Speaker 1: Welcome back, everybody to the Game Informer Show, a weekly
Speaker 1: podcast covering the video game industry. Join us every week
Speaker 1: for a discussion of the latest gaming news, reviews, and
Speaker 1: exclusive reveals, alongside Game Informer staff and special guests from
Speaker 1: around the industry. I'm one of your hosts today, Alex
Speaker 1: van Aiken, joined by Marcus Stewart. Hey you knowing, Marcus,
Speaker 1: I'm doing well. You can insert a witty remark here.
Speaker 1: I don't have one yet, but I assume them, so
Speaker 1: just put on yeah. Yeah, Well we'll get Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: got a ton of AI tools that can implement witty remarks. Well,
Speaker 1: it'll sound totally natural and only burn two bottles of
Speaker 1: water for for one three word sentence, but.
Speaker 2: It'll be good if.
Speaker 1: We can. We got that tool too. Don't worry about it, man,
Speaker 1: you will. You will sound and look like Woody, but
Speaker 1: also you will have your own own corporeal form. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show, Eric Van Allen. How you doing, Eric?
Speaker 3: I think you described one of my nightmares. I think
Speaker 3: that's that's one of my my terrors that has awoken
Speaker 3: me in the middle of the night. Snake in my boots. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: you become Woody like, yes, you become a doll.
Speaker 1: Rounding out the show this week, Brian Shay, how you doing.
Speaker 4: Brian, somebody's poison the water hole.
Speaker 1: Somebody has We were talking about this right before the
Speaker 1: show started.
Speaker 4: Many people.
Speaker 1: Is either a gas leak or poison in the water
Speaker 1: hole or not sure which in Minnesota right now, you
Speaker 1: guys gotta yeah, you figure that out.
Speaker 3: Perfect time for me to move there.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely well. Welcome all to the Game Informer Show
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Speaker 1: the show proper, guys. We've been playing. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of games that are out that we're talking about.
Speaker 1: We're going to be getting into Skate, Early Access, Sonic Racing, Crossworlds,
Speaker 1: Battlefield six. I went hands on with two of the
Speaker 1: biggest maps in the game, including Operation Firestorm, which is
Speaker 1: a beloved be A three map, two x KO and Hurdling.
Speaker 1: But let's get started. Skate, Eric, you and I played skate.
Speaker 1: We live streamed it. That's another thing. We're now live
Speaker 1: streaming on Wednesdays and Fridays every week. But if you
Speaker 1: missed the stream on Wednesday, Eric and I played Skate,
Speaker 1: Skate Foard Skate early Access, Skate period.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say it technically skate period, I think
Speaker 2: which it is.
Speaker 1: It is choice, Yeah, yeah, but I'm I'm you know,
Speaker 1: we dove into it. We played it for a few hours.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've had a chance to play
Speaker 1: it anymore, Eric, I have not.
Speaker 3: I've I've found myself wanting to go back. But I
Speaker 3: said this on the stream, and I mean this complimentarily.
Speaker 3: I promise it's it's kind of a friends slop game
Speaker 3: in that it's for for those who aren't aware of
Speaker 3: the lingo. Friend slop is a game that you probably
Speaker 3: aren't going to play by yourself, but maybe you're going
Speaker 3: to play with a group of your friends, and it
Speaker 3: becomes a social situation, the social medium, and I feel
Speaker 3: like skate is really aiming for that. It has individual
Speaker 3: things that you can do that are challenges that direct
Speaker 3: you towards doing objectives or you know, hitting different areas
Speaker 3: that they kind of give you control, but you really
Speaker 3: just kind of impress the local skate gangs and you
Speaker 3: build your influence and things like that. But it really
Speaker 3: I kept being reminded of track Mania in a lot
Speaker 3: of ways because of the number of people on the
Speaker 3: map at the same time and how you would just
Speaker 3: kind of follow where people were going. You'd see somebody
Speaker 3: doing a really sick line, or building up a cool
Speaker 3: ramp somewhere, or climbing a tower to get to this
Speaker 3: really cool spot, and you would kind of go where
Speaker 3: the people are going. And I think that's the more
Speaker 3: interesting part in this new Skate is how free form
Speaker 3: and open and interesting the city is as opposed to
Speaker 3: a lot of this single player, more oriented stuff, which
Speaker 3: is a as I understand, I've not played the original
Speaker 3: Skate games, but I think that's a departure for the
Speaker 3: Skate series. I know a lot of people in the
Speaker 3: chat that day were saying, oh, you know, are there
Speaker 3: single player things? Are you building your stats up? And
Speaker 3: stuff like that? Does not really seem like it, so
Speaker 3: no as sight aficionado's like, how do y'all kind of
Speaker 3: feel about the shift and focus?
Speaker 1: I you know, I played, I've played every Skate game.
Speaker 1: The one I played the most is two. Actually, I
Speaker 1: know a lot of folks are on the same boat.
Speaker 1: I know, Skate three obviously has lived on, especially like
Speaker 1: in online spaces like social media, where like there's a
Speaker 1: lot of just ridiculous stuff that people do in that
Speaker 1: game that's fun to watch. But it it it does
Speaker 1: feel like a bit of a departure, but it feels
Speaker 1: natural to me. It kind of feels like a natural evolution.
Speaker 1: I know, once some games go from you know, there's
Speaker 1: obviously all these you know, big companies want the next
Speaker 1: live action, live service game that hits. Yeah, yeah, sorry,
Speaker 1: everyone wants f m V coward everyone.
Speaker 2: Back.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, everyone's kind of chasing these games of service still,
Speaker 1: and it can often feel soulless, especially when it's a
Speaker 1: series that you love that's transitioning to those spaces. But
Speaker 1: I think skate makes the transition pretty naturally it, you know,
Speaker 1: I think it does e a well. Uh and what
Speaker 1: Full Circle Studio. I think to kind of have this
Speaker 1: entire city that is designed around skating, right, It's called
Speaker 1: San Vansterdam. It's an amalgamation different Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 3: Representation.
Speaker 2: Guys are the co mayors of.
Speaker 1: Alex San Vansterdam Aiken and Eric San Vansterdam Allen as
Speaker 1: we are. Those are our Christian names.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, are given names by the skate God.
Speaker 1: I think having this space that feels it still feels
Speaker 1: like a city that you might stumble upon, you know,
Speaker 1: there there are still cars driving around roads, and like
Speaker 1: there is a natural flow to the city that feels
Speaker 1: I was very quickly kind of finding myself not having
Speaker 1: to consult the map as much, kind of knowing where
Speaker 1: at least in the first section of the game that
Speaker 1: they kind of drop you in the cities divided into
Speaker 1: four sections, and the first section that you put into
Speaker 1: we spent a lot of time in there, you know,
Speaker 1: climbing around doing like parkour stuff as well as obviously skateboarding,
Speaker 1: and you kind of like start to get a familiarity
Speaker 1: with the space. That is fun and it kind of
Speaker 1: feels natural. And I think had this come out in
Speaker 1: some other form, as like a Games of Service, I
Speaker 1: think it would have felt a lot more or at
Speaker 1: a lot more jarring. But to me, it feels pretty natural.
Speaker 1: I like Eric said, it's honestly really invigorating to see
Speaker 1: other players doing their lines, you know, coming up with
Speaker 1: you know, seeing them do tricks, you know, seeing I
Speaker 1: saw some folks do tricks. I was like, oh, how
Speaker 1: do you I want to know how to do that trick,
Speaker 1: like the line and going yeah, and that's kind of
Speaker 1: like a classic skate thing you can do. But I
Speaker 1: couldn't remember the button sequences, and so like figuring that
Speaker 1: out through asking folks yea to be clear, texting a
Speaker 1: friend who was in our lobby. There's not voice chat
Speaker 1: to my knowledge or anything like that, but it was
Speaker 1: still like this, it feels very lively in a really
Speaker 1: fun way. And while I think there is still a
Speaker 1: general lack of content and the sense of kondas not
Speaker 1: even necessarily the right word. There's a lot of things
Speaker 1: to do. I just think like they're the like central
Speaker 1: motivation to continue playing the game really kind of lies
Speaker 1: on you as the player, like what do you want
Speaker 1: to be doing, and less so on a character. Really
Speaker 1: kind of like there's not there are like there's a
Speaker 1: through line. You know, there's like some characters who will
Speaker 1: have you do challenges and stuff, but there's not really
Speaker 1: there's not a story really or anything like that kind
Speaker 1: of propelling you through. It's just kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: similar to a game other online games, or similar to
Speaker 1: like almost like a sandbox game, where like the onus
Speaker 1: to progress really is on you as the player, uh
Speaker 1: and just purely based on your own enjoyment and fulfilling
Speaker 1: that like skateboarding Fantasy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's probably worth noting too that this is an
Speaker 2: early access launch.
Speaker 1: Like it is, it is early it's.
Speaker 2: Still very much a big development, so they could certainly, Yeah,
Speaker 2: they could certainly add stuff to it and will for
Speaker 2: gameplay wise. I I am a big Tony Hawk fan.
Speaker 2: I never really got into skate like the most Skate
Speaker 2: I think I've played was like a demo of the
Speaker 2: original Skate and I kind of was. I was kind
Speaker 2: of turned away because of how less arcadie it was,
Speaker 2: like it it's a lot more technical, And I always
Speaker 2: got the impression from as a onlooker that Skate was
Speaker 2: kind of the Grand Turismo of skate games, of like, oh,
Speaker 2: it takes itself more seriously and maybe like too seriously
Speaker 2: for me, but watching you guys stream it looked a
Speaker 2: lot sillier than I Maybe the impression I ever got
Speaker 2: from the Skate series is the gameplay still like the
Speaker 2: same level of technicality as the old ones, or have
Speaker 2: they made it a little more arcadie.
Speaker 1: Or I was talking to Eric about this on stream,
Speaker 1: and that Skate One when it first came out felt
Speaker 1: so much more radically semish, not the sims but.
Speaker 3: Like simlish, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Like simlish on like real skateboarding. Yeah. And I think
Speaker 1: at the time didn't have any other references for that
Speaker 1: in the game space. We had, you know, Tony Hawk
Speaker 1: for the most part, and you know, other sports there
Speaker 1: was like Kelly Slater and stuff, but those were all
Speaker 1: very arcadie, you know, And I think by comparison, Skate
Speaker 1: felt like such a stark contrast, and it felt it
Speaker 1: kind of had a lot of those labels as being
Speaker 1: you know, more realistic, you know, more more semi and
Speaker 1: you know, and and for folks who aren't aware, you
Speaker 1: are really performing your tricks on the analog sticks on
Speaker 1: your on your controller and so like an ali is
Speaker 1: down on on the right stick and then up on
Speaker 1: the right stick, and yeah, and so you're kind of
Speaker 1: and there's a lot more complicated ones and there. I
Speaker 1: think that naturally was like a barrier to entry for
Speaker 1: some people. I always it kind of really captured my
Speaker 1: attention when that mechanic first came out. I think it
Speaker 1: feels really good, But I wouldn't say these days that
Speaker 1: it necessarily feels like a sim skateboarding game. I think
Speaker 1: like there's so many other games now like Session skate sim.
Speaker 1: There's others I'm forgetting the name of, but that have
Speaker 1: really kind of dialed in the very grounded I mean,
Speaker 1: some games are even like cutting skate tapes together and
Speaker 1: it's all very grounded, whereas Skate has some of those
Speaker 1: elements with its mechanics, but the world and the activities
Speaker 1: and and all of that are much more what's the
Speaker 1: right word, you know, surreal and kind of arcadie. I
Speaker 1: guess right, it's in the lack of a better.
Speaker 3: Term, it's in a fantasy world essentially. You know, it's
Speaker 3: in this magical city where everybody skates. I was going
Speaker 3: to mention earlier. That's why I didn't think about it
Speaker 3: until now. But it's kind of weird that there are
Speaker 3: cars there. Like, we made a city where people are
Speaker 3: going to be riding around on their skateboards all the time,
Speaker 3: but we made sure there were still cars that do
Speaker 3: not break for pedestrians.
Speaker 1: I think they do that so that I imagine when the
Speaker 1: servers are emptier it might feel a little isolating or
Speaker 1: lonely without those cars. I think that would be core personally.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, one big player. I do think it
Speaker 1: gives it like a real city feel, having actual cars there, right,
Speaker 1: And I imagine you can kind of grab onto the
Speaker 1: back of them and ride. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I was sitting on the back of one of the
Speaker 3: flatbed trucks for a while, just riding it around town,
Speaker 3: using the city emote and just kind of observing the
Speaker 3: town as it went by, and that was kind of neat,
Speaker 3: but I think this game does do a lot of
Speaker 3: really interesting stuff in that way. Like you were saying,
Speaker 3: to take the what would normally feel kind of semi
Speaker 3: kind of hardcore, you're doing all these precise stick inputs
Speaker 3: to do certain tricks and things like that, and instead
Speaker 3: it puts it against this very open, freeform world that
Speaker 3: wants you to just find really interesting lines, find cool things.
Speaker 3: I think they give you a really good example early
Speaker 3: on with that hedge jump that you do, because it's
Speaker 3: just a couple hedges on a slight elevation, but you
Speaker 3: can see the visual language of oh, I bet I
Speaker 3: could do a really cool looking trick off that, and
Speaker 3: the game encourages you to look for more of that.
Speaker 3: I think my biggest frustration and the thing that I
Speaker 3: think they need to address in Early Access is the
Speaker 3: ways in which the structures of monetization and free to
Speaker 3: play are actively inhibiting the fun of the skating. And
Speaker 3: by that I mean there's a lot of I mean
Speaker 3: there's like a pseudo loot box. I couldn't really tell
Speaker 3: what it was, but there's some sort of thing in
Speaker 3: there that's got cosmetics that you can put money into
Speaker 3: or currency and of course, there's different kinds of currency
Speaker 3: that are accrued in different manners, and there's all that
Speaker 3: kind of stuff. You can buy an additional pack for
Speaker 3: this game that is out there as well. There's a
Speaker 3: Founder's pack if you want that. And that's that's one
Speaker 3: thing set that to one side is like, okay, that's
Speaker 3: that's the free to play. It's it's it's that we
Speaker 3: we did this really cool section uh in skate where
Speaker 3: I'd found this tower that just went straight up into
Speaker 3: the sky, higher than any other tower in skate Van
Speaker 3: Francisco or whatever, and we spent so long climbing it,
Speaker 3: and it's a really cool climb. It's a really fun
Speaker 3: puzzle that there's there's a climbing ability that feels like
Speaker 3: Assassin's creed when you're going up the sides of the
Speaker 3: Basilica's and Assassin Assassin.
Speaker 2: That was really weird to watch, you guys, like I
Speaker 2: didn't know this game had like straight up parkour your
Speaker 2: characters or just.
Speaker 3: It's it's cool. It's fun because you get to see
Speaker 3: yourself go further and further up and you keep thinking,
Speaker 3: as you get up there, there's gonna be something cool
Speaker 3: up here. There's gonna be something so sick up here.
Speaker 3: And when we get to the top, there's a fast
Speaker 3: travel point and it says locked, get a higher level
Speaker 3: to unlock this fast travel point. And I just felt
Speaker 3: my stomach sink into my feet because.
Speaker 1: It was like a twenty minute climb.
Speaker 3: It was a really long climb. I did it twice
Speaker 3: because I did it once before the stream it was like,
Speaker 3: we should do this on stream, it's sick, And then
Speaker 3: we did it on stream and both times it was like, right,
Speaker 3: I did this whole thing. We get all the way
Speaker 3: up here. We had such a fun time trying to
Speaker 3: raise each other up it and stuff like that. And
Speaker 3: you get to the top and the game is like,
Speaker 3: you could fast travel here again if you'd like to,
Speaker 3: once you're high enough level. We're not going to tell
Speaker 3: you what that level is though, come back later. Maybe
Speaker 3: Who's just because you.
Speaker 1: Had leveled up and you were thinking, oh now we.
Speaker 3: Can maybe now we can unlock it. No no, yeah, no.
Speaker 2: You can you buy progression? Is there?
Speaker 3: Not? To my knowledge, I couldn't see a way to
Speaker 3: do it. In my end, I feel like all this
Speaker 3: stuff surely cosmetic. Yeah okay, yeah, but that's the thing is.
Speaker 3: I understand that if it's a free to play game,
Speaker 3: you need to find your way to get your revenue
Speaker 3: stream to pay everybody. That that is just a base
Speaker 3: level of making games and publishing them. But some of
Speaker 3: the progression stuff, I think, especially if it gets in
Speaker 3: the way of people actively wanting to explore the zones
Speaker 3: and spend time playing your game. I think it's cool
Speaker 3: to have the structured challenges if you want to go
Speaker 3: chase those, if you need something to kind of guide
Speaker 3: and signpost you along and say here, go do this,
Speaker 3: go do this, we have cool things here, go do this.
Speaker 3: But then also let people just explore and get rewarded
Speaker 3: for that exploring, you know, find things, and don't feel
Speaker 3: like you're approaching it in the wrong way if you
Speaker 3: go off the beat.
Speaker 1: Not all the rewards have to tie into the microtransaction.
Speaker 4: System like that. That's something that like, you know, the
Speaker 4: best open world games, it's like, Okay, I'm gonna go
Speaker 4: over there and there's gonna be something cool waiting for me,
Speaker 4: and like it sucks that, Like you do all that
Speaker 4: effort and you get there and it's like come back
Speaker 4: when you don't suck Lol.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, gain gain or story quests, like that's that's
Speaker 3: a weird thing to do in a game. At least
Speaker 3: it would normally let you just plant your flag but
Speaker 3: then be like, oh, hey, you're like not supposed to
Speaker 3: be here yet, like maybe go do some stuff, but
Speaker 3: we'll let you. Like you got the point you got here.
Speaker 3: But it's weird to know that I'm going to have
Speaker 3: to eventually hit some unknown level and then go climb
Speaker 3: that tower again just to get that fast travel point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, whereas like that would have been a great reward
Speaker 1: that's not tied to monetization, like just let me have
Speaker 1: this fast turble point and that's like more of it.
Speaker 1: It's like it's it's a game design flaw, but it
Speaker 1: does tie. It does relate to the micro transactions, because
Speaker 1: the only way that you are getting rewarded in the
Speaker 1: game for completing things is you're getting points to spend
Speaker 1: in in the shop or getting loot boxes, where it'd
Speaker 1: be great to have these more natural rewards like cli
Speaker 1: to the top of the tower and get in the
Speaker 1: fast trouble point.
Speaker 3: I just think that weirdly enough progression in this game.
Speaker 3: If it's going to be an open world, free explore
Speaker 3: Go do things. Maybe it's being updated over time, and
Speaker 3: they add kind of it'd be cool if they did
Speaker 3: some rotations and oh, you know, kind of like what
Speaker 3: Fordye does with their map, where they change it out
Speaker 3: every once in a while and the city changes and
Speaker 3: new things pop up and new lines uppear. Having any
Speaker 3: part of that be gated by a metagame progression where
Speaker 3: you have to be a certain level to access certain things,
Speaker 3: or you can get there, but it's going to be
Speaker 3: actively detrimental if you get there before the game things
Speaker 3: you're supposed to. Is that that's going to get in
Speaker 3: the way of the free form nature of skates, of
Speaker 3: finding these cool lines, of doing these cool things and
Speaker 3: feeling really awesome about discovering this fun way to explore
Speaker 3: the world with, you know, this piece of board under
Speaker 3: your feet and yeah, or rolling, you know, we should
Speaker 3: talk about the rolling. Yeah, the roll.
Speaker 1: The rolling is super fun. Is ridiculous. Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: essentially roll up into a ball off of your board
Speaker 1: and you can Eric calls the Blanca roll.
Speaker 3: Shade would like it to be called the Sonic role.
Speaker 3: I say, Blot in the comments below.
Speaker 4: No, listen, listen. Blanca does not use his role for transportation.
Speaker 4: He uses it to attack opponents. Sonic uses it for both.
Speaker 4: He used it to attack opponents and to get places.
Speaker 3: What is an attack but transportation closer to your opponent.
Speaker 4: That's what I was saying about when when I get
Speaker 4: in a car, I'm like, this is an attack if
Speaker 4: somebody is in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Speaker 4: But it is primarily a form of transportation, which is
Speaker 4: how Sonic uses it. He goes places fast. But then
Speaker 4: he can also attack enemies using the.
Speaker 3: Role when I'm playing for it, so I attack that pavement,
Speaker 3: I attack that asphalt. I'm on there, attack that assphalt.
Speaker 2: Skateboarders are rolling up into ball. Is this a real
Speaker 2: skateboard move?
Speaker 3: Do people do this in real I've not seen Tony
Speaker 3: Hawk comporting itself this way. No, No, it's it is.
Speaker 1: Rolled up in a ball, going much faster than anybody
Speaker 1: can actually skate, Like you are going faster.
Speaker 3: Speaking goes faster than skating. It's it's kind of funny,
Speaker 3: and I hope they never change it. I hope it
Speaker 3: just stays that way forever because it rules.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I mean, we haven't really talked about like
Speaker 1: the actual like act of skateboarding We've talked a lot
Speaker 1: about the world and all of that, but I I
Speaker 1: think skate and this game, this game definitely holds onto
Speaker 1: this element of past games where the best moments, the
Speaker 1: best time the game feels its best in like the
Speaker 1: little moments where you're just hitting a little hitting a flip,
Speaker 1: hitting a grind and landing and it just feels crisp.
Speaker 1: The sound effects, you know, the difference in the different
Speaker 1: I've got actually got a skateboard next to me, like hitting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do a trick on string, the difference in
Speaker 1: like grinding at the top of your board versus like
Speaker 1: the middle. They've done a great job kind of capturing
Speaker 1: the various sound effects that that kind of change, and
Speaker 1: just there's like a really satisfying element to just like
Speaker 1: these little moments. And your reward is like, you know,
Speaker 1: you get points, of course, and it tells you, you know,
Speaker 1: great job, but it's also just like the satisfaction of
Speaker 1: this of completing this more involved trick than you would
Speaker 1: in like a Tony Hawk and a Tony Hawk where
Speaker 1: you'd press X to kind of ali and then X
Speaker 1: plus left to do like a flip trick, and then
Speaker 1: you land it right, and you only have to worry
Speaker 1: about like your rotation when you land, whereas in skate
Speaker 1: you are one button. You're pushing forward on your on
Speaker 1: your skateboard. Then you're kind of pulling back to ready
Speaker 1: yourself with the trick, flicking forward to Ali or or
Speaker 1: another accommodation to like do a different trick and then
Speaker 1: hitting that grind, worrying about your balance and like a
Speaker 1: there's not like a there's not like a meter or
Speaker 1: a bar that you're like, there's not a mini game.
Speaker 1: It's purely like their physics engine. You are balancing yourself
Speaker 1: on the board, and you know, it's just it feels
Speaker 1: really great. And also when you land, you know, and
Speaker 1: Tony Hawk, if you if you land and you're kind
Speaker 1: of just you know center, you know, you're kind of
Speaker 1: like ninety degrees to the ground, You're gonna land the
Speaker 1: trick right, as long as you aren't like at a
Speaker 1: weird angle with skate, even if you do that, if
Speaker 1: it's a really you know, with physics involved, if it's
Speaker 1: a really big jump, you have to actually change the
Speaker 1: angle of your board like forward and backwards exactly exactly,
Speaker 1: like to make sure that your trick is kind of
Speaker 1: landing on the back wheels so that you don't well
Speaker 1: you know you aren't and if you do it too
Speaker 1: much then you'll kind of the bord'll go out from
Speaker 1: underneath that kind of thing. So it's a lot more.
Speaker 1: There are a lot more considerations in completing a line,
Speaker 1: even a simple one, but there's it's just so satisfying
Speaker 1: to do that those those little things.
Speaker 3: That's something that I found myself really surprised by, and
Speaker 3: maybe the main differentiator between the Tony Hawk game and
Speaker 3: a skate game, at least for me in these specific games,
Speaker 3: is that I found so much more enjoyment in just
Speaker 3: going somewhere, setting a session marker, which I think is
Speaker 3: a really smart, useful tool that you just drop a
Speaker 3: point that you can always zip back to, and saying,
Speaker 3: I see this really cool line where I can go
Speaker 3: down this ramp off here, grind the hit the ground,
Speaker 3: do a trick, and it would look really cool if
Speaker 3: I nail all that, And it's all about the locomotion.
Speaker 3: It ends up being all about the getting from point
Speaker 3: A to B and just doing this very simple line
Speaker 3: compared to, like you said, some of the stuff that
Speaker 3: you might be able to do in Tony Hawk, but
Speaker 3: is Tony Hawk's more of a You're racking up really
Speaker 3: high scores like pinball, where the ball's going everywhere and
Speaker 3: the scores rising up and you're getting millions of points.
Speaker 3: You're like, yeah, cool, cool, cool, and that does satisfy
Speaker 3: a really good itch in my brain. But skate feels
Speaker 3: like the opposite. Where do you all remember Marble Madness
Speaker 3: where you have to get the marble across different stuff.
Speaker 3: It's that's the difference. It's pinball versus Marble Madness, where
Speaker 3: in one case, I'm trying to get this really cool
Speaker 3: high score with all the tricks in ways I know
Speaker 3: I can link the entire park together, And in skate
Speaker 3: it felt like I was, Okay, how do I navigate
Speaker 3: this whole thing without beefing it and get like a
Speaker 3: really sick line that just feels like it connects together
Speaker 3: really well, like everything's moving, and when it is moving
Speaker 3: in motion, it just feels fluid and it feels expressive
Speaker 3: and like you've kind of mastered these very basic levels
Speaker 3: of locomotion that create this really cool flow state and
Speaker 3: that I do think works really well in this new skate,
Speaker 3: And I think they have mostly gotten that there's still
Speaker 3: a little bit of iffinus. Sometimes every once in a while,
Speaker 3: you know, there's a little bit of hitching because it
Speaker 3: might be server side, or sometimes you just feel like
Speaker 3: you hit something a little bit weird and your guy
Speaker 3: just beefs it out of nowhere. But mostly I found
Speaker 3: that the skating is very solid and an enjoyable to
Speaker 3: undertake and has a very different vibe than you would
Speaker 3: normally expect from other arcade skaters. Yeah, say it's really good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm looking forward to the early access roadmap. They've
Speaker 1: kind of laid out that each new season, which they
Speaker 1: each last about two months, the first season's coming on October,
Speaker 1: then season two in December. But they have said that
Speaker 1: each season includes new skatable areas obviously, like new challenges
Speaker 1: and like events based on seasons, new like partners and
Speaker 1: cosmetics and stuff and oh one thing, the soundtrack's really good,
Speaker 1: and they've said that they're going to be adding new
Speaker 1: new tracks each season they do.
Speaker 4: They've got McGee on the put Pearl jams even flow
Speaker 4: on it.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen that yet, but I did see they've
Speaker 1: got McGee on there are you looking up? They've got Turnstyle, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they've got some good stuff, and it was so good
Speaker 1: that we demonetized our stream yesterday because I was just
Speaker 1: looking through looking at them. That's all right, though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I know that later on. Yeah, and in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six. I'm just going to read off a couple
Speaker 1: of the things that kind of my eye and my
Speaker 1: ears perked up when I heard that they were kind
Speaker 1: of doing this. There's an in season two in December.
Speaker 1: There's party Voice Chrat coming, which sure, that's that's actually
Speaker 1: pretty good to have. There's a replay editor. There is
Speaker 1: a replay editor that I haven't messed around with in
Speaker 1: the that is out right now, but I guess they're
Speaker 1: gonna be like improving it in season two is their plan.
Speaker 1: But there's a new it says, new co op game
Speaker 1: mode coming in season two and the season three and beyond.
Speaker 1: They're talking about open world collection, more character customization slots
Speaker 1: like tattoos and that kind of thing, player created parks,
Speaker 1: new game modes, that kind of thing, leaderboards. So like
Speaker 1: they're still certainly and as well as like you know,
Speaker 1: new tricks and stuff. But I think this the foundation
Speaker 1: is solid. I think there's some you know, we've kind
Speaker 1: of described some of our qualms with some of the
Speaker 1: progression stuff that I do think, Yeah, I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: them benefit. The doubt will likely be ironed out in
Speaker 1: some way with us being early access. But I think
Speaker 1: if you're just looking for that skate experience, and you
Speaker 1: you know, you don't necessarily want to go play the
Speaker 1: old games, but you're you want to, you're on the
Speaker 1: on the fence about checking this one out. I do
Speaker 1: think it's worth checking out. I mean, it's free to play.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm gonna check out. I'm not a skate guy.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think I think, I'm I'm I'm pretty
Speaker 1: positive on it. Honestly, you know, all things considered, it
Speaker 1: it is is, it's it's a lot of fun. And
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about how, like this weekend, I'd love to
Speaker 1: convince some friends to sit down and just spend an
Speaker 1: evening playing skate, you know, just doing stuff. So I'm
Speaker 1: I dig it. I'm I'm a fan so far.
Speaker 4: But awesome, Yeah, forward to it for a while. I Mean,
Speaker 4: it feels like we've known about this thing for so
Speaker 4: many years at this point, because they announced it super
Speaker 4: early and then we're just like waiting, and I think
Speaker 4: they sent me like a care package like two and
Speaker 4: a half years ago. They had like a beanie and
Speaker 4: like just a T shirt that said skate and I
Speaker 4: just it's just like a shirt that I wear around
Speaker 4: the house. But like it's not like it did have
Speaker 4: the period, yes, but it was like, Okay, well they
Speaker 4: must be gearing up to like release this thing. And
Speaker 4: it was like two and a half years later and
Speaker 4: it's still was not out and finally it's here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm curious to see what you think of it, Brian.
Speaker 1: I think I'll be jamming on this. I think as
Speaker 1: updates come out, I'm certainly going to keep playing this,
Speaker 1: you know, in the coming weeks.
Speaker 4: For this skate series is kind of I've bounced off it,
Speaker 4: similar to I think it was Marcus that said it
Speaker 4: where it was like yeah, not like I obsessed over
Speaker 4: the Tony Hawk franchise for a lot of like the
Speaker 4: late nineties and early two thousands, as a lot of
Speaker 4: people did. So when I saw that like EA was
Speaker 4: putting out a skating franchise, I gave like the first
Speaker 4: couple a shot, and I was like, this is not
Speaker 4: quite like the arcade style action that I enjoy about
Speaker 4: the Tony Hawk franchise. So I always kind of like
Speaker 4: bought the games or like found like a used copy
Speaker 4: of them and then played them for like an hour,
Speaker 4: and I was like, Nope, maybe not for me. So
Speaker 4: I would like to try this because it seems like
Speaker 4: there they took a lot of lessons for like modern
Speaker 4: game design conventions and like the directions they want to
Speaker 4: go and kind of forged a unique identity for this
Speaker 4: particular game. So maybe it's maybe it's worth giving a shot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my last warning, heed this, heed these words. Do
Speaker 1: not climb the big tower until you got to pop
Speaker 1: up that says you can unlock fast travel points now
Speaker 1: because it'll unless you really just want to see the sites.
Speaker 4: But can a leap of faith off the tower?
Speaker 1: You you actually yeah, you actually cant And there are
Speaker 1: actually I don't know if you saw this, Eric, there
Speaker 1: are different moves that you can do when you're falling
Speaker 1: in the air, and I did like a Superman died.
Speaker 1: You can also do like spread your spread your wings
Speaker 1: out and just like but at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you're falling to your death and.
Speaker 3: It's well, now you're dev like just yeah.
Speaker 1: You are immortal, You're an Immortal Being.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, Yeah, it's.
Speaker 4: A different game than I was expecting the Parkore, there's
Speaker 4: Assassin's Creed climbing, there's apparently.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you get to the God.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it's like Astrobot. It's just different games.
Speaker 3: I thought the visual novel portion was a little strange,
Speaker 3: but I think it really propelled the story for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the horror mission actually is like really highlight this year.
Speaker 3: And pay homage to your solid as well. It was
Speaker 3: really cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh, Brian, keeping the keeping the sports games train moving,
Speaker 1: You've been checking out what is probably one of the
Speaker 1: most beloved sports, uh, Sonic Racing, specifically Sonic Racing Cross
Speaker 1: the World.
Speaker 2: I watch it weekend.
Speaker 4: Is this the Game Awards where we're lumping sports and
Speaker 4: the same category.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're putting for the Netflix documentary. That's really gonna
Speaker 1: get me hooked on Sonic Racing. Yah.
Speaker 3: The Bill Simmons to Survive Sonic Racing episodes.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, I mean, don't they have like some collaborations
Speaker 4: with like actual racing leagues. I thought they had like
Speaker 4: a Sonic Racing Crossworld's car in one of the.
Speaker 3: Some friends and I were talking about this recently that
Speaker 3: I think Danica Patrick was in a previous Sonic Racing game,
Speaker 3: And that's that's a real crazy poll when you talk
Speaker 3: about the crossover characters, because in Cross Worlds you have
Speaker 3: SpongeBob and things like that, but you don't have Danica
Speaker 3: Patrick in there. Where's a Max verstappin sons World.
Speaker 2: It's almost like Multi Bobby and Sonic Cross World.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but Ricky Bobby.
Speaker 4: Like Lebron James being in Multi Versus was also kind
Speaker 4: of one of those weird ones. But like, yeah, Danica
Speaker 4: Patrick being in one of the previous I think it
Speaker 4: was Racing Transformed.
Speaker 3: But yes, while yeah, but speaking.
Speaker 4: Of Racing Transformed, this is probably the best Sonic Racing
Speaker 4: game since that game, which you know, a lot of
Speaker 4: people really love Sonic Sonic and All Stars Racing Transformed.
Speaker 4: I think it's called it's a long told title, it is,
Speaker 4: and I know it was like Sega Racing or I
Speaker 4: don't know Sonic and Sega Racing originally, but yeah, Sonic
Speaker 4: Racing Cross Worlds. I think they have created a kind
Speaker 4: of like the poll quote from my review is it's
Speaker 4: the most well rounded cart racer of twenty twenty five,
Speaker 4: which is saying something seeing as how we got a
Speaker 4: Mario Kart game and a Garfield KRT game this year.
Speaker 4: I've not played still include Garfield and that yes, I
Speaker 4: honestly a full disclosure. I have not played Garfield KRT.
Speaker 4: So maybe I'm maybe I'm assuming that it's better than
Speaker 4: Garfield Cards. But yeah, so it's like you know, it's
Speaker 4: it's like, unlike Mario Kart World, there's no like open
Speaker 4: world area that you can explore in Crossworlds. There's no
Speaker 4: like there's no like real battle mode. There are some
Speaker 4: like side modes that you can do, like some kind
Speaker 4: of like party style competitions, but like the meat of
Speaker 4: this game is just like the straightforward races that like
Speaker 4: I think there's twenty four courses, and then in the
Speaker 4: middle of it, like the second lap of every race
Speaker 4: is a Crossworld's lap. So you do your first lap
Speaker 4: on like the normal that the regular track, and then
Speaker 4: the person in the pole position chooses between two courses
Speaker 4: like rings pop up in like at the end of
Speaker 4: the first lap, and they choose what track you want
Speaker 4: to go to next, and it pulls from a like
Speaker 4: a list of like fifteen crossworlds that you can go to,
Speaker 4: almost like Ratchet and clank style, so like it it
Speaker 4: whoever the first the person in first chooses, the entire
Speaker 4: second lap takes place on that course, so it teleports
Speaker 4: you to the second course where you do this other
Speaker 4: the second lap, and then these are like fully fledged
Speaker 4: courses too. It's not just like, oh, this is like
Speaker 4: bare bones and like nothing really going on. It's like, no,
Speaker 4: this is These are actually probably more involved than like
Speaker 4: the standard tracks. So like there's one that you go
Speaker 4: and there's like actual like dinosaurs running around, like like
Speaker 4: that's my favor There's like one that's like you know,
Speaker 4: there's there's water and like there's like a bunch of
Speaker 4: like ships and everything that you have to like drive through.
Speaker 1: There's not a candy Land kind of style one.
Speaker 4: I mean there's a lot of different ones. There's one
Speaker 4: that almost reminds me of like Rainbow Road.
Speaker 2: Actually are any of these based on Sega games or
Speaker 2: are they just for this game?
Speaker 4: So that's the thing is like when you look at
Speaker 4: like Mario Mario Kart, like most of those levels are
Speaker 4: based on something at least like adjacent to a real
Speaker 4: world mar you like level this, I would say it's
Speaker 4: you know, maybe sixty percent based on Sonic stuff. So
Speaker 4: there is like the rooftop Run from Sonic Unleashed has
Speaker 4: a level and like you're so you're going through I
Speaker 4: forget what what the Greek name, it's like a pop
Speaker 4: botast or something like Socrates Socrates that's yeah, so so yeah,
Speaker 4: it does play like that. And then there's like there's
Speaker 4: various other levels that are like from Sonic games.
Speaker 1: But like there's a cool one from like Sonic Adventure
Speaker 1: with the whale you know that jumps up.
Speaker 4: There's Radical Highway from Sonic Adventure two. So like, yeah,
Speaker 4: there are some that are from Sonic levels, but there
Speaker 4: I think a lot of them are just kind of like, hey,
Speaker 4: this would be a cool cart racing level. And that's
Speaker 4: the same as like the power ups. Like there's some
Speaker 4: where it's like the Wisps from Sonic Colors and like
Speaker 4: they give you like the boost and some other some
Speaker 4: other abilities and like attacks that you can perform. But
Speaker 4: then there's others that it's like, oh, this has like
Speaker 4: no thing to do with a Sonic game. It's just
Speaker 4: something that they created for Sonic Racing Crossworlds or a
Speaker 4: past Sonic Racing game. So like I would have preferred
Speaker 4: like there's plenty of power ups that they've that Sonic
Speaker 4: has had in the past. It's like, why do we
Speaker 4: have to kind of outsource them? But I understand, like
Speaker 4: there's certain archetypes that they wanted to have for these
Speaker 4: power ups and for these levels, So it makes sense
Speaker 4: in that regard that it wouldn't be like strictly tied
Speaker 4: to Sonic lore. But yeah, like the racing is super sound,
Speaker 4: the levels are extremely creative, and it just feels like
Speaker 4: a very streamlined kart racing experience. And there's also like
Speaker 4: a rival system when you play like the Grand Prix
Speaker 4: or if you go to Race Park, which is like
Speaker 4: kind of like the more special condition races, Like there's
Speaker 4: one where it's like, yeah, you get points for finishing first,
Speaker 4: but also the tea it's like team based since like
Speaker 4: the team that collected the most rings over the course
Speaker 4: of the race also gets like bonus points for their ranking.
Speaker 4: Or like there's one where it's like if you run
Speaker 4: into your teammate while you're racing, you get a speed boost,
Speaker 4: So it makes sense to kind of stay grouped up
Speaker 4: because you just like play off each other with like boosts.
Speaker 4: But yeah, like the Grand Prix they'll they'll have like
Speaker 4: a rival that you are designated to actually beat, and
Speaker 4: that ends up being like kind of like an alternate
Speaker 4: objective to just finishing first, although the rival typically is
Speaker 4: like the one that's going to be leading the pack,
Speaker 4: so it ends up just being like, all right, get
Speaker 4: get in first. But there the weird thing about the
Speaker 4: Grand Prix is that the final one, so it's four
Speaker 4: races of three lap race four three lap races.
Speaker 2: Yea.
Speaker 4: The final, the finale of each Grand Prix is just
Speaker 4: like it's just like one lap of each of the
Speaker 4: preceding courses. So it's not like a track on its own.
Speaker 4: It's like, Okay, you played these three courses already in
Speaker 4: this Grand Prix. Now you just do one lap of
Speaker 4: each of those courses for the final. So it's kind
Speaker 4: of a.
Speaker 2: Strange anyway, it's just here's it. Here it is.
Speaker 4: I mean, there are fewer collectibles because like each track
Speaker 4: has like the red rings from the Sonic franchise that
Speaker 4: you can collect, but like it doesn't really it removes
Speaker 4: them for that Grand Prix finale. But no, they're not
Speaker 4: like it might be like because in the final lap
Speaker 4: sometimes like the tracks are a little bit more chaotic,
Speaker 4: so I think it's just like the final lap variant
Speaker 4: of that, so like there's more going on, but it's
Speaker 4: not really like anything you haven't seen before, which is
Speaker 4: a bit of a disappointment, but it's also kind of
Speaker 4: cool to be like, Okay, yeah, I remember all of
Speaker 4: these tracks that we just raced through, and now it's.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, a tour. I didn't mind it as much
Speaker 1: when I was capturing for the review. The it was
Speaker 1: kind of like a chance to kind of you know,
Speaker 1: almost like the oh, okay, we've been racing on these
Speaker 1: these tracks, let's put your knowledge to the test. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, twenty thirty hours in you aren't going to
Speaker 1: have really that knowledge test is kind of null and
Speaker 1: void because you've probably memorized the the tracks at that point.
Speaker 1: But as somebody who was just jumping in and was like,
Speaker 1: oh okay, yeah, I think I remember like my strategy
Speaker 1: and like what I what my moves were. Did it
Speaker 1: work out or not? Let me try to you know, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, get ahead.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And that's that's the thing though, is that like
Speaker 4: the Mario Karte franchise and kart racing are so synonymous
Speaker 4: with one another that I didn't like. I always try
Speaker 4: whenever I'm reviewing a game to not do too much comparison,
Speaker 4: but it's like Mario Kart is such like the standard
Speaker 4: for kart racing that it's impossible not to, like at
Speaker 4: least make a little bit of a comparison.
Speaker 3: Especially Yeah, it came out this year, It's it's still
Speaker 3: top of everyone's mind. Yeah, came out.
Speaker 4: Three months ago, so like it's it's difficult to avoid that.
Speaker 4: But at the same time, it's like I wanted to
Speaker 4: like judge it on its own merits, but then you
Speaker 4: look over the fence at Mario Kart World and you're like, oh, well,
Speaker 4: like you know, they were able to do a different
Speaker 4: course for every entry in the Grand Prix, so it's
Speaker 4: I don't know, it gives it a different flavor, But
Speaker 4: it's also like, it would have been nice to have
Speaker 4: like another track here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fair. I think I like, speaking of like
Speaker 1: that comparison to Mario Kart World. I think I like
Speaker 1: the the general experience of Mario Kart more like the
Speaker 1: actually like racing mechanics. It feels more polished to me
Speaker 1: than Sonic Racing Cross Worlds. But I can't deny that
Speaker 1: the amount of content and cross worlds is. There's so
Speaker 1: much more there going on, and like in terms of
Speaker 1: like modes and the customization of the machines that you're
Speaker 1: riding on, Like that's a cool piece and I like
Speaker 1: that the what would you call it? What is it
Speaker 1: called the gadget system, Yeah, so that's that's cool.
Speaker 4: So there's there's aesthetic and like cosmetic customization where it's like,
Speaker 4: all right, you've unlocked these carts. You can swap out
Speaker 4: like the different body parts. You can apply different paint jobs,
Speaker 4: you can apply different auras that like you know, like
Speaker 4: all right, well I want like this red glow to
Speaker 4: be all around my car. You can farm in this game, yes,
Speaker 4: but uh that stuff like you can go too far
Speaker 4: with that pretty quickly. And there are many sponsored decals
Speaker 4: as well, So if you want to add like your
Speaker 4: favorite Ramen brand to the side of your car, you
Speaker 4: can do that. There are a lot of those. But
Speaker 4: like the stuff that I mostly did was the gadgets,
Speaker 4: which are like basically like these like granular customization, so
Speaker 4: every character is is sorted into these different classes. So
Speaker 4: like speed, acceleration, handling, boost, and power. Those are the
Speaker 4: five classes, and like speed is just all right, You're
Speaker 4: you have the highest top speed out of anyone. Handling
Speaker 4: is exactly what it sounds like. You can go around
Speaker 4: corners a little bit more precise, and like the it's
Speaker 4: a little bit tighter to go around. Boost is kind
Speaker 4: of like the extreme gears from Sonic Riders if you
Speaker 4: ever played that game, it's like the hoverboards and those
Speaker 4: are back, which is kind of cool, but it's I
Speaker 4: would say that's the most technical of the classes because
Speaker 4: it's all about like maximizing your boosts, because your boosts
Speaker 4: are really great, so like your boost seems to charge
Speaker 4: a lot faster when you're drifting, but also if you
Speaker 4: get like a boost, it it's a lot more effective.
Speaker 4: And then power you can kind of like ram into
Speaker 4: other racers while you're while you're racing and it will
Speaker 4: cause them to kind of either be bullied or actually
Speaker 4: just lose rings while you hit them. And what was
Speaker 4: the other one that I didn't touch on? Handling, power, speed, boost.
Speaker 3: Acceleration, acceleration.
Speaker 4: So yeah, that's simple. It's just you get up to
Speaker 4: speed faster. So all of the characters fit into one
Speaker 4: of those five and all the carts fit into one
Speaker 4: of those fives. You can mix and match. So if
Speaker 4: you want, like to do Sonic as a like he's
Speaker 4: a speed character natively, but if you want to give
Speaker 4: him like a power cart, you can do that and
Speaker 4: it'll adjust his stats accordingly. And if you really want
Speaker 4: to get granular with like your play style, you can
Speaker 4: also make this gadget plate, which is this customizable like
Speaker 4: load out essentially, So the one that I have that
Speaker 4: I use all the time is in each each gadget
Speaker 4: that you put on this plate takes up a different
Speaker 4: amount of space on the plate. It's almost like a
Speaker 4: resident Evil inventory where it's like you have to like
Speaker 4: fit it in the way that like it's it's less
Speaker 4: much less complicated than a resident Evil inventory. But like
Speaker 4: you know, there's like six slots I think on like
Speaker 4: a fully upgraded plate, and you upgrade it by completing
Speaker 4: laps using the gadget plate. And so like I wanted
Speaker 4: one that's like I want to have it so I
Speaker 4: can hold three items instead of just two when I'm racing,
Speaker 4: And so that took up two slots on the gadget plate.
Speaker 4: And then there's one like I want more defensive items
Speaker 4: to show up in my in my my racing, So
Speaker 4: that took up one spot. And then it's like, all right, well,
Speaker 4: if I fall off the track and I have to
Speaker 4: be put back on the track, that like kills my momentum.
Speaker 4: Here's this gadget that I can install that gives me
Speaker 4: an automatic boost when I land from being like falling
Speaker 4: off the track, so it helped me recover faster. That
Speaker 4: takes up one spot. So it's like kind of like
Speaker 4: figuring out how you want to tune your character and
Speaker 4: like what perks you want to give your character. So
Speaker 4: there is a lot of customization you can do that
Speaker 4: is not only cosmetic but also like it impacts your
Speaker 4: performance as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it sounds like there's a lot more single player
Speaker 3: meet on the bone here than what I would have
Speaker 3: expected because Mario Kart World, you know, again to draw comparisons,
Speaker 3: there was stuff to do in that game in terms
Speaker 3: of finding challenges and things like that in the open world.
Speaker 3: But when you pick your cart in Mario Kart World,
Speaker 3: you're not going in and giving it RPG stats. You know,
Speaker 3: you're not changing its inventory. It has kind of a
Speaker 3: set you know, stat line, and that's what you roll with.
Speaker 3: So it's interesting to hear this describe this way. That
Speaker 3: seems like there's a lot more to do on that end,
Speaker 3: especially if you're a single player. But does that, like,
Speaker 3: do you think that might make it a little bit
Speaker 3: unapproachable for a multiplayer situation when somebody just says I
Speaker 3: want to play tails, I just want to raise his tails?
Speaker 3: Is it's still easy to just pick up and go.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's pre load outs, like there are like like
Speaker 4: ones that they've done that are just like, all right,
Speaker 4: well here's a plate. You can just choose that, and
Speaker 4: like you just choose from like one perk. The extra
Speaker 4: slots open up once you level up the thing, so
Speaker 4: if you just want to jump in with a friend,
Speaker 4: you can do that. And there's also like carts or
Speaker 4: machines I think they're called in this where it's like, yeah,
Speaker 4: there's these three stock ones that you can choose from,
Speaker 4: similar to Mario Kart. So I think that it's more
Speaker 4: it's as approachable in that regard, and maybe even more
Speaker 4: approachable because you don't have like the open world element
Speaker 4: to consider. I think it's interesting because in my review
Speaker 4: I called out that there's not as much meat on
Speaker 4: the bone in racing in Sonic Racing Cross Worlds. But
Speaker 4: that's only because there's no like story mode, there's no
Speaker 4: open world mode. But and somebody asked me about this, like,
Speaker 4: you know, what content are you even referring to in
Speaker 4: Mario Kart World, because you know, the open world doesn't
Speaker 4: have like very compelling challenges, And I'm like, well, you know,
Speaker 4: I still think that, you know, regardless of if you
Speaker 4: like the open world, it's still content. It's it just
Speaker 4: may not be compelling content. So that's where I think
Speaker 4: Racing Cross Worlds excels, is that it has a higher
Speaker 4: concentration of compelling content. Whereas you know, Mario Kart World,
Speaker 4: I can jump in and explore that open world for
Speaker 4: hours on end and never even do like an actual
Speaker 4: formal race. Now what I want to do that that's
Speaker 4: another question. I much rather jump into like the the
Speaker 4: I even forget what the Battle Royale mode is called, oh,
Speaker 4: knockout Knockout mode, Knockout Tour mode. I would much rather
Speaker 4: do that. But at the same time, you know, if
Speaker 4: I wanted to jump in and mess around with friends
Speaker 4: and like the open world, and I wanted to get like,
Speaker 4: you know, a party of twelve to just roam around
Speaker 4: and like be goofballs in the open world. You don't
Speaker 4: have that option in Sonic Racing Cross Worlds, but there
Speaker 4: is like a it's much more focused of an experience.
Speaker 4: So it's nice that, like we have these two pretty
Speaker 4: good cart racers. I think Mario Kart World is a
Speaker 4: very good cart racer for what it does, and I
Speaker 4: think Sonic Racing Cross Worlds is also a very good
Speaker 4: cart racer. So it's cool that both of them have
Speaker 4: released this this good product in the same year. But
Speaker 4: they also approach the genre from different different angles, even
Speaker 4: if like the core experience is pretty similar.
Speaker 3: Mm.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I one thing that I explicitly don't like is
Speaker 1: in the in the cosmic in the not in the
Speaker 1: cosmetics and the carts that you can unlock at the
Speaker 1: with your tickets that you get from from racing at
Speaker 1: the very end is a really cool cart. It's like
Speaker 1: a dragon, and the model is like like it's in
Speaker 1: the game, but it says coming in November, and it's
Speaker 1: like it's in the game though it's right there, just
Speaker 1: like why would you show it to me if I
Speaker 1: can't have it? Yeah, it's it's in the menu. It's
Speaker 1: got its own, like it's in the UI, I can
Speaker 1: I can rotate it around and it's like eight again, I.
Speaker 3: Could say I can rotate the object in my mind.
Speaker 3: I can comprehend it in the three D space. Yeah, yes, there's.
Speaker 4: I mean they're they're doing seasonal content. That's probably why.
Speaker 4: But why would they show that to you?
Speaker 2: Well, like it's in the game now, Maybe keep you
Speaker 2: playing of like, oh man, that looks cool better you know,
Speaker 2: stick around for.
Speaker 1: That play until November.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess like if people didn't have social media
Speaker 1: and they weren't following the game, this would be a
Speaker 1: way for them to see that there's more stuff coming.
Speaker 1: I guess the kids hooked. I was. I was like,
Speaker 1: just let me if you already put it in the game,
Speaker 1: let me race with his damn vehicle.
Speaker 3: Also this dragon, Timmy, you can race that dragon in no.
Speaker 2: Opportunity to not just have that cart be Kureu with
Speaker 2: wheels on him. Huh because it's a dragon. Oh, like
Speaker 2: it's each riding on top of Kirau is.
Speaker 3: Like, where where are the wheels on?
Speaker 4: Here?
Speaker 3: You's body in this Maybe.
Speaker 2: He's like Axle from Twisted Metal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's got his eyes out, or maybe he's like
Speaker 3: kind of bent over and he's got like a wheel
Speaker 3: in each hand and then wheels on his.
Speaker 1: The real pants on the dogs.
Speaker 2: It's like Michael Jackson and Moonwalker when he turns into
Speaker 2: a motorcycle at one point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or like when the the two Shivas in Final
Speaker 3: Fantasy thirteen become the motorcycle. So then we have Eachy
Speaker 3: Bond and Kirry you kind of slammed together and turn
Speaker 3: into a motorcycle.
Speaker 2: And this is a weird game or series in general.
Speaker 2: They could get away with it.
Speaker 3: I think this is I think this is the first
Speaker 3: time this idea has ever been floated. Is Sonic riding
Speaker 3: on top of a motorcycle made out of kurru and
Speaker 3: Ichi bonds. Congratulations on having a completely original thoughts on
Speaker 3: this podcast.
Speaker 1: That does You.
Speaker 4: Said axel, but talking about a different axle. I'm talking
Speaker 4: about crazy taxi axle. Why is crazy taxi not in
Speaker 4: a racing game.
Speaker 1: It's a good point. They're too busy, they're too busy working.
Speaker 1: You know, Super came into the city and yeah.
Speaker 3: You know taxi driving crazy about Uber and Lyft would
Speaker 3: go kind of crazy.
Speaker 2: You know, it would be funny as if they add
Speaker 2: the fake Axle from Infinite Wealth, like they put that
Speaker 2: guy in the game but not actual.
Speaker 1: Axel Axel Rose.
Speaker 3: I was thinking that too. It was like Axel Rose
Speaker 3: and then November Dragon, November Rain, Connect the dots people,
Speaker 3: It's it's been there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been there the whole time.
Speaker 2: He's the new Danica Patrick.
Speaker 4: Yeah, everybody's saying that about Axl Rose. He's the new
Speaker 4: Danica Patrick. Final just just one more piece of evidence.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, well what Sonic Racing is out the twenty fifth?
Speaker 1: Is that right?
Speaker 2: Check? That's correct?
Speaker 1: Cool, so look forward to that. You can go check
Speaker 1: out our review on game reformer dot com or watch
Speaker 1: our video review on YouTube dot com Slash game Informer.
Speaker 1: You should definitely go watch that because the reason I'm
Speaker 1: yawning is because I was up late editing that video.
Speaker 1: So got it. And you can also see the game
Speaker 1: see gameplay of everything we're talking about. But yeah, well
Speaker 1: let's get into really quick. I wanted to dive into
Speaker 1: Battlefield six again. We talked about it a few weeks
Speaker 1: back when the open beta was happening. I was invited
Speaker 1: to a preview event, a virtual preview event, and the
Speaker 1: whole point was to show us Battlefield six's two biggest maps,
Speaker 1: and that is a new map called Merrick Valley, which
Speaker 1: is the biggest map in the game, and then Operation Firestorm,
Speaker 1: which is a level it takes place in oil field.
Speaker 1: If you've played Battlefield three, you've probably remember it or
Speaker 1: look up screenshots you're like, ah, yes, I remember that one.
Speaker 1: A lot of folks like that one for its kind
Speaker 1: of it's a classic battlefield where it's all out warfare
Speaker 1: with vehicles. There's jets flying over top of you, there's
Speaker 1: attack helicopters, there's various there's like two different two or
Speaker 1: three different kinds of anks. You know, You've got you know,
Speaker 1: smaller like rovers with like turrets on them. There's a
Speaker 1: lot going on as well as like your typical like
Speaker 1: you know, infantry level, you know combat that's happening alongside
Speaker 1: all of that. And Murk Valley is also the same.
Speaker 1: It's got like that all out battlefield experience, and playing
Speaker 1: these two maps has just kind of skyrocketed my excitement
Speaker 1: for Battlefield six. They feel. I think one of my
Speaker 1: criticisms coming out of the open beta was that it
Speaker 1: feels great to play Battlefield six. It just doesn't always
Speaker 1: feel like Battlefield. It feels like Call of Duty, especially
Speaker 1: in like the infantry only maps, and of course like
Speaker 1: there are that is like, you know they are going
Speaker 1: to try to take Call of Duty's lunch this year
Speaker 1: and sides they're pointing to the fact that maybe they will.
Speaker 4: They at least, I mean, the reception on social media
Speaker 4: and YouTube and everything has been like absurdly good for
Speaker 4: Battlefield six so far.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, it feels that series has had.
Speaker 4: In a while, Oh for sure. Yes, yeah, especially after
Speaker 4: like the last one, which.
Speaker 3: Forty two set a pretty low bar to clear, if
Speaker 3: I'm being honest, and there were some good maps in
Speaker 3: that one. There's I love the big tornado with wing
Speaker 3: suit was pretty sick like I when.
Speaker 1: It would happen.
Speaker 2: Though when it happened, I will never forget. Maybe the
Speaker 2: funniest stream I've ever done here was me and former
Speaker 2: editor Dan Tack playing that game when it came out,
Speaker 2: and I was.
Speaker 1: There, was were you there?
Speaker 2: I titled the stream I think like we're gonna be
Speaker 2: fighting or dodging tornadoes in Battlefield twenty forty two, And
Speaker 2: we played for over an hour and didn't see a
Speaker 2: single tornado.
Speaker 1: I swear I swear we played two hours it was
Speaker 1: a single tornado.
Speaker 2: That makes it more ridiculous. But we're just like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're gonna do cool tornado stuff like they've been shown.
Speaker 1: We were on Tornado Watch, we'd be like, oh, is
Speaker 1: there a tornado forming in the background, And.
Speaker 2: Then it was just be getting shot and Dan making
Speaker 2: fun of me is like trying and.
Speaker 3: Ask for heal like that's that's the thing is. I
Speaker 3: played Battlefield for fifty percent the big strategy, you know,
Speaker 3: having the feeling of or kind of pushing across a
Speaker 3: map or moving lines. There's a feeling of even if
Speaker 3: you yourself are not you know, putting up huge kill
Speaker 3: numbers and all that, you're kind of fighting as part
Speaker 3: of the unit and working together and things like that.
Speaker 3: And the other fifty percent is raw spectacle, just the craziest,
Speaker 3: dumbest things. And I did have a moment where I
Speaker 3: thought Battlefield six might have it when I saw when
Speaker 3: we were playing the open beta a dude getting a
Speaker 3: helicopter take off and immediately just rainbow arc that thing
Speaker 3: into the ground, just completely slam that thing into.
Speaker 2: Oh that's why footage of me using anything that leads
Speaker 2: to ground in battlefield.
Speaker 3: That's but that that to me is that's that's beautiful.
Speaker 3: That's that's battlefield happening in motion in front of you.
Speaker 3: Of its poetry.
Speaker 1: And listen, if you're playing on mouse and keyboard and
Speaker 1: you're gonna get into a helicopter, remove your hand from
Speaker 1: the mouse. Left hand goes on Wazdi, right hand goes
Speaker 1: on your arrow keys. You will have a much easier
Speaker 1: time flying a helicopter. That way. Tips for people like me, No,
Speaker 1: just get good man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I fly jet with mouse and keyboard and I
Speaker 3: use the mouse to control pitch and yaw because I'm
Speaker 3: crazy Seco. Yeah, but that's how I learned to play
Speaker 3: on Battlefield too, So that's how I've always played it since.
Speaker 3: But I I am interested. So it's a larger map.
Speaker 3: Did you feel like the vehicle counts and there there
Speaker 3: was a lot more involvement there with it, because the
Speaker 3: stuff that we played in the open beta definitely had
Speaker 3: some stuff. There were a PC's occasionally, tanks and jets
Speaker 3: and things like that, but I felt like it was
Speaker 3: still infantry focused game.
Speaker 1: No, it was like the it felt like the battles
Speaker 1: were fought in one by vehicles, you know, like there
Speaker 1: was Obviously infantry was important, like especially engineers, having anti
Speaker 1: tank having people repairing your engines, but like the tides
Speaker 1: shifted whenever, whenever, you know, a vehicle would enter the battle,
Speaker 1: and but there was I want to say, like, so
Speaker 1: they're all if you play battlefield, you know that, like
Speaker 1: all the vehicles along are on cool down timers, And
Speaker 1: when you look at the spawn screen, you can you
Speaker 1: can spawn in your teammate, you can spawn on points
Speaker 1: that you control. You can spawn at your HQ, which
Speaker 1: is like all the way back at the start of
Speaker 1: the of the match where you started, and at the
Speaker 1: HQ is also where your vehicles spawned in. And I
Speaker 1: want to say there were at any given moment there
Speaker 1: were like ten vehicles, like at some variation on cool
Speaker 1: down t into twelve vehicles, and it felt like there
Speaker 1: was always like you know, new vehicles during the battlefield
Speaker 1: and it felt amazing, honestly, Like when I was playing
Speaker 1: this this event, it was firing in all cylinders, you know,
Speaker 1: I remember one. You know, there's there's a lot of
Speaker 1: cool new mechanics that are at play that we've talked about,
Speaker 1: like being able to like drag people as you're reviving them,
Speaker 1: like dragging. I had like so many cinematic moments where
Speaker 1: like we're pinned down by snipers and like my guy
Speaker 1: runs out, gets knocked and I'm like I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: you up and you know, dragging him back together. Yeah
Speaker 1: exactly behind. Oh yeah, like that was happening. There were
Speaker 1: you know, just like the all of the vehicles were
Speaker 1: like just felt so good, like me and my my career.
Speaker 1: I was playing with uh, some of the game Spot folks,
Speaker 1: Jean Luke. We we kind of like hit each other up.
Speaker 1: We're like, oh, we're both in this preview event. Let's
Speaker 1: get some people and get a squad going. And like
Speaker 1: we were like either doing two and two in two
Speaker 1: tanks and like kind of like going around points from
Speaker 1: like two directions together, or at certain times we were
Speaker 1: all in a helicopter together. Like it was just like
Speaker 1: the antics were like cranked to eleven, but everything felt
Speaker 1: fair and and like that we were in control of
Speaker 1: our destiny. You know, people were playing their roles correctly.
Speaker 1: I remember I got downed. There's this one moment that
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, like this is this
Speaker 1: is incredible. Is when I get downed in Murk Valley,
Speaker 1: which that map is two large construction sites surrounded by
Speaker 1: kind of mountains like hills and and like it's very
Speaker 1: much an indevelopment place, but a lot of the combat
Speaker 1: happens in and just outside of those big you know there.
Speaker 1: It's almost like they're building like big not necessarily skyscrapers,
Speaker 1: but very large industrial buildings, but it's all in development,
Speaker 1: so it's like this big construction site. Anyways, I get
Speaker 1: downed one of my tea mates. I think it was
Speaker 1: either it was like a snow bike mic from kind
Speaker 1: of Funny, or I think Jake Lucky was on my team.
Speaker 1: It was like a streamer guy. But one of them,
Speaker 1: I can't remember which one of them got me up.
Speaker 1: And I had been like I had been paying it forward.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you, I had been anytime people were down.
Speaker 1: I was playing medic. I was like, Doom, Doom, get
Speaker 1: you up, You're back in the game. I was feeling
Speaker 1: like I was like my team loves me, you know.
Speaker 1: I was getting like folks like, you know, waving their
Speaker 1: gun at me, like to say thank you and stuff
Speaker 1: like I don't know, just like wiggling your your that's
Speaker 1: the little a little army yeah yeaheah, or like the
Speaker 1: double crowd really quick to say like thanks.
Speaker 3: That's what that means.
Speaker 4: But they were dead body though, which is weird.
Speaker 1: But eventually I switched to I switched to recon and
Speaker 1: I was sniping and I was just like, this is
Speaker 1: like one of my best games. I've ever played a
Speaker 1: battlefield and I was like, oh my god, I'm capturing
Speaker 1: all this. This is great, and there's one moment and
Speaker 1: I'll have to find it. In the footage where I
Speaker 1: get down, somebody comes and revives me and like they're
Speaker 1: they aren't a medics, so they're like hardly like slow
Speaker 1: reviving me and dragging me away as a guy is
Speaker 1: running at us, like firing at us, and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're both dead, but like I'm gonna, you know, I
Speaker 1: see what's happening. I'm gonna try to fight. My teammate
Speaker 1: pulls me up. They get down. As soon as my
Speaker 1: gun comes up, I scope in and one shot the
Speaker 1: guy and like he falls to the ground and then
Speaker 1: I get my teammate back up and we keep moving.
Speaker 1: But it was like it was the most cinematic thing ever.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, we're dead. We're dead,
Speaker 1: and then I get up Boom save us. Then we
Speaker 1: get back up together and we keep moving, you know.
Speaker 1: But it was just like a there's so many cool
Speaker 1: moments like that.
Speaker 3: It was call an ambulance, but not for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, exactly. Yeah, but both of these maps kind
Speaker 1: of going back to my original point, it has felt
Speaker 1: you know, there's it hasn't necessarily felt like battlefield. There's
Speaker 1: some some bigger maps that were in the open beta.
Speaker 1: There's one bigger map which is like the Snowy Mountain
Speaker 1: area that like kind of felt like more traditional battlefield,
Speaker 1: but a lot of the other ones were kind of
Speaker 1: like a weird mixture between like Call of Duty and
Speaker 1: and and still battlefield, but like it just didn't have
Speaker 1: that feel. These both of these maps have that battlefield
Speaker 1: identity in them, like fully, and I think that gave
Speaker 1: me the confidence and like, okay, you know, the infantry
Speaker 1: only maps, I can I can tolerate those if if
Speaker 1: you know, I'm going to be playing a lot on
Speaker 1: these bigger maps, and I imagine they're gonna have playlists
Speaker 1: and everything. I imagine they'll have like infantry only playlists
Speaker 1: and like all at war playlists and that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and it feels good to know that, like as they
Speaker 1: are kind of setting their sights on the broader market,
Speaker 1: they aren't forgetting the people who you know, who have
Speaker 1: been with a series for a while, and like that
Speaker 1: those experiences that people are expecting, they're still there. You
Speaker 1: just have to like go to the right places to
Speaker 1: look for them. But those maps felt substantial. They felt like,
Speaker 1: you know, every every match felt different, you know, and
Speaker 1: I feel like there were so many points on those maps.
Speaker 1: We were playing various various game modes. Is a new
Speaker 1: one called escalation, where the whoever has the majority of
Speaker 1: the points of the control points. Once you have that majority,
Speaker 1: then a ticker starts going up, and eventually the longer
Speaker 1: you were holding a territory, like that territory will just
Speaker 1: permanently become yours for the rest of the match, and
Speaker 1: then the number of points that you're fighting over dwindle,
Speaker 1: but you were still fighting for that majority. It's it's
Speaker 1: a cool mode, and I forget where I was going
Speaker 1: with at but there's that there's you know, we were
Speaker 1: predominantly playing Breakthrough, which is my favorite mode. It's where
Speaker 1: there's an attack and defending team the defenders have unlimited
Speaker 1: lives and the attackers start with like think two hundred
Speaker 1: lives that they share with each other. And the attackers
Speaker 1: are just like trying to get to time to capture
Speaker 1: A and B and have them held at the same time.
Speaker 1: And then you kind of you move forward to you.
Speaker 3: Push the line with the Eyeah, you're pushing the capture. Yeah, yes, you're.
Speaker 1: Pushing the line forward. And in those moments, really, in
Speaker 1: all the game modes on these two maps, like there
Speaker 1: are places I just didn't have time to explore really
Speaker 1: and fight out because I was really focused on like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I've feel like I've got this point down, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: like help my team here. So like it still feels
Speaker 1: like even after playing for hours on these maps that
Speaker 1: there's still a lot to learn and kind of master.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I'm really positive on Powerfield six. I'm yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm really excited for the game.
Speaker 4: I'm so excited for this guy. I did not play
Speaker 4: any of like the betas or whatever, but like it,
Speaker 4: all the footage I've seen has looked incredible. And like
Speaker 4: I skipped twenty forty two because I heard such terrible
Speaker 4: things about the launch. I know they did make some improvements.
Speaker 1: Like through the spread with bugs, they added more tornadoes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but like, yeah, I enjoyed like the old school
Speaker 4: Battlefield games, Like Battlefield three was great. I loved Battlefield
Speaker 4: two back in the day, so it'd be it'd be
Speaker 4: really nice to get back into it. Like Battlefield one
Speaker 4: was fine. I don't know, didn't really enjoyed it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but like it was, it was a perfectly fine entry
Speaker 4: in the series. But like, yeah, this seems like the
Speaker 4: one that I'm going to like give an earnest attempt
Speaker 4: at getting back into the Battlefield franchise.
Speaker 1: I want to play. There's that.
Speaker 2: I know I'm wrong for this, but I'm interested in
Speaker 2: the campaign. I'm that guy.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, yeah, I think the three campaign was phenomenal
Speaker 1: from what I remember.
Speaker 2: The last one I played was Hardline.
Speaker 3: Played was interesting as a way to put that, yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: It was set in Florida, so I got that out
Speaker 2: of it. It's like a whole point. There's like a
Speaker 2: whole sequence. You do a shootout during a hurricane, like yep,
Speaker 2: just like Home that company slaps, I those are my
Speaker 2: I'm not the biggest bats, but I love the two
Speaker 2: battle the Bad Company games.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm I'm I'm hopeful, you know, obviously, like they
Speaker 1: are putting all their chips on the table Battlefield. They've
Speaker 1: got what like almost ten studios working on Battlefield something
Speaker 1: like that under the guys Andretti Studios. Yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 1: I hope it does well for them, for for the
Speaker 1: studio's sake, but also as a fan, you know, I
Speaker 1: would like to see Battlefield kind of back in its
Speaker 1: prime again. You know, it stinks, you know, going you know,
Speaker 1: four or five years in between entries, you know.
Speaker 4: And what call of Duty is doing every year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't necessarily need it to be annual, but
Speaker 1: like more frequent would be nice because I really enjoy Battlefield.
Speaker 1: So fingers crost. You know, we don't have much longer
Speaker 1: less than a month now, I believe, so. Yeah, but uh,
Speaker 1: well that's Battlefield six.
Speaker 2: Eric.
Speaker 1: I want to toss it to you and and Marcus
Speaker 1: and Brian. You'll probably have to, you know, help carry
Speaker 1: this conversation because I'm not a fighting game guy, even
Speaker 1: though I really want to be, but I'm just so
Speaker 1: bad at them. But two x KO is out in beta.
Speaker 1: It's like in perpetual beta, kind of like how they
Speaker 1: launched Valerant, Ye, like, yeah, yeah, it's just gonna be
Speaker 1: you can play it and then eventually there will be
Speaker 1: a launch at some point. But like it is, it
Speaker 1: is kind of out and and playable. Not all the
Speaker 1: content is necessarily there yet.
Speaker 3: But is it an open beta or so for for
Speaker 3: those at home, let's let's set the stage here. Two
Speaker 3: x KO is the League of Legends fighting game made
Speaker 3: by Riot Games. Unlike Valorant and some other stuff that
Speaker 3: I think they had maybe talked about at some point, Uh,
Speaker 3: this is entirely set within the League of Legends universities,
Speaker 3: eg of Legends characters. It does seem like they're responding
Speaker 3: to the popularity of Arcane a little bit by getting
Speaker 3: a lot of Arcane characters in there early so Jinks,
Speaker 3: Vy Echo are all in there. It is it Like
Speaker 3: Vinnikin said, it's in a Valorant style closed beta that
Speaker 3: you opt into and they're kind of rolling invites and
Speaker 3: you might even be able to get some drops from
Speaker 3: people that are streaming it or something. But also if
Speaker 3: you were in any of the previous alphas that have
Speaker 3: existed for this game, you are in the closed beta already.
Speaker 3: They just opened it up to everybody who has already
Speaker 3: play tested or previewed this game in some manner, So
Speaker 3: it is. I mean we were talking earlier about Skate
Speaker 3: and how long that's been in development. Two XKO has
Speaker 3: been in development for ages. I've been I've worked at
Speaker 3: several games websites over the course of two xko's development
Speaker 3: life cycle, and it is largely made by a lot
Speaker 3: of fighting game people, a lot of people involved in
Speaker 3: the scene, involved in the fighting game development scene. The
Speaker 3: most like, most well known is probably the folks behind
Speaker 3: Rising Thunder, which was a very approachable fighting game that
Speaker 3: was all about trying to take the concepts of a
Speaker 3: fighting game, your basic street fighter style game, and make
Speaker 3: them easier for people to understand and grasp because you
Speaker 3: take a fighting game anywhere and the first thing people
Speaker 3: start to say is, well, I can't do fireballs and
Speaker 3: I can't do dragon punch motions and things like that,
Speaker 3: and that's totally fair. And so a lot of this
Speaker 3: game is based around the idea of it is a
Speaker 3: two on two tag fighter in which you pick two characters.
Speaker 3: You have one that's out and fighting on the screen
Speaker 3: street fighter style, and you have one that's your back
Speaker 3: character that can come in for assists and can also
Speaker 3: tag out, and there's kind of your basic attack buttons.
Speaker 3: You have a sist button, and then you have special buttons,
Speaker 3: so much like Super Smash Bros. Or other Honestly, a
Speaker 3: lot of fighting games have been doing this recently. I
Speaker 3: think Grand Blue Fantasy Versus did this as well, having
Speaker 3: a dedicated special button. Persona kind of did this with
Speaker 3: having normal attacks and then having Persona attacks. You have
Speaker 3: the ability to instead of having to do dragon punch
Speaker 3: motions or quarter circle forward, quarter circle back type stuff,
Speaker 3: you just do some input of a direction and special
Speaker 3: and that is how you access some of your special abilities,
Speaker 3: like your fireballs, your projectiles, your special moves. And I
Speaker 3: think in that respect it's a really solid interesting game
Speaker 3: to get involved with if you want to learn how
Speaker 3: fighting games work. Because the current batch of fighters in there.
Speaker 3: So one of the big critiques of two XKO right
Speaker 3: now is that the roster is not very big, especially
Speaker 3: for a two on two fighter. I think it is
Speaker 3: ten or eleven characters at the moment, which when you
Speaker 3: start to do the math of how that shrinks down,
Speaker 3: it's not a huge roster compared to games.
Speaker 2: How big it's going to be.
Speaker 3: It's it's it's going to grow, it's it's just going
Speaker 3: to keep going because it's a live service game like
Speaker 3: League of Legends. Yeah. There, there's there's not really a
Speaker 3: theoretical endpoint as far as anyone can tell, until they
Speaker 3: run out of lead characters. You know.
Speaker 4: Also you mentioned Rising Thunder. That is a game that
Speaker 4: I previewed, I think for Game and Former my first
Speaker 4: year at Game and four. Let's go seth Killian. I
Speaker 4: want to say it was Packs West that year, or
Speaker 4: it may have been E three, and like he walked
Speaker 4: me through, I'm like, wow, this is really approachable. And
Speaker 4: then that game never came out because Ryan acquired the
Speaker 4: team basically and they started work on two x KO,
Speaker 4: which I have also played preview events for two x KO.
Speaker 4: I played it at Riot's campus in Santa Monica and
Speaker 4: it has a lot of that same DNA.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's I think the roster that's in there
Speaker 3: right now is kind of interesting. There's a good mix
Speaker 3: of different what you would call archetypes within fighting games.
Speaker 3: You have your zoners, like Jinx is kind of a
Speaker 3: zoner slash trap character who wants to kind of set
Speaker 3: up all these different gadgets and tools and keep you
Speaker 3: controlled from a distance. Whereas you have Blitzkrank, who's the
Speaker 3: newest character. He's a grappler. He's got the Zangie valariat
Speaker 3: that he just walks you down with, and he's got
Speaker 3: if you've played blitz Crank in League of Legends, you
Speaker 3: know he's got the hook and then the uppercut into
Speaker 3: the air, and he can do that into XKO as well.
Speaker 3: He's going to move that grabs you and pulls you closer,
Speaker 3: and then he can uppercut you to do a launcher
Speaker 3: and then put you into a combo. Ari is kind
Speaker 3: of a mid range, a little bit rushed down, but
Speaker 3: also just kind of like tricky, being able to do
Speaker 3: all these sorts of air combos with her Spirit dashes
Speaker 3: and setups with her Spirit flares. They all feel very
Speaker 3: similar to their League of Legends counterparts. I think the
Speaker 3: ways in which they have taken these concepts from of Legends.
Speaker 3: I think one of my favorites is actually Yasuo's wind wall,
Speaker 3: which in League of Legends blocks projectiles. In this game,
Speaker 3: it blocks projectiles, and that's a very straightforward thing. But
Speaker 3: seeing those concepts recontextualize in a fighting game and what
Speaker 3: it means for that design space and that strategy space
Speaker 3: is really really cool, I do. It still feels a
Speaker 3: little rough at parts, especially like super animations, the one
Speaker 3: for Vi, which Vi is also one of the newer
Speaker 3: characters that's in the game, her Level three super was
Speaker 3: kind of getting some jokes about it because she's kind
Speaker 3: of just punching somebody that's off screen and you don't
Speaker 3: really like see stuff involved. It could use a little
Speaker 3: bit more or just panache a little bit more, like
Speaker 3: like jushing up of some of the animations and stuff.
Speaker 3: I think that is happening over time, because I've already
Speaker 3: seen some of those animations get better over time and
Speaker 3: more character be added to these characters over time, so
Speaker 3: I kind of expect that to change as time goes on.
Speaker 3: But I think the one part that you can really
Speaker 3: tell it's still close Beta is a lot of the
Speaker 3: infrastructure around the fighting game. So there's a lobby system
Speaker 3: that's very much like the Arc system Works style lobby
Speaker 3: system of the other Little Avatar and you walk in
Speaker 3: and everybody's playing at stations. You go sit on the
Speaker 3: couch and that's how you ready up and I've never
Speaker 3: really I know some people hate those. I like them.
Speaker 3: I think they're fine. I n't say I love them,
Speaker 3: but they work, they function, they're kind of goofy and fun.
Speaker 3: But there's some menus and some user interfaces and just
Speaker 3: pieces of locking in and playing a game that still
Speaker 3: feel kind of funky and like they're still kind of
Speaker 3: being put together. And I hope that improves because once
Speaker 3: you're in the game and playing, it's a really enjoyable
Speaker 3: fighting game that I think does feel more approachable than
Speaker 3: I would have expected, especially a tag fighter to feel,
Speaker 3: because if you're talking about games that feel approachable, street
Speaker 3: Fighter is kind of middle of the ground. I think
Speaker 3: Street Fighter is easy for people to pick up because
Speaker 3: they've probably played it before, but you can feel a
Speaker 3: like a skilled differential between yourself and a good Street
Speaker 3: Fighter player very fast. This has got me in trouble
Speaker 3: for This got me in hot water, but I'll put
Speaker 3: it on the pod. I think tecans really easy for
Speaker 3: anybody to pick up and play. There there is a
Speaker 3: much higher skill ceiling. I always have to say. Techan
Speaker 3: is also a very difficult game to get very good at,
Speaker 3: and I think the skill differential is much higher there.
Speaker 3: But for somebody to just pick up and play a game,
Speaker 3: Techan and soul Caliber have always been kind of my
Speaker 3: my ones that I go to of if somebody doesn't
Speaker 3: really play fighting games, they're still going to have a
Speaker 3: good time playing it because it's a very.
Speaker 1: I played a lot of soul Caliber growing up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: had a great time. I wasn't playing you know, I
Speaker 1: played techans at our arcades and stuff, but I was
Speaker 1: never any good, but I would agree with soul Caliber
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, yeah, soul Caliber was always like, oh,
Speaker 1: I know, my comments.
Speaker 3: Into Yeah, I had got into hot water because I
Speaker 3: said the normies love techan and I'd stand by that,
Speaker 3: but apparently that's that's.
Speaker 4: A but the experts love techan as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, everybody loves.
Speaker 4: Literally, I walked out of a tech and Aid event
Speaker 4: with Justin Wong, so it's like, you know that the
Speaker 4: the the officionados love it as well.
Speaker 3: Everybody loves Tecan.
Speaker 4: You beat I did not beat Justin Womer?
Speaker 3: Okay, uh so so there's that. And I would say
Speaker 3: on the opposite end of the spectrum, tag fighters have
Speaker 3: a very high level of entry and a very high
Speaker 3: level of skill, where where I think, no matter what,
Speaker 3: you're dealing with so many factors. There's I mean, Dragon
Speaker 3: Ball Fighters I think was maybe the closest we got
Speaker 3: to it feeling a little bit more approachable for new players.
Speaker 3: But Marvel versus capcom is a lot for anybody to handle.
Speaker 3: And you can kind of button mash and have some fun,
Speaker 3: but the second you start playing anybody who kind of
Speaker 3: knows what they're doing, you can get overwhelmed by what
Speaker 3: is happening on the screen.
Speaker 2: If you play someone that knows how to tag reliable, yeah, man,
Speaker 2: you are screwed, which is always I've always found out
Speaker 2: to be the biggest barrier for new people in tags,
Speaker 2: like how do I tag? Like what is the tag button?
Speaker 3: If they're thrown in hyper combos and and they got
Speaker 3: cable ripping a viper beam from across the screen to
Speaker 3: check your your jump and things like that, Like that's
Speaker 3: it's a different world, man. That's you're you're entering into
Speaker 3: the zone, the zone of Tag Fighters, and I I'm
Speaker 3: really impressed by what two XKO does to lower that
Speaker 3: barrier of entry. Now, of course that's going to come
Speaker 3: with some controversy of is it courting casuals too much?
Speaker 3: Is it too casual of a game? I think this
Speaker 3: discussion happens around every single fighting game that has ever
Speaker 3: come out in the history of ever. Is a game
Speaker 3: comes out, it does a few things to try and say, hey,
Speaker 3: let's make it easier for new players to do, as.
Speaker 2: Simpler control scheme that you can choose from, and people, Yes,
Speaker 2: I'm unreasonably upset about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And honestly, like, I love the simple control schemes
Speaker 4: in both Street Fighters six and Tech and eight. I
Speaker 4: think they did a great job of that. And I'm
Speaker 4: somebody who's been playing Street Fighter since street Fighter two
Speaker 4: and Tech and since Tech and three, and it's like, yeah, like,
Speaker 4: I think these are great. I think allowing more people
Speaker 4: to play a game is awesome, Like whether it's like
Speaker 4: if you want to play Persona five on easy, I
Speaker 4: think that's cool because you're still just enjoying a game,
Speaker 4: Like I don't think we need to gatekeep.
Speaker 3: And the interesting thing is, there was a belief that
Speaker 3: was going to change the way that Street Fighter was played,
Speaker 3: and there was I think it was Evo two years ago,
Speaker 3: a Street Fighter six player who used Chunley specifically on
Speaker 3: simple inputs because of the way in which it simplified
Speaker 3: some of the kamba routing there, but broadly it's still
Speaker 3: kind of the same character. I think other things like
Speaker 3: the introduction of hit boxes or leverless fight pads have
Speaker 3: done more to shift the talk about how a fighting
Speaker 3: game is played than any sort of input system on
Speaker 3: the software side. I know this is getting crazy technical.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, but I I always say I wait for
Speaker 3: the tournaments. I wait for when Combo Breaker comes around,
Speaker 3: when EVO comes around, when CEO comes around, I watch
Speaker 3: what players do there because that gives me an idea
Speaker 3: of what is the upper limit, what is the upper
Speaker 3: potential of this game? And sometimes like games do sinker
Speaker 3: swim at that moment, you know, we there have been
Speaker 3: a lot of games that have come out that have
Speaker 3: been pretty solid, interesting fighting games, and then the competitive
Speaker 3: scene doesn't really latch on and they just kind of
Speaker 3: don't really go anywhere. That happens sometimes, but I'm interested
Speaker 3: to see what happens there with two XKO. But I
Speaker 3: think for a casual standpoint, which I do think is
Speaker 3: what Riodte is going for, because you have to keep
Speaker 3: in mind that Riot is not just trying to make
Speaker 3: a fighting game for fighting game players. They absolutely are,
Speaker 3: and they've got a lot of people on staff who
Speaker 3: are doing that. They're also trying to get some Legal
Speaker 3: Legends players in the door. They're trying to get some
Speaker 3: Arcane watchers in the door. They're trying to get people
Speaker 3: who enjoy this IP but don't want to engage with
Speaker 3: it in a mobia to engage with the IP. I
Speaker 3: think it's a smart play from them, and I think
Speaker 3: there's some really good foundational work done here to build
Speaker 3: that up. And yeah, I find it a really really interesting,
Speaker 3: fun game that I've I've run sets and had a
Speaker 3: good time doing it. I need to get back to
Speaker 3: it at some point, but it it's in kind of
Speaker 3: a strange place because of the close beta situation. You
Speaker 3: have to find people like, Okay, are you in the
Speaker 3: close beta. I'm in the close beta. Okay. Let's like,
Speaker 3: you know, meet up, make a lobby, all that kind
Speaker 3: of stuff. But I do find it really interesting, really compelling,
Speaker 3: and they need to add more of my favorite le
Speaker 3: characters so I can play as them, because there's there's
Speaker 3: a few I'd like. Vi VI is really fun. VIB basically, yeah,
Speaker 3: give me chow Goth. I'm going to need I need
Speaker 3: Shavana in there, and I need to be able to
Speaker 3: turn into a dragon for my ultimate that'd be.
Speaker 2: Pretty what's the short little furry teo?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Is he would he? I guess he wouldn't. He's too short?
Speaker 3: Probably right, Like, you can you can do that. You
Speaker 3: got serve Bot in Marvel versus Capcom. You can absolutely
Speaker 3: do ye.
Speaker 2: Make him the serve bot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, making the serve bot so you can just kill
Speaker 3: him in a one touch situation.
Speaker 2: Well, unless you're good excuse me, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean there there are some people good with serve Bot.
Speaker 3: I won't won't discount that, But I Timo. I would
Speaker 3: be surprised if Timo doesn't appear at some point, just
Speaker 3: because there's always the room for some some quote unquote
Speaker 3: joke characters, and I could see them doing some cool
Speaker 3: stuff with him. But I think here's the legends, who's
Speaker 3: the the Dan of leg I don't that's a really
Speaker 3: van aken? Are you thinking of anybody? Off the top
Speaker 3: of your head, like, who's the the the goofy jokes?
Speaker 3: I feel like Shako might be that character. Shako. There's
Speaker 3: there's an old adage about Shako who is a clown
Speaker 3: Prince Jester uh. In League of Legends, Shako, the Shako
Speaker 3: team is always going to feed and flame everybody in
Speaker 3: the chat and do terribly and the Shako on the
Speaker 3: enemy team is going to terrorize you and end the
Speaker 3: game at twenty minutes because that's just the paradigm of Shakos.
Speaker 3: The same with Trenders, the same with Mortekaiser's uh. Mortekaiser
Speaker 3: would be the most insanely toxic character they could add
Speaker 3: to that game.
Speaker 1: There's a cool character in League called nar Nar sick.
Speaker 1: Nar is like a little guy and he has a
Speaker 1: little boomerang. But when he gets enough, when his rage
Speaker 1: meter fills up, he transforms into this giant beast and
Speaker 1: like starts bullying people. But like at the start, his
Speaker 1: first form is just like a little guy with a boomerang.
Speaker 3: He's just a little guy.
Speaker 1: But he let him transform. Then it's like, oh, we're
Speaker 1: in trouble. That could be a cool mechanic. There's a
Speaker 1: guy named Cled who rides a like.
Speaker 3: A chocobo night, essentially Chocobo night.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, uh, this is a cool, cool thing they
Speaker 1: could definitely pull from.
Speaker 4: If you told me all these names were completely made up.
Speaker 4: I would never know.
Speaker 3: Have you what League of Legends media have you engaged
Speaker 3: with Brian Jay.
Speaker 4: Two xko playing for twenty minutes at Riot Headquarters?
Speaker 3: Have you watched hit animated series Arcane yet?
Speaker 4: Because I because I guarantee you that there is too
Speaker 4: much media to consume in the year twenty twenty five
Speaker 4: that I will never catch up to my list of
Speaker 4: stuff that I want to watch.
Speaker 3: Season one of Arcane is worth a watch. I will
Speaker 3: say that season two, jury I feel is still roiling
Speaker 3: on that one. I had a good time watching it,
Speaker 3: but I would not be surprised if most of their
Speaker 3: early editions go that way, just because it was it
Speaker 3: was incredibly popular. I mean, people who don't play a
Speaker 3: League of Legends watched Arcane and fell in love with
Speaker 3: the characters.
Speaker 2: My mom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so imagine we'll get Jase at some point, Jace.
Speaker 3: I think Victor. I would love himer Dinger. I think
Speaker 3: heimer Dinger would be he's got to have the banjo,
Speaker 3: he's got to play a little tune, play a little
Speaker 3: ditty exactly.
Speaker 4: These are all AI generated names I can tell.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'm actually AI generated. What I said at
Speaker 3: the start of the show, what I said one of
Speaker 3: us on this podcast is an AI. I find out
Speaker 3: the whole time is.
Speaker 2: Going to be in there.
Speaker 1: Well, I know, Shay, you have to head out, You've
Speaker 1: got a heart out here in a couple of minutes.
Speaker 1: So we would just want to say thanks for joining
Speaker 1: us this week. Of course, if you want to follow
Speaker 1: Brian online, you can follow him at Brian pch on
Speaker 1: Instagram and Blue Sky and Shay, we'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me and uh I'll see you
Speaker 4: guys hopefully in a new episode very soon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, bye, lea, all right, nobody stopped.
Speaker 1: All righty, welcome back to the Game and Former show.
Speaker 1: We're gonna close it out with Marcus telling us all
Speaker 1: about Hurdlane, which is a cool game. I actually played it,
Speaker 1: I think last year at Packs West, and I think
Speaker 1: it was when they were first showing it off and
Speaker 1: it seems cool at the time, but I haven't really
Speaker 1: kept up with it. Marcus, can you kind of give
Speaker 1: us the rundown on what it is and how far
Speaker 1: you are, what you're thinking all that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well you know it's a tale as old as
Speaker 2: times but a boy and as calicorns. Yes, yes, more
Speaker 2: than one of them. It turns out I.
Speaker 1: Have good memories being on the Calicorn calicorns farm.
Speaker 3: Yeah, home on the range where the deer and the
Speaker 3: calicorn play.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know the ones.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 2: This is a So this is the no game from Ocomotive,
Speaker 2: who was the developer of the what do we call
Speaker 2: it the far series Far Loan Sales and Ye are
Speaker 2: Changing Tides where you were piloting a big, old, complicated
Speaker 2: ship over a desert, which I like those games quite
Speaker 2: a bit. So I was really interested in this because
Speaker 2: this is completely different than those two games. So it's
Speaker 2: it's the setup is strange because it really just kind
Speaker 2: of gets going with little to no context, where you
Speaker 2: play as a boy in a city, which I was
Speaker 2: not expecting just watching all the trailers. You just see
Speaker 2: kind of like, you know, big majestic landscapes.
Speaker 1: For us and then mountains and stuff.
Speaker 2: But it starts in this like dingy city and you
Speaker 2: wake up as this kid in a hoodie and immediately
Speaker 2: you know there's no dialogue. But he finds this like
Speaker 2: a stick and is exploring a city and he finds
Speaker 2: one of these giants sort of like they kind of
Speaker 2: like yax or wilderbeasts, like a weird kind of like
Speaker 2: fantasy take on them and called calicorns. He finds one
Speaker 2: in the city, a media tames it and just starts
Speaker 2: ordering it around, and he makes his way out of
Speaker 2: his city into the big open world, and ostensibly the
Speaker 2: goal is to get not only this calicorn, but other
Speaker 2: caliicorn that you find along the way to the summit
Speaker 2: of a mountain off in the distance. Yeah. It's uh,
Speaker 2: it's it's strange. I don't know, like why, like why
Speaker 2: this kid has taken upon himself to do this.
Speaker 3: It's messed up because he does this and it becomes
Speaker 3: a video game. But I try to tame an animal
Speaker 3: and suddenly I'm banned from the San Diego Zoo and
Speaker 3: I just think that's wrong, you know, Yeah, apparent to
Speaker 3: the animals out, well.
Speaker 2: Did you have a big stick, because that seems to
Speaker 2: be like a symbol of authority, So I think if
Speaker 2: you had the shepherd stick, they'd be like, oh, we
Speaker 2: know what this guy is.
Speaker 3: It is it a big shepherd cane, like what you
Speaker 3: would hook people off a stage with if they're telling
Speaker 3: bad jokes.
Speaker 2: Uh, well, maybe not like a candy cane shape. But
Speaker 2: it is like a a big old stick that shoots.
Speaker 2: It's glowy. He's got a little bit of a glow
Speaker 2: to it.
Speaker 3: The glow does help for establishing authority.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so the game is it's pretty simple so far,
Speaker 2: but it's kind of like it's challenging and it's simplicity,
Speaker 2: I guess. So you're you're finding these calicorn along the way,
Speaker 2: and the way that you guide them, it's very like
Speaker 2: there's a cursor that you're kind of moving, and the
Speaker 2: closest comparison I can think of is maybe Pickman, but
Speaker 2: it's not as precise as Pickman, which is actually one
Speaker 2: of my kind of issues with the games is kind
Speaker 2: of steering these things is is tough because basically, like
Speaker 2: you're it's in front of you, like they tell you,
Speaker 2: like you want to stand behind your herd, and you
Speaker 2: see the curse in front of you, but it moves
Speaker 2: any opposite direction that you are aiming it. So if
Speaker 2: you are aiming left, it's the cursor's going to go right,
Speaker 2: and so is your herd. Does that make sense? It's
Speaker 2: almost like yeah, horizontally inverted a little bit, okay, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and you know, combining that with like swinging the camera
Speaker 2: around so that you kind of keep not only your
Speaker 2: self in view, but kind of the cursor to make
Speaker 2: sure you're not guiding them into hazards because they because
Speaker 2: the caleicorns can get hurt. I don't know if they
Speaker 2: can die. I have not lost one yet. I have
Speaker 2: five currently. But yeah, like it's like a lot of
Speaker 2: the challenge is trying to just kind of keep everyone
Speaker 2: oriented the way you want to go. I'm I'm almost
Speaker 2: embarrassed to even admit how long it took me to
Speaker 2: get the first calicorn out of the little area you
Speaker 2: found them and down an alleyway because of how like
Speaker 2: I just thought like, oh, it's like pickman, like wherever
Speaker 2: I point is, you know where it's going to go.
Speaker 2: But then he was going every which win. I'm like, wait,
Speaker 2: how is this targeting system work exactly?
Speaker 1: It seems like just give it some cup pet tutorial vibes.
Speaker 2: Uh okay o, listen, we can joke about listen the games.
Speaker 2: If this game is on game Pass, you download it
Speaker 2: and you see how hard you see to get that
Speaker 2: first caliicorn out of there.
Speaker 3: Caliicorn Challenge.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and I I have a better handle on
Speaker 2: it now, but I do wish it was maybe more straightforward.
Speaker 2: I don't know if the way to control scheme works
Speaker 2: now really serves anything other than maybe be a little
Speaker 2: more complicated than I think it needs to be. But
Speaker 2: eventually you get you know, you get used to it.
Speaker 2: You can and you can command them to stop. You
Speaker 2: can make them move at like a brisk pace. You
Speaker 2: can have them slow down. You can like along the way,
Speaker 2: you can have them eat this fruit or run through
Speaker 2: these special flowers that basically give them speed boost that
Speaker 2: you can just kind of spam. It almost feels like
Speaker 2: like literally you can collect them to where it feels
Speaker 2: like hitting the Mushroom power up and Mario Kart where
Speaker 2: you're just like, all right, I'm just gonna boom boom boom,
Speaker 2: and they're just like flying, which when you get to
Speaker 2: a big open field in a game, like like you
Speaker 2: know you're gonna go have a good time, and you
Speaker 2: get to a big open segment and there's like flower
Speaker 2: patches in the distance and you're like, oh, we're schmiant
Speaker 2: to just sprint through this, and you're just like flying
Speaker 2: down this majestic hill and the music starts to swell
Speaker 2: and you're like yeah, And also because it's wide open,
Speaker 2: is less difficult to or it's easier to not have
Speaker 2: them running into something. It's I'm I'm enjoying it so far.
Speaker 2: I'm not loving it as much as I did the
Speaker 2: Far games. Again, very different games, but it is there
Speaker 2: is something like relaxing about it once you wrap your
Speaker 2: head around the controls. Like initially I was frustrated with
Speaker 2: it in a way that was disappointing. Was like, oh,
Speaker 2: it seems like something I would be into, but I
Speaker 2: just wish this controlled better. But once I kind of
Speaker 2: got my head around it, I'm it is fun to
Speaker 2: just sort of like explore and just sort of, I
Speaker 2: don't know, just kind of chill out with these these
Speaker 2: weird acts, like you're not really doing anything super crazy,
Speaker 2: like you're like some of the obstacles have been as
Speaker 2: simple as like, oh, there's like this this door that
Speaker 2: I need to find a way to get around, Like
Speaker 2: you can separate yourself from the herd and go exploring
Speaker 2: your own like, which is generally been assemble as like oh,
Speaker 2: I need to climb up this thing and maybe jump
Speaker 2: across this gap and then open this door so that
Speaker 2: they can come through, or I need to push a
Speaker 2: box so I can climb it, or to fill a gap,
Speaker 2: and sometimes the calicorns can help with that because it's
Speaker 2: too heavy for you. Where I'm at in the game,
Speaker 2: which is probably a halfway point, because from what I understand,
Speaker 2: the game isn't very long. I think I've seen people
Speaker 2: say it clocks around like four hours ish, Like I
Speaker 2: have not finished it, but I've gotten to a point
Speaker 2: where they introduced like an actual enemy, Like it was
Speaker 2: like this like hawk, this big old It kind of
Speaker 2: reminded me of the owl from the Oriy games a
Speaker 2: little bit.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You're going through an area where it's kind of stealth,
Speaker 2: where it's like you're in its domain and you're very
Speaker 2: carefully trying to guide your herd and not have it.
Speaker 2: Have any of them knock over these like rock pillars,
Speaker 2: that's gonna alert the owl, and then it's gonna come
Speaker 2: swoop down and start swiping at your herd and they
Speaker 2: can get like bloody and stuff. Again, I have not
Speaker 2: lost anyone yet. I don't know if any of them
Speaker 2: can die. I assume they can, mainly because there's an
Speaker 2: accessibility option to make them invincible if you want.
Speaker 3: Ah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I was like, I assume they can die,
Speaker 2: but so far all five of them are intact.
Speaker 1: Are these are?
Speaker 2: They can name them? When you tame a new one,
Speaker 2: you get the option like a.
Speaker 3: Little don't name them, that's gonna make it worse when
Speaker 3: they die.
Speaker 2: I think you have to name them. So I've named
Speaker 2: all five of mine so far. Just what are the names? Well,
Speaker 2: the first one because he's like, he's like the biggest
Speaker 2: one in the party so far, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: he kindos like a yak and then immediately I was like, well,
Speaker 2: you're gonna be yacko. And then because of that, the
Speaker 2: subsequent two have to be whack and Dot, which it
Speaker 2: worked out sarendipitously because they creased in height as they went,
Speaker 2: So the middle high, the middle tallest is Wacko, and
Speaker 2: the smallest is dot. So I like to think the
Speaker 2: game was accommodating in that sense. My next one kind
Speaker 2: of had like he's like extra shaggy. He had kind
Speaker 2: of like a shaggy dog vibe to him, but he
Speaker 2: kind of made him look older, So I named him Gramps,
Speaker 2: and then there was one after him. His horns were
Speaker 2: twisted in a way. There's no real reasoning for this one.
Speaker 2: Just for whatever reason, I saw his horns and I
Speaker 2: was like, you're a herald. You're gonna be Harold. And
Speaker 2: I think the most recent one I got, I rescued
Speaker 2: he was falling from a cliff and I had just
Speaker 2: gotten there in time and pulled him over the edge.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I could have failed that, if
Speaker 2: he could have just like gone over, because I got
Speaker 2: an achievement for doing it. But I was like, man,
Speaker 2: you almost went over that cliff. You're gonna be Cliffy.
Speaker 3: What No, No, no, you can't like, oh you almost
Speaker 3: got hit by that car.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call you room like I'm gonna call you car.
Speaker 2: I like naming people after their near death experiences. Finds
Speaker 2: like this is your personality, trade is how you always die.
Speaker 1: I always name mine after my animals, and so it's
Speaker 1: probably not a good game to do that with in
Speaker 1: case they do get eaten.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well you can name your favorite ones. You know,
Speaker 2: you can play favorites, especially because you can decorate your calihorns,
Speaker 2: like along the way you can find these ornaments that
Speaker 2: you can hang under horns, and you can put one
Speaker 2: on each horn, or if you really like them, like yacko,
Speaker 2: who I've decided He's like, okay, you're like my pack
Speaker 2: leader because you're the tallest and you're my first, so
Speaker 2: you're gonna get two on your horns. So he's the
Speaker 2: only one that has that is dual rocking these like
Speaker 2: almost like Christmas ornament looking things. One of dot has
Speaker 2: a harness I believe they called it. It's like it
Speaker 2: just covers all over horns and it like like light up,
Speaker 2: so just like little lights. So everyone looks pretty. I
Speaker 2: think everyone has an ornament now. So Mike gets to
Speaker 2: the point where more than one of them are gonna
Speaker 2: have like you know, double horns or double ornaments. But yeah,
Speaker 2: you can decorate them, name them, you can pet them,
Speaker 2: of course. You can stop and give them pets, and
Speaker 2: you can clean them off when they get dirty. There's
Speaker 2: times and you kind of have to plow through shrubs
Speaker 2: and they get branches of them, or if they get hurt,
Speaker 2: they get covered in blood and you can kind of like,
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 1: Is this like a DS game where I'm using my
Speaker 1: stylist to kind of like wipe away the dirt.
Speaker 2: No, you're just holding the white button until meter fills
Speaker 2: and then they're good to go. But they also gonna
Speaker 2: have personality traits like if you can look at your menu,
Speaker 2: some of them don't have anything, but I have two
Speaker 2: that have other like like one of them is affectionate
Speaker 2: and then the other is I forget what it is.
Speaker 2: It's something mischief like a lot. I don't know what
Speaker 2: the exact where to use, but it's basically like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is like the mischievous one. And I haven't seen
Speaker 2: these traits translate into gameplay, Like I was like, Oh,
Speaker 2: it's like, is the mischievous one? Is he gonna like
Speaker 2: wander from the pack a lot? Is he gonna get
Speaker 2: in in trouble or something? And I have something? Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like, what do you It's that gonna mean anything.
Speaker 2: I haven't noticed anything dramatically different about them, so I
Speaker 2: don't know if that's something that comes later or if
Speaker 2: it's even something like like I don't I wonder how
Speaker 2: much petting them matters, like are they gonna play favorites?
Speaker 2: Like can I bond more with some of them than
Speaker 2: the others? I didn't pet them enough. I kind of
Speaker 2: make a habit, not only in this game but in
Speaker 2: other games where you can you have a constant companion,
Speaker 2: they can pet that. I usually pet them after we
Speaker 2: got through like some rough like patch, like, oh that
Speaker 2: was like a rough sequence there, All right, good job, everybody,
Speaker 2: everybody gets a pet. And I don't know, that's just
Speaker 2: I feel bad when I go long links without petting
Speaker 2: a companion. Yeah, yeah, like it feels like, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like if this is my dog, I would pet them,
Speaker 2: you know, regularly.
Speaker 1: I would do the same thing with my fall Up
Speaker 1: four companions, you know, you would pet them.
Speaker 3: Valentine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Mean I would pet him. He's great. Yeah, and he's
Speaker 2: a robot. So I don't know if it's it's not
Speaker 2: as weird right anyways, but yeah, it's it's I said,
Speaker 2: it's not the most complicated game. Like again, the challenge
Speaker 2: is just trying to navigate the weird steering system and
Speaker 2: keep your calicos from running into spikes or off a
Speaker 2: cliffs and stuff like that, and just enjoying the scenery
Speaker 2: along the way. I don't like the story is pretty minimal.
Speaker 2: It seems to just be like, for whatever reason, just
Speaker 2: get to the top of its mountain. Don't know why.
Speaker 2: But it's almost kind of like similar to like, I guess,
Speaker 2: like for loan sales, Like it's kind of almost feels
Speaker 2: like it's more about the journey than what you're trying
Speaker 2: to get to. Yeah, yeah, but I'm enjoying it. It's
Speaker 2: it's like, if nothing else, it's kind of like a
Speaker 2: nice little chill pill game in between the big review
Speaker 2: game I'm currently playing.
Speaker 1: Nice. Well cool. Well, that's hurdling if you were trying
Speaker 1: to remember which game we're talking about, folks.
Speaker 2: I'll give it up the next week on how many
Speaker 2: of my calicorns actually survived.
Speaker 1: The journey, okay, and I hope for all of our
Speaker 1: sakes they are all remaining at that point.
Speaker 3: Will have a terribly somber update.
Speaker 1: I've become very attached guys.
Speaker 2: Bad news guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Cliffy and Yaco are doing okay, take care of them.
Speaker 1: Well that's the show for this week. Everybody, make sure
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