actually got told what it was and like played
some of it, would be like, oh, this is my jam.
This is so good. It's one that I is always
at the top of my list when people say like,
what are your underrated? What games do you think deserve
more love? Paranormal Site is way up there, which is
weird because it's coming from Square Enix. You would, I
think it would have a little bit more of a
lift behind it, but I had no idea. That's the
for every Final Fantasy, you know, there's always a dungeon
encounters that that struggles to get the same attention, right,
So this is Paranormo site is the flip of that. Uh,
And it was it was really really very excellent excellent.
So yeah, all games quick ones to list off real quick, Charles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, so I I had a third pick and
I could not remember because I'd written it down that
was gonna be instead of Epic Mickey. I was like,
I guess I'll just say epic mickeing is that written down?
Immortality would be my actual third pack? Oh I love that?
Yeah yeah, yeah, great horror game but also has like
a fall movies are vaguely fall to me, and something
about the idea of like digging through that that's like
a really good Uh, Immortality is my pick instead of
epic baby, But also that's fine. No one's we're not
like ranking these there's some points or anything. Other ones
I'll I'll just want to say, is like anything with
like a murder mystery. I feel like murder mysteries are
very Fall coded to me, Like the movie Knives Out
is like my favorite Fall horror movie. I would say,
but Tangle Tower tangled.
Speaker 4: I was about to say, Tangle Tower is like the
Knives Out video game.
Speaker 2: Yes it's yes, I know there's more by that studio,
even about those like characters, I just haven't played them.
I just played Tangle Tower.
Speaker 4: When there's a new one on the way too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought it. Yeah, it just got delayed. I
don't know. Yeah, absolutely, And I remember playing it and
being like, oh, this is so awesome and I'd only
really ever played Ace Attorney of like a murder mystery
style of that type, and seeing other people do it,
I'm like, oh, this is like voiced and it's like
done well anyways, that's good. Uh. And then the other
one I was gonna say is like it feels almost
too obvious to even say, but Luigi's Mansion. Oh yeah,
yeah yeah yeah, so so yeah, so full couldn't get
more full?
Speaker 1: I think, I think of I still like the Costume
Quest games. I know that people like don't like them
all that much. I think they're hit or missed for
some people it was like very on the nose, you
know from from Double Fine, but that's fine, and then
Left for Dead two.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, oh yeah, every Zombies absolutely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and specifically that one is like you can play
versus mode. Still, it's a good time.
Speaker 4: I also find myself wanting to explore certain parts of worlds,
so either going to a game like Marrowwind to just
walk around it and kind of experience it again, or
certain zones in Final Fantasy fourteen like the Rocktica, Great
Woods and stuff like that, actually zones Wow, very yeah,
where it just feels fitting for the season and it's
nice to kind of walk around those and maybe update
your your GLAMs, your transmogues to be seasonal and all that.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean most in momos like Wow, I f
have fourteen, Like that's really where I feel like the
good seasonal events also kick off, and usually fall is
when I renew Wow and start playing again something about it.
It's like I listened to Bonnie Bear and then I
renew my WOW subscription.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, I don't think I've let my fourteen sub
labs yet, But the other day I was going like
I could really go for just sitting down with like
a nice cup of cider and playing some Triple Triad.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: Say. Card games are also very outumble. I mean, they've
been very top of mind for me for a long time.
But something about like playing when I grew up, we
would play Rummy with my relatives and all that. We'd
always play card games and Thanksgiving and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: So we didn't talk about Thanksgiving enough. I was gonna say.
As an aspect of this, the last game I didn't
mention was Mario Kart. We specifically for Maple Treeway, which
is just like Fall as a course, but just in general,
like there's a lot of like party games that you
would play.
Speaker 4: Like with clubhouse games. Man sitting down with clubhouse games,
everybody playing some Mancala or something, you know, just have
a good time.
Speaker 2: I dig that. Well.
Speaker 1: I think that's gonna be it for the show this week. Everybody.
I hope that wherever you're listening to a SAT, you're safe,
you're warm, you're cozy, unless you're in Minneapolis and it's
still it was eighty degrees a couple of days ago.
But but yeah, I hope everybody has a great start
to October.
Speaker 4: The fall.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm definitely we're starting to decorate for Halloween.
Now we're gonna be throwing a party. I'm excited. It's
like definitely getting into like the fall spirit.
Speaker 2: You guys like you guys like cooking, right, Yeah, yeah,
what's what's all the menu for the party?
Speaker 1: We were actually talking about that last night. We might
do something easy and just do like a chili. We
also have like friends who are vegan, and it's easy
to do vegan chili. A lot of the time you
can make back and out.
Speaker 4: Of these Yeah, well, vean vegan mac and cheese can
be kind of difficult. It's a lot of dairy. I've
got to go in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I love a good chili. Oh chili sound
sound a good stew? I love beef stew for this
time of the year. Granted that probably gets a little
bit more winter, but I don't know. Beef stew for
me is year round.
Speaker 2: My dad would always make a batch of chili on
Sundays while he's watching the football game. So I say, also,
I'm from Cincinnati, so we've got Cincinnati style chili, which
is also a big cultural event if you're in Cincinnati.
Here's here's game before is big news. I mean you've
seen it here if you live in Ohio. But Skyline's
adding a chicken chili to the menu and it's actually
pretty good.
Speaker 4: A chicken chili.
Speaker 1: Go watch the of Charles and Leo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Leo flew to Dayton to eat Skyline and he
was like, yeah, it's pretty good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, go watch that video.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: I think Eric's like, what the hell?
Speaker 2: So is it?
Speaker 4: Is it like ground chicken or is it okay?
Speaker 2: That's where I.
Speaker 4: Was confused, is like, what was the Is it just
like shredded chicken in chili sauce?
Speaker 2: It's ground chicken instead of ground That's the only okay
that makes My mom doesn't eat red meat, so she's
never she goes to Skyland. She gets like the vegetarian chili,
which is just.
Speaker 4: Like the bees. There is their turkey chili there, and
turkey chili is pretty good.
Speaker 2: This is this is their first time I think adding
a different meat, and they went chesape and they went chicken.
It wasn't testing. When you taste it, it's I wouldn't
have guessed. The thing different about it was the meat,
Like it tastes different, but I would have thought it
was like they added more tomato or something. It wasn't
so right, could be anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, All right, y'all, thanks for listening to the podcast
this week. Be sure to follow the guys here. Follow
Charles at Chuck Duck three six five. You can call
Eric at ce Moosi, follow Wes who left earlier at
I Underscore AM Underscore Wes, or at Wesley LeBlanc, and
you follow me at It's van Aken or it's van
acin dot games, And as Charles is pointing out in
the video, head over to Game Informer dot com slash subscribe,
pick up a magazine subscription. It's a best way to
help us out and help keep the lights on. We
really appreciate your support. All right, that'll do it for
this week. We'll see you next week. Everybody, goodbye,