Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Game Informer Show, a weekly
podcast covering the video game industry. Join us every Friday
for a discussion about the latest gaming news, reviews, and
exclusive reveals, alongside Game and Former staff and special guests
from around the industry. I'm one of your hosts, Charles,
and I'm kind of like the Yoshi of this podcast
group because I know all the words to three thousand
and five by Child Shcambino. I am joined today by Marcus,
who's like the Mario of our group.
Speaker 2: I didn't even know if I should do a Mario
impression or a Chris Pratts Mario impression.
Speaker 1: Like do one and we'll guess which it is.
Speaker 2: It's trash.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure's Chris.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure that's what he says in the trailer
it's a thousand when he shows him as painting and
he's just like y yeah.
Speaker 1: And Eric Van Allen, who's kind of like the La
ky To of the Game of the Game of Former
crew because he'd be flying around with that camera.
Speaker 3: I was like, maybe I'm going to get Charlie day Luigi.
Maybe I'm going to get like the oas he does
the pape. Sylvia he's no, but I just get laky too.
Speaker 1: I just.
Speaker 3: In Fantasy Mario World. I'm still working.
Speaker 2: A characteristic. I'm sorry, lak too. Did we not say
lack it two?
Speaker 1: I don't know what we say. It's a word I've
only ever seen written.
Speaker 3: I like laky too. That's fun.
Speaker 1: That's that's my best guess. And finally, our special guest
for today Nicole Carpenter, freelancer extraordinaire, who's kind of like
the Rosalina of the Game of Former Crew because she's
not usually here, but the stars have aligned and she's
finally visiting us this week.
Speaker 4: Wow, that's beautiful.
Speaker 1: How do you feel, are you? Do you like Rosalina?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, And I also would have accepted Toad.
Speaker 1: And your tote impression real quick? Oh no, oh no,
that is that is something today?
Speaker 2: Would you like to do? You like to do? Michael
East Toad?
Speaker 3: I think the discord will automatically noise gate well noises
Not that I know this from experience or anything, but
I do think discord noise gates most of those.
Speaker 1: Hey, ma, well, I really was discorded noisegate at.
Speaker 2: That that was actually that was that was Captain Toad.
Speaker 3: Actually I think that was Marge Simpson walking by. That
was crazy, but.
Speaker 2: Like later seasons March Simpson where her voice is just destroyed. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh well, anyways, but we got a we got a
great show for you today this week. But before we
get into all the specifics, I just want to do
a quick plug for Game Informer dot com slash subscribe,
where you can go to get our latest issue, which
features Invincible on the cover. Invincible versus the game. Uh,
Marcus and Eric, you were you were the duo that went?
Is that correct?
Speaker 3: We were?
Speaker 2: We were. Yeah. I wrote this thing today and we'll.
Speaker 1: Be talking all about it today. If you want to
sign up for future physical issues, go to Gameformer dot
com slash subscribe anywhere in the US. You can also
get a digital subscription at the same place, and we're
on newsstands now in bookstores and other plays like that.
So you go to Barnes and Noble will be there,
and we're also popping up in countries around the world
as always. If you see one there, please let us know,
both because we're excited to be spoted in the wild,
and also we don't know all the stores that we're at,
so we would love to have a tally of knowing
where to point people to go. As always Gameformer dot
Com slash subscribe. Before we jump into our current issue,
we're actually going to do a quick moon walk backwards
into the back issue because Nicole, you wrote a fantastic
feature on the game Love and Deep Space once't you
tell us a little bit about like your relationship to
that game and the formation of this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, so I have been covering Love in Deep
Space for a little bit and playing it for a
little bit longer. But basically it's a I would say
maybe like part visual novel asque like part action game.
And the core premise is that there's these five guys,
five very very adorable, you know, lovable cast of characters
that you can choose a date to date and you
fight alongside them. You know, you're part of this like
crew of deep Space hunters. And you go out and
you try to help, you know, get rid of the
bad guys. Is you know, that's what you always do.
But you get rid of the bad guys. But then
you also come home and you have these five guys.
You have five boyfriends you can choose from and get
to know them. There's like the action part but then
it Love and Deep says recently added a home, like
you know, your own home, so you can also do
stuff like cuddle on the couch with your boyfriend or
like play music with him, or you know, he can
take a shower.
Speaker 2: Why not?
Speaker 3: And you're also there, are you also like present in
the room, like just hagging out like popcorn, Like he just.
Speaker 4: Comes out, so like I don't know if you I
believe this was from this GDC. The Love and Deep
Space people did a presentation and they showed some of
the pictures of the guys, the five boyfriends wearing their
towels after the shower, and it kind of is like
it's like a way to demonstrate how much detail, attention
to detail goes into these characters, because each of them
like wears their towel in a different way, and that
kind of like says something about the character. It's really cool,
like they these developers care a lot about the game.
Speaker 2: How many different ways can you wear a towel?
Speaker 3: I was I was doing this, yeah.
Speaker 2: A three.
Speaker 4: They are large all around the waist too, like so
these are like they're not like, you know, like doing this,
but they're all tied different ways around their waist.
Speaker 1: Huh is the one that's not you said that's largely
and this is not the most important, but this is
pretty important. It's all around the Okay, Okay, if I.
Speaker 4: Do wish one of them just had it like over
their head.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's sweatpants with like the towel wrapped around like
you just got them working out. Yeah, yeah, I see
the vision. So this is I've I've heard this described
not as like necessarily in Atome game, so it's not.
It has elements of dating sim but you are kind
of in a not to cite the deep text, but
you're in like a tenchi moyo situation where you are
like staying at a place and there's a bunch of
different and dudes that are all kind of are they
vying for your character's attention or I don't know if I.
Speaker 4: Would say vying for their character's attention because like you,
you know, they all have their own stories and part
of this, and like there's so there's so much to
this because not only are you like in this like
active storyline, but there are also these alternate reality storylines
and so there's so much variety, Like there's so much
going on that like it's not just this current timeline,
this current reality, so like there's just a lot going on,
and all of these characters play a role into that
main story as well, and so you can play, like,
you know, you can do the romance storyline for it's
getting caught. I won't go into the details of the gotcha,
but like, so the gotcha is a big part of
like what content you can see, so you to get
some of those like alternate storylines, you have to like
roll for the character stories and stuff, and like it's
a that's an oversimplication of it, but like basically, like
you can do what you want to do. You're not
like locked in.
Speaker 3: So I was going to ask that's you know, I've
played some mobile slash gotcha games before, like hon Kai
and Szendless on zero and things like that. It's five
dudes and they're kind of locked in. So I was wondering,
So the gotcha you're rolling for kind of these alternate
reality versions of them or just like variations on them,
but they're kind of like the baseline is these five dudes.
Speaker 4: Yes, the baseline is there's no other like people to
date other than these five guys. Okay, okay, and like
the alternate the alternate reality stuff is like wild, it's wild.
They have some different It's basically got like a theme
and a story each time it happens, which I don't
I don't know how long every update or whatever. And
some of them are like insane.
Speaker 1: What is the what is the rate?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Are we talking like their cavemen in Dinosaur Times here?
Speaker 2: Or is it just like like superheroes?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it basically stays in like the fantasy realm,
but like one since you're like a queen and like
you know, oh, and then in this other instance, the
five guys are like feral werewolfy type guys who are
like locked in ages, and it's it's yeah, like yeah, no,
they're locked in cages and literally like you're they're they're feral?
Speaker 3: Uh huh do they do?
Speaker 1: They can they talk? Yeah?
Speaker 4: No, they can talk. They can talk.
Speaker 2: Are you locked in the cage with them? Are you
in charge of the cage?
Speaker 4: I don't. I don't actually don't know if you're locked
in the cage with them, but I think that they're
basically they're like, are you scared of me?
Speaker 3: M okay okay? So I was going to lead in
to that because I was, like, the the thing with
this game is that obviously is very loved by people
who love this kind of content, super popular. It is
like I feel like it veers into genres that you know,
like romanticy and things like that. Like people want to
see like this this kind of content, specifically having those
encounters and stuff like that, and it has become extremely popular,
as y'all were saying, and that's kind of like a
large part of the piece was about like the popularity
of Love and Deep Space.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's the fandom around Love and Deep Space is
growing in the United States, but it's also huge overseas.
And when I say huge, I mean like almost like
k Poppy sort of huge. Like the people who love
these characters, you know, and everyone has like their favorite
and they sorry the dog. You probably heard that one.
Speaker 1: You heard that one right, barely?
Speaker 4: Okay, cool. Well, so they're like buying billboards to like
celebrate their favorite character's birthday, or they are, you know,
holding events to meet up with each other. Cosplayers are
coming so that they can take pictures with them. Like
it's huge, and these events aren't small, they're they're big events,
like big stuff. It's big stuff.
Speaker 2: Have they Have they even any sense of if they're
going to branch out to like wider multimedia stuff like
like you mentioned kind of cosplayers I assume sort of
performing as them. Have they like did they see themselves
doing like any TV or animated or even movie stuff
like with these with these guys.
Speaker 4: I haven't heard anything on that, but it does seem
like it's a franchise that has so many different storylines
that you can pull from, like they're you know, there's
so many here and so many different worlds that they've
built within like this main world. So it seems like
that is something that is doable and like would be
of interest to people. But I haven't heard anything anything
on that end.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, that's it's fascinating. It almost reminds me vaguely
of like when Infinity Niki started popping off, where at
least for me personally, that was like a series I
like the love nicky stuff I had no familiarity of
prior to playing Infinity Nikki and then learning how massive
like almost like I don't know if you say quietly massive,
just because I haven't heard of it, but like it's
like this, it's a giant thing and then Infinity Nikki
comes down, and it's kind of like kind of like
the glass ceiling, like mainstream kind of moment for it.
I don't any sounds like this game is, like you said,
it's kind of becoming more and more popular in the
West in a way that maybe it hasn't before. And
I assume this is the like Love and d Space,
Like there's no other games in this series. Is it
just this game that has just been around or well, well.
Speaker 4: One, it's nice you brought up Infinity Nikki because it's
the same team they built this game. In fold Games
yep O paper games. They kind of go both in
some some instances. But so Love and Deep Space largely
is this game, but there is like an early one
I can't remember what it's called, but this is like
this is the game.
Speaker 3: Interesting I to that point earlier. It feels like a
lot of gotcha games are starting to reach that point
of not just being a gotcha game and and kind
of orienting towards that. But a lot of them have
started to develop themselves as kind of like a lifestyle brand.
I feel like Infinity Nikki and Love and Deep Space
are two like really prominent examples of that, maybe genschin
As like the third one where they obviously like Gotcha
has kind of been looked at. There's always some new
legislation or somebody like putting scrutiny on Gotcha, rolls, loop boxes,
et cetera. It feels like a lot of mobile games
that have reached a certain level of popularity are now
eyeing like lifestyle brand stuff the same way that like
Pokemon might and things like that. And obviously this is
not going to hit the same massive wide demographic that
Pokemon might, just by nature of some of the shower
based content and all that, but it is it is
really interesting to see these games evolve like that, because,
I mean, this is there was like I've seen images
of people like going to conventions for this stuff and
all that sort of thing like this is I think
a much bigger thing than some people obviously someone like
me would like realize at a time. And it's kind
of cool to see gaming evolve in that way, to
see something become a lifestyle brand in that way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and like regarding the lifestyle brand like this app,
you know it is more than the love and keepsa
based game as well, like this app has stuff like
a period tracker, so you know, oh yeah, so there's
like different sort of functionalities in there. So this is
a it has a pre detracker, and then you know,
your boyfriend is like giving you updates like how you
feel and buddy like what's you know kind of like
sort of you know, it's giving you that helpful information,
but also they're uh, you know, talking to you, comforting
you that sort of thing as well. Like there's different
functionalities in there for people, and it's really really cool,
Like you don't see that, you know. I think there's
probably some like hesitations like would I want to be
putting my health information into like an app like that.
I don't know where they're storing it. I don't know
what they're doing it. I don't know, probably not, but
like that's not a concern for everyone.
Speaker 3: It's I mean, we tell Pikachu when we're sleeping, so
like and that's some more dangerous.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I actually believe that in Love and Deep Space that
there's a functionality where you can like fall asleep with
the men too.
Speaker 1: Like I was going to say, I had no idea
was that that stent of So there's is are there
like like sleep trackers. Is that a part of it?
Is it just like other stuff other like health information
putting in I just I didn't.
Speaker 2: It's like can you can you treat this as like
a fit bit that you can date.
Speaker 4: A little? I don't. I don't know if the sleep
functionality like tracks your sleep. It does have like you know, sounds,
it's got it kind of like helps you fall asleep,
like soothing audio that sort of thing. I don't know
if it tracks how you sleep, but it does have
those sort of healthy features.
Speaker 2: That's interesting that, I mean, the the sort of like
concerns about in putting your health information aside, that is
like pretty cool. It's like you don't, like you mentioned
in your piece, like you don't you just don't see
that with games or even a lot of tech, but
sort of something that is so like women's centric. Ah,
and to kind of have it wrapped around this really
appealing package of just having these virtual kind of like
dream guys sort of like help you with that stuff.
Like in a perfect world, I could see this being
a way to sort of help women that are I
don't know if they're if they have any like health
either concerns or just health trouble, Like if this somehow
helps them keep track of their lifestyle in a way
that maybe they wouldn't otherwise do with any other sort
of like piece of tech. I could see like a
like a neat sort of like benefit from that, assuming
all that stuff is sort of above board whatever they
do with the information you have. But yeah, that's that's fascinating.
Speaker 4: And part of that is that, you know, for this piece,
I did an interview with some of the with the
developers and part and the team is made up of women.
You know. That's also some thing that's very very rare
to see, is that a development team that is you know,
has a lot of women on the team. And so
that's something that I think you can see in the
design of this game and the design of its story
and its characters. It reminded me partly of the quote
from one of the developers on Resident Evil Requiem who
is saying about Hatley on Kennedy and that there was
like so much detail paid even to like the Renkals
in his neck, and that like it's that sort of
like level of detail and care going into all of
these characters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I assumed the good part of his neck not
the disease.
Speaker 4: Part, not the bad part of his neck. I forgot
he has.
Speaker 2: That little.
Speaker 3: Part of it isn't a bad part of Leon Kennedy's.
Speaker 4: This is like a side note. But I did an
interview with the Leon Kennedy voice factor Nick, and on
the call, he did like the the like moaning and
grew that he does unprompted. I was like, oh my god, like.
Speaker 1: He just does that. What was what was the content?
Speaker 4: It was a little prompted. I didn't say do this
for me, but I said I was asking him about
how he feels that, like everyone is hot for Leon
Kennedy right now, and then he was like, yeah, like
people like it. And then he was like he just
he just.
Speaker 3: Offered that up and then he decided to move like
a fifteen pound instrument next to him.
Speaker 2: Was like.
Speaker 4: No, exactly, And it was so good that I had
to like figure out how to embed audio into this
so I could just put the grunty the middle of
the article.
Speaker 3: Give the people what they want.
Speaker 2: He should start doing cameos, just make grunts for people.
Happy birthday, Steve, Happy birthday.
Speaker 3: Having to move on and move this really heavy rock.
Now I'm going to chop some wood over here real quick, Wow,
crush this watermelon?
Speaker 1: Uh well, I kind of all the danger there? Uh wonderful.
Was there anything else about love and de space the
cole you thought was a big enough you wanted to
call out before we move on?
Speaker 4: Oh gosh, I mean I could say that my favorite
guy is Silas.
Speaker 2: Like I was gonna ask, Yeah, I was gonna ask,
like what are there? What are their names and sort
of like their like elevator pitch, what are their personalities?
Like baseline?
Speaker 4: Okay, I'll go their names their Xavier Yeah yeah, yep, Zane,
Raphael Silas and Caleb Eric.
Speaker 2: There's a Raphael for you.
Speaker 3: I hate that. This is the worst running bit we've
ever come up with.
Speaker 1: And can you can you say, like, uh, Xavier the
blank one, like if you were if you were to
give them to narrow them down a little.
Speaker 4: Bit, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, so they have like
oh god, well I can I I honestly only really
note a lot about one of them, and that's Silas.
And he is like his red eyes, he is like
super confident. He's like a little mean, very powerful, and
that's like his elevator pitch. I don't know that much
about the other guys. Honestly, I'm not like, you know,
it's like I got, I got my dude, and.
Speaker 1: Like you're devoted.
Speaker 2: Is he a jerk? He kind of sounds like a jerk.
Speaker 4: Kind of mean, Yeah, I've.
Speaker 3: Heard things about this character, specifically that when you said,
like my favorite stilast, I was like, uh.
Speaker 4: But like he also has a soft side, you know that.
Speaker 3: You of course, of course.
Speaker 4: He's got a little side. But yeah, he like you know, you.
Speaker 2: Know, a little brasive, but you gotta you gotta penetrate the.
Speaker 3: Is he also the one that does the one? So
there was how I learned of this character In the
first was I got like an Instagram reel or something
where it was a cosplayer dresses this character who was
just picking people up at cosplay conventions, because because it
was like his gimme apparently that's the characters like gimmick
is he can pick you up with one arm. And
so this couse player was like it was a video
of him training with like a sandbag doing like one
arm lifts, and then him at the cosplay convention like
just lifting people.
Speaker 4: Because like, yeah, and I actually think that that like
TikTok trend went so much further to than just the
love and Deep Space fandom. Like I saw one arm
pickup challenge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's his thing.
Speaker 1: Sick does what does I'm trying to picture just him
being a little bit mean is very funny me trying
to picture his like putting you to sleep dialogue, You're
not asleep yet?
Speaker 2: Taking forever?
Speaker 3: Why is solid Snake angry that I won't go to sleep?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I don't know what his voice.
Speaker 2: Impression? Is he a grous.
Speaker 1: I'll just keep asking In one of these times you'll
you'll have a perfect impression of one of these characters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're trying to say, like is he a gruff mean?
Is he kind of like a snively like Draco Malfoy
kind of voice?
Speaker 3: To s.
Speaker 4: Like they all have great like like very trigit like
handsome man voice.
Speaker 2: If like they're all very Okay, they're only on Kennedy. Yeah, yeah,
they're only on Okay.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well awesome, Well Love You Space. You can read
about that in our last issue, which why am I Blanking?
On the cover Double seven Double seven First Light. If
you're a subscribing informer, you can check out the digital version.
It also might still be a newsstands right now. Yes,
and also if you are signed in you can see
the article version of that on came from it to.
Speaker 2: Come as well. Yeah, no, fantastic piece by the way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's really a really good article.
Speaker 1: Read it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And also I think next time, kind of like
the way we did the one podcast where you signed
ourselves Ninja Turtles, I think we have to learn more
about the other boys in Love and deep Space, and
we have to which one.
Speaker 1: Fantastic most Like, Yeah, we'll all take like a BuzzFeed quiz,
which which love?
Speaker 4: And also there is a buzz feed quiz for that.
Speaker 1: Oh, there definitely is. Actually, wait, Nicole, you're you're a
BuzzFeed quiz incarnate. Can you just assign us each a boy?
Speaker 4: Oh no, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'll take whoever. I do think Eric. I think Eric
automatically has to get Rafael, though I signed we signed
Eric Rafael the Ninja Turtles, so I assume it's basically
the same cart. So it sounds like Silas is like
the Raphael of the roup, because he's like the the
abrasive meme one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just pulled up Raphael's little profile pages so
I can I can give you guys a little bit
more detail. Let me take a look here. Okay, he's friendly, friendly,
care free, He's oh let's see.
Speaker 2: He is.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, Oh here's the thing. He's like the last
members of this like ancient race.
Speaker 2: Whoa boys?
Speaker 1: Was that? The sentence said?
Speaker 4: It's not boys, it's not just boys. It's like in
the sea, like a sea god sort of thing.
Speaker 2: And that's kind of it. You don't want to be
a clingy seagull.
Speaker 3: I that just sounds like I'm becoming like a Greek god.
Like that sounds like I'm setting myself up for like
a three Yeah.
Speaker 4: Like painting. He's like sensitive, you know, I kind of I.
Speaker 1: Kind of like Raphael's cool. Yeah, I'd fall asleep next
to him. That's kind of my But not the Ninja turtle, No, no,
of course not. Uh well, well, well I also sorry.
The last thing I want to say, I really enjoyed
you kept preferring to them as five guys, which is
the burger restaurant. And every time I was thinking about
the burger restaurant all from working there.
Speaker 2: He just got really hungry reading your piece.
Speaker 1: I got really hunger, Like I can't focus something about cheezburg.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Next second, we're going to talk about, uh, the new
cover story, Invincible Versus. This is a fighting game, Nicole,
you familiar with Invincible?
Speaker 4: Literally not even not even not you knowail.
Speaker 1: A little bit? All right, Well, luckily we have two
Capital E experts here to explain not only why Invincible
is worth your time, but why Invincible Versus is a
big deal. Take it away, boys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Invincible, for those that don't know, it is
a started as a comic series by Robert Kirkman and
Corey Walker. The artist Robert Kirkman also known as the
creator of The Walking Dead, so these are kind of
his two big babies. And you know, the Invincible comic
has been around. Started in two thousand and three, ran
until twenty eighteen. It's a superhero comic about a kind
of like the very brief brief is sort of synopsis
is that it stars Mark Grayson, who is this teenage
hero who is the son of this kind of like
all powerful superman like alien named Omni Man, who's sort
of Earth's protector. And without getting into crazy spoilers, because
if you watch the Amazon Prime series, the first episode
ends in a kind of wild way but essentially things
Mark kind of finds himself betrayed in a certain way,
and but like kind of the crux of the show
is just kind of a coming of age story of
him developing these incredible powers and joining a superhero team
of other teenage heroes and him trying to just figure
out how to be a hero while also juggling a
lot of like very morally gray situations. Like he's he's
kind of learning how to be a hero. He wants
it to do a good or be a good person.
He's very much in the sort of like I don't
want to kill people, but kind of like one of
the things that makes the comic in a show so
good is that he has put in these situations where
his beliefs are challenged on a regular basis, and the
series dives a lot into sort of like how being
a hero and dealing with some really traumatic stuff kind
of affects his psyche and how he sort of like
changes his kind of his viewpoint on what it means
to be the safe for humanity. It's also very much like,
in some ways a parody of the superhero genre, and
in other ways it's it's like a very mature take
on superheroes, especially around the time that it first came out,
where it's like it's like, you know, it's very colorful
in its presentation, but the dialogue is it's very grounded
and realistic. Like the way characters speak to each other,
it's very mature, it's vulgar, and it's also incredibly hyperfire.
Like characters die in the show in like like Mortal
Kombat esque fashion and oftentimes like you'll see characters that
you really like get the absolute just crap kicked out
of them, like Mark himself. Like the name Invincible is
almost like in some ways, it's almost like a joke, we.
Speaker 3: Were making a joke while we were out there on
this cover story. That's like invincible does not mean invulnerable, right,
Like it does not necessarily mean that you can't take damage,
you can't like get hit, and that is a recurring theme.
And like Segus knee into the fighting game aspect of
this is like this is it weirdly feels like a
mixture of fighting game genres because it tries to incorporate
so much of the not just different mechanics of games,
but also the visual language of games that kind of
feel in conversation with Invincible, your Mortal Kombats and obviously
your killer instincts, because a lot of the team comes
from killer instinct and things like that. So it is
kind of interesting to see in that way, like Invincible
ends up feeling like a natural fit for a fighting
game in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that was one of the big things where
like even Robert Kirkman when we interviewed him, he talked
about because he grew up a video game fan and
it's still a gamer to this day, but he grew
up a fighting game fan in particular, and he talked
about how much he loved Street Fighter, but especially how
much he left Mortal Kombat, which he didn't really confirm this,
but like seeing his work in Invincible and maybe even
to some extent, The Walking Dead, it's almost hard not
to think that Mortal Kombat has some sort of like
just ubconscious influence on just the way he depicts graphic violence.
But he was telling us back then that one of
his like bucket list dreams was Invincible video game, but
specifically an Invincible fighting game. So when he started Skybound Entertainment,
which is the company that he's the chairman of, in
the twenty tens kind of like their multimedia strategy was like, hey,
we have these really promising properties. We have The Walking Dead,
we have Invincible. I think these can be bigger than
what they are. And then over time they started working
on like, well, we can turn this into other forms
of media. This could be TV shows, this could be movies,
and then maybe one day this could be video games.
And sort of The Walking Dead kind of became the
first success story for that strategy. You know, they helped
launch that show. Of course it becomes the biggest thing
in the world. And then it also, maybe more crucially
for Invincible verses, it led to the creation of The
Walking Dead video games that Telltale made, and of course
that first season in particular is still celebrated as one
of the best narrative games of all time, and it
spawned so many just video game spinoffs of The Walking
Dead that it kind of it kind of laid the
seed for hey, we can we've we've done this with
The Walking Dead. Maybe now we can go back to
Invincible and see if we can maybe make the fighting
games of our dreams. And then on the other side
of the Cohen you have quota up the developer of
this game. As Eric mentioned, they are formed from the
ashes of Double Helix, which was a team that made
the twenty thirteen Killer Instinct kind of reboot that launched
with the Xbox One, which was a really good fighting game.
Some might even say underappreciated honestly, because it doesn't really
get brought up very often when you're kind of talking
about the best fighting games from that era. You hear
your Street Fighter, hear your Mortal Kombats, you hear like
Dragon Ball Fighters, and then Killer Instinct maye because it
was so early, it tends to get buried a little bit.
Speaker 3: It was platform I will I will pretty much tell
you with a lot of certainty that the reason why
it didn't get like celebrated as much in the community.
Certainly had a fervent following, a really competitive player base
that would show up, that would put on great tournaments
that had great action. They were consistently fun to watch.
But I do think being on Xbox for so long
was a thing. It was at a time when a
lot of PlayStation or a lot of fighting game fans
were playing things on PlayStation specifically most games. PlayStation was
the default, and that has started to shift in the
past few years, but I think that did ultimately effect
it maybe not reaching the widest coverage that it could
have because fighting game fans kind of just they especially
if you're a diehard, you buy the console to play
where the players are, and that is what you do ultimately,
And for a while that was I think the three
sixty was pretty popular for the for Street Feighter four
if I remember correctly, But then with the new generation,
it was all PlayStation from then on.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and it did helped that the Xbox One
just as a whole, did not launch in the rate
of state. Yeah, Like people were not enthused about that console,
regardless of what killers think specifically.
Speaker 3: And Street five was like a PlayStation exclusive for a while.
If I like a PlayStation console, it was I think
it's I think it always was. I don't think it
ever left that platform, they ever moved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but but yeah, So when Double Helix was bought
by Amazon, a few of the key members eventually found
a way to quarter up, which was a Skybounds Like
once they formed Skybyline Games, they formed a first in
house studio because before they were just a publisher. They
published a lot of some pretty good games like Before
Your Eyes, which is one of my favorites. They published
that again, they published Escape Academy, most recently A Good
Night Universe last year. But then they decided, for like
their if they want to do license games for their
two babies, walking Down an Invincible, they wanted to bring
that in house. Because something I thought was interesting I
didn't expect them to talk about, was they were they
felt kind of burned when Telltale shut down suddenly, because
you know, they that studio was like just churning out
these money making Walking Dead games. But then when they
shut down out of nowhere in twenty eighteen. One thing
that I think people forget was that that happened in
the middle of them making the Walking Dead the final season. Yeah,
and it threw that entire game into like disarray of
because I think they had put out maybe one or
two episodes before everything fell apart, So it's like, is
this game gonna be finished? And that kind of sort
of like scared them into being like, you know what,
maybe for our stuff, we need to keep this kind
of close to home. So sort of when the idea
of doing anything when Invincible came up, they were like, well,
we don't want to just we know, we want to
make a fighting game. We don't want to just give
this to any studio or just set up any studio.
We want actual fighting game experts to make this. So
they formed Quarter Up. They brought in several of the
leagues that were at Double Helix, who turns out they
wanted to make this game too, because a lot of
them are Invincible fans just in general. So it's kind
of just this perfect marriage. And so they've been working
on this since. I think they said twenty twenty three
was when they really started production on this game. And
the kind of the pitch is, you know, three v
three Tag Fighter, very much in the vein of Marvel
versus Capcom or like name it Arc System tag Fighter,
whether it's Dragon Ball Fighters or whatnot, with the Invincible license.
And while we were over there, Eric and I got
the fly out to sky Bound. We got to play
probably like a combined ninety minutes of the game, and
I think Eric and I, you know, you and I
are both we both enjoy fighting games quite a bit,
and I think we were both impressed with how much
fun this game is. And again, on one hand, it
shouldn't be that surprising because of the expertise involved. But
I think all so, I don't know, maybe sometimes they're
still at lingering. When you take a license game and
apply it something you're just wonder like, is can is
this gonna be as good as if it was an
original project? And but I will say it's like, again,
it's a fighting game fan, and as someone that I
really love Invincible, like I'm excited for season four to
start next week, this is like hitting all of the
right notes, like the faithfulness that a source material is there,
like in terms of just how the characters portrayed, the
dialogue between them, and also just how referential the move
sets are, like they were. We were talking to the
combat designer and he talked about how pretty much ninety
percent of everyone's moves is some reference to either of
the comics or the show. So if you are a
fan of either of these, you will see things and go, oh,
I remember when that happened, and some of it's like
it's like something that happened once and like a panel
of a comic or like a scene in the show,
and it'll be there. So it's like if you're just
like an eagle eye view or you're just like it's
like a constant broach, which is really cool Easter Rags,
but also just the in terms of the gameplay, like
it feels great to play, like you know, I'll pass
to you for this. But like even one of the
things that impressed I think both of us was just
how easy it is to just pick up and play
in general. Like there's a lot going on, but they've
managed to kind of boil down a lot of seemingly
advanced mechanics into some like really simple inputs.
Speaker 3: It's it's been a rising trend in fighting games, I
think because the damn kind of finally broke. I mean,
for years there had been the Persona four arena had
auto combos and things like that, and people would freak
out and be like, oh my gosh, we're simplifying fighting
games too much. It's it's we're going to lose the
magic and it yeah, yeah, it turns out that you
don't need to freak out. Sure, like a player can
make the Evo top a playing modern controls on Chunlee,
but like ultimately that has not changed strategy of the game,
and a lot of people playing modern controls. Scott Washington
Pools that year, so it's fine, and I think when
it comes to Invincible Versus it definitely has that sort
of universal approach to the language of the fighting of
We have universal launchers, so if an input does something
on one character, it will do it on all those characters.
So if you want to launch somebody in the air,
it's down heavy and that, and then you hold heavy
to follow into the air, and then you can do
an auto combo in the air if you want, or
you can do your own combo and you can try
to link that together. Obviously, you might drop it if
you do it that way, but you could potentially get
more damage if you find interesting links and things like that.
I think in that way, taking inspiration from Marvel Versus
Capcom was maybe one of the smarter things they could
have done, because when I think about fighting games as
a whole, games like Teken or Street Fighter are very tense.
They're very one on one. It's one combatant and you're
playing this very tense back and forth. But Marvel Versus
Capcom has always been the hype machine. It's been the
thing that is there's so much stuff on the screen,
and there's crazy moves and really long combos. It's where
you get lightning loops. It's where you get storm putting
constant barrages on the field. It's where you get sentinel,
just like oppressive offense or Magneto doing crazy stuff doom
dive kicks, like Marvel is the heype machine in the
fighting game scene, and I think a lot of obviously
the people at a quarter up play fighting games, and
they watch fighting games, and they a lot of them
were citing like Marvel is hype. This style of game,
the three on three tag fighter, allows you to make
characters more disposable and more powerful. So now you get
to have these moments of it's okay if one character
can get blown up because you have two more in reserve.
So you didn't like just end the round in an
unsatisfying way. And so the way that translates into invincible
verses is that fits the tone of the show, where
violence is rampant, it's sudden, it's aggressive. People like like
I'll be playing as Cecil and then maybe Monster Girl
tags in whax me around like Hulk did to Loki
in that one Marvel movie, and then that's it. It's
it's done, and and Cecil's toast and I got to
bring in you know, Mark and and Adam and Adam
Eve to to fight this out. Uh, And that's that's cool.
It works, and that means that those characters can be
really powerful to express that power and also express that
that violence from the show. But there's like sprinklings of
of killer instinct in there. There's a surprisingly complex, uh,
give and take on the guard side with those sorts
of like breakaway moments where you can try to hit
somebody and then you can do like a not a perry,
but it's like a power through it, kind of like
a combo breaker, and you can also faint into those,
so you can fake a combo breaker to bait an
enemy out and then get them back with it. And
there's there's a surprising amount, I think, especially for a
tag fighter, of a focus on those very one on
one mechanics that I think really does work and mixes
in some really interesting flavor that you wouldn't get if
this kind of just felt like they did Dragon Ball
Fighters right. And overall, I walked away just thinking about
that game constantly, like in my head, being like like
there was some cecil stuff I wanted to try out.
Still there was some Robot if you couldn't tell, Like
my favorite characters were like Cecil Robot. I really like Bulletproof. Yeah, well,
I mean Bulletproof. He had some like RecA stuff going
on that was really fun. I want to get too
deep into like fighting games, terminology and anything like that,
but he had some cool kind of flow charty combat
that made it seem like you could kind of condition
your opponents to get used to one string of combos
and then flip it on them when you think they
figured out the flow chart. And I love stuff like
that where you literally just played mind games with your opponent.
They're used to like right right left, right, right left,
and now you go right left, left and stuff like that,
and it hits so good. So yeah, if if they
have me on the plane home thinking about that, they've
they've stumbled onto something, they figured something out.
Speaker 2: I think the other thing too, is that the characters
feel distinct from each other, but they also, you know,
they feel true to what the characters are, and maybe
in terms of just making them feel individual, I think
I was most impressed with how they made all the
Veiltmites feel. Yes, Nicole in Invincible the Veltmites are they're
basically are they're basically Kryptonians if they ripped, Yeah, Like
I imagine if all Kryptonians and see we're evil. So
they all have just superman like abilities and are like
the most powerful threat in the in the Invincible universe.
So there's there's four of them represented in a game
between Omni Man, Thula and Nissa and Luken and I
guess technically Invincible himself. So it was like I was
wondering how to make them all feel different because it's like, oh,
in the show there, since they all have the same
abilities of just they can fly and it can punch
really hard, how do you make that this think? But
they found a way to sort of like tap into
like again going back looking at the source material and
finding moments with those characters saying, Oh, Thula, what's cool
about her is that she has a long braid with
a blade at the end, and she uses that, she
incorporates that into her fighting style. Let's just really lean
on that. And she actually became one of my favorite
characters because of just like she's like good zoning because
she can use the blade to like kind of like
a scorpion like throw it at you and gang people
towards you. She can like slice you up really fast
with it. Like there's some like really sick combo stuff
you can do with that braid.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of like visual language was reminding
me both of like go tanks from Dragon Ball Fighters,
but also Rashid from Street Fighter five, like the sort
of whirlwind tornado hits and things like that. But then
also yeah, throwing out the the dagger like like dagger
of hair almost had like a little bit of Milia
from Guilty Gear in there as well, Like there's there's
some really cool just little bits where I don't think
it was intentional to say like, hey, this is what
you know, We're just going to take these characters and
smash them all together. It was more like this, this
style seems appropriate for this character, and we're going to
really lean into some concepts that will make that character saying.
I think my favorite one that they were telling us
about was that Thulah has kind of a a dead
angle attack where you can hit at just the right
angle with the the air spike to really like do
some damage and open up like long combo strings if
you can get that right angle when you're throwing that
hair spike out. Uh and and it makes for really
interesting cast I think you we we talked a lot
about the Viltremites and stuff, but even just some of
the normal quote unquote characters like your your Marx and
your Omni Man's and stuff like that do end up
feeling widely different because of the way that they adapt
those characters and specifically how they fight. Luken, he's the Zonggief, right,
he was gonna say, he's pretty much very grappily He's
he I wanted to make him work so bad because
there's something so hype about a grappler in a fighting game,
Like you watched. You watch somebody go off as like
King or Zangief on somebody, and it's hard to even
be mad. It feels bad to be the person getting
destroyed by a zong Gief, but watching someone get destroyed
by Zogie if you're like, do it again, do it again? Yeah,
it's just Kylo Rinnon at one meme, I I understand
wrestling fans in that moment truly. I'm like, I get
it now, I get it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: Sorry real quick, Kylo Ren In that one meme, can
we is this.
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 3: The more are you talking about?
Speaker 2: The more about the more? Which one were you? Are
you thinking of him with out his shirt off?
Speaker 3: Can you imagine Kylo Wren in those like high waisted shorts,
but he's in like love and deep space.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah, actually yeah, yeah
he should be Yeah, make it happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I need to continue.
Speaker 2: I mean ignites his lightsaber? Is he talking with the
mask anyway? But yeah, yeah, I mean kind of like
it's it's the significant fighting game is like it's as
much fun to play as it is to watch. And
I think this game has a great balance because like
every match because of the number of defensive systems that
you have, the number like the tagging in and out,
and there's so many ways that you can turn the
tide of battle where it just feels like a ping
pong match constantly, like you're seeing like, okay, the tide
shifting this way, now dependent's shifting the other way. Who's
going to get the upper hand, who's going to maintain
the momentum the most? And even with Eric and I
when we were like, you know, we're learning the game
on the spot, so we're far from like high level players.
But I feel like most of our bouts it was
like pretty back and forth, even though Eric beat me
most of them ultimately in the end, but like it
was like a lot of times he had to earn
it a little bit, and there was other times where
he absolutely annihilated me. But you know, who can say,
you know, I'm learning the game. I'm too busy trying
to figure out the systems and stuff. You know, I'm
taking notes and whatever.
Speaker 3: Mental I did show up with a bit of chip
on my shoulder where I was like, this is my
first time covering a fighting game for GI, So I
felt like I had to kind of like establish myself,
like I know what I'm doing. Dominant, yeah, yeah, not
dominant so well, because also this is maybe like inside baseball,
but it's like you kind of show up and you
want to show people that, like I speak the fighting
game language, like let's let's talk about some some frame data,
let's talk about like some some deeper stuff here. And
it does kind of like ease in a little bit.
But also to that point, yeah, there's a lot of
deep stuff to explore this game. There's there's been like
open betas and stuff like that. That that I think
already finding game players have been digging through it. I
think the only reservation I had was when they were
first describing this game teaching us how to play it.
I was like, this is a lot of systems. There's
a lot of things to keep track of, because already
a tag fighter is on the more complex side of
a fighting game, because you have three characters to think about.
You have assists, you have tag tag in and tag out,
you have snap back things like that, where you're kind
of playing these games of who you have out and
who you want out on the opponent side, who you
want to be fighting, what the matchup is, and how
you can push that in your favor, and adding in
a lot of kind of guard breaking, combo breaking type
stuff where you're playing these sorts of intense foot see
games can get a little complex and can overwhelm a
player at first blush And I think for maybe the
first I was looking back at our B role and
I was, you could tell in the first few matches
we're trying to find our footing. And I remember they
told us a few things like, hey, this is kind
of like like this is the main way to do
like a launcher combo. This is like the main way
of like, oh you can do this, and this is
kind of like how you see this, And then they
told us about the feints and things like that where
we could start incorporating kind of switch ups in what
we were doing. And it hit a point where I
felt like I could see everything, like like I was
neo watching the matrix. I was like, I get it now,
and suddenly like it shifts and I was like, okay,
now I'm in geared. Now I'm going and suddenly the
action just starts to take over. And I think that
might be the case here where it seemed a little
intimidating at first, but honestly it flows really well for
anybody who just wants to like pick up the sticks
and match some buttons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fun. And you know, there's other modes in
there that we touched on the cover story. Mainly, the
big one was the story mode that they're still being
very cagey about, but there is like a story like
a cinematic story mode. We actually have a written feature
all about it on the website and a video feature
that will.
Speaker 3: Dat by the time it will be live by this point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we're kind of trying to pick their brains
about it, but it's like kind of what we gleaned
was like, okay, it's like a shorter story mode. They
described it as very much like playing an episode of
the show, and it takes roughly the same amount of
time to get through. It's like an hour ishull no
real idea of what the plot is. Unfortunately, we didn't
get to see the story mode, so he was just
kind of like grilling Mike Rogers, the narrative director. He
was very good at sort of like keeping a lot
of things close to the vest.
Speaker 3: There were some hints specifically, like he did gesture towards
that there's a window in time. Obviously, if you've seen
the show, certain events happen, certain characters and the state
they are in and things like that, you will kind
of see them in the cast of this game the
way they are presented in this game, and you'll be like, oh, okay,
so this is kind of like a rough window of
where this probably falls, and and that that is kind
of they they said they found like their window to
kind of put the story in there and do this
and still kind of get away with not worrying too
much about canonicity and things like that. I would mostly
say that this you know, they're they're big driver was
they wanted it to feel like an episode of the show, right,
and so that's that's kind of the takeaway. I don't
know how that ends up incorporating so many different characters,
especially on the viilt mind side, but I am like
really curious about it now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was also exciting to me at least
maybe specifically is that so Skybound Animation, the studio that
actually makes the show, helped work on the game, specifically
in the cinematics department, kind of going back to how
in house this game is, and they were talking about how,
you know, why they went with the art direction because
if you've seen the cinematics and needing the trailers, it's
got that kind of Spider Verse style kind of like
almost stop motion sort of look, which is not how
the show looks at all, but it's kind of like
a stylistic choice for this game, for the story. But
then they mentioned how they got for the director of
the scenes. They got a South Korean animator slash director
named So I'm gonna if I mispronounce as I apologize,
It's like sung On Kim, who is like really well
known in a lot of like animation circles, because when
I was looking up his credits, I was like, oh
my god, he's like the animation director for all the
animated shows that I like, Like, he was the guy
that directed Jackie Chan Adventures and uh, the Batman if
anyone remembers like that two thousand.
Speaker 1: That was that was? That was my Batman show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that shows, yeah, which won awards for in that
And the one that specifically got me was he's directed
several episodes of The Boone Docks, a lot of ones
that have like really good fight scenes in them, and
so yeah, I was immediately like, oh.
Speaker 2: Same, he did like twenty seven episodes of The Boone Docks.
So he was like, he's pretty much one of the
main guys you can said responsible for like director more show.
Speaker 1: More recent stuff. You opened with Jackie chan Adventures, and
I didn't know if there's something that like within the
last five ten years.
Speaker 2: Nothing that I recognized, okay from yeah, but those are
definitely yeah for my the things that I liked. I
was like, oh, I'm a big fan of all these shows.
That's pretty cool because I remember when we were talking
to Margine as, the head of the Skyline Animation. She
she didn't get it into what he did, but she
was very much like if you're into no in terms
of like if you follow animation, you know this guy,
he's a pretty big deal, and you're like, okay, so
excited to see kind of how that translates to something.
If you watch some of the trailers that they've put
out for like either the character reveals or even the
initial reveal trailer, you do see some scenes from the
story and get a sense of some of the fight scenes.
So it's like, Okay, it seems like it's gonna be
like fun to watch, but yeah, it was a good trip.
Like you know, if you check out the full cover
story in the magazine, we talk about you know, we
go into greater depth about the fighting systems, about the
game's development history, quarter ups sort of like hopes and
dreams for the competitive scene like EVO, and even talk
about Omni Man's appearance in Mortal Kombat one and how
that kind of helped like what Nether Realm did for
that character, because that's technically that characters first time in
a fighting game, so how they kind of like looked
at what a nether Realm did for him and how
to help inform how they approached Omniman in their game.
I thought was a fun little anecdote. But yeah, we
mentioned the issue is not The issue is live now
for digital subscribers. The print version will be coming into
mail at the end of the month as well as
hitting newsstands. If you've seen the magazine, we did a
really cool I don't think we've ever done this specifically
for a Game Informer, Like we've had alternate covers before,
but I don't think we've ever had dual art on
a cover. So if you see here, depending on which
version you get. So we're holding up the subscriber version,
so if you're a subscriber, this is the one you
get in the mail, where the front cover is illustrated
by Corey Walker, who is the co creator of Invincible
and sort of the artist that designed all the characters,
so he created this original piece for the cover, and
then on the backside is the same image, but it's
rendered in the quarter up style, So this was designed
by Quarterups art director Dan Er, so it's a little
closer to the endgame style. But if you go to
stores and buy the new stand version. Be the order
is flipped, so the quarter up version is front. Corey
Walkers is on the back, and.
Speaker 3: The front will have kind of your more magazine styling
on it, if I remember correctly, it'll have some of
like the here's what's in this issue, and it'll look
kind of what you expect like a traditional game informer
to look like where's the subscriber? One is like a
showcase piece, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I definitely want to buy both of them because
they're both cool. But yeah, if you want to, and
we we would love it if you did too. If
you just if you subscribe the game and then also
went out to your bookstore and bought the other one,
that would be a great way.
Speaker 3: If you want to just go to your bookstore and
start buying game informers, we would love that. The sick Yeah,
the coolest person in your friend we need.
Speaker 1: We've seed a few whales that'll just go out the
Barns and nobles and just hoard them. Nicole, I was
going to ask of the two covers of the rendered
game style and the comic style, which which of the
two do you prefer?
Speaker 4: Well, comics, I think I like the stylized, like the
comic book style.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I like.
Speaker 4: I think they're both very lovely, and I do love
that you have both, that they're the exact same image essentially. Yeah,
I like the comic style. I like like really stylized
sort of sort of art.
Speaker 3: I think I do. Like A fun note for those
of you at home is if you look on the
on the front, it's obviously very stylized. I love just
something about this. This look always looks good. But if
you flip around, Elemental in the back actually has a
lot more like elements and like action going on around
her and stuff like that, and it looks pretty sick.
Speaker 1: So and I believe on the the news stand version,
the Elementals fire is overlapping on the Game and Former logo.
It's like a little bit of it.
Speaker 3: Tell we had a lot of fun with the design
of this one.
Speaker 2: In the subscriber verse. I know Kyle Hilliard was a
big fan of this. Omni Man's cape is over the
Game in Former logo, which where yeah, sort of like
an insight baseball thing. Whenever we look at cover art
for for issues, like we're usually trying not to keep
the logo obscure. But there are times where artistically there's
some like cool thing, like when we when people either
have ideas for how to touch the logo or cover
it up in some way. We do tend to like that,
but we always have to consider, like, you know, well
people know what it is. But in the cases where
we do sort of green light it, it usually winds up
pretty cool. And this is when we were like, oh, yeah,
I think we have to keep it like that, Like
I love that. You know, you guys know what you're getting.
And you can call a Cape Informer too if you
want yeah, or just armor yeah, or the hot new
issue of Omer.
Speaker 1: Well awesome. Well that was our cover story again. You
can subscribe now and read that digitally. Otherwise it should
be on you stands and in nailbox soon. All right, now,
we're going to take a quick break and then we're
going to come back and discuss more of Nicole's legendary
reporting about a certain game company that starts with nintend Well,
be right back.
Speaker 2: And we're back.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about Nicole's latest piece. I'll know
it's a big cliffhanger or talking about Nintendo. And so
recently you wrote on Aftermath. It's a great independent game site.
They are suing the US government. What the heck?
Speaker 2: That's us kind of crucially, Charles, You're not the US government.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, I guess I'm kind of like, depending
on who you ask, I'm kind of their boss. I guess,
like I'm I tell them what I don't want them
to do, like collectively, me and the other people with them. People.
That's true anyways, Uh, Nicole tell us about this this story.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, so Nintendo is one of like maybe two
thousand or so companies that are suing the US government
to get refunds on the money that they spent on tariffs,
the tariffs that were implemented last year. Yeah, yeah, it
was last year.
Speaker 1: Right, it was last Yeah.
Speaker 4: I'm like, I've lost all track of.
Speaker 2: Time, Like, yeah, it was like a year ago. Now, yeah, yeah,
it's only a year ago.
Speaker 4: It's both like wild that it's a year ago, but
also it's only a year ago. Anyways. So basically, the
Supreme Court ruled that those tariffs were you know, we
can't do that, and so all these companies are trying
to get a refund. Now, Nintendo is one of those companies.
The lawsuit is pretty basic. They don't say how much
they spent on tariffs, but they are basically being like,
but we deserve a refund, you know, as do any
of these other companies, because the Supreme Court ruling was
a little bit unclear on like what you do to
get the refund at the point where it came out,
so all these lawyers were like, yeah, you're gonna have
to sue, and then all the companies started suing. However,
the government, the Customs and Border Protection are working on
a system I guess that will give refunds so that
lawsuits won't be necessary. That's like in the works. There
was a filing where they were like, I don't know,
like maybe a month they couldn't do the refunds. Now,
they were like, we need like a month to work
this system because this is like I think it was
like one hundred and sixty billion dollars worth of tariffs,
like were tariffs from that time, like the extra tariffs
were collected, and so like that's a lot of money
to figure out how to give back to these companies.
But the system is good because like smaller companies that
were impacted by that, which is like every small company.
They some of them, like you know, they don't have
like a lawyer on hand, like Ninten, like Costco.
Speaker 2: Or FedEx, and some of them just went out of
business because of.
Speaker 4: Yeah right, yeah, so they especially don't have like so
many so many went out of business. Yeah, So it's
very up in the air on like how the process
is going to go, like whether this lawsuit like will
even move forward, because if there's a system, there's like
no point for that lawsuit. But I think one of
the other things that people are talking about in regards
to this with Nintendo and other companies is, you know,
what are they going to do with the refund? Like
what are these companies going to do with the refund?
And largely they're probly just going to keep it, like.
Speaker 2: Because then FedEx came out and said publicly we are
going to pass this back to consumers somehow. I don't know.
I don't know if they've elaborated since they announced it.
I would imagine, not knowing how this works, it'd be
like almost like a class action payout kind of a
thing of like we have your data, we know how
much you paid and what the difference would be from
the tariffs. So we're just going to send you that
amount and like a little check or something. But yeah,
I I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't I've been thinking about that, not a specially.
Speaker 1: What we all do. We all get like an e
shop credit for everyone nso for a year. We already
get a free copy of a Welcome Tour on the switch.
Speaker 2: To, everyone gets a Super Mario Galaxy movie ticket.
Speaker 1: That'd be good.
Speaker 3: That'd be crazy if it's like a little domino like
tariffs are implemented in the US and big domino like
Welcome Toward costs ten dollars now, But I obviously this
is like the tariffs we're hitting. Right around the time
that Switched To was launching, and that was the hugest
story for a long time, was like this is a
major video game launch. There was a lot of speculation
at the time, like what is Nintendo going to move
the launch? Are they going to suddenly increase the price?
Like what are they going to do? And I think
it makes sense that this company is now being like, hey,
we had to launch under this, and now you're saying
like it shouldn't have been this way, Yes we would
like that, and also like it's money on the table
like they're going to pursue it. So, as you noted,
this is a lot of companies are doing this right now.
This is not like an individual. I think, because we're
in a game's bubble, we sometimes go like, oh, Nintendo,
assume the US government. A lot of companies are suing
the US government right now because they're all to get
their money back from that situation. But I do think
with Nintendo, there is especially when they get involved in
the legal realm, an era of like this is notable
because Nintendo doesn't usually walk into legal situations that they
don't feel very confident.
Speaker 2: And Nintendo's the only of the console makers that has
declared like like Sony and Microsoft have not either, even
though they also raised their console prices for the same reasons.
I know they I don't think they ever explicitly said
Mando's terrors, but they pretty much said without saying, and
those messages of like, you know, the current economic environment,
we got to jack this Xbox up a second time.
Speaker 4: I've been looking keeping on it, and I haven't seen
any other game companies specifically. There were some tabletop companies
that sued the government early on for different reasons. Yeah,
but I haven't seen any other like game companies that
filed lawsuits recently against U's government.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, Nintendo set the trend with eighty dollars games,
so they'll set the trend with suing the government. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Wow, Yeah, I was gonna say. Also, yeah, the the
Eric kind of mentioned it, but the idea of Nintendo
getting involved and everything, like, oh oh, they're almost around,
but it's kind of a lot of companies involved. Uh
do you think does it does it feel significant like
Nintendo being the one that's doing it. Does it feel
like a Nintendo thing to you? Or do you think
it's just like a they're they're just the ones that
would jump on the opportunity to get the money back.
Speaker 4: I think that the lawsuit part is like a big
company thing and that I wouldn't be surprised if we
saw I wouldn't be surprised if like Microsoft and Sony
were like considering this as well, now that the refund
system is in the works, like maybe if that's not necessary,
maybe like lawsuits are not necessary. So I think that
maybe that's perhaps why we haven't seen any other game
like big game companies doing this. But I do think
it's significant because like, this is Nintendo and it is
such an iconic brand, and you know, you think of
like cost Co or FedEx and like, yes, those are
part of our everyday lives, but Nintendo is part of
our everyday lives, like as or a lot of people's
everyday lives as like something that's like fun, you know, fun, exciting, bright, colorful, happy.
And it does feel significant to see them suing the
US government. And because one of the things I've had,
you know, monitoring, like the response to this online and
the thing that every person who responded to this story
in the comments or on social media are like, this
is the first time I've ever been on Nintendo's side
on a law superfoork because Nintendo is a litigious company,
famously ruthless in the court.
Speaker 2: Right, yes, but.
Speaker 4: They sue small they sue individuals for you know, ip reasons.
So to see this big, big lawsuit is significant. It
is significant to see people saying like, I'm on Nintendo's side.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was also right around I think it was also
last week where they were the Pokemon company, I want
to say, put up a statement being like, hey, we
don't agree with these memes that are being made by
the White House. Yeah, so I do think there is
like a I can't imagine those things were coordinated, but
it does create an appearance of like, uh, Nintendo's not
happy with US government right now, and as is often
the case, other people are not and they're like, hey, Nintendo,
thanks for sticking up to me or for me.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, the White House is gonna ooh sorry you go.
I was gonna say they're gonna be a Nintendo jail
for some They're not going to be getting zeldaco. Yeah,
they're not gonna get invited to many events. Yeah, yeah, god.
Speaker 1: Yeah, uh well yeah, wild story. I'm glad you're here too,
help us phill us in. And also it's a story
that like, uh, you know, you get a different thing
from reading the headline than you do for reading the
actual story, as is often the case. But it's always
nice to have someone come on and explain for people
that have just seen something like that.
Speaker 4: When I saw it come through, like I monitor like
the legal systems where lawsuits are uploaded, and when I
saw that, I was like.
Speaker 3: What, Yeah, it's it's like a really important piece of
like investigative reporting and all that, which is kind of
like why I was excited to have you on the
show in the first place, because I think a lot
of games reporting sometimes we think of just leaks. We
think of like, oh, it's it's just you got somebody
on the inside to give you the scoop of it,
like GTA six is sit on Mars or whatever, like
like it's a it's there's a lot of video game
reporting that happens in the trenches of just there's filings,
there's loss dudes, there's quarterly reports, and you have to
learn how to read the numbers and understand like sort
of the moves that are happening within those and breaking
them down for people. And I think it's really interesting
because people see that and they're like, oh really, and
then suddenly headlines like Nintendo is suing the US government
comes out and they're like, well, it's like yeah, that's
that's what reporting looks like sometimes, and it's it's really cool.
So yeah, keep it up and go check out Nicole's
work on on your You're on Aftermath a lot, obviously,
you're you're in GI any other places you want to
shout out, any pieces you want to shout out.
Speaker 4: I do have a cool piece. This is a print
media thing. I have a really interesting piece about mountains
and games coming to Trails Magazine, which is a magazine
oh mountaineering, like alpinist things like class and it's about Karen.
It's awesome and valley peaks and why climbing is a
thing in games. Right now, I don't know when that
will come out, Like I just filed the draft and
so it will come out of a future print magazine
thing whatever schedule that's on. But uh yeah, Like it's
really cool to see come to see magazines, you know, websites,
publishers who are interested in video game things who don't
typically cover that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. That's like fun discussion points, you like, best
thing like what are the best mountains and video games?
Speaker 1: That's gotta we gotta do that top five Yeah yeah yeah.
I also want to say you're doing some writing for Mothership,
right yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Mothership is great. So my previate my old my
bosses at Polygon, Zoe and Maddie started Mothership, a feminist
games media games video game site, and it's a really
cool endeavor and I'm so happy that they have been
so successful in like crowdfunding or you know, the subscription
model has been like so exciting and it's working, Like
that's cool, that's amazing. Yeah, yeah, I love Mothership. I
am working on a couple of stories. By the time
this episode probably goes live, this story will be But
I spoke to folks about uh, you know outer Loop,
the or sorry Loop, the Interslos among us folks you know,
released their contract, their like funding contract, and so I
spoke to them and a lawyer to break down, like
what is so uh poignant about a company just being
so transparent about what's in their contract and like it's
really good and how that could impact the industry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna say. I don't know if we've
gotten a chance to uh shout out Mothership on the
podcast yet, but that is definitely define some of beautiful
uh check out for interested more games writing specifically by
women presenting people. Awesome. Well, we're gonna move on now.
We got some reviews up this week. I'm gonna go first.
I'm gonna keep it relatively short because I don't think
everyone here knows about Monster Hunter, and also I don't
have a lot of strong feelings about this game. But
I reviewed Monster Hunter stories three. If you're familiar with
Monster Hunter, it's a game where you play a hunter
and you hunt monsters.
Speaker 3: A lot of would not have would not have elicited that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yokovich did that once in a movie.
Speaker 1: I've heard. I've heard. I heard it was awesome. I
heard everyone love.
Speaker 2: That's what I heard too.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Anyways, Uh, Monster Stories is a spin off where
you play as a character who can tame monsters, and
tamed monsters are known as monsters. I don't know why.
They don't really explain it. M O N S T
I E S for whatever. You like it, okay it
it kind of gives me the ick. I think if
they were cut I would like if the monsters themselves, like,
there's a I have a canine, which is like a
there are palamutes in a rise. They're like, you can
you can tame them in this game. That's a monsty
because that's a little guy. But then when it's like
big bulky gorilla man and I'm like, oh, it's my
little monsty, I'm like, Okay, well.
Speaker 2: I can't believe you're just gatekeeper for what It was
not hot.
Speaker 3: Until I started talking. Firm position is anti monsty.
Speaker 1: That's crazy No anyways, Uh, it's it's an interesting game.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: So it's the core series for Monster Hunter is an
action game, and they're usually these like big, long, drawn
out fights between you and the monster, and it requires
you to like there's a whole core loop of like
you craft the art, resist the elemental type, and you'll
get your weapon, and it's kind of got like a
fighting game title move stets. You're gonna learn all your moves,
You're gonna learn where to hit the monsters.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And a lot of the newer games, you're you're teaming
up with people online to like strategize and be these
real difficult monsters.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: But it's very it's a lot to get into. It's
a lot to learn, and the more recent games have
been a lot better about tutorials and stuff, but it's
a bit of an overwhelming experience of becoming in blind
MONTA Stories takes that and they're like, what if it
was a turn based game where you can kind of
take your time and then you're like collecting these monsters.
So I have a hole of the stables of all
my different breeds of monsters, uh, and they all have
different abilities. And this is the third in that series,
but it has a different visual style, so it's less.
They were kind of like Chibby before. Maybe if everyone
was Chibby, I'd be like, yeah, monsters, but now these
are like feels it's sells shape did, but it also
feels breath of the wild specifically because the main character
has a like champion tunic blue is like the default
costume that.
Speaker 2: Should be a Crayola Crown Champion tunic.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: When I when I saw the trailers for this, the
first thing that left to my mind was how to
Train your Dragon specifically, Like it's the style of we
have fantasy armor and things like that, and it's like
kind of almost maybe more on the live action side
of how to train your Dragon, which is not I'm
sorry is not a compliment, but.
Speaker 2: Is there any point in this game where the main
character holds their hand out to connect to the dragon?
Speaker 3: And is that a thing?
Speaker 2: That's what you do in these movies?
Speaker 3: You're like, never train your dragon.
Speaker 2: The New Jurassic World movies do that too. Were like
all of Chris.
Speaker 3: Pratt, that's usually every monster's like whoa okay an avatar?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: They like hair connect did with the dragons and then
like bonded for life or something, is it?
Speaker 1: Yeah? But it always it always starts with a hand.
It's a very horse girl thing. It's the open palm
to the horses.
Speaker 3: Now, because the next place I was gonna go is
that that's what they do in Tarzan's just what you.
Speaker 2: Do to tame animals for some reason, and then they
do like the hands together. How much Phil Collins is
in this game, that's a great question.
Speaker 1: It would not be out of place. It's not. It's
not the style of music that is in the game.
But if it did start playing, I'd be like, honestly,
I kind of I kind of like I would like
the game if it had like a slightly more rustic edge,
like that.
Speaker 3: Edge Phil Collins, rustic edge Phil Collins.
Speaker 1: A slight it would give the game a more rustic edge.
It would feel a little more like never mind, never mind,
we're most we're reading.
Speaker 3: So out back, Little Domino. Let's talk about monster hunter stories,
Big Domino. We're slandering Phil Collins.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: The this game has a more adult kind of look
to it. I wouldn't say adult, it's just a little
more mature. You're playing as like clearly older characters. You
are the prince or princess of a nation called Azuria,
and you are also a ranger, So you are a
monster rider. You tame monsters, but the rangers are like, uh,
ecologically minded, so they're like not just taming monsters. They're
like going out and they're like, we're gonna care for
the environment. We're gonna get rid of these invasive species,
and we're gonna raise monsters from eggs and release them
back into the wild to like restore the population, which
is always like a vibe in the Monster Hunter games,
but I really appreciate in this game that it's like
it's there's no in in Monster in our wilds. You're like,
we're we're respecting the environment. We do that by killing
monsters all the time, and they always have a good
reason for it. They're like, oh, it's disrupting an ecosystem
or doing that. But it is a weird disconnect between like, well,
if I kill nine more of these big frogs, I
can make new boots and that'll be good for the environment,
whereas in this game it's a little more specific of like, no,
if we have like you need a certain population to
sustain this thing, and then you'll start discovering their eggs
and wild and stuff. The story is kind of fire emblemy.
So you're you're one nation. Uh, there's another nation called Vermail,
and early on you have like a conference between your
monarch and their monarch and then the Princess of Vermail.
I think it's the princess. It's weird. It's kind of
all the government systems are kind of weird in the game.
But she's like, how about this instead of going to war,
I'll volunteer to just stay in your kingdom kind of
as like a what do they call it.
Speaker 2: It's like when you're captured, but like politically captured or yeah,
what is that? Yes, we're loaning him out to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't think award means because like Robin is Batman.
Speaker 3: And I don't think, no, it is ward. You're right,
but it is like used in this way, in a
political man way. Yeah, it is like they have they
have adopted or like traditionally you would marry into the family,
so that way there was like a tie there. It's like, hey,
don't lace each to this castle your kids inside, and
just like in DC comics, it was the keep the
Graysons and the Waynes from fighting.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, Yeah, but all all of those Graysons famously
orphaned Dick Grayson.
Speaker 3: It's not like the Waynes are doing much better.
Speaker 1: Like okay, sorry, I need to actually stop some more.
Speaker 2: Back.
Speaker 1: Toddy knows what it is, so she joins your side,
and it's kind of a there's a big there's a
thing called the encroachment, which is basically this big creeping
like crystal effect that is giving people this like deadly
disease crystalysis. It's making the monsters go crazy, and your
nations need to unite to basically figure out what the
issue is and go solve it. And that's kind of
the core plot of the game. My general vibe on
the game is that, like, it does everything totally fine.
I think the story is engaging enough that I wasn't
like bored by it, but I wouldn't say there was
enough like big plot twists that I was like, whoa,
this is a groundbreaking story. The combat I enjoyed. It's
you and one of your monsters. You fight side by side,
you fight monsters, monster versus monsters, and there's elemental advantages
your weapons. You'll hit different parts of the monster's body
to do stuff. And then there's also it has like
a kind of type circle thing, so there's technical tax
speed attacks, and power attacks, and the only reason I
could keep track of them is because they're color coded,
like firewater and grass in Pokemon. So if someone's gonna
attack you with a power attack, that's red, so you
have to use the blue attack and you'll do a
head to head and then you'll win. And I yeah,
I'm very glad they're color coded like that, because I
would have I would have never remembered if it wasn't
firewater Grass.
Speaker 3: I wonder if that was intentional in a way that
they were like, well, we should probably color code these
so that way people just cast media recognition.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, uh. It is kind of a fun
little game. I don't think it was a groundbreaking I
saw someone refer to this as like an early Game
of the Year contender. I just don't. I don't think
it left enough of an impression on me to feel
that strongly about it. But it took me like sixty
houts to get through, and there was plenty of sidecon.
I didn't side content. I didn't do so if you're
wanting like a big RPG. I think if you're a
Monster Hunter fan and you're specifically like excited to see
like you know, your Rathelos again, or there's some monsters
in this game that I recognize hero Monster on a
Wild so that I think are new to that game
that are now in this game. And that's fun. So
there's your new monsters in this new style. But yeah,
I don't think it's like a must play by any means.
But I didn't have a terrible time with it, and
that's that's my verdict.
Speaker 4: So you said that this was an adult this was
an adult game. Can you shower with any of the
characters that are.
Speaker 2: In the like f.
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So uh no, Well you can kind of change your
ally's clothes a little bit. But I think it's because
they gave me like the deluxe version when they I
got like my review code, I I will say, it's
not Uh the men aren't the ones that seem like
they're only wearing towels. If you want to see skin,
definitely more of the alternate female character's skins. What it
is always one of those things where I'm like, like,
I the alternate skin for this guy Gowl, He's like,
you know, scary guy, he's got like alternate dark colored skins.
I'm like, that's cool. Like what about eleanor can she
have like some cool arts in armor? And like all
the options are like two piece armor, where I'm like
what I don't I don't know why we went to
the two piece immediately, and I don't mind that that exists.
I just wanted like some cool other options and instead
it's just like nope, you get anyways. Uh No, it's
not there there. I would say there are probably some
hot guys here if you're like into anime kind of style, but.
Speaker 3: Or the monsters, I'm still saying, or the monsters, the monstie.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, thank you, yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 3: I assume you've got wraths. We've got uh Narga Kuga,
We've got uh the Gaya Chris, We've got.
Speaker 2: Like some of the classes and Capcom should do a
visual novel dating sim but they turn all the monsters
into people, so like Howards don't represents into people like
you know what would look like as a hot guy
where he's like.
Speaker 3: This podcast don't monsers in the.
Speaker 2: People have com If you want some free money?
Speaker 1: What is that called this. There's a word for that, right,
the Japanese.
Speaker 2: When you turn like an animal, I don't know, I
want to be Japanese word.
Speaker 3: And I was so like making a mental note to
like cut this if you say one of multiple words.
Speaker 1: All right, I am absolutely incorrect Japanese words.
Speaker 4: When they turned poke, I'm on, it's a human like humanoid.
But I'm all for this. I don't know what these
monsters look like, but I think they should turn into humans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that chicken from Wild that the one that you
ride around, What would that look like as a hot guy?
Speaker 1: I want to say gadjinka no one, no recognition. I
looked it up and that exists. Now. The second length
that came up is Kadjinka wiki fur the Furry Encyclopedia, which.
Speaker 3: Makes me feel like I'm going in the right direction.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, I mean all every monster has
an armor set and you put it on, so that
is kind of like, oh, I guess on that note,
my one pet peeve about this game, not one pet
eric so hard not to lose my mind. I'm pivoting slightly.
I mean my character this game lets you put in
put on glasses in the character creator, which I love
because that's to me, that's like my main facial defining
characteristic is like if I have glasses, then I can
identify as that character.
Speaker 3: Are you a are you a self insert character? Your
creator like, do you make characters that look like you?
Speaker 1: Do I generally speaking or in this game generally speak
generally because I can't. I never get there's never a
hair texture that's close enough to mine. And it's usually
like if if you're doing any facial hair, I feel
like I have a hard time getting this combo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel yeah.
Speaker 1: This game, though, I was like, I was like, oh,
I can put on glasses and I can have like
a little beerd There's no mustache, but it was like
close enough that I was like, yeah, okay that this
guy kind of looks like Charles. I remember, like Dragon's
Dogma two, you have to get like so far in
the game to even find the glasses option. And I
was always like, anyways, but my character was clearly a
black guy, no, no debate about that. Both my parents
were white, and it wasn't really addressed. And I don't
I don't know if it's like just the genes of
the world. It's just like I don't know, And there
was a thing where at one point the king like
puts me in charge of some you know, military thing,
and someone's like, Oh, why are you so nervous to
be in charge of it? And the guy's like, Oh,
he's worried that everyone's going to look at him and
think of his mother, the trader who betrayed the kingdom.
And I was just like, I don't think anyone looks
at me so and told looked like the trader exactly,
And I was like, what did she cheat on the
king with a black guy? And that's why I look
like this? So that's why I'm the trader.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: And then also my hair.
Speaker 2: I can say so many things and I won't.
Speaker 3: As a as a kid this podcast on the Rail.
Speaker 1: It's like a kid model and no matter what your
adult form looks like, the kid model has like a
bowl cut. So I was just here, like, my I
have clearly curly hair on this black character. I don't
know how we went from bowl cut at age seven
to like tight afro at age I think it was.
Speaker 2: The trauma of losing your mom that made your hair.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can ask another, ask another question about this.
This segment that was only supposed to be like five
minutes trying to more things. So you have you have glasses?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Does anyone else in the story have glasses?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Because because everything you have said so far implies to
me like a high fantasy fire emblem kingdom type thing.
And all I can think is where did you get
the glasses from?
Speaker 2: Like that the lenses?
Speaker 3: Like is Merlin running an optometry shop like down the street?
Like is he how's he cutting the glass and making
the frames? Like what's he doing?
Speaker 1: There is a guy that has goggles, but those aren't glass,
that's not glasses.
Speaker 2: The glasses are probably crafted from monsters too, like everything
else in that world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm trying to think of the the I'm trying
to think of like the limits of the technology in
this game, because there's like sand chips, that's a thing.
Speaker 3: So they have machinery, they have, you know, the the
ability to produce.
Speaker 1: Lookout points. So there is like binoculars, so they do
have some kind of like lens making stuff in that sense.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I don't think there's any other last first classes.
Speaker 4: Made home in the glasses factory exactly.
Speaker 1: Sand Monster, the heat Monster.
Speaker 3: Okay, you know what it turns out like the first
glasses were made in like Italy and like the thirteenth
century or something, So we're probably fine in terms of
technological business.
Speaker 1: As a prince, I'm the only person that could afford.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's messed up.
Speaker 2: It's actually instead of a crown, you get glasses and
it's the sign of royalty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a thing to see in the D and D.
In the player's handbook, which is also like you know,
high fantasy medieval stuff. There's like prices for all these
like regular items, and it's like one gold piece, two
gold piece, a potion of healings like fifty gold pieces.
A gold piece is like ten dollars. Also like a
postion of healings like five hundred dollars, Like whoa, by far,
I don't think anything goes over Like two or three
hundred gold pieces. A thousand gold pieces is a spyglass.
They're like, we gotta be realistic here. That's really hard
to make with a technology that we have. It's gonna
be way more expensive everything else.
Speaker 2: Can you not just do?
Speaker 3: Like Wizard Lasick? Like is that not a thing in
D and D?
Speaker 2: A Wizard Lasick? I don't know, Like you can't just
have like a magic spell that's just like prepare your
eyes poof.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, well I kind of like the idea that
he's like above you with the wand and he's kind
of like.
Speaker 2: Shooting into your eyes precise even though it's magic.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, no, Cale's doing it.
Speaker 4: Oh, it's just my magic. I use this to fix
people's eyes.
Speaker 3: Would have been it would have been nice to have that,
like a year and a half ago.
Speaker 4: I haven't done it to myself clearly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you don't trust it that much, Marcus. What's
it like to be able to see? Well, I do
wear contacts, so oh okay, okay, never mind, I'm in
the same boat but cooler.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you'll be there.
Speaker 3: You'll be there for a while.
Speaker 1: The other the other games all have contact lenses, which
is why you don't see.
Speaker 2: The glasses exactly. They figure that out.
Speaker 1: Anyways. If you want more detailed thoughts on all starting
the stories three, or you know, more concrete things about anything,
I want, I don't talk about race or glasses at
all on that piece, just really really more of a
supplementary discussion to that. But you can see that that's
live on the site, right now I get a game
a seven point five out of ten, I think that
people it's always the worst way to end of review.
So I didn't write this in the text, but it's
always a thing of like, if you like Monster Hunter
and you like the other Mashrner stories game, they'll probably
have a fine time with this, but it's not It
shouldn't be your introduction to turn based role playing games, right, yeah? Cool? Well,
speaking of reviews, Marcus, you after doing a cool preview
trip to go visit the studio or just talk to
people that made the game?
Speaker 2: Quarters, what a what a manufacturer? The wrestling that's where
wrestling comes from.
Speaker 1: There you go fast produced. You are now done with
your review, presumably by the time this goes up of
w W two K twenty six. How does it shape
up against the past entries?
Speaker 2: Should I give Eric a heart attack and play another
wrestling thing song to transition into the next segment? Yeah,
John Cena, what do you want.
Speaker 4: There?
Speaker 2: It is? It's like covered it. Wow? You know the
okay lyrics? Okay, and expect that.
Speaker 4: One day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this game unfortunately, it's it's funny how much our
reviews are kind of parallel charts because I At the
time of writing, I have not scored the game, but
I have largely finished my review. It'll be up by
the time you're listening to this, though. But where I'm
hovering at right now is around like a seven point five.
Uh so the same score I like wrestling. I generally
enjoyed the two K games. Even though there's a lot
of criticism I have with them, I do still find
fun with them. I you know this, I know some
people don't like the same aspect of it, and then
I get it, but I do have This is my
probably my least favorite since they came back. So a
lot of the same modes are there. And again, like
you said, Charles, is hard to not just say like, hey,
if you like those other games, so probably like this one.
But that's even harder for like an annual franchise, like
annual sports games. You're like, yeah, they did the thing again,
what do you want? So yeah, it's like all the
modes are there. You know, they add a few new
match types that are generally fine, but they're not like,
at least to me, they're not going to like blow
your socks off, but they're like nice to have just
the join the collection of them. I will say the
big thing kind of with in terms of new stuff
is like the Ringside Pass, which is their first four
way into introducing a battle pass. So traditionally in these games,
they're sort of like monetization strategy has been to release
these post launch DLC packs or like hey, here's a
pack with a few wrestlers and some cosmetics and other things,
and you can buy those ala carte, or if you
buy either of the like two or three special editions,
you'll just have like instant access to it. And those
packs dropped throughout the year. On one hand, and when
you kind of like like look at those two, there's
not much different because they're still paying extra money for
post content, which is like not new in games. And
I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with it. And
even with this battle Pass from what I've you know,
played from it, I I I think if you if
you have like a strong feelings about battle passes either way,
I think you kind of know where we are stand
with this game. Regardless of what this game does. I
will say, to their credit, what I do like about
there is is one none of the rewards expire, so
there's no like none of that toxic fomo of like
I need to log in now because yeah, you know,
Booker T is gonna disappear in two days. They don't
do that. Everything is always there all the time, So
I do like that, and I do think like there's
been some updates during the review here, it would have
kind of tweaked the sort of like progression of like
how long it takes, but even before the tweaks, And
maybe I'm saying and I'm coming to this with a
little bit of a I don't know, naivete. I don't
know if that's the word I want to use. But
I don't play multiplayer games generally. It's not really my thing.
So I don't really deal with battle passes just in
my daily life, like and even the ones when I
do log into them, I never buy anycause I don't
play enough to be like to feel enticed to pay
for a premium tier, like usually the free tier is
about as much engagement as I'm going to put into
the game probably anyway. So I'm I'm generally pretty neutral
on battle passing. I've never had a reason to hate
them or love them either way. I guess I will
say for this game once. I do think there's some
negative sort of like side effects that affect the other
modes because of the ringside pass being present. I think
mainly My Rise, which is like the story driven mode.
So My Rise, it's usually like two campaigns. You create
your own male or female wrestler, or in this game,
as they like to call them, wrestlings.
Speaker 5: But right, you can't do that in a review. You
can't just lie about the game.
Speaker 1: And then say if they were actually.
Speaker 2: Called like I, I mean, I guess you could call
that if you want. But but in the previous games
it was the same structure. Like you play, it's like
a original storyline. You're talking to wrestlers that are voiced
by the actual wrestlers, and you're like hanging out backstage,
and usually those initiate matches in the ring, and then
cinematics moments happened, like cutscenes, and it's choice driven, so
depending on how you respond, you can make yourself a
good guy wrestler or a bad guy wrestler. And generally
they're like always corny and cheesy and dumb, but also
wrestling can be corny and cheesy and dumb, so it
kind of lines up and it's if you enjoy like
dumb fun then I still get a kick out of them,
even while acknowledging how silly the stories are. But in
this case they change the structure where now instead of
just playing kind of like constant story moments in between
the big story milestones, you now have to play a
bunch of random matches in a row to fill up
a star quota. Because every time in the game, when
you complete a match, you get a star rating, which
is sort of like a real life thing from like
wrestling journalists or critics that will assign star ratings to
matches like, oh, that was a five star match. They
kind of have that built into the game. That's been
a thing for like ever, but now they're using it
in My Rise, where if you like, you have to
wrestle a bunch of matches and then if you want
to unlock the next story thing, you have to have
twelve stars across how many ever matches, So they're like, oh,
I wrestled this guy that was a two star match,
so I need ten more stars across how many of
her matches that get to the next thing. And it
sucks it is it creates such a grind now to
get to the next like plot milestone, and none of
these matches are really related to what you're doing. And
a lot of times the pool is very shallow where
it'll be like like you can decline matches and then
they'll just match you up with somebody else. But there
are multiple times, right decline, like three times in a row,
and it was the same guy like just popped up
and you're like, oh, it's the Miz, and like, well,
I already wrestled the Miz. I would like to fight
someone else, Like well, it's gonna be the Miss again,
and like is there anyone else around that isn't the Miss?
Speaker 1: And it's like, I guess, Miss, can you describe the Miz?
Speaker 2: Did you ever? I had Charles, you might you might
be young, and Nicole, I don't know how old you are,
But are you guys familiar with the real world.
Speaker 4: That's the only reason I know the mis?
Speaker 2: Okay, So he came from the real world and famously
created the Miss persona there and he said he wanted
to be a wrestler on the show and then he
actually did it, and he has been in w since
two thousand and six, and is he came in as like, oh,
he's the reality show guy. It's a wrestler, what a
you know? He thinks he's hot stuff. And he has
evolved that character in different ways, especially when he got
into acting he became more of a Hollywood character. But
basically he's this like kind of like smarmye, kind of
like cowardly villain who has somehow like who basically in
real life has outlasted and overachieved given where he came from,
Like every wrestling veteran thought he'd be gone within a year,
and he has outlasted everyone. And he has had a
genuine Hall of Fame caliber career. So it's to his credit.
He's a very good talent.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, had gone because I think as that like
kind of like he's a reality like what is he?
Speaker 2: He's a wild mouth guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I didn't realize he had such a successful wrestling career.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was one of the guys at the time
and he came in. I was like, I hated him.
I thought he was grading and then I was very
much like he didn't come from real wrestling. He'll be gone,
he won't make it six months. And then fast forward
twenty years later and he's won like every championship and
main event at WrestleMania, and he deserves all the flowers
that he's now.
Speaker 3: Getting, and you still don't want to wrestle him.
Speaker 2: But no, I don't want to wrestle him three times
in a row. In my eyes, don't want to. Don't
like Matt much. So yeah, and I don't notice for sure,
but I suspect the reason that they change the structure
is because of the Ringside Pass, because you earn experience
points in the Ringside Pass for doing pretty much anything
to gain, like engaging with any mode, but you get
more points for winning matches, So I think they wanted
you to use my Rise as a way to gain
experience to fuel the Battle Pass. So it's like, if
we give you a bunch of random matches that you're
probably going to win, this will make you unlock more rewards,
which on one hand is kind of admirable of like, oh,
you're giving me more ways to unlock your rewards, but
also you're doing it in a way that sucks, and
it just completely derails the pacing of this usually pretty
brisk and like to the point story mode. And I
almost wonder IF's like I'm not insane because I don't
always retain these story modes each year because they're not
memorable generally. But I even fired up. I usually fire
up the previous year's games when I'm doing a review
of the new one, just to compare things, because sometimes
there's so similar to at their mind myself like was
this in the last your game? And so I actually
fired up two K twenty five's My Rise just to
remind myself of how quickly it moves. I remember liking
it last year, and I played a few of the
story matches and I was like, yeah, it's just moment
the moment, just next thing, Like there's really no downtime,
Like there's optional side quest that you can do to
gain experience to pump up your character, but otherwise you're
free to just go through it and none of that's here.
And so it's my least favorite My Rise in a while.
The other big thing is the Showcase mode, which is
sort of like it's always it's like a playable documentary
more or less. I usually centers on the cover star,
so this year it's CM Punk and it's like half
of a historical sort of retrospective where he's you know,
They've shot all these vignettes with him where he's introducing
each match and he's like, yeah, I wrestled this guy
in two thousand and eight at SummerSlam. Man, what a
crazy match. Let's let's play that. And then the other
half is just like what IFFs because for Punk he left.
He walked out on w B in twenty fourteen and
didn't come back until twenty twenty three, so there's like
that ten year gap where he's like, well, what if
I stayed, who could I have wrestled? And that stuff
is also hit and miss because for the historical half,
it's really only focused largely on like one year, which
is like twenty thirteen to twenty fourteen, so like the
last year of his first run, and I think if
you're a Punk fan you want it's much of like
a wide breath because he came into W and six,
so yeah, like a long run in his first time.
And Grant I am ignoring the matches that they can't
do because certain opponents wrestle in other companies that he's like, Okay,
well we can't do Christiericho because he signed with AW
and him and Christierigo had a big feud. We can't
do Jeff Hardy because Jeff Hardy's in TNA, even though
they have a working relationship with TNA, and I think
they just announced the Hardy's are going to be DLC,
so maybe no, I don't know what the excuses with
that one. Maybe, But anyways, those are fine. That happens
every year with Showcase. But even still, there's just so
much of his career that is either touched on in
the little videos or just isn't really mentioned. So like,
if you wanted the ECW run of cmpunk get to
play any of that. If you wanted the straight edge
society era of punk, which is one of my favorite
eras of punk, you don't get to play any of
that stuff. Even maybe the biggest omission if it is
Money in the Bank twenty eleven, famously one of his
most famous matches, maybe his most famous match where he
beat Johnston famously guys short story, Punk was Gonna leave
WWA in twenty eleven challenged kind of promo that we
call the pipe prom promo. He basically broke the fourth
wall and criticized ww's creative, criticized Vince McMahon on live television,
and it's kind of the thing that propelled him to
superstart him because everyone's like, he's just say some wild
stuff right now on TV. And then was going to
walk out on w AT Money in the Bank twenty eleven,
a pay per view that was in Chicago, which is
his hometown, so everyone's one hundred percent behind him. He's
fighting Johnson of the biggest baby face. He was getting
booed out of the building and he threatened like, Hey,
if I win this title, I'm going to leave the
company with the title. I'm going to walk out with
this and you're gonna not have a champion and one wow.
And then he came back anyway a few weeks later,
but it was a huge thing at the time.
Speaker 1: He didn't.
Speaker 4: Out of it.
Speaker 3: That zegues into something I was going to ask about
this was just like I don't even know wrestling super well,
but I know that CM Punk for years was kind
of that person who was speaking out about things, was
going on podcasts and talking about things that were happening
in the WWE. Like he has been a vocal person
about like the way that company conducts business. And I wonder, like,
how much of that do you feel like this is
still a WWE branded game, and in the same way
that like Madden doesn't really touch on a lot of
the bad stuff that happens in football, Like is the
WWE game avoiding a lot of the stuff that would
paint them in a bad light.
Speaker 2: Well, no, because they had money in a bank, Like
the company worked with him on that storyline, Like he
didn't just go out there with my phone and say
what they wanted, Like they knew he was going to
do that. They just let him do it because Vince McMahon,
for better or worse, he'll do whatever it takes to
sell tickets. So even if it's him going out there
and punk literally saying that this company will be better
off once he's dead, Vice was okay with that because
he's a businessman. So it's you know, we're kidding into
sort of like the more wilder real life sort of
like psychology of wrestling, of yeah, go out there and
say terrible things about me, I don't mind because we're
trying to sell tickets, or yeah, go disparage the company.
It's okay.
Speaker 3: Well, what I'm saying is like not to like pull
the veil back, but there's like a degree of kfabe
where it's like, Oh, this this guy sucks and I'm
willing to beat him. And then it's like that's part
of the act, that's part of putting on the show.
And and obviously, like as social media is proliferated, those
personas have had to expand or or like reality shows
have had to encompass broader parts of their life than
just when they're on the quote unquote stage when in
like the Squared Circle and all that, so like they
have had to be larger than life. And but with
with Punk there was like very specific, like he was
like the infamous moment where he was on like was
it tranquilizers or something that that they were like do
you not remember the the pooped his briches story, because
this is the one I always think of with CM
Punk specifically, I think I.
Speaker 2: Do remember him mentioning in a podcast that he craped
himself in a ring, which is actually a pretty common thing.
Like a lot of wrestler be like, yeah, I took
a I took a fall so hard, I got slams
so hard that I pooped my pants in a ring
a little bit.
Speaker 3: There's there's a there's a podcast episode talking about this,
but it was it was happening around the time that
a lot of people were coming out about like the
health ramifications of being a wrestler, and like how a
lot of wrestlers were having to put up go fundmes
to support themselves because of longstanding things that happened to
them because of wrestling. And so that's what I'm saying
is like, does it feel like there's a glossing over
of that or does it more just feel like W's
is putting on a vision of seem punk that is
maybe their vision, but not the vision that fans would
want of CM punk.
Speaker 2: No, because they've the real reason I think this match
is an end because they talk about Money in the
Bank twenty eleven all the time. They didn't when he
was gone for ten years because he was persona non
grata in general when he was gone, so they just
did not talk about him. But even when he was
there the first time, and since he's come back, they'll
be like, yeah, it's went to Bank twenty eleven, one
of his greatest matches. But I think the real reason
it's not there is because Vince McMahon is involved in
that match, and Vince McMahon is currently persona non grata
and wuy for horrific reasons that you can look up
on your own, but like, he is involved in the
finish of that match because he in storyline, he tries
to stop Punk from winning and fails. So like, when
I think about, like, how do you recreate that match
without the vins running, I guess and it's like, I
think you could probably get around it, because it's like, yeah,
he's in the match, but he doesn't play, he doesn't
really get involved physically. He just kind of comes out
and stands on the stage. But he also sends another
guy named John Lorenidis, who was also implicated in that
same lawsuit, try to do something, but he also was
like nullified pretty quickly. So it's like, I think you
could just do a version of that match without him
and it wouldn't change things. But I think maybe they're
just like, no, we don't even want to go near
it because because he is present in the match, which
fair enough, but I that's all to say again, if
you're a Punk fan and you expect because everyone would
think like, well, that's match is going to be in
there and that's like his defining match, and they're like, no,
that's not in there, so that the show, the historical
side is kind of lacking the dream match stuff, or
it's just him finding opponents that he's never wrestled or
or in paid, or like kind of like inserting himself
in situations that involved other wrestlers where it's like, oh,
WrestleMania thirty was the Daniel Bryan show. But if I'd stayed,
maybe I would have been Daniel Bryan. I would have
wrestled Triple Ah in the opener and then inserted myself
in the three way main event. That stuff's fun, but
it goes on for like a really long time, like
a little too long honestly, where I was kind of
like ready for it to be over. I do like
that the matches don't have as many of the optional
objectives anymore, where like because you're playing at least the
historical matches, they'll be like, hey, there's a point in
this match where Punk hit a DDT, So if you
hit a DDT when we tell you you'll unlock a
thing afterwards, there's like half of it. Feels like there's
like half of that in these matches, so they're quicker,
they get through, but now there's just like more matches,
so it's longer in a different way. But they also added,
for the first time at least that I can remember,
like an alternative version where instead of playing kind of
like the timeline version, you can do like a gauntlet
match where it's like, okay, like straight up, there's a
video punk saying listen, we all know not everyone has
the time to get through this, but you want to
get all the unlockables. So instead you're going to compete
in one gauntlet match where it's one after the other.
It's you versus all twenty opponents that appear in Showcase,
and you have to beat them one at a time,
but you don't get it, like your health is the
same throughout, so it's just an endurance run. But it's like,
if you manage to win this, you will unlock everything
that Showcase offers, so you can do it two ways,
which is kind of neat. It's hard, and best of
luck to anyone that pulls it off. I tried it,
and you know, lost within like match five. But I
like that as kind of like a fun little like
endurance test. I do.
Speaker 1: I like that a lot. I wish more games were
just like, hey, you're only level two. But here's the
boss rush for the whole game, and do this the
old luck the highest level spells good luck.
Speaker 2: The other big thing that I uh not a fan
of is the Island. So this was the mode that
was introduced last year, and it's basically if you played
NBA two K, Like they've always had their version of
this where I forget what they call it, like my career,
but it's the thing where you make your own custom
player or in this case, the custom wrestler, and they
drop you in like a open hub with like you know,
there's other characters online or people running around and you
basically just go around do missions. But really what it
is is that it's it's like a digital shopping mall
where they want you to spend the VC to virtual
currency to be like, hey, you could buy cosmetics for.
Speaker 1: Your rest are there like real world ads.
Speaker 2: There, there's realm of brands like you can buy Nike,
you can buy an Jordan on top of just like
the regular WWE stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So like there's like in the open hub, like the
center of it is just like store after store after
store of these little clothing shops and you can only
buy everything in here with the VC, which you can
earn in game, but you know it takes a while.
And it's also you have to spend VC to upgrade
your character in this specific mode, so you have the
ration in your money basically to be like, well, do
I want to make my character stronger so I can
get through these matches, or do I want to buy
that shirt that looks really cool? And I said this
last year in my review about this, and it stands
now where it's like, that's like, it's not fun to
feel like I have to budget, like potentially real money
to be like, man, that's cool out for set, but
I don't want to pay like ten bucks fifteen bucks
to get like a full set of like shirt, sneakers,
gear for my fake character when I could just make
them stronger. And it also doesn't help that the missions
in the mode are just not fun anyway. Like this
year they're doing a thing where you join one of
three factions led by either Cody Roads, CM Punk or
Rhea Ripley, and they're all goofy and silly, like Rhea Ripley,
who is like this goth looking chick and wrestling. She's
like one of the most popular stars, but she has
like a like basically like a goth group, Punk has
an anarchist group, and Cody Rhodes, who is like an
all American boy, has like the Order of Tradition. You know,
we're very upstanding citizens here. And you join one of
them and you just play all these missions, but then
you wind up interacting with the other groups anyway and
doing missions with them, so you're gonna get to to
experience all three of them in some fashion anyway. But
a lot of times it's either just the regular wrestling
matches against you know, like a story opponent, or they
have these, uh, these kind of like roguelike style towers
where you compete in a tower and each group has
their own like theme tower, and then you go down
like a roguelike path of like you know, it's forks
in the road. You get stops that are matches, and
then there's some stops in the middle where it's like, hey,
here's a health pickup or here's an item.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of items in this game.
Speaker 2: So they're in in in the island specifically, you can
equip the wrestlers with like basically like little power ups
or perks to help you during matches. Like, oh, this
perk makes you lose stamina less often, or this one
lets you do submissions better. It's like stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Weapons ever, No, it's just.
Speaker 2: Now there's plenty of those under the ring that you
can pull out.
Speaker 1: I just didn't know if it was like with this
one you spawned with a spiked bad.
Speaker 2: That'd be funny. Not that I've seen. Maybe maybe it's
in there, but it's usually more like I guess, ability focused,
But yeah, those just aren't that fun to get through.
It just kind of like just feels like grinding. And
so it's just like and again like just being in
the island, Like the island looks cool visually because it
just looks like a giant w B theme park and
there's a lot of like visual easter eggs and references
for like, if you're a hardcore wrestling fan, you'll see
something and there's a lot of like inside jokes to
just WB's history. But once you get beyond the theme
park aspect, they're like, yeah, this just feels like a
digital shopping mall with a bad roguelike mode in there.
I don't really want to mess around with this, so
h yeah, so it's not it's still it's a little
bit better in a sense that they have voice acting
this year, which last year they didn't, But it's still like,
you know, I played enough to get a sense of
it and was like, yeah, I never really want to
play this again.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The other stuff like my GM, which is kind of
like the General Management sim Like, that's still fun. That's
still one of my favorite modes. They let you book
intergender matches now, which is the thing they introduced last year,
and now you can add more people to multi mid matches,
so that's cool, but it's still very much the same mode.
Same with My Universe, which is kind of like the
living sim where it just simulates a w B calendar
schedule so you can like run your own shows and stuff.
I've never really been into that mode, but I know
there's people that like love and really dig into that thing.
Now you can do to w B draft this year.
You know, I did it. You know, it's pretty much
the draft plays of the same. It doesn't my in
my GM, honestly, So it's like, yeah, I guess it's
it's cool. I guess again.
Speaker 6: Level of enthusiasm, like and I did it, I mean
I participated, Yeah, I mean when I review these When
I review these games, like, because there's so many modes,
it's like, not everything's going to be for you.
Speaker 2: And to their credit, if something's not for you, you
don't have to engage with it. There's probably one or
two other modes that will you know, we'll we'll find
your you'll find your time in Uh. It's just that's
not one of them. The one I is up there
with the Island in terms of like, I never like this,
and I don't think i'll ever like this is my Faction,
which is the other VC heavy mode where it's like
a digital card game where you buy card packs and
you compete with players online, and that is also like very.
Speaker 3: Much like it's fun? Is it fun?
Speaker 2: What's fun?
Speaker 3: FIFA FIFA Ultimate Team?
Speaker 2: I probably I've never like, I know what Ultimate by.
Speaker 3: If I like packs, they have players in them and
you play with them in the thing, and you're trying
to crack packs for better versions of players to then
slot into your team to go play online or whatever, Okay,
then yeah, I guess so it's cool. We remade the
most evil system in gaming. That's awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this has been a thing for like years now.
It's oh so in the priest modes. Yeah, so I mean, yeah,
I know Ultimate Team has been around even longer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's more just interesting to me that you're like,
and there's this mode which also has ways to spend money,
and there's this mode which also has ways to spend
money in this mode, which also has ways to spend money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's like, yeah, they give you free cards
from like the Battle Pass and stuff, but you know
it's really just to be like, you know, should take
this cool card, did you get into my Faction and
put it in the work, And also like on top
of it just being a little nefarious, the car game's
not fun, I guess a TCG fan, I've never thought
that the My Faction card game was fun and that's good.
It's like it doesn't even have that going for it.
So it's usually the mode I spend at least am
I like it's the elephant graveyard of those games for me. Basically,
I'll check in and play an obligatory match and go like, yep,
still not fun. All right, never see you next year,
I guess. But like it kind of like the whole package,
like it's the the n Ring Wrestling is still what
it is. There's been subtle tweaks made, but a lot
of it's kind of imperceptible, honestly, which is maybe a
little bit more damning than anything where it's like, I
know you're telling me that, like we tweak the reversal system,
and there's you know, there's like other new interactions where
like oh, you can like lock up with someone and
push them into the turnbuckle, Like okay, that's like that's cool.
You know that wasn't there before and that could begically useful.
But everything else is like I'm not really I know
you're telling me it's her, but I don't really see it.
I'm playing a lot of these matches. I feel like
I'm not really having to adjust my muscle memory from
these games, So I guess it doesn't ruin the game
whatever you did, but it also doesn't make it marginally
better either, as far as they can tell. Yeah, yeah,
it's so yeah. I'm kind of like with Showcase in
my rise, especially being not as great as previous years
and then the Island feeling like like Okay, this is
just here to stay now. I think like this is
like the NBA two kification of this franchise now, I
guess yeah, it's it's made it the weakest entries since
they came back with two K twenty two. Again, if
you like the n ring stuff, like, if you just
want to focus on just like the wrestling, it's still
like enjoyable if you already like that stuff, and the
new little like additions like the new weapons or whatever
will be fun, but everything else is just a step
below the previous year.
Speaker 1: Sang, well, there you go. I I always feel bad because,
uh Nicole's joining us now also doesn't know all that
much about wrestling, and I feel like you always go
through the whole thing, and I'm like, for your sake,
I always want to be more invested. And then you
finish the review, I'm like, yeah, I don't want to
play that game. It doesn't actually sounded all that fun.
I mean maybe if I knew what it was, it
might be fun, but it was what.
Speaker 3: Would you say, you're you're tapping out?
Speaker 1: I would say that I would, and and Marcus would
be like hey, and I'd be like, yeah.
Speaker 2: That's the thing. I mean, I guess it's an MMA
thing too, It's not exclusively wrestling, but yeah, yeah, yeah,
well don't you guys know about money and you know
the lore behind money in the bank twenty eleven, So
you're like educated on wrestling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm slowly leveling up and eventually I'll be able to.
Speaker 3: We did a I'm not going to retain that knowledge.
I'm just gonna I've already that was in my ram
and I've already cycled it out.
Speaker 2: It's the next step is we all take a work trip.
We'll expense this. We all go to Monday Night Raw Wow.
Speaker 1: I I, Marcus and I were on a podcast ninety
nine questions. We had to answer questions about each other,
and I got sounds aboub bule I got. I did
so many of them wrong, and all of Marcus's answers
were like wrestling focused. And afterwards I was like, I
feel like I gotta just out of service to Marcus,
I gotta learn some of these guys' names or just
something I don't know. Uh well, uh, that'll mostly do
for a show. I do want to end out with
a just one little game for Nicole here, just to
tie everything back together. So today we talked about emmenimal verses,
talked about monster on a story three, talk about w
W two K two six. You are now in charge
of Love and Deep Space, and a boy from one
of those games is going to be the sixth guy.
What what's the game you're picking to be?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: They're going to join Love and Deep Space.
Speaker 4: From the games we talked about today.
Speaker 7: M hmmm, Well the only man who name I can
remember from CM Punk.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there we go, d M Punk joining the cast.
Speaker 4: I have to say I did remember two of their names,
and I lined and said one because I don't like.
I don't want them missed. I don't want them.
Speaker 2: Yeahs start watching real world looks like, but.
Speaker 4: I don't want the moves to join Love and Deep Space.
Speaker 1: That's fair, that's fair.
Speaker 2: Can we do?
Speaker 3: Can we do Invincible and have Omni Man? But it's
actually just JK Simmons. Just JK Simmons is in Love
and Deep Space. Now that'd be that'd be kind of sick.
Speaker 2: That'd be nice, is it? JK Simmons wearing the Omni
Man costume?
Speaker 1: He could be he could be well yeah, no, no
reason not. I mean maybe that's maybe that's an alternate
version of him. You just unlock all the JK. Simmons
performances and all the other dimensions, I mean.
Speaker 2: Dimension. He's a gym rat, he's in shape, he is
he's Yeah.
Speaker 1: He's just evil sometimes.
Speaker 2: So it's just I'd love evil sometimes.
Speaker 3: Is that not part of the allure? Have I misunderstood?
I thought I thought we were going to the Faralel universe.
Speaker 2: I was still rather sleep next to Omniman JK than
Whiplash JK.
Speaker 3: Are you sleeping or are you awake?
Speaker 2: That's your sleep.
Speaker 1: If omniymn doesn't like you, you don't have to worry
about it for very long. If whiplash JA because it
doesn't like you, he's gonna really torment you.
Speaker 2: Your la.
Speaker 1: I'll take tens in from the listener, Korra, it's my favorite.
Speaker 3: J Oh, that's a good JK.
Speaker 2: Simmons.
Speaker 1: Ye.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyways, Thanks so much everyone for joining us this week
on the Game Reformer show. UH as always a good
game for dot com slash subscribe subscribe to the physical
issue where a newsstands bookstores. You can subscribe digitally as well.
Thanks to our amazing guest Nicole Carpenter for joining us today.
Your knowledge is invaluable.
Speaker 4: Thank you, it was really fun.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having y awesome and UH Nicole, is
there anything you'd like to plug on your way out?
Social media or recent articles?
Speaker 4: Maybe social media? Find me on Blue Sky. My name
is Nicolecarpenter dot whatever, Blue sky on.
Speaker 3: Dot bisky dot social.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh that's what it is, bisky dot Social.
Speaker 1: Beautiful. There you go, and you can find me at
Chuck Douck three sixty five. You can find Marcus at
Marcus Stewart seven. You can find Eric at c moosey uh.
And of course you can see all of us in
the Supermaro Galaxy movie coming out early April. Roll Yoshi Mario. Uh. Yeah,
Eric filmed. Eric filmed the whole thing. So he was
hanging out with Chris.
Speaker 3: I still can't get over. Even in Fantasy World. I
have to do work. That's that's terrible. It's it's a
it's a stunningly accurate dunk on me. But also he
likes it. Just get going on the camera.
Speaker 1: Look at him.
Speaker 2: He's so happy.
Speaker 3: He loves stress.
Speaker 1: All right, thanks so much for joining us. Everyone. We'll
see you next week.