Speaker 1: What is going on?
Speaker 2: Everybody? Welcome to the Game and Former Show, a weekly
podcast covering the video game industry. Join us every Thursday
for discussion about the latest gaming news, reviews, and exclusive reveals,
alongside Game Informer staff and special guests from around the industry.
I'm your host today, Alex van Aiken, and I am
joined by Brian Shay.
Speaker 1: How you doing, I'm doing so good. I you appear
to be sleepy.
Speaker 2: I am.
Speaker 1: I think I am finally back to my normal self
because there was a there was a stretch there at
the end of Summer Game Fest into like yesterday, that
I was just a shell of my my my beating.
Now I think I'm back.
Speaker 2: I'm still a shell, but but you know, we rally,
We rise above, rise against, We give it all. Yeah. Yeah.
Rounding out the show today, we're joined by Charles Hart.
Speaker 3: Charles, I'm doing good.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I got home late Tuesday night and then I slept
for ten hours and so I'm I'm back.
Speaker 3: I'm back in business.
Speaker 2: I'm awesome.
Speaker 3: Boss Baby back in business?
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's a show boss Baby too, back
in business?
Speaker 3: May I think so? I think so.
Speaker 4: There's also a like Boss Baby Netflix show but I
don't think that's what it's called, right.
Speaker 1: That's in the boss Baby multiverse, the Boss Baby.
Speaker 3: Multiverse, BABYCU, the bb C, BBCU.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, uh well, welcome listeners. We're gonna be talking
about all of all of our time a suburb gay best.
Oh my god, I got something the audiest. Let me
take a sip of water. Hold, okay, that's gonna keep
me awake. We went to Summer Game Fest in Los
Angeles this past weekend and we played a lot of games.
We watched a lot of games, and we met a
lot of the people behind those games, and we're gonna
talk about it today. We're gonna go through our hands
on impressions of several games. Some of them are still embargoed,
but the ones that aren't we'll be discussing on the show.
My wife is calling me mid show. I'm just texting her, Hey,
I'm on a podcast.
Speaker 1: Love you off to a great start here, by the way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're also gonna be talking about some highlights.
If we want to go through, you know, highlights from
Xbox Game Showcase, you'd be soft all that. It'll be
a fun show. But what do you guys want to
start with what do you think should we go through
highlights of the showcases? Do we want to just dive
into how about we just talk about what it's like
going to Summer game Fest play Days, because I think
a lot of people don't necessarily know. They see, like
on social media, like you know, the personalities and journalists
and creators they follow randomly tweet about being at Summer
Game Fest, but there's no tickets to purchase for the public.
So maybe we should talk about what Playdays is in
case you didn't know, which it's a so after the
Summer game Fest live stream that everybody can watch, there
is a three day event that is invite only for
select media and creators to go hands on with several
games that were shown off during the live stream, to
interview developers, network all of that, and that is what
when we kind of talk about being at Summer game Fest,
a lot of a lot of what we were talking
about is being at Summer game Fest play Days, which
is that that invite only event.
Speaker 1: And yeah, basically, like contrast to E three which ran
up in person up until twenty nineteen, that was like
a giant thing that took up both sides of the
LA Convention Center in LA Live, and it was like,
I think I looked at the attendance numbers for a
feature that I wrote in the upcoming issue of Game Informer,
and it was like sixty six thousand people attended E
three twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: And that is not the case for summer Game Fest
play days. It is far away from like the La
Live area, which is like kind of like a little
bit of the heart of like downtown LA. It's like
the most tourist y area. It has you know, the
I don't want to call it the Crypto dot Com,
the Staples Center where the Los Angeles Lakers play, and
you know, it has the LA Convention Center there. It
has a bunch of restaurants and everything that you can
eat in a few hotels. So that's where the that's
where E three used to be held, and like you know,
EA play would happen in that area as well. Microsoft
would sometimes do their Xbox hands on stuff at what
used to be called the Microsoft Theater in that area
as well. None of that stuff happens in that spot now.
And in fact, like you know, it used to be
a big tradition that like the Hotel Figaroa which is
right on the corner there would get a giant like
reskin of one of the games that was like being
highlighted at Summer Gamefest. This time it was like JSX
Airlines or something. And then you know the big like
billboards in that corner. It used to be like Batman
Arkham's I guess it was Arkham Knight was like a
big takeover they did in twenty fifteen because it was
launching around that time, and there's always like a big
game billboard that like just like oversees that entire area.
This time it was only murders in the building, the
Hulu show. Yeah, it was also Don Julio Tequila so
and then on the other side, the opposite side of
the Hotel Figueroa, it was actually an ad for Call
of Duty Modern Warfare three saying coming November tenth, which
is a year or oh this point, so nobody has
purchased that advertising space, is basically what I'm saying. But
play Days takes place kind of not on the other
side of LA but like it's in the Fashion district,
which is about I walked it most days. It was
about a thirty five minute walk from that LA Live area,
and it's a much smaller campus. It's an area where
it's you know, it's a fraction of the size of
the of even one of the LA Convention Center halls.
And it's not so much about spectacle like it was
at E three, where like Nintendo would show up and
they'd have like, hey, we recreated a Breath of the
Wild's High Rule, or we have like new Donk City
for Mario Odyssey. It's just like, hey, here are some pods.
Here's like a few private meeting areas. Some of them
would go a little bit like extra with like bringing
like you know, a more intricate booth setup, but it's
primarily just like meeting rooms and like areas that can
give presentations, and maybe some of them would have like, hey,
here's also you can grab like a bag of pretzels
before you go into your interview if you want, because
we're all running on fumes. And then there's like a
food truck area because like they would give us meal tickets.
SGF would to like, you know, so we're not starving
because it's not really near anything. So there's like a
food truck area. There's like some private meeting areas. There's
some pods that you could just kind of walk up
and try some games, but primarily it's all about like
the appointments and like meeting people. And it used to
be like I also in the feature I talked about
how at E three you would be late to appointments
because it was just like it would normally take like
fifteen minutes to walk from one hall to the other,
but once it got so full of like people in
the public attending, you were late because it was like
a forty five minute walk because you were just like
scrunched up shoulder shoulder trying to get from one side
of the convention center to the other, and it was
just like standstill foot traffic. This time you were late
to appointments because you couldn't go more than five feet
without seeing somebody you knew, and you're trying to be like, hey, hey,
I got an appointment. I got to run, but like
let's catch up later, trying to pull those moves. But
like it was, it's a very well run event, I
would say, and much more well run than what especially
the later E threes were, But that said, it is
missing something in terms of spectacle, Like there's no like
giant statues, and there's no like huge intricate like booth
setups and like you know, the number of quote unquote
press conferences. They were just live streamed like showcases at
that point, but like they have been cut down substantially,
Like you know, we really we got like a bunch
of like smaller showcases that were very indie focused, which
showed a lot of really cool games, but it doesn't have
that spectacle of like, all right, here comes Nintendo and
they're in a show like Shigaro Miomoto is going to
come out on stage with a like a highly field
than the Master Sword and then play a broken demo
of Skyward Sword.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's no puppets.
Speaker 1: There's no puppets. However, we did get like the SGF Showcase,
which had a lot of really cool announcements. We got
the Xbox Showcase, which is one of their better ones
they've done in recent years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, so we.
Speaker 1: Can talk about all those, but like, yeah, like the
the act of actually attending Summer Game Fest play days
as somebody who went to multiple e threes prior to it,
you know, going away, it's it almost feels like, okay,
from like a person in the media. This is what
E three should have always been. But I can understand
why people who are not in the media, or are
maybe even just content creators who are attending this, I
could see why this would be less exciting just because
it doesn't have like, oh, this is really playing to
like the enthusiast side of me, right Like for me
is like, you know, I'm a a diehard, like lifelong gamer.
So I always loved seeing like the giant statues and
like the the Mafia three like recreation of like a
Bayou like house or whatever it was.
Speaker 2: I feel that you were kind of taking that place now.
Speaker 1: A little bit. And that's smart because that that's a
slot that they could slide into, given that they are
primarily consumer focused.
Speaker 4: Ye yeah, the one this is my You guys had
been before, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've been to every Summer game Fest, gotcha?
Speaker 3: Oh cool?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The thing I find interesting about Summer Game Fest as
a concept is talking about like the how elaborate stuff
got We went to the Ubisoft area, which is like
not a part of Summer Game Fest but nearby, and
they just kind of had their own I think, was
that a hotel or just like a convention or it
was a theater.
Speaker 3: It was a theater.
Speaker 4: Okay, they had like their own little theater space and
they like really decorated like the Assousan's Creed Shadows place.
Speaker 3: It was all like these red lighting.
Speaker 4: And they really made it like like Japanese decorations and
stuff like that was a really cool vibe to walk into.
Speaker 1: Like Samurai armor and like, yeah, it was cool.
Speaker 4: Alex was like, yeah, I could wear that armor if
I if I really wanted to. But it's interesting how
like like the industry really likes like we're so used
to having the E three where it's like one event
that everything happens at, and how Summer Game Fest is
like kind of a replacement for that, but like you know,
Xbox isn't there, PlayStation was.
Speaker 3: There this year, which is cool.
Speaker 4: Nintend was always doing their own thing, and Ubisoft was
like kind of participating, but like they're like, we'll do
our own thing close enough nearby that people can walk.
So it is like an interesting thing of I think
I think I felt that during the the SGF showcase.
I was like, yeah, this was like all right. I
was like I wasn't super impressed by the stuff, but
it was you know, it was fine, and then the
Xbox Showcase was going on. I was like, Wow, it
would be wild if you know they were properly collaborating. Again, Also,
I think Xbox just owns so many studios and developers
at this point that it kind of is a thing of.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, there's show Case, better be good.
Speaker 4: They've been buying every developer for the past like two
or three years.
Speaker 1: That is one thing that I will call out that's
like worse for a summer game fest is then everything
is so spread out geographically, like yeah, uh, and La
is not a good city to get around. So like
the Summer game Fest, like everybody's staying downtown do oing
to the play days, right, and the Summer game Fest
like live stream, like if you wanted to attend it
live in in studio or live in the audience, like
I know you did, Charles. I was going to until
I realized it's all the way out by the airport. Yeah,
And I was like I'm not doing that. I've got
like an appointment I've got to be back for. I can't.
I can't do that. And then like the Xbox thing,
exact same situation where it was like it's all the
way out in Hollywood and it's it was a very
cool venue, Don't get me wrong, I very much. I
went to the mixer that Xbox held the night before
their showcase, and it was a very very neat venue.
It was the Academy of Motion Pictures Museum, so it
was a very very cool venue, but like it was
way out of the way of like where most people
were staying. So like I ended up not going to
that showcase live either, because it was like, Okay, well,
I have to get back for like a Summer Game
Fest appointment. And then like you pointed out like the
Belasco which is where you be Soft held their event.
It was walkable, but it was also like, if if
I left in the like the afternoon, I was not
going to go back to Summer game Fest because it
was just like, okay, well, I had to schedule it
in such a way that's like, oh, when I leave,
I'm going to u be Soft and then I'm done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which in it like betrays the point.
Speaker 4: Like the whole point is that everything's right there together
and you can like bounce back and forth, and then
when you're having to like schedule in the like travel
times and stuff, Yeah, it does get weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but overall, I will say I was very, very positi.
This was the best summer game fest yet in terms
of like attending it. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they they expanded it out from two days to
three days.
Speaker 3: There would difference.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I felt like I got to see more
and wasn't I mean, we were still all slammed. You
end up filling up your schedule no matter what. But
I did see more than I did last year, which
is cool, and.
Speaker 1: So much I didn't see though, Yeah I know, I
know me too.
Speaker 4: I regret not seeing a monster Hunter. I like didn't
make time for it, and I'm not a Monster Hunter guy.
But the stuff I've heard of people that went there,
they were like that, like blew my mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was very cool, but yeah, it's it's it
was fun. I could see them. I've been every time
I go. I think, Okay, how can they expand it
next year? And this year they had like Sega had
had a tent out back, which was smart to use
because previously that space was just like very A few
people actually went out there to sit, and so they
turned into a big tent with like fans and it
was it kind of felt like it didn't feel like
you were like outside a tent, like it felt like
another room. And I think like where they had the
food trucks and they had like a big publisher show
up next year for like an on campus presence, they
can put up a big tent where those were and
then move the food trucks across the street to where
the badge pick up was. Like I find the event
organization fascinating, but yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: More organized this time around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really I really enjoyed it. I think the
Wi Fi desperately needs to be proved because it is
non existent. But but yeah, they continue to to improve
that show that that that event, I should say, And yeah,
I guess we can get into like what we actually
played there. I mean, actually, let's let's let's start with
with a couple of the Uh we can just kind
of go day by day, like what our Friday was,
like our Saturday or Sunday. I think that'll be the
best way because we can.
Speaker 1: You know, I need to bring up my calendar then yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: We can chat through also the showcases that were that day.
I think that'll be a great way to do it.
But I I arrived Saturday morning, the day the event started.
You two were there at least the night before the
day of the actual I was.
Speaker 1: There the week before.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Frian was all in the LA scene. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah. The Summer Game Fest stream happened on Friday
the seventh. I arrived Sunday the second. Well, yeah, so
I visited Riot Games on Monday.
Speaker 2: You got to do it hands on with Valerie and
two K XO.
Speaker 1: Yes, I did two x koh K. I always want
to say two k XO as well because of two
K NBA two k x U x KO. But yeah,
I got to play that and I got to play
Valorant on consoles before it was announced, and yeah, I
had a great time doing both.
Speaker 2: What's that? Can you tell me real quick on the
valor because I play Valerie. What's the focus mode that
I keep hearing about? I saw it's like kind of
brings in like a vignette almost on your screen a
little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Is that like you hold left trigger and it does
that or something.
Speaker 1: Like, Yeah, it's when you aim down the sites. It's
kind of like a vignette mode that like lets you like,
I don't know, focus interesting it's not much like, it's
not anything that's like so innovative.
Speaker 2: Is it like a magnification on that slightly as well.
Speaker 1: A little bit? Yeah, yeah, just like just like an
ADS where it's like you you pull the left trigger
and you know, you just look right down the sites
of the gun.
Speaker 2: Because not every gun and Valerant has that, I should say,
sounds curious.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's it's you know, it feels good. This
is you know, Riot's first time coming to consoles as
a developer. Obviously they've published like those Riot Forge games. Yeah,
but this is like the first time they are developing
a game specifically for console. I mean, obviously it's been
on PC for four years now, but you know, it
played really well. They're they're they're doing cross play and
cross progression. However, cross progression goes across all platforms. Cross
play is only console to console, and then PC is
still on its own island, which makes a lot of sense.
I hate it when or cross play for a shooter
includes PC players because I'm a game pad player. I'm
not going to stand a chance. And somebody even asked,
like what about those like peripherals that allow you to
use mouse and keyboard on console and they're like, no,
we're not allowing that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's funny too though, because there are some games
now where that have cross play between PC and consoles
and team like an Apex Team's almost every pro team
has a controller player because far away PC is always
going to be better, but up close the tracking with
like am assist makes for like up close fights. It
kind of favors the the controller player. But Valorant as
a game, a lot of things are done far away.
It's a lot of you know, on PC clicking little heads. Yeah,
and so I think it makes total sense for them
to keep those separate.
Speaker 1: And you know, it plays really well. They're not They're
developing almost like a separate skew, but in conjunction with
it because, like you know, they have to make sure
all the content comes over in the right way. But
they are saying that there's not a flagship you going forward.
They're going to develop it all in parallel. They're going
to bring all the content as much as they can
day and date with the PC stuff. All of the
content that is in the game currently is going to
be in the game when it comes to consoles. There's
I think there's a beta test happening later this month,
if I'm not mistaken, maybe early July. But they're they're
aiming for twenty twenty four for it to come two consoles. Interesting, okay,
and it's free to play.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and in two XKO, what can you tell
me about that? How that feel? I'm I am very
excited for that game.
Speaker 1: So that's also a one that's coming to consoles. So
it started off as a game called Rising Thunder, and
that was a game developed by Radiant Entertainment, and that
was Seth Killian, who very prominent figure in the fighting
game community. He worked at Capcom, then he left to
found his own studio. Riot bought them out in twenty sixteen,
I think, and Seth actually left shortly thereafter or in
twenty nineteen. I think he left, and he is now,
I believe, at Netflix Games. But so two XKO kind
of took some of the ideas that Rising Thunder was doing,
but they definitely rebuilt from scratch. It is a fighting
game starring the champions from League of Legends. So if
you're a League Legends fan, you'll see a lot of
characters that you know. If you're not, then it's just like, hey,
these are new fighting game characters. It's a two v
two fighting game, and you can actually play four players,
so like you can have like two players on one
team two players on the other, and it's built around
like approachability, so you there's button for special one, and
there's a button for Special two, and there's those specials
are almost used like Smash Brothers specials, where it's like
if you hold down and press special, it'll do one attack.
If you press like forward and do special, it'll do
another attack. So there are like different commands you can
put in, but it's not like you have to do
like you know, charging and quarter circles and everything like
you would and like Street Fighter. So it's really kind
of playing off of that that trend that we're seeing
with games like Street Fighter six and Tech and eight
where there's a more simplified version of controls. But that's
just the way this game is. And there's some ways
you can utilize like your team attacks in certain ways
that are really like cool, Like you can call them
in and have them like perform an attack like and
also like juggle them off of them, So like there's
they're playing off some of like the ideas present like
the Marvel versus Capcom games, but also the simplified controls
in other games. And you know, there's some really interesting
ways that like you can call in your teammate to
do an attack, and then if you press like I
forget what button it is, but they will just stay
and trade into be like the new character on the screen.
And then I was doing some really intricate combos. I mean,
I'm with the coaching of the director, by the way,
I will say that, but I was pulling off really
intricate combos within like a very short time because of
like the way specials are implemented. And then there's also
an ultimate system that I think you push both of
the special buttons at the same time, you can like
bring in throws into the equation. It's a you're able
to do cool stuff like basically, like the way the
director was pointing, I think it's named Sean Rivera. He
was saying like, yeah, we basically wanted to make it
so like people could find the fun as quickly as possible. Yeah, yeah,
And that's a very smart approach, especially in like a
crowded fighting game market. And also that the art style
is absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah. And and those character designs, I mean, like
character designs are like Riot's bread and butter. And so
I'm excited to see League characters and a different perspective.
I know there's there's characters in there that I hate
fighting against in League, like a Lowie, where I feel
like she's just gonna be super annoying and to fight
against in the fighting game as well. So I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 1: She's one of the more recently announced characters yea as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, her tentacles, I hate them, but that's that's cool.
So did fill me in? Did you do anything else
before STI Propper that you can?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So I visited two other studios. One of them
I can't talk about. The other one was Trey Arc,
which I visited to see a presentation of Call of
Duty Black Ops six doing a lot of stuff with
that game, and I can't say any details, but I
did get hands on with the multiplayer as well.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 1: But they were, like they said, you can say you
played it, you can say like you enjoyed it, which
I did enjoy it, but we can't really talk about
like any details of what we played. But you know
they're doing a lot of stuff. Like the campaign is
set in nineteen ninety one. They are kind of doing
like a successor to Black Ops Cold War if you
enjoyed that campaign. This seems like they're really playing into
like that espionage thriller Angle. The whole premise is like
the US government has been infiltrated by this evil cabal basically,
and they are like, you know, the CIA has been compromised,
and like the Department of Defense has been compromised, I think,
And it's like the Black Ops team actually goes rogue,
so like they actually are fighting like members of the
government because they are so like you know, there's a
scene and there's a.
Speaker 2: Lot of conspiracy theorists wet dream it is.
Speaker 1: It really is, and like you know, the story mission
that I saw, I saw a couple of story missions,
but the one I saw most prominently took place during
a Bill Clinton campaign fundraiser.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: So there's gonna be some like nods to like the
Times and everything, and like you know, they're coming out
of like this like bunker that was like underneath it,
and you know you see like a little Caesar's pizza
right there. So they're leading into like the businesses that
were really booming back then, and there's like you know,
there's there's sequences that are that that take place in
the US like that, and there's also sequences that take
place like during the Gulf War. So you're over in
Iraq and you're you're completing missions there. So there are
a lot of like a lot of moving pieces, and
it's it's meant to be like, all right, you who
can you trust? You can't trust anybody. There's like paranoia,
there's a conspiracy. There's all kinds of stuff of like
what is going on here and taking place in the
early nineties. So that's kind of exciting for me as
somebody who actually, like you know, was alive and remembers
pieces of the early nineties. Yeah, Charles, what do you
remember about the early nineties?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 4: Well, nineteen ninety one, I believe was the year my
parents graduated high school.
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4: So you know I was born Okay, cool? And yeah,
I was So I was born. I barely missed the nineties.
I was born in March of two thousand, narrowly.
Speaker 2: Wow, you missed out on a lot.
Speaker 3: Apparently, I'm trying to catch up a lot of.
Speaker 2: Conspiracies, a lot of call levels. You missed the.
Speaker 1: Entire thing where this evil cabal infiltrated the CIA.
Speaker 4: Oh, I'm really glad I can play this historically accurate
video game.
Speaker 2: It's you know, and then the cab left the government.
Speaker 1: A lot to find out. Everybody got their memory wiped.
It was like a real like Men in Black that
was also historically accurate where everybody's been in black.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, good to know that was actually our first
contact with aliens.
Speaker 1: Wow. First, Yeah, you forgot Independence Day? That happened to
will Smith is just everywhere.
Speaker 2: That's where we got our That's where we got the
national anthem from.
Speaker 1: Yes, ok, it's not Francis Scott keep no. But also
on Alex this will be of interest to you. On
the multiplayer side. Classic Prestige is back, baby nice. My brother,
My brother had one question for me this whole weekend.
He was like, find out if Prestige is coming back
to Call of Duty. So, all right, you ready for this.
I'm bringing up my notes here. Classic Prestige is back.
So military levels fifty five levels like Modern Warfare three.
Then you have a choice to enter Prestige. There's going
to be ten levels of Prestige and then you can
enter Prestige Master after you finish those ten levels of Prestige,
and then that is one thousand levels. Wow. And if
you finish that, they say there is a classified reward
waiting for you at the end of those one thousand
Prestige Master levels.
Speaker 2: What the heck?
Speaker 1: So how many people I want to see the race
to that? But so there's also sixteen level or sixteen
maps at launch in multiplayer, brand new ones. Twelve of
them are the classic three lane sixty six maps, four
of them are strike maps which are for like the
smaller like HVT and gunfight atches, and then round based
Zombies is also back. That's continuing the story where it
left off on the Dark Ether storyline. So two all
new maps for Zombies at launch, and of course they
have a pretty aggressive post launch plans as you would imagine.
They say tons of post launch content planned. So that's
Call of Duty, Call of Duty, Call of Duty. It
did look very impressive.
Speaker 2: Move for Call of Duty. Again, I'll say.
Speaker 1: I the last time I was like truly excited for
a Call of Duty game was when I was at
E three twenty nineteen and Activision was like Hey, you
got to check out the new Modern Warfare game. And
I've been like so busy. This's the final day of
E three twenty nineteen, and I was like, all right,
I have like one hour. Can I get in like
a theater showing now? And they showed it to me
and I was just like, this is incredible. Like I
was blown away by that theater presentation. It was like
the one where like you're like going into the people's hat,
like the person's house, and like you have to get
up to like the attic, and like you're doing it stealthily,
and that was such a cool mission to showcase. They
did such an amazing job with that mission. And then
I was like I need to play this game. And
that was the last time I was like really excited
for a Call of Duty game, and this this kind
of gave me those vibes where I was like, oh, wow,
they're doing some cool stuff with this the campaign especially,
but also the multiplayer and zombies. I kind of fell
off zombies after a couple but I do feel like
there are people who love the zombie stuff, so I'm
happy for them if if they're excited about round based
zombies coming back and like, you know, the continuation of
that storyline. But yeah, multiplayer and the single player campaign
looked really neat. So yeah, I'm excited for a Call
of Duty game for the first time in a while.
Speaker 2: Well good, I do want to I feel like we're
going to take a while to get through like our
our hands on impressions, so I do kind of want
to just run through highlights real quick. From a couple
of the showcases, I think Xbox are the best showcase of.
Speaker 3: The disputably honestly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they in terms of like first party, they
showed off Doom the Dark Ages, which gives the Doom
Marine a Doom guy a shield that has spikes on
it and kind of goes medieval.
Speaker 1: I'm all in on that game. By the way. It
looks sick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that looks awesome. Stated K three had a like
cinematic trailer. I love State of the K two. It's
the last game I really dived into co op with
my dad, so I'll have to tell him that there's
another one, But that that got me excited for whatever
is coming next with that game. I think those systems
in State of d K are a lot of fun.
We got like a horror DLC for Starfield Shattered Space.
I think it's called I still have really not I
kind of bounced off of Starfield very quickly. I do
kind of retain some sort of eagerness to go and
play that again now that there's been updates made and
new content and all that.
Speaker 4: That game that game for me. I did beat it,
but I didn't like it. And then I like really
dove into like the side faction stuff and I was like,
this stuff is great, Like this is what I wanted
the whole time, and it kind of like lets you lose.
So I'm excited for like the concept of a more
focused DLC because that was my favorite parts of Starfield
were when it was like more directed like that.
Speaker 2: Oh good, good good.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: We got another look at Fable from Playground Games Get
in a twenty twenty five release window. That's exciting. It's
been years now, but I'm excited we're finally getting close.
The thing that blew me Away was perfect, dark good.
It looks incredible. We got a first look at that
gameplay and finally, by the way, like I feel like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: They announced that game like years ago. I mean the initiative,
I forget when the initiative was founded, but it was
not a short while. I mean it was.
Speaker 5: Seventeen maybe, yeah, And you know, we got looks at
Wall Running and Parker Mirror's Edge type stuff mixed with
stealth and gadgets.
Speaker 2: It's giving dais X and I'm I'm here for it.
It looks awesome. I cannot wait to play that game.
Speaker 1: Probably initiative initiative was founded in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: Twenty eighteen, okay, probably my most the thing that just
kind of excited me the most from the whole weekend,
Perfect Dark looks awesome. So we had that Life Is
Strange Double Exposure is a follow up to the first
game I started. It's funny. I started getting Life Is
Strange tiktoks on my for you page. Now weird and yeah,
it's just people replaying a certain scene from that game.
It's really funny. What else, Uh, Indiana Jones looks good.
We had to look at some extended cutscenes they showed
the like the they tease the Boulder run, which I
think is bad. I think boulder runs in games people
who are like not sure what I'm saying, Like when
you when the camera pans around and faces the player
and you have to run towards the camera as a
chase scene happens behind you. You can't see anything in
front of you. I hate that stuff. I think it's
probably like the reason I don't like crash BANDICOOTNA Uncharted
Barely Barely got I barely got through that, Like my
my boredom and my frustration. I just hate those things.
I think it's bad game design. Well maybe in movies,
but god.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're just that's the opening of the cut scene,
and then you have to kind of parcore your way
through because it's a it's a first person.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe yeah, maybe paints track around.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they're crash bandicooting it. I think
they might just be like, that might just be the
opening cut scene and then you have to take over
from there. I think that what they're But the camera's
fixed on a certain point, so it's just constantly, oh gosh,
people vomiting everywhere. But I think that what they're honestly
going to do is I think they're going to allow
people to replay classic scenes from the movies, because why
would they just be like, hey, he's in another place
that traps him with a giant rolling boulder. I think
that is them making it like teasing that there's going
to be classic Indiana Jones scenes that you will be
able to relive through the game like a mode. Yeah,
like I don't know, Indiana Jones legends or something.
Speaker 2: Hm hmm.
Speaker 1: I like.
Speaker 2: I like the idea they're just being other boulders across
the world.
Speaker 4: That not again, why does it always have to be boulders, Yeah, exactly,
But he doesn't fear.
Speaker 1: Anything except snakes.
Speaker 2: So and not boulders.
Speaker 1: Okay, not boulders he runs from, but he's not afraid
of him.
Speaker 4: That.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we got to look at a Vowed again in
a new trailer that continues to look promising.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: One of my big critiques was looking at like the
early trailers, like the combat is not feeling like having
that feedback that Screenshake. I wanted that impact, and they
they've continued to say they're working on that stuff. But
I'm eager to play that game. Stalker two I actually
went hands on with the summer game Fest. We can
talk about that later. Probably the biggest the biggest announcement
for for Xbox Sikos is Gears of War E Day
was announced. The prequel, set fourteen years before the first game,
looks like it's stars Marcus, Phoenix and Dom.
Speaker 1: And I could not be more excited for having that
duo back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I can't wait.
Speaker 1: It's really like the what Quiet Place is doing right
where it's like, oh, ok we did one and two,
so like we've gone forward in the story the way
Gears has, and now we're going back in the story
and showing like when these aliens first arrived.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that basically a Quiet Place is doing, and now
also Gears of War, which I'm for it. I mean
that I like the world building in that sense.
Speaker 2: Me too. We're getting three new Xbox Series X and
S models this holiday, a all digital one terabyte Series
X it's white. We're getting a one terabyte Series S,
and then a special edition Xbox Series X it's Galaxy
Black and it's two terabytes SSD.
Speaker 1: Of course, yes, I just bought an Xbox Series X.
I didn't S for the longest time.
Speaker 2: That's all right.
Speaker 1: I mean I got it with Amazon Points because I
remember when my Discover rewards points for free.
Speaker 2: Basically damn okay, and uh yeah, we got some updates
for Fallout and that kind of thing. I think one
of the Another highlight for me was South of Midnight.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that looks really cool, which.
Speaker 2: It got a first gameplay trailer in a twenty twenty
five launch window that is Compulsion Games. It's setting in
a by you and Compulsion Games made we happy few,
which I don't know how many people played that, not
as many.
Speaker 1: I reviewed it.
Speaker 2: You did, what do you give it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think I gave it like seven, like it was fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but this this looks like a action game.
The animations cool, it's uh the frame rate of the
character animations is on a separate like like cycle than
like the the real time gameplay, and so it gives
it lends this uh not stop motion look, but it
lends almost like into the Spider Verse look during the Yes,
in terms of like the frame rate that everything's playing
back at. It's cool. And uh, the gameplay itself. I
mean I was getting some Infamous vibes, like when they
when the character like sling shot it across the map
and like it was flinging into the air. I was like, oh,
that looks like Infamous. It looks cool. I can't wait
to play it. There's a big catfish that that the
character rides along. They're all they all sound like the
people I grew up around in Virginia. Not not well.
I guess Virginia is not quite as as southern as
as like Louisiana. But it gave me. It gave me
happy feelings just hearing Southern accents in general. And it
looks like it's got like some Bayou folkalore going on.
It looks cool. It's called South of Midnight if you
missed it, And I do want to jump ahead to Fragpunk,
which is a game that people kept coming up to
me at the show and telling me, have you played Fragpunk?
You gotta play it. It was like there was a
behind closed doors event for it. And it's a five
y vive shooter. Listen, if this game looks cool to you,
you don't want to wait to play it, go play
friends versus friends. It's the same thing. It's not the
same thing. But Fragpunk looks to be like a what
if he puts like some big publisher money behind the
concept of like a card based first person arena shooter.
Looks cool. It's coming out sometime next year.
Speaker 1: So Alex, I think the perfect segue there would be
a game. I think we both also checked out, and
I think Charles even checked it out too. Marvel Rivals.
Speaker 2: Yes, I want to hear your thoughts. I have thoughts.
Speaker 4: I so my thoughts as someone who I like. My
basic vibe was I liked it, but it wasn't as
I remember the first time I played Overwatch. It's I
guess for people listening, Marvel Rivals is essentially Overwatch with
Marvel characters, and.
Speaker 1: It's also in third person.
Speaker 3: Also in third person, yes, good point.
Speaker 4: I remember the first time I played Overwatch and just
really being like, it's amazing how much I click with
like every character, Like I feel.
Speaker 3: Like it hit across the board.
Speaker 4: My main thing Marvel Rivals on my first play is like,
oh not every character is like immediately super intuitive, which
I didn't think was a bad thing. But I think
I was expecting because it has like the Marvel license,
that they were going to go for a more like
everyone can jump in and play as their favorite character
type thing, and I think I think, you know, people
would still enjoy it.
Speaker 3: But I right off the.
Speaker 4: Bat, I was like, I love spider Man. I'm gonna
pick Spider Man. But in like a shooter setting. It's
like not it didn't like translate immediately and I might
have been able to like figure him out. I just
wanted to try a bunch of characters.
Speaker 2: I picked him first, too, and I hated it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they enjoyed Spider Man. I also like more mobile characters.
I thought that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also absolutely suck with mouse and keyboard, and they
didn't have any game ads, so I was playing mouse
and keyboard and like doing my best to like just
like walk in a straight line basically. But like you know,
I enjoyed it, and I think that like going into
it a game that is so heavily influenced by a
title like Overwatch, and I put a thousand hours into
Overwatch one, and I love Marvel games, so like, you know,
I'm predisposed to like this this game. But like a
game that's so heavily inspired by game, I've spent so
much time into it. Soone poured so much time into
there's either there's one of two things. One it either
feels really good it's like, oh okay, yeah they really
nailed what made Overwatch special, or it's going to feel
like a cheap imitation and it didn't feel like a
cheap imitation to me. It felt like they had their
onto something with this gameplay, and they're onto something with
the way that some of these characters control, like and
I tried other ones and not all of them clicked
with me either, But like, my biggest fear for this
game is it's monetization cannot be And I told them this.
I told that that was the director, producer and the
guy that's like kind of overseeing it at Marvel Games.
I was like, look, there's nobody who is predisposed to
like this game more than me, being like, you know,
over a thousand hours in Overwatch, diehard Marvel fan. I
love like all the MCU stuff of all the TV shows,
Like I used to read comics a lot more than
I do now. If the monetization is like predatory or
exploitative or just like feels bad, that's going to do
to me what Overwatches New monetization Methods did where it's
just like, oh I don't want to do this anymore.
That'll pass Like that screws you over unless like you
really grind it out like that discourages play. And I
told them, like, that's the way that you would get
rid of any goodwill that I got out of this
gameplay session of like feeling like, oh, okay, yeah, I
could see myself like spending some time with this game
when it comes out. And so hopefully that's not the case,
because like I do feel like they're onto something. I
don't think like I'm like ready to be like I
declare that this is the new Overwatch and like everybody
who left Overwatch to check out Marvel Rivals. But like,
you know, if it's a free to play a game,
if I'm not mistaken, so like, yeah, if when it
comes out, like why not check it out? If like
you were an Overwatch fan, you're kind of missing what
Overwatch one brought to the table in the wake of
Overwatch two, Like why not give it a shot. That's
what I'm going to do whenever like the game pad
like beta or whatever is available, just to see how
it feels. In comparison, I did play.
Speaker 3: I did get a controller. For what it's worth, jeez,
I was in the market for you.
Speaker 4: I did it later, so I wonder if they like
went and they were like, oh, everyone wants controllers.
Speaker 3: So we got to go get some controllers hooked up but.
Speaker 1: I did mention that to nothing. They're like, oh, well,
this this bill does have controller like like support, and
I was like, oh what, I did not bring a
controller and yeah, okay, so maybe that was the feedback
that I gave.
Speaker 2: Them, and they had they had control when I went.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah, well I wish I would have later.
Maybe maybe me going earlier like changed the Uh yeah,
I think.
Speaker 2: I'm a bit more cynical in the game than you, Brian.
I think a cheap imitation is a bit harsh. I
do feel like it's it's it feels a little rush,
not ru it, just it didn't come together for me.
Uh as not that I won't play it, but uh
it feels more like, oh, play this for a weekend
rather than like this is going to go into my rotation.
And I still currently play Overwatch two pretty regularly. And yeah,
I think it just felt. I think Charles mentioned like
some of the characters don't play how you think they would,
and granted like I would get used to it over time.
That did through throw me for a loop, Like I
was expecting Spider Man to be more of like arranged
character or something with like his webs and he he
has a couple of those, but then he's mostly like
a fist character, and I didn't enjoy the up close
combat as much as I did playing range characters. I
thought star Lord was a lot of fun. I played him,
and then I played nay More.
Speaker 1: Oh how does he play? He is?
Speaker 2: Nay More is like almost like a zone controller, so
he can place down. I also wasn't quite sure exactly
what some of the things we're doing because I'm like
trying to I think I tried like twelve different characters
and like the span of like five games. But nay
More has his spears, so left click is like just
a normal thrown to spear. Right click seems to like
have a little more stickiness when you throw it at somebody,
like it seems like it kind of if you throw
it in their vicinity, it seems like it almost like
will hit them anyways, even if you missed. I don't
know if that was intentional or what. But and that
right click also you're you're ultimate as anymore. You're selling
this big fish out and there's something to do. There's
some sort of synergy there, I believe, But his ultimately
cool because right what's like.
Speaker 1: Team up attacks are also a thing that's in this
That was cool.
Speaker 2: That was cool. Rocket Raccoon, I played is rock at
him and I jumped on top of groups shoulders, which
was and I was playing with bots at that moment,
so like it wasn't like I could tell my teammate like, oh,
go over here, go over here. It was kind of
the whim of the bots. But that was that that
is cool and feels unique.
Speaker 1: And yeah, like Scarlet Witch and Magneto can like do synergies,
which is cool. I didn't get a chance to try
theirs out, but I was looking at like the list
of team up attacks because in the menu they had
like a list.
Speaker 2: I played predominantly with bots, which I did play one
game at the end with real people and that was
like the best it felt. I was like, okay, well.
Speaker 1: For sure, that's when it all clicked, like yeah, and.
Speaker 4: We got smoked by bots my first game and I
was like, oh no.
Speaker 3: And then the second game we did end.
Speaker 4: Up winning, even though one of our human players he
was playing his group and group can make like playing walls,
and they were finding out that you can make them
like horizontally.
Speaker 3: On a wall as like a ramp and so this
the whole game just built a ramp up a random
wall and.
Speaker 4: Was just kind of hanging out on top there and
was like not participating, just kind of like messing around
with the system. So we did kind of have like
one team member less, but we somehow managed to win
that game.
Speaker 1: What a strange thing to do if you're like they're
previewing a game.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I wanted to say, you were just like, yeah,
if they were there for like a really long time,
they got bored, or if they were just like a
YouTuber that was like really trying to test the limits
of stuff.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it was really weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. I got sat between two YouTubers
and it was it was an experience. I'll say, I
think they knew each other and just kept like dabbing
each other and like cheating in front of me to
dab each other and that kind of stuff, like please
please stop.
Speaker 1: Next to each other if you want.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, but but yeah, it was. It was.
I'm not as sold as you, but I'm as I'm
talking about it. I'm coming more around. I think I
was really underwhelmed, uh at first, and that last that
last game I did enjoy, but I think it still
has a lot to prove for me. I do want
to do wanna. I want to get a code for
like that that beta or whatever that's going on. I
know people have had access to it. I'm not going
to sid sign that stupid agreement though that I can
only talk positively about the game. I was going around, Yeah,
that's weird, but that's Marvel Rivals. I guess we can
get into our other things that we we played at
Summer Game Fest. We're already an hour into the podcast.
Speaker 1: One thing that I think a lot of people were
hoping would be at Summer game Fest the live stream,
but was not. We got to pour one out for
the Hollow Night Homies. Yeah, yep, the Xbox Showcase or
the Summer Game Fest Showcase. That leaves the only real
option if it's coming out second half of this year,
if the Nintendo Direct that's coming this month.
Speaker 3: Dude, that's true.
Speaker 2: I saw that tweet going around of it was Xbox
is saying, like somebody asking Xbox, so this means every
game in your showcase this year's coming out within twelve
months from a couple of years ago, and Xbox says,
that's exactly what we said, and it was like a
year later somebody said somebody was tweeting it, and then
another year later somebody was tweeting that tweet. It was
just like, man, you didn't do Team Cherry any favors
of that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean if Team Cherry told them it was
coming out during that time, yeah.
Speaker 2: Who knows. There were other games though in that list
that definitely didn't come out in twelve months. But that's
that's funny.
Speaker 1: We got to push redfall out to make sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I can talk about my PlayStation games I.
Speaker 3: Played, Yeah, it's a good time for that.
Speaker 4: So first game I played Astrobot. That game goes so hard,
so the so I remember when I played the PS
five like tech demo for the first time, and I
was like, this game's so fun, it's amazing, but it's
really short, and in my head I was like, Okay,
the size of this game allows the levels to feel
so good, like they've condensed everything down so that any
one level is really like this is all the stuff
we've got and it's going to be really cool. And
then playing like a few levels of the full game,
I was like blown away by like, oh no, the
whole thing is going to feel like this, Like every
game is going to have that like handcrafted quality.
Speaker 3: And I had like my notebook and.
Speaker 4: I wasn't expecting to take that many notes, and I
had like pages and pages because it felt like every
second I had to like pause the game and write.
Speaker 3: Something down because it was so cool.
Speaker 4: But yeah, and I played two levels, I fought a boss.
It still feels good. I mean it plays the same
as the tech demo. Yeah, so it's all the same
controls as a punch. You can do like a little
hover jump where you shoot lasers down to hit people
underneath you. And then I also got some power up.
So the first power up I got, it was like
an octopus backpack and when I used the right trigger,
it like inflated and like send me like soaring up
into the air.
Speaker 3: And when there's a part you.
Speaker 4: Can go underwater and when you inflate it, you like
immediately shoot up to like the surface, which was fun.
I got a I think it was a dog, Yeah,
a dog backpack, and he was like a jet pack basically,
so when I pressed the right trigger there, I would
like shoot forward as like a rocket, and they used
that to like break through certain objects.
Speaker 3: And there's also like some platforming there.
Speaker 4: And then in the boss level, I got these frog
gloves and that one you get, each trigger punches out
the other fist kind of like arms, I guess, yeah,
but they can punch. So that was like really fun,
and that's like, I mean, this is what the game
is for, but the triggers feel really good. Then when
it has like just enough resistance, then when it pops out,
it feels like you really like pulled it back, and
those can punch stuff, and you can always use those
to like swing on these certain like red poles to
like go through a level to platform, and that was
like the whole boss fight revolved around. I thought this
giant octopus revolved around having those frog gloves.
Speaker 3: And then after you beat this boss, you go and
you rescue two.
Speaker 4: Throughout the game, you're rescuing little other astrobots and sometimes
they're just like in sticky situations. Some of the like
cooler ones to find are like dressed up as PlayStation characters.
The first when I saved a ratchet and rivet astrobots.
After you beat the octopus, there's like a capsized rowboat
and then when you go over there you can use
your gloves to flip it over and Crato sineitreus are inside,
and then the three of you fly off together and
then it unlocks a like God of War Ragnarok like
themed level, but it was locked for the demo, but
I could see I had like Thor's Hammer on like
a big frozen chunk of ice, and I was like, dude,
I want to play that so bad. And it also
makes me like really excited for like, there's six worlds,
so I would assume, and this is me just talking
out of my ass but I assume at least they'd
be at least one of these in each of those worlds,
and I'm just really excited to see like what games
they want to do, like these like spinoff.
Speaker 3: Levels for but yeah, so that's really exciting. And then
there's also these smaller levels. There was like a.
Speaker 4: Circle and across one just like the PlayStation buttons, and
those are like really like intense platforming levels, so like challenges,
so you have to get through it in one life,
and I beat the first one.
Speaker 3: I didn't have time to beat the second one, but.
Speaker 2: Do like a Mario challenge room where it's like, yeah,
thirty seconds or less.
Speaker 3: Well, it's not timed, but it's like around it just.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, yeah, it's like a fast level.
Speaker 3: Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 4: The first one it was like a bunch of floating
like ice circles, so you like skate along there and
these guys had like they're swinging spike balls on change
you had to jump over.
Speaker 3: And then the second one revolved around.
Speaker 4: This like capsule you can pick up and when you
throw it at an item, it slows time. When you
throw it at an enemy, it slows time. So you
had to like grab them and throw them.
Speaker 3: At the right time to like platform and avoid obstacles
and stuff.
Speaker 4: But yeah, the main levels were like not hard. It
was you know, Mario is a good comparison where you're
going through like a early level and you know Mario
Otyssey or Mari Galaxy, and it's more about like, wow,
what a charming, beautiful place to go hang out in.
And it's still like fun to do even though it's
not like challenging. These are the levels are like heart
and I'm excited to see like people start speed running.
Speaker 3: Them and stuff like that. Yeah. Astrobod good, astrobod good.
Speaker 1: That's one of the most anticipated games for me, even
though I didn't get a chance to see it or
play it, Like I saw the you know, the announcement
obviously when it happened on the PlayStation Showcase. But uh,
the Astrobot game that came out with the PS five
was probably the best launch title. I mean, it was
up there, right, or the other launch titles like Miles Morales,
which is unbelievable and Demons.
Speaker 3: The other one there's a little bit exclusive launch title.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, but like that as far as like
demonstrating what the dual sense can do, Like it was
so novel and so cool, and it was like the
levels were so well designed. But yeah, Miles Morales was
really good. I really.
Speaker 4: The other game I played was Lego Horizon Adventures, which
such an odd little game. So the first thing starts
to me, it's a Lego game. It's not developed by
TT Games. It's developed by I think it's Studio Gobo.
It's called and Gorilla, So the people that made the
Horizon games are working on this. They have the entire
voice cast back. The guy I was playing the demo
with said like a lot of the writers from the
first game were writing on this and it just retells
the events of Horizon zero Dawn. So that first game,
and like I said, it wasn't made by TV games.
So there's some parts of like a Lego game when
you think of it, that do translate, but a lot
of it was like very different. It's like in a
base Lego game, anything made of legos, you that's like
your gameplay Q to like punch that and you can
usually destroy it or it'll be like some significant item.
In this game, there wasn't nearly as much like environment destruction,
but the whole world is made of Lego, like they
really committed to it, so like the water is made
of like little Lego studs floating around, and like the
environments looked really nice. And then gameplay wise, it wasn't
like a complicated game, but like based on what you'd
expect compared to what you expect from a Lego game.
There's like you can hide in the tall grass from
the enemies, and they have weak points that you can
target with your weapons. There's a like consumable items, so
you can get I picked up like a fire spear
when I was playing is viral and I had twelve uses.
If you shoot an arrow through an open flame, it'll
light tall grass on fire, so you can't hiden that anymore.
Like there's just like a lot more intricacy to like
the gameplay systems than I expected. And then obviously the
it's goofy because it's a Lego game. It's all the
same voice actors, but they're not doing the lines at
all the same And I think the story is like
slightly altered from what I remember just to make it
more digestible. I'd have to wait and see until, like
I actually played the full game, but like I remember
Aloy getting her focus in like a cave like in
one of those like old ruins, and in this one,
I think Ross just gives it to her. She like
finds it like out in the open during the tutorial area.
Speaker 3: But still good, still cool, Still probably the same rough story.
Speaker 4: Oh and then the other Lego goofiness thing is like
you can dress up like Aloy can have.
Speaker 3: They have like Lego City stuff.
Speaker 4: They have a Lego Friends, which is there like girls
line Lego Ninjago. There's all these outfits you can customize
the hub area of buildings. You can make like one
room like a hot dog cart and one room have
like a Lego Ninjago roof and all that stuff. And
then even in the games, I summoned a hot dog cart.
I keep talking about the hot dogs because for some reason,
that's the main thing I remember from this. But I
summoned a hot sales guy and he threw explosive hot
dogs at all the machines I was fighting as like
a power up ability. Also, characters level up. There's like
a level up path where your damage and health goes
up and such.
Speaker 3: So it's just like a really interesting thing.
Speaker 4: As someone who's like obviously I mentioned all the time
my first ever video game I played was Lego Star Wars,
so I have a very like strong attachment to the
Lego series. It's very interesting to see another studio's like
take on what it means to be a Lego game.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. How about you, Brian, what are what are
some of the any highlights that you played that you
can talk about And as some of the stuff we
played is still under embargo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'll just run through these quickly. But metaphor
Refentasio or Refantasio, the new game from the Persona developers
that played really cool. It's it basically like the Elevator
Pitch could be boiled down to its persona, but in
a fantasy world instead of like taking place in like
real world Japan. However, like you know, a lot of
the art style is the same, Like the characters kind
of dress like they're in like the modern ages. And
then there's also instead of personas, you get archetypes that
you can summon that's basically like a distillation of like
what they think a hero is. And then there's a
learned line based combat system, so it's still turn based
like like Persona. It has a lot of the same
similar ui as well, but like you can set like
certain characters in the back and they'll take less damage,
but also their melee attacks will be less impactful, so
you can are there their physical attacks. Sorry, so you
have to like balance, like, okay, am I going to
want this character to do like physical attacks or they're
only going to be casting magic If so, I'll put
them in the back and then like you know, put
my more like physical characters up front. But yeah, like
a lot of it is kind of of like Persona esque.
And they say there is like some sort of like
relationship management. I don't know, if it's going to be
on the level of Persona. But yeah, I had a
really good time with it. I played like the dungeon,
I did the tutorial, I did the dungeon, and then
I did a boss fight, and they were all really fun.
I played for about forty five minutes.
Speaker 4: Okay, Yeah, I was gonna ask how long that took.
Was it was it like a full dungeon in that
time or.
Speaker 1: Was it like no, no, no, So it was like fifteen
minute chunks of like, Okay, here's fifteen minutes you can
play through like an early part of the game. Here's
another fifteen minute gameplay segment of you just dungeon crawling,
and then here's another fifteen minute segment of you fighting
a boss. So yeah, I had had a good time
with that. I got to play Dragon Ball Sparking Zero, which,
as somebody who grew up enjoying the Boudekai games, I
never really played the Buduakai ten Kaichi trilogy or the
games in that one that series, but I love the
Boudokai trilogy and that was kind of like my main
interaction point with the Dragon Ball Z franchise when I
was a kid. Yeah, so I really enjoyed like those titles,
so I like they're doing like some really fun like
what if scenario stuff with this one. Like you there
are I think it's either eight or ten characters that
you can play through, like the events from dragon Ball
Z all Whip dragon Ball Super is like the characters
that you can control all the way up. Obviously Goku
is going to have the longest story out of all
like the individual characters, but like you play through like
impactful and iconic scenes from the uh the show or
the shows I guess, yeah. And then there's also several
what if scenarios. The one that I got to see
is at the very beginning of dragon Ball Z fight
Ratts when he comes to Earth, and then you've got
to be like, okay, well what if Piccolo and Goku
didn't team up to fight Ratits at the end of that.
So there's like several what if things, and like you
can actually defy like the what if logic because it's like, oh, well,
you're supposed to lose this battle, but if you win,
you get like a special cut scene. And then there's
like custom battles that you can like build out with
like okay, well, like you can have these three characters
fighting these three characters, and there's like wind conditions and
like what environment it takes place, and you could share
those with friends. There's gonna be like a strap battles.
I can call it all the where. It's like the
developers just like pre create like kind of like cool scenarios
three days on and then there's just a one battle
three on three three one once and you can each side.
I can have at three three AirCare stop blotline like you
can see wap water characters battle and you can transant
form that transformament, car charger, cage, so power moves. You
have three dree fighting fighting, deal deals good, and you're
floating off all around vironvironments a drusturable like like fighting
fighting city and be smashing the jug and building just
a strong role and stay the same bound mountains. And yeah,
there's one stadium like a ornament and like I gotta
get carried away the lasting and caught me on into
like like the stadium like damage the stadium trigger that
season in battle of like like the like get out
of here and you're seeing to be proud. I was
suddenly plunning out of the stadium and it was kind
of cool. But yeah, yeah, that was a really fun demo.
I'm really looking forward to that. It made me want
to go play the Budhikai or PreMaster trilogy that they've
heard the remaster series they put out. But then I
realized it's only on Xbox three sixty and p S three.
It's not actually on G S four and Xbox one.
So with the Xbox three sixty, uh, marketplace closed down,
you actually have to go get a physical copy if
you want that, I believe, which is a bummer because
I would love to, you know, reacclimate myself with those games.
But I mean this one comes out with October eleventh
on the modern consoles, So yeah, I'm very much looking
forward to that. Let's see, he's going quick one here.
Rusty Rabbit. It is a two point five D side
scrolling action game. You play a rabbit who kind of
has like almost like it's not as cute as it sounds,
but like basically humanity has left Earth and rabbits have
evolved to be the dominant species, and they're like, you know,
he's he's piloting a mech and like basically the rabbits
have like misinterpreted what humanity left behind, so like they
found the fairy Tale of Peter Rabbit and they've interpreted
that to be like their holy scripture. But like it's
it's very like yeah, basically, it's like very irreverent. Like
the opening cut scene is like, all right, well, his
wife and his daughter have left him, and like he's
sitting there in his on his couch and he's smoking,
but it's a carrot that he's smoking, which was kind
of cute. And they all have like these The demo
I was playing was in Japanese and it's like, I'm
absolutely playing it this way because they all have like
gruff voices that you would expect in like a yakuza game,
and like I just loved watching this, like gruff sounding,
very cute rabbit speaking in Japanese and smoking a carrot.
I was like, this is the way I'm going to
play one.
Speaker 3: But yeah, who's the developer on that.
Speaker 1: I don't know the developer's name, but it's it's written
by Jen Yurubuci, who was the writer of Fate zero okay,
and it like, you know, he had like a very
trademark sense of humor that he's integrating into this. But
it played well. There's a lot of upgrades and everything.
One that caught me off guard. We'll move on to
this yours Rising m that's it's almost like a two
D Metroid Vanya. It's being published by Atari, but it
is being developed by way Forward, which instantly tells me
that's going to play well, and it does. I honestly
was not a fan of the art style when I
saw the reveal, but it pays homage to a lot
of Atari franchises, which is cool. So like there's mini
games like where you have to hack and it actually
does like a little like homage minigame to Yards Revenge,
the old like nineteen eighty two Atari game. But then
like I got to a boss battle and it was
the Missile Commander, which you know, pays homage to Missile
Command the nineteen eighty Atari game, and the mechanics are
kind of related to that as well, So like he
shoots up these missiles in the air and you can
use this attack that almost is like Ness's PK Thunder
in Okay Smash Brothers. Yeah, so you have to like
intercept the missiles and like detonate at the right time,
kind of like a Missile Command and then you know
unload on the actual boss himself. And then there's like
all kinds of different like easter eggs for like Atari,
Like the the save terminals all look like old Atari computers,
and I think that there was I saw somebody like
post that like there was a just a giant billboard
in the background said Nolan, which is a you know,
paying tribute to Nolan bush Noll, the founder of Atari.
So yeah, I'm really excited to see what other like
easter eggs they have for Atari games. But like you know,
it's stealth, it's like two D, but it's also stealth.
It's also Metroidvania. It's also like Mega Man inspired in
terms of like the gameplay, so like a lot of
promise in that one. Yeah, I'm trying to touch on
these as quickly as possible. Steam World Heist too, I
really had a good time with played that for about
forty five minutes. It seems like it's really carrying on
the legacy of the first one, the strategic tactical, turn
based two D combat, which is really fun. Like so
it's like a two D style game, but like you know,
it's almost like Xcom inspired, like you have to get
behind cover and you have to like you can bank
your shots off walls and ceilings to try to hit
your enemies, and some weapons are better at that than others.
Some have more range. So if you're a sniper, you
have a really long sight line that you can bounce
off trick shots, you know, to like complete different objectives
on that. You can a deep class customization system on
that Monster Hunter Wilds. That demo was really impressive, Like
the way I was watching. I'm not a monster hunter
like die Hard either, but I was really impressed by this.
It was just like, Wow, this is like almost thrilling
to the point of exhaustion, which is like kind of
how I felt like watching like John Wick four, where
I was just like watching it in theaters. I was like,
this is incredible, This is incredible, and then like by
the end of it, I was like out of breath
almost by Like, man, that was just like an adrenaline
rush from start to finish. But like they played out
an entire hunt in the demo that I saw, and
like there were so many cool things of like all right,
we're going to lead him through this area and hopefully
this other monster will attack him and then We're gonna
lead him into this storm and this region's Apex is
Apex creature is going to attack. And there were a
lot of really really impressive systems that like all meld
together and work, and it made me really want to
redownload Monster Hunter World to like get a taste of
like the excitement that demo brought. So that was when
I was, what was that.
Speaker 2: That poor dinosaur slash monster?
Speaker 1: Oh? Did you watch it too? Do you see the No?
Speaker 2: But I saw somebody. I think John More on Twitter
was like he was like, my most annoying take about
Monster Hunter is that I feel bad because.
Speaker 1: I felt bad too, because like he got injured. The
monster got injured, he started limping away and they're like, Okay,
we're just gonna let him go for now. And then
they like found him later in the dem like the
next day they went back to their camp slept and
he was asleep, and they're like, all right, we're gonna
wake him up in like a really mean way. So
like they put a bunch of explosive barrels all around
the monster and shot the barrels and exploded like right
by the monster. The I was like, the Monster's probably
like really guys. Like, I'm just trying to like recover
from like all the danger of yesterday and like all
the wounds that I I. Yeah, I felt bad for
the monster too, but like then I'm like, oh wait,
it's it's a video game. I don't have to feel
bad for the monster. The last one I want to
touch on an indie title that people told me I
should check out Parcel Core.
Speaker 2: This looks awesome.
Speaker 1: This was so cool. I want to say it was
Victor Lucas, a longtime YouTuber that told me to check
this out, and I went. And it's basically like jet
Set Radio meets Crazy Taxi but on a bike. So
like from the way that the premise was that like
the city has outlawed biking and like because like there
are three corporations that were like vying for control over
like the bike delivery market or something. Yeah, so it's
like a really out there premise, but it's like you
have to like accept deliveries and then get them delivered
in a certain amount of time. So there's like the
Crazy Taxi DNA, but the controls are very jet Set Radio.
You're grinding on rails, you're like pulling off tricks, as
you get there, and it's all like one big tongue
in cheek like commentary on the gig economy, which was
really fun as well, and like there's a lot of
like cultural references, like or pop culture references, like there
was a breaking bad reference that I spotted, and there's
like other stuff like there's a and certain deliveries have
different conditions, like there was like a guy who was
running like a wine business, and you wanted me to
deliver his bottles of wine. But because there are wine bottles,
you can't be too reckless, so like you could only
sustain a certain amount of damage before the mission failed.
Other ones are like just get the package there as
fast as possible, I don't care what it takes. And
then there's a mode where it basically is like a
crazy taxi mode where you're going around, like you go
to one delivery person and you have to like make
it over to another one before time expires and then
deliver that package. So there's a lot of really cool
stuff at play with this. They said the hardest thing
for demoing to Americans is that because there I believe
an Irish developer, all the cars go on the left
side of the road, so like you're going through your
you're riding your bike through traffic, and I'm riding on
the right side just by you know, instinct, and he's like,
oh no, no, you're gonnaet hit by a car if you
drive on that side.
Speaker 2: That's funny.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that was a really fun one, and that
one's coming out relatively soon. I think that's coming out
in September.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks awesome, do you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those are the ones that I saw that I
was most excited about. I really really enjoyed my demo
that I got of Assassin's Creech Shadows. But I know
we're not going to talk about that quite yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was. I need to check the the uh
I think, Charles, you're going to talk about that probably.
Speaker 3: Right right now.
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, no, no, I need to check the embargo.
Speaker 1: On the embargo's up for Assassin Street Shadows. But I
mean the demo was very impressive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, why not?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I can talk about it or any
of us can, Oh, Charles.
Speaker 2: Go, yeah, I was an embargo none of us you
get hands on or no, no, no hands on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we had our presentation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean so I think people but that saw
you forward saw a chunk of what.
Speaker 3: We got to see. So obviously there's.
Speaker 4: New games that in Japan, you got Yoske the Samurai.
Speaker 3: And now A the Shanobi. And in the.
Speaker 4: Gameplay demonstration you see Goske doing some combat.
Speaker 3: Uh, and then now I sneaking into this facility, the.
Speaker 2: Castle it's there in essentially right yeah, yeah, yeah, or
not quite a castle town. This is a normal castle.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I think I think you use the word castle town.
Speaker 2: There are castle towns in the game, I know.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay.
Speaker 4: We also got to see what it looked like if
yos were to go in that castle to assassinate, assassinate
the daimyo, I think is a position. And then we
also saw a now Way if she went during the
day and was taking like a slightly less stealthy approach
and was like actually engaging in combat sometimes three paths.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: In addition, yeah, addition to now Way at night and
Jake looks nuts like I really really appreciated from these
demos seeing how different these characters were, because you know,
there's been a lot of different assassins, so the idea
of like two assassins was always like cool, But for
the most part, like game to game, the assassins play
the same and there's more changes like dramatically over time,
but they have generally the same toolkit.
Speaker 3: Usk is just so different.
Speaker 2: He's not even really an assassin.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, yeah, he's not stealthy. He doesn't do
parkore like, he doesn't climb walls. He's got the huge armor.
Ons doesn't make any sense, we're just showing. He basically
just walks right in and just fights dudes.
Speaker 3: He can like.
Speaker 4: Truck like it was charged through walls with his shoulders.
He has just had all these Oh and he also
has like a gun. He's like a rifle ye for
like range combat.
Speaker 1: I love that they're just like they even acknowledged in
the demo. They're like, yeah, Stel, it's not an option
when you're yessca. He's not really like hiding from anybody.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and like when you walk in town, like everyone
turns and looks at you because you're i mean, first
of all, an African person in Japan. But also he's
huge and wearing this like really ornate samurai arm, so
he like draws all this attention from all these people. Yeah,
and I just think I think he's like such an
interesting direction to take, and I think because of that,
now it can really be like traditional assassin, Like she's
got some other cool things. But for me, whenever I'm
playing an Assassin's Creed game, I really like the fantasy
of being the sneaky hooded assassin and like you know,
having my hidden blade and stabbing people in the dark
and all that. And they always want to make each
game a little bit different from the last and like
add something in to kind of spice it up. And
I think Yasuke's existence of being so far from what
you expect allows NAWE to be a lot more traditional
And if people just want like a quote unquote normal
Assassin's Creed game, now he's doing like all the things
you're looking for, whereas like Yasuk is going to be
like a real wild cart and I'm really excited to
see like more of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was just brutal in the way that his
executions and like he would literally just like walk up
to people and there's like weapon floorish as he can do,
of course, but like even just like base attacks, like
he's just doing so much more damage than now I did. Uh,
Like where now they fight like a little not a ball.
He's just like a big, bigger kind of guard. Yeah.
What takes Yaske like three strikes takes now a like ten.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And but now it seems really like capable and
like the hand to hand stuff as well. Like I
was thinking like, okay, well you've got to be stealth
or nothing with her, and then I saw this this
demo and I was like, oh wow, she's like pretty.
She looks really fun as well with like like just
going in like if you want to do action style gameplay.
Speaker 2: She also has this cool move where she runs up
a against a wall like briefly wall runs, kicks herself
off of a wall, and throws a grappling hook right
above her. And that's how like she can scale walls
that have.
Speaker 3: Like trim around like the roofs.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, or like walls that don't have like handholds,
which is super cool. But yeah, just like Yaske is
brutality where like he's there was one part where he's
literally like holding up an enemy by the throat with
his blade and then just like flings them off of
it and they just like go flying. Also in our demo,
I don't know if it happened to you, Brian. I'm
really curious and like the first encounter as Yaske, when
you're in just the town, not the castle yet he
goes into attack an enemy and just like a round,
random townsperson gets caught in the middle and like on
the upswing, Yaske just like beams this townsperson and then
go flying. It was just like it. It was like,
you know, like a bowl on a china shop situation,
like just yeah, the did the.
Speaker 1: Fruit physics get put on display?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: He kicked some guy into like a crate of oranges
and like the oranges scattered in a relatively realistic way.
I was actually surprised by the details put into the
oranges falling onto the ground.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was a nice also in the demo compared
to the showcase which I watched, I watched my partner
last night because I was like showing her what it was.
I don't know if they like tuned it down for
a showcase or if it was a setting a turn off.
I do remember Yoske decapitating like oh yeah, several people.
There was so much blood and he didn't There was
blood and he was definitely like hurting people and he
decapitated like a Samurai boss. He fought, but there was
I felt like it was a little bit more brutal
in our behind closed Doors demo and I'm curious to.
Speaker 2: See he probably like, yeah broadcast, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: They just don't want to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you you only have so many you only want
so many hapitations if you're not Mortal Kombat in your trailer.
Speaker 1: How are you guys feeling about this game? Because for me,
it kind of jumped up after seeing this of like
some of one of my most intestated games of the year,
because it's extremely my jam Like it's the same way
that I felt about Star Wars Outlaws when we went
to Sweden to play that Alex where I was like, Okay,
let's see what this is and I was like, okay,
this this world structure and everything looks right up my alley.
I think that the way you can choose how you
want to engage with the missions in in Assassin's.
Speaker 2: Creed shadows the protagonist and a player.
Speaker 1: Like the protagonists like, because I sometimes I just want
to be action and other times I really want to
be stealthy, and it's nice to have like a character
that I can choose that's actually like prespect for that,
you know, yea, and you can swap them on the fly.
So it's like, oh, well, like you know, I love
Assassin's Cree Odyssey, but like if I spect my Cassandra
for action instead of stealth, it's like, okay, well, I'm
not really equipped to attack this this thing stealthily. I'm
assuming there's going to be like separate upgrade trees for
these characters and every thing. I don't know, like it
looks really good man, like it looks really good. And
Star Wars Outlaws. I didn't see the demo at the
show this time around. Did you get to see that? Charles?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I played it. I played three twenty minute segments.
Speaker 1: But I did not. I'm sorry to move on. I
didn't get your opinion on like overall thoughts on Outlaws. Yeah, no, Assassins,
I keep saying the Creed.
Speaker 3: Sorry, Yeah, I'm excited. I did last year.
Speaker 4: I played through most of the Assassin's Cree games to
do like a big retrospective. So I'm like very freshly
well versed in the series, and I think the like
the two Assassins, like does a lot for me in
terms of like getting to play the way I want,
but also like getting to try the new stuff, and
like there's a reason people have wanted them to go
to Japan for so long, Like it's just it just
makes perfect sense with all the lore of Assassin's Creed
and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: So I'm very excited for that.
Speaker 1: Did you play Ghost of Sushima?
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 4: I played like the first act, and then I think
I played the first active that I got hired at
fan Bite, so then I was like doing work stuff.
Speaker 3: But yes, yeah, I played a little bit of it.
Speaker 1: That was maybe my favorite PS four game. Like it's
like up there with like the first Spider Man game
for like just my game of the generation, Like it
is maybe in my top twenty five games of all time.
Like that's how much I loved Ghosts of Sushima. Yeah,
and I came in. I mean it was almost like
going from Overwatch to Marvel Rivals, where I'm just like,
all right, this is either gonna be awesome or it's
gonna feel like a cheap imitation. And I was really
impressed with Assassin's Creed Shadows.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, I do think.
Speaker 4: I trust I'm also curious to see, like we know
it's going to be like a bigger RPG, like closer
to a Valhalla or an Honesty, but I'm curious to
see like how expansive that is, because I also don't
want to like play this game and get like burned
out on it, like Ghost of Sushima is, like it's
a big game, but it's not like one hundred hours.
Speaker 3: I'm sure how.
Speaker 1: Many hours I put into it, but well I think
I probably put like sixty or seventy hours into Ghost.
Speaker 4: Sure, sure, sure, Well maybe I'm wrong, but yeah, I'm
curious to see what like scope does for this game
and if it like can hold me the whole way through.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I also think I mean, I think the gameplay
looks awesome, the scenarios and I'm not really an Assassin's
Creed guy kind of fell off a long time ago,
but like the addition of Yaske is really intrigued to me.
I think the writing is I don't know if they're
going for it intentionally. The writing is kind of bad
in some places, like you select the kid, like now
we to go up to this castle, and she's like
and he's like, be careful, you'll be alone up there
and she's like, I won't be alone. I have the shadows,
and I was just like, that's the stupidest line. And
I love no.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 4: I was thinking it'd be like like in the opening
scene in Star Wars Outlaws, it's like, you can't do.
Speaker 3: That, that's against the galactic code. She's like, I'm a
Star Wars that out law.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly what it was.
Speaker 1: We really are the last of us, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So I'm like, but gameplay wise, it looks cool. I
want to play it. Yeah, we'll see.
Speaker 1: That.
Speaker 2: They they did you get to play? You got to
play the Rogue Prince of Persia, right, Charles. I know
we've covered that on the show.
Speaker 3: I did well, I got I did get to play.
I got to play.
Speaker 4: A new update for it where they were talking about
game came out, and I think for a lot of people,
if they had a chance to check it out, they
didn't play that much of it, or they didn't really
feel the need to. I do feel kind of bad
because it like Prince of Persia, the Rogue, to me
is like, that's a what's it called that? That's an
early access game, you know, But like Haiti's two is
also technically an early access game, but the amount of
content that delivers to someone is like so vastly different
from like your average early access experience. And Prince of
Persia the Roague came out like the early access launched
like a week or two after that. I think they
like delayed it because of eighty two. So my first run,
I played it like on my own. I was like, okay,
like maybe this will be good, but I didn't.
Speaker 3: Really click with it.
Speaker 4: And I played three runs here with the developer sitting
right next to me, and I really felt like I
got the whole like proper experience. And the update they
added was like a new skill tree, or not a
new skill tree, a skill tree period. There was no
skill tree before. Yeah, so I enjoyed playing the update
and I really was like, Okay, I can see how
when I played this game, which I think, I think
it's already out, I think it count this past monday
having played it, being like okay, I can see myself
like sinking more time into this now that there's like
a proper progression system.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it feels good.
Speaker 4: It's like it's like dead cells but a little more agile,
which is fun.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: What about Star Wars Outlas since I've now boomeranged back
to that, Like, what were your overall thoughts on that.
Speaker 3: I liked it.
Speaker 4: I'm not like one hundred percent sold on the gameplay yet,
Like as I was playing it, I was like, Okay,
this is another one of those like this is another
action adventure stealth, there's vehicle combat, and it's like it's cool.
Speaker 3: It seems like I'm sure it'll be a good game.
And I didn't think it was bad.
Speaker 4: There's just nothing about it to me that like stood
out as particularly particularly unique, except it is a Star
Wars game like Star Wars, so I'll probably play it
because of that.
Speaker 3: But I wasn't like it wasn't like a revolutionary thing
for me.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, nice, Yeah, I mean I think that
was kind of like our takeaway as well, Alex, Like
we really enjoyed our time with the game when we
were out in Sweden, but it wasn't like, oh, this
is going to change the industry. It was just like, oh, yeah,
this seems like a fun like open world Star Wars
game with some interesting mechanics at play with like the
reputation system and I don't know, like the open world
seems like it's going to be at least from what
again what we played back in what was that February March.
It's it seems like it's going to be the kind
of like gameplay loop that would hook me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was all.
Speaker 4: I was all also in like on the rails like
contained sections, so I'm I am interested to see like
the whole were.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I got like a ship combat section, I got like
a proper like infiltration mission, and then I got kind of.
Speaker 3: A like uncharted style like just exploring these old ruins.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, yeah, well I played a lot. I'm
going through my notes seriously. What I can talk about
real quick? We talked about Marvel Rivals. I played a
game called Lush Foil Photography sim Did you like that? I?
Speaker 3: I also tried it and it gave me a headache?
Speaker 2: I did. I did like it. I think the the
graphic settings were whatever they were running on was not
optimized for the game. And yeah, it looked it had
like a weird like DLSS filter on it that didn't
look good to be honest. But like the mechanics and
like of like just I mean it's like operating. I
think like if my friends are interested and getting into
photography and learning more about it. I could see recommending
this game because all but one setting is like pretty
one to one the ISO behave. The way the ISO
setting behaves in the game is different than a real camera.
And it could be that I was using the wrong
priority mode because like a real camera, it had like
shutter priority mode, manual aperture priority. You can adjust the
shutter speed the the ISO, like I said, the white balance.
You can add different lenses on, you know, you can
all sorts of steps, exposure steps, and so I was doing.
I was just like messing around a lot with like
the manual stuff and like putting it through its paces.
I think it's it's pretty, uh like it's it's pretty.
It's pretty cool that it's like it gets very close
to operating a real camera. I think, like, if you
aren't interested in that kind of thing, it's not there's
really no game here.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's such as sick with Pokemon snap is what
you're telling me.
Speaker 2: If you want a game like a game loop. Yeah,
but like if you if you're actually interested in like
learning photography and like messing around rather than going out
and buying like an expensive camera, like having a digital
environment to do that in and it is relaxing and fun,
but it certainly can be aimless and based on the
demo that I had, but I think if they can,
they can assuming like the graphics look better because they
look like have this like smearing effect which is usually
for in my experience, like something to do with like
DLSS settings. If they can fix that. And perhaps it
was just like a hardware issue. And you know, I know,
running into play Days booth sometimes you kind of just
get thrown wrenches into the works.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Want to see more from that game. But it seems cool.
It is literally a photography sim you go explore some
real life locations, like I had Mountainnari from from Kyoto, Japan.
They had a place in Australia, I think a place
in Italy. It was, it was, it was cool. I
checked out Stalker two, which is probably my most anticipated
game going into Summer game Fest, and I was pretty disappointed.
I think it might be a case of like a
bad demo setup. I was playing mouse and keyboard on
like essentially a TV tray fold out dinner table, uh,
and the so that they there's no room to move
the mouse, so the DPI was cranked up like crazy,
and it was a very dark demo, like it was
taking place at night, and with the glare that was
on screen, I could barely see stuff happening. And I
just think it was a bad demo. So I'm not
gonna like write the game off, but I was like,
kind I was underwhelmed by, like the mechanics, the shooting mechanics,
how they felt it was a little floaty, not quite
as precise as I wanted. Again, I think I was battling.
I kept like going from I kept switching from a
mousing keyboard to controller because I just couldn't get it
to feel right, and I was battling like Major Glare.
So yeah, it was just like not a good demo.
Speaker 1: Major Clare is the boss exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's it's like an open world horror survival
game FPS, you know, it's it's I think I feel
like everybody has heard of Stalker two at this point,
if you're interested in that sort of genre. But yeah,
I want to I want to see more. I don't
want to talk too much about it, just because I
was disappointed and I feel like I it was so disorienting,
like my demo appointment that like I feel like I
don't even have a great grasp on the game because
the appointment went down. But I did play Replaced though,
which was awesome. That was another that was there under
the Xbox label and Replaced. So people remember the Last Night,
which is that was that cinematic pixel art game that
got showed off at an Xbox showcase years and years ago.
The creator of it said some wild things publicly kind
of got I think canceled or something, and then this
game kind of popped up, different totally different team, but
like similar vibe, and people kind of latched onto It's like, oh,
we can still get that cinematic pixel art platformer action game,
and this game looks amazing, feels awesome. The combat is
similar to like an Arkham situation, where like your WHY
is your counter button, your B is your heavy attack
X as a light attack, and you're kind of managing
incoming attacks from enemies, using your attacks to bypass their defenses,
like using your heavy attack against shielded enemies will Like
you're playing as like a it's all set in like
a cyberpunk area, cyberpunk setting, and so like you're heavy
is technically like this, like it like melts through the
enemy shield and you a gun as well that you
can use. But in order to build up AMMO, you
have to attack people with your fists.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I forgot that. I did see somebody playing like
I was waiting to go into another demo and I
got to look over somebody's shoulder while they're playing it.
It is visually impressive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah it is. They're they're doing a mixture of
three D assets and two D pixel art. The the
it all looks really stunning. And I will say the
the story promise seems like a cool setup. Typically I
feel like with like Cyberpuk things like people are all
about like making their augmentations and it's like, uh, you know,
really embracing that. This game centers around an AI that
has become locked in a human's body and can feel
all the emotions of a human and does not want
to feel it. They hate it and they want to
go back to just being a normal AI, and so
the game is about like them trying to get out
of this human body, which I think is a cool setup.
Speaker 1: I get it, I really do, man, Yeah, I understand.
Speaker 2: So I got to play a section like a definitely
oscillates between combat. Everything was set up in three separate
pillars from the main menu, so there was a prologue.
There was a place called the It was like a
train station that acted as like a trading hub, and
there's no combat. There was like more adventure game style stuff,
and then there was a combat section. It was just
like a wave based combat challenge. You could see kind
of all of the various aspects of the game in
these disparate demos, But I walked away really impressed by Replaced.
What else did I play? Two of my favorite things
I can't talk about yet, my two favorite games of
summer game fests I can't talk about. Wow, I can't
talk about hyper Light Breaker. I played that. I enjoyed it.
I think it the targeting system. I felt like I
was battling that a bit, but like I really like
the concept of like doing these open world runs as
a hyper Light Breaker. The character designs were awesome. I
enjoyed like going to the shops before each run and
buying you know, loading, Okay, do I want to go
with like a pistol? Do I want to get a
like more of something like an assault rifle. What kind
of melee weapon do I want? Do I want like
a a pinwheel ax like Bloodborne style like acts that
like spins, or do I want like just like more
of a sword or or and and there's like a
hoverboard and you can use There's a lot of stuff
going on. But I really like Heart Machines games, and
I think I'm really gonna like this one once I
get the handle on the targeting system and the controls.
But everything's procedural, so like you're going in and fighting
you're essentially wiping out smaller like elite mobs to then
unlock bosses that are in like flood gated arenas like
Dark Soul style, And it's all procedural in terms of
like the environment and where things are placed. And in
order to escape the world, you have to like I
had to like activate this pillar that this shrine that
shot up like almost like this waypoint in the sky
that I had to run to. And as I was
like trying to close out this level, I was being
chased by this like really hard assassin who was like
dead set on like trying to kill me before I
could escape the level. So that there's a lot of
cool things going on with hyper Light Breaker. I want
to see more. I love Light Drifter exactly. Yeah, me too,
So I think it's it's gonna be interesting. I played Uh,
Never Never from Devolver Digital, from specifically Nomada Studio, the
team behind Greece, and Uh, that game's really cool. It's
a lot more action oriented than I thought. You play
as a white haired swordswoman who has like a you know,
a fairly robust set of attacks that just feel really
intuitive and I didn't really need to pay attention to
tool tips or anything like that. It just feels like
if you've played like a two D action sword fighting game,
you could just kind of pick it up and go.
And it was pretty challenge. The game centers around this
wolf family who after some tragedy, this woman ends up
with this wolf cub. The cub is named Never and
that's who the game center is around. But you play
as Alba, who is the wolf's companion and kind of caretaker.
And throughout the game, the wolf grows older and older
and learns new abilities.
Speaker 1: And so you can't teach an old dog Nutrick.
Speaker 2: More like a young dog, but yes you can. That's
funny joke. And so the game is told their season.
So I played I think I started in summer and
my demo it was missing some some core cut scenes
in areas. But like after I got done with the demo,
I asked. I was like, okay, so well the next
one then we'll proceed to the next season after this
demo and they're like, yeah, and the dog will you know,
grow a little older, look a little different. And so
it's really a story about, you know, kind of parenthood.
There's a lot of the one. I think the creative
director had a child during the making of Greece and
wanted to focus on that theme with this game. So yeah,
themes of companionship, parenthood. It's it's really gorgeous, looking very
much inspired by Princess Amononoke from Studio Ghibli. There was
some Spirited Away in there. Some the enemies kind of
looked like no face from Spirited Away.
Speaker 1: Particular because Studio Ghibli.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so it looks really cool. I'm excited to
play more and I think it comes out. It comes
up this year, so that'll be neat. Yeah, I'm trying
to see what else I played.
Speaker 3: That was a trailer.
Speaker 4: Like at SGF when I saw one of the ones
where I was like, oh, video.
Speaker 3: Games, baby, Yeah, Yeah, I was.
Speaker 4: Really excited to see that, like not expecting it at all,
kind of the exact kind of thing I want from
one of these showcases of like, oh, I remember that exists,
but I wasn't excited for it because I hadn't thought
about in so long.
Speaker 3: Just being reminded of it and I was like, yeah,
I'm so into that.
Speaker 2: Two more games. I have two more games I can
talk about real quick. I played Skate Story, which I
know there's a lot of games with the skate in
the name that have come out lately. There was Hell Skate,
There's Skate Story, There's Skate Sim, There's Skate Skate, There's
a Skate's, There's Session of Skateboarding Sim. There's there's there's
a lot. Yeah, yep for for people who have forgotten
what it is or maybe you haven't even seen it.
While I always confuse this one with Hell Skate Skate Story,
the one I played at Summer Game Fest. You play
as a skateboarding demon who wants to devour the moon,
and you are fighting against celestial body and dealing with
like philosophical questions, like literally there is like you are
like collecting philosophy pages and one section of this game
while performing kick flips and ali's. It's it's a very
strange game. The soundtrack rips. They have a band. I
talked to Sam, who's the developer mostly pretty much solo
developer of Blood Cultures is the band that is doing
this the music in the game, So it's gonna be
a combination of licensed music from Blood Cultures as well
as some original tracks. And it whips. It is killer.
But you're essentially going through like these very ethereal linear hallways,
doing ali's to avoid spikes, doing tricks to fight bosses,
Like your skateboard has supernatural power, so when you do
this skate story, this skate story, yeah okay, yeah uh,
And so you're just like fighting. I fought like this
giant like orbing flying like sculpture of I don't know
if it was Plato, but he like locked me in
like essentially his mind palace and prevented me from devouring
the sun. And I had to pass his tests to
escape and devour the sun or devour like a gay or.
Speaker 1: Were they like were they like you have to do
a kick flip over.
Speaker 2: This gap would say that say the first part again.
Speaker 1: So was it like you must solve my riddles three
or was it like you must do a kick flip
over this gap?
Speaker 2: Kind of a combination of both, Okay, mostly the latter.
What that means you like get off your skateboard and
run around and interact with things too. There's like more
that you kind of get like spit out into more
open quote like uh, I guess, like skate parks, and
there's like secrets and stuff you can unlack by doing tricks,
and then you kind of get threaded back into these
like more linear chunks. It's a weird game. I think
it's gonna I think Blake Hester would love this game
if he was still with us a game informer.
Speaker 3: And he'll probably still love.
Speaker 1: It enjoy it.
Speaker 2: He is still alive, so if he was still with us. Yeah,
this is like one of those games I think, like
the Jacob Gellers of the world are really gonna Like.
I enjoyed it, and the developer was super nice and
I was just caun tell. He's like very proud of
the game and it's really cool. So I recommend checking
it out if that sounds interesting to you. Last game
I played was Battle Aces, which is a ten minute automated,
mostly automated real time strategy game by Uncapped Games former
developers who have worked on StarCraft and Warcraft. And it
is a mostly multiplayer game. There's no campaign. You can
play against ais if you want, but it's set up
to be like, uh, you know, matchups with with other
people and either one v one or TV two's and
it gets rid of a lot of the intricacies of
real time strategy games. Uh and really focuses on just
the army building in combat. And I like the concept
of it more than the execution I think. I think
it will have an audience, But for like a real
time strategy fan, As a real time strategy fan, I
really do like the minutia of like building the walls
around my base, selecting, you know, building farms so that
I have enough money or that I have enough resources
to build my armies up. A lot of those things
are automated in this game. So if you are interested
in real time strategy games and you that kind of
stuff has put you off in the past, and you
just kind of want to like mash your armies together
to fight, you could do that and and and uh
so that that that is a cool aspect of it.
I think I'm worried that the game is going to
be too complicated for their target audience and not complicated
enough for RTS fans.
Speaker 3: That's that's what I've heard. The vibe I heard from
some other people was like.
Speaker 4: As an RTS fan, this I like, I like rts's
and this is a little less than that. But as
someone who doesn't play RTS is personally, I haven't really.
Speaker 3: I mean, maybe I can try it and I'll see
if my opinion changes, but.
Speaker 4: It has yet to like speak to me in a
way that like some more established RTS hasn't.
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, I I'm uh yeah. I think the
the enemy designs in the units are cool and the
way that you like compile your you pretty much have
like a deck of you make your army before you
load into the match, and there there is some complexity
there and some interesting stuff there. I just worry it's
like a little one note art style is cool. I
really like the the anime trailer they posted as like
their cinematic trailer was really cool. I'm like, y'all should
make a Battle Aces anime because that looks sick so yeah,
I'm interested to see more from that game. I I'm
not completely sold on it. We'll see what happens. But
those are those are the games I played at Summer
Game Fest. Anything else y'all want to talk on before
we get out of here.
Speaker 3: I think I think I covered my bases.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we covered quite a bit of ground
in this this episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny because we still aren't done. We just
can't talk about everything yet. And like I said, two
of my two favorite games from the showcase from the
play days that I played, I can't talk about yet.
And one of them is like, ah, it's so good?
Speaker 3: Was that the one I saw too?
Speaker 2: That one's really good. There's another that I like better
a little more.
Speaker 1: But those in the industry call it tease. The tease.
Speaker 2: Yes, well that's gonna do it for for today's episode.
Thank you all for for sticking with us. It's kind
of like a just throwing everything at the wall that
we played. Hope you enjoyed hearing our thoughts. Stay tuned.
Next week will be we'll be diving into even more
because I think embargoes will be up. But yeah, there's
a lot of fun I'm exhausted. I'm excited to go
eat lunch and take a quick nap. But thank you
all for listening and watching. If you enjoyed the show,
be sure to share it with the friend, leave us
a review, and if you really want to support us,
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It really helps us keep the lights on and helps
us keep doing this show. So thank you everybody. Brian Charles,
thank you for joining me. Uh, thank you listeners. We
will see you all next Thursday. Goodbye,