Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome to Game Mess Mornings with Me Mike Minaudi,
your host from GiantBomb dot com. Thank you for tuning in.
And this episode we're going to be talking about some
mobile games going offline, why college football twenty seven is
making everybody mad, and we're gonna look at the Assassin's
Creed Black Flag Recinct reviews. It's gonna be a good
one because we have Jeff Backbar on the show. Jeff,
how are you doing.
Speaker 2: I'm doing all right on this Wednesday morning. Thank you
for having me making my triumphant return to GMM. It's
a great day. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: I wanted to say this was your first ever appearance,
which apparently isn't true, but I might continue believing that
so I feel special. If that's okay, brother.
Speaker 2: It might be only my second. Not gonna lie. You know.
Speaker 1: They say you never forget your second. That's a famous
thing people say all the time.
Speaker 2: That's exactly the truth, and I'll tell you what it
checks out, just going off life experiences.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, yeah, I do appreciate you being here. We
are continuing to fill in for Jeff Grub who's something
something about a beach, right, I don't know what he does.
If he's not if I'm not working with him, I
don't care what he's up to. Honestly, he can do
whatever he wants.
Speaker 2: In the theater of my mind, I kind of just
picture that guy under an umbrella on the beach playing
some Chinese retro portable thing. Yeah, his family desperately clamoring
for his attention to help put up an umbrella or something, right,
and him he cannot be bothered, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, he's too busy playing Sin and Punishment for
the Nintown sixty four, which I do approve of. I'm
glad that's that's what he seems to have gone to
after I was pocking that up so much recently. So hey,
that's fine. We hope that Grub is having a fun time.
He'll be back next week. So you're gonna be stuck
with me for the rest of this one. But that's
okay because we got plenty of talk about. But before
we get into things, let's explain ourselves. Don't forget to
go to giant bomb dot com slash join from a
Premium member to get access to our special shows, including
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Portal Palace. You're gonna watch all of Marry Me, Toma Dacci,
and so much more. We've got other stuff cooking in
there as well as for this show. Most weekdays, Jeff
Grubb help piece your gaming like back together. I'm not
Jeff Grubb, I'm Mike Manatti. That includes breaking news and
maybe even some of our own original reporting for all
these topics, I'll get input from a bona fide expert
who will make me look smart. If you're watching live
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or find the RSS feed on giant bum dot com.
You can also catch the show later with chapters and
timestamps on YouTube. Hello YouTube, Oh, I wanted to do it?
And I can? I?
Speaker 2: Can I do it? Can I do it? Can I
do my own take?
Speaker 1: You got to do it? Yeah? You give it your
own spin.
Speaker 2: Go ahead, Uh you can get also gotch a show
later with chapters and timestance on YouTube.
Speaker 1: Hello YouTube, We have a lot to get into, so
let's start this show with. Mario Kart Tour is being
shut down and no offline version is planned. This is bye,
Dave Aubrey at VGC. Mario Kart Tour, the mobile iteration
of Nintendo's iconic racing series, is being shut down in
just two monthsnnounced on Nintendo's official Mario Kart Tour fac
web page. The end of service notification explains that Mario
Kart Tour will no longer be playable as of twenty
two to fifty nine PT on September twenty ninth, twenty
twenty six. Unfortunately, for dedicated Mario Kart Tour fans, there
are no plans for an offline version to play after
the service ends. An offline version is not scheduled for release.
Nintendo said, perhaps.
Speaker 2: This is uh, perhaps this is no coincidence, but this
is also the first time I've heard about Mariocardtour in
a very long while. Are people playing it?
Speaker 1: You have to imagine some people played. I mean, it's
weird because this was a part of their initial very
big push into mobile when the WU flopped, They're like,
we're going to do a few things here. One, we're
going to expand our media outside of game. So that's
how we got things like the theme parks in these
movies that worked. That's been working well. We have Switch
working incredibly well for them. And the third pillar was
we're going into mobile, and that's I think that's probably
what excited investors the most at the time, and it's
the one that bore the least amount of fruit to
the point where even the Mario Kart mobile game, and
it's Mario Kart. You know, Mario Kart is huge. It's
off to the best selling game or whatever Nintendo system
it is on, and this thing just never really got
that much traction going.
Speaker 2: So there was this one, and then there's the Mario
like run one. Right, there's Mario Little Runner.
Speaker 1: There was Mario Run. There was some kind of a
Doctor Mario, there was like there, there was there original
one that was an RPG. The only one that seemed
like it ever kind of got something going was the
Fire Number one. Fire Ambum Heroes popped off for a
bit and that was doing well for a while. They
still do stuff every once in a while. There was
another FIREMM game that came out somewhat recently that I
never hear anybody talk about. And I feel like there's
even something else right nounced recently that I can really
forget about. Now. There's that Animal Crossing game as well,
Pocket Camp, and that's one where it's like, oh, Animal Crossing,
what a great fit for mobile, right, And still nobody
really cared. But when they took that offline, they created
a kind of offline versions like hey, pay ten dollars
whatever and you'll just get the entire game. And that
seems like a good compromise from you know, making a
mobile game and an ending service of it instead of
just making something that nobody can ever play again. You
do that. And they're saying that that is not planned
right now for Mario Kartur and you know, we're the
idea of digital game is very much sort of being
discussed right now, and that is sort of the reality
with a digital life service game like this is that
it could just be gone forever at some point, which
is you know, terrible from a preservation angle, and it's
just weird in general to think that there's gonna be
a Mario Kart game that you just cannot play.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I mean I never Oh, actually, I take
it back. Maybe I did play this once when it
first came out. Uh, certainly there had you know, what
was the I don't remember the mechanic that. I don't
remember the loop? Was it like? Uh, was there something?
There's a lot of costumes, Yeah, and that's what you're
paying for.
Speaker 1: I think that's part of it. I mean, there was
a gotcha element for sure, and I'm not I don't know,
you're probably paying for more courses things like that. I
just I remember never liking the track design because this
is the tour aspect of it, so the tracks would
be like pairs. There's a lot of branching pass and
they would put some of these tracks into Mario Kart
eight Deluxe in the DC for that, and they're often
not the best tracks because they just kind of didn't
feel as focused.
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker 1: Right. So it's weird because it's you know, it wasn't
a great game, that's for sure, but I'd be playing it.
Speaker 2: We'd be playing if it was great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. But it still would be nice to have
some kind of offline verse, especially when they have done
that for Pucket, mean, especially when there's been some momentum
with people trying to get legislators to create some laws
to stop this sort of thing from happening.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: I don't know how far along that it's getting exactly,
but it is just kind of this weird thing for
these companies to just completely get rid of the games,
which sucks for people who have been spending money in
Mario kartsor.
Speaker 2: Well, because the taking of it down just seems nefarious, right,
because it's like, why not just leave the thing with
an offline component? What is the risk? What is the
exposure there? I don't understand. The only thing I could
understand is like this maybe boardroom dark pattern, thinking of like, well,
we can't just let people have a thing indefinitely for free.
That'll distract them from buying the new thing, right.
Speaker 1: But you think they would know what this was, and like, look,
obviously not that many people care about Martyo kartour, but
just let them, for ten dollars buy it and get
get every costume, get every track. They're probably not even
gonna play it that much. You'll make a little bit
of scratch from that and people won't have to be
mad you and feel just kind of icky about the
whole thing. Yeah, yeah, so, uh, you know, it's been
a week. It's been a week for Microsoft Xbox in
PlayStation right always is a fun reminder that Nintendo is
capable of being shitty as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I subscribe to the grub school thought of like
everyone airing out the dirtiest of their laundry all in
one shot so that it can all just go down
the disposal and the goldfish esque memory of the average
consumer clicks in locks in, where all this is unfortunately
water under the bridge.
Speaker 1: All right, next up here, so you know, obviously there's
all the Xbox news with their layoffs and the studios
that they are sort of parting ways with. Now that
this came out from some reporting, Xbox game Pass has
reportably lost millions of users since twenty twenty four. This
is by Andy Robinson at VGC, says Xbox game Pass
has reportably declined by four million users since Microsoft's the
last shared subscription numbers. That's the coin above Bloomberg in
the Wall Street Journal, which claimed that game Pass currently
has around thirty million subscribers, down from the thirty four
million that Microsoft's last reported in twenty twenty four. According
to court documents published during its legal battle around the
Activision Blizzard acquisition, Microsoft had expected game Pass to have
around seventy seven million subscribers by this point in its
long term strategy. Seventy seven million. They're at thirty. However,
as acknowledged by Xbox's new CEO, Asha Sharma earlier this week,
game Pass has not grown at the pace Microsoft expected.
It's not off by a little bit, Jeffy. They thought
they're gonna have seventy seven million right now they are
at thirty million, which is down from thirty four million
a couple years ago. And I think, you know, I
think this is one of the big reasons why all
of this is happening with Xbox was the big bet
was game Pass and that just didn't work.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think with a lot of things, you know,
safe as death right, and I think game Pass outstayed
it's welcome without meaningfully innovating in a way that was
a compelling, you know, proposition for people. And I think
as a consequence, all these sort of load bearing pillars
of the business models began to crumble, and you know,
we're sort of where we're at now. I think I
think it's very easy to put yourself back into the
glory days of the highest of highs where what game
Pass sort of experienced and make the calculus of like, oh,
this will have you know, seventy plus million subscribers if
things keep going the way it was going. But that's
not the case. It actually went in the exact opposite direction,
and the value wasn't there, and people got it got stale.
And I think, you know, that's the one constant, is
that if a product is not doing or giving you
the feeling it gave. Because that was the thing, right,
game Pass became such a necessity, right, it was like
if I'm not a game Pass member, I'm like losing money?
Speaker 1: Right, right? Am I even really a gamer if I'm
not a game Pass member?
Speaker 2: And and and you know, even for the mechanisms of
like discovery, it was pretty successful. And you know, you know,
obviously a lot of reporting has come out that it
was a occasionally deeply unfavorable revenue split in situation for
game makers, but nevertheless, like it just laws that motion,
like it just could not maintain any of that. And
I do think a lot, a lot like a lot
of these things that find early success, their value is
sort of front loaded in a way that is unrealistic,
and as things begin to play out, they show their
true colors and not being able to maintain that level
of you know, interest and excitement. This is unsurprising.
Speaker 1: The other we're kind of reporting that I saw from
Bloomberg's kind of a mentioning the problem with game Pass,
and some of it is timing, where all right, we're
launching game Pass and we are going to buy all
of these studios so we can make content, because that's
what's going to get people excited, just the breadth of
games of different genres, of different sizes that we are
going to have here. And meanwhile, what everybody was actually
doing was just playing Minecraft, Fortnite, Call Duty. People work
very much finding their one game, and then these games
were becoming platform so to the point where there kind
of aren't seventy seven million gamers out there right now
that would be interested in a robust library that game
Pass was offering. They did very well with I think,
you know, people like us gamers of our ilk who
kind of grew up like we like being able to
play a bunch of different things of different genres and
this and that, and that's where they found success, and
then they struggled to expand outside of that. So those
investments in those studios that were, you know, doing things
where they thought like, yeah, it's gonna be great to
have a South of Men like because that's going to
expand our portfolio on game Pass, and it kind of
turns out that that wasn't actually driving interest. So the
whole thing is just kind of a bummer because I
game Pass seemed like something that maybe should have worked
better than it could have. It seems like you could
see why maybe it seemed like a good bet at
a time, and when everybody was doing these things right,
Disney Plus was popping off, not that obnoxiously, so we
had a million of these subscription services. Probably another part
of the problem because how many of these things than
any one person actually have.
Speaker 2: Well, well, that's how I think the history will be written, right,
because if you are a console manufacturer and you find
yourself in the impossibly fortunate situation that game Pass found itself,
like how much like how much more of a favorable
thing do you could you ask for? We found a
thing where we are guaranteed to receive money every month
from people who are excited to pay it right, Like
who are glad? Who are like this thing has momentum,
this thing has excitement, and pissing that away and not
being able to maintain it, I do think will be
a major part of how the history books are written
when it comes to, you know, the autopsy of Xbox.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, is you know since twenty twenty four when
we had this drop, that's when call of duties on
game Pass now right, and that and that didn't move
the needle. And if that doesn't move the needle, nothing
really will. It's and it's still it's kind of awkward thing. Go, well,
this is that still thirty million people giving you money
every month or every year. So they can't stop. They
can't stop doing game Pass because then they are just
going to lose that revenue stream. They're kind of in
a bit of an awkward spot with it, all right.
College Football twenty seven is pissing everyone off. This is that,
Mark Delini a game spot. Ask players what their favorite
mode is in EA's revitalized college football series, and most
will tell you it's Dynasty a Road to Glory, which
give players control of an entire school football program or
a created player, respectively. Unlike Ultimate Team EA's longstanding paid
to win mode seen in all of its sports games,
these modes have largely been untouched by micro transactions, but
College Football twenty seven has crossed the line. According to
many players to voice their frustrations online, Dynasty and Roe
to Glory now each allow you to pay to instantly
improve your coach or athlete, rather than improve them over
time through play. With the coach level cap of one hundred,
players would need to spend twelve thousand points, which equates
to one hundred dollars if bottom bulk. The early access
Ultimate edition in the game includes four six hundred points,
meaning even the most expensive version of the game teams
designed to ask players to fork over more money or
else trudge through a remarkable grind. As one player on
Twitter explain, you could see that breakdown below. Players can
no longer tweak sightings to level up faster or fastest.
Speediest option is now the default in both modes, while
slower options still exists in Dynasty. On Twitter, a popular
college football streamer is mobilizing players to boycott the end
game pay to level options using the hashtag DFB play
don't Hey. The time of writing this article, the hashtag
is trending at number eight on the website. Meanwhile, on
rd it, some players are promising to skip the game
because this new in game purchase scheme has rubbed them
the wrong way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, hopefully there's momentum here with
the with the sort of consumer response. Although I don't
know it's bull counting, just doesn't always.
Speaker 1: Do every time surf every time I see that. It's
maybe it's cynical, but I always remember that boycott Call
of Duty, Monitor War for two or whichever one it was.
Steam group. Then the game came out. You could see
everybody in that group just playing that game on launch day.
Speaker 2: See what we gotta do, folks, We got boycott college. Yeah,
that's what we gotta do. The scam of higher education,
that's what we gotta do. I think he missed the message.
I think they're trying to emulate the college, the financing experience.
Speaker 1: The most paid to win of all the mosts, the
most pay to.
Speaker 2: Win, and then you wind up over paying and really
get nothing on your investment because you're in debt up
to your eyeballs until you're fifty three. Yeah, what a
colossal disaster in stereo from every point, stepping on every
goddamn rake in the yard. I just and like, am
I wrong? Didn't this game like come back in the
last two years or so too, with like very favorable reception, right,
Like listen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was no college football game for a while
and then it came back and was huge. Right, It's
it's been doing very well. People were very excited about it.
And that's not enough because line must always go up, right,
So now you know, and there's already Ultimate Team, you
already have that for the big micro transaction heavy mode,
and that makes EA plenty of money. But it's not enough.
And I'm sure they are having these these these board
meetings at all time. Again it goes you know, there
was that anecdote about Don Matrik looking at Halo four
and just being like, can we make can we have
the real money auction house from Diablo three in there?
I bet those kinds of insane conversations are happening constantly.
So of course some executive is like, well, if Dynasty
and Road de Glory are popular, why don't we have
micro transactions in there? Oh? Imagine how amazing would be
if people could play to level up faster? Wouldn't they
love that and be happy to give us money because
they are out of touch and greedy. So uh here
it is pay literally pay to win again one hundred
dollars if you want to get to the max level,
you know, stuff like that. It's all even if you
don't engage with it. It is kind of this weird
dark cloud of I'm doing this grind, I'm trying to
like level up naturally. Yeah, and I could just pay
to get through it all. That's what begins to make
it feel less like a game and more like some task.
Speaker 2: Everything just feels like it is done for the instant
revenue gratification. No longer does anything seem like, oh, we're
gonna play the long game here, We're gonna like develop
a community, develop a fan base, and like grow the thing.
It's just smash and grab twenty four seven, three sixty five.
And you know, look, I don't know. My normy friends
tell me the Madden Experiences dog shit. You know, FC
still seems to be cooking. I don't really, you know,
have my finger on the pulse of the wider sentiment.
We've dib and I fired up NHL twenty six last night,
and I'm like, God, this game feels a million years old,
just in terms of like how it plays and how
it feels. It's like borderline playable. So yeah, I don't
I don't know. I guess it's like a large larger
conversation of like, just how popular are sports games anymore?
Speaker 1: Outside of FC It seems like they often are. They
feel like the man game is so often so well,
and that's maybe one of the biggest disconnects I feel
as a you know, hardcore gamer or something, is my
lack of interest and those things. And I like sports.
It's not like an old timey ow they're playing their
sports balls over there. I would like good sports games,
especially in like the Ultimate Team era. Of these things.
I just I find them kind of repulsive, even when
they start throwing that stuff into like the wrestling games,
the WBE games. I'm like this, I just everything about
this presentation, everything about the structure of this is just
off putting. And I wonder how long people will take it.
I think people will take it a lot, because there's
just a group of people who want to play the
college football game, who want to play Madden. They are
just desperately into that it is one of two video
games they will buy every year. You know, it's a joke,
the Madden Call of Duty players, but that's a real audience.
Speaker 2: It is. I kind of call them the CALSHI players now,
just because look forgive me for making this assumption, but
you know, anecdotally, in my friend circle of friends, you know,
the same people who are the predictive gamblers are the
same people who only exclusively play Madden. And I think
perhaps those types of players are wired a certain way
to maybe just accept some of this stuff in a
way that is disproportionate than the rest of the community.
I don't know. Again, perhaps I'm making some coming.
Speaker 1: But if all you do is play like a Call
of Duty and I'm Madden, you at a certain point
you are probably normalized to the aggressive micro transactions in
the live service element of it, in some of this grossness. Now,
it seems even then that there's been a bit of
overstepping here with with trying to do that to this mode,
and there is some backlash. You do wonder how much
how it can break containment. How big a deal can
it possibly be for a game that has a huge
audience that isn't following friends on Twitter, right, so things
like that, they might dislike it. And I hope that
there's more momentum, and I hope that there's even like,
oh wow, we got we gotta pull back. This one's
pissing people off too much. Maybe that can happen more
so than the impacting sales, which is hard to do.
Getting really mad online sometimes, for whatever reason, can make
these companies change course. We'll see if that happens here.
All right, why don't we take a quick break. We'll
come back. We got some Assassin's Creed Black Flag Recinc.
Reviews to look at. You're back, everybody, Hey, everybody, Game
Mess Mornings is continuing me, Mike Bnatdi got Jeff Beckel
right here next stup Assassin's Creed Black Flag Recinct reviews,
aren't It's at an eighty seven on Open oh, Nick
and eighty seven for this sort of a remaster make right.
I never know what to call these. They're the kind
of in the sweet a remaster remake.
Speaker 2: To me said, you said master, make remaster make hmm.
Something about that that's giving me deep pleasure.
Speaker 1: I don't know why that one here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels good.
Speaker 1: Did you play? Okay, wait a second, I just looked.
It's eighty six now, everybody, so maybe it got slightly
worse since I last looked on Open Critic. Everyone calls
all the markets are going crazy. It's just crazy, players
are losing their minds. And then this eighty six. Uh
did you like the original Black Flag at all?
Speaker 2: Yes? This is the Maybe this is not entirely accurate,
but this is the only Black Flag, I'm sorry, the
only Assassin's Creed game that I can like draw from
memory that I remember enjoying and playing. Everything else is
just sort of a blur to me. And the Black
Flag stuff is the thing that I kind of dig.
Speaker 1: I was really into the series for a while there
in the beginning, kind of that one, that the two trilogy.
I even liked three a lot, which is a bit
of a bit of a hot take, and then four
four was was super fun. I liked the pirate stuff
in it was incredible.
Speaker 2: You know what I think they should do.
Speaker 1: I think they should take that pirate stuff and just
make it its own game outside of Assassin's Creed.
Speaker 2: That'll never work, Mike, What do you mean so kinda.
Speaker 1: Let's added a to it. Let's make a quadruple a
Pirate only Assassin's Creed spinoff. That'd be a big deal.
That game did come out, which is wild, and no one,
no one. Not only did no one play it, no
one talked. Nobody even reveled in its failure the way
they did. With like a concord or a high guard,
no one could even care.
Speaker 2: I okay, so I tell this story fairly often. I
played that game so long ago at an E three,
Like I'm not joking. I think I played it in
like twenty sixteen or something like a version of it.
It was at the booth. If they were it was playable,
it was fine, I just can And then it just
disappeared for six years. Right did you go to that
E three?
Speaker 1: Do you know what I'm talking about? It was I
didn't get to play it, and I think because they
kept reboot I think they just couldn't figure out how
to actually make it a real life service game that
people were going to actually spend money on, and they
never did figure that out. It turns out they would
have been better off just releasing the first version of
it and probably getting the same result. I have my
own version of that with all the Knight's Silk song
where I played it at like E three twenty nineteen.
Then it was the game for years. Everyone's like, where
is that. I'm like, I played it. It wasn't even
like a special thing, that one that was just on
the show for Nintendo's booth amongst a bunch of random
third party things. Nobody even cared that much. Then, I'm like,
I just played it as I was like leaving on
the last day.
Speaker 2: Everyone has their own That's what I love about That's
what I kind of missed about any three, because everyone
has their own strange story of like a thing that
they experienced that played out in the most unbelievable way.
I have this the skull and Bone thing, and I
have the Bye. I'm sure much more people have is
the BioShock Infinite teasers.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, I saw that. Yeah, that whole thing. Everyone's like,
it's is gonna be the greatest thing ever, And it
turned out that was all I.
Speaker 2: And just like talking to Ken Levine like after that
and like just oh man, what a what a I
don't want to call it a bait and switch, but
that is kind of what it was.
Speaker 1: Uh. Some of my favorites are the in theater demos
for games that never came out, including Pirate themed that
Pirates of the Caribbean game that sort of was gonna
play like Fable two.
Speaker 2: Oh I don't know that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw that, and then uh, the original Prey Too,
which was a sci fi bounty hunter open city game
that looked really cool and I was really bummed when
they can't that. All right, let's up. Let's let's read
some quotes for some of these reviews, like Liam Kroft
that Push Square, who gave black Flag recing thing eight
out of ten like a captain going down with their
ship would be soft, has remained loyal through the classic
assesses create black Flag experience. In this new recinct version,
it's as you remember it, except better, bigger, and markedly
flashier in all the right ways it has to create.
Black Flag recincts demonstrate that there's still a charm to
staying faithful. Ash whaling at Well played with a nine
out of ten says with a blisteringly hot current gin
facelift and a complete mechanical overhaul that actually fixes pass mistakes,
Black Flag recinc Skips the open world bloat liver, pure
unadulterated pirate dopamine.
Speaker 2: WHOA, Well, you could buy that out of the gas
station near me, dopamine.
Speaker 1: Give me that pirate dopamine? Right, oh yeah. Jared Green
at IgM for nine out ten says, more than just
a shinier version of the same game you remember, Doss
created Black Flag. Recinc Brings what was already one of
the best games in the series up to today's standards,
them a bit more of a muted responsor. Jordan Remae
at or Rambi at a game spot with the sound
Ted says, Recinct is a hass step towards something truly fantastic.
You play it, you will see the strengths of Black Flag.
You'll see why the original game was the de facto
pirate vagan for years. You also find a remake that
doesn't manage to take the crown from the very game
that it's remaking. I wonder, I know one thing that's
not here, some of the current day stuff, right, I
think that's been removed, So maybe some people have different
feelings about that. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm might be happy about that. That seems great.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I like I both kind of like
it and also don't know if I would miss it
all right, Especially Black Flag was weird because that was
the first time where you weren't that player Desmond guy, right, yeah,
because he's dead, but you're just sort of some non speaking,
silent protagonist in an office.
Speaker 2: I'm not this is not a unique thought, or I'm
sure I thought that is not shared by many people.
But Assassin's Great to me is just like that storyline
is just the most do we even need this thing
at all in the entire lineage of this game? Like
it's not important, right, It's it's kind of irrelevant, like
you you know what I mean. It just seems like
the most needless thing. Again, it's fine. I find that exists,
people like it, that's great, but it just does not
need to be a part of these games.
Speaker 1: Well I think part even more so than like, oh,
do people like her or not. One of the reasons
why it's on the remake is because at the time
that stuff was all kind of pointing to story threads
that never got pulled or really followed up on. That
was that they kind of never really knew where they
were going with that stuff. The point where when I
don't check out his sounds Creed that much anymore. I
never I had never even played Shadows. I didn't touch
a second of it. But whenever I do play one
of these, like Valhalla, I'm always shocked when the real
world stuff is still in there, and like that one
English guy is like still hanging out from from two,
like you're still in these games? You Oh, okay.
Speaker 2: I think it's I think it's a consequence of like
never being able to decouple the sort of like a
whiplash that you experienced playing the very first Assassin's Cree
game when all this stuff showed up, because that's not
how it presented, right, Like, that's not how they just
sort of were like, oh, this is actually what's going on,
And I just I remember that being such a violent
whiplash of like what this this is the underlying explanation
of what we're doing here. If you like it, that's cool.
I'm not gonna yuck. You're young. But I also think
we could lose it, leave it on the editing room floor.
Oh well, I.
Speaker 1: Bet this is going to be the first of many
of these kind of remaster makes for Assassin's Creed, which
we've had like there's like the remastered Assassin Creek two trilogy,
which wasn't even done very well. I wouldn't be shocked
if it's just straight up okay this treatment now for
Assassin's Creek two, Brotherhood Revelation, maybe SATs Creed one, which
I like. Assassin's Creed one I think as SASA Creed
one gets too much flack sometimes Unity, which I think
people have come back on after initially the launch of
that game was was rough. I think people respect Unity
now and Syndicate has actually quite a few fans as
well that could benefit from that. I bet all those
games and at that point, hey, maybe three and maybe Rogue,
remember that's quite Rogue. That was That was the one
that kind of came out concurrent with this one. I
think maybe with five. I forgot that was the one
that was only Xbox three sixty yes time when Xbox
one was out, they were making a lot of Assassin's
Creed games for a while there.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, this is like my biggest nightmare of
like being on some sort of game show and I'm
meant to like organize all the Assassins games. Was like
Kyle's you know, I'll disqualify me. Now, there's no way
I could do it.
Speaker 1: I had to review Assassin's Creed Liberation for the PSP,
which was like the new Organs one, and it had
like a cool idea and a cool setting, and I
thought it was incredibly unfun to play. Though. So there's
just been a of these things and there's you know,
it's the one thing I do. We sought that as
always mostly done pretty well for them, that to take
one break one time because unity sort of threw them
off and then no one cared about syndicates. It took
like their big break, which is maybe a couple of years.
And then that's when Origins came out and they had
the new formula. Hey, I bet they'll they'll remake Origins
in Valhalla and Odyssey and all those RPG ones at
some point as well. You gotta check this out. You think.
Speaker 2: That's a good question, you know? Uh, I would say
probably not. You know, I just you know, I have
to be really pick h I have to really pick
and choose my my where I put my energy into
games and stuff like that. I will wait to sort
of see on uh the the kind of like the
circles we travel in like that feedback. There is a
threshold that gets crossed when it's like, oh God, I
think I have to play this Expedition game right, Well,
that's obviously right once in a once a year your
kind of thing. I don't know, I just can't see
like this, you know, master make getting to the place
where like, oh, this is something you really got to
check out. Back, are probably gonna just miss a threshold
from you playing it.
Speaker 1: I want to check it out, least. I don't if
I'm gonna like play through Black Flag again, but I
don't want to give it a Looksie, that's for sure,
all right. Next up here, Toys for Bob stills to
work on Banjo KAZUOI saying we're huge fans. This is
Andy Robinson at VGC, the Crash and Spiro Studio. Toys
for Bob has reiterated that would love to work on
Rare and Xbox's dormant Banjo Kazui series. The California based
studio has built a reputation for platform or revivals. They
worked on Crash Bandicoot for and recently announced a new
installment for Spiro The Dragon. Banjo Kazu seems to be
next on studio's hit list and so reiterated in an
interview with kind of funny that would jump at the
chance to work on the franchise. The franchise we love
set associate creative or loose stuttered as platform fans, Banjo's
top of the heap. We have some huge, huge fans
of that franchise understaff. I'm talking they got the Jiggy
as their profile pick and that kind of thing. Of
all of the franchises that Xbox has not taken advantage
of that they own, Banjo Kazooi is the most criminal.
Speaker 2: To me.
Speaker 1: I still think about how people popped off when they
were just revealed for Smash Brothers, how excited everyone was
for that. It's like, boy, imagine if you could take
that energy and put it into some kind of new
game that was just a faithful revival. There was a
point when we were getting the Reignited trilogy and the
you know, Crash Bandicoot Insane trilogy where these three platformers
were making a comeback, and it was it was shocking
to me that some sort of Banjo Kazooi thing didn't
happen right away.
Speaker 2: Then it is baffling because we you've gotten, you know,
revisits of things that we rightfully probably shouldn't have out
of the order of you know, leapfrogging of Banjo kazoo
got some buzzy stuff, right, Yeah, Like I mean, no
offense to people who maybe are not here, but like,
come on, come on, I mean, yeah, Banjo Kozooi rightfully
earns a place before or something like that. In my opinion,
what what was the last actual entry for this franchise?
Speaker 1: Actual entry was Nuts and Bolts, which was a kind
of early Xbox three six game. Maybe there was a
Game Boy Advance game that I'm forgetting about that happened
after that, but I think it was Nuts and Bolts,
which is really the only Benja Kazooi game that Xbox
ever published.
Speaker 2: So here's my here's my thought here. Right. It's like
it's baffling because I feel like in the last twenty years,
all you hear from games who have tried to emulate
this style is that it's a Banjo Kazuoi. Like like
everyone is constantly saying, Hey, this huge dearth, right that
is that needs to be filled, We're filling it. And
how that feedback doesn't manifest into a brand new entry
in this series from people who actually own the damn
thing is baffling.
Speaker 1: And they still own Rare, right, I mean Rare it
has been working on just Sea of Thieves boy, very
pirate themed episode today. They've worked on c of Thieves
for a long time now and that game has done
really well for them. Ever, while it was canceled, I mean,
I doubt there's very many people at Rare anymore who
had worked on the original Banjo Kazui game. So maybe
it makes even more sense now for Toys Bob Boys
for Bob to do it instead of Rare. I bet
Rare could make it happen as well if you gave
them that assignment. If for some reason you don't want to, then, boy,
after this Spiro game comes out, that should absolutely be
twice for Bob's next assignment is just let them make
a Banjo Kazui game. I almost guarantee they'll knock it
out of the park. That the spiral remakes they did
are great. I love Crash Bandicoot for I thought that
they did an incredible job with Crash four, and I'm
very excited for their new Spyro game. All right, next
up here is Final Fantasy seven Ever Crisis to end
service on October seven. Hey, here's an another one of these. Everybody, Yes,
this is from Saramano Akamatsu Bob Basicy seven Ever Crisis
will end service on October six at eleven pm. EFIC
squaren Ex just announced the free to play RPG first
launch for iOS and Android on September seven, twenty twenty three,
followed by pcv esteem on December seventh, twenty twenty three.
There's a quote here a square Eno says, we understand
this news maybe disappointing, and we sincerely apologize for the
abrupt nature of this announcement. Uh do you remember this one?
Because this was the other Final.
Speaker 3: Fantasy seven remake that they announced kind of at the
same time as the other one that was mobile first
and again has has kind of some gotcha stuff, and
it's a bit more traditionally played like it has turn
based battles.
Speaker 1: I never touched it. I was always a.
Speaker 2: Bit confused by what it even was. I only know
about this, I don't know. I only acknowledge its existence.
Like if I had to, if someone was like, hey,
is this a real game, I would only be able
to tell you yes, and that is it. I think yeah,
from my perspective of someone who's deeply unconcerned and uninformed,
this barely even registers on the radar. So this is
just another case of like, hey, this couldn't find its motion.
Is that what we're saying?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think I ever got too much going on.
Although it lasted for a bit, not long. You think
that if it was doing okay, they would at least
get it through the end of this remake trilogy coming out,
and we have Revelation releasing next year now. From some
people who play the game, like Sean, I've heard some
good things about it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: It has kind of done some storytelling that we haven't
seen before. It can look pretty so it'd be nice.
I again, this was a thing where they're like, okay,
here's the offline version. Something that Square Enix has also
been doing. They have that kind of offline standalone version
of Brave x VUS coming out pretty soon as a
two d HD kind of joint. It's called Final Fantasy Resonance,
and people are excited for that. Now, maybe it's a
bit much to think they're gonna do that with this
game at a time when they are trying to sell
fum Fantasy seven revelation. Maybe that kind of project might
confuse people. Oh again, this project has confused me for
its entire life.
Speaker 2: I mean, and it's not like, you know, the other
big thing in the world called Final Fantasy seven didn't
exist back when this came out. I mean, like, certainly
the calculus couldn't have been, like we got to move
this to get out of the way of the real
trilogy remake that we're doing. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Again, I think it's like back then, everybody's like mobiles,
Mobiles like a simultaneous pillar. We have the Bomb Fasy
seven remake coming on a console, and we can't just
port that to mobile, oh, which nowadays you probably could,
but we learned that people don't really play games like that.
Then we have to have something separate for mobile, and
that's why this exists. But it turns out doesn't work
with that. Hey, Square NX was doing that a lot.
Do you remember remember Fantasy seven First Soldier? Remember their
Battle Royale game for mobile? No, yeah, that was a
thing that didn't last very long. Again apparently kind of me,
but also like, is gonna play that? I did even
play it, and I think it sounds neat, and I
still kind of can't be bothered. So it's rough. It's
rough out there for these things. Square E Squerience is
constantly trying with mobile and they have you know, like
everyone else in the mobile space, they have far more
failures than they do successes, all right. Nintendo expands the
switch onlines game Boy and GBA Library with four more
titles from Liam Doolan at Nintendo Life. Nintendo's today expanded
butch online GB and GBA Library, which online members with
a standard subscription can access the game Boy titles, and
if you also have an expansion subscription, you can play
the game Boy Advance title. So for game Boy we
have Warrior Land Super Mario Land three. That's that's a
great one. That's just a very good action to the platform.
This was the first game where you can play as
Warrio got all sorts of weird hats to expand his abilities.
It's kind of also basically this and the virtual book
Boy games, we're the only ones that play kind of
like this game. After that, the series went into a
bit more of this puzzle platform or direction, which I
also really like. But there's still something about the original
Warrio Land, there's a fan.
Speaker 2: Of if memory serves, and maybe I'll actually fire this
up on NSO and like see if I can recall
the horror.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of.
Speaker 2: Times where like Warrio like faces the screen and he
looks like like flattened and weird, and I just remember
that always, like deeply upset, right me.
Speaker 1: My big you know, my big memory. My big memory
of this one is this is like one of the
games where my younger brother accidentally deleted my SAF file,
which like, look, that's gonna happen at some point in
your life, but it still traumatized me, you know, still
learn yeah, right right, gotta be careful with those younger brothers.
Sort of hope too now, sort of hope one is
already on there. These are like very classic style first
person RPG, so it's kind of neat like that. I
don't know how much I want to like play through
one of these, but it's interesting that that kind of
game is on the game Boy and FORIGNI fied zones.
I don't know much about. When I look at it,
it looks a little bit like the old Metal Gear games,
maybe a bit more actiony than than that. Over on
game Boy Advance. So now they say, you know, just
one new game for Gameboy Advance. Well, it's it's two
games in one. It's a tringle package has Doctor Mario
and Puzzle League. Now I'd never played this collection before.
I like the Puzzle League games also known as a
paneled upon, the big one being Pokemon Puzzle League for
NTEL sixty four, actually one of my favorite games. But
this version of Puzzle League is incredibly bare bones, like
it has the game but not you know, obviously you
don't have the Pokemon accoutremonts, but you really don't have
anything here. You don't have anything. It kind of feels
like a campaign. You don't have any fun characters, set
dressing progression. It is just it's that. And then Doctor Mario.
I don't know. I I like the song from Doctor Mario.
I like the vibe of Doctor Mario. I don't really
care about playing Doctor Mario that much.
Speaker 2: No, it doesn't really do anything for me. It's fine. Uh.
That game was always just like a weird novelty of
like I'm gonna play this for fifteen seconds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was one of the most even on the
nes Man was one of the most I'll throw this
in for a little bit, do that, and then I'm like,
all right, back to one of the five Mega mans
now or whatever I have here.
Speaker 2: And then the Puzzle League game. I I I this
might be the first time I'm laying eyes on what
this looks like. I've never seen it in my entire life.
Speaker 1: Again, Pokemon Puzzle Leak and Pokemon Puzzleague is on the
N sixty four nso that is a banger. I like
that game a ton. I think it's a of all
the kind of like drop down puzzle games. It's mechanics
might be my favorite, maybe maybe even over at Tetris,
even over a U. And I like all of those
styles of games quite a bit. I like all those
more than I like a Doctor Mario. In Japan, they
got Tomato Adventure, which never came out over here for
Game Boy Advanced. Tomato Adventure is the precursor to the
Mario and Luigi games.
Speaker 2: So no ship.
Speaker 1: Yes, if you look at it, like look up Tomato Adventure,
it just looks like Mario and Luigi because that was
just that team. They did this, and then I was like, hey,
now we want to make it Mario RPG kind of
like this, So you know, it's a shame that they
couldn't like give us a translation and give us this,
because that would be super cool. That's probably more work
than they are willing to put into these kind of things.
But yeah, Japan got Tomato. If you want to play
Tomato Adventures, everybody, there's a there's there's a fan translation
out there, and you'll you can figure out some way.
I think you can make that happen if this is
the first time you're learning that this game exists. Well,
it took up while it felt like to get this
nso drop. It has been slower than almost ever, it
feels like, and especially for GameCube, which is the newest
platform there already aren't very many Gantu games on there,
and it has been months months since we've gotten a
new one of those. I don't understand the insane drip
feed on these things. I'm glad we got these games.
It's nice to get them. I'm always excited when we do.
It's gotta happen a bit faster than this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know what that again like to me,
it's it feels very reminiscent of all these things that
are like very frontloaded, and you're almost like, man, this
can this you know this kidens is great, the value
here is great, and then things just like dry up
and it's like all right, you know it doesn't It's
not an encouraging feeling, especially in the face of like
those are there like a price hike in some of
this stuff too, right, like.
Speaker 1: Can it's some territory that are increasing the price of NISO.
Not here yet, but you know, hold on, right, hold wait,
just hold on everybody. Yeah, I mean I like NSO
a lot. When Yeah, there's games of Planet. I played it.
Speaker 2: It's very solid.
Speaker 1: I've played a ton of NSO. Sometimes the newer consoles
like GameCube I will have some issues with the emulation there.
They eventually fix that. Stuff like n sixty four is
in a similar place and now that emulation layer feels
pretty good, so maybe it'll get there. But you know,
for stuff like Super Nintendo Game Blay Advance, things that
are easy to emulate. Just it's a nice way to
play those games for me, I just I just need
more of them. I just need them to beat it
up a bit again, especially on that GameCube front, what
are we waiting for? There are still a ton of
games to put on there.
Speaker 2: Yep, let's pick up the pace.
Speaker 1: Oh right, Speaking of pace, where we are reaching the
end of our show, which means it's time to look
at last week's Paul, which was are you more or
less confident in Xbox's future after today? Sixty one percent
said less confident, thirty one percent said I feel the same,
and just eight percent feel more confidence. Okay, they're like,
I like what they're doing. Yo.
Speaker 2: Eight percent, people like, hit me up because I just
want to interview you. I just want to talk to
you and really get inside your broken brain, uh and
just try and figure it all out. Want to know,
like where you went wrong in life? Like what what?
How did? How did your life experiences spit you out
in a way where you think on the other side
of this catastrophic, catastrophic dumpster fire of news and you're like, hey,
things are looking up.
Speaker 1: Huh are you going about the future of Xbox there?
Jerff Uh.
Speaker 2: It's funny because I was looking at this and I'm like, huh,
I wonder if feel the same. Was is sort of
like burying the lead a little bit, because I feel
like there were a lot of people before this poll
came out and probably felt extremely unconfident about where things
are going. How am I feeling about Xbox? I'm pretty
much I'm pretty much like living in a post Xbox
world right now. Like, I don't think it exists really,
I think it is just an I think it's just
four letters and we'll see where that goes. It's I
don't know if you are living your life knowing what
we all know about the way things go, and you
are still even the little bit cautiously optimistic, You're just
not paying attention to how things go in reality. So
I don't know. Friends, feeling pretty down to the dumps
about this brand. Not gonna lie all right.
Speaker 1: We got a new poll for I guess ready for
tomorrow's episode, and the question here is have you played
Maria Kartour? And your options are yes, no, And this
one's for me. I want to see if other people
say this. Maybe I can't remember, because I think I did.
I feel like I must have, but I don't remember
if I did. Maybe I just watched a video of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I want to see the majority people
are going to fall into that guy like or you're
just like.
Speaker 1: Members lay Mario card Tour.
Speaker 2: Gotta rub your eyes a little bit squint and just
sort of be like, huh, what was it?
Speaker 1: What was that?
Speaker 2: What was that thing? Maybe maybe I did Did I
do that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I don't know. That's Uh, that's wild to
me that I can't remember. So we'll see. I'm curious
what other people think about that one. All right, boy,
this stock is fun. I was like, there's a section
year where where it's like what's happening on Giant Bomb.
One of the things listed is four Swords Fiesta. That
that was a feature from what four years ago? And
I think I don't know, but quite a while ago.
Speaker 2: Business had a different ownership when that was written.
Speaker 1: The fourth sorts bring it back? Ah no, no, we
hey we have with the Light Club popping off later today.
You know Dan, Dan was a good boy. Dan finished
space Ace. I know he's like he's not not feeling
amazing right now. We'll let him have some fun. He's
going to just be able to do whatever he wants,
whatever he wants to play for Delay Club. That's going
to be happening. That's at two pm Eastern today, everybody,
and then I'll be back with Game Mess Mornings tomorrow.
I've got some guests lined up for the rest of
the week. I think, yes, tomorrow I will be having
Lexi joining me, so we'll see what fun stuff I
wait to stay a voicemail dump truck. Well, give me
a teaser for the voicemail dump truck.
Speaker 2: Back, a are a teaser for the voicemail dumb truck.
You say it's the best podcast that you're not listening to, folks,
That's what I'm gonna tell you. Every week we outdo
ourselves in ways that I really can't comprehend. So do
yourself a favor. Tell your friends, tell your family members,
and tell random ass people you meet on the street.
Seven oh seven exit flu. That's the phone number you
leave voicemail, and you got around an eight to fifteen
percent chance of having us play and react to your
voicemail on the show tomorrow. The one and only the
most underrated comedian within the halls of Giant Bomb will
Crosby joining the program tomorrow, So make sure you tune in.
It is a call in show. You have to stick
around for about twenty to thirty minutes to realize it
transforms into a call in show, but that's the way
we do it. Check it out tomorrow. It's gonna be
a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: I'll have Jason Finelli on Friday for Game Mike Mornings,
and then the party be having a grab bag for that. Alllrighty,
we did it. Thank you so much. Jeff had a
good time talking about the news with you today.
Speaker 2: Likewise, Mike, you're doing a great job. Thank you for
having me.
Speaker 1: All right, thank you. And so the next morning, Mets,
have a good one, take care of yourself and goodbye.
Sing bunting bet bet b